RADICAL HISTORY NETWORK (RaHN)

MEETING - LUDDITES REMEMBERED

2011-12-06T22:53:00.001Z

proudly LUDDITE – OCCUPY now

SPEAKER FROM LUDDITE 200 INVITED

8 pm on 14 December, Wood Green Social Club, Stuart Crescent, N22 (normally in room 1)

(Just opposite the Civic Centre on the High Road, at the start of White Hart Lane, 50 yards from the main road. A 100 yard walk from the bus stop at Wood Green tube station, past the Wood Green bus depot)

We are celebrating that it is exactly 200 years since the clothing workers in northern counties who had tried talking to employers and politicians, were finally forced disguise themselves, take large hammers [Enochs – there is a picture of one on the blog] and start breaking up the new machines that had destroyed hundreds of jobs. They were not opposed to technology as such just machines that were crushing their livelihoods. After a brave revolt, that scared the ruling class, they failed and we know today that destruction does not work. Now we have to consider other methods for the widespread introduction of technology that threatens millions of jobs. Dockers, printers, and others have seen jobs eaten by new inventions and millions of others less publicised, are under threat. Today many think in terms of occupation of premises, property and equipment, to control their use and ensure production is for social need, not just profit.

What is a Luddite?
The Luddites, armed with hammers, pistols and a desperation to protect their livelihoods, seized the imagination of the British public in the early-nineteenth century. And they have held on to it. Two centuries later, the word 'Luddite' is still familiar all round the English-speaking world, though our rulers have ensured it is a byword for negative action.

History and events
Machine breaking as a form of protest had been happening in England since at least the late-seventeenth century. It gained momentum in the 1790s and again in the early 1800s, when framework knitters in Nottingham, angry at the prospect of wage cuts, took hammers to their machines. They remembered the name of a Leicestershire lad, named Ludlam maybe, who had smashed a machine in a fit of pique, and from him came the semi-mythical figure of General Ludd, in whose name the protests were said to take place. Machine-breaking also spread to the cotton industry of Lancashire and Cheshire, but it was in Yorkshire that the most disturbing and ultimately poignant drama was played out. The violent events of 1812 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, leading to a string of executions in January 1813, have been told and retold ever since by historians, novelists and playwrights

Repression
Those in authority were determined to crush the revolt from below. There was no right to vote anyway, and a massive army was assembled, more men than were used against their mortal enemy, Napoleon Bonaparte in Spain, to force obedience. Some of the mills were fortified and pitched battles followed, people were killed on both sides. Hundreds of spies were sent into the villages but for months silence ruled . Then by deception some names were gathered, arrests made, terror ruled in the community. After what passed for a ‘trial’ 14 were sentenced and hanged. Many more were transported to penal colonies in Australia.

People involved
The key characters in West Riding Luddism were tradesmen known as croppers, who needed great skill and strength to manipulate enormous shears with which they smoothed the surface of the woollen cloth produced in the weavers' cottages that dotted the hills and villages. But a machine was invented that could shear cloth much more efficiently and some of the new breed of Yorkshire manufacturers were installing this latest technology in their factories, which were bringing all the processes of cloth production under one roof. The consequences of this change forced the revolt, which brave though it was, was doomed by the massive use of arms.

Luddism has become a title, worn with reluctance but bravery, by workers defending their livlhood agaianst capitalist ‘Progress’ and politcal indifference. We have tried the political parties and the so called law and now we must fall back on ourselves and our organisation to occupy. We remember the Luddites with pride

BOOK REVIEW - Joe Jacobs biography

2011-11-27T18:48:00.001Z

Review: Alan Woodward, After Cable Street – Joe Jacobs 1940 to 1977. 84pp. London, Socialist Libertarians, September 2011.
(Available from Housmans bookshop and at meetings).

Alan Woodward has done another service to radical history in producing this well-researched booklet, continuing the narrative of a varied and active political life begun in its subject’s posthumously published autobiography (Joe Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto, 1978). Using Joe’s letters and other papers, backed up with reference to a range of background sources, he places the life in the context of its times, showing how Joe’s political ideas developed after his days as a Communist Party activist in the 1930s. Those ideas were repeatedly applied in support of working-class struggle; and against those who Joe believed would take over or sell out that struggle for their own ends.

The core chapters are: Joe and the war; Shop stewards, workplaces, unions and the occupation; Joe and the international dimension; Strike reporting; Politics and organisations. Key events – confrontation with military authority, industrial strife and organising, political debates and clashes – and Joe’s role in them are recounted along with their effects on his thinking, with frequent quotes from his own writing, some of it still unpublished notes. Relevant theories and their more notable advocates are discussed in detail, displaying Alan’s impressive knowledge of the history of leftist ideas in the 20th century. The helpful lists of dates, sources for each section, and index are further added value.

In the concluding section, Expulsion and Conclusion, Alan discusses Joe’s association with Solidarity (‘for Workers’ Power’ was the subtitle of the magazine, later ‘for Social Revolution’, not part of the group’s name) in the early to mid 1970s, which was amicable and mutually beneficial for several years but terminated in sadly downbeat fashion, in one last ‘expulsion’ for Joe.

Alan devotes perhaps a disproportionate amount of space to the Solidarity group, or his own (in my view) somewhat idiosyncratic picture of it, and to one of its publications in particular, as if this was an article of faith to which we all subscribed. It wasn’t and we didn’t, as the introduction to the pamphlet in question itself makes clear. As a member of the group during and for quite long after Joe’s time in it, I have to say – at the risk of adding to the disproportion – that this is not exactly Solidarity as I knew it. Alan makes us sound too big, organised and party-like, and he will insist on labelling us ‘marxist’, without making it sufficiently clear that this is his assessment of its nature rather than what the group called itself (‘libertarian socialist’ was the preferred term). There is a longish list of supposed local groups (p.54 – two men and a dog, or a couple and a cat, might have been about the strength of some of these) and a particularly jaw-dropping assertion (pp.64-65) about Solidarity using ‘the political yardstick – in their case of basic marxism…’ (What?!)

Sometimes he qualifies the brand as ‘libertarian marxist’ (which many of us would consider a contradiction in terms) whereas Solidarity’s long-drawn-out analysis was concerned specifically to show the inherently non-libertarian tendency of essential elements of marxism. This extensive critique meant that Marx was indeed quoted much and often in Solidarity publications, as Alan points out (with the misleading implication that such references are in themselves evidence of marxism). Given that there are problems with all labels, it seems perverse to slap on one which was not used and would, I believe, have been rejected in no uncertain terms by most members over the years. Apart from anything else, it goes against the libertarian grain, and is ahistorical, to derive a complete worldview from one individual, and a dead white male at that. One day the ‘insiders’ history’ may appear… (see postings on this blog, October and November 2011). In the meantime, readers can judge for themselves from numerous texts still around on the internet.

But the half-dozen Solidarity years form only a small part of the J J story, and the account here of his interactions with the group and eventual parting from it in the notorious (or deplorable, or farcical) ‘expulsion’ episode seems fair, to the best of my first-hand but long-ago recollection.

Reservations aside (these may or may not include Alan’s trademark proofreader’s-nightmare typing, already familiar to fans), the booklet contains a lot of good stuff which deserves to be more widely known. To end on one more note of dissent, however: I can’t entirely agree that ‘The story of Joe Jacobs is a sad one’ (p.5). Take it for all in all, there are grounds for hope and encouragement in his overcoming of difficulties, will to resist oppression and authoritarianism in all situations, receptivity to new ideas, and determination to remain his own man to the end.

L.W.

More on Invergordon: Reporting the Mutiny.

2011-11-27T18:40:00.002Z

The Strike Signal

There was no news blackout on the events at Invergordon in mid September 1931 (see this blog, September 2011, and Black Flag No.234, late 2011, pp.17-19), much as the Admiralty and government might have liked to impose one. Things had moved fast, and the Cromarty Firth where the ships of the Atlantic Fleet were gathered, although distant from the corridors of power, was not so remote from centres of population and lines of communication that what was happening there could be kept secret.

The Daily Herald newspaper, the only national daily that supported the Labour Party, went to town on the story of what were seen as sensational developments. On Wednesday 16th September, when the sailors’ action was under way and its outcome unpredictable, most of the front page was devoted to different aspects of the situation, with multiple headlines. The following day almost as much space was occupied by the follow up and the announcement of the mutiny’s end result, successfully blocking the imposition of massive pay cuts. Excerpts are reproduced below.

Two of the most prominent among the mutineers refer to the Daily Herald in their memoirs of Invergordon:. Fred Copeman, later of Spanish Civil War fame, says that he was a reader of the paper, which was viewed as ‘red’ in the Navy, the Communist Daily Worker being seldom seen at all by sailors (Reason in Revolt. London, Blandford Press, 1948). Len Wincott, asserting the lack of any left-wing political culture on the lower deck, noted that ‘Even the Daily
Herald was not allowed on the ships till 1926,’ (Invergordon Mutineer, 1974, p.66) He too was a reader though, and had, before the mutiny, ‘found time to pen and send an angry letter’ to the paper, not printed or even acknowledged (p.83), about an inaccuracy in one of its reports about the Navy.

Front Page News, Daily Herald, Wednesday September 16, 1931

Headlines, sub-headings, captions including:

ATLANTIC FLEET RECALLED – Official; Unrest Follows Pay Cuts Among Lower Ratings; Exercises Suspended Pending Admiralty Enquiry; Premier’s Talks with Crew of Warship at Portsmouth; Sailors hold mass meeting on shore. Photos: guns on HMS Warspite; Rear Admiral Tomkinson.

From Our Special Correspondent ABERDEEN, Tuesday

Invergordon to-night is as quiet as a village on the shore of a South Sea island.

All the ships of the fleet are lying peacefully at anchor in the bay, and there is no sign of trouble or disturbance.

Members of the town council and municipal officials assure me that for two days there has been no difficulty with members of the crew.

PROTEST RESOLUTIONS

Meetings of the lower ratings were held ashore on Saturday and Sunday at which resolutions were passed protesting against the cuts to pay and seeking their withdrawal.

The Saturday meeting was very boisterous, for many of the sailors had been to Invergordon games, and attended the meeting in a lively mood. Extra pickets were brought on shore to prevent disturbances.

The Sunday meeting was an orderly and serious affair, at which speeches were delivered and questions asked and answered. There was no trouble with pickets or police.

Resolutions passed at the meeting were presented to the commanding officer with the request that they should be communicated to the Admiralty.

I learn to-night that a high officer travelled by air to London to-day. The lower deck hopes that he will return to-morrow with a reply to their resolutions.

All shore leave was stopped yesterday and to-day, when Invergordon was surprised to find the Fleet had not sailed, nor a single bluejacket landed.

Meanwhile no hostility has developed between the men and the bulk of the officers, and the ships seem absolutely at peace.

Yesterday spectators on the shore observed crowds of men meeting on board various ships from which sounds of cheering could be heard, followed by the singing of popular choruses.

On one ship sailors were collected in groups on deck. A party gathered round a piano and held an informal concert.

Another crowd indulged in an acrobatic performance, and this indicated that they were having time off from their usual duty.

Front Page News, Daily Herald, Thursday September 17, 1931

Headlines, sub-headings, captions including:

FLEET OBEYS “MIDNIGHT” ORDER: Sailing For Home Ports After Admiralty Promise; Crews State Their Grievances Against Pay Cuts; Cheers for the King and Flag; Commands of Officers Not Obeyed; Destroyers Lead Way Down Firth.

From Our Special Correspondent INVERGORDON, Wednesday

After a good deal of persuasion, the men of the Atlantic Fleet who have been on “strike” all day, decided this evening to obey the Admiralty order to take the ships to their home ports.

The Government’s promise to “make proposals for alleviating hardships” was conveyed to the men during the afternoon.

It was discussed at length by the crews, who then decided to ask for assurances that they would in fact be taken to their home ports.

Men Reassured

There seems to have been suspicion that once at sea the order to go home would be cancelled, and the ships sent to some distant station.

I understand that the men required a great deal of persuasion to agree to man the ships. In some cases, more than two hours were spent debating the question.

The men were finally reassured that they would be taken to their home port, and that cases of the greatest hardship would be investigated.

Valiant, which had taken the lead in the “strike”, was one of the last ships to agree to the order, and word was passed round that the men had decided to man the vessel.

About half-past ten to-night the first of the Fleet, one or two destroyers, steamed down the Firth.

The men are now confident that their representations will be investigated.

“We have not been beaten,” was the declaration of one of the leaders.

They have sent the following letter to the Admiralty: [Manifesto demanding rethink on pay cuts].

[Description of ‘extraordinary scenes on board’ on Wednesday 16th, Page Two]

Socialisme ou Barbarie and the origins of Solidarity.

2011-11-06T08:11:00.003Z

Origins of an influential
libertarian socialist organisation - Part 2

The politics of the Socialisme ou Barbarie (S ou B) group were a considerable influence on Solidarity and had origins, like Solidarity, in the Trotskyist movement. The prime movers, Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort, were members of the Parti Communiste Internationale (PCI), the French section of the Fourth International. Working together from 1946 these two argued that the Stalinists in the USSR and out of it were not a part of the workers’ movement but bureaucrats who were as much enemies of the working class as the capitalists. (The US Johnson-Forest Tendency, subsequently the group round the publication Facing Reality, were thinking along similar lines at this time. Relations were close between the two groups or at least their key members for many years.) At the end of 1948 ten or twenty dissidents left the PCI and in March 1949 the first issue of Socialisme ou Barbarie was published. The choice posed in the title – Socialism or Barbarism – stemmed from the emergence of two atomic-armed superstates, both aiming for world domination. The result of the conflict between them would be atomic war and a return to barbarism for
humanity unless the power elites both east and west were overthrown by socialist revolution.

At the same time as the group were locating all power in the rank and file the majority of the group including Castoriadis resolved that S ou B should develop into a vanguard party able to lead and co-ordinate the workers’ struggle and conquer state power; Lefort amongst others opposed this idea, taking the position that the essential problem was not the organisation of the revolution but workers’ power. After 1953 the anti-bureaucratic critique began to acquire some influence among rank and file militants particularly in the Renault factories on the outskirts of Paris. Instead of working to capture the unions and provide ‘correct leadership’ the industrial militants worked independently from the unions in autonomous groups.

Cornelius Castoriadis

From the mid-1950s Castoriadis developed a critique of Marx’s views of technology as a neutral historical force and labour as a simple commodity. The former was rather a class-technology designed to increase control over the workers. In the latter case the price of labour was not fixed but depended on the ‘relationship of forces between capitalists and workers’. The implications were that Marx’s economic ‘laws’ were no such thing, the nature of history became unpredictable and every historical situation was open. From 1958/9 he combined his concepts of the central contradiction in modern society, that between management and worker, with these criticisms of Marx. ‘The new critical theory of society which grew from this assumed that the real contradiction of capitalism could no longer be sought in the economic arena but within production itself.’ In this view the initiative and participation of the workers was required to allow work processes to function but the room needed for this participation also made room for worker self-activity and a degree of shop-floor control which management would continually try to contain and which trades unions would try to sell for cash gains.

It is not difficult to see where the attractions lay for the 1960 Workers’ Party. S ou B emphasised the importance of rank and file industrial organisation More than this, it stressed the necessity for this rank and file organisation to be autonomous and placed the increasing spread and power of such autonomous organisations at the heart of the process leading to socialism. The role of the political group was to put autonomous groups in contact with each other and publish detailed and honest accounts of particular struggles to discuss lessons learned and encourage further autonomous activity elsewhere. [This puts Solidarity’s future practice in a nutshell].The project of capturing the trades union hierarchies was simply abandoned.

Chris Pallis of the Grainger-Pennington group through which these ideas were translated had met Castoriadis in 1947 through a friend who was at that point breaking with the PCI under Castoriadis’ influence. They met again when Chris returned to London (from Malaysia) in 1950/52 but it was not until 1956 that he began seriously to take note of Castoriadis’ ideas, as he became disenchanted with the Trotskyism of the Club and the SLL. He began to read back through Socialisme ou Barbarie and made contact with the group. There is evidence of well-developed traffic between S ou B and a group of people in the SLL around Chris Pallis some time before it became more public and spread its ideas in 1959/60, resulting in the Grainger-Pennington expulsions.

‘Socialism Reaffirmed’ – founding ideas and principles of organisation
The ‘Socialism Reaffirmed’ text published in October 1960 set out the position of the new group, or perhaps more accurately put forward ‘certain ideas which might form a basis for a regroupment of revolutionary socialists’. This text, largely the work of Chris Pallis, is a summarised selection from the founding text published in the first issue of Socialisme ou Barbarie in March 1949. A full version also titled ‘Socialism or Barbarism’ would be published in 1961. The 1960 leaflet is the recognisable forebear of later texts such as ‘As We See It’ and ‘As We Don’t See It’. Like them it attempts to set out complex ideas in as clear a way as possible with simple precise sentences, although not yet free of Marxist linguistic tics.

Key points [some abbreviated] are:

No existing supposedly working class organisations express the interests of the working class...
A socialist movement is the self-conscious and independent movement of the immense majority.
The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves... Revolutionary bodies can assist the process but mass socialist consciousness and mass participation are essential...
No ruling class ever has [given] or will give up its privileges without ferocious struggle.
Society is divided into the majority and those who own, manage, decide and direct. The result is crisis and conflict ...
The working class develops an ‘essentially socialist’ consciousness in everyday struggle at the point of production in both capitalist and communist societies...
In one revolutionary upsurge after another the working class has attempted to solve ‘the basic question of its status as an exploited class’ and challenged ‘the very basis of all exploiting regimes’.
Between these peaks of activity the working class has created political and trade union organisations but they have degenerated partly because capitalism has adapted itself and partly because capitalist methods of thinking and organisation have been imposed on them... The revolutionary organisation must fight mystification and its peddlers.
Socialism means workers’ management in the factory and in society as a whole – without economic power the working class hold on political power will be insecure. ‘Factory committees and workers' councils are the probable forms through which the working class will exert its rule’ ...
The working class needs a revolutionary organisation not as leadership but ‘as an instrument of its struggle’ whose role is to assist struggles and link them, publish material to generalise experience and to stress the revolutionary potential of independent mass action.
The structure of the revolutionary organisation should reflect the highest working class forms, i.e. workers’ councils. Local bodies will have the fullest autonomy ‘that is in keeping with the general purpose and outlook of the organisation.’ All central decision making bodies should be made up of elected delegates, revocable at any time.

This is very clearly a summary of the S ou B/(Castoriadis) position. There are some noteworthy features: firstly, the assertion of the primacy of struggle over theory and, with caveats, the primacy of autonomous working class organisation over the revolutionary party. The essential element of a socialist society is asserted to be workers’ economic power enshrined in ultra-democratic bodies not the political organs of party or state. The leaflet’s significance in the context of the times is that it was a libertarian challenge to the Leninist left on its own ground, using its own language to attack its own fetishes in the kind of logical progression of argument familiar from its better polemics. This made it rather more dangerous and challenging than arguments in terms taken from other traditions whether social democratic or anarchist.

Nevertheless there are some internal contradictions and inherited assumptions. One is the assumption that the working class engaged in the struggle for socialism is the manual working class engaged in production. This does not mesh particularly well with the concept of the socialist movement as the movement of the vast majority. Already by 1960 the proportion of the population engaged in manual and white collar non-managerial service jobs was considerable. Similarly movements such as CND were potentially capable of independent mass action but had no relationship to class struggle at the point of production.

Another feature of the leaflet is the way that 'the' revolutionary organisation is described not 'a' revolutionary organisation. However self-effacing as an instrument of working class struggle the organisation may be, no matter how great the (nevertheless conditional) autonomy of local branches, what we have here is enough residual Leninism to assume an exclusive and essential role in relation to working class struggle. These points are not trivial or abstractly theoretical and would be tested soon enough by the group’s practical experience. This experience would in turn modify its practice and the statements that the group put out from time to time in future.

[Solidarity, later joined by members from a more libertarian background, was to devote much of its intellectual energy to getting any ‘residual Leninism’ out of its system, and to developing and extending its critique not only of Stalinism and Trotskyism but of marxism in general. - LW]

JQ emphasises that this is a work in progress, as part of a longer “Insiders’ History” of Solidarity, and that comments are welcome.

MEETING - What does Rosa Luxemburg have to say to today's Anti-Capitalist Movements?

2011-11-02T08:04:00.000Z

Speaker: Peter Hudis, co-editor of The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg (Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg Vol. I) 2011.

7.30 pm Thursday 10 November, Brockway Room, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 (5 mins walk from Holborn Tube).

"[In the 1905 Russian Revolution] there fermented throughout the whole of the immense empire an uninterrupted economic strike of almost the entire proletariat against capital – a struggle which caught, on the one hand, all the petty bourgeois and liberal professions, commercial employees, technicians, actors and members of artistic professions – and on the other hand, penetrated to the domestic servants, the minor police officials and even to the stratum of the lumpenproletariat, and simultaneously surged from the towns to the country districts and even knocked at the iron gates of the military barracks." -- Rosa Luxemburg, 'The Mass Strike'

With comments by Kevin Anderson, author of Marx at the Margins, David Black, author of The Philosophic Roots of Anti-Capitalism, and Heather Brown, author of Marx on Gender and the Family

Sponsored by the International Marxist-Humanist Organization (http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/) and Hobgoblin Online (http://www.thehobgoblin.co.uk/)

ALL WELCOME

“GENESIS” – earliest days and prehistory of SOLIDARITY

2011-10-29T07:40:00.003+01:00

Origins of an influential libertarian socialist organisation - Part 1

Based on extracts from a working draft by John Quail, plagiarised with permission by LW.

In the beginning: a gripping tale of splits and factions, in which our heroes finally escape from the scary authoritarian left, after many adventures

The first issue of the magazine that was to become Solidarity was published in October 1960. Called Agitator for its first few issues, it was produced by ‘Socialism Reaffirmed’– the group’s name being also the title of what was effectively a manifesto, libertarian and autonomist in content, issued the same month. In brief, the earliest members of the Socialism Reaffirmed group were expelled from or left the Socialist Labour League (SLL, precursor of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, its heirs and assigns) at various times in 1960 and formed a new organisation with a new perspective which then attracted further recruits.

Trotskyist background
The SLL emerged in 1947 from a split in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a short-lived unification of the UK Trotskyists, following a dispute about the correctness or otherwise of joining the Labour Party as a clandestine faction, the alternative being to continue as an open independent party. It was now forbidden to
have dual party membership so the cost of joining the Labour Party en masse was the formal dissolution of the RCP and the maintenance of a clandestine party with the difficulties and potential expulsions involved. The minority, led by Gerry Healy, in favour of joining the Labour Party had the support of the Fourth (Trotskyist) International. The numbers involved were very small. The rump of the RCP faced with declining influence finally decided that it would formally dissolve and ask members to join the Labour Party in 1949, forming another clandestine faction.

Known as The Club or The Group, the Healy entryist faction of 1947 retained a secretive branch structure with membership by invitation while its public face was as a readers’ group or tendency around its paper Socialist Outlook. (proscribed by the Labour party in 1954, it ceased publication in October that year). Members of the Club then joined the Tribune group.

Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and more importantly the Russian intervention to put down a popular uprising in Hungary in 1956 caused enormous dissent in the Communist Party in the UK and led to the loss of 7000 members, perhaps a third of the membership. For the minority who wanted to remain communists, the choices were to form some kind of oppositional communist party, to pursue a course of hardy independence or to join some existing group. The third option would benefit the SLL particularly, as the largest (with about 150 members) and most active of the three UK Trotskyist groups of the time, and the Club/Group had some success in recruiting dissident Communist Party members from 1956 onwards.

After Hungary in 1956 and many other events we became more critical. When I say we, I mean a group of us in the Islington YCL [Young Communist League]. There were a lot of groups at the time who were dissidents. We produced a bulletin which had a circulation of about 800. A lot of us overlapped with or were in a Trotskyist group which didn’t have a name, it was simply called the Group, before we were expelled from the YCL in 1958. – Ken Weller, prominent Solidarist, interviewed by JQ.

Expulsions and departures from the Socialist Labour League.
As a Leninist organisation that wasn’t the Communist Party, The Club was a place to bring together activists from the new movements like CND and rank and file militants from trade unions. There was a democratic constitution, fractions were permitted and, as Ken Weller put it, Gerry Healy ‘had loosened up a bit as a tactic and was quite democratic for a period.’ The Newsletter edited by the able ex-Communist Party journalist and later respected historian Peter Fryer [1927-2006] was described as a ‘lively entrist paper’ and the theoretical journal Labour Review as of high quality. Chris Pallis remembered the more sociable elements getting together in the pub after branch meetings and at summer camps, conversations combining the serious and the jokey, with much writing and circulation of satirical rhymes and songs – the latter a tradition which Solidarity would continue.

Many subsequent events can be explained by the involvement of the Club, overwhelmingly London based, and one of its recruits, Brian Behan, in the 1958 strike at the South Bank building site. Behan was fired by McAlpines as result of his organising efforts but was supported by the site shop stewards’ committee who called a strike, while the builders’ union, the AUBTW, took on the role of strike breakers. With the high profile events of the South Bank strike and the related ‘rank and file conference’ drawing a great deal of adverse press attention to ‘the Red Club’, it could only be a matter of time before the Newsletter and Labour Review were proscribed and a witch hunt against Club members was started by the Labour Party. (Some Club members, most prominent among whom was Brian Behan, favoured open work anyway.) Healy declared the formation of the Socialist Labour League without consultation with the Club’s membership, causing considerable upset in the organisation.

Events led to the formation of an oppositional faction of about 25 members who were rapidly expelled. Any democratic illusions SLL members may have had were being demolished fast and the high profile defections and expulsions during 1959 were accompanied by rising dissent. Ken Weller ‘began to become more and more of a dissident because I felt that most of the criticisms I’d had of the Communist Party were true, in spades, with Healy.’ The democratic constitution was a complete sham. For another early member of Solidarity ‘The growth of the anti-bomb movement and my sympathy with its objectives and involvement in its actions, created particular conflicts due to the SLL’s “critical support” for the Soviet Union and its bomb.’

Healy returned to a more placatory approach to Labour in late 1959 and 1960, and distanced the SLL from industrial action, despite an upsurge of industrial disputes at this time. This return to Labour was opposed by a small group of seven SLL members led by Brian Behan and including Ken Weller, numerically hardly a threat but with support in the SLL. Their expulsion (May 1960) led to 70 people leaving with them.

As National Committee members of the SLL, Bob Pennington and ‘Martin Grainger’ (Chris Pallis, a.k.a. Maurice Brinton) were participants in the expulsion of the Behan faction. But they had developed a series of theoretical criticisms of the SLL and some of its prominent members. A direct challenge was made to the leadership, in this case its ‘obsessional fear of mildly unorthodox views – or of simple questions for which readily prepared answers are not available’. At this point the story moves towards the ideological shift that produced the Solidarity group. A Healy loyalist had reported a conversation in which ‘Pennington and Grainger had admitted to sympathy with the anti-Totskyist journal Socialisme ou Barbarie' and both were summoned to a meeting of the London Executive Committee. When they tried to leave, after an abusive rant from Healy, they were subjected to physical assault. The immediate result was not only departure of these two from the SLL but their break with Trotskyism, permanent in the case of Grainger/Pallis, temporary in the case of Pennington who was later involved in Militant and Big Flame.

Towards regroupment
The flood of CP defections after the suppression of the uprising in Hungary fed into a variety of different Trotskyist and ‘new left’ movements. For important sections of the left, the contortions of ‘anti-anti-communism’ based on assumptions of the revolutionary legitimacy of the USSR and the Communist bloc as the repository of socialism, however distorted, became redundant. Organisationally it was clear that it was no longer necessary for the revolutionary left to form cells or ‘positions’ within the larger Labour or Communist Parties, which no longer had a monopoly of left political activity. In the UK the movement for nuclear disarmament and the shop stewards’ movement were not under the complete command of any of the political tendencies. For the Trotskyist mindset these represented unorganised areas in need of leadership and potential recruitment. For the more reflective they represented new movements in a new geopolitical context which demanded a new politics.

Out of the group that left the SLL with Brian Behan and Ken Weller, a number formed an organisation called the Workers’ Party, lasting less than a year, then a group from this including Weller and others started reading all the critiques of Trotskyism they could find and opened discussions with, inter alia, Grainger and Pennington. Of all the positions they considered they found that of Socialisme ou Barbarie the most interesting. On this basis the discussions drew them closer and a common platform was established during August and September 1960.

After Cable Street - Joe Jacobs, 1940-77 - Meeting

2011-10-09T07:14:00.001+01:00

Wednesday 12 October,8 pm
at the Wood Green Social Club, Stuart Crescent , N 22,
(The WGSC is 100 yards up the hill just up from the tube station, cross the gardens and there we are , opposite the Civic Centre)
Joe Jacob's life was important for two reasons. The first was that he was one of the best examples of a political working class activist who automatically associated with the Communalist Party of Great Britain at its peak. Yet within a few years, the CPGB had lost the leadership of many of this group and in Joes case had expelled him twice, simply over their Stalinist politics and practices. His example could be written tens of thousands of times in the CPGB's long decline into political conventionality and disintegration.

Secondly Joe did not just hide himself away and pack in political activity but joined what was by far the best example of a libertarian marxist group , Solidarity , sometimes called Solidarity-for-worker-power. Here is participated in full and worked in both an industrial and political context - he was an ace reporter and writer .

