Throughout the centuries that have fled since man crawled forth from his cave an ignorant savage, there has been some form of organized government under which somebody has been oppressed. During all these unknown ages the people have had but little voice in the affairs of nations. For a long time the source of authority was not in this world at all. The king sat on his throne by the will of god, and therefore was not accountable to the people for his acts. He commanded — the people obeyed. He was lord of their bodies, and his partner, the priest, was master of their souls. The government of earth was a duplicate of the "kingdom of heaven." God was the supreme despot above, the king was his faithful imitator below. Between the heavenly king and the earthly king the people were very much like the fellow who got caught between the devil and the deep sea. That is to say, if they rebelled against the one, they were confronted by the agents of the other, and the argument in both cases was the same — force.
But in the course of human progress the people became more enlightened, and the divinity of kings as the basis of government had to go. But government itself remained, and under it the people were enslaved. But government — this monster of the ages — that has been guilty of every possible crime, has been compelled to change its garb, to put on a new mask, in order to keep the people in subjection, otherwise they would have rid themselves of it long ago. But, while government has changed its garb — its form — it never has changed in principle, because, like the christian god, government is the same in principle yesterday, to-morrow and forever.
There are but two theories upon which government can be based. One is the divine right of kings, the other is the natural right of majority rule. In this country at least, no one will maintain the divine right of kingcraft. So we have only to notice the majority rule fallacy.
Admitting that the will of the majority does, in some mysterious way, prevail, (which is not true) the question arises, by what right does it rule? When two men meet, one man on the highway, have they, because of their superior number, the right to dispose of his life or his property? If A. has no right to control B. when acting as a single individual, does he acquire this right by combining with C.? Let those who advocate government meet this question fairly. Let them candidly admit that ten men when combined possess rights which belong to none of them as individuals. That is the logic of majority rule. Let them deny this proposition, and their whole case is gone "like the baseless fabric of a schoolboy's dream."
We have had coercion enough. For ages man has ruled with sword and bayonet, with bars and chains. For many centuries the strong hand of power has crushed the liberties of the people, has soaked the soil with human blood, has cast the sable shadow of oppression over the earth, and now are we not civilized enough to dispense with it forever? What blessings does government confer?
Has it not ever been an engine of oppression in the hands of the few? Is it not in its very nature antagonistic to freedom, and can we expect it to defend that which it destroys? For many centuries government has held sway, and liberty has been driven from among men. Let us give liberty control.
Liberty does not bring confusion, it brings peace. Under government the nations are armed constantly for war. The state thrives on war and bloodshed. Its chief prop is the sword. It lives only by violence. Take from it the power of its arms, and it will die a natural death.
The government of man by man is essentially tyrannical. It is this infernal doctrine that has painted on the sable canvas of the past the wildest scenes of rapine and murder. Let us away with it.
Ross Winn.
The Rebel January 1896 (An anarchist-Communist journal devoted to the solution of the labor question)
RETRACING THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF THE FAI
The 25 November 2002 edition of La Campana reported: "The Bulletin of the Education Union of the CNT of Castile reports that at the end of this month there is to be a Historical Symposium in Guadalajara on the 75th anniversary of the FAI."
The Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) was set up in Valencia in 1927 with the primary aim of recording the activities of anarchism in Spain, with its light and shadows, and reflecting upon the causes of its peculiar character and obvious prominence in the nations' history over the past two hundred years. The Guadalajara Social History Group and The Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo decided to convene a further gathering to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the FAI.
That gathering was held on 29 and 30 November and on 1 December 2002 the topic would be The Roots of Anarchism in Spain and on the Saturday, Organised Anarchism in Spain: the Sunday would be given over to Anarchism's Achievements in Spain.
The topics cited above have prompted me to retrace the historical roots of the FAI.
In the 1920s Spanish anarchists and CNT personnel were scattered across France and in Lisbon.
The dictator Primo de Rivera's police harried opponents "out of his kingdom" and could rely upon the help of Portuguese authorities in arresting and handing over progressive-minded folk to the Spanish government!
