Vero Benvenuto Constantino Recchioni was born, a British citizen of Italian descent, on 19th July 1915. He anglicised his name to Vernon Richards in 1935,
but was always called Vero at Freedom Press. His parents owned the King Bomba delicatessen in Soho, and he managed the shop for a short time after his father's death. When Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, he liked to say 'Thatcher was born over a corner grocer's shop, and I was born over a posh grocer's shop'.
His father, Emidio Reccioni, was an anarchist, or - as Vero put it - he 'called
himself an anarchist' but he was an authoritarian where his family was concerned. In the 1920s he took young Vero to see the sights of Paris, and left him in the hotel room all day while he went out on his own. The sightseeing trip was a cover for meetings with other Italians to plan the assassination of Mussolini.
At the time of the 'Angry Brigade' trial in London, Vero spoke scornfully of the conspirators who gave themselves away by boasting of their exploits to casual girlfriends. 'My father was a good conspirator, not even his close family knew what was going on'. The Daily Telegraph named Recchioni as the financier of the attentat on Mussolini, and he sued the publishers for libel. The defence was that they had meant another shopkeeper called Recchioni, but they could not identify anyone elso of that name and description, or even find another Recchioni in the telephone directory. He won a large sum in damages, which according to legend was used to finance another attentat on Mussolini.
In 1935 at the age of 20, Vero was expelled from France under the terms of the Hoare/Laval pact, and returned to London to edit an anti-Mussolini paper, Free Italy/Italia Libre, in collaboration with the Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri. Berneri went to Spain when the Spanish Revolution broke out, where he was shot dead by a firing squad of men wearing Communist Party armbands.
Vero, who had just joined University College London to study civil engineering, was advised by Berneri and others to stay and make propaganda in Britain on behalf of the anarchists in Spain.
He started a newspaper, Spain and the World, and was immediately joined by the surviving members of the old Freedom Group, who had suspended publication of Freedom in 1932. One of these, Lilian Wolfe, continued working as the office administrator for Freedom Press until 1969, when she was 94 years old. Emma Goldman, Max Nettlau and others gave their support and contributed to the the paper. In 1937, Vero sent to Paris for his girlfriend Marie-Louise Berneri, the daughter of Camillo, and provided her with a British passport by marrying her.
After the defeat of the Spanish Revolution the paper changed its name to Revolt!, then when World War Two stated, to War Commentary for Anarchism. Vero's application to be registered as a conscientious objector was rejected, but as a civil engineer working for the railways he was in a reserve occupation, and there was no attempt to call him up. War Commentary was implacably anti-war, and Freedom Press also published anti-war pamphlets (which had a bigger circulation than might have been expected because the shelves of bookshops were emptied by the paper shortage). But anarchists who supported the war were not rejected as comrades. A journal published by exile Spanish anarchists, Solidaridad Obrera, very much in favour of the war against fascism, was printed on a Gestetner duplicating machine owned by Freedom Press, and kept in the Freedom Press office. According to Vero, the Spanish anarchists would say 'may we come and print Solidaridad Churchilliana?'.
During the war, Vero and John Hewetson were registered as proprietors of Freedom Press. The police came to the office one day looking for an anarchist fugitive from the law. Of course the Freedom Press people denied all knowledge, and the police pointed out that Freedom Press was liable to to immediate closure, as it was not on the Register of Business Names. That same day the business was registered, and as a unforeseen consequence of this emergency action, Freedom Press was saved from takeover by people who did not share its aims.
In late 1944, Freedom Press was raided by Special Branch, who seized the files-and the typewriter-for investigation. Two anarcho-syndicalists, regular contributors to War Commentary, had long objected to articles which they thought 'irrelevant to the working class struggle' (for instance those calling for sexual freedom). In the disruption caused by the police raids, they saw an opportunity to make the paper more to their liking. They recruited Spanish anarchists, a few Trotskyists and others to the Anarchist Federation, and held a meeting which voted by a majority to replace the editorial board. Vero pointed out that he and John were registered proprietors, and refused to relinquish control, though the anarcho-syndicalist pair were offered one page of the four-page paper, to use as they wished. They were furious. In those days, decent book and newspaper printing was letterpress, much more costly than the offset litho printing of today.
