Kronstadt uprising - 100 years on

Email received recently which may be of interest:

March 20-21, 2021: A two-day online conference to commemorate the Kronstadt Commune of March 1921.

We invite you to “Kronstadt as Revolutionary Utopia: 1921-2021 and Beyond,” an international convergence to remember history’s repressed revolutionary hopes and explore the “living past” struggle of authoritarianism vs. humanism.

Conference site:     https://kronstadt2021.wordpress.com/

(Endorsed by Institute for Anarchist Studies, Workers Solidarity Alliance, The Commoner, La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology, Dialectical Social Ecology, Black Rose Books).

Radical History Podcasts

The proliferation of podcasts in recent years is an interesting trend that probably tells us something about the eagerness of radicals (and egotistical self-promoters) to grasp the opportunities that technological developments provide. A previous RaHN meeting looked at the tradition of radical pamphleteering and self-publishing that followed the invention of the printing press.

Arguably podcasts are a manifestation of this tradition, but with radio / broadcast media - a hugely more accessible way of spreading the word than pirate radio...

Anyway, below is a rundown of radical history podcasts I have enjoyed. If you can recommend others, please leave a comment below. I am especially interested in hearing about black history or feminist history podcasts, but I am sure there are lots of others.

Working Class History

Engaging documentation of working class struggles around the world, often including interviews with participants. For example the story of the Columbia Eagle Mutiny (about the hijacking of a ship full of napalm by two anti-war American sailors during the Vietnam war) features extensive reflections by one of the mutineers.

Closer to home there are episodes on The Angry Brigade (with John Barker), women in the Miners' Strike, The Peterloo Masscare (with Mike Leigh) and the Asian Youth Movements in Bradford.

Working Class History is now up to 50 episodes and has various related projects including a book and a spin off podcast on working class literature.

Working Class History website.

The Log Books

This podcast has a much narrower scope - it is based on the logbooks of calls made to London's Lesbian and Gay Switchboard from the 1974 onwards. The entries are brought to life by the presenters - and by contributions from many Switchboard volunteers past and present.

It's an incredibly effective way of telling the story of the resilience and tenacity of LGBT+ people in the UK in the late 20th Century. The entertaining tales of odd things that callers have asked about is artfully intertwined with very affecting tales of coming out, or everyday prejudice. Ordinary and extraordinary lives are the foreground to larger societal issues like the HIV and AIDS epidemic or homophobic legislation including Section 28.

The Log Books is a great podcast to recommend to friends who enjoyed the recent Channel 4 drama "It's A Sin" which covers the same era and issues.

The Log Books on Apple Podcasts.

The Log Books on Acast.

Bed Of Lies

One of the roles of radical historians is to draw links between past and present struggles. But sometimes those links are forced upon us. Bed of Lies is a podcast about the struggle of women activists who were deceived into relationships with undercover policemen (Spycops). It is, surprisingly, produced by The Daily Telegraph, but don't let that put you off.

The narrative is driven by the women and their struggle for justice. The scale of the infiltration of activist groups and the trauma faced by its victims can be quite bewildering - I think the best thing about Bed of Lies is the way that it draws together the various strands whilst retaining the human stories underpinning it all.

Bed of Lies at the Daily Telegraph. (linking there must be a first for this blog!)

Police Spies Out of Lives - a campaigning group to support the legal actions, and participation in the Public Inquiry into Undercover Policing, by women affected by long term intimate relationships with undercover police officers who were infiltrating environmental and social justice campaign groups.

History Workshop

History Workshop Journal was founded by Marxist historian Raphael Samuel and others in the 1970s. They now have an occasional podcast.

Topics are wide-ranging but can tend a little too much towards the academic for my personal tastes. Having said that, I do categorically recommend two episodes which are configured as walking tours of London - one on Marx's various haunts in the city and one on the irascible anarchist and atheist Dan Chatterton.

History Workshop website.

History Workshop at Apple Podcasts.

Bad Gays

There is a natural tendency for radical history to tell the heroic stories of struggles - and strugglers - that have been obscured by the conventional version of events. Bad Gays turns this on its head by focussing on complete wrong 'uns - who happen to be gay. Each episode covers the life of one person.

In parallel to this there are fascinating insights into "what being gay" (or rather, experiencing same sex attraction) might have meant at various points in history.

The Bad Gays universe is lavishly diverse - colonialist statue Cecil Rhodes brushes up against entertainers like Liberace and Morrissey. Objectively terrible people like Ronnie Kray or nazi-skinhead Nicky Crane are discussed alongside more complex individuals like Radclyffe Hall and John Maynard Keynes. 

Each episode concludes with two simple questions that yield interesting discussions between the hosts: Was this person gay? Was this person bad?

Bad Gays website.

Ken Weller 1935-2021

A previous post on this blog celebrated Ken Weller's 80th birthday and the influence he had on us. So we were greatly saddened to hear of his death recently, but also amused by this absurd press cutting posted on Twitter by Chris Spannos:

A more sensitive obituary has been posted by Nick Heath (a former RaHN speaker) at the Anarchist Communist Group's site.