The quickest solution was to get over the border and flee to Portugal and France. Living in the Portuguese capital were Manuel Pérez,(1) the doctor and anarchist Pedro Vallina, their families and a number of their co-religionists. With his family, Perez had been given a haven on the premises of the Lisbon cabinet-makers' union. (2)
Meetings between anarchists and militants of the Spanish CNT and Portuguese CGT in Lisbon were frequent and there was a recurrent theme: How to stand up to the Portuguese and Spanish governments' concerted harassment of libertarians. In the face of this, Manuel Joaquim de Sousa proposed that an all-Iberian resistance and action body be set up, made up of Spanish and Portuguese militants, to defend themselves from the authorities in both countries and to facilitate propaganda and mutual aid.
This was quickly taken up and in 1923 there was a Conference of the Workers' Organisations of Portugal and Spain in the city of Évora. At this gathering of Iberian libertarian workers, Manuel Joaquim de Sousa, a very experienced and highly cultivated Portuguese militant formally moved for the first time that the FAI be established. The physician Pedro Vallina, once he had been discovered by the Lisbon police, fled to France with his family. Manuel Perez had to stay put and with the Spaniards J. Ferrer Alvalada and Sebasti…n Clar…, represented the CNT and Spanish anarchist movement at the Évora Conference and, on behalf of these organisations, backed the plan put forward by Manuel Joaquim de Sousa (from the UAP — Portuguese Anarchist Union) and Jose da Silva Santos Arranha (from the Portuguese CGT).
This was in the Portuguese city of Évora in 1923 and the scheme was proposed by Manuel Joaquim de Sousa of Portugal and backed by THREE Spanish comrades!
So the embryonic FAI was born EIGHTY years ago and had two main aims: to marry the efforts of the militants of Spain and France for the purpose of spreading anarchism in the Iberian Peninsula and replying on an equal basis to the actions of the police and governments of both countries.
Manuel Perez wholeheartedly backed the idea and Manuel Joaquim de Sousa was charged with producing a final draft of the proposal and presenting it to the Marseilles congress in May 1926, at which 30 delegates from the French, Spanish and Italian-American groups were present, alongside Armando Borghi, attending in his capacity as IWA delegate.
At this congress, Manuel Joaquim de Sousa represented the Portuguese CGT and Manuel Perez (by then living in France) the Portuguese Anarchist Union-UAP. The following items were discussed and approved: a) The organisation of anarchist forces in Spain and France b) organisational misunderstandings between comrades c) NON-recognition of the so-called Revolutionary Alliance that called for liaison with politicians d) the strengthening of the Prisoners' Aid Committee and scrutiny of the scheme drawn up by Manuel Joaquim de Sousa and establishing the FAI: "1. Congress agrees to establish the Iberian Anarchist Federation and reports this resolution to the Portuguese Anarchist Union. 2. Given the abnormal conditions in force in Spain, the liaison COMMITTEE will be based in Lisbon. 3. Its establishment will be entrusted to the Portuguese Anarchist Union, the latter being at liberty to invite support and cooperation from the Spanish anarchists residing in that location. 4. Said committee may, whenever it deems appropriate, summon an Iberian Congress to finalise said Federation. 5. That this committee will operate on a provisional basis until such time as the Congress is held. 6. The Spanish anarchists are to be consulted upon implementation of these resolutions." Plus: "A delegate representing the Spanish anarchists will attend the forthcoming Portuguese Anarchist Union." (3)
The UAP congress was then scheduled for 20 June 1926 in the Portuguese capital, but on 28 May (23 days ahead of its scheduled opening) a military coup in Portugal overthrew the democratic government and "blocked the way" to the Portuguese and Spanish anarchists. This unexpected development led those anarchists from both countries committed to the "venture" (since the holding of a congress in Portugal or in Spain had now been rendered impossible), held a clandestine meeting in Valencia on 25 July 1927. The UAP sent its general secretary Francisco Quintal to represent it. The Portuguese CGT was represented by Germinal de Sousa (the son of the first proposal to found an FAI — Manuel Joaquim de Sousa) who was living in Spain at the time as a refugee.
At the end of the meeting the Portuguese Germinal de Sousa was proposed and approved for the position of general secretary of the FAI, taking over from the committee set up in Marseilles.
