13 Facts About James Tochatti

James Tochatti, was a Scottish anarchist agitator, merchant tailor, trade unionist, newspaper editor and public speaker.

James Tochatti was born in 1852 in Ballater, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, to police constable Joseph Tochatti and his wife Jane Cormack.

In 1882 James Tochatti was charged with disorderly conduct outside a cheesemongers in Hammersmith in a dispute over closing times.

James Tochatti was active in the Hammersmith Radical Club, and in 1885 he was a founding member of the Hammersmith branch of the Socialist League.

James Tochatti regularly undertook public speaking and contributed to the League's paper Commonweal.

James Tochatti served as the branch president of the National Labour Federation trade union during the successful 1889 strike over low pay at the John Isaac Thornycraft shipyard in Chiswick.

James Tochatti remained a member of the League and of the Hammersmith society despite the society adopting an anti-anarchist stance.

James Tochatti remained a friend of William Morris despite the split.

On May Day 1894 James Tochatti was attacked while speaking on anarchism.

James Tochatti died in Poole, Dorset on the 22 November 1928 aged 75.

In January 1894 James Tochatti started the anarchist monthly newspaper Liberty: A Journal of Anarchist Communism in response to the violent rhetoric being used in the newspaper Commonweal.

Liberty was to be avowedly against political violence and "bombastic talk", with James Tochatti arguing that it only served to alienate people from the anarchist cause.

James Tochatti produced the periodical in the book-lined basement of his shop on Beadon Road in Hammersmith, London, with help from regular contributor Louisa Sarah Bevington.