NOT the bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library, No.5 February 2021
Stuart Christie
The Stuart Christie Memorial Archive
Friends, family and comrades of Stuart Christie have come up with a plan to commemorate his life by creating an archive at London’s Mayday Rooms and online.
“Stuart’s life may have been plastered with headlines, Britain’s most famous anarchist was the usual description, but the small print of it was what was important. His courage, imagination, his loyalty, not just to what he believed in, but to his friends and family, his remarkable intelligence, his self-deprecating, droll and spiky humour. He was a man of parts, each one of them remarkable.
“To reveal the richness of Stuart’s life and the many histories he was a part of, we intend to establish a memorial archive in his name. The Stuart Christie Memorial Archive will be housed at the MayDay Rooms in Fleet Street in London.”
Read more about the project (and donate!) at
https://www.gofundme.com/f/stuart-christie-memorial-archive
Of the Book and the Deed: A Tribute to Stuart Christie by Nhat Hong
“Stuart came of age and political awareness in Glasgow in the early 1960s. The arc of his early politics went from a prospective Protestant Orange Lodge member to the anti-nuclear war movement of the Committee of 100 to the Glasgow Federation of Anarchists by the time he was 16. He was drawn to anarchism because it ‘was a way of life rather than an abstract view of a remote future. It was not a theory, a philosophy, a “programme for life,” nor yet a description of how individuals and society should one day be, but a whole new way of looking at the world we were in… . [It was] something I could measure myself in my actions right now.’”
You can read the rest of the article at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/qftw7w
A salute to Alexandre Skirda 1942-2020
We salute the memory of Alexandre Skirda, historian the Makhnovist movement, the Kronstadt revolt and other anti-state tendencies of the Russian revolution.
Read more at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/msbf5w
RIP: Ken Weller
We’re sad to pass on word that Ken Weller, author of ‘Don’t be a Soldier!’ The radical anti-war movement in North London 1914-1918, has died.
Ken Weller (1935-2021) and ‘Don’t be a Soldier!’ https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/q83dd9
The life-saver
César Orquín: the Anarchist Inmate Who Saved Hundreds of Spanish Deportees in the Nazis’ Mauthausen Camp by Carlos Hernández
“So, back in the day when the memory of the almost 5,000 Spaniards to perish in Mauthausen-Gusen was being honoured, one man, one name was the centre of controversy – César Orquín Serra. This Valencian anarchist was accused of all sorts of criminality by some Communist Party-connected deportees. But his reputation was defended by other countrymen who had worked under his orders and who ascribed those accusations to the long-standing political rivalry between communists and anarchists.” https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/5mkn9b
Two Women
Augusta Farvo, Partisan and Kiosk Operative by Lorenzo Pezzica
“Her kiosk was to serve as an essential rendezvous point for Milan anarchists after the Second World War, a sound, safe place for contacts, appointments and meets.”
https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/t76k8n
María Lozano Molina, Poet, Activist and Woman-At-Arms by Imanol
“Let us get down to brass tacks and introduce a woman who was always linked to the libertarian movement. A woman who neglected neither the written word nor weapons, as she was a poet and a resister. A woman who championed and spread her beliefs right up until the end of her life. Our subject today is María Lozano Molina.”
https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/pc882q
Russia
Prison Nabat [Ekaterinburg] No.1, 16 August 1919
At the height of the Russian Civil War in August, 1919, anarchists imprisoned by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg began publishing a handwritten news-paper PrisonNabat [Tocsin] in the name of the Union of Working Anarchists. (With intro by Sergei Ovsiannikov and translated by Malcolm Archibald) https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/8kpt6v
Russian anarchists’ manifesto: For a free Russia! [1934] by G. P. Maximoff
“Economic wretchedness and the absence of political rights in tsarist Russia had obliged lots of workers and peasants to quit their country and seek material well-being beyond her borders. The revolution in the month of March 1917 resulted in the abolition of monarchist rule and laid the foundations for broader political freedoms, thereby making Russia one of the world’s freest countries.” https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/c2fsgf
Historical goodies
November 1908 San Francisco Haymarket Commemoration leaflet
Two sided leaflet from November 1908 advertising a Haymarket Commemoration on Wednesday 11th November as well as a series of talks organized by the San Francisco Social Science League during November 1908. https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/ngf3mg
Historical Research
Beyond the bounds of revolutions : Chinese in transnational anarchist networks from the 1920s to the 1950s by Morgan William Rocks
Thesis looking at the “dense and often overlapping networks of three important anarchist figures, Ba Jin (1904-2005), Ray Jones (1889-1974), and Lu Jianbo (1904-1991)”
“As anarchists were predisposed to historicizing themselves, they often turned their gaze to their comrades in China and beyond. Beginning with the publication of Albert Meltzer’s 1968 pamphlet, ‘The Origins of the Anarchist Movement in China’ anarchists began to write histories of Chinese anarchists and their ideas of revolution.”
Thesis available at https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0395377
Syndicalism!
Syndicalism and anarchism have always had an… interesting… relationship! With that in mind it is exciting to see this new site devoted to the idea of syndicalism. It contains really interesting historical documents that allows us to track the changes and nuances in syndicalism itself and is well worth a read.
https://syndicalism.org/
Sending you all our best wishes
Kate Sharpley Library collective (February 2021)