On 30 and 31 October 1931, Portuguese and Spanish delegates attended a clandestine "National FAI Plenum" and a plenum of regionals in Madrid. Members of the FARP-FAI also attended the Madrid plenum on 31 January and 1 February 1936. (4)
In spite of the indelible indications that the FAI was and is historically an all-Iberian organisation — its very name makes this plain — many Spaniards regard this anarchist body as essentially Spanish.
In the memoirs (unpublished and I have a copy of the letter in my possession) that he forwarded from Rio de Janeiro on 23 October 1948 "To the FAI National Liaison Committee", Manuel Perez puts paid to some of the confusion that existed (and still exists) in the minds of Spanish and other militants!
At one point, he states: "I ought to say that back in 1923 when the Seville-based CNT national committee, of which I was a member, held a peninsular conference in the Portuguese city of Évora, I took part together with J. Ferrer Alvarado and Sebastián Clara, representing Spain, and Jose da Silva Santos Arranha and Manuel Joaquim de Sousa representing Portugal."
"At that conference, the appropriateness of unifying the Iberian peninsula's confederal and libertarian movement came under consideration and two bodies were founded to that end: the Iberian Confederation of Labour and the Iberian Anarchist Federation." (5)
Elsewhere, he states:
"This is why we cannot ignore the fact that the FAI is a peninsula-wide body which of course had its commitments and responsibilities at international level. So thinking of it as an essentially Spanish organism is lamentably wide of the mark."
Speaking of the historical course of the FAI, Tierra y Libertad (Mexico) in May 1974 published under the headline "Portugal, Portugal … Portugal) (page 2) this comment: "In 1927 at a plenum of Spanish anarchist groups in which Portuguese anarchists participated, it was (finally) agreed that an Iberian Anarchist Federation would be set up as an organisation embracing the entire organised anarchist movement of the Iberian peninsula, which is to say, of Spain and Portugal.
From that point on, anarchism right across the peninsula shared a common fortune, and from 1939 up until today, because of the kinship between the two fascist regimes endured by both victim-nations, Iberian anarchism found itself even more deeply committed, and during the 1936-1939 Spanish revolution the FAI's general secretary was a Portuguese — Germinal de Sousa."
For want of space I shall leave other documentary evidence to one side and close my references with Vila Real's Tierra y Libertad and a piece over the signature of Antonio M. entitled "One FAI member here", quoting his text: "Is there somebody with a grudge against this federation? It stands accused of a number of things … but there were anarchists around before 1927 and the creation of the FAI. Back in 1923 when Manuel Joaquim de Sousa tabled the suggestion that an FAI be set up, he did it, I imagine, with an eye to improving relations between existing anarchist groups and making it an effective vehicle for the propagation of the anarchist ideal."
I have been conducting research for over 65 years and collected documents on the FAI, CNT and other movements carried by libertarian publications in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Mexico, Algiers, Brazil and elsewhere and it is not hard to find contradictory claims and disagreements about the FAI-CNT, and even attempts to persuade readers that the Iberian Anarchist Federation was NOT Iberian at all, but essentially Spanish.
Choosing to forget the ground-breaking efforts of Portuguese such as the author of the plan for an FAI (Manuel Joaquim de Sousa) or the secretary of the Portuguese Anarchist Union, Francisco Quintal (who was at the Valencia meeting in 1927, or the FAI's first general secretary Germinal de Sousa (who held that post for several years), of the Spanish-Brazilian Manuel Perez working from 1923 onwards on the formation of an FAI, or the Spaniards J. Ferrer Alvarado and Sebastian Clara (in Évora in 1923) among other pioneers is not by any means a denial that history is written with scientifically proven facts! Forgetting the efforts made by Spanish and Portuguese anarchists in 1923-1926 in facing up to the savagery of Primo de Rivera and the "Portuguese democratic" police amounts to erasing part of a history that was written with the blood of the workers and anarchists of the Iberian peninsula!
On the threshold of the 80th anniversary of the gestation of the FAI, the decision to commemorate its 75th (!) anniversary amounts to mopping up and absorbing the blood, sweat and tears shed by its earliest idealists. And it means forgetting about the dramatic and painful reasons that drove Portuguese and Spanish anarchists to band together into one organisation capable (they reckoned) of countering the repression from the Spanish and Portuguese authorities, regardless of conventional borders and ignoring the roll-call of the workers who strove bravely to form the FAI.