Even so, Joe found himself increasingly in conflict with the organisation and through his contact with more libertarian politics eventually was expelled here as well. Joe had made contact with the Echanges et
Mouvement group, effectively a council communists off shoot , that is sitting outside both the marxist and main anarchist movements. His relations with E&M were terminated by his early death in 1977.

Hence Joes life and times are of hugely significant especially for socialist libertarians who identify themselves as being in this broad category. The events of his life , outlined below should be put into these two contexts.

In 1936 , Joe had defied the CPGB and mobilised dissident communists organising against the fascists of Oswald Mosely. His comrades did stop the fascists from marching through the East End , but at great personal risk . In the following years Joe played a less public role but was active right up to his death. His story is at last told here.

He did war service and did a spell in the nick after a clash with an officer. After returning to his work in the clothing trade, Joe was as active as ever in the workplace and led a strike/occupation at a factory in Warren Street . He fell out again with the Communist Party , too much thinking for himself , and moved towards less authoritarian politics . Joe had always been critical of the CPGB policy of concentration of the official trade union structure , favouring building up the working class organisation at the workplace. Eventually he left manufacturing and began work at the Post Office at Mount Pleasant. After brief contact with trotskyists he also turned to a more radical alternative, libertarian marxism.

He joined Solidarity for workers power and was active in writing reports of industrial events . He was a very diligent writer about the important Post Office workers strike in 1971, as he had just retired from employment at the PO. Next he was prominent in the dispute with the Big Flame over the 1972 Fisher Bendex strike and that organisation was forced to back down. Joe also wrote for the monthly journal doing reviews and suchlike .

Joe was increasingly involved in international contacts . He had lost friends as volunteers in the Spanish Revolution and later took a serious interest in French libertarian groups. He was enthusiastic about the council communist group Echanges et Mouvement Ultimately this new version of politics took him away from Solidarity and he was expelled after a pointless campaign for change. His politics were now centred in this aspect of ideas and activity Joe had worked on his auto biography and was practically finished the key passages when he died in 1977. His daughter completed his manuscript and published the book privately , the great classic Out of the Ghetto.

Alan Woodward has written up his life story since 1940 for Gorter Press, and the book will be available at cost price Currently celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the great Cable Street Resistance which gave Joe was his most important role in organising against the fascists of Oswald Mosely. This curiously has been written out of the official version .

Numerous other events and publications will be involved in the events of the never ending fight against fascism. We celebrate Joe's life , mourn his early death and continue the struggle of his efforts .

Striking a Light: The Matchwomen and their place in history

2011-09-27T11:03:00.000+01:00

Waltham Forest Radical History Workshop
Tuesday 11 October, 7.30pm,
Orford House Social Club
73 Orford Road Walthamstow E17 9PU

Railway/underground station: Walthamstow Central

Buses: Hoe Street

Louise Raw will talk about her book Striking a Light: a new history of the Bryant & May matchwomen’s strike of 1888.

Her book celebrates the achievement of a remarkable group of young East End women, who took on a ruthless cartel and won. Raw proves conclusively that these women changed the entire course of British labour history, and were in fact the mothers of the modern union movement.

The life histories of matchwomen like Eliza Martin and Mary Driscoll, who were instrumental in the strike, are told for the first time.

Copies of the book will be available for signing.
All Welcome

Admission: £2.50 Concessions £1.50

Spain and the World ; Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War (7)

2011-08-31T22:06:00.030+01:00

Eric Hobsbawm and the politics of writing history

Examining the writings of historian Eric Hobsbawm it is easy to discern a theme that consistently runs through his writings on the Spanish Civil War (SCW), that is that the Spanish republic had to be defended first, that the revolution had to be thwarted to carry out this aim, and lastly that the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) was the only organisation capable of carrying through this task.(1) However what is not laid bare for the reader is how much of Hobsbawm's personal political opinions lead to his analysis of the the SCW. And secondly that Hobsbawm constructs an historiography that always engages and dismisses at the same time an alternative view of history, that from an anarchist or libertarian tradition.

The Background
In 1959 the book Primitive Rebels (PR) was published. It is Hobsbawm's history of movements, criminals, and social banditry that represent naive, backward, and most importantly unorganised attempts at social revolution. Chapter 5 of the book examines the history of peasant anarchism in Andalusia
from the middle of the 19th century to the early 20th, Spanish peasant anarchism, Hobsbawm argues, lacks all of the necessary prerequisites for a successful revolution. This is because when considering its mode of thinking, the absence of theory, its organisation, and the social class of its adherents, these factors brought all together indicate failure at the outset. Of course underlying the problems of this movement is simply that Marxist communists were not present. In the conclusion he writes:

"Classical anarchism is thus a form of peasant movement almost incapable of effective adaptation to modern conditions, though it is their outcome. Had a different ideology penetrated the Andalusian countryside in the 1870s it might have transformed the spontaneous and unstable rebelliousness of the peasants into something far more formidable, because more disciplined, as communism has sometimes succeeded in doing. This did not happen. And thus the history of anarchism, almost alone among modern social movements, is one of unrelieved failure; and unless some unforeseen historical changes occur, it is likely to go down in the books with the Anabaptists and the rest of the prophets who, though not armed, did not know what to do with their arms, and were defeated for ever."(2) (My italics.)

There are many issues arising from such a statement. I shall look at the most important. Firstly Hobsbawm uses his close examination of peasant anarchism to actually castigate the whole history of Spanish anarchism. Indeed in 1986 Hobsbawm makes it markedly clear that the whole book is an attack on anarchism and libertarianism: "If you read Primitive Rebels you will see that there is, so to speak, a subtext which is a polemic against anarchism and libertarianism, or against the kind of movements which deny the force of organisation."(3) In PR he also fails to elucidate that communists then, and later, were unwilling to organise or propagandise among peasants, a class that must always follow the lead of the industrialised working class. This was emphasized by all Marxist theoreticians of the Second and Third Internationals. The peasantry is a class leftover from feudal times, it is not a true class of the capitalist era. Of course here, there is the stress on the Marxist philosophy of history. Previous egalitarians - Anabaptists - failed, they lived in the wrong epoch in the schema of historical materialism. For Marxism all precapitalist egalitarian movements failed as a consequence of residing in the wrong epoch and also their remnants will fail in the modern capitalist era. A natural corollary of this is how Marxism transforms all early egalitarians into pertinent members of its own tradition, see for example their writings on Gerard Winstanley and Thomas Spence or Shelley. (4) Aspects of the peasant anarchism ideology were millenarian, i.e. the belief that after the day of the uprising against the oppressors, perfection, total equality, and freedom would reign. It is the idea that is similar to the second coming of Christ that was the cornerstone of millenarian thinking of the middle ages. Hobsbawm thus links the Anabaptists, the millenarian movement of the 16th century, who were crushed, with peasant anarchism to emphasize the naïvety of peasant anarchism and as an idiopathic cause of their failure. However as Bookchin points out: 'But granting the cycles of periodic uprising and decline, the agrarian movement in the south had a solid economic core that accounts for its continual revival in the face of unfavourable odds...What doomed the agrarian movement of the period was not the impracticability of its visions but its isolation'. (5)

The Spanish Civil War
In an essay written in 1966 for New Left Review Hobsbawm further analyses the themes initiated in PR. The major theme of this essay is that whatever the Spanish socialists and communists contributed to undermining the Spanish revolution (after the fall of the monarchy), the main culprit in the revolution's failure was the anarchists. Again, to repeat, the anarchists had no revolutionary theory, consistently exhausted themselves in pointless uprisings, anarchist terrorism in Barcelona constituted no more than a police problem, and their militias in the Spanish Civil War (SCW) were militarily ineffective. And he pronounces on the Spanish Communist Party, without examining the social constitution of their membership, their policies and actions, reasons for their rapid growth after 1936: 'The communists, whose policy was the one which could have won the war, gained strength too late and never satisfactorily overcame the handicap of their original lack of mass support'. (6) Lastly he then examines instances of modern revolutions and reasons for their failure or success, and necessarily that anarchists will fail. This essay was republished 1973 in the book Revolutionaries and juxtaposed with two other chapters on anarchism. What is made clear is the politics of the whole book: 'My point is to explain why the revival in interest in anarchism today seems so unexpected, surprising and - if I am to speak frankly - unjustified.' (7) In a sense it seems that Hobsbawm is speaking to the student and revolutionary movement in the 1970s and his message is thoroughly political. In fact it could be argued that Hobsbawm's project on the 20th century history is entirely political, where he, the historian, cannot divorce himself from Hobsbawm the communist.

The final part of Hobsbawm's tetralogy on modern history that begins with the Age of Revolution was published in 1994, The Age of Extremes: the Short Twentieth Century. (8) In it he gives the usual potted history of the SCW with all the usual culprits, villains, and heroes. The book ignores all sources that do not fit into Hobsbawm's view that the defence of democracy organised by the Spanish Communist Party was the only way to win the war. We hear nothing about the terror inaugurated by the communists in the Republican zone; the May days in Barcelona; the military incompetence of Soviet advisers; the lack of arms for certain fronts; the Soviet Union's hold on the Republic's gold reserves; the success of collectivization in the cities, towns and villages, the failure of the left to build a constructive alliance. Anarchists are now ‘ultra-left’. Even for a marxist this is an abuse of the term. Ultra-left means outside and beyond the movement. In Spain the largest section of the labour movement was anarcho-syndicalist, how can the anarchists be the ultra-left!? This rather standard account of the SCW set in the context of the struggles of the 1930s and appeasement shows a Hobsbawm who is plodding along, ignoring anything that could refresh his ideas and lead him to be self-reflective. Yet again, his voice is led by his politics.

By 2007 Hobsbawm alters his method of attack. Writing on the intellectuals and the SCW he attempts to turn the tide against the influence of George Orwell. (9) The majority of British intellectuals, writers, artists supported the Spanish Republic, and some fought with the International Brigades. This group were unwavering in their support and in general did not criticise the communists, or anything that would hinder the republic's cause; a blanket of silence fell on those who returned from Spain. To voice concerns was to help the fascists. George Orwell, who had fought for the POUM (10) brigades and who found himself chased out of Spain after the May Days in Barcelona in 1937, was rejected by his publishers on his return. His attempts to write and publish accounts critical of the communist conduct of the war were thwarted. Hobsbawm again gives only the partial truth, Orwell was vilified by British communists and International Brigaders and has been to this very day. (11) The fact is that supporters of the Popular Front then and now present the SCW as only a fight for democracy, support of the Popular Front was paramount. In Britain during the SCW, mention of the Spanish revolution and its battle with communism was not allowed by the left. However Hobsbawm faced with overwhelming evidence of the negative role of communism in the SCW must as a historian relent at least a little bit:

"The conflict between libertarian enthusiasm and disciplined organisation, between social revolution and winning a war, remains real in the Spanish civil war, even if we suppose the USSR and the Communist party wanted the war to end in revolution and that the parts of the economy socialised by the anarchists (i.e. handed over to local workers' control) worked well enough. Wars, however flexible the chains of command, cannot be fought, or war economies run, in a libertarian fashion. The Spanish civil war could not have been waged, let alone won, along Orwellian lines..."

and

"Moral revulsion against Stalinism and the behaviour of its agents in Spain is justified. It is right to criticise the communist conviction that the only revolution that counted was one that brought the party a monopoly of power. And yet these considerations are not central to the problem of the civil war. Marx would have had to confront Bakunin even if all on the republican side had been angels." (12)

This brief analysis from a libertarian perspective shows that the emeritus historian Eric Hobsbawm has consistently looked to Spanish Anarchism as the major reason for the loss of the SCW to Franco's fascists. It was a backward movement in a backward country. That Spanish Anarchism embodied the revolutionary traditions of that country and represented the majority of socialists and revolutionaries holds no sway for Hobsbawm. He refuses to take on board more recent histories that examine the role of communism in Spain and its impact on the crisis in the Republic. His closeness to the subject - as someone who was influenced by the euphoria of the 1930s - and also his consistent support of 20th century communist politics, in particular the Popular Fronts and Eurocommunism means that his historical analysis of Spain is riven with bias. For us the danger is that Hobsbawm is a writer with selling power and his message has volumes of credence that drowns out any other view.

Dale Evans, August 2011

(1) The idea for this piece on Hobsbawm came from a re-reading of Noam Chomsky's classic essay originally published in 1969 'Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship', in particular where he writes [The] ...predominantly anarchist revolution and the massive social transformation to which it gave rise are treated, in recent historical studies, as a kind of aberration, a nuisance that stood in the way of successful prosecution of the war to save the bourgeois from the Franco rebellion. Many historians would probably agree with Eric Hobsbawm that the failure of social revolution in Spain "was due to the anarchists," that anarchism was a "disaster" a kind of "moral gymnastics" with no "concrete results"at best "a profoundly moving spectacle for the student of popular religion".' Page 43 in Chomsky on Anarchism, AK 2005. As you will see Hobsbawm's ideas are set in stone.

(2) Hobsbawm, E J (1959) Primitive Rebels p92

(3) Hobsbawm, E J (1986, November) Marxism Today p23

(4) For example Christopher Hill's writings on Gerard Winstanley, M Ashraf, The Life and Times of Thomas Spence 1982, and Paul Foot on Shelley

(5) Bookchin, M (1977) The Spanish Anarchists p96

(6) Hobsbawm, E J (1973) Revolutionaries p78

(7) ibid p84

(8) This book was incredibly well received by other professional historians and the left. Criticism tended to focus on the book's Eurocentrism, Hobsbawm methods of periodisation, and the absence of the working class in his narrative. It was also pointed out that the book does not fit comfortably with the other 3 volumes of the tetralogy because of Hobsbawm's closeness to the subject and the autobiographical nature of some of his analysis. It must also be stressed that the book looks at the 20th century from the point of view of the complete dominance of its history by the Russia Revolution. The Spanish Revolution becomes merely a subset in this overall scheme. Marxist reviewers of the book tend to support this approach. New Left Review's review by Goran Therborn is completely uncritical, and embarrassingly it borders on the hagiographical (see New Left Review 214, 1995, 'The autobiography of the 20th Century). In all the reviews that I have read none examine Hobsbawm's view of Spain and mention his condemnation of other socialist and revolutionary traditions

(9) Hobsbawm E J (2007) 'War of Ideas' The Guardian 17 February. Hobsbawm also has a dig at Orwell in his latest book How to Change the World: Marx and Marxism 1840-2011: see page 297 where Hobsbawm makes clear his continued support of Popular Frontism and the necessity for the Left's support for Spain alongside the isolation of George Orwell.

(10) Orwell, G (1966) Homage to Catalonia

(11) On his return from Spain Orwell’s book on Spain was rejected by his publisher, Gollancz. Kingsley Martin editor of the New Statesman and Nation rejected his articles on Spain, and he was continuously vilified by the communists. Orwell wrote 'Gollancz of course is part of the Communist racket, and as soon as he heard that I had been associated with the POUM and anarchists ...he said he did not think he would be able to publish my book' and '...the N.S. having previously refused an article of mine after the suppression of the POUM on the ground that it would "cause trouble", also refused to print the review [of the Spanish Cockpit by Borkenau] as it "controverted editorial policy" or in other words blew the gaff on the Communist Party' and 'Incidentally the Daily Worker has been following me personally with the most filthy libels, calling me pro-fascist etc., but I asked Gollancz to silence them.'

All quotes from The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 1: An Age Like This 1920-1940, Penguin 1970, pages 312, 314 and 319. Attacks on Orwell from communists have continued since, in particular the commander of the British International Brigade Bill Alexander, see his 'George Orwell and Spain' in Inside the Myth, Orwell: Views From the Left, Lawrence and Wishart 1984.

(12) 'War of Ideas' Eric Hobsbawm, The Guardian 17 February 2007. In this article Hobsbawm also calls Ken Loach's film Land and Freedom sectarian.

Sources used

Bookchin, Murrary (1978) The Spanish Anarchists : the Heroic Years 1868-1936, Harper Colophon

Chomsky, N (2005, [1969]) 'Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship' in Chomsky on Anarchism, AK Press

Duncan, Martha Grace (1988) 'Spanish Anarchism Refracted: Theme and Image in the Millenarian and Revisionist Literature', Journal of Contemporary History 23(3) pp323-346

Hobsbawm, Eric (1959) Primitive Rebels : Studies in Archaic forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Manchester University Press

Hobsbawm, Eric (1966) 'The Spanish Background', New Left Review no 40. [republished in Revolutionaries below]

Hobsbawm, Eric (1973) Revolutionaries, Quartet

Hobsbawm, Eric (1994) Age of Extremes : The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, Michael Joseph

Hobsbawm, Eric (2007) 'The War of Ideas', The Guardian, 17 February

Hobsbawm, Eric (2011) How to Change the World: Marx and Marxism 1840 - 2011, Little Brown.

Other chapters in this pamphlet : click on the links

Spain and the World : Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War : Preface

Writing and medicine in the Spanish Civil War

The view from the East End Joe Jacobs and Spain

British Imperialism and Non-Intervention

May Days in Barcelona 1937 : a contemporary view

Workers Control in the Spanish Revolution

Anarchist participation in the Government

MEETING - No to privatising the Post Office

2011-08-31T20:56:00.002+01:00

Wednesday 14 September 8 pm at the Wood Green Social Club, Stuart Crescent , N 22,
on the second Wednesday of the month.
[The WGSC is 100 yards up the hill just up from the tube station,cross the gardens and there we are, opposite Civic Centre]

This useless piece of proposed anti-social legislation which reverses the gains of the last century when the PO finally replaced costly private provision with public service, deserves to be opposed by anyone not obsessed by the profit motive. Historically this area has direct links with the introduction of Rowland Hill’s famous Penny Post. Mr Hill was resident at what is now the Bruce Castle Museum in Lordship Lane, N17 – they have exhibits on the subject well worth a visit. Over the years the Post Office has become a model of social
organisation but a thorn in the side of the profiteers. These have always sought to bring back privatisation to social and welfare bodies and provoked strikes and disorder whenever they could.

One side effect of the disruption has been an increasingly strong trade union. From the long-running strike of 1971 to the more recent industrial actions, the Communication Workers Union has galvanised its members into activity to save jobs and a public service. Now the Tories are trying again and we can itemise the likely consequences of their action –

There will be closures of offices as rationalisation takes hold;
Many full time jobs will go with replacement by low paid. reduced rights staff;
Costs to the public will be greatly increased as we have seen from the privatised utilities;
Differential market rates will result in massive cuts to distant rural areas;
“Human resources” scams will result in more unemployment and social disruption.

In recent strikes the public have made clear their choice for rejection. We at RaHN are only too pleased to promote the respect for the historical arrangements. We are seeking an early resurrection of the previous alliances on this issue and are seeking union support for this initiative against the market’s baleful influence.

We urge everyone to come to the meeting as a start to this campaign. We will have a CWU speaker who must remain anonymous to avoid victimisation. Cameron is determined to press ahead with the social disruption as his persistence over the NHS privatisation has shown. Governments have little else to do but devise schemes to reduce living standards, increase unemployment , and cut public and welfare services – all in the name of “the market” or greater profits for his millionaires' Cabinet.

'Your money is Permanent' - Invergordon Mutiny Poem

2011-08-30T22:11:00.004+01:00

Would you ask your sleek Committee

By whom the probe was begun

To manage on twenty-eight bob a week

or try it on twenty-one?

For six long years they dallied

And jiggled the wedge so thin

For six long years we wondered

How far they would drive it in

But you spoke and we believed you

‘Your money is permanent’

And now you’re chipping the plain AB

by twenty-five per cent.

Excerpts from unpublished poem about the 1931 mutiny over Navy pay cuts, by AB John Bush.
AB = Able Seaman.

Verses printed in Anthony Carew, The Lower Deck of the RN, 1900-1939: the Invergordon Mutiny in Perspective, Manchester, 1981, pages 142 and 171.

INVERGORDON MUTINY - Review

2011-08-30T22:01:00.008+01:00

Review by J. J. (Joe Jacobs), Solidarity: for Workers’ Power, vol. 7, no. 12, November 1974, pp.19-20, posted here to mark the 80th anniversary this September of the Invergordon Mutiny* – a small-scale, short-lived episode but extensive in its effects, and one with significance for libertarians. A few notes have been added for clarification or updating.

* (More on this story later).

Invergordon Mutineer by Len Wincott (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974).

I got to know Len Wincott soon after the mutiny, and saw him off when he went to the Soviet Union in 1934. I was pleased to be among those who met him again during his recent visit to Britain to promote his book.

From the very beginning of his visit Len made it clear to all concerned that he was not here to talk about his experiences in Russia over the last 40 years. A circular handed out by his publishers stated:

‘During the Second World War he served in the Red Army, but later was arrested as a “British spy” and spent 11 years in a labour camp in the Northern Urals. In 1957 he was released and cleared of all charges when the gates of the labour camps opened after Khrushchev’s denouncement of Stalin’.

Len Wincott, now aged 67, lives in Moscow with his fourth wife Lena whom he married in 1965. He decided to return to the Soviet Union because (as he explained to the assembled newsmen at a press

conference) he had no intention of trying to start a new life at his age, in his very bad state of health, when his wife had all her friends and relations in Russia where they were quite comfortable, with access to good medical and other facilities. This meant he could not talk about those things which the press would have dearly loved to report. If he wanted to go back it meant they would be deprived of their stories and, incidentally, so would we. That he was unable to tell us about the Soviet Union says a great deal about the state of affairs existing in Russia today. His silence made a very loud noise!

Len Wincott’s book is a forthright statement of the facts of the mutiny. It contradicts much of what has been written about it by ‘official’ historians an others. It begins with a description of his childhood. He was one of a family of eight with a drunken, brutal father and a long-suffering mother, and was brought up in the dire circumstances of working class life in Leicester. He joined the Navy when he was 16. As he puts it: ‘No one will suppose that a 16-year-old boy was moved by the ideas of heroism to read a pamphlet on how to join the Royal Navy. In my case the urge was certainly the ominous spectre of unemployment.’

Len’s background is an adequate recipe for what went into his actions during the mutiny. The gulf which separated the men from the officers, those who gave the orders and those who were expected to carry them out, was so great that the mutiny had to take the course it did. The officers never had a clue about how the men felt – and they cared even less. Maybe there were one or two exceptions.

Invergordon in 1932

The publisher's blurb says: ‘the book tells the story of the famous naval mutiny at Invergordon when the men of the lower ranks spontaneously – and successfully – rebelled against the Admiralty’s decision to make drastic cuts in their basic pay. It was an event unprecedented in naval history with far-reaching consequences for both the navy and the country in general’.

I personally well remember the Invergordon Mutiny. Two leading members of the Communist Party were trapped by government agents in a compromising situation. [1] The Party was quite willing to present them as victims of the government’s actions, without making it clear it [the CP] had nothing to do with the mutiny. It suited the government to produce these ‘reds under the beds’ in order to hide the true character of the mutiny which was started, managed and carried through by the ratings of the Atlantic Fleet. The mutiny was self-managed and reached a degree of success which no amount of ‘leadership’ from the Communist Party could have provided.

As Tony Carew said in a letter to Tribune (August 23, 1974): ‘Far from being a model strike such as the Communist Party might approve, it was a relatively spontaneous and loosely organised affair, in which a predominantly conservative body of men showed their ability to take effective action without being led by the hand. And it was nonetheless radical for that’. [2]

Some retired naval officers and others have tried to knock Len’s account of the Mutiny. Whatever differences may arise in various accounts of this historical event, it cannot be denied that it was a great example of ordinary people taking matters into their own hands. There is no evidence that the rank and file sailors ever had any contact with any outside person or body (such as a trade union or political party) during the course of the mutiny. All decisions were made by the men on all 8 ships* independently, after the initial mass meeting on shore where it had been decided to ‘strike’.

If you want to know the form and content of a self-managed struggle, in which the rank and file never surrendered the decision-making to any outside, self-appointed leaders, then read this book. [3] It’s a practical lesson on many levels – even if, like me, you don’t share all the author’s views. But remember that many of Len’s views are coloured by the fact that he suffered a great deal more from some of those he came to regard as his ‘friends’ than he ever did from his known enemies.

J. J.

Notes
1. W G Shepherd and George Allison were charged under the Incitement to Mutiny Act and sentenced to 18 months and 3 years penal servitude respectively in November 1931 for trying to spread communism among sailors (after the mutiny). Security files confirm that they were set up with the help of an informer. (The ‘compromising situation’ was a political one).
2. For a fuller account of this position, see Anthony Carew, The Lower Deck of the RN, 1900-1939: the Invergordon Mutiny in perspective, Manchester University Press, 1981: Chapter 8, The Road to Invergordon. Carew interprets the mutiny in terms of industrial relations.
3. This advice is repeated in Joe Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto, London, 1978, pp.123-4, where he adds ‘little details which Len told’ him:

He described some of his feelings while the Atlantic Fleet was without effective control by the officers. How they organised communications between ships. How they spent time speculating on the possible consequences of their actions. How different people reacted to this situation. How discipline was maintained at a very high level, on a completely voluntary basis. The elected representatives were respected and committee decisions carried out with efficiency.

‘The result of the mutiny’, Joe continues, ‘is a living testament to the ability of the ordinary seamen, rank and file, in organising their own affairs under conditions of extreme stress.’ Other parts of the review are integrated into the chronological narrative of his book, with some additional recollections of Wincott as a fellow CP activist in Stepney for a time before going to the USSR.

* There were more than 8 ships in the Atlantic Fleet, up to 15 including different classes of warship, but not all were involved in the mutiny to the same extent, 2 or 3 possibly not at all.
Estimates put the number of men involved in the mutiny at 12,000.

Spanish Revolution Meeting Report

2011-07-31T06:54:00.001+01:00

RaHN, which had not met for some months, kicked off again this week with a well attended meeting to celebrate the Spanish revolution of 1936. The military invasion by General Franco, aided by Hitler and Mussolini, sparked off the immediate resistance of much of eastern Spain. Everyone took to the streets, disarmed the troops, stormed the barracks and prisons then occupied their workplaces in factories, depots, mines and the land. It took nearly three years of civil war to dislodge them, aided even so by the so-called helpers of the communists who also turfed out occupiers. People paid tribute to the International Brigades who went to the country to defend the people's action. In the end, the fascists won, and this became a curtain raiser for WW2 a few months later.
The speaker, Brian Bamford from Manchester, gave an interesting discourse on the events, covering various historical sources and views. Speakers from the floor emphasised what was and still is the greatest mobilization of ordinary people fighting to control their lives. There were people at the meeting from the Haringey Solidarity Campaign, some visitors from Walthamstow and two Spanish students who were able to add details about the recent big demonstrations all over Spain.
There was a good supply of literature available including the recently published book on the workers' control in this period and a pamphlet on the war from Manchester. A reprint of a booklet on Women in the Spanish Revolution had been made. The RaHN blog which has had many hits on this subject was publicized. Housmans of Kings Cross supplied a bookstall.

The forthcoming RaHN programme:

14 September The Closure of the Post Office. After one and a half centuries of the Post Office as a publicly owned business, it is now facing privisation with the undermining of workers' rights. Local resident Rowland Hill introduced the national system. Merlin Reader, a union representative for the Communications Workers Union, outlines the Post Office history and the current struggle.

12 October Joe Jacobs. To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the famous Cable Street events of 1936, we remind people that Joe's magnificent struggle against the fascists is recorded in detail in a working class classic Out Of the Ghetto. Alan Woodward has written up the second half of his life after 1940 and introduces his booklet.

22 October Anarchist Book fair, Queen Mary, University of London , Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS. All day Saturday, 10 am to 7 pm. Come and talk to us at the Radical History Network stall.

9 November : to be arranged

14 December The Luddites Remembered. It is 200 years since the clothing workers smashed up the machinery that was destroying their jobs. Many regard modern technology as similarly destructive but a better way is needed to deal with it this time round. We examine the prospects.

Spain and the World: Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War online pamphlet by supporters of the RaHN - click on this link

FILM SHOWING - Land and Freedom

2011-07-13T09:07:00.002+01:00

Haringey Independent Cinema are showing Ken Loach's film land and Freedom on Thursday 21st July at 7.15pm, West Green learning Centre, West Green Road, London N15

" Told from the point of view of Dave, a British volunteer who journeys from Liverpool to fight in the brutal civil war that engulfed Spain in 1936, Ken Loach’s masterpiece neither romanticises the conflict nor diminishes the dilemmas of individuals caught up in it.

Dave’s political journey starts out in the Communist Party. But, he goes on to fight with the Marxist POUM militia in a civil war within the civil war, in which the POUM sided with a glorious but short lived anarchist inspired revolution in the City of Barcelona, ranged against the increasingly repressive forces of Stalinism. "

This film has attracted much controversy simply because of the May Events of 1937 in Barcelona, when a communist coup that led to the annihilation of left wing party the POUM, and severely weakened anarchist power in Catalonia. Supporters of the Spanish communists and the Popular Front government have attacked the film both for its politics and its alleged historical inaccuracy. In many ways Loach based his film on Orwell's view of events in Catalonia, and communists have been vituperative in thier condemnations of Orwell's Homage to Catalonia.(1) Another example is Martha Gellhorn, travel writer and journalist, who was with Ernest Hemingway in Madrid in 1936; both were life-long fellow travellers. She rubbished the film in a review published in the London Evening Standard on 5 October 1995. An exchange of views about the film, with both the communist view and the contrary view, can be found at the website of the Marxist journal 'What next' . A contemporary view of the events in Barcelona written by Liston Oak - a communist - can be found on this blog

(1) Bill Alexander 'Spain and Orwell' in Inside the Myth : Orwell : views from the left. London 1984.

