Rose Street Club

Rose Street Club
Rose Street as seen in an original sketch of 1851
Leader	Johann Most
President	John Lord
Secretary	Frank Kitz
Founded	1877 (1877)
Dissolved	1882 (1882)
Headquarters	Rose Street
Newspaper	Freiheit
Ideology	Radicalism Anarchism
Political position	Far-left
Regional affiliation	London

The Rose Street Club (sometimes the International Rose Street Club^[1] and earlier the Local Rights Association for Rental and Sanitary Reform) was a far-left, anarchist organisation based in what is now Manette Street, London.^{[note 1]} Originally centred around London's German community, and acting as a meeting point for new immigrants, it became one of the leading radical clubs of Victorian London in the late-nineteenth century. Although its roots went back to the 1840s, it was properly formed in 1877 by members of a German émigré workers' education group, which soon became frequented by London radicals, and within a few years had led to the formation of similar clubs, sometimes in support and sometimes in rivalry. The Rose Street Club provided a platform for the radical speakers and agitators of the day and produced its own paper, Freiheit—which was distributed over Europe, and especially Germany—and pamphlets for other groups and individuals. Although radical, the club initially focused as much on providing a social service to its members as on activism. With the arrival of the anarchist Johann Most in London in the early 1880s, and his increasing influence within the club, it became increasingly aligned with anarchism.

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