Brenda Christie: Stuart Christie's eulogy to his wife

Good morning everyone and thank you all for coming on this sad occasion to say goodbye to Bren, my wife, life partner, friend and comrade through fifty-one years of life’s vicissitudes, caprices and blessings — the beloved mother of Branwen — and Nanna to granddaughters Merri and Mo.

Brenda was an intensely private person who— although engaging, sociable and witty — disliked being the focus of attention, but I’ve no doubt she would have been pleased to see everyone here, sharing this day with us.

A baby-boomer, born in Shoreditch in London in April 1949, Bren’s formative years were spent in Gosport in Hampshire where her lovely dad, Bert, was a Chief Petty Officer, a ‘Sparks’ in the Royal Navy.

She hoped to take up a career in journalism, but despite her sharp intelligence, enquiring intellect, love of literature and creative writing skills, the breakup of her parents’ marriage and her tense relationship with her mother Eliza forced her to leave home at 15 and move to London where she became a copy typist, working in a variety of temporary jobs, including at the Treasury.

In 1967, her adventurous spirit took her to Milan where she worked for a time as companion to a glamorous American model, a job that introduced her to the dolce vita of Milan and Portofino, but it was a lifestyle that failed to satisfy her sense of moral integrity.

With news of the events of May 1968 in Paris and the radical political, musical and cultural turbulence that was taking place in Britain, largely provoked by the U.S. war in Vietnam, the feisty-spirited 19-year-old Brenda was drawn back to London to be part of the radical social and cultural revolution then taking place, which is where we got together on Bastille Day, 14 July 1968, shortly after my 22nd birthday.

We were together from then until the morning of her passing, just a month after she turned 70.

Those fifty-odd years of our lives together saw many adventures, good and not so good — laughter and tears — as happens in all relationships.

But it’s the treasured, shared and cheery memories that are the abiding ones.

On our first date in 1968 I took her to Jimmy’s Greek Restaurant, a carpeted sewer in Soho’s Frith Street which to me was excitingly cosmopolitan in character, but was also cheap with plentiful Mediterranean-style food. Brenda, however, was distinctly unimpressed, particularly when she spotted the column of cockroaches marching along the wainscoting by our heads.

We made our excuses and left for the more salubrious Amalfi in Old Compton Street. From there we went on to the theatre; Unity Theatre in Somers Town to see Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs for which I had wangled complimentary tickets.

I certainly knew how to treat a girl in those days.

After the performance we went back to my flat in Crouch End in North London where I further tried to impress Brenda with my skill in tossing a Spanish omelette, but my hand to eye coordination was skewed that night and it ended up splattered on the floor.

Brenda, who was precariously balanced on a three-legged chair at the time, laughed so much she leaned back, lost her balance and ended up on her back on the floor with the remains of the omelette, legs akimbo, unladylike, flashing her knickers.

Despite those early misadventures, and fortunately for me, Brenda shared my surreal sense of humour, and so began a tumultuous, lifelong, genuinely loving relationship.

Brenda was introduced originally to the Marxist-led International Socialists through her best friend Valerie Packham, and the pair were deeply involved in the staff and student occupation of the Hornsey College of Art in Crouch End, which took place from May to July 1968.

Later, during the final years of the fascist dictatorship in Spain, she became increasingly committed to the anti-Francoist cause, working closely with the clandestine anarchist First of May Group, which brought her under the radar of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch and the Security Service, MI5. That, of course, ran alongside her role as a co-founder of the anarchist publishing house Cienfuegos Press and her involvement with the Anarchist Black Cross and Black Flag magazine.

In the summer of 1971 I was framed and arrested on conspiracy and possession charges which led to me spending eighteen months on remand in Brixton Prison, which is when Brenda came into her own.

While holding down a job as a temporary copy typist, not only did she visit me most days throughout those eighteen months, she brought me cooked meals all the way from Shoreditch to Brixton on public transport.