Pamphlet published on this blog Spain and the World : Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War

New pamphlet on Workers Control

2011-07-09T15:44:00.002+01:00

The New World: perspectives on workers' control in revolutionary Spain 1936-39

Alan Woodward

Available from Housman's bookshop, Housmans, Peace House, 5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London N1 9DX, UK

In Alan Woodward's new publication he looks at the whole tradition of workers' control, covering the libertarian tradition from the 1905 Russian revolution, the theorists of the 1920s on to the Spanish revolution.

Looking at the Spanish revolution Alan examines all aspects of the cooperatives from transport, food production, small workshops, the health serivce and local government. The pamphlet is also a polemic against those socialists who are ideologically against workers' control.

It is an inspiring story of workers taking control of their own political and economic lives as he says:

"The essence remains the same - to help the formation of a collective, open, federated, responsible sciety without repression by capitalism or its state. This allows maximum freedom for the individual and a fair permenent structure in which it operates. This is a New World many are seeking and your help in realising it is invited." (p65)

See also on this blog pamphlet Spain and the World : Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War

Spain and the World : Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War (6)

2011-06-25T08:07:00.005+01:00

Barcelona May 1937 : a contemporary view

The article below was written in May 1937 and published in the weekly periodical New Statesman and Nation (NSN). In many ways it is an extraordinary piece of political writing, firstly because of who the writer is and secondly that it should appear in the NSN.

Liston Oak was a member of the American Communist party and in 1936 went to Moscow to work on the English language daily Moscow News. While awaiting clearance for the post he went to Paris. For reasons that are not clear he used his contacts with the Comintern (Communist International) to move on to another job based in the offices of the foreign minister of the Spanish Republic, Alvarez del Vayo. Del Vayo was in charge of propaganda in the English speaking world and Oak was to be the Director of Propaganda for Britain and the United States. Part of his responsibility was to chaperone leading celebrities such as Ernest Hemingway around. Oak was therefore a committed communist and an apparatchik of the Comintern. He went to Valencia at the beginning of 1937, but quickly moved on to a new office that was opened in Barcelona. It seems highly likely that Oak knew what was happening, that is the disappearances and assassinations, and that the intrigues against the anarchists and the POUM were leading to a full scale assault. In fact Oak did something that was extraordinary considering his politics: he went to interview Andres Nin, the leader of the POUM, not once but twice! This would have marked him and meant his life would be in danger. Oak was aware of the situation and made plans to escape from Spain.

Another American writer who was in Spain at this time was John Dos Passos. He was in Spain for the same reason as Hemingway, to contribute in the making of the film Spanish Earth. Oak and Dos Passos know each other, as
Oak had accompanied Dos Passos on a fact finding tour of a miners’ strike in Harlan County in the early 1930s. Oak made contact with Dos Passos while in Barcelona and became his personal secretary for the day that Dos Passos left Spain in a Government chauffeured car in the last days of April 1937.

We can only speculate on what happened next, but Oak obviously rejected his communist politics and viewed the May events more openly and critically, based on his experience. Oak's piece was published on 15 May 1937 - over a week after the fighting of the May Days of 1937 had ended with the defeat of the CNT and POUM, and strengthened the position of both the state and the communist party. Interestingly in the weeks following publication no letters were published commenting either way on Oak's article. However in the two following issues of NSN H. N. Brailsford, NSN staff writer and fellow traveller, wrote two long articles about Spain, singing the praises of the Popular Front and condemning the anarchists and the POUM. Orwell returned from Spain at the end of June 1937 and because of his associations with the POUM NSN did not publish anything that he wrote on Spain.

Dale Evans

June 2011

[Biographical details on Liston Oak compiled from The Breaking Point : Hemingway, Dos Passos and the murder of Jose Robles, by Stephen Koch, Counterpoint, New York 2005]

BEHIND BARCELONA BARRICADES

[We publish this article as an interesting interpretation of the situation in Barcelona by an American journalist who has been working in Spain for the Valencia Government. He expresses his own point of view which is not necessarily ours. – Ed., N.S. & N.]

Recruiting poster for the militias

The Anarchists waited too long. If they had struck nine months ago, or even three months ago, they would have been able to capture power. After the Fascist rebellion was defeated in Catalonia last July – credit for which belongs primarily to the Anarchists, then the strongest and best armed workers’ organisation in all of Spain – they might have entrenched themselves impregnably in positions of power in the Government, in the army and in the police force. But now the coalition of Communists, Socialists, and Left Republicans has grown too strong for them.
      Behind Barcelona barricades thrown up by the militant members of the C.N.T. or General Confederation of Labour, there are deep conflicts whose origins antedate the Spanish Civil War and Revolution. The traditional Anarchist opposition to the traditional state persists despite their participation in the Barcelona and Valencia Governments. Paradoxically they now demand greater representation in the government of Catalonia, the Generalitat.
      But more important is the Anarchist demand that the social revolution which began with the defeat of the rebels in half of Spain, be carried forward. To the slogan of the P.S.U.C. or United Socialist Party of Catalonia, and the Left Republicans – “Democracy versus Fascism” – Anarchists oppose the slogan “Libertarian Communism versus Fascism.” , Their posters proclaim: “Win the war and make the revolution,” and “The war and the revolution are indivisible.”
      Those who call the Government of loyal republican Spain a “Red dictatorship” are quite mistaken. If it were really “red”, the Anarchists would not now be fighting in the streets of Barcelona. The Generalitat is not a workers’ government and it is not revolutionary. The political parties dominating it are entirely sincere when they proclaim to the democratic world that they seek, not Socialism, but “a democratic republic of a new type,” meaning evidently a reformed capitalism somewhat like the Social Democratic Scandinavian countries, or perhaps Mexico, with Left workers’ parties participating in a progressive anti-Fascist coalition government with “bourgeois” parties. Certainly no party n Spain at the moment seeks to establish there a dictatorship such as that of Soviet Russia – least of all the “Socialist” Spanish Communist Party.
      The rivalry between the C.N.T. led by the F.A.I. or Federation of Iberian Anarchists, and the other Trades Union, the U.G.T., dominated by the Communists and Socialists, is almost as old as the dispute between Bakunin and Marx. Long before the July rebellion they hated one another bitterly and violent clashes were of frequent occurrence. During the past nine months of civil war there have been numerous armed fights, particularly in the smaller towns and villages. The question of collectivisation of agriculture loomed large in this feud. News of these “riots” was not often printed in the Spanish newspapers and it was, of course, censored in the despatches of foreign correspondents.
      The Communists, Socialists and Left Republicans not only oppose collectivisation of any more farms and factories; they demand that the Anarchist militias become part of the regular republican army under a single command and that the Anarchist-controlled Workers’ Patrols be dissolved in favour of a regular “non-political” police force. Further, they demand that the Anarchist workers in the rearguard surrender their arms, needed at the front. They demand the dissolution of the Workers’ Committees which have controlled the factories and collectivised farms – something like the Russian Soviets prior to the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution – constituting a dual power.
      These demands were a challenge to the Anarchists. They are supported and to some extent inspired by the so-called Trotskyist P.O.U.M. which split away from the Comintern in opposition to “Stalinism.” They are opposed by all other Spanish organisations.
      The P.S.U.C., which now has a membership of 60,000, is affiliated with the Comintern. When it was formed a year ago by the merger of the Catalonian Communist and Socialist Parties, the Communists numbered only about 250. These figures indicate the growth of Communist influence in Catalonia – and throughout Spain. Aid from Russia and from Communist Parties throughout the world has enabled them to gain enough power to throw down their ultimatum to the Anarchists – and the result was street fighting in Barcelona.
      I left Barcelona the day before the fighting began, after four months in Spain, three of which were spent working for the Valencia Government. I profoundly regret anything which weakens the anti-Fascist united front, but I cannot agree with the official version of events which makes the Anarchists the villains of the plot. The common conception of an Anarchist as a wild irresponsible hooligan is as far from the reality as the same conception of a Bolshevik some years ago. In fact the Anarchist is, strangely, the nearest approach to a Bolshevik to be found in Spain to-day, except possibly for the P.O.U.M. Communists. But unfortunately they have no Lenin – not even a leader of the calibre of Trotsky or Stalin.

Leadership of the POUM, Andres Nin is 2nd from right

      The Anarchists fear that behind the Communist-Socialist-Left Republican programme for a regular republican army and police force under a single command and one flag – not the red or the red and black flag and not the Catalonian flag, but the flag of republican Spain – and behind the opposition to the completion of the proletarian revolution, there is a plan to eliminate them from the Spanish scene. They charge that the “Stalinists” have organised a G.P.U. in Spain controlled from Moscow. They point to the imprisonment recently of the Anarchist Morato, who is now on hunger strike, and to the jailing of dozens of other Anarchists on one pretext or other of disobedience to the decrees of the Government, in Murcia, Lerida and elsewhere. They protest against the suppression of Anarchist newspapers. They point to the exclusion of the C.N.T.-F.A.I. from the Basque Government and the imprisonment of numerous Anarchists in Bilbao. And they remember that in Soviet Russia the Anarchists were long since “liquidated.”
      Hence for months Barcelona has been an armed camp, although the casual visitor would not suspect it. The “united front” with the other parties has been only an armed truce necessitated by the war against the Fascists... A few weeks ago the Communists raided the Anarchist arsenal and stole seven tanks... A few days before I left Barcelona there was a gigantic funeral procession for Roldan Cortada, Communist leader of the U.G.T., assassinated by an Anarchist or, more probably, by an agent provocateur. Banners demanded revenge. The next day an Anarchist was assassinated... I interviewed Luis Companvs, president of the Generalitat, and predicted an armed clash. He laughed scornfully and said the Anarchists would capitulate as they always had before.
      It was too late for compromise; the inevitable irrepressible conflict occurred and has evidently been suppressed since I left Barcelona. But the fighting is not over. There will be further compromise “solutions” which solve none of the basic issues, and further crises and armed conflict.
      The Barcelona and Valencia Governments have been partially paralysed from their beginnings by these conflicts and by the rivalries of the constituent organisations of the People’s Front Government. Their effectiveness on the military field as well as on the economic and political fields has been crippled by recurrent crises. Malaga, like Toledo and other cities, was practically handed over to Franco’s forces. All has been quiet on the Aragon front, key to winning the war, because the Government dared not give the Anarchists and the P.O.U.M. militiamen too many machine-guns.
      After the fall of Malaga, General Asencio and Colonel Villalba were removed from the War Ministry because they sabotaged the defence of that city. But the leaders of the C.N.T. and the P.O.U.M. charge that there are still many Generals and others occupying high positions who are counter-revolutionists, secretly in sympathy with the Fascists. They demand the removal of all such anti-proletarian officials. They demand a thoroughly proletarian revolutionary cleansed of doubtful “bourgeois” elements,” and they want working-class control of the army and police, and of factories and farms.
      If you are puzzled as to why the Communists and Socialists join with the Left Republican and Catalonian Nationalists in opposing such a revolutionary programme, the Anarchists and the P.O.U.M. will answer that the politics of both the Second and Third Internationals are no longer revolutionary, but reformist and social democratic. They will tell you that the Comintern has long since abandoned its hopes for a world revolution – until after the world war they are sure is on the horizon. The Spanish Communist Party has become an instrument of the Soviet Foreign Office.
      The Soviet Government, they maintain, and hence the Comintern, under the Stalinist dictatorship, want no revolution in Spain or anywhere else at present for fear it would weaken the chances of a military alliance with England as with France. Soviet Russia seeks security and will sacrifice the Spanish Revolution because Anglo-French imperialism demands it as the price of possible military aid to Russia against German-Italian-Japanese aggression, Andres Nin, P.O.U.M. leader, told me last week. He said that the only hope of saving the Spanish Revolution lies in an acceptance by the Anarchists of a Bolshevik line of action. That hope seems dim; however fine their revolutionary spirit the Anarchists have an implacable hatred of Marxism and Leninism.
      Their lack of political clarity, the absence of any common political policy whatever, plus their hatred of discipline and dictatorship, weaken them in a struggle for power against a party which is as highly disciplined as an army and knows exactly what it wants and how to get it.
      It is indeed fortunate that there is even greater friction among the forces under Franco – between Spaniards and Germans and Italians and Moors, between monarchists and Fascists and right republicans. Franco’s military efficiency is also crippled by internal conflicts, and after four months of thinking about it I am convinced the Fascists can never win, despite disunity among the anti-Fascist forces.

Liston M. Oak, The New Statesman and Nation, 15 May, 1937, pp.801-802.

Click on links to other chapters of the pamphlet

Preface to the pamphlet

Workers control in the Spanish Revolution

Writing about medicine and health in the Spanish Civil War

The Anarchist participation in government

The view from the East End: Joe Jacobs and Spain

MEETING : The Spanish Revolution 1936-39

2011-06-18T06:41:00.001+01:00

Speaker is Brian Bamford from the Solidarity Federation [Manchester]: Trades Council secretary, building worker, writer, and editor of Northern Voices.

8 p.m. on Wednesday 20th July, at Wood Green Social Club, Stuart Crescent N22-
Just up the hill from Wood Green tube station, across the gardens and the WGSC is on your right.

Seventy-five years ago many of the Spanish people launched a spirited defence of their country against an attempted coup by right-wing Spanish Army generals, supported by German and Italian military power. The popular insurrection took a ‘leftward turn’ as the armed people began to take over factories, depots, farms, estates, municipal authorities – indeed the whole of most of east Spain. Militias with 100,000 volunteers including the famous Durruti column, marched against the Nationalists under Franco.

In the rear, regions of Catalonia, Aragon, etc., became a workers’ republic, as chronicled by George Orwell and others. In a social experiment that last nearly three years, the people were in control and business institutions were collectivised or ‘adjusted’ to the new world. This can be regarded as the foremost example of workers’ power the world had ever seen, and remains so today.

Sadly fascism – Franco, Hitler, Mussolini – had armed forces and air power to ensure the eventual defeat of the people. There were divisions among the defenders, many were anarchists while the socialists/communists held more orthodox left-wing views, but armed might won out anyway. And the ‘civil’ war became a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the world war against the Axis powers that began within a few months. However we still celebrate the 1936 libertarian revolution, the breathtaking courage of the Spanish people, and the vision of a workers’ New World, not forgetting the international volunteers who went to assist them.

Already published on this blog about the Spanish revolution
Spain and the World : Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War
Women in the Spanish Revolution

Spain and the World: Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War (5)

2011-06-16T16:56:00.006+01:00

British Imperialism and non-intervention

The revolt of the sections of the Spanish army led by Franco in July 1936 left the British ruling class with a series of immediate dilemmas, the most important of which was to stay out of a war that had a potential to conflagrate and not to support the Republic a state that had shown itself incapable of stable government. The British ruling class hoped that Franco’s forces would be quickly successful and stable government that represented no threat to British interests would resume.

Leon Blum : Socialist Prime Minister of France's Popular Front Government

The establishment of the Non-Intervention Committee
Since the First World War Britain and France were in alliance and tended to follow the same diplomatic path. In 1936 a Popular Front government was elected in France consisting of Socialists, Radicals and Communists. This government had strong links with the Spanish Popular Front government in Spain and indeed contracts in place were for the provision of French arms and munitions for Spain. Immediately after Franco's revolt some aeroplanes and other munitions were dispatched to Spain on the order of the French premier Leon Blum. Blum had strong sympathies for Spain but found himself constricted in his actions by the attitude of the British, the possibility of a split in the French government with the Radicals clearly indicating their aversion to any support to Spain; and lastly the possibility of igniting mass protests against the PF government by the very large French fascist
movement. Leon Blum therefore proposed to the British the setting up of a committee to ensure the neutrality of European countries in regard to the Spanish conflict. The Non-Intervention Committee first met in September 1936.

The British government and the politics of non-intervention
Among academic historians controversy surrounds the amount of overt pressure that was placed on the French to fall in line. The point is however, that in foreign affairs at this time the British were the dominant partner and it was unlikely that the French would do anything that contravened the wishes of the British.

For the British Blum's idea was a godsend on many counts. It meant that Britain could present its policy as being part of a European initiative; the French and the British were speaking with one voice. The policy had the general support of the British public. It wrong-footed the Labour Party which could only go along with a policy initiated by French socialist. Lastly, it would not entail support for a government which allowed armed workers onto the streets and ordinary sailors to take over its fleet; and it was not siding with the Soviet Union. However what was envisaged by the British as a temporary situation soon became prolonged as Franco's rebel army with German and Italian air support was stopped at the gates of Madrid in November 1936. The British continued to pursue this policy to the end of the Spanish Civil War in April 1939. For the left this was and is a sell-out, a betrayal, cowardice in the face of the obvious fascist threat to peace. To defeat the fascists in Spain may have altered the course of history - the second world war might not have happened. To pursue this line of analysis is to be blind to the role of British Imperialism and the role of Empire in decisions that were made. The speculative big 'IF' of history has no place in the concrete analysis!

Rudolf Rocker - the German anarchist - examines this line of argument in his pamphlet 'The Tragedy of Spain' first published in August 1937. Rocker opens his pamphlet with an examination of the role of foreign capital in Spain and the dominant position of British capital there. British capital had interests in iron ore, mercury, aluminium and copper mining, railroads, and docks. The infamous Rio Tinto owned the largest copper mines in Spain and when this area was over run by Franco's forces in August 1936 a contract between Rio Tinto and Franco was drawn up so that Rio Tinto could carry on business as normal. Indeed Rocker was correct in pointing out that British investments in Spain represented 40 percent of all foreign investment. Trade between the two countries was also considerable with Spain exporting £10 million worth of goods to Britain and importing over £3 million. Before Franco's uprising there were fears for British property in Spain, as left wing newspapers urged nationalisation.

Rocker continues his argument by looking at the threats to the British position that came from all sides: the potential loss of investments if Franco wins the war; the increasing influence of Italy and Germany in Spain and the whole Mediterranean; the threats to communications of the British empire. On the other hand the defeat of Franco would give more impetus to the social revolution, yet another risk to British interests. For Rocker this is the crux of the British fudge of non-intervention:

'And in this situation lies the explanation of England's [sic] whole attitude on the Spanish question. It determined the so-called 'neutrality policy' of the English and French diplomats, which seems unintelligible only to those who think that the present power struggle between different power groups in Europe is concerned only with abstract problems like democracy and fascism. To one who is naive enough to judge the thing from that point of view the seeming blindness of English and French statesmen must of course cause a severe headache; but he will not have understood the heart of the question at all.' ...

'No, the conservative potentates on the Thames are neither blind nor slow of understanding .... Those men know very well indeed what they are doing...'

'The tactics of English diplomacy has [sic] always been to play one power against the others in order to maintain England's hegemony on the Continent. These tactics were determined by the position of world power of the British Empire. England could keep her hold on her colonies, scattered over every continent, only so long as she was able to guarantee them protection against foreign attack.' (Rocker, pp.11 and 12)

Rocker's perspicacious analysis, a piece of brilliant political economy, is borne out by history.

The British Empire consisted of over 500 million people stretched across the globe from the Caribbean through the middle east, containing large chunks of the African continent, to south Asia and the Far east, and on to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Ocean. It was dependent on trade routes and communications that passed Spain, and the Mediterranean was of paramount importance. Italian pronouncements in the 30s that the Mediterranean should be an Italian lake were not well received in London. However Italy was not a world power as Britain was. Britain had the largest merchant fleet in the world and one of the largest navies, and was the world centre for financial capital. The British army was just over 200,000 men of whom half were based overseas across the Empire. But Britain could not fight a European war and could only do so in future by drawing on the Empire's resources. As Rocker says the British ruling class were not interested in democracy but in securing a balance of power that assured the continuation of the status quo and alliances would be made that met these interests.

The Pursuit of Non-Intervention
The Non-intervention policy must in some ways be seen as the real beginning of the British policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a policy that became more pronounced and entrenched with Neville Chamberlain's premiership from 1937.

The British refused to allow the Republic's fleet to refuel, it was not impressed by sailors so-called 'mutiny'

The British pursued non-intervention with a zeal not even followed by the French or Americans. In July 1936 the fleet of the Spanish Republic could not refuel in Gibraltar after private companies were dissuaded from entering into contracts by the British government. Sales of armaments were immediately stopped. Both of these events happened before non-intervention was proposed by the French government. Later the British government exchanged agents with the insurgents thereby giving legitimacy to Franco's cause. Franco's representative in London, the Duke of Alba, having links to the right wing of the Tory party, was able to propagandise for the rebels. Speakers from Republican Spain were often banned from speaking in the UK and immediately returned to Spain. In one such instance Julian Gorkin, a leading member of POUM, arrived in the UK to speak to a meeting of the Independent Labour Party and was sent back from Croydon Airport. Police began to monitor all pro-republican activity. Journalists undertaking assignments in Spain had to sign a declaration of neutrality before setting off. The government brought into operation the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870 making it illegal for UK nationals to join militias in Spain. A Merchant Shipping Act was passed making it illegal for ships of the British merchant fleet to carry arms to Spain.

Splits in the British Ruling Class
There can be little doubt that the policy pursued by the British did seriously undermine the military capabilities of the Spanish Republic. And even though there were splits in the ruling class they did not stem from an attitude towards the rights or wrongs of supporting a democratically elected government in Spain but rather from policies that should be pursued towards Italy and Germany. Anthony Eden the Foreign Secretary was concerned about the Spanish conflict for two main reasons: one, that Italy not use the civil war as an opportunity to extend its power in the Mediterranean, in particular by having permanent bases on the Spanish Balearic Islands. He also wanted to offer Italy plenty of carrots to draw Mussolini away from German influence. He therefore proposed a British-Italian treaty to settle differences. Eden's failure in both of these aims led to his resignation from Chamberlain's government in February 1938. In fact Eden found himself isolated in government as his softer approach to the Spanish republic found few friends in the British cabinet and he also lost prestige as the Primer Minister took control of foreign policy and pursued appeasement with even greater vigour.

Bibliography
Brendon, Piers. The Dark Valley : a panorama of the 1930s, Pimlico, London, 2001
Buchanan, Tom. Britain and the Spanish Civil War, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997
Gallagher, M. D. 'Leon Blum and the Spanish Civil War' Journal of Contemporary History 6(3) p56-64, 1971
Little, Douglas. 'Red Scare, 1936: Anti-Bolshevism and the origins of British Non-Intervention in the Spanish Civil War' Journal of Contemporay History 23(2), p291-311, 1988
Moradiellos, Enrique. 'British Political Strategy in the face of the military uprising of 1936 in Spain'. Comtemporary European History 1(2) p123-137, 1992

Rocker, Rodolf. The Tragedy of Spain [1937], ASP, London 1986

Watkins, K.W. Britain Divided: The effect of the Spanish Civil War on British political opinion. Thomas Nelson, London, 1963

Dale Evans

June 2011

Click on links to other chapters of the pamphlet

Preface to the pamphlet

Workers control in the Spanish Revolution

Writing about medicine and health in the Spanish Civil War

The Anarchist participation in government

The view from the East End: Joe Jacobs and Spain

Barcelona 1937: a contemporary view of the May events

Spain and the World: Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War (4)

2011-06-16T15:16:00.002+01:00

Workers’ control in the Spanish Revolution 1936

The Army mutiny in Spain in July 1936, and the resulting 3-year civil war, had a few positive effects. Well away from the fighting, in the cities, towns and countryside, thousands of anti-fascist committees were set up; thousands more workplaces were occupied and work kept going. The collectivised workplaces were run by workers’ committees, or Comités, and we give two examples below - a major transport system and a health service.

Barcelona Tramways
Perhaps one of the best examples of socialisation was that of the Barcelona Tramways, described extensively by the major book on the collectives. It covered trams, buses, underground, taxis and two funicular railways, and 7,000 workers of whom 6,500 were members of the CNT*. After the military coup there were 600 operating trams and many of them had been used in the street barricades, ther was also extensive road damage and the main company's offices were guarded by Civil Guards. Armed workers saw off these troops and found the building deserted except for a lawyer left behind to parley. This man was well known as he had led the prosecution two years previously of workers’ leader Comrade Sanches, which resulted in a 17 year sentence. He had demanded 105 years for the crime of heading a 28 week strike! The workers wanted to shoot the man on the spot but Sanches opposed
that and even arranged for an appointment the following Monday and an escort home. Predictably he was never seen again.

Workers get organised
The Comité of seven called an immediate meeting of delegates from various sections - the power station, repairs, cables, traffic, conductors, stores, accounts, offices, etc. The workers were in control and began organising. A radio broadcast recalled all workers committed to the new operational setup. Company engineers accepted the authority of the Comité, including a former colonel who had been victimised for supporting the union.

As a result of day and night working to repair old tramcars, instead of using trailer-cars to extend capacity - a practice that had caused many accidents - there were 700 trams on the road five days after the fighting, 100 more than before. The vehicles were all repainted in the red and black colours of the CNT/FAI**. Other technical improvements included the replacement of 3,000 awkward metal support poles by aerial suspension, a new safety and signalling system, a new electric furnace, milling machines and electrode welding sets.

The new system worked well. Each section was headed by a workers’ representative and an engineer, both nominated by the Syndicate. Every decision was approved by the Comité. Assemblies were held on sectional issues and a general assembly ratified major points, like one to carry out the additional repainting without overtime pay. At one assembly, efforts were made to get the hundreds of shareholders to attend but only one middle-aged woman, who owned 250 shares, attended. She declared herself happy with the arrangements, and Leval recounts that the woman was unlikely to be deprived of her means of support.

More production
The service was substantially improved. Monthly income was 12% up on 1935 figures. 1937 figures for passengers carried went up by 50,000,000 to 233,557,506. A uniform fare charge of 0.20 pesetas meant a substantial reduction for most people. It was 20 months before fares were increased. The war and the blockade meant that internal workshop production of materials and parts used went up from 2% to 98%. All debts were paid off, and financial assistance rendered to other municipal undertakings.

Better conditions
Working conditions were both equalised and bettered. Previous day rates of 8,9,10,11 and 12 pesetas for various grades, were increased to 15 ps for labourers and 16 ps for skilled engineering workers. Wash basins and showers were installed and an occupational health service introduced. 30 district doctors were appointed to treat workers and their families. A home help service was set up to help workers who were sick. A well equipped clinic was appropriated for use of the syndicate.

There was full sick pay. Discipline at work was typical of that in other Comités. Serious cases were dealt with by assemblies, and dismissals usually became transfers. Drunkenness resulted in the pay being made to wives. An effective sanction in workplaces was the "naming" of irresponsible workers on a displayed blackboard, which presumably allowed a variety of personal responses.

Defended against State take-over
The value of the collective organisation was obviously recognised by the workers as much as the public. When the government tried to assume control of the tramways in June 37, as part of a whole scheme to take back all the utilities and public services, the workers mounted a massive campaign. Huge posters called for rejection of "municipalisation", the euphemism used by the reformists for their planned destruction of the system. All the gains itemised above were listed and such was the response that the plans were shelved.

Conclusion
The success of the tramways Comité was due to the superiority of the workers’ management and external factors. Petrol shortages meant more use of the public service and the crippling effects of the war and blockade were minimal in the industry. The old regime was conservative and reconstruction was overdue.

Health Service
We can now turn to one example involving the extension of collectivisation into social welfare, that of socialised medicine, in Catalonia initially but also other cities in Republican Spain. (This is from the same source as above, page 264.) Deriving from a Syndicate of Liberal Professions, the Syndicate for Sanitary Services, SSS, was set up in September 1936 to tackle the problem of health. Spain had high infant mortality, 18 or 19 per 1,000, and this disguised the fact that it was double in working class areas compared with elsewhere. There were many other problems as well.

The initiative was taken by CNT Ministers in the Central and Catalonian government and the resulting health service was often staffed by political members. This political lead was to become a disadvantage when the counter-revolutionary forces removed CNT personnel from 1937. This included Dr Martì Ibañez who had been Director General of Sanitary Services and Social Assistance in Catalonia, just one of luckier of the victims of the Stalinist counter revolution, who lived to tell the tale.

By February 1937, Leval writes that the SSS had on roll 1,020 doctors of different specialities, 3,206 nurses, 330 midwives, 633 dentists, 153 pharmacists, 633 assistant pharmacists, 335 preparers of dressings, 81 other specialists, numerous masseurs and 220 veterinary surgeons. In all, a total of 7,000 people to cover a Catalonian population of 2.5 m. By June, there were in Barcelona, 18 hospitals [six of which had been set up by the SSS], 17 sanatoria [9 new], 22 clinics, 6 psychiatric establishments, 3 nurseries, 1 maternity hospital and two very modern annexes to the General Hospital, one for bone TB and the other for orthopaedic treatment.

Outpatient departments were established in all principal localities and smaller localities were attached. These were adequately equipped and staffed to deal with problems. Funding for these as for other parts of the SSS was from central and local government. Operations were free in the new clinics as was psychiatric treatment.

Doctors
Doctors responded in different ways. The older-established ones were suspicious and a number left the country. Younger staff were enthusiastic generally about the new system. Previously new doctors were virtually unpaid, worked in poor conditions and waited their turn to fill dead men's shoes. Now all hospital doctors were paid 500 ps a month for three hours work a day. In addition, they could have private patients but this practice was closely supervised to prevent excesses. No doctor could receive two salaries and the widespread practice of neglecting official work for private practice was ended. A majority of staff also worked voluntarily in addition to their posting.