The only equivalent to the nativist flavour of this approach would be a REFUSAL on my part TO ACKNOWLEDGE that Spanish militants expended more effort and lives than the Portuguese in order to ensure that the FAI has survived to this day!
Edgar Rodrigues.
Notes
1. Manuel Perez was born in Spain but moved to Rio de Janeiro as a boy. He studied at the Crafts and Trades School. In the first decade of the 20th century he served as general secretary of the cabinet-makers' union, directed its newspaper and embraced anarchism. He was deported to Spain by the Epitácio Pessoa government because of his outstanding activity in 1919.
2. In 1922-23, with his partner Mercedes and daughter Carmen, Perez fled to Lisbon to escape Primo de Rivera's police and wound up living on the premises of the cabinet-makers' union. His wife was pregnant and when she went into labour, Perez sent for his fellow-exile Dr Pedro Vallina and just as his daughter Aurora was being delivered the Portuguese democratic police burst on to the union premises (he had been reported through the connivance of the Spanish and Portuguese police) to arrest Perez, his family and the physician Vallina. But in view of the screams of the new-born and the sight of the physician with his blood-stained hands, the police withdrew, letting the Spaniards go. Pedro Vallina and his family were to quit Lisbon the following day and Perez stayed on for a few days to allow his partner to recover. (Unpublished memoirs of Manuel Perez).
3. Taken from O Anarquista of 16-5-1926. This was the organ of the Portuguese Anarchist Union (UAP). Francisco Quintal was general secretary and director of the paper. For further details see O Sindicalismo em Portugal by Manuel Joaquim de Sousa and Edgar Rodrigues Resistencia Anarco-sindicalista em Portugal 1922-1939.
4. FARP (Portuguese Regional Anarchist Federation), the Portuguese section of the FAI was responsible for publication of the newspaper Rebelião, published from Spain and then Argentina, France and Spain in 1936-1939. Its officers were Vivaldo Fagundes, Jose Rodrigues Reboredo, Manuel Firmo, Marques da Costa (for a time), Manuel Francisco, Reboredo's daughter, J. Bastos, the Angola-born but Lisbon-educated physician Câmara Pires and other Portuguese anarchists.
5. A copy of a two page type-written letter from Manuel Perez-Fernández in the author's collection. Perez was captured during the Spanish Revolution and sentenced to death. He was saved by the Brazilian commercial attache who was living in Spain and who had known Perez as a journalist back in Rio de Janeiro, the pair becoming friends. Lobbied by Perez's wife and daughters he interceded and vouched that Perez had lived in Brazil from boyhood: this rescued him and he secured passage for the Perez family back to Brazil. After the end of the Vargas dictatorship, Manuel Perez, José Oiticica, Roberto das Neves and others launched the newspaper Ação Direta. Perez died in Rio de Janeiro, an anarchist to the end!
I Could't Paint Golden Angels
by Albert Meltzer
I have to admit to always having had a passing interest in history, and in particular the history that the likes of Thatcher would have us forget. i.e. our own history, and the fact that so-called ordinary people have had to fight for every crumb they've ever got. The histories of our struggles, that are more often than not deliberately overlooked, when they are not falsified to suit the purposes of our enemies.
With this in mind, while the writing and remembrance of working class history by the working class themselves is more important than ever (due to our culture being drowned under the weight of the trivial and worthless 'lifestyles' sold to us in magazines and on the TV, and written out of existence by the 'histories' of our enemies, who now say that we don't exist — apparently we are all 'middle class' now — even those who scrape along on the minimum wage… grand to know you're really middle class, as you serve idiots in McDonalds, or shovel shit in some factory). The cataloguing and documentation of our own misrepresented and abused movement/ political philosophy/ practice/ history is to my mind of ever greater importance. After all you will not find out about what anarchism is about from our enemies.