She also played a crucial and pivotal role in helping to organise and coordinate my ultimately successful defence — that the only incriminating evidence against me had been planted by former Flying Squad detectives, with their superiors’ knowledge! — that and working late into the night typing up the barristers’ notes during the eight-month Old Bailey trial, one of the longest in British legal history.

Her character and integrity won her the grudging respect of the senior police officers involved in the case. One of them, Commander Ernest Bond, brazenly admitted to her — in the presence of a Chief Superintendent — that they knew I’d been ‘fitted up’, but they could live with my possible acquittal. As far as they were concerned they’d succeeded in keeping me out of circulation for eighteen months.

It’s at times such as those these that we come to really know people in ways of which others remain completely ignorant. Brenda, to me, exemplified the Sufi and humanist ideal of ‘faithful in loving friendship, kindness, compassion and solidarity’.

A few months after my acquittal, in May 1974, following the kidnapping in Paris by anti-fascists of a Francoist banker, a Special Branch officer visited our flat in Wimbledon and advised us to move out of London. Whether or not this was friendly advice or an implicit threat we decided not to put to the test. As Falstaff says in Shakespeare’s King Henry the Fourth, ‘The better part of valour is discretion’, and so we began our life Odyssey.

I may not always have been her Odysseus, but she was certainly always my Penelope.

Our first house was an nineteenth century mill house in Honley, Last of the Summer Wine country in West Yorkshire, in fact its exterior featured in a few episodes of that long-running series.

As well as typesetting our books and journals, Brenda and a friend opened a competitively priced teashop called Touchwood, which became a popular eatery for local mill workers and long-distance lorry drivers on the Trans-Pennine A6024 between Huddersfield and Manchester. Their home-made pies and pasties were to die for. On Touchwood’s last day, when we were preparing to leave Yorkshire for Sanday in Orkney, she and her partner Deanna gave all their regular customers free lunches. Many were in tears when they learned the teashop was closing down.

Our next home was the penultimate of the Northern Isles, Sanday in Orkney, where we lived for seven years with Bren’s beloved dad, Bert. It was idyllic for a time, especially made glorious by the birth of our daughter, Branwen, albeit in fairly dramatic circumstances.

Our wonderful lady doctor had been struck down by cancer and she had been replaced by a series of locums straight out of the animated cartoon Scooby Doo. When the one arrived who was to deliver Branwen he had clearly been drinking, as had the taxi driver of the Commer van that doubled as the island ambulance. To aggravate the situation, the only bottle of oxygen on the island had been used up that morning trying to revive a suicide who had jumped off the end of the pier, having filled his pockets with stones.

I lay on the bed beside Brenda dripping chloroform onto a tea towel covering a flour sieve, both of us breathing the fumes intended to ease the pain of the birth contractions, which somehow the doctor’s ineptness had caused to go out of synch.

In the end we had to call for the local inter-island aeroplane to airlift her to hospital on the Orkney mainland. Even that was problematic as a heavy haar, a sea mist, had enveloped the islands so completely that the pilot had to fly in dangerously low, just above sea level. Even the lifeboat couldn’t make it.

That and a few other run-ins with incompetent locums, some of whom had already been struck off the Medical Register two or three times, proved to be the writing on the wall, especially given our now elderly Bert’s deteriorating medical condition.

From Sanday we moved south again, to Cambridge where Brenda found a job as an editorial assistant with Cambridge University Press, working with the leading historian Albert Hourani and the noted Arabist Trevor Mostyn on a number of prestigious CUP titles such as the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa. Both men insisted Brenda was credited by name for her work on the encyclopedia, threatening to remove their names as authors and editors if the class-driven Press Syndics refused to comply, which they had done initially. To credit a lowly editorial assistant by name in such a distinguished publication was unheard of, and I doubt if it has happened since.

It was in Cambridge too that Brenda discovered what proved to be her true métier as a teacher, initially teaching Business Studies to 16- to 19-year-olds at Cambridge College of Further Education where her best friend Valerie was Senior Lecturer in charge of Secretarial Studies. Although to be honest she did think it was a thankless task trying to teach teenagers things they didn’t particularly care about — and to be somewhere they didn’t want to be.