A series of reviews of related areas were begun. For example, pharmaceutical products were to be re-organised from laboratories to outlets. Health and safety at work was re-structured to begin an occupational health service and insurance companies’ involvement reduced in favour of State provision.

As well as the Catalonian SSS, there were a number of other health syndicates set up. Some date from 1936, like the Mutual Aid Society of the Levant in Valencia, which in fact survived the Franco years. In Valencia in February 1937 a Congress of Federations of Health Syndicates was held. These were from all over Republican Spain, over 40 in total with 40,000 staff. An important aspect of the Congress was a planned further development in organisation especially with regard to diseases like TB. This of course would involve considerations extending to housing and schools and other aspects of public health.

While not all syndicates were as comprehensive as the Catalonian model, they represent a pioneering venture into a national health service well in advance of other countries. Much of this was due to the CNT and practically nothing except funds came from government. In many cases, military personnel provided field hospitals and dealt with right-wing pharmacists. CNT generally organised evacuations from the war zone, bomb shelters and anti-gas brigades.

In conclusion, the achievements in health were far from being the version that socialists would like to see. Private practice and ownership remained, old ideas and practices were not completely removed. The constraints of war and the trade blockade imposed obvious limits. It was an experiment in un-propitious circumstances and was generally terminated with the victory of the military forces of the Right. It does represent an extension of workers’ power into social welfare, beyond the workplace limit set by anarcho-syndicalist theory. It demonstrated that workers could effective manage society as well as their workplaces.

* CNT - Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo : National Confederation of Labour - anarcho-syndicalist trade union
** FAI - Federacion Anarquista Iberica : Iberian Anarchist Federation

Bibliography
Leval, Gaston. Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, London, Freedom Press 1975
Dolgoff, Sam (Ed.) The Anarchist Collectives, New York, New Life Editions, 1974

Alan Woodward

June 2011

Other chapters in the pamphlet

British imperialism and non-intervention

Writing about medicine in the Spanish Civil War

Spain the view from the East End : Joe Jacobs

Anarchist participation in the government

Previously published on this blog
Women in the Spanish Revolution

Spain and the World: Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War (2)

2011-06-15T13:28:00.005+01:00

The tragic consequences of anarchist participation in the Popular Front government

At the time of the conflict there were two governments in Spain, the central government in Madrid and the Generalitat, the government of the autonomous region of Catalonia. The CNT-FAI entered the latter on September 27th 1936 referring to it as a Regional Defence Council; on November 4th 1936 four members of the CNT entered the central government [Richards 1995 p63 and 68].

Juan Garcia Oliver : leading anarchist became Minister of Justice

Collaboration and its prelude.
Was the entry of the CNT-FAI into the Popular Front (PF) government an abandonment of principle [Richards p42] or a strategic mistake that led to an abandonment of principle and a dismantling of its autonomous and revolutionary structures [Schmidt and Van der Walt 2009 p200]? From the start of the military uprising anarchists were placed in a very difficult, or maybe an impossible situation that according to Peirats they had no clear plan to deal with [ibid p202]. Lacking, as they saw it, the necessary support to carry through a revolution, they put all their efforts into the fight to defeat Franco. To many putting the war before revolution was a false dilemma [Guerin 1970 p129] and by this thinking they failed to recognise that the real enemy was the capitalist system of which fascism was but one form of expression [Richards p51]. The basis of the CNT, its independence from political parties, opposition to the state, its decentralised structure and opposition to permanent and paid officials should have prevented any temptation to participate in government [ibid p82]. There were tight rules preventing anyone representing a political party from becoming a militant of
the confederation or holding any representative position [Peirats 1998 p172]. However, prior to their collaboration, the CNT seemed to hold a contradictory position with regard to electoral activity. In 1930/31 they flirted with electoral politics, first to help overthrow the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and then to get rid of the monarchy. After a firm policy of abstention led to the election of the right there was confusion about their attitude to the formation of the PF in 1936. Whilst after meeting in January 1936 to discuss their attitude to other working class organisations and the forthcoming election the Regional Committee of the CNT adopted a policy of abstention, their actual anti-election campaign was so weak that it had little effect and there seems little doubt that anarchists voted in the elections that helped bring about the victory of the PF [Richards p18 and 23, Guerin p19-20].

This contradictory position came to a head in September 1936. In early September in a manifesto entitled ‘The Uselessness of Government’ they had presented a clear picture of how a popular front government could do nothing to aid the struggle against fascism: “The existence of a Popular Front government, so very far from being an essential element in the struggle against fascism, in point of fact denotes a voluntary limit set to that same struggle”. [The Uselessness of Government: CNT Manifesto, Guerin 2005 p659] However by mid September 1936 the CNT issued a statement in support of their collaboration in government which reads like the Bolshevik support for a ‘workers’ state’ in Russia of 1917. The CNT statement argued that: “At present, the government as the instrument regulating the forces of the State, is no longer a force for oppression targeting the working class, just as the state is no longer the agency dividing society into classes. And with the participation of CNT personnel in both, the State and the government will refrain all the more from oppressing the people.” [A would-be justification, Guerin 2005 p659]

Collaboration and Democracy
Richards [p75-7] and Dolgoff [1986 p121-2] disagree over whether the decision to enter the PF was reached democratically and whether during the struggle against Franco the decentralised decision-making process in the CNT was replaced so that, as Richards puts it, “…. only too often were fundamental questions decided by ‘influential militants’ and accepted as fait accompli by delegates at the Plenums and not discussed at all by the rank and file in the syndicates.” [Richards p75-6] Dolgoff, in disputing Richards’s arguments, refers to a reply the CNT made to the IWA refuting charges that the organisation had violated anarchist federalist principles by imposing decisions on the rank and file. The report contends that the decisions to join both the Generalitat and Central government were ratified by Plenums, and that from July 19th 1936 to November 26th 1937 there were 17 regional and dozens of local Plenums as well as district federations and regional congresses of unions. The problem in following Dolgoff’s line is his use of words such as consult and ratified which are hardly the basis of a decentralised decision making process. Peirats argues that, in this period, despite meetings taking place there was a suspension of effective federalism in the CNT. The number of circulars sent out by the National Committee, he argues, shows that it was really giving out instructions. The higher committees were communicating directly and frequently and by-passing the intermediate levels of the organisation against usual procedure. Circulars were sent out to local and district committees and to unions on the basis of their sensitivity and agendas that were too sensitive did not reach the unions. The bottom to top procedure had broken down and to speak of the principle of majority rule in a situation where the sensitive matters put to the organisation are the products of committees and large meetings of militants of the old guard is hypocritical. Quick decisions needed to be made and sensitive information guarded from leaks and so the committee decided to abandon federalist principles [Peirats p186-7] Peirats concludes: “The National Committee’s report to the AIT asserts that the CNT ‘continues to develop along federalist lines’ and immediately demonstrates the opposite.” [Ibid p188].

Conclusion
Speaking at a congress of local federations in Paris in 1945 Federica Montseny, an anarchist minister in the PF government, spoke of the futility of their time in government [“Federica Montseny Sets the Record Straight”, Guerin 2005:674]. It was futile because the PF government and the ‘communists’ (who had a large influence due to the fact that Russia was the main source of weapons for the republican side), in particular, aimed at halting and dismantling the revolutionary process. So anarchists who were supposed to be supporting workers in pushing the revolution forward were instead involved in a process that sought to reverse it. The question remains: what would the CNT-FAI had done if the PF had defeated Franco? Remain in the government? Perhaps a futile question as by then many more anarchists and other revolutionary workers would have been murdered or imprisoned at the hands of the government they were involved with. Vital mistakes were made right from the start. The situation in Catalonia prior to the CNT-FAI entry into government was one in which the region was a virtual independent republic. An Anti-Fascist Militia Committee (AFMC) had been set up to represent workers’ organisations, various political parties and groupings. Instead of dissolving the Generalitat the CNT-FAI elected to leave it intact and support Companys; this decision put a brake on the revolution and within two months the AFMC which was more representative of the revolution and a less authoritarian power than the government was abolished [Richards p64, Marshall 1993 p461]. In government anarchists helped to check the collectivisation process and oversee the absorption of the popular militia into the army, and supported the regimentation and militarisation of the armed forces, a process that led to the demoralization of many anarchists and workers [Marshall p465].

Were there alternatives to collaboration? Richards [55-8] Suggests that a CNT-FAI alliance with the UGT from the start might have been a better option. The revolution was under a threat from Franco and the government, and an alliance between the two main workers’ organisations which he terms the main spearhead of the struggle, whilst it may have meant concessions to final objectives, would not have led to the abandonment of fundamental principles such as workers’ control. The political collaboration entered into led to the abandonment of all principles and objectives both long and short-term. Peirats [p188-9] argues that, given the situation, victory over Franco and continuing the revolution was not possible but suggests that a heroic defeat might have been better than collaboration. There were many militants in the CNT who whilst opposing collaboration allowed it to take place; not being able to offer final victory they stuck to their principles. Their refusal to compromise meant avoiding complicity with the counter-revolution within the government and they sought to leave indelible marks: constructive revolutionary experiments such as the collectives, artistic and cultural achievements and new forms of communal living. There is no better summing up of the fatal and failed experiment of anarchists in government in the Spanish Revolution than Peirats when he states: “Pity the revolution that devours itself in order to obtain victory” [ibid p189] . Perhaps that is one of the main lessons of the Spanish Revolution.

Ray Carr (The Libertarian Communist)

Bibliography
Books
Peirats J, 1998 Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution. Freedom Press, London
Richards V, 1995 Lessons of the Spanish Revolution. Freedom Press, London

Chapters or Sections in Books
Dolgoff S, ‘Controversy in the Spanish Revolution’, pp.120-7 in Dogoffs S, 1986 Fragments: a Memoir. Refract Publications, Cambridge
Guerin D, ‘Hostility to Bourgeois Democracy’, pp.17-20 and ‘Anarchists in Government’, pp.128-30 in Guerin D, 1970 Anarchism. Monthly Review Press, New York
Guerin D, ‘Anarcho Syndicalism in Government’, pp.655-675 in Guerin D, 2005, No Gods, No Masters. AK Press, Oakland
Marshall P, ‘Spain’, pp.453-468, in Marshall P, 1993 Demanding the Impossible. Fontana Press, London
Schmidt M and Van der Walt L, ‘The Question of Power and the Spanish Revolution’, pp.198-202, in Schmidt M and Van der Walt L, 2009 Black Flame. AK Press, Oakland

Spain and the World : Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War (3)

2011-06-15T13:28:00.004+01:00

Writing about medicine and health care in the Spanish Civil War

Angela Jackson, Beyond the Battlefield: Testimony, memory and remembrance of a cave hospital in the Spanish Civil War. Pontypool, Warren & Pell Publishing, 2005

Nicholas Coni Medicine and Warfare: Spain, 1936-1939. London, Routledge, 2008

Jim Fyrth, The Signal Was Spain: The Aid Spain Movement In Britain, 1936-39. London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1986

Jim Fyrth, Sally Alexander, eds. Women's Voices from the Spanish Civil War. London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1991

Paul Preston. Doves of War: Four Women of Spain. London, HarperCollins, 2002

These books deal with the civil war rather than the revolutionary aspects of events in late 1930s Spain. Some information on healthcare in relation to the latter can be found in the ‘Libertarian Medicine’ posting on this blog, May 2010.

The focus of Angela Jackson’s analysis in Beyond the Battlefield is memory and remembrance – an angle that has special significance in Spain after the decades-long suppression and willed forgetting of those times, institutionalised until quite recently in the post-Franco ‘pacto de olvido’ (‘Don’t mention the civil war’). She looks at the hospital set up in a cave to treat casualties from the battle of the Ebro, summer 1938. By this stage the People's Army medical services were bringing their most seriously wounded to improvised hospitals as near to the front line as possible. Many patients were International Brigade volunteers, interspersed with injured prisoners-of-war and civilian victims of bombing raids. (Caves were also used as bomb shelters.)

Many foreigners were sent to help set up and run the hospital; others came later. Memoirs, letters and interviews are used extensively in the book, along with photographs. Conditions were, inevitably, incredibly difficult – up to a hundred beds, ‘all higgledy-piggledy’ – but somehow the work proceeded. At least one nurse ‘even began to doubt that anything could be worth the suffering that she saw around her … this misery and this horror’. Still the staff managed some improvements: in wound treatment, a new system of triage, blood transfusion (sometimes direct arm-to-arm), and training Spanish nurses. There were of course numerous patients who did not survive, buried in a grave outside the village. Eventually the cave, which had featured in pro-Republican reportage, had to be evacuated, at the end of 1938.

Parts of the broader medical history of the Spanish Civil War were being written up in professional journals as they happened, but the comprehensive treatment of the subject provided by Nicholas Coni’s book was long overdue.
As he explains, he concentrates on doctors and on secondary or hospital care: circumstances, sufferings, and responses in the changing situation. He claims to have included ‘almost everything it has been possible to discover’ about medicine on the Nationalist side, given that Republican medical advances are better known already. The author confesses a certain inadequacy in his account of nursing, which may be related to some limitations in the book generally. The Nationalist zone receives noticeably disproportionate attention here, with the remarkable Republican nursing effort given scant credit or even disparaged in one or two quotations. There is no acknowledgement of the role played by the anarchist women’s organisation Mujeres Libres in nursing, training and health education.

Coni’s evident medical knowledge is, however, used to good effect in discussion of wound care and blood transfusion, without too much technicality, and in relation to the more general subjects of famine, disease, and organisation of medical services. He adds a short but useful look at the neglected (in this context) topic of psychiatry. He is suitably scathing about the quaint Nationalist project to study the ‘biopsychiatric roots of fanatical Marxism’, while noting as a possible ‘first’ the Republican attempt to inaugurate screening for ‘war neurosis risk’.

Unfortunately coverage of medical services does not extend to the initiatives of the collectives; sources sympathetic to these are largely ignored. Thus the writing-out of the libertarian contribution is perpetuated. Apart from that, while taking account of the International Brigades (and of what foreign medical support there was for Franco), the role of Spanish practitioners is refreshingly prominent. Male ones, that is: the only woman who gets into the list of biographical notes is Priscilla Scott-Ellis, a nurse on the Nationalist side and one of Paul Preston’s Doves of War (‘Doves’ – Coo!), so a bit of a usual suspect. Notes on individual campaigns bring out the ways in which the war was waged and varieties of damage inflicted, then a survey of the post-war aftermath shows the detrimental effects of Franco’s victory, on medicine as in other aspects of life in Spain. At £70, this was not going to be a best-seller but it’s worth getting hold of if possible for anyone interested in the conflict.

As well as the case of the Nationalist-supporting volunteer Scott-Ellis (not without interest in its way, pp. 11-118 in Doves of War), Paul Preston supplies an extended profile of Nan Green (pp. 121-201 in same) whose work as an administrator and compiler of statistical records was recognised as contributing to Republican medical successes. Parallels are discernible, ironically, between those ‘enemies’, in their frankness not only about the horrendous conditions but about their respective sides’ disharmony and failings, and their own clashes with hard-line authoritarian politicos.

The campaign to provide medical aid from Britain to the Republican cause is the subject of Jim Fyrth’s detailed analysis of the groups, organisations and individuals involved, the difficulties they encountered, and their varied achievements. In the later book co-authored with Sally Alexander there are contributions from nurses to supplement this account and bring home its reality. As in some other publications, especially of memoirs, there is an understandable tendency to accentuate the positive and preserve an impression of a united front. To realise the problems and disillusion connected with the communist-led militarisation of Republican medical services, for example, we need to look elsewhere, e.g. the chapter on medical aid in Tom Buchanan’s Britain and the Spanish Civil War (Cambridge, 1997). A ‘pact of [selective] forgetting’ among veterans and their supporters, perhaps? Something for historians to address.

Liz Willis

March 2011

Spain and the World: Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War (1)

2011-06-15T13:26:00.005+01:00

Spain 1936: the view from the East End

Extracted and adapted from: Joe Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto – My Youth in the East End: Communism and Fascism 1913-1939. London, Janet Simon, 1978, 319pp. (Later reprinted by Phoenix Press)

Joe Jacobs, in his well-regarded memoir of early 20th-century left-wing political activism, had quite a lot to say about the Spanish Civil War, showing how important it was in the political life of the time, in London’s east end as elsewhere. He refers extensively to his files of the Daily Worker (DW, the Communist Party newspaper which eventually became the Morning Star), highlighting the inadequacy and inaccuracies of its coverage and using it to show how the official ‘line’ lagged behind events.

Chapter 10 of his autobiography is entitled ‘Three Tailors from Stepney in Spain’ (pp.213-21 in first edition). He tells the story of how Nat Cohen, Sam Masters, and Alec Sheller set off by bike for the Barcelona Olympiad (the alternative to the ‘Nazi’ Olympics in Berlin), due to start on 19th July 1936; Joe and his wife Pearl were expecting to see Nat and Sam in Antwerp in about a fortnight. But by 20th July headlines were appearing, if not yet as front-page news, about the attempted right-wing military coup, already termed ‘Fascist’, and resistance to it: ‘Masses defend the Republic’; ‘General strike begins’...

Within a week reports had started coming from a DW special correspondent, the headlines were big, and the word was out to rally supporters to the cause of the Spanish Republic: ‘All into action now’. Joe noted that no more than two days’ notice was required to fill any hall when events in Spain were being
discussed. Meetings were going on all over the place; holiday plans were called off, the Barcelona Olympiad was abandoned and the British delegation returned, but there was no news of the three tailors. The first report of their presence in Spain came not in the DW but in the Daily Express, whose reporter had ‘found’ them with the government forces in Barcelona and been told how they crossed the border from southern France when they heard what was happening. An editorial launched into a xenophobic and of course anti-Communist denunciation of such intervention.

The contrasting Party Line of the DW was given on August 6: ‘No neutrality’, and ‘Not Soviets but defence of democracy’. Although even at that distance ‘it looked as though this fight would in fact be for a workers’ revolution over all the forces of reaction in Spain’, Joe did not ‘recall any discussion or consultation with the membership about the issues raised by the Spanish struggle’. Nevertheless, for activists like himself, ‘The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War demanded all our attention during the first few weeks and a lot of time for longer’ in the form of whole-hearted support for efforts to publicise the Republican cause, raise funds for medical aid, and expose the realities behind ‘non-intervention’.

For a time he did not see the full significance of his friends’ action, even when he received a letter from Nat Cohen about himself and Sam having joined the militias. When Joe mentioned this, and the lack of official CP notice taken of it, to members of the District Committee, he ‘felt the response was not altogether one of approval for Nat’s actions.’ Alec Sheller was the first of the three to return, largely ignored except by the Stepney branch of the party, which held a meeting to hear his report. Meanwhile more details had started coming through from Nat, who also sent a photograph showing ‘a few of the boys in the front lines of Mallorca (before we evacuated)’. Joe uses these first-hand accounts to correct inaccuracies and omissions in the DW and later versions of events, arguing that the International Brigades were not a CP creation but a development from the early response of committed volunteers.

Of course other things were happening in the East End, and the stories of anti-fascist struggle at home (notably Cable Street) and of the author’s own difficulties with the party are interwoven here. Still ‘the fighting in Spain could not be ignored in all our preoccupation’ as the situation grew more critical. Both Sam and Nat were wounded before the end of the war and shortly before the end of Joe’s narrative we learn that they were in the ‘English hospital’ in Barcelona ('Cranen' - probably Grañen).

There are interesting postscripts, however, in the editor’s continuation, written up from notes and documents. One strand concerns Nat Cohen and his future wife Ramona, a Spanish nurse, whom he managed to smuggle out of Spain when he himself was repatriated as a result of his injury. The problem of getting her into Britain from Paris was solved by a comradely arrangement with Joe and Pearl whereby the Jacobses went to France, met up with the two from Spain, and Pearl returned as a ‘day tripper’, having given her passport to Ramona. (It worked.) For Sam Masters the outcome of the war was a tragic contrast. He recovered sufficiently from his lung injury to go back to the fighting and was killed in the Brunete offensive. He had been ‘allowed’ to speak up on Joe’s behalf when the latter was faced with suspension from the party.

Joe had continued to take note of the Spanish events as his problems with the CP intensified; his critique focused on issues like Spain, implying that the party, as distinct from the rank and file, was too inclined to drag its feet. In yet another way the struggle impinged close to home: Joe’s brother Hymie (a.k.a. H Jackson) turned up as a prisoner of war in a Nationalist concentration camp. Termed ‘a sort of individualistic “Anarchist”’ he had crossed the Pyrenees on foot in 1937 and joined up with the British Battalion, having fallen foul of the law in London. According to his niece he admired the republican cause, and the bravery especially of the anarchists, but had little respect for the CP leaders of the British Battalion. He was particularly struck by the power of the Catholic Church in Spain and the popular reaction against it. Eventually he was released, in late 1938, and returned to the East End.

Like many others, Joe Jacobs went on remembering Spain and analysing its significance for all those on the political left.

In his own words…

From Joe Jacobs, ‘The Good Old Days’ in Solidarity vol., 7, no. 10, April 1974, pp.5-12; p.9:-

The International Brigade.

The Spanish Civil War, particularly the International Brigade, is another example of how the C.P. started by sabotaging and weakening the movement, only to take it over, claiming all the credit and ending up by subverting its aims.

Some friends of mine were on their way to the Barcelona Olympiad (to be held in opposition to the Olympic Games in Hitler’s Germany). They arrived at the Franco-Spanish border on July 19, 1936. The revolt of the army under Franco had already begun. They crossed into Spain and two of them joined the Republican Militia in Barcelona. One of them later formed the ‘Tom Mann Centuria’ – an English unit – around the time when some Germans and others were arriving in Spain. Units were being created from among many foreign volunteers.

I received early news from my friends. Their presence in Spain was reported in the Daily Express, with an editorial condemning their actions, a few days after their arrival. Despite all efforts to get the activities of my friends reported in the Daily Worker, no mention of their activities was made for many weeks to come.

In fact I now know that there was great opposition to any actions which did not come directly as a result of Party decisions. My friends were Party members. When the flood of volunteers from all parts of the world, from many different political backgrounds, had become a fact of life, the Communist Party of Spain, under the direct control of the Communist International, began to take over these units which had been created by the volunteers themselves. It wasn’t until late November 1936 that the International Legion (later International Brigade) was directly brought under the control of the Communist International by Tito. The facts have still not got into the history books. The Communist Party continues to claim credit for the creation of the International Brigade.

Once again, when ordinary people – rank and file – initiate a struggle which they seek to manage themselves, and this proves effective, the parties arrive to try to take it over. In this case the C.P. succeeded. We know how the International Brigade was used against anyone critical of C.P. policies and domination. We also know how the Communist Party continues to claim credit for all the heroic efforts of all the volunteers who fought in Spain. We all know how the struggle ended.

[Some details in the above were revised in ‘Out of the Ghetto’ after Joe had studied his files more closely]

And as others saw him…

Solidarity for Workers’ Power, vol. 8, no. 6, 22-4-77, p.14.

On March 29 Joe Jacobs died of a heart attack in University College Hospital, at the age of [nearly 64].

Joe had been a rebel since childhood and a revolutionary all his political life. Active in the workers’ movement in the 1930s (see his article ‘The Good Old Days’ in Solidarity vol, 7, no 10) he was expelled from the Communist Party in 1937 for advocating street mobilisation and working class direct action as a means of fighting the fascists in London’s East End.

After an association with Trotskyism in the early 1950s, Joe joined Solidarity in 1970. He wrote our pamphlets The Postal Strike and Under New Management in 1971 and 1972 respectively. In the last couple of years Joe developed severe disagreements with the London group. These eventually led to a parting of the ways. Despite this we all retained personal respect and affection for him. He was young in heart and he gave unstintingly of himself to the revolutionary movement. We regret he did not live to see the triumph of the cause to which he devoted so much of his life.

Other Chapters in this pamphlet
British Imperialism and non-intervention
Writing about medicine in the Spanish Civil War
Anarchist participation in the government
Workers control in the Spanish revolution

Previously published on this blog
Women in the Spanish Revolution

Spain and the World : Aspects of the Spanish Revolution and Spanish Civil War

2011-06-15T13:23:00.010+01:00

Preface : Celebrate the Spanish Revolution

This is a first for the Radical History Network of North East London: a pamphlet published only online. This is an unusual undertaking for us, as normally we would publish in paper and charge a price to recoup our printing costs. However we have decided to publish a series of short pieces on various aspects of the Spanish revolution and civil war (SR/CW) which interest members of the group and our supporters. Books, pamphlets and articles abound on the SR/CW, but we hope that these pieces will add a different take on things and give a different point of view on these historical events. We hope that from the beginning of publication to the year's end more contributions will be received and enlarge the project. Anyone who is in broad agreement with the group can make a contribution.

The pamphlet is published on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the attempted military coup begun on 18 July 1936 by right-wing generals, and stopped in its tracks by the people of Spain who went on to fight a bloody civil war that lasted nearly three years. During this period sections of the Spanish people experimented with self-managed organisation of work and society in town and country, and with a new economics. This revolution was to be destroyed by the authoritarian communist reaction and the politics of popular frontism, fascist militarism and the machinations of international deplomacy. The pamphlet explores some of these themes, how they have been perceived, and how the contexts changed and undermined the truly phenomenal revolution in life undertaken in such adverse circumstances. Anarchists and libertarian socialists celebrate this achievement!

"You Comrades of Barcelona and Catalonia in general are giving a shining example to the workers of the rest of the world, that you fully understand the meaning of revolution. For you have learned through past mistakes that unless the revolutionary forces succeed in feeding, clothing and sheltering the people during the revolutionary period, the revolution is doomed to ruin. For its strength and security lie not in the state or in the political power of parties but in the constructive efforts during the fighting period. Your marvellous experiment will and must succeed. But whether it does or fails, you are planting new roots deeply in the soil of Spain, in the hearts and minds of your people and in the hearts and minds of the oppressed all over the world."

Emma Goldmann - Barcelona September 1936

* Spain and the World - originally published by Freedom in London from 1936-39, edited by Vernon Richards

CONTENTS

Please click on link to go to any of the chapters
Workers' control in the Spanish Revolution 1936
Spain 1936: the view from the East End
Spain 1936 and the tragic consequences of anarchist participation in the Popular Front government: a lesson for the future
British Imperialism and non-intervention
Writing about medicine and health in the Spanish Civil War
Barcelona 1937 : a contemporary view of events
Eric Hobsbawm and the politics of writing history

Previously published on this blog
Women in the Spanish revolution

Great Enoch - a weapon of choice

2011-05-28T13:01:00.000+01:00

GREAT ENOCH

The 'Great Enoch,' was the name given to the sledge hammer that smashed the hated shearing frames. The sledge hammer was made by Enoch and James Taylor who ironically also made the shearing frames that were so effectively dismantled under the hammer's blows.

Such a weapon had its mythology which is remembered in the chants

'Enoch did make them, Enoch shall break them'

and

'Great Enoch still shall lead the van,
Stop him who dare! Stop him who can'

An original hammer head is held in the Matress Factory Museum in Pitts burgh PA, with the unfortunate curator's blurb:

"The vitrine in the centre of the room houses and iron sledgehammer head, specially the common type

referred to as an Enoch Hammer. The tool sits alone ina room dark except for the spotlight on the case Rendered impotent by its treatment as a relic of tiem other than our own, the case is guarded by a security camera on each wall and a proximity-triggered alarm on the case. By rendering this former implement

of rebellion safe in plxiglass box in a quiet and guarded museum, the hammer head itself can in insured

against future inspiration and use."

ITS TIME TO LIBERATE THE HAMMERHEAD!

Luddites - Anniversary meeting and publication

2011-05-28T12:23:00.000+01:00

Anniversary Meeting Luddite Uprisings: Technology Politics Then and Now

Venue: Feminist Library meeting room Westminster Bridge Road London SE1 7XW.
Nearest tube Lambeth North.
Date: June 8th, 7pm
Organised by: Luddites200 Organising Forum

In 1811-12 Artisan cloth workers in the Midlands and North of England rose up against factory owners who were imposing new machines and putting them out of work. Since the 1950s the Luddites have been painted as fools opposed to all technology and progress, but in fact the Luddites were very selective in their attacks, breaking only machines they thought were 'hurtful to Commonality'.

What can the Luddites teach us about the ongoing use of technology to replace workers’ jobs, as well as issues like GM food and nuclear power? Can we escape the myth that technology always brings progress? On the anniversary of the first action against a GM crop site in Britain, come and discuss the issues with speakers from the Luddites200 Organising Forum, Stop GM, a trade union activist, and the Stop Nuclear Network.

The Land : special Issue : The Luddites
The Land magazine have published a special issue on the 200th annivesary of the Luddite uprising of 1811-13. The issue contains numerous articles on a range of themes including:

Mr Lud's Song - Theo Simon traces the history of Luddism through the movement's songs
King Ludd in the countryside - The Luddite rebellion in the industrial north was matched 19 years later by an even more widespresd uprsing in the rural south.
Lessons from the Luddites - Kirkpatrick Sale reflects on the contemporary relevance of King Ludd's message
Technology and equity - Simon Fairlie argues that new agricultural technologies are inherently inequitable
Gandhi on technology - a selection of observations from the world's most successful Luddite

Available from Monkton Wyld Court, Charmouth, Bridport DT6 6DQ or see The Land is Ours website

Alexi Sayle : Teenage Maoist

2011-05-28T10:29:00.000+01:00

Alexei Sayle, Stalin Ate My Homework. London, Sceptre, 2010. 304pp.

