Albert Meltzer, anarchist, born London, January 7,1920;
died, Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset, May 7, 1996.
Albert Meltzer was one of the most enduring and respected torchbearers of the international anarchist movement in the second half of the twentieth century. His sixty-year commitment to the vision and practice of anarchism survived both the collapse of the Revolution and Civil War in Spain and The Second World War; he helped fuel the libertarian impetus of the 1960s and 1970s and steer it through the reactionary challenges of the Thatcherite 1980s and post-Cold War 1990s.
Fortunately, before he died, Albert managed to finish his autobiography, I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels, a pungent, no-punches pulled, Schve... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
WRITING IN the preface to l’Espagne Libre, in 1946, the year of my birth, Albert Camus said of the Spanish struggle: “It is now nine years that men of my generation have had Spain within their hearts. Nine years that they have carried it with them like an evil wound. It was in Spain that men learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many men, the world over, regard the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy”.
On 1 April 2009 seventy years will have passed since General Franco declared victory in his three-year crusade against the Spanish Republic. His victory was won with the ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Victor Blanco’s Story
Victor Blanco, teacher in the Huescan village of Alcampel (Aragón), another chronicler of the revolution, has left us his recollections of how the social revolution transformed the life in his village:
‘…On the night of the 27th (July), with the threat from Tamarite gone, the members of the CNT decided to start carrying out our aims, to try to create something new and humane, to organize an agricultural collective in accordance with anarchist principles. We held a meeting to determine how the idea should be presented to the people. We had the sympathy of the people but we knew we had to act carefully when we dealt with the personal interests of individuals. We agreed to call a public a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The life of Lucio Urtubia Jiménez (1931–2020), an anarchist from Navarre in northern Spain, is the stuff of legend. As an activist in 1950s Paris he counted André Breton and Albert Camus among his friends, worked with the legendary anarchist urban guerrilla Francisco Sabate (El Quico) in attempting to bring down Franco’s fascist regime, and carried out numerous bank robberies to fund the struggle to free Spain. But it was in 1977, after having his earlier scheme to destabilize the US economy by forging US dollars rejected by Che Guevara, he put his most infamous plan into action, successfully forging and circulating 20 million dollars of Citibank travelers checks with the goal of funding urban guerrilla groups in E... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Antonio Martín Bellido, Madrid 1938-Paris August 17, 2014: son of a Madrid UGT (General Workers’ Union) militant exiled in France where he lived, in Strasbourg, from the age of two.
Having served his apprenticeship as an electrical engineer, he moved to Paris at the age of 19 where he joined the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL). In 1962 he visited London with other young Spanish and French anarchists to take part in the annual anti-nuclear Aldermaston march, during which many enduring friendships were forged.
That same year he joined the recently re-constituted MLE’s (Libertarian Movement in Exile) clandestine planning section known as ‘Defensa Interior’ (D.I.), whose remit was (a) ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Born 20 March 1924, died 6 February 6 2004
The milieu in which the anti-nuclear Scottish Committee of 100 flourished no longer exists, its activists having long since adopted other agendas. However, its brief flowering will always be associated with the dynamic figure of Walter Morrison, who seemingly at birth had signed up for life as a private extraordinaire in the Awkward Squad.
Morrison, who has died in his eightieth year, fought courageously against the wrongs in society, proudly wore the badges of nonviolence and libertarian socialism, and spoke his mind fearlessly no matter where he was or in whose company.
Angered by the Clydebank blitz in 1940, the 16-year-old Morrison lied about his age and joined the army. He... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
In 1943, the young Italian anarchist, Goliardo Fiaschi, falsified his birth certificate — to make himself seem older than his 13 years — and joined the wartime Italian partisans. Armed with a captured rifle almost as big as himself, he accompanied the women who regularly crossed the Apennines on foot to carry food from Parma, Reggio or Modena, some 150 miles away, back to the starving inhabitants of his Tuscan birthplace, Massa di Carrara. In 1944, he was adopted as a mascot by the Costrignano Brigade, and, in that role, entered Modena as standard-bearer on its liberation in April 1945.
Fiaschi, who has died aged 69, was one of the youngest of the generation of anti- fascist partisans who fought against Mussolini’s ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Russian Anarchists (1967) was followed by Kronstadt 1921 (1970) and in 1972, Russian Rebels: 1600–1800. He then moved into American anarchism with The Haymarket Tragedy (1984). This focused on the campaign for the eight-hour day in Chicago in 1886 during which seven policemen were killed by a bomb, and for which four innocent anarchists were executed — one cheated the gallows by killing himself, and another three served sentences until pardoned by the state governor. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background (1991) established that the two men, executed in 1927 in Massachusetts, were serious revolutionaries rather than “philosophical anarchists”.