Someone once said that 'history is lies' and while maybe not all actually 'lies', then at least one side's point of view or outlook on events. I was looking forward to reading Albert Meltzer's book I couldn't paint Golden Angels, as an earlier book (written with Stuart Christie) The Floodgates of Anarchy, was one of the first books that introduced me to proper 'anarchism' rather than the mangled version I'd found within the 'anarcho-punk', and 'crass-hippie' punk scene. It came as a breath of fresh air after all the 'anarchy & chaos' and 'pacifist' rubbish, neither of which seemed to add up to anything worthwhile in the long term, and in the case of 'pacifism' made sense only as a short-term tactic. This autobiography is written in his own inimitable style, and is packed with Alberts anecdotes and observations, which are often as humorous as they are caustic when dealing with those whose actions and beliefs did not live up to his own ideals. His story is written in episodic form, due to his diaries having been stolen by the police, although helped out by a useful chronology in the appendix, which (when you realise it's there) helps keep track of where in the story you are at any given time.
Albert Meltzer was often accused of being sectarian while he was alive, and was cowardly attacked when he could no longer answer back, but his 'sectarianism' was because he had a clear vision of what 'anarchism' was about, and what anarchists should be aiming for. An anarchist's behaviour should be compatible with their beliefs, or they simply are not an 'anarchist', and this to me, was the root of his 'sectarianism'. While compromise with people whose views/ vision are not the same as our own is sometimes necessary from a tactical point of view (after all, we don't have to like someone personally to work together towards a common goal), we always have to be careful as to who we associate with, because guilt by association can cancel out anything we are attempting in the present, invalidate past work and poison any future action. I think this point comes across well in the book. I've not mentioned any of the many incidents that Albert Meltzer was involved in while an active anarchist from an early age, as he describes them all so well in this book, which I can whole-heartedly recommend as a good read — along with the afore-mentioned Floodgates of Anarchy. In the book he comes across as a man with strong beliefs, who would always help out if he could, even those he did not know, and was a more honest man than many who have since slandered him. He was also capable of admitting when he was wrong, something many cannot and a sign of someone with a strong personality. If Albert was sectarian about his vision of anarchism, then it was for good reasons, and I for one am proud to share that 'sectarianism' if it means retaking 'anarchism' from the slimy hands of 'liberalism', the pacifists and the so-called 'libertarians' of the right wing.
Mark R
OBITUARY: REMEMBERING COMRADE EGO
News reached us on 15 December 2002 of the death of our old comrade, the anarchist battler Jose Ego-Aguirre to who our movement is so indebted for his years of indefatigable agitational and propaganda work as well as his organising and fighting abilities.
Comrade Ego, Peruvian by birth but Chilean from choice, started his flirtation with anarchist ideas at the beginning of the 1930s. Up in northern Chile where the pampas is punctuated with saltpetre deposits and where the wounds of past massacres of the saltpetre workers had not yet healed, our old friend made the acquaintance of Anarchy. Or rather it met him among the dust and rocks on top of the stony Atacama hills as he was working in the Chuquicamata mines as a mechanic. There he ran into an illiterate worker by the name of Santiago Ramos who asked him to read to him the anarchist pamphlets that Ramos received from the Chilean capital. As he read these pamphlets, deciphering them letter by letter, page after page, he absorbed his friend's beliefs and they penetrated him so deeply that he would never depart from them. And so his leisure time was little by little diverted away from boxing to anarchist agitation and trade union organising. Not long after that a group was formed in the mine. It was called after Pascual Vuotto, a renowned Argentinean anarchist militant jailed and unfairly persecuted in a scandal that would go down in history as the "Bragado prisoners affair". Together with the others they held anarchist meetings in the La Loa canyon, beyond the omnipresent reach of the employer back in the pit or the mining encampments. They were to set up aerials in the Atacama hills where only the condors fly and from there broadcast subversive messages using a clandestine radio transmitter. He would establish a connection with the Libertarian Youth of Chile, of which he became a member and he started to write articles for the anarchist press. These turned up in the most important anarchist paper of the day, La Protesta, which was run by the electrician Felix Lopez. He would also join the IWW, a revolutionary syndicalist organisation within which he was to play a leading role as an organiser and agitator and with which he would remain up until it petered out in the early 1950s.