However, after six years in Cambridge, Bert, Brenda’s delightful dad, who’d lived with us since our Yorkshire days, passed away. It was time again to move on, this time to Hastings where we settled for twenty years, largely to ensure that Branwen, our daughter, could put down roots and enjoy some stability with regard to her education and friends.

Among her talents Branwen had a predilection for drama. But it turned out that the principal of the local after-school drama studio she attended was not only a drama queen, but a complete chancer to boot, one whose knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare and his time and plays was embarrassingly superficial. Think Donald Trump meets Danny La Rue and you’ll get some idea of the kind of person I’m talking about.

The bottom line was that Brenda ended up teaching Branwen herself, and was so successful that she swept the board at the local Music and Drama Festival, as well as other festivals in East Sussex, Kent and South London, putting to shame the competing local drama schools. Other mothers approached her to teach their children, which led to Brenda setting up her own Rude Mechanicals Drama Studio. This lasted for almost 10 years and won the hearts and minds of her pupils, whom she enthused with her love of Shakespeare — to say nothing of winning countless drama festivals across the South East.

Our final move was to Clacton. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it coincided with a decline in Brenda’s health. A heavy smoker for more than 50 years, she had increasing breathing and mobility difficulties, but these were eased by the entry into her life of her two darling granddaughters, Merri — born in 2014 — and Mo, in 2017.

Their dynamic and irresistibly exuberant personalities boosted her spirits and recharged her morale enormously.

The end came much sooner than any of us expected.

Hardly a month had passed between her biopsy and diagnosis of small-cell cancer, the first chemo session, and her death.

It was sudden and unexpected — it came in the hour of the wolf, the hour between night and dawn.

What Branwen and I draw some small comfort from is the fact that it wasn’t a long and painful process. She didn’t suffer, she died at home, loved and cared for, not in a cheerless hospital ward or strange hospice room, and I was beside her, able to comfort her at the end. It was her time to go.

This morning we say goodbye to Brenda’s body, but not to her spirit or to the love we had for her and she for us. She has joined what some African societies call the ‘sasha’, the recently departed, whose time on earth overlaps with people still alive. They do not die, they live on in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, and bring them to life in stories and anecdote. Only when the last person to know an ancestor dies does that ancestor leave the ‘sasha’ for the ‘zamani’; the generalised ancestors who are never forgotten, but are revered in memory.

Brenda was a feisty and spirited woman who found it difficult to pull her punches in her dealings with others. She didn’t suffer fools gladly — or even badly, including me on occasions. But despite our sporadic harsh but soon forgotten and forgiven outbursts of frustration, words can never express my own and Branwen’s profound gratitude to Brenda for bringing purpose, happiness and a sense of fulfilment to our lives — not least for her constant part in the general effort to alleviate the burden of the darker times we’ve shared.

Goodbye, dear.

 **************************************************************************

Brenda Christie died at home in June after a short battle with cancer. At the KSL we have always tried to commemorate the less famous comrades who made up the anarchist movement. Intensely private, she appeared only as ‘Marigold’ (the typesetter) in the Cienfuegos Press titles she helped publish. Later, the academic authors ensured she was thanked by name when she worked as an editorial assistant at Cambridge University Press.

Brenda worked with the First of May Group against Franco’s dictatorship. She also thought of the name for and played a central role in the Stoke Newington Eight Defence Group. Stuart Christie in his eulogy says Brenda ‘played a crucial and pivotal role in helping to organise and coordinate my ultimately successful defence… working late into the night typing up the barristers’ notes during the eight-month Old Bailey trial, one of the longest in British legal history. Her character and integrity won her the grudging respect of the senior police officers involved in the case.’ John Barker, one of those convicted, later thanked her for her work with the defence group saying that she had saved him several years of prison time.

Anarchists can have complex lives: Brenda loved Shakespeare and ran a drama school. In the eulogy, Stuart tells how she turned her back on the ‘dolce vita’ of sixties Milan because it ‘failed to satisfy her sense of moral integrity.’ Instead, she lived a life full and committed. Our thoughts go out to Stuart, Branwen, Merri and Mo and all who knew and worked with her.

