Introduction to 'A Life For Anarchy: A Stuart Christie Reader'

A life and not a legend

When our friend and comrade Stuart Christie died many people paid tribute to him. They were illuminating in many different ways, and we have included several of them in part three. We hope this book will give you a sense of the richness and complexity of his life. We also hope it will act as a memorial, given that we haven’t been able to meet up and celebrate his life. We were slightly troubled by some throw-away comments made after he died about it being a pity he hadn’t ‘got’ Franco. Focussing on the ‘legend’ like that devalues what he did do. He said himself ‘I much preferred to be known as as one of the founders of the Black Cross […] than one of the many who didn’t manage to kill Franco.’[1]

That he didn’t kill Franco was inevitably the first fact that people knew about Stuart. He took advantage of that to get publicity, but he did not let it define him. That failed attempt shone a light on the Franco dictatorship, and Stuart came to believe that the ‘law of unintended consequences’ meant that his arrest was the best possible outcome.[2] He was not one to waste time on repenting something gone in good conscience, nor on repeating the experiment. His life story, if you read his autobiography, is not of a person obsessed with Franco (for all his crimes) but someone returning from the unknown world of Franco’s prisons with knowledge – a twentieth century journey to the underworld.

Stuart’s Anarchism

Stuart is a key figure in the history of the anarchist movement from the sixties onwards (a history that is pretty much unwritten). But then, anarchism was also the central impetus of his life. Reading his autobiographies gives us a sense of someone who didn’t embrace anarchism as a set of answers, but that it expressed a view of life that was already inside him. His Granny really did make him an anarchist! The Carrara conference of 1968 connected him to an international network of anarchist and libertarian revolutionaries committed to freedom and solidarity. Stuart was party to the conflict between ‘liberal’ and revolutionary anarchists and remained committed to the militant position for all of his life. It would be easy for hindsight to reduce those conflicts to a simple either/or choice (whether your yardstick is ‘violence’ or ‘class’) but that would be to simplify Stuart’s outlook. Stuart was driven by a strong personal moral choice, and believed in the importance of affinity groups in the wider social struggle. Personally, he was confident, had a sense of humour and without suffering fools gladly was prepared to take people as he found them. 

Spain and the sixties

It was his involvement with the Spanish anarchist resistance that put Stuart in the headlines. He saw the continuing existence of Francoism as ‘unfinished business’:[3] to him anti-fascism was a moral imperative in the shadow of the Second World War. He called the Spanish Civil War ‘the most important moral reference point in the whole of the 20th century.’[4] But the execution of Delgado and Granado in 1963[5] was the immediate impetus for his involvement with the plot against Franco. He found once imprisoned, that the attitudes he had formed in Scotland connected him perfectly with anarchists old and young in Spain – and worldwide.

The 1960s and 1970s were a time both of conflict and optimism across the world. Britain (and other countries) saw the height of working-class self-confidence. It was much easier to walk out of one job and into another. You could live on Unemployment benefit. Strikes meant higher wages. For many people, breaking with capitalism was not just necessary but possible. The anarchist movement grew. New ideas were arising and being tested, leading to new conflicts. For ‘liberal’ anarchists both revolution and class were outdated ideas. The explorations of intellectuals would guarantee that society gradually but inexorably became more and more reasonable. For other anarchists revolution was not just desirable, but near. There was an opportunity to get rid of the state and capitalism and to start building a free society. Stuart identified with this revolutionary tendency and in 1974 said he expected to see Anarchy in his lifetime.[6] Upholding the anarchist tradition of revolt, they wanted more than to repeat the slogans of the past. For them, people were to be judged far more on what they did than what they said. This led them into conflict with some veterans of the movement: the revolutionaries were dissatisfied with grand but empty phrases uttered by unaccountable ‘notables’. This conflict played out at the Carrara conference, but its roots lay in part in the organisational trauma of the exiled Spanish anarchists. 

The Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union, the CNT, had suffered defeats and repression before but remained a union and a revolutionary organisation. After 1939, and after the chaos of the Second World War, what was the aim of the CNT, and what tactics should it follow? Would the allied powers follow up their anti-fascist slogans by getting rid of Franco? Divisions over tactics were exacerbated by the control of the CNT by figures like Federica Montseny and Germinal Esgleas. Their sabotage of the resistance to Franco would lead to revolutionary anarchists increasingly operating outside the official structures of the CNT and give rise to the First of May Group.