“ I knew Sayle's family CP background – it's been mentioned by him many times. But Maoism? Blimey.”

As suggested by the comment quoted above, this enticingly-titled memoir of a childhood and adolescence in an atmosphere of left-wing political commitment contains a number of surprises. No doubt its author’s fame as an actor, comedian and author will attract readers not normally much concerned with what makes Reds tick. Conversely, those of us with an ingrained resistance to celebrity culture, not to mention suspicion of the Party, may be dubious about its value to radical history. It turns out to be well worth reading from several points of view.

Alexei Sayle describes in detail what having openly active Communist parents meant in practice, at the height of the Cold War, in working class Liverpool. The city itself gets a lot of attention, from the now vanished community environment where he grew up n the 1950s-60s through industrial decline to the urban devastation wrought by the planners. His father Joe was a railwayman, however, active as a shop steward in the NUR, with free rail travel for himself and his family, so that they could and did seek wider horizons. This meant not only regular attendance at the union’s AGM, but a series of holidays in Eastern Europe: Hungary in 1961 and 1963; Czechoslovakia 1959, 1960, 1962; Bulgaria 1966. Despite the family being on most of those occasions (with a few blips) treated as honoured guests in a privileged delegation, the young Alexei eventually became aware of a ‘nascent sense of unease about the Communist experiment’.

At the same time he remained at odds with the conventional values peddled by his schoolteachers and resisted pressures to conform, finding his own career path, as it turned out, in the direction of comedy early on. Politically, the chapter ‘I Was a Teenage Maoist’ is about his brief sojourn in the by-ways of Merseyside Marxist-Leninism, an episode of what he calls ‘split-brain thinking’, when he simultaneously ‘both totally believed it and totally didn’t believe it’. Tales of demonstrations, paper-selling, meetings and attempts to convert the masses will strike a chord with many who did not share his precise affiliation.

Along the way he touches on a number of points of 20th-century, from the Police Strike of 1919 and the 1926 General Strike via Hungary, Suez and the Cuban Missile Crisis to Czechoslovakia 1968. Brought up to take the party line as read with reference to the Spanish Civil War and the Russian Revolution, he was accustomed to hearing George Orwell denounced and found the reading of ‘Animal Farm’ something of a revelation. He nevertheless arrived at his own understanding of Marxist (class-struggle) historical theory, also as a result of reading, in this case Marx himself, which was bad news for his teachers.

Not all about Sayle – his concern for issues affecting ordinary people’s lives is evident – it’s not a-laugh-a-line, and punches are not pulled when, for example, repressive regimes or bureaucratic obtuseness are up for discussion. He doesn’t let himself off too lightly either. All the same, it is quite funny in a lot of places – and is a good read throughout.

What is libertarian history - Continued

2011-05-28T10:18:00.001+01:00

Liz Willis continues her examination of libertarian history - This article is published in Black Flag issue 233 for mid 2011 with the title 'History turned on its head by class'. Part 1 is available on this blog 'What is Libertarian History - part 1'

Revolutionary Theory

For committed marxists who came into the system, the real and earnest, especially economic type of history was preferred among the growing number of options and specialisations, and it was obligatory to fit political events into the appropriate categories.

Two Trotskyist students going into a history exam: one (not a Trot swot) calls to the other, ‘Was 1848 a bourgeois revolution?’ The other indicates affirmative: sorted. Or up to a point – they may not pass but at least they can write something, more than likely involving the conclusion that what the revolutionaries needed was correct leadership.

The Communist Manifesto (K Marx and F Engels, 1848) begins with the assertion that ‘the history of all hitherto-existing society has been the history of class struggle.’ This proposition was of course more
complicated and nuanced than might at first appear, and was elaborated at considerable length in the foundation texts of marxism into a system purporting not only to explain the past but to understand the present and predict the future. So marxist historians and students knew where they were and had a structure to apply as universally as possible: pre- history, feudalism, rise of the bourgeoisie, industrial capitalism; forward to the proletarian revolution, socialism, and the withering away of the state.

You don’t have to buy into the whole marxist package to find elements of this analysis useful, perhaps essential tools of the trade in many historical contexts, but it begs questions that may present themselves to libertarians particularly and suggest alternative or supplementary approaches. What about authority relations generally: people against the state, dissent from dominant ideology, issues of gender, race... ? Some of the subtler and less rigid proponents of marxism could accommodate such elements, even if it took a while for them to get around to doing so, and much ingenuity was devoted to the shoe-horning of examples from multifarious epochs and locations into the overarching framework. The insistence on that framework was the problem, as analysed by, for one, Paul Cardan (a.k.a. Cornelius Castoriadis). Apart from taking issue with the prediction of successive crises leading inevitably to the final collapse of capitalism, he sought in a text published by Solidarity in 1971 as ‘History and Revolution: a revolutionary critique of historical materialism’ to restore the primacy of human agency, the power of collective action to shape events instead of being stymied in advance by ‘objective’ economic conditions, immutable laws and pre-determined stages of development.

1960s and after

In the high cold-war era any mention of capitalism, class struggle or even classes, especially in terms like ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘proletariat‘ was often enough to brand someone as an unsound, subversive lefty, acting as a red rag to respectable academics entrenched in university establishments. Such suspect concepts were discouraged by the ranks of ‘bourgeois empiricists’ who would examine closely, for example, the opposing sides in the ‘English’ Civil War or the factions in the French Revolution and discover so much disparity within them that it seemed they were not really sides or factions at all – not only refusing to see the wood for the trees but asserting that so many differences between individual trees meant there couldn’t possibly have been any wood.

Meanwhile other things were happening. E H Carr famously argued in What is History? (1961) that historians’ pretensions to absolute objectivity, to be simply researching and conveying ‘the facts’, were illusory, and that there was always an element of bias in selection and presentation. The solution was not to give up trying to be objective but to recognise the influences working in the other direction. This book, written up from Carr’s Trevelyan Lectures, became the classic introductory text to the theoretical side of their subject for a generation or two of history students, at least.

Another change was that the ‘Whig interpretation’ of history – roughly, the view of steady progress and successful reform, and judgments of significance based on whether and to what extent events contributed to this – was challenged on various fronts, not only because academic fashions change but because developments such as the women’s movement and other liberation struggles meant an increasing number of people were realising how much had been written out of history as they had been taught it. For many, of course, the realisation was far from new, but from the 1970s there was a fresh dynamism in the expansion of ‘alternative’ and subversive histories, together with an awareness of formerly neglected episodes such as mutinies, anti-colonial struggles and anti-war activism. Bringing out the relevance of these to contemporary society was an important part of the process.

To take a few prominent examples, Sheila Rowbotham uncovered the hidden history of women, with special reference to resistance and revolution; Raphael Samuel’s History Workshop celebrated the labour movement; E P Thompson influentially described ‘The Making of the English Working Class’. Perhaps rather little of this was of a self-proclaimed libertarian persuasion but the overall tendency was in the direction of wider participation and diversity in theory and practice. A great deal of it eventually became integrated or co-opted into academic respectability, with more or less resistance from historians of the old school (sometimes in more sense than one), but that establishment too was changing. The scope of studies could be expanded into international comparisons or conversely adopt a regional, local, or even family and personal focus, while approved research topics and papers could range from the inter-disciplinary to ever more specific specialisation. By the early 21st century a group of British historians were considering ‘What Is History Now?’ under the chapter headings: social; political; religious; cultural; gender; intellectual; and imperial.5

Then we have on the one hand the increasingly esoteric reaches of post-modernism, leaving no metaphor not unpacked and no concept undeconstructed (Quote from a conference: ‘It doesn’t matter whether it really happened’), and on the other the popularity of the sillier type of television history restoring royalty to centre stage and endlessly mentioning the war, but let’s not go there just now.

Towards a Conclusion

‘Celebrate our history, avoid repeating our mistakes’, the slogan of the Radical History Network of North-East London (RaHN)6 suggests two important elements of a libertarian history project. A third might be the effort to understand what our history has been up against, in particular the behaviour of those in power, ‘What’s bin did and what’s bin hid’ by the state to pre-empt or counter any revolutionary threat, or the routine disregard of people’s lives and liberties in the alleged ‘national interest’. This thread is recommended for those with a taste for detective work; the National Archives open new files all the time, and Freedom of Information requests can sometimes dig out more. The results can include useful exposés and demonstration of fallacies and distortion in official versions of events, and may sometimes show the effectiveness of protest and persistence of dissent, as well as many bureaucratic absurdities.

The ‘celebration’ endeavour – of past struggles, movements, groups, lives, ideas – can be pursued in a variety of contexts according to choice, interest and access to resources. The point is not to claim that ‘our history’ was all brilliant; accentuating the positive is fair enough, but not to the exclusion of the negative, even if the latter often seems to have received more than its fair share of attention already. If past mistakes and flaws are denied, they can hardly be avoided in future. Nor is all struggle, dissent or revolt equally relevant. Just as looking at ‘A Century of Women’ (Rowbotham, 1999) can cram an uncomfortable assortment between the same covers, so the idea of ‘rebel’ can concoct a marvellous hodge-podge.7

Without attempting to draw up a table of tick-boxes to assess the libertarian credentials of historians and their work , the foregoing bits and pieces may suggest some criteria. Easier, perhaps, to say what libertarian history is not: productions featuring the glorification of militarism, adulation of heads of state and national heroes, denunciation of popular movements or denial of their existence and so on, not hard to spot. Libertarians will probably tend to let other pens dwell on the fads and foibles of the ruling class, or on its guilt and misery for that matter, and are not likely either to indulge in the game of making up counter-factual, what-if tales, wishful thinking for reactionaries.

On the positive side, those who are aware of authority relations in all sorts of contexts (in all hitherto-existing society?) and can perceive the plight of history’s underdogs will have insights to offer; they will be well placed to interpret and comment on generally neglected subjects and sources. They may be professionals or not but will not be holed up in ivory towers, preferring to make their work accessible and to interact with others, not least those involved in current struggles, and not forgetting the need to document those struggles too.

Liz Willis, August 2010

Notes [Notes 1-4 are in part 1]

5. David Cannadine, ed. What Is History Now? Palgrave, 2002.

6. http://radicalhistorynetwork.blogspot.com

7. David Horsfall, The English Rebel: One Thousand Years of Trouble-making from the Normans to the Nineties. Viking 2009/ Penguin 2010.

WikiLeaks - from World War 1

2011-01-16T15:21:00.002Z

The recent and continuing publication of US secret diplomatic cables by the Guardian newspaper clearly demonstrates the arrogance of power, the manipulations and machinations, and the plain perfidy of American imperialism towards democratic ideals and its continuing quest to police the world. What is perhaps of greater interest for us who live in the UK is the utter obsequiousness of Britain's ruling eltite in the face of American power. To have a few crumbs from the top table they have to grovel and prostrate themselves before their American masters.

However to return to the title of our story on 12 December 1917 the Guardian newspaper began the publication of secret diplomatic correspondence in which Britain and its allies were to carve up the world after the end of World War 1 in order to bolster and expand their respective colonial empires.

The new Bolshevik Government in Russia - whose Commissar for Foriegn Affairs was Leon Trostky - first published the documents in the Izvestiya in November 1917. The historian E H Carr argues that the Bolsheviks had a definite purpose in mind with their publication:
"...the publication of the treaties...was in one respect an appeal to American opinion and to radical opinion in allied countries over the heads of allied governments whose sinister bargains with one another and the dethroned Tsarist regime were thus revealed to the world." (1)

Carr also argues that their publication influenced President Wilson of the USA and his 14 points that were put before the participants who met to draft treaties for the future of peace at Versailles in 1919.

In Britain the publication of the secret treaties had a major effect on radical opinion and in particular that of the Union of Democractic Control. In 1918 the UDC published a book containing all the treaties and correspondence (The Secret Treaties and Understandings) *. Trotsky points out that the machinations of secret diplomacy operate against the people of the world, his words are still poignant today:
"Secret diplomacy is a necessary weapon in the hands of the propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to make the latter obey its interests. Imperialism, with its world-wide plans of annexation, and its rapacious alliances and arrangements, has developed to the highest extent the system of secret diplomacy. The struggle against imperialism, which has ruined and drained of their blood the poeples of Europe, means at the same time the struggle against capitalist diplomacy, which has good reason to fear the light of day" (2)

*The UDC was setup in 1914 by disaffected liberals and Ramsay MacDonald of the Labour Party, all of whom opposed war with Germany with the UDC arguing for a negotiated peace and an end to secret diplomacy. The UDC was supported by Quakers and the Independent Labour Party and by 1916 many trade unions were affiliated. Individuals such as J A Hobson and Bertrand Russell were also members.
(1) E. H. Carr, The Boshevik Revolution 1917-23, Volume 3 page 24, Penguin 1966
(2) From the opening page of the 'The Secret Treaties and Understandings - UDC, 1981; see above link

THEY CAN'T EXTINGUISH THE FIRE - Leaflet on recent events from PastTense

2010-12-11T09:31:00.002Z

The outbreaks of rebellion on November 10th/24th, and the (right royal) fun on December 9th gave us all a boost – there’s nothing like rioting to warm up a chilly winter. Hopefully the demolition of Millbank, the tugs of war with the police and the attacks on government buildings and random royals, as well as the wildfire of college occupations around the country are just the opening round, not only for the students, but for the rest of us facing grim years of cuts, losing our jobs, homes or services… Can we look forward to defiance of the austerity program spreading to public sector workers, council tenants, and beyond?

So far many local or not so local anti-cuts campaigns have sprung up to try to work together to resist. The writers of this leaflet have been involved in anti-cuts campaigns before. For years, in fact three decades, each Spring seemed to bring new rounds of threats to this service or that community centre in our localities.
Whatever we think of the state, or of local councils, many of these services were vital for people with little else going for them – the elderly, the utterly skint, kids with no places to go, the disabled. Each March small groups would get together to fight for their centre or advice line or whatever to stay open, and each time some would be saved and some lost. Usually the loudest or most together (or those that could mobilise well, bring young stroppy kids out on the street etc.) would survive; often less organised but no less vital programs would lose their funds. (We think in the end councils used this process to identify which services were likely to fight back and which weren’t, never intending to make all the cuts in the first place.)

The campaigns to resist cuts could be lively and fun, or dull and predictable: often genuine community anger created rowdy and adventurous resistance, while local left groups and union branches made heavy weather of things with turgid meetings and empty threats. But over the years not only did the annual to and fro become more depressing and harder to bring to life each year, but local services got leaner and leaner, housing and homeless services, advice centres, youth groups, disability schemes got thinner and harder to access. There ain’t that much fat left to be trimmed, even before the ‘Coalition’ got going.

When people talk about fighting the cuts, it sometimes seems like it's just a new political issue. But it isn’t. It’s much more essential than that. Issues are things like opposing nuclear power or being against animal testing. But cuts are not the same thing. They cannot be resisted in the same way. The reason that cuts are being made all across health, housing, education, and so on is to maintain the profits that can no longer be made from a burst economic housing bubble and the bonkers levels of individual debt (credit cards, loans, mortgages, etc). Now the profits to be made are going to come from squeezing the living standards of a large section of the population. The cuts are not being made because the economic system HASN’T worked, they are being made because that’s exactly how the economic system DOES work. It never stops trying to screw us for more and more of what we have had to fight to maintain over the centuries. The Tories make the cuts with relish but if Labour had been elected to power they would be making just the same level of cuts to maintain the same level of profits for the same rich people. Maybe they would have used slightly different words, dressed things up differently, but basically we’d be facing the same shitstorm. After all the credibility they lost going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan and all the other murderous lies, the Labour hierarchy must be really made up to be out of power: they can pose like they wouldn’t cut anything, hoping to wriggle back to some level of support again.

There are differing trains of thought that link the cuts to ‘The Crisis’, or ‘The Deficit’ or ‘The Tories’, but for many there is a much more simple truth – it’s just called ‘Life as Normal’. The rich have been getting successfully richer in this country and the poor have been getting poorer – or living on credit. If the cuts are setting out to re-float a busted economy of over-inflated debt and speculation by taking more and more from the poorer section of the population, well, it’s just more of the same for most people. Poverty, crap jobs, insecurity, health problems – that’s how we’ve been living anyway. But do you still feel like politicians will sort it out for you? Do you feel like if you keep your head down and work hard, you’ll be o.k? Do you feel scared? Have you had enough of that shit yet?

Mass unemployment is coming (AGAIN – for those of us that remember the 80s!) and with it the ‘disciplining’ of those unable or unwilling to work for poor wages or for free. The promise of a good job and good life after University is an illusion. College leavers and graduates with join the dole queues. This is partly why they’re also attempting to shut people out from going to college – why pay for expensive degrees and raise expectations for those people the system needs to be fighting each other for crap jobs?

The cuts will bite – hard, and hurt many of us and those around us – if we let them. Truth is, the cuts are as much an opportunity as a crisis: a chance to push back, but also a chance to break out of the isolation and fragmentation that has settled over us in the last 30 years. Getting together to halt their cuts can be a step towards remaking the way we live in our OWN interests, We’re surrounded by people who are angry and sad about what’s going on, but many of us keep quiet most of the time. Talking to people, finding out how people feel, could lead to discussing what we might want to do about it…

In some ways the moment we are at now reminds us of the anti-poll tax movement in early 1990. After successfully bashing one group after another for ten years the then tory government over-reached itself, hitting millions of people at once with a new tax that threatened to make most of us much poorer. But a huge movement grew up, with twenty million people refusing to pay at one point, community groups pledged to support each other, some strikes by workers against collecting the tax, and a tsunami of protests turning into riots at Town Halls across the country built up to two big riots in London. In the end the government abolished the poll tax... It IS possible to make them back off if we get together and push hard enough.

One lesson of the anti-poll tax movement though is to break out of controls by official bodies and left groups. Labour and trade union structures actively tried to hold back the fight against the poll tax; trotskyist groups tried to control it, using it for their own ends, and sabotaging actions and groups that didn't fit their idea or weren't under their thumb. They are already attempting the same with anti-cuts campaigns. Any cuts fight that is going to win needs to be controlled from below by communities, workers, the people under threat; if we hand it to trade union leaders or lefty leaders they will either take the sting out of the movement or use it to push their own power and agenda. They also turn fun and lively resistance into dull meetings and boring slogans, hamstringing people's independent thinking and acting. We have to stay collective and open, always going beyond the polite and useless limits set by political parties and unions. Pointless demands like calling for the TUC to call a General Strike, or even for LibDem ministers to oppose the cuts, are a waste of time.

Greece, France, now here: resistance to the interests of capital and the rich is spreading, getting angrier and looks like making a difference.
Let's go for it! Strike...occupy...block their economy... let's take back our lives...

THE CUTTING EDGE?

Below are some links to some texts we thought might be useful, related to just some of the areas of our lives the upcoming onslaught is targetting. Past Tense's focus had traditionally been linking the struggles of the past with our own, so these are mostly historical in general, some are personal accounts, some from our own times, but we hope people will find them useful, or inspiring... Obviously these are just what we could unearth at reasonably short notice, and because we're London-based, there's a distinct London bias. this is only a start; possibly we could build up a real resource of material discussing resistance to cuts both
historically and in the future...? Any further suggestions for texts to link to are very welcome.
These and hopefully others soon are up/linked as www.past-tense.org.uk

LOVE ON THE DOLE

It looks like we're facing the most comprehensive shake-up of benefits for decades. Read about some previous collective resistance to attacks on the unwaged...

1920s-30: Some articles on the The National Unemployed Workers Movement are being worked on. patience...
1980s: A history of Islington Action group of the unwaged: more on the claimants movement in the 80s/1990s:
http://radicalhistorynetwork.blogspot.com/2009/10/claimants-and-unemployed-issues-and.html
Resistance to the imposition of the Job Seekers Allowance:
http://libcom.org/history/3-strikes-funeral-comments-anti-jsa-struggle
Dole Autonomy versus the Re-imposition of Work: Analysis of the Current Tendency to Workfare in the UK (1998-9):
http://libcom.org/library/dole-autonomy-aufheben
MY HEAD IS ONLY MY HOUSE UNTIL IT RAINS (sorry captain!)

The capping of Housing Benefit, threats to limit council tenancies or to kick people out if they get a job... The end of social housing as any kind of meaningful option? A return to mass homelessness sixteenth century style? Time for rent strikes!

Some stuff on rent strikes:

Leeds 1914: http://freespace.virgin.net/labwise.history6/rentrick.htm
Leeds 1934: http://freespace.virgin.net/labwise.history6/1934.html
Glasgow 1915: http://www.radicalglasgow.me.uk/strugglepedia/index.php?title=The_Rent_Strike.
or http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/subjects/rentstrikes.html
Barcelona, 1931: http://libcom.org/history/articles/barcelona-mass-rent-strike-1931
East End 1938: A PDF of Sarah Glynn's take on East End rent strikes of the late '30s: http://www.sarahglynn.net/The%20Battle%20for%20Housing.html
http://www.sarahglynn.net%20/has a lot more interesting stuff too...
Housing Finance Act, 1950s: http://www.alphabetthreat.co.uk/pasttense/pdf/HousingFinanceAct.pdf

St Pancras Rent Strike, 1960: http://www.alphabetthreat.co.uk/pasttense/st%20pancras.html

Material on squatting is very numerous. As a start:
http://www.squatter.org.uk/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=18%20
has chapters from "Squatting: the Real Story', a 1979 history of squatting in the UK (some folk have just started working on a new updated history...watch this space...)

• AS LONG AS YOU'VE GOT YOUR ELF

The lie on the airwaves is that the NHS is safe from the knife... But jobs are going, there are huge re-organisations in responsibility for health at a local level, health centres are being closed... In the 1970s, 80s and 90s, successive recessions and health 'reforms' collided in the closure of various hospitals - health workers and users fought back by occupying them/attempting to keep them running. Some experiences:

The South London Women's Hospital Occupation (which includes discussion of the work-in at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and others): http://www.alphabetthreat.co.uk/pasttense/womens%20hospital.html

University College Hospital occupations early 1990S:

• EDUCATING RI(O)TA

Too big a subject, really. While rioting students are always a welcome winter sight, the occupations of university and college buildings is spreading around the country. The more the merrier! But why should college occupations by restricted to students? Occupied colleges could help build a stronger movement against cuts generally if they become a base for non-students, and new forms of education for all might even arise, not subject to the control of academia...

Occupations of colleges: 1968-9 were big years, even in England. The Hornsey Art College Occupation 1968: http://www.alphabetthreat.co.uk/pasttense/hornsey.html
Some random gossip from the LSE/ULU occupations of '69:
http://www.alphabetthreat.co.uk/pasttense/69occupations.html

One lovely sign is the increasing numbers of sixth formers joining the student protests, and starting to occupy in schools too. Reminds us of 2003 when thousands stormed out of schools to riot against the start of the Iraq war... If teachers lock the gates, why not set their cars on fire?
libcom.org/history/march-2003-schoolkids-against-iraqi-war

While the student rebellion so far is brilliant, it also has to be said that there seems to be a lack of questioning of education and academia... A wider critique of education and its role in keeping us socialised and propping up capitalism. Some general stuff on school, resistance and that...
libcom.org/library/education-stupefication-commodification

The old Situationist classic 'On the Poverty of Student Life' is always a laugh too: http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/4

• THE LOCK STOCK AND BARREL OF IT IS...Council cuts

Local council services are probably going to be the hardest hit; in housing, stopping non-essential repairs, closing housing offices, closing the already half shut gates; slashing services for the vulnerable,knackering schools and nursery provision; libraries are also in the firing line.
For years local services have been gradually whittled away. (We're scanning and preparing some texts on library occupations, anti-closure campaigns etc...)

Ratecapping: In the 1980s some local councils controlled by the leftwing of the Labour party (slightly to the left of today's Labour) tried to oppose Tory central government's imposing of drastic budget cuts by refusing to co-operate... But in the end they all pretty much bottled it, or got personally hammered and made liable. the process of central government trying to restrict council spending by limiting the amount they could raise in 'rates' (the council tax of the time for you young 'uns) was know as rate-capping. A factual account can be found at http://wapedia.mobi/en/Rate-capping_rebellion&

The Rate-capping saga does provide a salutary warning: attempts to instigate 'Socialism in one Borough' inevitably fail, or the brave lefty leaders get cold feet, or end up sacking workers and making cuts in the end ('with a heavy heart'). During the rate-capping struggles not only did many people invest much support and hope in their elected representatives; disillusion was bound to follow. Now it is very unlikely that any councillors controlling local authorities today, however left sounding, will risk the martyrdom that Lambeth councillors brought on themselves, and councillors room to manouevre on budgets and raising money is even
more tightly controlled. But similar attempts to deflect local rebellion by councils 'allying' themselves with cuts rebels should be answered with the proper politeness: occupy, strike and lets run the area ourselves. Critical detailed texts on the rate-capping struggle would be welcome if anyone has any... as we think similar developments may arise...

Egg chips and strikes, a personal account of resisting council cuts in the late 1980s: http://www.alphabetthreat.co.uk/pasttense/lambeth%20cuts.html

• AND FINALLY

Austerity measures generally are set to cause redundancies in both the public and private sectors. A good account of the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent, the last real sustained successful period of workers' struggles, has some interesting history and useful perspective on how things have changed: http://www.alphabetthreat.co.uk/pasttense/winter.html
..........

We haven't even mentioned legal aid cuts... which will hamstring anyone trying to challenge many of the proposed cuts legally eg defend themselves against eviction. Law centres, where you can get a semblance of legal advice and representation, are basically going to go to the wall. We're working on chasing useful texts on this and other matters, watch this space or email us to suggest writings that should go up here...

...BUT DON'T GET BURNED

People are obviously divided about the use of 'violence' so far, and the press, the politicians and other lame 'oppositional' voices like the NUS leaders are jumping on this division to try and split any anti-cuts movement right from the start. While aggro is inevitable - people are angry, and the cops aren't gonna let us do what we want without rough stuff - it's important that any movement is built on OUR terms: we don't let the enemy tell us how to run things. Sometimes violence works, sometimes it's not a useful tactic, but dividing along 'violent vs non-violent' lines is playing into their hands. There's many ways to fight back, not everyone wants/is able to push and shove; sometimes occupying is more productive than smashing up a cop van, especially a suspiciously old van, left "abandoned" yards from a police line, handily close to lots of cameras. No-one should be pushed into doing things they can't handle. On the flip side, people not into 'violence' shouldn't be doing the police's job, trying to stop people or grassing them up. We have to accept there are a diversity of tactics and do our own thing. Most important is to WIN, to have fun getting together and spread the fight.

Some thoughts we have had: many people, especially on November 24th and December 9th, were already doing some of these. Many others weren’t. We’re not here to be boring old fuckers telling people how to do things; but we’ve been in riots, many, for 25 years, we’ve watched out mates go down, had our heads cracked sometimes, and won a few. There were young folks out on the 24th who went properly disguised, who have maybe faced the cops before; others will now learn as the “justice system’ identifies and hammers the people it can lift from these events.

COVER UP: Unless you want to go to prison then it’s a good idea to MASK UP. By this we mean covering your whole face apart from your eyes, not just your chin and mouth. And stay masked up when arriving/leaving actions, because cops and journalists never stop taking pictures, and can identify you from clothes etc. Even if you aren’t going to get up to anything the more folk that mask up the better. People photographed or filmed bashing the fuck out of the cop van on the 24th without covering their faces, even posing for the press, are asking to be picked up afterwards and sent down. The groups who have been targetting the Scientologist Church for a couple of years always wear fun animal masks... We could all wear Cameron masks or whatever. Maybe we could club together some cash for a job lot.

SAY CHEESE? It’s bad enough that the police film our every move, and that there are thousands of CCTV cameras everywhere doing the same. The police FIT team are there for every demo, recording who does what and pointing out people wanted for previous ‘trouble’. We may not be able to prevent this (at recent ukuncut actions the FIT have been going plainclothes, so beware). But we should not just be avoiding making ourselves a spectacle for press cameras, posing with faces uncovered; we need to be getting rid of them. Press pictures and film are used to send people to prison. In the old days we used to drive journalists out of demos, smash their cameras or destroy film. These scum who side with police and the state are all fair targets… HAPPY SLAPPING: Nowadays we’re also obsessed with taking photos or film ourselves, sticking it up on facebook and youtube etc; if it shows people doing stuff they could be arrested for then IT’S DANGEROUS. The cops trawl these sites gathering info. It could be you or your mates going down next time. Let's just use phones for keeping in touch and co-ordinating movement.

TURN THE KETTLE OFF: Too many times in the last few years large groups of demonstrators have ended up being kettled, surrounded by police and penned in one area for hours. Apart from being very boring (and cold on the 24th!), it allows the police to control our movements, keep us from spreading the action, and nick who they want. Police intelligence about Millbank was limited but they won't make that mistake again. At Millbank they weren't ready for people; in Whitehall they were. It was always obvious they were going to box people in. So how do we avoid it?