[You can read Stuart’s Eulogy at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/9kd6dm]

Image: Stuart and Brenda Christie, Paris, 1974: photo by Antonio Téllez (who also cooked the delicious rabbit á la Basque). With thanks to Stuart Christie. https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/djhc94

 KSL

Brenda Christie, who has died of cancer aged 70, was my wife, friend and comrade for more than 50 years. An intensely private person, though engaging, sociable and witty, she was a typist, editor, teacher and political activist; we met in London in 1968 on Bastille Day.

Brenda was born in Shoreditch, east London, daughter of Eliza (nee Evans) and Bert Earl, and grew up in Gosport, Hampshire, where her father was a chief petty officer in the navy. With a love of literature and a sharp intelligence, she had hoped to make a career in journalism, but the breakup of her parents’ marriage led her to leave home at 15 and move to London, where she became a copy typist.

In 1967 her adventurous spirit took her to Milan, where she worked as a companion to an American model, but the political and cultural turbulence of the time drew her back to London. Brenda was introduced to the International Socialists (which became the Socialist Workers party) through her best friend, Valerie Packham, and they were involved in the occupation of Hornsey College of Art in 1968.

She was also committed to the anti-Francoist cause, working with the anarchist First of May Group, which brought her to the attention of the Metropolitan police’s special branch and the intelligence services, as did her role as a co-founder, with me, of the anarchist publishing house Cienfuegos Press, and her association with the Anarchist Black Cross and Black Flag magazine.

When I was arrested and falsely charged with being involved in the Angry Brigade conspiracy in 1971, Brenda visited me almost daily in Brixton prison for 18 months, bringing home-cooked meals on public transport, and helped my legal team in my successful defence and acquittal.

In 1974, following the kidnapping in Paris of a Francoist banker by anti-fascists, a special branch officer visited our flat in Wimbledon and advised us to move out of London. We went first to Honley, in Yorkshire, where Brenda and a friend opened a teashop, Touchwood, which became popular with local millworkers and lorry drivers.

Our next home was Sanday in Orkney, where our daughter, Branwen, was born and where we continued our work on Cienfuegos Press. We then moved to Cambridge, and Brenda worked for Cambridge University Press on a number of titles with Albert Hourani and Trevor Mostyn including the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa.

In Cambridge she discovered her true metier in education, initially teaching business studies at Cambridge college of further education. After a move to Hastings, East Sussex, where we settled for 20 years, Brenda’s teaching extended to giving drama lessons to Branwen – who later became an actor – and setting up the Rude Mechanicals Drama Studio.

Our final move to Clacton, Essex, coincided with a decline in her health, the pain of which was eased by the arrival of our granddaughters, Merri and Mo, who survive her, along with me and Branwen.

********************************

Thoughts on the @narchist London Bookfair

Some thoughts from 'Battlescarred' Nick Heath:

Below we have the distinguished observations of the leader of the 'Anarchist Federation' Mr. Nick Heath on the London anarchist bookfair.  Mr. Heath is immediately recognizable for the remarkable head-gear he dons on such occasions as the London Anarchist Bookfair.  When he turn-up in 2012 at the Manchester & Salford Bookfair he came disguised as Williekerslike complete with a cloth cap.  When the trade unionist, Derek Pattison, confronted Nick outside the venue to that event at the People's History Museum, Mr. Heath hesitated before mounting the staircase questioning Ron Marsden about Derek who was armed with a handful of leaflets.  In the end Heath allowed his girlfriend to ascend the stairs before him, and she deftly took the leaflet from Mr. Pattison in her teeth and spit it out.  What is worrying is that Mr. Heath, apart from being somewhat narrow minded politically, is one of the few anarchists with any intellectual qualities in the 'anarchist' affiliated organisations in London.

Steven.

 

 

Oct 24 2015 14:54

What did you get at the 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair?