Publications and networks

His skill as a social networker (as well as the breadth of his interests) showed in his and his life partner Brenda’s publishing efforts, in particular with Cienfuegos Press. It was the death of his close comrade Albert Meltzer in 1996 which started him on a new phase of publishing activity, taking advantage of new technologies, just as he had in the 1960s and 1970s. Under the imprint of the Meltzer Press he published his study of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica We the anarchists.[7] The moral and social foundations to his anarchism remained the same, but the desire to commemorate his comrades and lost generations of anarchists grew stronger. Tony Blair’s ascendency and in particular the 2003 invasion of Iraq provoked a look at his own personal history, and his three volumes of autobiography, My granny made me an anarchist, General Franco made me a ‘terrorist’ and Edward Heath made me angry.

We encourage you to go and read some of Stuart’s books. We haven’t gone through them for extracts for this reader, but we hope it will complement them. There is one book of Stuart’s that we do want to talk about, since you’re unlikely to find it on the shelves of your local library.

In 1983 Stuart wrote The investigative researcher’s handbook. Produced before word processing, let alone the internet, it contains social network analysis done by hand: proof that as well as being intelligent, Stuart was not afraid of hard work! He also advises the researcher to ‘include in your friendship network key people who know everything and everybody – “sociometric stars”. You’ll often be surprised at just who some of your friends and acquaintances do know.’[8] Stuart himself came into that category!

The Handbook also contains this warning to the researcher: 

‘In a vendetta investigation all you waste is your time and money, but a conspiracy investigation can seriously damage your mental health. This has nothing to do with whether or not conspiracies exist or don’t exist. Conspiracies occur all the time, but they are rarely, if ever, as ubiquitous, all powerful and pervasive as the obsessives who believe in them make out. […] 

‘The maze-like trap of all conspiracy investigations (and trials) is that one lead takes you to another and so on interminably until everyone you come across – or wish to involve – is inextricably linked with the conspiracy. It can be a nightmare world for the investigator – and the investigated, – so unless you have a healthy, sceptical and open mind try to avoid getting sucked into conspiracy theories if you want to keep your sanity.’[9]

That’s obviously a nod to Stuart’s experience in the ‘Stoke Newington Eight’ trial. Presented by the police as mastermind of the Angry Brigade, he was acquitted of charges of conspiracy to cause explosions and possession of ‘explosive substances’ after sixteen months of imprisonment on remand. That acquittal gave him the opportunity (and maybe a self-imposed obligation) to try and explain the Angry Brigade in the context of its times.

What if?

It has been hard, when putting this collection together, to have so many things we would like to and cannot ask him about. We know that Stuart was a fine comrade and friend, loyal and supportive as well as tenacious and sometimes maddening. Beyond those human qualities we would like to try and show his contribution to anarchism. It’s a hard thing to measure what one person brings to a social movement. We’re glad he wasn’t executed by the Franco regime. But what if he had ‘retired’ from the anarchist movement in 1967 after his imprisonment in Spain? Thinking about that gives a sense of what a difference he made.

Would Black Flag, ‘excitingly irregular’ at times but funny and committed, have appeared or been what it was without Stuart? Without Cienfuegos Press (1974-1982) and Stuart’s other publishing efforts we would know much less of anarchism. Who would have given voice to half of those lives and ideas?

What would Albert Meltzer’s autobiography I couldn’t paint golden angels look like? The more we look, the more Stuart becomes a key figure in Albert’s life. Mark Hendy said ‘Albert before 1967 was Albert without Stuart. From late 1967 onwards he was Albert with Stuart – two very different beasts!’[10] Though the temptation is to see them as ‘indelibly joined as Marx and Engels, or perhaps more appropriately Laurel and Hardy’,[11] their great partnership does not mean they saw things the same way at all times. Stuart was enjoying Charles Radcliffe’s revolutionary/ countercultural Heatwave in prison, while Albert was fuming at him as one of the ‘lunatic middle-class “militants”’ disrupting anarchist meetings at the Lamb and Flag pub in London.[12]

Without Stuart’s character and contacts, would the Anarchist Black Cross have been relaunched? Miguel Garcia, the resistance veteran who became International Secretary of the ABC, said of Stuart that he was ‘rancho aparte’ (meaning that he ‘goes his own way’) which is undoubtedly true, and worth remembering alongside his charm and friendliness. Had Stuart ‘retired’, would Miguel Garcia have come to London and written Franco’s prisoner with Albert Meltzer? And if Miguel Garcia is ‘in some ways, perhaps every way, the reason why the Kate Sharpley Library exists’,[13] then were would we be?