STICKING TOGETHER AND KEEPING MOVING: People could try going in smaller groups, arranging meet ups with other groups to form crowds quickly, head for other targets... On the 24th everyone was focussed on reaching the LibDem HQ, and this had been widely announced for two weeks. In future smaller groups could target other likely buildings, and keep it quiet. Or spread word about some places then hit others. Moving around and not staying in one place makes it harder to kettle you. But keep an eye on police movements too, usually you can see when they are preparing to kettle, and that's the time to break out and head somewhere else. It IS possible to break out of kettles if you are determined and form a wedge (though this can be a bit rough on the people at the sharp end), there are plenty of tactical ideas circling on the web. But if we're in a small group/on our own outside, rather than hanging around at the various police roadblock, we could filter round to one point and mass up to head off somewhere else.

ARRESTS, INJURIES ETC: If you think you're up for an eventful day, it's best to go with a small group you trust. Keep an eye out for each other, count up after police charges and arrange meeting points if you get split up. have a list of names safe somewhere with a mate who's not there who can ring a solicitor in case of arrest. Act as a thinking group: everyone should know who is prepared for aggro or not. And someone with you having a basic knowledge of first aid is useful. Police are only likely to get heavier.

If someone is getting nicked, if you can and are up for it, try and grab them back off the police. A determined group can save someone from being lifted, especially if its only one or two cops. If someone is rescued they should move off somewhere else, swap clothes with mates. It's also useful to move if you're being vocal, or very active and the plod are obviously on your case.

ZIP IT UP: If people do get nicked, their mates should alert legal observers or find out where the cops have taken them and get them a decent solicitor. Legal obervers should have been giving out bustcards with a good brief's number. If you're nicked: in a situation where actions are still going on, the police are probably not going to interview you, but don't rely on that. You're only obliged to give a name and date of birth (though not giving an address may mean they hold you longer); it's best not to make any statements, if they do ask you questions "No Comment" is the best reply. It is important that defendants organise a defence campaign together, give your defence a political focus. Don't get lost in the legal system as an isolated defendant. The Legal Defence & Monitoring Group can help with advice and legal help; www.ldmg.org.uk/ you can also download their bustcard and the excellent 'No Comment' from their website, which has good advice on what (not) to say when nicked: www.ldmg.org.uk/files/No_Comment_3rd_Edition.pdf

SUPPORT PRISONERS: People who get sentenced for actions like these need support while in prison: letters, books, newspapers, pickets of prisons etc. Prison works by isolating people, so let's break that down. During the anti-poll tax movement we set up support groups to give practical help and spread info about those jailed for the riots/refusing to pay.

GOING EQUIPPED: If we're gonna be occupying government or other buildings, some items concealed about your person may be useful: junior hacksaws for cutting locks and chains, a D-lock to close doors in our interests, powerful catapults to knock out cameras and windows, paintbombs to cover police visors and journo cameras... be prepared to ditch stuff if you think you'll be searched by the plod.

DRESS CODE: Bland, darkish clothes that make it harder to pick you out and nick you later are good; fairly tight fitting so that it's harder for cops to grab your clothes in a scuffle. Keep it lively and keep it mobile! - There's no point hanging around in a pointless confrontation if we're outnumbered. If they block one way we can find another. 12-volt battery sound systems have been used to keep the atmosphere fun and help move people in an organised way. We need more of them! And more drum bands and freestyle Mcs on megaphones:

A RIOT IS A FESTIVAL!

madame guillotine, past tense, december 2010

For more reports on the students' protests at InfoShop

SMOKEY CRUSADE by R M Fox

2010-12-11T08:37:00.002Z

Chapter 4

REVOLUTIONARY ORATORS

Link to Chapter3

IN the days before the War - the romantic period of revolutionary oratory - Socialist speakers wore soft felt hats and red ties. Anderson conformed to this custom. He had, too, a well-shaped head, a good broad forehead crowned with a mass of curly hair and a slight cast in one of his eyes which gave them a fine rolling frenzy on the platform. He had energy, audacity and tirelessness in attack. He would leap on to the platform and challenge all corners. And he was ready to leap on to his opponent's platform, too. Whether he loved Socialism or his own voice best perhaps he himself could not have told us, but if established society could have fallen before oratory, I am sure Anderson would have brought it down. He could talk all day - in fact, he did spend most of his Sundays talking - and remain fresh, energetic and interesting. On Sunday morning he held his meeting at West Green Corner. In the afternoon, snatching a scrappy meal, he went on to Finsbury Park. Here he occupied a disused bandstand around which the people flocked to listen. After buying cakes and tea at the Park restaurant, he took the tram back to West Green Corner and spellbound an audience until midnight, or even later, when a small dazed group would stumble away convinced that they had assisted in striking thundering blows at the edifice of Capitalism. During his oratory he refreshed himself with long drinks from a lemonade bottle, its gassy sharpness making him hoarse or thinning his voice to a husky whisper, but he would talk on until his throat eased again.
     I could not resist these avalanches of oratory, especially as Anderson gave expression to all those feelings of resentment and bitterness which I could not put into words. My only regret was that I had to be up so
early in the morning that I could not stay to the end of those long-distance speeches, except when on some specially interesting occasion I abandoned all thought of the morrow. I was often up till one, and it seemed that I had hardly got my head on the pillow before the alarm clock sounded the beginning of another weary day. It was hard, too, having to spend the long black week waiting for Sunday, to be caught up and carried away in these denunciations and appeals.
     I was delighted when it was announced that the Socialist group would hold meetings on Thursday nights at St. Ann's Corner, in the heart of a drab slum area. The platform was pitched underneath a street lamp in an open space, where several roads joined, just opposite a public-house with stuccoed and imitation marble front. The lights behind the public-house windows winked dolefully as Anderson poured out his evangel of the new social order.
     St. Ann's was a difficult place to speak. One enthusiast got into serious trouble with his audience through referring to the number of houses in the area condemned by the Medical Officer of Health.
     "Wot sort ov a place does' e live in, comin' dahn 'ere talkin' abaht slums!" growled a hearer, voicing the general feeling.
     Anderson was a popular speaker, with personality, fervour, humour and a touch of real eloquence. It was no trouble to him to break this rough ground. The only opposition he got was from a bunch of local tradesmen, with shops around the meeting place, who resented the coming of an agitator to their peaceful district. Thursday was their half-holiday, so they were free to voice their hostility. In the saloon bar of the public-house they brooded over the affront to their dignity, and at ten o'clock, when the publichouse closed, they sallied out to the meeting opposite. A big bull-like butcher was their leader, and close behind came a dried-up little chemist, a long thin baker - who was a district councillor - an illiterate fishmonger - who was a candidate for municipal honours - and several others who were attached to that side.
     Pushing through the meeting they began to sing God Save the King, and at the same time tried to knock off the hats of members of the audience who did not uncover. The Socialists responded by singing The Red Flag. The tradesmen, who were very few, were routed after a few minutes' swaying, jostling and struggling. But they were not beaten. Next week they hired a brass band to play under the lamp and so drown Anderson's voice. This might have succeeded with any ordinary man, but Anderson merely set his platform up on the outskirts of the crowd and shouted above the music. The din and confusion was terrific. The crowds were bigger than ever. Anderson declared that a free-speech fight was on. Presently the police began keeping the audience on the move, and they circled about the speaker like an agitated swarm of bees. Waving his arm at the baker's shop opposite,. Anderson hurled challenges at "the dough-dumper across the way." The police, the band and the excitement increased the turmoil, in the midst of which Anderson triumphed.
     The shopkeepers could not continue to hire the band each week - it was too expensive. So the following Thursday they sent a man with a cornet to walk round the meeting playing his tunes. Huge crowds turned out and this was completely ineffective - how could it be otherwise with a man who could talk above a band? The third week a barrel-organ was pressed into service. But the effect of this was spoilt for the shopkeepers by one of them running out and telling the organ man to stop just as he was grinding out the Marseillaise.
     "Don't play that!" shouted the indignant shopkeeper. "It's one of their songs."
     The red flag waved triumphantly in the breeze and the shopkeepers were defeated. I was tremendously thrilled by these happenings and felt that the citadel of iniquity was crumbling. I never missed a Thursday night meeting. In rain and snow and wind I listened to Anderson's voice crying woe and desolation. I heard him speak in thick fog, when, in spite of the lamp, his figure was just a dim shape on the platform, an unquiet voice that would not be still.
     Inevitably I joined this group. They met weekly in a room behind the Sunbeam coffee tavern, and, as I walked through the stuffy little shop, past the tired men who sat in the pew-like wooden seats, a stale odour of kippers and cabbage filled the air. But I was oblivious to this as I entered the room and looked round at my fellow crusaders. Some were stolid young men lounging on the wooden forms smoking cigarettes. A few had eager, thoughtful faces and looked as if they had brooded long over the misery and injustice of the world. My eyes rested on Anderson, who sat at a table, with two or three men, facing the others. The white profile of his face - straight nose, firm chin, high forehead - would have marked him out in any gathering. He was plainly the leader. I noticed that he was poorly dressed though his clothes were neat. His light-brown overcoat was stained and his felt hat, tilted on the back of his head, was old and shapeless. Yet he sat nonchalantly, his legs crossed, apparently quite satisfied to be serving the Cause. I signed a Declaration of Principles and, upon being admitted, received a red membership card. Then the secretary produced some little stamps of a lovely delicate pink, on each of which was printed in black letters, The Socialist Party. Each stamp, I was informed, was a receipt for a week's subscription, but to me they were passports to a new world.
     The group I had joined was the smallest and, theoretically, the most extreme of the various Labour organizations. It attacked all the others with fervour, maintaining that its few hundred members were the only light in the dark world. During its few years of existence, it had already suffered from bitter internal feuds. The most serious of these had been when Mr. Con Lehane a tall handsome Irishman, who had been General Secretary of the party, left, taking a good number of his supporters with him. The night I joined a letter was read from one of the dissentients describing his opponents as "the embodiment of political filth," but beyond being a little puzzled at signs of division where I expected a unity like the head of a spear or a single flame, I was not disturbed. There was nothing I found here that I could not, with a little adjustment, fit comfortably into my dream world.
     Soon I was busy in my spare time selling Socialist papers, carrying the platform, listening to talk which made me feel that we were on the verge of great events. I was a good listener, but had very little to say, and so I had to suffer from bores who were always on the look-out for prey. I have painful memories of one man, with bushy eyebrows and an intent look, who would walk home with me and halt under the big lighted clock at the Tottenham Gas Offices while he expounded some point in economics.
     "This is what I want to. do," he would say, fixing me with a pitiless eye, when I was dropping with fatigue. "Take this pipe" - he pulled it from his mouth and I surveyed the hateful object with disgust - " Then this pouch." I looked with similar loathing at that. "And then that lamppost" - he pointed with the stem of his pipe at the post in question. "Now what I want to do is to explain to the ordinary man the relation between the amount of labour power in these three objects."
     I could not see how the ordinary man would be benefited even if this were explained. But I kept very quiet, in the hope that by so doing I would dodge further voluminous explanations. It was a vain hope. I was lucky if I could shake him off in half an hour. I saw the hands creeping over the face of the lighted clock while I stood in a state of coma. If I attempted to escape he would clutch my coat and begin again. In time, however, I developed a sense which warned me of his approach, and I crossed over to the other side of the road before he could see me.
     Anderson was always interesting. He was a man who lived for his ideas and cared little for anything else. Poverty and unemployment were familiar to him. He and his family had to move hurriedly on many occasions when the landlord pressed for rent. Even in these circumstances he did not forget his beliefs. Once, before he left, he tacked a printed slogan on the wall of the empty room, proclaiming in thick black type "Rent is Robbery and Profit is Plunder." What the landlord said when he found it is not recorded.
     He never allowed his domestic difficulties to interfere with his political life. I have known him debate with the local M.P. one night, making a great hall resound with his eloquence; carry out a surreptitious moving operation the next; and put in his nomination for the local council election on the third day. Though he ran many times and had large enthusiastic meetings, he was never elected. His propaganda did not appeal to ratepayers. For the ordinary worker, his attractive personality was counteracted by something too nebulous in his talk of a Social Revolution. He had nothing of an immediate practical character to offer, and would have scorned to offer it if he had.
     It was just this lack of contact with reality which made an irresistible appeal to me. I had no use for the kind of realities I knew. I sat at the feet of the leaders. I attended economic and history classes run by Jack Fitzgerald - a studious and solemn little bricklayer who taught me to understand the mysteries of Karl Marx. I listened to Hans Neumann - an excitable German who had translated the writings of Karl Kautsky. I progressed in my knowledge of Socialist theory, but, as time went on, I became increasingly conscious of the lack of something. Life was bigger than an economic class or even the gorgeous dream of a future Socialist Order in which the rosiest apples would grow on every tree.
     It took me a long time to realize that Anderson and his colleagues were completely satisfied with preaching Socialism. They had no real desire to accomplish any change, even though they thought they had. All they wanted was to gain artistic expression, to put into words the dreams that formed in their consciousness, to feel the joy of creation and of sharing that creation with an audience. For this they were prepared to endure hunger, to face hardship, provided always that they could interpose between themselves and that hardship a barrier of beautiful words. For a long time I found compensation in exactly the same way. Day dreams in the workshop and night dreams on the Socialist platform masked the uglier realities of life. But in my mind the question would keep rising: "Where do we go to from here? What do we do next?" Yet my guides had no perception that any further move was required.

ANTIGONE in VICTORIAN ENGLAND - Helen Macfarlane, Revolutionary and Feminist in the Year 1850 By David Black

2010-11-30T10:01:00.002Z

The Divine Idea of Liberty
Following the overthrow of Louis Philippe in France in February 1848, the tide of Revolution reached Austria within weeks. In March, the citizens of Vienna overthrew the government of Prince Metternich and forced Emperor Ferdinand to concede a representative Diet and a new constitution. But the Hapsburgs played for time and struck back. In October, Field Marshall Windischgratz’s troops stormed the city and restored the status quo. A new Emperor, Franz Joseph, annulled the constitution. In Hungary however, the imperial army was driven out and independence was declared. Here, counter-revolution required outside help, and this was provided by Czar Nicholas I under the terms of the Holy Alliance. Russian troops invaded Hungary and restored Hapsburg rule. Afterwards, Windischgratz’s successor, Field Marshall Von Haynau, unleashed his own troops on the defeated Hungarian population in an orgy of reprisals.
            Present in Vienna in 1848 was a British woman called Helen Macfarlane, then about 30 years old. The experience of Revolution and ensuing Counter-Revolution had a profound effect on her. When she
returned to England she embraced the radical wing of Chartism, which was trying to revive itself following the defeat of the People's Charter campaign in 1848. In 1850 she began to write for two new publications edited in London by the Chartist leader, George Julian Harney: the monthly Democratic Review and the weekly Red Republican. Living in Burnley, Lancashire, Macfarlane knew Frederick Engels in Manchester. Engels, on behalf of Karl Marx (who was in London), commissioned her to write a translation of the Communist Manifesto, which had first been published in German just before the 1848 Revolutions broke out. Macfarlane’s translation, serialised in the Red Republican, was presented by editor Harney as “the most revolutionary document ever given to the world.”
            In an article for the Red Republican, in June 1850, Helen Macfarlane, writing under the pseudonym of ‘Howard Morton’, said that “Chartism in 1850 is a different thing from Chartism in 1840"; now that "English proletarians" had "proved they are the true democrats" and had "progressed from the idea of simple political reform to the idea of Social Revolution. Returning lately to this country after a long absence of some years, I was agreeably surpised by this fact. 'What old Mole; workest thou in the earth so fast?'."
            Of course she was over-optimistic. Chartism would never recover from the defeat of 1848 and the radicals’ efforts to renew Chartism as a socialist movement were doomed to fail in the capitalist boom-time of the 1850s. But Macfarlane was the first British writer (actually, born in Scotland) to understand the awesome importance of two German thinkers: Hegel and Marx. Not only had she seen a Revolution; she had also grasped the power of an Idea:
            “The idea of perfect Liberty, of Equality and Fraternity – the divine idea of love, incarnate in the gentle Nazarean, is the idea we earnestly worship.” This “great work had been begun by the Lollards and other heretics of the middle ages, but its accomplishment was reserved for Luther”. With the Enlightenment, it “freed itself from the dead weight of a lifeless Past… bursting forth from under the accumulated rubbish of ages, like waters of life - like a fountain to refresh the wanderer fainting in desert places: it found an expression free from all symbols, sagas, and historical forms, in the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’, by Maximilian Robespierre, and in the immortal pages of the ‘Contrat Social’ and ‘Emile’”.
            This “unique and profound investigation into the nature of man, which, conducted by a phalanx of modern philosophers, was terminated by Hegel, the last and greatest. The result of this investigation was the democratic idea, but as thought, not in the inadequate form of a history or saga. As Hegel expresses it, 'Freedom is a necessary element in the conception, man'... The next step in the history of this idea, will be its practical realisation."

Antigone

Hegel argued that philosophy sometimes must exercise "audacity". So also for Macfarlane, must its practical realisation. She wrote: "We, who rally round the Red Flag, are reproached with entertaining the nefarious design of completely destroying the existing order of things; with the desire of totally abolishing the present system of society - for the purpose, it is said of putting some fantastic dream, some wild utopia of own in place of long established and venerable institutions"; the accusers being "bankers, cottonspinners, landowners", as well as "'superior women', educated according to the recipes of Mrs. Ellis for making 'admirable wives and mothers'."
            "We are low people certainly; disreputable vagabonds without doubt. In ancient times we were accounted 'the enemies of the human race', accused of setting fire to Rome... I am happy to say we still retain our old reputation... and have not failed to follow the laudable example of our precursors in Roman times... Yet even in England, this shopkeeping country of middle-class respectability there are a few of us belonging to the 'better sort' who have repudiated all claim to be considered respectable, because for them the words Justice and Love are not mere empty sounds without a meaning; because they say - like Antigone in Sophocles - the laws of God are not of today, nor of yesterday, they exist from all eternity."
            What are we to make of this remarkable unfurling of the Red Flag as the enactment of "laws of God' which "exist from all eternity"? Macfarlane seems to have taken on board Hegel's analysis of Sophocles’ tragedy ‘Antigone’. In this drama, Antigone’s two brothers, Polyneices and Eteocles have killed each other fighting for control of the City of Thebes. Eteocles’ victorious ally, his uncle King Creon, inherits the throne and decrees that, whilst Eteocles should be buried with full honours, the ‘rebel’ Polyneices should be left outside the walls of the city to be eaten by the birds. Antigone refuses to accept this dishonouring of a brother. Despite threats from Creon that he will bury her alive, she buries Polyneices according to the tribal religion and she wins Creon’s son Haemon over to her side. The conflict ends in disaster for all concerned.
            Hegel describes how the dramatic clash in ‘Antigone’ takes place between two irreconcilable principles: on the one hand, the Moral Law of the state, which is cruel, but nonetheless, historically 'progressive'; on the other hand, the law of 'natural' family honour, based on the kinship principles of a stateless tribal society. Antigone says of this ‘natural’ law:
            "Not now, indeed, nor yesterday, but for aye
            It lives, and no man knows what time it came."

            George Lukacs, in ‘The Young Hegel’, shows how Hegel saw the ancient tragedy of Antigone as a precursor of the "tragedy in the realm of the ethical" he saw unfolding in capitalism. Hegel feared that because great wealth seemed to be "indissolubly connected with the direst poverty", the powers of a "lower world" (expressed in the ‘laws’ of political economy) were becoming inverted with the "higher world" (the Ethical State) and threatening to dissolve the "bonds uniting the whole people". The dialectical tension on Antigone occurs because the supposedly less 'civilised' of the two colliding forces gains, in Hegel’s words, a "self-conscious actual universality."
            Antigone does not just stand up to the new state; she also stands out as an individual from those in her community “who think as I do but dare not speak”. Antigone holds her defiance as more important than her life and in breaking the silence she breaks the bonds holding the state together.
            Lukacs’ insights were re-examined in the 1970s by Raya Dunayevskaya who, like Macfarlane, identified the Idea of Freedom with the Idea of History, freed from its narrow bourgeois horizon. Dunayevskaya praised Lukacs’ restatement of the importance of the Hegelian dialectic for understanding Marx’s humanism but rejected Lukacs’ fetishism of the “vanguard party” as mediator of class consciousness.
            Dunayevskaya pointed out that the traditional Left had limited “subjectivity” to the negation of capitalism by an abstract universal of “socialism”, which in reality had ended up as Stalinism and other forms of statism. But the second subjectivity – as “negation of the negation” - contained the objectivity of real struggles by real human beings. Addressing socialist feminists who were fighting for ‘autonomy’ from the Old Left, Dunayevskaya argued that Hegel’s analysis of Antigone expressed how the individual's experience in revolt can lead to a new subjectivity "purified" of all that "interferes with its universality"; in which the prevailing ‘principle’ is an objective 'autonomy' of self-liberation.
            I have included these 20th century interpretations of Hegel’s analysis of Antigone to illustrate its influence on revolutionary thinkers. In Helen Macfarlane, it surfaces again in an article she wrote on the visit to London in July 1850 by Baron Von Haynau, the aforementioned Austrian Field Marshall and war criminal. Von Haynau happened to visiting the Barclays and Perkins brewery on Bankside when word got around the Chartist-supporting workers that the “Butcher Haynau” was in their midst. The workers set upon him and attempted to drown him in a barrel of beer; he narrowly escaped with his life and had to rescued by a squad of constables. When the Morning Post asked, "How is it that the labouring class, once profoundly indifferent to what was taking place in foreign countries... have suddenly become so sensitive?", Macfarlane responded:

            "... let us look at the other side. A hoary-headed old ruffian orders women to be stripped naked, and flogged till nearly dead, by a set of savage soldiers... Of what terrible revolting crime had these unhappy women been guilty? They had aided their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, in the Hungarian and Italian insurrections... “

            These women, Macfarlane pointed out, “had aided those to whom they were bound by every natural and legal tie" as part of the struggle for Freedom.” Like Antigone, they had upheld a 'higher law' than that laid down by the state.
            And "it lives". In another article she links the "Holy Spirit of truth" which inspired the poets and prophets - namely Hesiod, Isaiah, Cervantes, Milton and Shelley - with the guidance of the "Nazarean" towards "a pure Democracy, where freedom and equality will be the acknowledged birth right of every human being; the golden age... the Paradise, which was never lost, for it lives - not backwards, in the infancy and youth of humanity - but in the future..." On a similar note, she takes Blanqui's concept of "A Republic Without Helots" to mean a society "without poor, without classes... A society such indeed as the world has never seen - not only of free men, but of free women..."
            Macfarlane's recognition of her own subjectivity as one of the "few of us belonging to the 'better sort'", who had defected to the side of the oppressed, as she puts it in reference to Antigone, comes from Marx. The Communist Manifesto, as translated by Macfarlane, celebrates the fact that: "a part of the bourgeoisie is joining the proletariat, and particularly a part of bourgeois ideologists, or middle-class thinkers who have attained a theoretical knowledge of the whole historical movement."

Pantheism and Materialism

Macfarlane, like her contemporary George Eliot, turned to German philosophy to understand the growing crisis in Christianity. Macfarlane translated parts of Hegel’s introduction to ‘Lectures on the History of Philosophy’ for discussion in the Democratic Review. Hegel argued that despite Luther’s great blow for freedom, Protestantism had introduced a "tormenting uncertainty" into the minds of individuals. Similarly, for Macfarlane, in "the regions of spiritual compromise, of doubt and fluctuation, of unrest, of weariness and vexation of soul - the region of protestantism... [there] is no fundamental principle, upon which a reasonable creature could find a firm footing."
            The problem with all churches (apart from the Unitarian movement, which she had some respect for) was that "an infallible book is assumed as the basis of religious faith, yet without having any professedly infallible interpreter". But ”covertly, every sect assumes its articles, confession or creed, to be the infallible interpretor"; and anyone who refuses any particular sect's interpretation is "immediately denounced as an 'infidel scoffer'."
            Macfarlane argued that Protestantism was a “a state of transition… the stepping stone for the human mind in its progress from deism to pantheism - that is, from a belief in some things, in the divinity of one being or of one man, to a belief in the divinity of All beings, of All men - in the holiness of All things.”
            At this point, Macfarlane seems to part with Hegel and side with his most radical pupil, Heindrich Heine - another friend of Marx. Heine wrote in his 1835 essay on the ‘New Pantheism’:

            "In man divinity attains self consciousness - and the latter in turn is revealed through man. This is achieved not in or through a single individual, but in and through the totality of mankind - so that every man comprehends and represents in himself only a portion of the God-Universe, but all men together comprehend and represent it in its totality - in ideas well as reality."

Similarly, for Macfarlane, pantheism was:

            "…the sublime and cheering doctrine of man's 'infinity - as the oak lies folded up in the acorn... the divine nature (or at least in a manifestation of it which is found only in man) is common to us all... we are bound to do to others, as we would they should do to us. This rule is universally valid, without distinction of birth, age, rank, sex, country, colour, cultivation, or the like….”

On the political orientation of pantheism, Heine wrote:
            "The political revolution which is based on the principles of French materialism will find no enemies in the pantheists, but rather allies who derive their convictions from a deeper source, from a religious synthesis... [The] divinity of man manifests itself also in his body. Human misery destroys or abases the body, which is the image of God... We interpret the great words of the Revolution which St. Just pronounced, 'le pain est le droit du peuple', as meaning 'le pain est le droit divin de l'homme'. We do not contend for the human rights of the people, but for the divine rights of man. In this, and in many other respects, we differ from the men of the Revolution. We do not wish to be sans-culottes, or frugal citizens, or economical presidents. We establish a democracy of equally glorious, equally holy and equally happy gods. You ask for simple dress, austere manners and unseasoned joys. We, on the other hand, demand nectar and ambrosia, purple raiments, costly perfumes, luxury and splendor, dances of laughing nymphs, music and comedy. Oh, do not be angry, virtuous republicans! To your censorious reproaches, we say with the fool in Shakespeare, ‘Dost think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?’ "
Heine concluded:

            "We have, in fact outgrown deism. We are free and do not need a tyrant with thunder. We have come of age and do not need paternal supervision. We are not the bungled handiwork of a great mechanic. Deism is a religion for slaves, children, Genevans and watchmakers."

            Macfarlane clearly echoes Heine’s words in her call for a republic “without helots, without poor, without classes… of equally, holy, equally blessed gods”. She adds, “Upon the doctrine of man’s divinity, rests the distinction between a person and a thing… the most heinious crime I can perpetrate is invading the personality of my brother man… Red Republicanism… is a protest against the using up of man by man”.
            I have taken up just a couple of themes from Macfarlane’s writings. I take up more of them in a 50,000-word book I am completing on the subject. She also debated the issues of Chartist organization and propaganda; she did a powerful critique of Thomas Carlyle, she attacked the historians of the ‘Glorious British Constitution’; she wrote about the United States of America as ‘sham republic’ which wasn’t a democracy because its Black people were enslaved and its women were denied their rights; and more.
            Karl Marx described Helen Macfarlane as an ‘original’ and a ‘rare bird’ in British political life. For me, she was a flash of humanistic enlightenment appearing suddenly in mid-19th century England, then just as suddenly disappearing without trace in 1851, having fallen out with her editor, Julian Harney. Historians, with a few exceptions, have ignored her.

First published in The Ethical Record, March 2003

A complete biography has been written by David Black, Helen Macfarlane: A Feminist, Revolutionary Journalist, and Philosopher in Mid-Nineteenth Century England published by Lexington Books published 2004. (link to Lexington Books)

SMOKEY CRUSADE by R M Fox

2010-11-30T09:32:00.003Z

Chapter 3

THE HIGH CROSS

Link to chapter 2

From the workshop gate I could see, at the corner of the street, a big stone cross - the High Cross, a relic of the days of chivalry. I thought it marked a stage of the journey taken by the funeral procession of Queen Eleanor in 1290. The story of how she had sucked the poison from a dagger wound inflicted by a Moor upon her husband, King Edward, when he was crusading in the Holy Land was one of the romances of my schooldays. Afterwards I learned that this was not one of those famous crosses, yet it held for me the glory and thrill of romantic history.
    Though not so fine as Charing Cross or Waltham Cross it still raised itself to the sky with a proud gesture as if the men who made it said, " We are not so little after all! " My eyes rested gratefully on the delicate stone traceries of the High Cross in those early misty mornings when I hurried by it to work. Almost opposite the High Cross above a shop - which may have been a saddler's - was the skeleton of a horse, propped up with iron supports against the sky. The wind whistled through its unprotected ribs and made play around its knobbly knees. It looked incredibly mournful and desolate. As a decoration I preferred the medieval cross with its suggestion of beauty and dignity, but as an introduction to an age of realism perhaps the bony skeleton was more fitting. Alas! the age of realism proved too much for its symbol, for the bony skeleton has long since vanished while the High Cross still celebrates the triumph of human hands and minds.