In the late 1930s, comrade Ego travelled down to Santiago for an IWW congress and stayed there, swapping Chuquicamata for La Disputada where he was a trade union delegate for a long time. He settled in the new town of La Legua and there, together with the Cordero brothers, carpenters by trade, he launched the Tierra y Libertad group and the newspaper of the same name. There he carried on with his activities on behalf of the ideal of liberation that he so loved and to which he clung right up until the end. There too, he gave up radio propaganda in favour of impromptu speeches delivered on street corners or on public transport, delivered with a swift intensity before he disappeared into the streets, frequently with a policeman on his heels.
For decades he worked at trade union and local levels, busily setting up and writing for anarchist newspapers and he was involved in every initiative designed to organise Chile's anarchists: he joined every federation that group that emerged from them.
After the brutal installation of the dictatorship of Pinochet and his Junta, comrade Ego was overcome by deep depression and despair at the severance of nearly all of his long-established ties with comrades, finding himself alone and isolated from all his old acquaintances. But driven by his deep convictions he bounced back and, on his own, set about distributing anarchist and anti-dictatorship propaganda outside factories, schools and universities. There he made new comrades and contacts in the student movement and carried on churning out anti-regime propaganda on an old mimeograph machine.
Not that the repression spared him: in 1981 he was arrested with some 17 secondary school students when the police burst into a meeting their new anarchist group. But on their release they rejoined the fray. By that time he had reestablished contact with libertarian militants of longer standing, such as Villarroel, Aliste, etc. These added their experience to the new blood drawn mainly from student circles but also from trade union circles, albeit minority factions. The libertarian students, banded together under the umbrella of the RIA, made headway in the Catholic University and started to work closely with women's groups, residents' groups and a few minor trade unions. Out of this came the first anarchist publication produced in Chile under the dictatorship — Hombre y Sociedad. That review first surfaced in 1985 at a moment of acute crisis in the Pinochet dictatorship when there were important mass mobilisations. It can only be regretted that it had a very small print-run on account of the dearth of funds. However, the publishers had their own premises where the crew of old libertarian militants used to get together with younger people, with various popular movements and the premises — in the Calle Toesca — was also made available to other political groupings. In the review, Ego played a very important role throughout this time vis a vis the resurgence of the anarchist movement in Chile: without a doubt, the groundwork for the present Chilean anarcho-communist movement was laid through the publication of the review as well as the agitational and propaganda work carried out by the youth group centring on the elderly comrade Ego.
Then, for years on end, he was involved in intensive propaganda and organising work. Comrade Ego became a reference point for countless youngsters recruited to anarchism in the 1990s. We can remember our comrade always with a pamphlet or a book under his arm, one that he would not hesitate to lend or offer as a gift, or marching under his flag, or chatting with somebody on a bench in the square about the cause , while waiting for some tardy comrade to show up .. and we can still hear what he said in a video on 1 May in El Peda, a couple of years back. For years he was an indefatigable supporter of anarchist organisation and he took part in the 1997 congress out which an anarchist organisation was supposed to emerge. He told us: The comrades have good ideas but things cannot be achieved willy-nilly. It is not a matter of showing up and coming up with an organisation. The comrades need better training, they need to educate and be educated, to understand whom they are dealing with and have a clear sense of direction." And so it was that Hombre y Sociedad was resurrected in October 1997 when a handful of us comrades got together in the Patio Esmeralda, known to us as "HQ" and where the lads used to receive anarchist literature for free on Saturdays. It was our attempt to spread anarchist theory and held revolutionary libertarian forces to regroup. And comrade Ego invited us to follow the route of organising and struggle that he had been following for decades. For reasons of health — already he was suffering from cancer — comrade Ego left Santiago in late 1998, heading south, to Pillanlelbun in Temuco. Towards the end of his life his urge to wander returned and he drifted further south. His life was ebbing away but he was pressing further and further south. Down there he resumed his activism, making contact with the young and he started to publish a news-sheet called Amor y Acracia which he handed out at meetings and on anniversaries. In this way he collected around himself a new band of comrades who later came together into the Joaquin Murieta Libertarian Movement (MLJM), an organisation of which he was a member at the time he died. "Being an anarchist was like being born again" he told us once. This old man therefore was born and died an anarchist.