Avrich was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Jewish family o... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Anarchism is a revolutionary method of achieving a free nonviolent society, without class divisions or imposed authority. Whether this is a “utopian” achievement or not is irrelevant; the Anarchist, on any normal definition, is a person who, having this aim in mind, proceeds to get rid of authoritarian structures, and advances towards such a society by making people independent of the State and by intensifying the class struggle so that the means of economic exploitation will be weakened and destroyed.
Confusion
There should be no confusion between anarchism and liberalism however militant the latter might be (e.g. movements towards national liberation). The liberal seeks greeter freedom within the structure of society... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Appendix A: The circle of friends
Close links between German industry and commerce and the Nazi party go back to 11 December 1931 when Walter Funk, later wartime president of the Reichsbank (German central bank) approached Baron Kurt von Schroeder to arrange for Hitler to meet potential supporters among German industrialists. Wilhelm Keppler, a small businessman, was given the job of calling together a group of capitalists who could advise Hitler on what to offer the industrialists in order to win their support. This became known as the Keppler Kreis (Keppler Circle), which later developed into the Reichsfuhrer SS Circle of Friends supervised by the SS and Gestapo boss Heinrich HimmIer.
Twenty days after the abortive attempt o... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Spanish army in Morocco rose in rebellion against the Second Spanish Republic on 17 July 1936. By the following day, the long-planned coup d’état, under the leadership of General Sanjurjo and a military directorate consisting of generals Yagüe, Quiepo de Llano, Mola and Franco, had spread to the Spanish mainland.
The Spanish anarcho-syndicalist labor organization, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), had been preparing for the eventuality of such a coup for some time. Earlier that year, on 14 February, just two days before the elections that were to bring to power the Popular Front government that precipitated the military uprising, the National Committee of the CNT in Zaragoza issued a prophetic warni... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Antonio Téllez Solà
Born January 18 1921 — Tarragona, Spain, died March 27 2005 — Perpignan, France.
The Herodotus of the anti-Franco maquis
Antonio Téllez Solà, who has died at his home in Perpignan aged 84, was one of the last survivors of the anarchist resistance which fought to overthrow the Franco dictatorship. He was also one of the first historians of the post civil war urban and rural guerrilla resistance to the fascist regime. In his actions and his writings, Tellez personified refusal to surrender to tyranny.
The son of a railway worker, he was born in Tarragona and was radicalized by the October 1934 insurrection in Asturias, which failed when the unions outside the min... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Robert Lynn has snuffed it. In the heart of Glasgow — the Calton — hundreds of people are genuinely mourning the loss of one of its best loved sons.
Born in the Calton in 1924 Robert went on to be educated at St. Mungo’s Academy. Leaving school at 14 years of age he took up an engineering apprenticeship in the shipyards. Already possessing an awareness of class consciousness he was swept up in the maelstrom of political activity which was occurring during the war years in the British shipyard and engineering industries. In 1943 the strike on Tyneside, which saw Jock Haston and Roy Tearso imprisoned, quickly spread to the Clyde where many shipyards were brought to a halt. Robert worked in Yarrows as an apprentice and... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
11: The Bourgeois Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was declared on 14 April 1931. The people of Spain who saw in it the engine of change and the promise of new beginnings welcomed it with enormous popular enthusiasm. Article No. 1 of the new Constitution read:
‘Spain is a democratic republic of workers of every class, organized in a regime of liberty and justice. The powers of all its organs emanate from the people. The Republic represents an integral State, compatible with the autonomy of the municipalities and regions.’
The CNT leadership had contributed much to the new Republic. In a truly Pilatesque speech Joan Peiró confirmed, with obvious satisfaction, that the CNT had acted as midwife to the Republ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The point of a club is not who it lets in, but who it keeps out. The club is based on two ancient British ideas the segregation of classes, and the segregation of sexes: and they even remain insistent on keeping people out, long after they have stopped wanting to come in.
— Anthony Sampson, Anatomy of Britain
If secrecy is to be considered a factor in British politics and commerce then without doubt Freemasonry is one of its principal vehicles. Freemasonry is the largest semi-covert organization of the western bourgeoisie, with over six million members worldwide sharing a vision of a unified world order bound together through a series of interlocking Masonic alliances. Among the worlds most influential institutions m... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)