Well, today it's the "anarchist Christmas": the bookfair.

So what did everyone get and how was it for people?

Battlescarred

 

 

Oct 25 2015 18:03

Nothing. Was given latest Black Flag and latest Freedom Bulletin,
which I have yet to read.
Chased that mofo Brian Bamford a few yards up the Bookfair
when he had the nerve to greet me with a shit eating grin.


A more considered e-mail about last year's Bookfair was sent
to me below:
Dear Brian,

 

Here are some thoughts about the bookfair that I didn’t really feel were
worthy of documenting but which have helped me to understand a couple
of paradoxes that had been on my mind – and which I probably unwisely
promised that I would send you!!

 

My overall impression of the attendees was negative.  Overall, they
struck me as being self-centred, which I felt was evidenced by the
obvious attention that they had given to their hairstyles and apparel,
some of which was conspicuously co-ordinated.  Obviously, self-centredness
precludes concern for the other.

 

You might ask ‘What has this inference got to do with anarchism?’ 
Well, if one constructs anarchism solely as being against, the inference
has nothing at all to do with it. However, if one constructs anarchism
as being emancipatory (not perhaps the best word I could choose) the
inference has a lot to do with anarchism because a commitment to
emancipation implies concern for the other.  Moreover, the two previous
constructions of anarchism imply two converse ways of being an anarchist,
in the case of the former, being reactive and in the case of the latter, being
proactive.  

 

My impression of the attendees and the inference from it that I have drawn
contrast with my appreciation of the bookfair programme.  With the sole
exception of what I regard as its extremely unfortunate front and back
covers, I think that its design is extremely good. In addition, the component
of information about disability is extremely commendable.

 

This brings me to the issue about the information in the programme about
the meetings. Initially, the subjects of the meetings look impressive. 
However, so too did the subjects of the meetings of the previous bookfairs
that I attended.  The large majority of the subjects give me the impression
of being one-offs or attempted start-ups.  This impression has prompted me
to imagine an anarchist event in which the large majority of the subjects of
the meetings are reports of works-in-progress.  That type of event might be
attended by far fewer attendees and attendees of a very different type.    

 

Just a couple of thoughts.

Under the Black Flag!

IN an e-mail extract below Iain McKay questions the concern of some of us on the Northern Voices Blog have about the plight of Freedom Press in particular and the left press in general, saying:

'All in all, I'm not sure why you are doing this Brian – all you seem to be doing is alienating people. ....  Given what you have written about me all I can say is that I would suggest your readers take everything you write with a very large pinch of salt.  All in all, I really do have better things to do that (sic) to reply to obvious distortions and insults.  If you want to help build the anarchist movement in the UK, well, that would be good but, to be honest, it does not look like you want to do that – if you did, you would not be writing such nonsense....  if you want to do something constructive then please consider getting involved with Black Flag – like the “Freedom” Kropotkin helped create, it is a communist-anarchist journal...' 

Comrade McKay then patronises me suggesting:

'If that (Black Flag) is not your version of anarchism, get involved with something more suitable for you (apparently “Anarchist Voices” is still going).' 

The fact is that, as I have already pointed out, I have never to my mind ever written anything about Iain McKay.  So far as I know I have never set eyes on him, and though I know the name I cannot recall having read anything he has written much beyond his recent e-mails to me.  Other people have remarked upon him and what he has written, but I have no pre-conceived ideas about him. 

As an alternative to the historic publication Freedom (first published 1886), which was put to death last year, Mr. McKay proffers Black Flag (circa 1970).  It is hard to take Iain McKay seriously here if only because, it seems to me, that Black Flag had its historical origins in a failed projected that I was involved in, in the 1960s.  Black Flag evolved out of a charitable venture called Black Cross which was set-up by Albert Meltzer and Stuart Christie.  In the early 1960s, both Stuart Christie and I took part in a campaign organised by the young Spanish anarchists of the F.I.J.L. to discourage tourism in Spain as part of the general struggle against the Franco regime. In the end, we clearly failed to discourage tourism to Spain; and in August 1964, Stuart Christie was arrested in Spain and served three years of a 20-year sentence.  For my part and that of my then wife, we were involved in research and propaganda, which involved us in providing photographs of shanty towns around Barcelona and Barcelonetta.  We sent reports of working and living conditions in Spain and later Gibraltar to our contacts in Paris for publication in the F.I.J.L. the Spanish underground periodical Nueva Senda as well as providing reports for 'World Labour News', 'Worker's Voice' and 'Direct Action' in the UK.  

