Meeting Report, Wednesday 8th May, 2013

Radical History Network of North East London

‘EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE’: General Strikes, Solidarity Strikes and Industrial Solidarity

“The general strike is a revolution which is everywhere and nowhere”  (Fernand Pelloutier)

 

The 1926 General Strike in the UK  [By Alex - Full report of presentation available]

 

In May 1926 2 million workers joined the only General Strike Britain has ever seen. It lasted nine days, before being called off by the people who had called it – the General Council of the Trades Union Congress. The TUC leadership had unwillingly called the Strike, in support of a million miners who had been locked out of the pits until they accepted drastic wage cuts. The General Council had been forced into action by the overwhelming class feeling of the members of the unions, who both strongly supported the miners and believed a General Strike to be in their own interests in the face of an economic assault from the bosses and the government.

 

The Strike was in most cases rock solid: increasing numbers of workers were walking out, and towards its end it was spreading into other industries not officially on strike. But the government was very well prepared, having planned in advance - ensuring the amassing of coal stocks to make sure the miners could be defeated and industry could keep going, recruiting volunteer strike-breakers ahead of time, and setting up networks to organise nationally and locally.

 

But, afraid of the possibilities of workers escaping their control, and class warfare overflowing their very limited aims, the TUC bureaucrats tried hard to avoid the Strike, attempted to hamstring strikers on the ground from any autonomous action, negotiated throughout with the government and finally called the strike off, claiming they’d gained concessions, even though none had been won. Although 100,000 more workers came out on the day following the ending of the Strike than had previously been called out, very quickly most workers returned to work, facing worsening pay and conditions from employers made bold by the defeat – and leaving the miners to fight alone for six months until they were forced to give in and accept wage reductions. This sellout did leave a powerful legacy of bitterness. At the time, and ever since, the TUC leadership has been blamed for betraying the General Strike, and the miners.

 

Many on the left, including ourselves, obsess on the myth of May 1926 as some kind of potential revolutionary situation, thwarted by union leaders holding back class struggle. But maybe it wasn’t: few at the TIME saw it as more than an (admittedly huge) industrial dispute, limited to support for the miners. It’s possible that it was doomed to failure, given the conditions prevalent at the time. Although the situation may have contained a lot of ‘revolutionary potential’, this depended on the willingness, confidence and numbers of working class people prepared to go beyond the trade union structures when it became necessary. Whatever bitterness and anger at the selling out of the miners may have existed (and it was widespread), there was no critical mass of people able to translate it into maintaining or extending the Strike.

 

Recent General Strikes in Spain (and generally) [By Millie - Full report of presentation available]

 

Historically there have been two main ways general strikes have come about: They have been national events, pre-announced, or they have erupted, usually on a regional or city-wide basis… The latter type of general strike often starts in one industry, and spreads; it is more often spontaneous or organized from below while the first is more likely to be more top down. Quite often the second kind is provoked by some act of brutality, oppression or repression by the authorities or employers… Most of the city-wide or regional general strikes did have in common that they occurred at a time of general class struggle, upsurge of strikes, etc, they didn’t spring up out of nowhere…

 

In Spain, you often get small general strikes in various regions or cities; for example in Puerto Real, a strike in a car factory grew into a general strike in the whole region. More recently the Asturias miners’ strike sparked a one-day general strike. Spain really loves its General Strikes… There have been 3 there since the start of the current financial crisis in 2008, but before that, just in the post-Franco era, they’ve taken place in 1981, 1985, 1988, 1992, 1994, 2002, 2003, 2010.

 

Most of these have been called in response to labour laws, pension ‘reform’ or dole ‘reform’… Interestingly there have been two main exceptions, having more political than economic aims: the first was called against the attempted military coup in 1981, the second against Spain’s involvement in the Iraq war in 2003. [NB, remembering that the first echoes the general strike and popular mobilisation against the fascist coup of 1936 that launched the Spanish Civil War]. The latter strike saw a lot of civil disobedience, mass opposition – the strike was very much centred in community organising.

