Woolf Wess

Woolf Wess (also known as William Wess or William West; 1861 23 May 1946 ) was a Jewish immigrant to the United Kingdom who from 1884 spent much of his time community organising in London. An anarchist, trade unionist, and a newspaper editor, Wess was active in the Socialist League and is notable for his involvement with the International Working Men's Educational Club, and Freedom Press.

Before London

Wess was born in 1861 in Ukmergė, Russian Empire (now Lithuania), to a Hasidic baker. At the age of twelve, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. He also worked as a factory machinist in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia). In 1881, Wess immigrated to England to avoid military service.

Wess became heavily involved in the local labour movement and "[...] played an important part in the Jewish trade-union movement in Britain. He helped to establish almost all of the Jewish unions in the 1880s and 1890s."

By the beginning of the 20th century, Wess' participation in the Jewish trade union movement had been reduced. He took up a job as a bookkeeper in a tobacco factory and in 1904, he stayed with Tom Keell, the compositor and new manager of Freedom. In February 1906, Wess and Lilian Wolfe (Keell's partner and another member of the Freedom publishing group), were setting up the Arbeyter Fraynd Club on Jubilee Street, Whitechapel. By June of that year, he and Rudolf Rocker were serving on another tailors' strike committee.

Wess spent 1928–1929 rebuilding the London Freedom Group, only for it to close down in 1931. By the late 30s, Wess had revived it again and had become involved in solidarity work for the Spanish Revolution with Emma Goldman. By 1946, he was still active as a speaker within Jewish radical circles in London, making a speech to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the first publication of the Freie Arbeiter Stimme (Free Worker's Voice or Free Voice of Labor). He died on 23 May of that year at the age of 84 and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. In his obituary, he was noted as an atheist, as a number of anarchists were at the time.