Jenny Patrick

Who is Jenny Patrick?

Jane Hamilton Patrick was a Scottish anarchist of some standing, and played a crucial role in a number of radical organisations.

Patrick was a printer and typesetter by trade. She became active in politics, when she joined the Glasgow Anarchist Group by 1914. She was also a partner of Guy Aldred’s for some thirty years until his death.

Patrick with other anarchists had an ambivalent attitude towards the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and along with Aldred, she helped form the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation a breakaway group.

The authorities began to investigate this group, and Aldred, Patrick, Douglas McLeish and Andrew Fleming were eventually arrested and charged with sedition within the first year of its inception. Patrick along with others was eventually found guilty and given a sentence of three months. The charges relate to anti-parliamentary activity, the promotion of the Sinn Féin electoral tactic and undermining of parliament.

In 1924 Aldred and Patrick helped set up a journal called The Commune.