 

More specifically, the one day general strikes of the last three years have all been called ‘from the top’ by the two large union confederations, the UGT and the CCOO. But on the day, they feature a lot of mass grassroots activity.

 

OPEN DISCUSSION   These are points that came up in the discussion.

 

• It’s true that post-World War 1 there was a near-revolutionary situation, across Europe there were revolutions and uprisings, and a crisis in Britain. Does today suggest a re-run of 1926? Capitalism has changed a lot structurally, the industrial landscape has altered. There have also been huge changes in class composition, sociological changes, especially increasing atomization; people’s relationship to work and hence the focus on workplace struggles is v. different.

 

• Is there a way at approaching a pan-European General Strike? The European TUC structure poses some problems…

 

• What about a General Strike in the future? What factors will cause it?

 

• The General strike is a means to an end – we need also to think about strikes as occupations, sit ins, there is a long tradition of this in some places. How can we help to bring it about?

 

• Interesting that the first speaker linked William Benbow and Rosa Luxemburg. Benbow was part of the movement for reform that was betrayed by the 1832 Reform Act. Remember that at this time trade unionism was still illegal, trade unionists could be transported to the penal colonies. [Typist’s note: I think that the Combination Acts that banned trade unions or workplace organising had in fact been repealed a few years before in 1825, though it’s true that many aspects of organising could get you arrested, the Tolpuddle Martyrs for instance were specifically transported for swearing oaths when joining the union]. Benbow’s Grand National Holiday: in discussions around this idea, the question of ‘how will we eat?’ came up, and Benbow said “There’s sheep on a thousand hills”, i.e. let’s take everything from the ruling class. But recognizing that this meant civil war.  Rosa Luxemburg also saw things clearly – she made a point that a general strike has to involve unorganized workers – in fact she went further and stated that the struggles of previously unorganized workers would be a factor giving a mass strike real force and potential to transcend trade unionism.

 

• Has there ever been an organic general strike that has grown out of struggles at the grassroots? Yes, as an example, 1877 was given, a nationwide US strike wave sparked by one train strike. This movement arose in a period of intense social change following the US Civil War, in the 1870s many advances and opportunities were in the process of being closed down and restricted, and there was a large collective response. City-wide strikes (as mentioned earlier) were often sparked by dispute in one industry and spread outward. Even a shop assistants’ strike launched a General Strike in 1905. The 1905 Russian revolution to some extent was made up of an organic general strike, growing out of city strikes arising from immediate demands or grievances. For instance the sacking of two workers in the Putilov works in St Petersburg spiraled into a general strike in that city, and so on…

 

• Now, though, conditions are much less favourable. We’ve seen changes in work, i.e. most people being in temporary or insecure jobs, the [worse than] decimation of many staple industries, the huge decline in union membership, and a reduction in community, solidarity, the possibility of people standing together. These changes haven’t come about coincidentally, they have been imposed partly because of previous waves of militancy. It is important to recognize the changes we face now, but also useful to discuss and remember these struggles from the past, and learn as much as we can. It was suggested we can’t just build solidarity around workplaces any more, people don’t work in the same way, big factories etc .with a community around where most people work, are a thing mostly of the past for the UK and western Europe at least… Struggles outside work have risen in importance for many.

 

• It’s also true that many people aren’t happy to join in strikes that aren’t sanctioned by official structures.

 

• But expansion of strikes often takes place outside work now. People who aren’t necessarily on strike can participate in other ways. “Anything where people feel they can connect.” E.g. in Spain, Occupy have launched a campaign of local organising, “Occupy to the barrios”, rather than focusing on central points. [Typist: interestingly we had the same discussion in Reclaim the Streets in 1998-9, though those of us who argued that RTS should be concentrating on local struggles rather than building for big spectacular one-offs lost the argument then. Though that did lead to June 18^th 1999, which some people rate highly. Hey ho.]

 

• How does industrial action spread? During the 1984-5 miners’ strike, there was massive support and solidarity but no other strike action in support.