In the workshop 1 had no time to dream about such things. Life was too urgent.
One effect of our combined demand for a rise had been to throw Bert, the Cockney, and myself together.
"Where do you go to of an evening?" he asked one Saturday morning, peering at me from behind his greasy forelock.
"Sometimes I go out, sometimes I stay at home and read," I answered vaguely.
He wrinkled his nose in contempt.
"Why don't you come dahn the Monkeys' Parade?" he asked. "Larf! Me and George uster 'ave lots of fun there. Girls!" - he rolled his eyes - " You wouldn't believe!"
The Monkeys' Parade was that half-mile of High Street about which some magic clung, especially on Saturday and Sunday evenings, when groups of laughing, bright-eyed girls wandered up and down, exchanging glances and greetings with half-grown lads. It was a club of the streets in which the spirit of youth ran riot.
     The starting whistle blew, and one of the men called Bert away. When I saw him later he winked, and put his finger to the side of his nose significantly. "Seven o'clock, Sunday," he whispered. "I'll meet you at West Green Corner! "
     We were working late that Saturday and, when I left, the sky was turning a wonderful shade of violet and the street lamps shone like bright jewels. The world held a mysterious beauty which I felt but could not express. All the grime was left behind for the day, the growing shadows softened every harsh outline and made everything fairylike. I was eager for new experience, new life. As I entered the gate and went in to tea I thought I was still undecided about Bert's invitation but, in reality, I had made up my mind.
     On Sunday evening punctually at seven I arrived, and there was Bert,. in a big check cap, sitting on the railings, smoking a woodbine.
"Hallo, thought you was never coming! " he said, jumping off.
     We walked down the pathway, passing the wooden seats scattered at intervals along the Green. Bert had his cap cocked at an acute angle and walked with a swagger. For a hundred yards by West Green Corner the wide pavements were thronged with groups oflads and girls. Some had gathered round the seats in the Green, and from these groups came whisperings and giggles. Others strolled with lofty disdain but turned at the end of the lights and repassed the same spot. Eyes flashed invitation as they passed. These youngsters were stirred by early mysterious promptings and thrills of which they were just becoming conscious. Scuffles, nudges and shrieks of laughter came from every group.
     Bert, as a man of the world, affected to be above all this, but his jaunty step and excited giggles showed that he delighted in the tumult.
"You should see it later on," he gurgled. "This ain't nothing! You'll see 'em all over the bloomin' road, pavement an' all, an' so thick you have to fight your way through! Allo, Molly!" he yelled, grabbing a girl's arm as she passed. " Don't know me now? Gettin' stuck-up, ain't you?"
    He drew Molly out of the crowd into a shop doorway.
    The girl laughed. "I must be going," she announced firmly.
" 'Oo's the lucky one? " asked Bert grinning.
"Well, so long, Moll, see you another night." He squeezed her hand and nudged her with his elbow, but, wriggling free, she ran off.
     Two other girls came along arm-in-arm. In their light-coloured Sunday dresses they looked to me far too elegant and lovely to have any contact with the world of oil and grime to which Bert and I belonged. I was amazed when Bert suddenly leaned forward and gave one of them a loud smack on the shoulder. And I was quite unprepared for the squeal of delighted laughter which followed. I had no sisters and was ready to worship at the shrine of girlhood in mute admiration, but to see a potential goddess mauled by Bert's grubby fingers was a shock. Bert gave me a push which sent me staggering into the arms of the other girl. I drew back in confusion. I had been responsive to the glamour of lights and laughter. Life was a grand spectacle and a great adventure. But this jostling on the Monkeys' Parade suddenly became meaningless and unattractive. The glamour died out. I looked round for a way of escape.
     Bert was getting on well with his companion. I heard him howl with glee and a shrill laugh answered. In his wisdom he took what life offered and was content. I slipped from the footpath and, evading the others, mingled with the crowds that were standing in the open space at the corner. Flowing towards the corner, by the lighted windows of West Green Road, came one human stream. It was joined by another which flowed along the quieter and more shadowy pathway by the Green - as the open space was called. At the corner both streams met, eddied and swirled. Here, at about seven o'clock, a Salvation Army band played. Soon they departed, marching off in great style behind the Blood and Fire flag to their citadel, with bonneted girls shaking their tambourines. This left the ground free for orators, agitators, world-shakers and evangelists of various kinds.
     As I went farther from the footpath I found my progress barred by a crowd which stood packed round a wooden platform from which a man was speaking. A row of bushy trees helped to justify the name of the Green, but the one at the end, near the speaker, was quite bare as if unable to survive the weekly torrents of oratory to which it had been exposed. I paused and some quality or cadence in the speaker's voice made me listen.
     Energy was expressed in his thick-set frame, his vibrant voice, and in the defiant way in which he shook back his mane of curly hair. In the moonlight the speaker's head and shoulders were silhouetted clearly above the crowd. Round him the audience was gathered, a solid mass of white, attentive faces. He had reached that pointknown to every artist in words-when the audience and himself had fallen under the spell. In loud clear tones he was voicing the gospel of discontent.
I stood and listened. Here was a man appealing to that youthful blood which, in every generation, is ready to pour itself out in sacrifice to cleanse the world. He was calling to struggle, to adventure, to freedom - to all those impulses which were stirring in me. He rose to his climax and, unconsciously, the audience leaned forward:
"When Pizarro landed in Mexico, he gathered his followers together and drew a line in the sand" - the speaker paused and with a single sweeping gesture drew a line in the air - " then he spoke to them. 'If any man among you fears to come, let him stay with the boats. But those who do not fear, let them step over this line and follow me. Beyond those hills lies the unknown. There may be vast treasure waiting for us there, there may be danger, perhaps suffering and death. But remember that, for whoever steps over that line, there is no turning back'!"
With his arm outstretched, as if pointing to the line, he went on:
"To-night I am asking you to cross the Rubicon. If you want freedom, if you want the lives that men and women should lead, and are prepared to fight all the forces of hell that are leagued to hold you back - step over that line!"
The speaker's head disappeared from the crowd as he clambered down from the platform, and a murmur of applause ran through the audience. They were impressed by his speech, and dispersed reluctantly. Yet though many surrendered themselves to the dream, they knew they were not going to rise in revolt. They had heard it many times before. For me it was new. It seemed that I had actually crossed a clearly defined line and that my life would never be the same again. I snatched eagerly at the mantle of glamour which had been flung over the everyday drabness and meanness of life. Till then I had accepted the world as it was and, though discontented - with the keenly felt wretchedness of youth - I had not dreamed of the possibility ofquestion, let alone of swift and violent change. Discontent came to me now not as a limping, dragging misery, but with a flaming torch, flower-crowned and shining with the beauty of an ideal.
Strange thoughts crowded in on my eager brain when I went to bed that night, and I slept fitfully. It seemed that I was hardly sound asleep when five o'clock came and the alarm clock, with its shrill, urgent clamour, called me back to another week's toil.

SMOKEY CRUSADE by R M Fox

2010-11-30T09:07:00.003Z

Chapter 2

I FACE THE WORLD

Link to chapter 1

I soon slipped into the life of the workshop, extracting interest and amusement, as well as enduring boredom. Up in the woodwork shop we boiled cans of tea at breakfast time on the gas jet used for heating glue, and sometimes we fried sausages. Reid, a thick-set, clumsy young man, who was the workshop humorist, gained general applause one morning by cleaning the greasy frying-pan on his mop of hair. Another jest of his was to pour out grey paint from a bucket on to the newly made wooden shutters, then-instead of a paintbrush - he seized a broom and painted vigorously.
     I wore a leather apron now - black and shiny with oil - and with my sleeves rolled up, I ran every morning to the corner shop for "a penny tin of skim milk" for our workshop breakfast. The grocer asked me one morning if it had to be "skim," but I saw no humour in this. About five-thirty a.m., on my way to work, I would buy hot cheese cakes fresh from the oven for a halfpenny at a coffee stall. Another halfpenny would buy a cup of hot tea. Thus fortified, the sleepy desolation of my morning journey gave way to a sense of well-being.

   As a newcomer I passed the tests. They sent me to buy "belt oil." But I soon learned that if you poured oil on those hard greasy black leather belts they would slip on the shining pulleys, and the wheels would refuse to turn. I pushed the barrow, with its clumsy cartwheels, to and fro. I ran errands here and there. I liked to be out, for then it seemed that the pageant of life was spread before me. I envied the van drivers and the draymen perched in their high seats, seeing things happening all day. Once, on an errand, I passed the factory where my father was working. I felt a sudden pity for him and the others cooped in that grey building for most of their waking hours.
     Mr. Stour was in his happiest mood in the smithy, an old straw sunbonnet stuck on his head and a worn leather apron tied round him. Hammer in hand, he worked away at the anvil.
     " Bring the monkey! " he roared. "Bring the monkey!" With grizzled beard and red sweaty face he looked like a farmer. I soon found out what this mechanical contrivance was, and brought it to him as he shaped the white-hot metal ribbon that he held on the anvil. He could neither read nor write to any practical extent. Yet with a few movements of the bellows, a swift jerk of the tongs and deft strokes with the hammer, he could make all kinds of fancy, interlacing scroll-work, spirals and roses to grace gates and railings. On the office wall hung framed certificates recording his triumphs as a smith.
     "Tell your bloke I brought this stuff!" a strange vanman said when he delivered a load of wood or iron, never dreaming that he was speaking to the "bloke" himself. Mr. Stour said nothing, for fear he would be asked to sign his name. Yet when he was dressed up in a silk hat and frock-coat - as happened on special occasions - he made a fine figure of a leisured gentleman.
     He was sensitive about his illiteracy. I found this out when he sent for me one morning. I entered the office, and he stood looking at me.
     "Hm, h'm," he cleared his throat irresolutely. " If you were spelling [?] malleable,' how would you spell it?" he asked suddenly.
     I made a shot at the word.
   "Yes - all right," he said, then - making up his mind - "I want you to go to the foundry and order some of those" - he pointed to some castings. "See, I will give you a sketch of one. If Mr. Hunt asks why you have not got a proper order, tell him there was no one here to give it you.You understand?"
     To get to Hunt's foundry I had to pass through the Tottenham ghetto - a district crowded with Polish Jews, supplying the cheap labour in the factories on the adjoining marshland. Many families shared these houses, and half-naked children tumbled about the thresholds, while shawled and tousled women kept up a foreign chatter.
     When I reached the foundry I went into a long gloomy shop like a huge shed with a sanded floor, and saw a knot of men standing at one end. A man walked towards me along the narrow pathway, and I saw he carried two pails from which came a red glow. A clamour of yells rose from the men at the other end, and I skipped out of the way confusedly. The pails were filled with molten metal ready for pouring into the moulds.
     I spoke to Mr. Hunt, who answered in a gruff tone, and bade me follow him. We passed an elderly man with spectacles and a short grey beard, who looked benign as he stooped over his work. He was painting huge iron girders with dull red paint. As we passed, Mr. Hunt, who, with his burly form and drooping moustache, was fierce and mastiff-like, rasped out:
     "Late again this morning, were you?" The old man looked up startled.
     " No," he quavered. "I was in early!"
     "Oh! And this is what you've done all the morning. I'll soon see about that!" and the mastiff man strode on, leaving the old man hurrying over his work with trembling fingers.
     I thought to myself: "He works hard. He looks as if he had always worked hard, and yet this is how he is treated!" I was on the threshold; he was near the end of his work-worn life. I had matter for youthful reflection here.
     Crossing the yard I saw the huge black furnace from which, when the men turned the tap, there poured a golden stream. Starlike sparks flew up only to fall, hissing and spluttering, to the ground. The workmen were quick to dodge these flying metal sparks. This furnace was a compound of beauty and ugliness.
     Mr. Hunt grumbled incessantly about not getting a proper order, and snarled at everyone he met, including the bleak-looking lady in the office, who snapped out her replies. I was glad to leave the foundry.
     Compared with Hunt, Mr. Stour seemed a model employer, but in spite of his good qualities as a smith he had other qualities not so admirable. He was mean in petty ways. If a boy was kept on an errand an hour or so after his working time, he thought it enough to give him a penny or twopence as a reward. Each employee had to fill in a time sheet. This was the only check, because Stour did not believe in spending money on office work.
     On winter mornings men occasionally came in late - ten minutes, half an hour, even an hour. Sometimes Stour would arrive unexpectedly at six a.m. One morning, as I stood outside the gate, Stour sidled up. It was a cold morning and I had seen only a few shivering milk or paper boys and half-frozen workmen huddled in their coats as I hurried to work.
     "It's very funny," said Mr. Stour, with a whine in his voice, "but they're all here at six when I'm not here!" He tried to find out from me the names of men who were often late.
     Another morning when only a few workers had arrived early I saw him get up on the stool in his office and - at ten-past six - stealthily shift the hands back to the hour. This meant that those who had come in early would have to work another ten minutes. He had just done this when Mr. Boyd - the perky, self-satisfied foreman of the machine shop - came strolling through the yard.
    "You're ten minutes late, Mr. Boyd!" said Stour complainingly.
    "I'm not," replied Boyd.
    "You are," persisted Stour. "Ten minutes exactly," he pulled out his watch. "I set it by railway time."
"I don't go by railway time," retorted Boyd. "I go by the office clock. That's what it's for!"
     He nodded towards the big clock, whose hands had just been altered. Mr. Stour swallowed and choked. He was caught in his own trap.
     He tried other measures. Men who came after ix found the door shut against them. He kept it locked till nine o'clock, and stopped their pay.
     Once I arrived a few minutes past six and found the door locked. But I also found Boyd outside in a fury, his shoulder to the door, trying to burst it open. The small door and the massive wooden gate in which it was cut shook under his assault. He looked round as I came up.
     "Get over the top! " he ordered. There was a gap between the arched brickwork and the top of the gate with railings on each side.
     I was soon up on the railings, over the big wooden gate and down on the other side. All I needed to do was to slip a catch and the door opened.
   Boyd walked down the yard with magnificent nonchalance, and I followed.
   As we reached the glass office, Stour ran out, his mouth agape.
"How did you get in?" he cried, without concealing his amazement.
"The boy let me in!" said Boyd, casually, walking straight on.
"And how did you get in?" Stour demanded, turning his wrath on me.
"Over the top!" I answered, with simple truth.
"Who told you to ?"
" Mr. Boyd!"
He ran after the foreman.
"The boy says you told him to get over the top!"
"The boy says right! "
     Stour could only mumble reproaches when he came back to me. The truth was he was beaten again.
     Later he introduced a timekeeper, whose job it was to take note of the time each man came in and to shut the door on late-corners. But the times were never very accurately recorded. One day, to the joy of the shop, Mr. Stour himself arrived when the door was locked, and he had forgotten his key. He banged on the door and shouted till he was tired. Then he went round to the back and, peeping over the wall, called through the little window opening on to the machine shop.
     "That's old Stour out there," hissed a workman to me. "Don't listen to him, and don't look at him. Give him a taste of what he's given us!"
     He was left outside for two hours.
     Stour & Loughboroughs' was a slipshod, easy going small shop of the pre-War type. Stour was a good smith but a poor manager, parsimonious and muddled. Loughborough, a big, muscular, clean-shaven man, never bothered. Everyone worked long hours for little pay, but had comensations in lack of rigidity, absence of methodical grind. The firm employed the lesser skilled unorganised workers. Once during a rush period one of the men brought his father out of the workhouse to help in the shop.
     I carried pailfuls of "breeze" - small coal - to the forges and later swung a hammer at the anvil. I pushed the heavy truck filled with castings, iron or woodwork to and from the works. I learned to work a small drilling machine and helped the men generally. But underneath the workshop grime my face grew pallid. When I reached home - at about seven o'clock - I wanted to have tea without washing, and fell asleep over my evening meal. Those five silver shillings which I received each Saturday were earned hardly enough at the expense of youthful zest and happiness.
     Perhaps it was a consciousness of this which made the three boys of the works determine to ask for a rise. Mr. Stour used to retire to his room upstairs each evening just before six, to have his tea. We knew this because one of us had to bring him his tea, to run for his half a haddock or whatever delicacy he favoured. One local cookshop - there were several greasy specimens - to choose from - objected to selling half a haddock, but Mr. Stour insisted that a whole one was too much.
     Judging a time when he would have finished his tea sufficiently to receive us, we tramped upstairs in our thick working boots. It sounded like the tramp of an army. Mr. Stour came rushing out on to the landing, his mouth full of haddock, tea and bread, to demand the reason for this invasion.
    George a pale, shortish lad of about fifteen, with freckles and prominent teeth, spoke first. He asked for more money. Mr. Stour said " No."
     George explained that his grown-up sister, with whom he lived, insisted that he should get more or else leave.
    "Very well," said Mr. Stour, "I suppose you will have to go."
    I was next in the line. I stepped out and put my plea for more money.
    Mr. Stour looked troubled. He could see all his youthful staff departing.
    "I will consider it," he announced.
Bert, who was older than either of us-he was sixteen, a Cockney, with a big greasy lock hanging over one eye-was also promised consideration.
     George departed at the end of the week. Bert and I secured another shilling.
     I was growing more proficient at wielding the hammer in the smithy, where sparks and bits of red-hot metal were flying. One big, curly-headed, young man had lost an eye through a flying metal spark. I came near to losing some fingers on my right hand when I unwittingly rested my hand on the blades of a machine that was chopping off lengths of metal as if biting sticks of celery. A workman who saw my danger gave me a blow in the chest which sent me staggering backwards just in time.
     The one-eyed smith was very fond of a confection that we called "asphalt." This was a dark, thick, solid substance resembling bread pudding, with a layer of white icing on it. When I ran out at breakfast or dinner time I usually had to bring one or more lumps of "asphalt."
     At the back of the machines was a row of small windows - facing the windows of a synagogue across a narrow space. The end one opened near a wall, on the other side of which ran another passage alongside the works. By wriggling through this small window it was possible for a boy to drop over a wall and bring cans of beer in for the men. After dropping down into the passage I had to be careful not to run into Mr. Stour or Mr. Loughborough on their way to or from the firm. And, coming back, it was just as important to put the cans carefully on the wall above my head, before scrambling up and tapping at the window for them to be taken safely in. In the meantime if Mr. Stour asked for me it was the task of the others to head him off till my return.
     I have mentioned the synagogue opposite our row of windows, but we never really noticed this until one morning when - on the celebration of the feast of Yom Kippur - we heard the longdrawn wailing of women with a response of lamentations in a deeper key. By standing on the bench and craning necks we could see all the women at one end and the men at the other. Between them stood a rabbi in an embroidered robe who seemed, to our uninitiated eyes, to be urging each side on whenever there came a lull in the wailing.
     Soon - as an accompaniment to the wailing workshop humorists began to beat plates of sheet iron with hammers and spanners. The Jewish caretaker poked his head through the window.
     "You wouldn't think it funny if I came round and told your boss how you're working!" he threatened.
     "We don't have to work now! It's our breakfast time!" he was told triumphantly.
     The humorists grew more boisterous. The rabbi, chanting and swaying from side to side, was made the target for small screws hurled through the open window. He had his back to the workshop but, during a pause, he turned his glittering dark eyes, pale face and long straggling beard towards us. In that face was all the mournfulness of persecuted Israel. The only man who had a word to say on his behalf was a quiet old German workman.
     " All religions are funny to those outside them," he muttered solemnly. "You should respect every man's belief!"
     He might as well have talked to a horde of savages as to these boisterous young men cooped up all day in a narrow workshop cage.
     Soon I began to regard myself as a grown-up workman, as hard-bitten as any of them. One morning Mr. Stour pointed to a sack filled with heavy metal fittings. "Take this and deliver it to that address," he said, giving me a piece of paper.
     "It is heavy, and you'd better get a penny ride on the tram."
     I pushed the paper into my pocket abstractedly and set off. The sack was very heavy, as I soon found. I got off the tram at St. Ann's Corner, on the edge of an area of dismal slum streets. Then I hunted for the address. I went through every pocket, but it was gone. Plunging into the narrow streets I asked for any firm where they would be likely to have ordered the fittings. I was directed to a big factory on the top of a hill and, as I toiled up, I was glad I had found the place so easily, but when I reached the gates I discovered it was the wrong place, and wearily I dragged my load down again. I could not face going back and saying I had lost the address. Kindly, if slatternly looking, women, lolling at the street doors, advised me where I could sell my scrap iron for a few pence. Up and down I wandered, the burden growing heavier and more hateful. I thought I was doomed to carry it for life. At last I asked an old woman standing at a gate. She turned a wan pathetic face to me, and answered in a gentle faded voice. Then I saw she was blind.
     Dispirited I turned back, prepared to face my humiliation at the workshop. I reached the point where the tram started, and decided I must ride back as I was staggering under the load. I fumbled for a penny. Suddenly I felt a crackling in the corner of my coat lining. The paper had worked down through a hole. In no time I had it out, and there was the address I wanted. I had been walking in circles round it all the time. I hurried back and delivered the sack. With a weight off my mind and body I started again for the workshop, but - unluckily - walked straight into Mr. Stour and Mr. Loughborough. Stour stopped and smiled. "I see you've delivered the fittings!" he said. Yes I had. There was no need for me to say anything or explain anything. But the heat, the weariness, the hopelessness of the morning overcame me. I was all wrought up inside, and suddenly I burst into a flood of tears. They were both startled. Mr. Stour told me to get on a tram and take a good hour for dinner. Perhaps they thought the sack was too heavy for me. I never knew what they thought. But I was overwhelmed with shame at this exhibition of childishness. It never happened again. Perhaps that is one reason why it left an indelible mark was too heavy for me. I never knew what they thought. But I was overwhelmed with shame at this exhibition of childishness. It never happened again. Perhaps that is one reason why it left an indelible mark.

What is libertarian history?

2010-11-07T07:36:00.005Z

A differently formatted and illustrated version of this (half) article is published in

Black Flag, Issue 232, 2010/11, pp.28-29, under the title ‘The history of history itself.’

Part 2 is due to appear in the next issue of Black Flag in May 2011 (watch this space).

There are a number of historical contexts which might be expected to attract a libertarian historian looking for a research topic, those times when significant numbers of people did appear to be acting collectively to take control of their lives and inaugurate a fairer, non-authoritarian form of society: the Paris Commune of 1871, workers’ councils in the Russian Revolution, Spain 1936-37, and Hungary 1956 spring to mind. A lot of good work has been done on these and there is room for plenty more, not only to draw the lessons – that what was achieved once could be possible again; what went wrong and why – but as a corrective to the disinformative history that the opponents of libertarianism tend to propagate. In the case of Spain, there are still books being produced which manage almost entirely to ‘disappear’ the anarchists.

Hungary Revolution 1956

It has been well observed that history is written by the winners, and libertarians have not won in the long run (yet), although the proposition is less tenable now that your actual working historians are a comparatively large and varied set of people and many amateurs have access to a range of resources for research and communication. Historians of medicine sometimes tell the story of the brain surgeon who said ‘I think I’ll take up history when I retire’ to a historian, who replied ‘Good idea. I’m retiring soon too, maybe I should take up brain surgery!’ It doesn’t quite work, though: while taking the point that history can claim to be a serious occupation rather than a hobby and a bit of study and training in techniques is likely to be useful, it isn’t really rocket science, or brain surgery, and there is some sense in the idea that anyone can decide to do it. This article will look at some ways in which it has been done, and at some of those who have done it, and consider whether a case can be made for a distinctive libertarian contribution to the theory of the subject as well as to its content.

Rebels and Pioneers

While much of recorded history has indeed been for and about the winners – powerful ancient rulers and imperial conquerors seeking to justify and consolidate their dominant position (and denounce their opponents), medieval chroniclers generally supporting the status quo in church and state – a parallel, contrasting view of the past subsisted in popular memory, transmitted by oral tradition, in stories, songs and rhymes, to emerge as a unifying theme in times of rebellion. The Peasants’ Revolt (1381) repudiated the idea that class divisions were divinely ordained ‘When Adam delved and Eve span’; the Diggers of the 17^th century ‘English Revolution’ saw their actions as a reassertion of ancient rights, invoking a pre-Conquest age of communal ownership and shared work on the land. Subsequent movements have looked to both of these, not for the historical accuracy of their alternative myths, but for their rejection of the dominant ideology and vision of a different way of life.

The modern kind of history, old-fashioned as it may appear from some points of view, can be traced to the 18^th century, located among cultural developments in the wake of the Enlightenment . Edward Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ is the celebrated blockbuster archetype. Less well known, one of the few women writers whom Mary Wollstonecraft could regard with approval or as any kind of inspiration, Catherine Macaulay (1731-91), produced an eight-volume History of England and was famed, or notorious, in her time as a prominent ‘Bluestocking’, daring to appear openly intellectual in defiance of social expectations.¹ As well as the slights and slanders that went with this territory she came in for personal attacks when, as a widow, she married a noticeably younger man. With the irrationality of dominant-male ideology, her reputation as a writer suffered too. Recent commentators have been more generous, hailing her as the first (noteworthy) English woman historian and a proto-feminist who advocated equal liberties for all. She is said to have based her writings mainly on primary source materials, unusually for the time, and to have had a political, rather than a moral, purpose; her work was popular in revolutionary America and France.

Revolutions

Wollstonecraft herself (1759-97) showed an awareness of history in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman and an ability to look at it in her own way, from her take on the ‘half-civilised Romans’ to her analysis and rejection of patriarchal authority, tyrannical rule, and supposedly ‘natural’ gender roles and values. When she reported on the French Revolution – bringing her intelligence to bear on events which were affecting her and her friends, at a time when her personal life was in turmoil – she was at pains to explain the social and economic background and recognised the deep causes of the repellent violence of the Terror.

Kropotkin

Revolutions and uprisings are naturally a favourite subject for libertarians as for socialists (and some reactionaries). Kropotkin wrote about The Great French Revolution; a signed copy with an inscription to one of the professors is, or was in 1968, on an open shelf in Aberdeen University library, available to be borrowed by students and shown to the local anarchist group (we did return it). His aim and that of libertarians generally would have been to contest the prevailing historiographical preoccupation with guillotines and massacres, in order to understand the process, including the class realities involved. While underlining the power of collective action, it was also necessary to acknowledge the double dangers of authoritarian revolutionary leaders and post-revolutionary repression.

Those themes were even more forcefully present when it came to writing about the Russian Revolution of 1917. The members of the French Convention in 1792 had consciously made a break with the past to the extent of declaring Year I and inaugurating a new calendar; the Bolsheviks brought only a slight change in dates (from ‘Old Style’ to new) but were otherwise insistent on their historical mission. The theory of dialectical materialism was taken to justify their seizure and retention of power, and rapid elimination of opponents (including anarchists) of the left and centre as well as right. If history did not support their claim to embody the will of the masses, then history was at fault. Their version did not go uncontested and in the long run the suppression of unacceptable facts was not final.²

George Orwell later denounced the rewriting of history and perversion of collective memory as practised by totalitarian regimes in the fictional but well-grounded ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’; his ‘Homage to Catalonia’ made a major contribution to preserving the truth about events n Spain. For the most part, however, it was left to less widely published, committed writers and publishers such as, in Britain, Freedom Press, or later Solidarity, Cienfuegos, and currently AK Press, to document the libertarian content of revolutions and the fate of anarchist activists.

... and all that

Much of what many normal (non-revolution-minded) people still think of as history – kings and queens, battles and so on, boring stuff laced with scandalous or comic anecdotes by way of light relief – was familiar enough in the early 20^th century to be thoroughly satirised in ‘1066 and All That’ (W J Sellar and R J Yeatman, 1930), still a fun read even if getting the full flavour depends on ‘common knowledge’ which is now far from common. It ended, fans may remember, with America becoming ‘top nation’ and history coming to a full stop. The focus was obviously on Britain, especially England; other countries had their own national myths equally crying out for debunking.

Ellen Wilkinson

Ellen Wilkinson – ‘Red Ellen’ of Jarrow fame, trade union activist, Labour MP and Minister – realised ‘how little real history’ had been on offer when she went to Manchester University as a student at in 1910.³ Such feelings would have been shared by most of those at the receiving end of formal education at all levels, over many decades. Gradually the situation improved in several respects. Received wisdom was contested; ‘social history’ – including vast swathes of human experience, work, culture and almost anything to do with women – no longer relegated to occasional chapters, footnotes and brief asides, diversions from considerations of serious (men’s) business like running countries and waging wars. Even if the Academy remained dominated by patriarchal attitudes and authoritarian assumptions there were contexts where different approaches could be explored: evening classes for ‘self-improvement’, public libraries, books and magazines, political groups.

In schools, whether or not pupils were turned on to history probably depended a great deal on the inspirational or off-putting style of individual teachers and the chances of passing exams (Formula: when discussing an event apply the formula ‘causes, course, results’; if a personality, say who they were, what they did, why they were important), rather than the content of the curriculum. Traditional teaching had its uses, at its best inducing analytical habits of thought, and equipping students to organise their ideas and develop their own interests. (It also managed to convey a sense of chronology, something which seems to be lacking in latter-day episodic what-it-was-like to be a Roman/Viking etc. methods in use at junior levels.)

Despite pretensions to (social) scientific status, the initial attraction was often, and remains, akin to that of literature, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with liking a good story. Why should the devil have all the best tunes or the ruling class the best stories? – as long as reality is allowed to get in the way when it has to. In the words of G M Trevelyan, ‘The poetry of history does not consist of imagination roaming at large, but of imagination pursuing the fact and fastening upon it...’ ⁴ Similarly, even outright fiction can have a place in stimulating appreciation of conditions in the past, but should not be confused with actual evidence. In the higher echelons of academe the narrative mode might have been deemed inferior to the study of documents and the compilation of statistics but it persists through successive fashions, controversies and ‘turns’.

L.W.

August 2010.

Notes

1. Jane Robinson, Bluestockings: The remarkable story of the first women to fight for an education. Viking, 2009; pp. 6-7.

2. Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, 1917-21: The State and Counter-Revolution. Solidarity, London, 1970. Reprinted in For Workers’ Power, edited by David Goodway, 2004.