An archive of Ken's writing, including his essential Don't be a Soldier! The Radical Anti-war Movement in North London, 1914-18 is available at Libcom.

Kate Sharpley Library were inspired by Ken's passing to post some thoughts on Don't be a Soldier.

A Ken Weller reader is apparently being published in due course by PM Press.

The Great Post Office Strike of 1971

 

This month is the 50th anniversary of the Great Post Office Strike of 1971. It is said that it was the longest mass strike (200,000 workers, for 44 days) since the 1926 General Strike. Although it was ultimately unsuccessful/sold out, it led to decades of greater shop-floor self-organisation and militancy in sorting offices..

2 accounts by ex-postal workers can be read here:

https://libcom.org/history/sorting-out-postal-strike-1971-joe-jacobs

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2021-02-04/here-lies-body-postman-sid-he-could-not-exist-fourteen-quid-great-post-office

Liz Willis

Liz Willis (born Elizabeth Ann Smith) has died in hospital in London with family around her, age 72, following diagnosis of pancreatic cancer last year.

Liz was born in Stornoway, daughter of Margaret (Peggy Flett) and Calum ‘Safety’ Smith, joined four years later by sister Alison. Her early childhood is recollected as a time of street games and unsupervised freedom on long summer days and it was this vision of Stornoway that stayed with her in later years. Her parents, large extended family, the wild landscape and stifling social mores of the island provided an ongoing source of inspiration and rebellion. An outstanding and prize-winning student, she developed a facility for languages and history in particular. The family moved to Dingwall in 1959, where younger sister Marjory arrived just as Liz was preparing to go to Aberdeen University to study history in 1964 at age 16.

It was in Aberdeen that her interest in politics crystallised, as she became an active member of Youth CND and left-wing societies, attending regular meetings and hops. She developed her lifelong internationalist, libertarian socialist outlook, joining Faslane protests, a peace march to Paris, and hitch-hiking across Europe to an anarchist camp in Italy in the summer of 1967. After attaining her MA in History, she chose Belfast to pursue a course in library studies, because it "seemed like an interesting place to be in 1968" and found herself on her second day in the province helping Bernadette Devlin up during a civil rights march. It was in this heady atmosphere that she met her future husband, Roy Willis. They married in 1969 and Janetta was born in 1970.

As the political situation deteriorated, the young family moved to London, where Mark was born in 1972. Roy’s social work course took them to Muirhouse housing scheme in Edinburgh, where Liz found time to get involved with tenants’ rights and demos in support of the miners and other causes. Returning to London in 1974, they settled in the borough of Ealing, where she spent the majority of her life. She found her political home in the shape of Solidarity for Workers’ Power, remaining an active member until its demise in 1992. Amongst her many contributions was the pamphlet ‘Women in the Spanish Revolution’, which remains a key text on the subject.

While looking after young children she stacked shelves in Sainsbury’s before finding a position at the Medical Research Council library at Hammersmith Hospital. Some of her most treasured memories were family holidays in Europe, allowing her to practice her proficiency in several languages and absorb her interest in the history and culture of places that she could still recollect clearly 40 years later. Her thirst for knowledge continued as she collected four diplomas and her activism was undimmed as she took on new causes such as the Polish Solidarnosc movement and provided support to an Iranian refugee friend. In the 90s, divorce and grown-up children allowed her more time to concentrate on her writing, research and book reviews, joining Medact’s Medicine, Conflict and Survival journal editorial board in 1991, which she served on until her final year, and for which she wrote well over 100 items. She also participated in the London Socialist historians’ group, Anarchist Research Group and other radical history forums. As grandchildren appeared in the new century, she proved to be a devoted grandmother, from knitting baby clothes to excavating archive materials to help them in their studies.

She started the ‘Smothpubs’ blogspot in 2011, (so named after a mix-up when helping police with their enquiries), with articles on a range of subjects including local and family history and including a mine of material on conscientious objectors. When diagnosed with cancer last year, she carried on through chemotherapy and a clinical trial, taking it as an opportunity to learn about the latest medical research and the state of the NHS, for which she was always committed but for most of her life never had much cause to use. She was appreciative of the NHS staff’s efforts to treat and support her in this time. Over the past year living in Walthamstow, she showed little sign of slowing down, continuing her trips to the British Library, Housmans bookshop and local libraries. She continued to collect material for her blog and the Radical History Network blogspot, and even found time to do translation work for an anarchist research project and take part in the E17 Art Trail. She managed regular trips to Scotland, including a flying visit to Stornoway to see her uncle Donald Smith’s retrospective exhibition and retrace childhood footsteps. It was only in the last month or so that the disease took hold, but she remained a ‘free rebel spirit’ to the end.

Liz Willis (21.10.47-10.11.19)