The last time we set eyes on him was in late November 2002, a couple of weeks before he died. He did not want us to visit him at first because he did not want us to see him so weak and helpless, we who had always seen him on his feet and ready for battle. He looked weary and he began by telling us: "Fear not, comrades, capitalism is doomed. It's going to die even as I am, but anarchy never dies .. " The usual message of struggle. He insisted that his body was eager for its eternal rest but that he wanted to make some contribution to rebirth, to the ongoing struggle, to carry on giving the system a hard time until a truly humane system spreads across this liberated planet. It was obvious that his life had run its course. But even so he was clear-sighted enough to leave us a genuine political "testament" which we who were there should be able to reconstruct some day. He talked to us there about the movement, the present state of the system, the shortcomings of anarchism and its militants. He offered us counsel and guidance one last time and hammered home, yet again, the need to go on fighting to organise a libertarian movement with a genuinely revolutionary outlook. He bequeathed this task to us before going to his eternal rest.
We owe the old man a debt: to go on fighting for the ideals for which Ego gave his life, fighting on until we see them triumph in this world, until Freedom becomes the norm across the face of the earth. We have a great debt to the guide whom once we had and whom we will have no more. May this short review of the life of an anarchist who fell after a lifetime's combat, this humble tribute and our hopes help to speed the day of Revolution and Liberation, the only tribute really befitting the beloved friend who has left us, but who lives on in our hearts, just another denizen of the new world we carry in our hearts.
FAREWELL, COMRADE EGO! WE SHALL NOT FORGET YOU! YOU LIVE ON IN OUR STRUGGLES!
From Hombre y Sociedad,
No 15/16, March 2003, Santiago, Chile
An 'Uncontrollable' from the Iron Column
A Day Mournful and Overcast
A clear view of what the Spanish Revolution was all about from a member of one of the most militant anarchist militia columns. Illustrated with relief prints.
1-873605-33-1 £3 (£2 post free individuals) / $3 including s&h
Emile Pouget
Direct Action
A classic syndicalist text, a practical plan of how to organise to win.
1-873605-43-9 £3 (£2 post free individuals) / $3 including s&h
Islands of Anarchy: Simian, Cienfuegos and Refract 1969-1987 An annotated bibliography
by John Patten
Simian and Cienfuegos came out of the anarchist resurgence of the nineteen sixties. Under the direction of Stuart Christie, the charismatic Scottish anarchist, they went from duplicated pamphlets to an ambitious book publishing programme. Cienfuegos (and later Refract) developed an international network of collaborators and supporters and an impressive list of titles recording anarchist history and advancing a practical libertarian critique of authoritarianism. Full details of everything they produced, or planned, with a historical introduction.
ISBN 1-873605-23-4 ninety-odd pages, A4. £30
£20 / $25 to libraries for direct orders received before 1/1/04 —
£15 / $20 to individual KSL Bulletin subscribers
Reprinted:
Ethel MacDonald: Glasgow Woman Anarchist, Rhona M. Hodgart
1-873605-28-5 £3 / $3 (£1.50 individuals)
Ethel MacDonald was a comrade of Guy Aldred's who travelled to Spain to support the anarchist movement during the Spanish revolution. As well as seeing the gains of the revolution, she worked as a radio announcer and was a witness to the Barcelona 'May Days'. She helped comrades to escape the growing Communist repression and was herself imprisoned by the Communists. This pamphlet tells her story.
Coming soon: Under the Yoke of the State (Anarchist writings on prisons and crime) Any more contributions out there for an Anarchist Mayday Anthology? Ditto Anarchist dictionary-pedia thing?
This bulletin produced October 2003. Thanks to comrades for donations (both financial and reading matter)
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Do or Die: Voices from the ecological resistance. Number 10 (final issue). Very big and varied. Has a 'How long would Canary Wharf last if London was magically depopulated?' Fun to write, obviously, but makes you wonder if capitalism or humans are the problem. First 100 pages are an interesting analysis of 'how we got here and what now?' which should be read by 'outsiders' too. £7 UK, 15 euros Europe (post free)
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