3. Biography at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ (search for Ellen Wilkinson).

4. G M Trevelyan (1876-1962): inaugural lecture, Cambridge, 1927 (much quoted).

P.S. It would have been apt to mention here the celebrated passage from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (first published 1818) , chapter 14, where three of the main characters discuss history: ‘The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all – it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention’. (The discussion continues for several paragraphs). – LW.

Book Review - Who Do You Workers Think You Are?

2010-11-07T07:20:00.003Z

Mark Crail, Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians. Barnsley, Pen & Sword Books, 2009. 176pp, £12.99 pbk. (Or try public libraries around shelf-mark 929.107, or in the family history section)
You don’t have to be a celebrity or a distant descendant of aristos, royalty or other dodgy characters to stand a good chance of finding some interesting twigs on your family tree. This small information-packed volume indicates some of the directions enquiries may lead in if there is, for example, a trade-unionist, Chartist, or Co-op supporter among the ancestors, and how they might be followed up. It includes many illustrations from the author’s own collection of labour movement memorabilia, showing that his knowledge of the subject is more than academic.

Great Dock Strike 1889

Unfortunately for libertarians, bureaucratic organisations tend to keep and preserve better records, and it is inevitably the mainstream movement that gets most attention here. Then again, few of us can expect to have an impeccably anti-authoritarian pedigree, and at least in the chapters on the historical context, a substantial part of the book, the author includes a lot more than the obvious big players. The Great (syndicalist) Unrest of 1911-12 is mentioned along with other episodes of intensified industrial struggle, including the two world wars, and not forgetting the state’s repressive response. For some researchers, police (special branch) files and prison records may therefore be a fruitful source.

Some smaller organisations are briefly described including sundry Trotskyists, the Co-op Party, and Common Wealth which Crail says took a ‘libertarian socialist stance’. He doesn’t go so far as to give anarchists as such a look in, but anyway as he points out with reference to other groups, those who are openly up against the law are not likely to keep too many personal details written down. Here too the reports of their watchers in the good old National Archives may be helpful.

Altogether there are many useful pointers to help in the continuing work of uncovering hidden history, in addition to and beyond the family, not only of struggle but of workers’ lives and constructive action.
LW
October 2010

VISIT - Phoenix cinema celebrates 100 years

2010-11-07T07:07:00.002Z

Wednesday 10 November at 8 pm, first floor bar

The Phoenix Cinema, 52 High Road, East Finchley, N2 9PJ

This year the Phoenix , one of the old cinemas in Britain, is celebrating its 100th birthday. Its architectural features alone are outstanding. Come and join us while we celebrate with an appreciation.

The invention of the cinema is one of the signposts of the modern era. Previously culture meant either trips to the theatre [ the cost !] or to the rowdy music halls, which have their virtues but even applied art is not one of them. The cinema opened up a whole new world to which even people born and brought up like Charlie Chaplin, from the London workhouse, were able to contribute and make their own distinctive mark.

America of course was the home of this startling new medium but it was not long before the long arms of capitalist enterprise engulfed it . Over time various artists have attempts to establish a degree of professional autonomy . Many were sympathetic to, or actually joined, the communists, more as a sign of resistance than to signify ideological commitment. McCarthy did his best to eradicate that.

The new regime in Russia after the revolution in 1917 instantly saw the possibilities of film and encouraged the film makers as part of their political programme. This is not the place to debate the nature of Russian state capitalism but we can note the substantial contribution of Serge Eisenstein and co.

In Britain, a trip to the pictures became increasingly a cultural habit. Cinemas like the Phoenix with its innovatory use of sound in 1929 and the talkies, responded to this enthusiastically. A bit later a group of committed and talented film makers produced not the blockbusters, as advertised, but high quality and serious films . More directly, working class organisations established clubs for the propagation of socialist causes with the Workers Film Movement . Perhaps the most notable was the Salford and Manchester Workers Film Society but there were many others.

The weekly trip to the flicks became a regular feature, especially for young people . Even children got their own version with Saturday matinees, as many will remember. The popular explosion of culture symbolised by pop music , the Beatles, Rolling Stones and this areas own stars , The Kinks , also saw a wave of new cinema productions . Some of these were of course nationalistic and military in orientation but it was new and exiting and kicked the old cultural interests with precedents and continuous profits into the dustbin.

Labour-based films over the last 30 years have seen such productions as Ken Loach's Riff raff, Adalen 31, The Grapes of Wrath, Harlan County USA, Matewan, Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, Norma Rae, Blue Collar, Union Maids, Sit Down and Fight Walter Reuther and the rise of the Auto Workers Union, With Babies and Banners, Silkwood, The Wobblies, and many more.

The Phoenix, which is owned and managed by a Cinema Trust, a charity run by and for the community, is effectively an independent cinema, outside the big chains. Its location just over the border in Barnet means it is not a challenge to the much newer Haringey Independent Cinema, which features monthly films in the West Green Learning Centre in Tottenham. RaHN supports both these enterprises and invites you join them in East Finchley for an informal meeting - and drink - to celebrate the 100th birthday of this grand old institution. It runs a range of activities, both for this and generally and you can get more
information from www.phoenixcinema.co.uk , or by phoning
020 8444 6789 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting
020 8444 6789 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

Better still go there via Fortis Green Road or East Finchley tube which is opposite.

Today everyone can be a film maker. Record your discussion, meeting, strike, picket line or demonstration and send it to YouTube. But there is no replacement for the social role of the cinema.

You can read more in Steven G Jones : The British Labour Movement and Film 1918- 1939 [1987, 248 pp] ; Richard Porton : Film and the Anarchist Imagination 1999, 314 pp] ; Tom Zaniello : Working Stiffs, Union Maids , Reds and Riffraff an organised guide to films about labor [1996, 295 pp] .

SMOKEY CRUSADE - R M Fox

2010-10-18T10:11:00.003+01:00

Published in 1937 Smokey Crusade by R M Fox is the autobiography of a socialist, anti-imperialist and supporter of the the Irish national revolution whose teenage years were spent in Tottenham. The Radical History Network is republishing those chapters of his autobiography that cover his early years and also his fight against the First World War.

CHAPTER I

THE FIRST DAY

On my fourteenth birthday I left a London elementary school and was flung into industrial life, or, to be exact, I left on Friday and was fourteen on Monday. There was nothing unusual about this, most of the boys at school followed that custom. I do not know what became of any after the school door closed on them and me, except one, whom I met some years later in prison. He recalled himself to my memory. I was then working in the prison kitchen.
"I was at school with you - poke us a bit of pudden through the window!" he muttered urgently from outside. The others called him my college chum.
When I left the red-brick building called the Lancastrian School, whose bell at the end of the street had so often hastened my morning toilet, I was anxious to find work and make my way in the world. I was very vague about how to do this. For although I took a vivid and romantic interest in the world around me I had no definite, practical aim. In any case I had to find a job whatever was open. It was not for me to choose.
I went to see an estate agent who advertised for a boy in his office. He was a most gentlemanly man, with
grey moustache and greying hair, of the sort who deal in desirable residences. He weighed my capabilities closely. I had, I remember, two or three interviews with him, but, in the end, I was beaten. Otherwise I might have been selling desirable residences now.
Next I visited a sweet factory. The manager here had not the manners of the estate agent. He was brusque. But a lasting memory of the works is of a large number of charming girls, in light coloured overalls, each shut in a glass case, like lady cashiers. They were packing sweets behind glass partitions. The manager seemed to resent my coming - even in response to his advertisement. I decided he was not my type, and he made a similar decision.
I did not appreciate the droll side of this at the time. I was frightfully anxious to get work. Not because of financial stringency. My father was a skilled engineering workman - who had several small mechanical inventions to his credit. He had worked for an automatic machine company - the penny-in-the-slot kind - and had invented horse racing, boxing, balloon racing and other machines, which the company had taken over for a few pounds. He was fairly sure of constant employment, the danger was that when he was given a position of authority he would side with the men against the management. This had led to more than one abrupt dismissal. My mother had been headmistress of a school. I had a pleasant home. I was not pressed to find a job, though I was expected to do so.
My father is a man with a craftsman's mind it was characteristic of him that while he would spend nights and weeks and months fiddling with bits of metal, making clay moulds for lead weights, trying patiently to perfect this or the other movement, he was never able to handle the business side of his inventions. What he received from them did not compensate him for the money, time and effort put in. But he got a great joy out of this.
For years my brothers and myself played with a fishing machine which he had constructed, but could not put on the market. By dropping a penny in the slot, a catch holding a small metal fishing rod was released and a magnet at the end of the line could be worked along above the cardboard fish which lay at the bottom of a glass sea. Each fish had a metal ring through its nose. The skill, after catching the fish, consisted in guiding it through grim-looking, jagged, overhanging cork cliffs to the landing-stage, without its being knocked off. This was a good game, but it was spoilt for me by the memory of the hours of desolation I had spent, holding the clay mould, assisting in the adjustment of the various releases, when I would much rather have been reading an interesting book, walking along the streets, mingling with the stream of people or just looking at those gorgeous red sunsets which the dust and smoke of London helped to create in such perfection.
No, it was not because of money but because of pride that I wanted to get work as soon as I left school. I imagined after a week or two that my lack of success meant that I was unemployable. "Fancy!" I thought, "going right through life and never getting a job once!" I saw myself as one of the seedy occupants of the park benches - the yawning dispirited fraternity, turning bleary, hopeless eyes to the dawn.
Near where I lived was the gasworks. During the dinner hour I saw men lounging outside the gate waiting for the works hooter to sound. Many of them wore no collars, their clothes were greasy and untidy. Now, I thought, if I had a job, I would be smart and alert. I would show by my manner that I was worthy of some responsible position - say that of a works manager. I would impress the higher powers - the higher powers were represented to me by a mental picture of a rather stoutish gentleman with a thick watchchain across his waistcoat. When I heard the errand boy at the oil shop boasting that he had filled his pockets with woody pears from a tree which grew in the patch of yard behind his employer's shop, I pitied him for wasting the energy which should have been used to impress his employer. Impatiently I shook my bridle and champed my bit, eager to pull the load.
I had left school three weeks when I tracked down a job at Stour & Loughboroughs, art metal workers. They advertised for a boy, and at five in the morning - they opened at six - I was sitting on the rail opposite the wooden doors of the firm waiting. There were five or six of us perched like sparrows on the rail. It was a foggy, raw morning and we sat in depressed silence. We were rivals. At eight o'clock Mr. Stour decided to see us. The little gate cut into the big wooden one was opened and we went through a yard to a small glass office at the end. Mr. Stour - a middle-aged, bearded man, of benevolent appearance - took us in turn. When my turn came I answered his questions firmly. A spark of understanding flashed between us. He did not need to tell me I was engaged. I had won my first battle in the industrial field. I had found work.
At six o'clock on Saturday morning I began, stepping through the little wooden door, a shade timidly but with a feeling that I had a right to be there. I saw by the door racks of metal-round, square and angle. Farther on, planks of wood were stacked, for, besides making gates and metascroll work, the firm produced wooden revolving shutters. On one side of the yard was the smithy, dark and wide, with glowing fires and the ring of hammers and anvils. Straight ahead, next to the little office, was the machine shop. Here were benches of thick wood equipped with vices. There were a few drilling machines and, at the end, in a railed-off space was a gas engine which supplied the power. The gas engine was started by slowly pushing round an enormous fly-wheel. A few pulls and pushes and its steady beat could be heard all over the works, even in the smithy above the ring of the hammers. Higher up, in a shop reached by a corkscrew iron staircase, was the woodwork department. The morning I started work there was much activity in the wood shop. Big carpenter's planes were wielded and curly shavings went flying until boards looked as smooth and glossy as clothes which have been freshly ironed. Soon a litter of shavings spread over the floor and I was told to take these down to the yard and burn them. Down I clattered with boxes full of shavings and lit a bonfire in the yard. But the foreman of the smithy - poking a pale face out of the murk objected to the smoke blowing into his shop. I was faced with my first interdepartmental dispute. The smithy foreman insisted that I burn the shavings in the fireplace above, the head of the wood department commanded, " Take them below! "
This state of discord was general. Mr. Stour would order me to take metal from the rack. Mr. Loughborough would tell me to pile up his planks. "Why aren't you doing those rods? " Stour demanded. I explained. "I don't care who told you! Do as I say!" Then Mr. Loughborough would come back.
On the first morning it was all very strange. I burnt the shavings - armfuls of them - under difficulties. I sorted nails and screws. The smithy foreman ordered me to tidy the yard. I started out hopefully, making it as neat as I could. At eight-thirty we breakfasted for half an hour, and then worked until one o'clock. The morning seemed terribly long. I had not yet fitted into the mechanism of the shop, and the tasks I was given to keep me going did not really fill up the time. I swept the yard again and again, until not even a stray pin could have escaped my notice. From eleven o'clock there was a long, tedious pause. At twelve I was told to take the hand truck to bring supplies of castings. The handcart was built for strength. It had great heavy cartwheels which aroused the derision of passing draymen. Two of us were needed to manage the load, and my companion was Bert, an impish Cockney boy. At the foundry the handcart was loaded up with rough castings, and we trundled it back. When we reached a back lane Bert let down the handle of the cart with a jerk, and sat on it.
" Wot's the time? " he asked.
" Half-past twelve," I answered.
"We don't want to break nothing," he said.
"We'll get back just on one. We won't do nothing more to-day! "
Bert told me how glad he was that it was Saturday. "The days are that long," he said. "I don't know how I can stick it till Saturday comes round."
That Saturday morning had certainly been long though the patches of waiting had been most tedious. I was used to school hours from nine thirty to twelve and from two to four thirty. And these had been packed with varied interesting activity. To face a whole week of days stretching from six a.m. to six p.m., filled with petty laborious work, suddenly seemed a dreary prospect.

The variously radical life of Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst

2010-09-23T22:26:00.002+01:00

The variously radical life of Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst

5 May 1882 to 27 September 1960.

September 2010 brings the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Sylvia Pankhurst. Her surname is inevitably associated first and foremost with the Suffragette movement, the militant campaign for votes for women in the early 20^th century, and she was certainly active and prominent in that, repeatedly risking health and liberty in the cause. But her determination to act on her principles led her into involvement in many other areas of equal or more interest to radical historians, including syndicalism, anarchism, soviet communism, peace campaigning and anti-fascism.

Socialism

Sylvia Pankhurst grew up in the early stages of the British political labour movement, in a household on close terms with some of its key elements – Fabians, Independent Labour Party (ILP) – and stood by the ideas she absorbed. Eventually she was to take them much further, and in rather different directions. She became a close friend of Keir Hardie, whom she called in an obituary (1915) the ‘greatest human being of our time’.

In 1907 she undertook a tour of parts of Britain, with the aim of making a visual record in paintings of working women; she had given up her studies in art to work for the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Despite her social awareness she was not prepared for the scenes of hardship she found and heard about from the women themselves: in industry - pit-brow, textiles, potteries; on quays packing and gutting North Sea herring; doing agricultural labour in Berwickshire.

A few years later her travels extended to the USA, in the first three months of 1911and 1912, primarily for the suffrage movement but not confined to that. She noted the ‘squalid poverty’ of new immigrants in the ‘nightmare industrialisation’ of Pittsburgh, incurred hostile criticism by agreeing to speak at the Negro University of Tennessee, and Insisted on seeing prisons, as well as Nashville sawmills and a blanket factory. Such observations confirmed her misgivings about single-issue politics and elitism.

Nevertheless in 1913-14 Sylvia the Suffragette was arrested numerous times and suffered the torture of forcible feeding under the notorious ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act. She continued to speak and work for the WSPU, but was against the sort of ‘stealthy act of destruction’ (arson) ordered by her sister Christabel.

East End

Sylvia and her allies took their struggle into a new area and a new phase In 1913, with what became the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), its agenda being to increase support both for women’s right to vote and for socialist ideas, while putting the latter into practice in meaningful ways. Their organisation was democratic and inclusive (men were welcome too, George Lansbury being a close associate). Elections and decisions like choosing the name of the weekly newspaper, The Woman’s Dreadnought, were by majority vote, at meetings held twice-weekly in afternoons and evenings so that more people might attend. The paper sold for a halfpenny but was distributed free when 4 days old. East Enders were encouraged to contribute, and training was arranged for speakers. Propaganda by word was accompanied by deeds of practical help, not all one way. East Enders rallied round not only to assist with the work but to help against the police by improvising a ‘People’s Army’ to defend themselves and fight off arresting officers.

Large demonstrations and rallies were held. In the turbulent year of 1913 Sylvia supported industrial militancy, in which syndicalism was a major element. She spoke at a mass rally in support of victims of police brutality and of a vicious lock-out of striking workers in Ireland, and at an Albert Hall meeting in protest at government treatment of British syndicalist leaders following strikes in coal and transport. Just before the First World War began she went to Ireland to investigate the trouble there.

Also in the last weeks of peace successive approaches and direct action led to a deputation from the EFLS at last being seen by Prime Minister Asquith, who found their presentation ‘moderate & well-reasoned’, and agreed that votes for women must be on the same terms as for men. But any progress towards electoral reform was shortly to be put on hold for the duration, as was the mainstream WSPU campaign (with a war-mongering vengeance).

What She Did in the War

As in internationalist in both feminist and socialist modes Sylvia combatted the rising tide of ultra-patriotism by writing hundreds of letters and articles, leading deputations and organising protest marches. When the conflict became prolonged and its effects more devastating she fought against the deterioration of living standards in the East End and the attacks on civil liberties (conscription, Defence of the Realm). Material help was provided by her team via centres for milk distribution, mother and baby clinics, a toy factory and a cost-price restaurant. At the same time she participated in the villified anti-war movement at home and in Europe. Significant actions were undertaken on behalf soldiers’ and sailors’ dependants and in exposing the unequal availability of food.

In March 1916 the ELFS was rebranded as the Workers' Suffrage Federation (WSF), and its newspaper retitled The Workers' Dreadnought (WD),this being democratically agreed and minuted like all decisions. It published letters exposing what was happening in France, gathering information on executions at the front and accounts of brutal punishments, and carried an eye-witness reported of the 1916 Irish Easter Rising. Siegfried Sassoon’s classic statement against the war was published in WD in July 1917. The premises were raided after a call to troops to desert, and later two issues of the paper were suppressed, in October and November 1917. Those dates will ring a loud Russian bell.

Soviets and Communism

Notwithstanding her self-sacrifice for the sake of the vote, Sylvia had turned away from party politics and belief in parliamentary government and towards other roads to socialism; she declined nomination as a Socialist candidate, observing with reference to the long-awaited Bill that gave women (aged 30) the vote: ‘The profound divergences of opinion on war and peace had been shown to know no sex.’ (She later commented: ‘The woman professional politician is neither more nor less desirable than the man.’) The WSF declared itself for International Socialism and the overthrow of capitalism and the Russian Revolution seemed to offer hope, to the extent that Sylvia was seen as a leading pro-Bolshevik. In May 1919 she appeared at Trafalgar Square with Tom Mann and Guy Aldred, urging soldiers to refuse to go to Russia, and she supported Harry Pollitt’s agitation in the docks to prevent ships being loaded with arms for counter-revolutionary intervention.

Meanwhile she articulated her own vision of soviets as the ‘most democratic form of government yet established’ - this meant ‘social soviets’ to involve the entire working class, in living areas as well as the workplace; thus the soviet principle would be shown to work for women. Delegates would constantly report back and get instructions from those who elected them.

The WSF was the first British group to affiliate with the 3^rd International and Sylvia, by then a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) travelled to its 2^nd Congress in Moscow (with Willie Gallacher of Red Clydeside fame) after some correspondence with Lenin. They differed, ironically, on the point of the ‘parliamentary road’ which Lenin thought should not be excluded as an option for British comrades, but she was for a time happy to accept some of the now-legendary ‘Moscow gold’ in the form of subsidies. On her return one of her most damaging terms of imprisonment ensued, this time for sedition after the publication of an ‘incitement to naval mutiny’, ‘Discontent on the lower deck’, in October 1920.

Sylvia broke with the unified CPGB (at one time there were two or three) over issues of censorship and control of the paper (WD), having criticised Lenin for ‘abandoning the cause of emancipation of the workers’ with the New Economic Policy, and regretting that there was no sign of dictatorship withering in the USSR.

The Anarchist Connection and Anti-Fascism

Earlier, translations of Lenin had been done for the Workers’ Dreadnought by an Italian anarchist writer, researcher and typographer, Silvio Corio, said to have been influenced by Errico Malatesta (see Black Flag No.231, mid-2010, pp. 36-38) and associated with the Italian anarchist exile scene in London. The WD ceased publication in 1924 but the association continued – Silvio and Sylvia lived together for about 30 years. Their son Richard was born in 1927, to a 45-year-old mother determined to remain unmarried and to let her son grow as a ‘free baby’ who ‘should be a free man’.

In the course of the next few years of intensive writing combined with child-rearing, Sylvia became preoccupied with the danger of fascism, highlighted by reports from Italy and contacts among refugees. She was active on behalf of the Women’s International Matteoti Committee which succeeded eventually in securing the release of the murdered socialist deputy’s widow, arranged for aid to be sent to detainees and participated in the 1933 Day of Protest for victims of Italian fascism. Acting against the home-grown variety too, she was hit by a stone at Cable Street (1936).

Mussolini’s attack on Ethiopia brought these concerns to a new pitch of urgency and sparked off a wave of protest calling for sanctions and for the League of Nations to support the Emperor Haile Selassie in resistance. Sylvia started a weekly paper, The New Times and Ethiopia News, which continued until the mid 1950s, proclaiming that ‘the cause of Ethiopia cannot be divided from the cause of international justice’ and exposing the racism inherent in the lack of response: ‘The great betrayal of today is excused by the thought that liberty and justice for an African people do not matter’ (11-7-36).

The Next War and After

‘Remember – everywhere, always, fascism means war.’ – SP. New Times & Ethiopia News, 9-5-36.

In September 1939, the sub-title ‘The National Anti-Fascist Weekly’ was added to the masthead. In contrast to her stance in the First World War Sylvia was now an advocate for complete military victory against the Axis powers, although her own war effort was peaceable and consistent with her earlier work: trying to protect the living standards of working-class families and to get anti-fascists released from internment, assisting the Jewish Refugees Committee. She received death threats and was given police protection, while Silvio Corio broadcast a call to Italian workers on the BBC. Not that they had gone over to the side of the authorities: Sylvia kept up her criticism of British policy after the Italians were got out of Ethiopia in 1941, seeing a need for its ‘liberation from its liberators’. In 1942 she visited the country, where she was welcomed with honours and found a street in Addis Ababa named after her.

Her continuing commitment to the idea of a thriving independent Ethiopia made her something of a proxy-patriot-in-exile, if not a selective imperialist, after the war – and kept her on the Foreign Office radar as a permanent irritant, so not all bad. She was still opposed to conscription and colonialism, and declared ‘Women’s great work today is peace. And they are not doing it.’ The last issue of the New Times appeared in May 1956; in July 1956, two and a half years after Silvio’s death, Sylvia and their son left for a new life in Ethiopia. Provided with a comfortable household, she settled in and embarked on yet another programme of fund-raising and organising to improve conditions, especially in relation to health and medicine, until her death.

There are worse ways to sell out, if her end-of-life be so considered. Her life as a whole provides many good reasons why she should be remembered.

L.W.

September 2010

Sources for the above

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WpankhurstS.htm (cites June Hannam, ‘Pankhurst, (Estelle) Sylvia (1882-1960)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004). A helpful summary but a few details are not quite right. Calls Corio ‘socialist’.
Martin Pugh, The Pankhursts. London, Allen Lane, 2001. Plenty of useful information and contextualisation but not totally at ease with SP’s character and politics. Calls Malatesta ‘Socialist’.

Shirley Harrison, Sylvia Pankhurst: A Crusading Life, 1882-1960. London, Aurum Press 2003. Comprehensive treatment using an extensive range of sources, combining personal and political factors to do justice to its subject.

More Books about S.P.

Shirley Harrison, Nic Watts. Sylvia Pankhurst, Citizen of the World. Hornbeam 2009. 48pp.

Mary Davis. Sylvia Pankhurst: A life in radical politics. Pluto Press 1999. 176pp.

Barbara Winslow. Sylvia Pankhurst – Sexual politics and political activism. UCL Press 1996 268pp.

Patricia W Romero. E. Sylvia Pankhurst: Portrait of a Radical. Yale U P 1987. 334pp.

Some Books by S.P. (E. Sylvia Pankhurst)

The Suffragette (1911)

India and the Earthly Paradise (Bombay 1926)

Save the Mothers (1930)

The Suffragette Movement (1931)

The Home Front (1931; Virago reprint 1977)

Ethiopia: A Cultural History (1955)

Tottenham 100 years ago; R M Fox's autobiography

2010-09-23T22:03:00.002+01:00

Wednesday 13 October at 8 pm

Meetings venue; The Postmen's Office; at the North London Community House, 22 Moorefield Road, London, N17 (The old Post Office). The venue is just around the corner from Bruce Grove British Rail Station, where Bruce Grove meets the High Road in Tottenham. Wheelchair accessible. Any High Road bus is OK

Richard Michael Fox - more commonly known as R M Fox - was brought up in Tottenham and went on to become an 'Influential Irish Historian'. We shall be examining his autobiography 'Smokey Crusade'. R M Fox lived in Bruce Castle Road, attended the Lancastrian primary school on the Roundway, N17, and worked in several local factories, mainly in the Tottenham Marshes area; and they were 'marshes' in those days. His life can be divided into sections
* Working in Tottenham area factories up to 1912;
* Working around London and active in the socialist and anti-war movement pre-WW1;
* Anti-war work after 1914, street corner meetings, court martial and prison, released 1919;
* Trade union student at Ruskin College, Oxford, visits to Russia, Germany and Ireland, as a journalist, the move to Ireland, marriage, and a career as writer and academic.

We are concerned with his first 30 years and can look at three main themes in his book:
1.    Industrial work. He slaved away for some years in various small plants then some big, organised ones. The original JAP motor cycle engine which eventually moved to Northumberland Park Road, then a sweat-shop on the marshes and lastly in a massive plant just over the border into Walthamstow. He worked as a machine operator, often on shifts and subject to the cut backs and the sack. This was the age of Taylorism as described in the mis-titled 'Sabotage', (see Brown below in further reading). Fox read as he could and later wrote a book on 'Factory Echoes'. Outside work he was become active socialist and he was a keen union member. Later, he also lived and worked for a period in Woolwich.

2.    Anti-war work. He was active in the North London Herald League, described by Ken Weller in his book 'Don't be a soldier' (see below). This was mainly street work, there were dozens of open air pitches where speakers entertained the passers-by. Finsbury Park was a key site with rotations of speakers. Socialists, strikers, anti-war members harangued the audiences and Fox was a dab hand at this work The NLHL had its offices in Green Lanes, Harringay, near what was to become the old Unison offices. He fought off conscription (military tribunal at the old Town Hall on The Green). Later he went to prison at Wormwood Scrubs and Brixton and took part in the hunger strike. The brutality and ill treatment of the prisoners was notorious and marked him for life.
3.    From early on he was around the Socialist Party of Great Britain (Barltrop see below). He devoured Marx and Engels and graduated onto the Independent Labour Party. Three years at Ruskin College impressed him and opened a career as a writer. He went to Russia but his account is more travelogue than analysis. He found a home in the Irish national liberation struggle and settled in as the movement divided into Free Staters and nationalist revolutionaries. His career in Ireland is another, and longer, tale.

'Smokey Crusade' though it s now unavailable except through the British Library, was for many years a crucial text among the left in Britain. Older members recall parts of it almost as their own story, and for those of us in north east London, his career is of special interest. He wrote many books on Ireland as well as his earlier industrial articles. Though he did not understand the degeneration of the first workers' state, he was a conscientious and active socialist, as he saw it, all his life. We can celebrate his development from quite ordinary beginnings. (Some sections of this autobiograpphy will be published on this blog - radicalhistorynetwork.blogspot.com)

Further Reading
R M Fox, Smokey Crusade, 1937
Geoff Brown, Sabotage: a study in industrial conflict, 1977
Peter Beresford Ellis, A History of the Irish Working Class,1985
Ken Weller, Don't be a Soldier - the radical anti war movement in North London 1914-1918, 1985
Robert Barltrop, The Monument - the story of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 1975

Radical History Network at the Anarchist Bookfair - 23 October

2010-09-23T21:15:00.002+01:00

3pm to 3.50pm - Room EB2

Discovering hidden history - Radical History at the Anarchist Bookfair

Those who have seized ownership and control of the resources of society are also very keen to control what goes on in our heads, so a big part of radical history's agenda is finding examples of resistance that the authorities have kept hidden. In the meeting we look at two examples (1) Joe Jacobs who lived in the East End of London, a political activist and organiser for 40 years, who had fought Moseley's fascists in 1936. And (2) Walter Conway, who from humble beginnings, was the main organiser for hospital medical services for ordinary people in Tredegar, South Wales, before the advent of the National Health Service.

MEETING - RaHN - Autumn Programme

2010-09-05T15:20:00.000+01:00

To all our friends and supporters RaHN is holding a meeting to organise our Autumn programme. 8pm Wednesday 8 September at the Tollgate Pub, Turnpike Lane, near Turnpike Lane Tube Station. Come along with your ideas.