Aims and process

This is a selection of Stuart’s writings and there are several interesting articles we didn’t have room for. We wish that Stuart had written more, even if only introductions to some of the books he published. But obviously, to publish, to ‘get it out there’ was often enough, without Stuart needing to add his own commentary. Once he had access to a website, Facebook, short-run printing and ebooks it’s hard to keep track of everything he did publish. If you look at Christiebooks or his Facebook page, Stuart was as happy to share the words of a comrade or friend as to write his own.

The first part of the reader contains a selection of Stuart’s short political writings. They hopefully reflect some of the optimism, as well as some of the conflicts, of when they were written. We have given these a brief introduction to set out their context. They are in chronological order, but this is not a comprehensive selection, since he never stopped writing political articles. 

The second part contains some of Stuart’s biographical tributes to his friends, mentors and comrades, beginning with that of his good comrade Albert Meltzer. These are in chronological order, except that the two pieces about Flavio Costantini have been put next to one another. We have also put his tribute to Brenda at the end of that section. In some ways, it’s the most important piece there. 

These biographies contain the warmth of comradeship and hint at Stuart’s importance in connecting an older generation of anarchists to a new one, not to mention creating international links, reflecting Stuart’s own internationalism. They also record the world-view of an anarchist tendency which continued the tradition of revolt in new circumstances. We have tried to provide a balance in both parts between British and European pieces and hope they act as building blocks for an otherwise unknown anarchist history. 

The third part contains a selection of tributes to Stuart, in a loosely thematic order. It starts with two tributes from the Kate Sharpley Library. Ones from his Spanish comrades are followed those of historians. Tributes from other British comrades come next. We have kept together the eulogies read at the funeral. The section ends with details of the Stuart Christie Memorial Archive. We give the last word in the book to Stuart, with his 1983 article ‘A time for anarchy’ which we think gives a concise view of his political viewpoint and of his life.

We have, to the best of our abilities, corrected errors silently and put footnotes in to explain the context of the pieces (and sources of quotations). We have also attempted to keep the notes under control. Many of the people mentioned need a book of their own but we have tried to give a sense of who they are and where they came from. We have given nationalities to show where people started out. Their lives will be richer than we can tell in a few words. We hope that the glossary of people and groups that regularly reappear helps you to find your way around. We would like to borrow one last quote from Stuart’s writings. ‘If you find mistakes in this publication, please remember that they are there for a purpose. We publish something for everyone, and some people are always looking for mistakes!’[14]

We know that this is not the final word on Stuart’s life. Seeing the materials that people are sharing with us and the Stuart Christie Memorial Archive, we feel as though we are constantly learning more. We hope this reader gives you a sense of the breadth of his experiences, and celebrates his humanity, his morality and his intuitive grasp of anarchism.

Kate Sharpley Library collective

1 May 2021

Notes

1, ‘Anarchist on paper only’ by John Cunningham, The Guardian, 5 January 1981.
2, p.127 of General Franco made me a ‘terrorist’.
3, ‘Looking back at anger’ interview http://www.3ammagazine.com/politica/2004/apr/interview_stuart_christie.html
4, ‘On anarchist resistance’, page before introduction of General Franco made me a ‘terrorist’.
5, Two Spanish anarchists, executed for a crime they did not commit. See the glossary.
6, see the introduction to MAN! in part one.
7, we have reprinted Stuart’s introduction in part one 
8, p.16
9, p.12
10, Email of 28 December 2018
11, Albert Meltzer I couldn’t paint golden angels, p.269 ch 18
12, ‘Lamb & Flag’ meetings Freedom 12 November 1966
13, ‘Dar la vida, por la vida (Give a life for life): Miguel Garcia Garcia (1908-1981)’, introduction to Looking back after twenty years of jail : questions and answers on the Spanish anarchist resistance (Kate Sharpley Library, 2002).
14, p.ii of The investigative researcher’s handbook.

A Life for Anarchy : A Stuart Christie Reader is available from AK Press https://www.akpress.org/a-life-for-anarchy.html