Freedom Press had acquired Express Printers in 1942, and the anarcho-syndicalist pair were among those giving continued financial support for this purchase. They now withdrew their support, and Vero had to apply to his mother (who was was not an anarchist) for a loan to make up the shortfall. With accomplices, the pair robbed Vero and Marie-Louise at gunpoint of £25.00 (four weeks average wages) to finance a rival newspaper, and smashed the type for the next edition of War Commentary with a sledgehammer, as it lay on the press bed at Express Press. No doubt they thought they were justified.
Vernon Richards, John Hewetson, Philip Sansom and Marie-Louise Berneri were prosecuted in April 1945 (as the war in Europe was finishing, but before the end of the war against Japan) for 'conspiracy to contravene Defence Regulation 39A'. Marie-Louise was acquitted because, as the law was then, a wife could not conspire with her husband. The three men were each sentenced to nine months imprisonment. Philip, with the usual one third remission, was released after six months. John and Vero served the whole nine months, having been found guilty by the visiting magistrates of trying to smuggle a letter out of prison.
After their release, the same team of four resumed control of the paper, now renamed Freedom. Marie-Louise sadly died of viral Pneumonia in 1949, at the age of 31. John and Philip retired as editors and administrators (while continuing as contributers) in the 1960s. Vero did not retire.
He was effectively the proprietor, always ready to listen to other opinions, but using his prestige and charisma, and control of the funds, to make decisions for Freedom Press on his own, when he thought it appropriate. He had after all started Spain and the World on his own. There are two ways of making collective decisions. One is for a group to meet and decide by consensus or majority voting. The other is for an individual to say 'I propose to do such-and-such, and I invite others to join me'. Vero preferred consensus, but refused decisions he could not accept. However, he was not the boss. All who worked with him were unpaid volunteers, over whom he had no control.
In 1968, changes in printing technology meant that Express Printers was no longer viable as a business. At the same time, the lease expired on Freedom Press's temporary premises in Fulham. Vero borrowed the money to purchase 84b Whitechapel High Street (across Angel Alley from Express Printers at 84a), in his own name because no-one would lend to Freedom Press. He personally owned 84b until 1982. Then 84a was sold to the Whitechapel Art Gallery, some loans paid off, and others, including the loan from Vero himself, converted to outright gifts. Vero then transferred ownership of the premises to Friends of Freedom Press Limited, registered at Companies House as a company which does not trade.
Vero was editor of Freedom until 1965, when he handed over to the first of a succession of editorial collectives. In 1987 he was disatisfied with the way Freedom was going, and resumed editorship in 1988, until he handed over again in 1996.
Anarchy, the Freedom Press monthly edited by Colin Ward from 1961, was (I think) Colin's own idea, but the initiative for the current Freedom Press quaterly was Vero's. Early in 1986 he invited a couple of anarchist academics to edit it. A year later, he learned that they had not yet begun collecting copy for the first issue, and invited two other anarchist academics, Nicolas Walter and Heiner Becker, to take over. The name The Raven was proposed by Becker.
In prison in 1945 Vero, an accomplished violinist, organised a band of fellow inmate musicians. After his release he took up photography, and on one day in 1947 took the only known portrait photographs of his friend George Orwell. In the late 1960s he took over a small-holding near Colchester and made his living for thirty years as an organic market gardener, supplying 'health food' shops.
Following the death of his companion Peta Hewetson in 1997, Vero retired to Hadleigh and became something of a recluse, but he continued to work for Freedom Press, as accountant and treasurer, until the day before his death. He was found collapsed, and taken to hospital where he died, on 10th December 2001. As Philip Sansom once said, "if Richards had not started Spain and the World, the whole history of modern British anarchism might have been not just different but non-existent".