When he came out of prison, Stuart Christie was taken care of by Albert Meltzer and, as I understand it, they first formed the Black Cross and later the journal Black Flag.  It may well be that the Black Cross did its job in providing assistance for prisoners held in the jails of General Franco,  but Black Flag was never a publication which had any significant status in the British labour movement.  I joined a trade union in 1957 – the ETU as an apprentice electrician; but, in all my years on the shop-floor I have never known a working man or woman who had ever heard of a publication called Black Flag.  Certainly none of the blacklisted electricians that I'm involved campaigning with today will have heard of such an obscure journal.   Its exotic and melodramatic contents and title may well appeal to young students but not to the working people and trade unionists, I know.   

Stuart Christie knows my views on what happened in the 1960s, and he knows that I am critical of his historic aloofness with regard to the British labour movement to which I belong as a lay trade union official, and his literary failure to seriously re-examine what transpired at the time of our involvement with the Spanish resistance to Franco.  However, having said all that, when Tameside Trade Union Council published its tribute to the 70^th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War in 2006, Stuart had no hesitation, when at my request, it came to him writing an introduction in our booklet (see 'Other publications' on this Blog).    

If Iain McKay had owt about him he would know that I already edit the regional political and cultural publication Northern Voices, perhaps he unaware of this because he lives in London and works at a University.  Because it is so well publicised he ought, however, to be aware of my involvement in the campaign against the blacklist in the British building trade if only because since 2009, when the Blacklist Support Group was set up, there has been a London aspect to this struggle.

& Iain McKay's Misplaced Critique!

BELOW Iain McKay addresses an e-mail to me in which he gives me

too much credit.  I can only assume that has responded in

such haste that he has failed to notice that I am not the author

of the critique on which he exercises so much passion. 

The author of all the critiques about 'Who Killed Freedom'

is clearly Christopher Draper who lives in Llandudno, and

though Mr. Draper writes for Northern Voices he is, as any one who

knows him will realise, very much his own man.  Iain ought to

understand that the words Northern Voices is in the plural, and

 is not one of those smelly little orthodoxies in which everyone speaks in chorus.

Dear Brian,

I'm sick and tired of your petty insults and smearing good comrades -- I also don't appreciate you twisting of my words.
Here is what I actually wrote:
'And what of "Total Liberty"  ?  If this analysis were accurate then that should have gone from strength to strength.  If I remember correctly, it became 'Anarchist Voices' -- does that still exist? I can find issues up to 2010 on-line.  It looks like it "lost its way" long before Freedom did...' compare that to Brian's 'Flaunting his ignorance, McKay celebrates the demise of the magazine "Anarchist Voices", which "lost its way long before FREEDOM did" but I can reassure Iain that it’s alive and well...'


The bad faith and dishonesty is clear. ' Flaunting my ignorance'... oh hum.  I guess that my going through the 'Freedom' archives from the 1880s to the 1960s to produce a Peter Kropotkin anthology amount to nothing... as does my reading of the paper from the late-1980s -- so I have 'flick[ed] through copies of FREEDOM before 2001.  Rest assured, the Freedom of the 1880s to 1930s was class-struggle focused, was communist-anarchist -- even if it opened its columns to others (and why not, if the articles are of sufficient interest and quality).   It is interesting to note that a single quote from 1919 apparently overturns the self-proclaimed communist-anarchist position 'Freedom' had from 1886.  Its recreation in the 1930s was also on this basis.  This did not exclude other anarchists writing for it -- as did other anarchists after 2001.  Something I have noted many times but which Brian fails to acknowledge.


