‘In theory, there is no such thing as exile for the anarchist, nor actually for any consistent internationalist’, the Encyclopédie anarchiste stated in 1934. Such claims have become a central line of investigation for transnational labour historians who tend to emphasise a central paradox: ‘If the lived experience of transnationality helps account for the appeal of internationalist ideas amongst mobile workers in the first globalisation, then, it does not follow that there was any simple linkage between transnational lives and internationalist politics’. The very cosmopolitan London milieu provides an excellent testing ground for the perennial claim that anarchists have no motherland, but also for the counter-argument that sectionalism dominated exilic politics. In a place where several libertarian movements – chiefly French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian – coexisted in large numbers, along with significant socialist contingents, the French comrades did indeed put their proclaimed internationalism into practice, sometimes to a remarkable extent. Anarchist militancy in Britain was at least twofold: there were numerous collaborations among the elite, bypassing national fault lines and resulting in influential tactical initiatives; simultaneously, a heartfelt yet rudimentary and symbolical internationalism prevailed at grassroots level. Nonetheless, by comparison with previous generations of exiles, anarchism appears especially propitious to international contacts, through its emphasis on practical internationalism and ferocious critique of nationalism and patriotism. This insistence, along with the joint reflection at elite level over the question of the anarchists’ entry into trade unions, make this period a golden age of practical and strategic internationalism. The forms and contents of exile politics raise other questions. Was this period a parenthesis in the comrades’ political activism, confirming the stereotypical depiction of exile as a time of sterility and boredom? What links did they maintain with the country they had left, with the one they were living in? How did exile modify the refugees’ political conceptions and practices? Despite the intense conflicts within the groups and recurring talk on the political emptiness of exile, this forced spell abroad proved very fruitful: it provided the conditions of a strategic reorientation through trade union militancy, out of the ostracism where the comrades had found themselves since the late 1880s. Newly formed informal international networks provided an efficient modus operandi in a movement fraught with organisational dilemmas.