• Neighbourhood level is the key to organising, local groups and so on, focusing on immediate action. The poll tax showed it was possible… There’s a need for groups of workers getting together locally.

 

• There really is no point in whingeing about the TUC, unions etc, we should just be organising for ourselves.

 

Here the discussion on the night ended… obviously we should be continuing to debate these issues as part of our movements etc…

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

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

Spanish Revolution Meeting Report

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

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

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, and 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, and small workshops tothe 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 society without repression by capitalism or its state. This allows maximum freedom for the individual and a fair permanent 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 (online 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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Women in the Spanish Revolution by Liz Willis

Originally published by the London Solidarity group in 1975 as Pamphlet No.48
This text utilised the version at http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/disband/solidarity/womenSpain.html (accessed 29/7/10) with some changes to details of formatting and numerous corrections to misprints/mis-scans which appear on the Internet – and, in a few cases, in earlier editions.

 

Introduction
In a way, it is clearly artificial to try to isolate the role of women in any series of historical events. There are reasons, however, why the attempt should still be made from time to time; for one thing it can be assumed that when historians write about "people" or "workers" they mean women to anything like the same extent as men. It is only recently that the history of women has begun to be studied with the attention appropriate to women's significance - constituting as we do approximately half of society at all levels. (1)

In their magnum opus The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain (Faber & Faber, 1972), Pierre Broué and Emile Témime state that the participation of women in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 was massive and general, and take this as an index of how deep the revolution went. Unfortunately, details of this aspect are scarce in their book elsewhere, but the sources do allow some kind of picture to be pieced together. In the process of examining how women struggled, what they achieved, and how their consciousness developed in a period of intensified social change, we can expect to touch on most facets of what was going on. Any conclusions that emerge should have relevance for libertarians in general as well as for the present-day women's movement.

Background
Conditions of life for Spanish women prior to 1936 were oppressive and repressive in the extreme. Work was hard, long and poorly paid (2), and when improvements did occur they were not always entirely beneficial to women. Figures from the Instituto de Reformas Sociales (quoted in S.G.Payne, The Spanish Revolution, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970), show that in the decade 1913-22, men's wages increased by 107.1% and women's by only 67.9%, while prices rose by 93%. When the 1931 Republic established the eight-hour day for agricultural labourers, this meant, according to a peasant in Seville Prison who talked to Arthur Koestler, that the men could go to meetings and gossip, while their wives could return home at 5 p.m., prepare the meal, and see to the children's clothes.

Minimal reforms including maternity compensation had, however, been introduced, and featured in the aims of most progressive groups. Politically, the Republican Constitution of 1931 brought-votes for both sexes at 23, a radical departure for the time and place. At first, it has been said (by Alvarez del Vayo in Freedom's Battle), a woman's vote merely doubled the power of her husband or confessor. But the situation was being modified. The Republic brought measures of education and secularisation, including provision for divorce if "just cause" were shown. Despite the weight of internalised inferiority under which they must have laboured, many women were starting to involve themselves actively in politics. (3)

On the libertarian side, the strong anarchist movement incorporated a certain awareness of the necessity to envisage changed relationships between people. For its adherents, the abolition of legal marriage at least was on the agenda. It is more difficult to assess to what extent their personal lives embodied a transformation in attitudes, but it seems that the particular problems of women were not a priority concern. (4)

In fact they were not much of a priority with anyone. Margarita Nelkin, a Socialist who was to become a deputy in the Cortes, wrote about The Social Condition of Women in Spain (Barcelona, 1922) and Women in the Cortes (Madrid, 1931); there was a movement for women's rights in the early twenties, but it had a reformist and careerist orientation, based on women in the professions. For anarchists, a reformist, minimal or transitional programme was more or less out. The focus was on thoroughgoing social revolution. Unfortunately, any theoretical discussion of what such a revolution might involve was often out too, in favour of an assumption that things would work out spontaneously in the best possible way.