So, all in all, I'm not sure why you are doing this Brian -- all you seem to be achieving is alienating people. Your insults on Richard Griffin are disgraceful (he is no 'useful idiot' and to suggest so shows you do not know him).   I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve by these poisonous emails -- given what you have written about me all I can say is that I would suggest that your readers take everything you write with a very large pinch of salt.   All in all, I really do have better things to do that reply to obvious distortions and insults. 


If you want to help build the anarchist movement in the UK, well, that would be good but, to be honest, it does not look like you want to do that -- if you did, you would not be writing such nonsense.   For the other people cc-ed into these bile-filled emails, if you want to do something constructive then please consider getting involved with Black Flag -- like the 'Freedom' Kropotkin helped create, it is a communist-anarchist journal. If that is not your version of anarchism, get involved with something more suitable for you (apparently 'Anarchist Voices' is still going).

Iain (McKay)

Who Killed FREEDOM?: update two: April 2015

by Christopher Draper

IN 2014 the world’s oldest radical newspaper, FREEDOM, ceased publication. In February 2015 I (with help from NV comrades) identified the culprits and causes of its destruction in a detailed critique, 'Who Killed FREEDOM?' (available on this website). If you’ve been following the thread, here’s the latest update…



1. Despite their angry responses not one member of the FREEDOM collective has had the courage to accept our challenge to come up North and publicly debate Who Killed FREEDOM? at a Manchester Bookfair.



2. Two recent FREEDOM respondents, Iain McKay and Richard Griffin, are no exceptions. Both signally failed to offer any substantive analysis of why a paper that had survived so long through such a variety of adverse circumstances should now find it impossible to continue. As the authors of an excellent analysis of the failure of alternative organisations observed:
'If we refrain from rigorous criticism for fear of upsetting our friends we can be sure our enemies will be much less restrained and when reality eventually kicks in our initiatives will continue to collapse' ('What a Way to Run a Railroad', Commedia, 1985).


The FREEDOM collective’s continuing refusal to accept responsibility or properly analyse its own failure adds insult to injury.



3. Both McKay and Griffin have nothing to say about key issues such as FREEDOM’s refusal to print criticism of Anarchist Federation intimidation or the paper’s censorship of further specified articles. Neither confronts the fundamental criticism that FREEDOM abandoned its core role of fostering open-minded anarchist debate and instead introduced a regime of simplistic, sub-Marxist rhetoric enlivened by images of masked, missile-throwing juveniles.



4. When McKay claims FREEDOM from “the 1880’s until the 1940’s was always a class-struggle journal” he exemplifies his limited understanding of the FREEDOM tradition perhaps best illustrated by an example that appears in FREEDOM’s centenary edition, published in October 1986.  When Tom Keell, the paper’s editor in 1919 heard that anarchist William Charles Owen had returned to England he asked him to write for FREEDOM.  As Owen had grown sceptical of the merits of communism he wrote back pointing out that as an Individualist he thought his writings might not suit the readers of an Anarchist Communist paper, 'but on being told we were Anarchists first and foremost, he consented'. That is the point, for 115 years FREEDOM was 'Anarchist first and foremost'.  From 2001, in the words of editor Simon Saunders, FREEDOM 'enforced a strict class first line'. 



5. Griffin claims his contributions to FREEDOM on 'gardening, architecture, skateboarding etc' lacked class analysis and still got published.  Sadly he failed to draw the obvious conclusion that he served the collective as a 'useful idiot'.  His offerings challenged nobody, he had and apparently still has, nothing to say about the collective’s censorship or abusive treatment of critical contributors.  His sycophantic attitude is embarrassingly obvious from his pat on the back to Comrade McKay,  'Well said Iain, couldn’t have put it better myself'. 



6. It is apparent to impartial observers that Iain McKay and Simon Saunders, assisted by cabin boy Griffin are better suited to sailing off into the sunset under the 'Black Flag' of vicious old sea-dog, Captain Meltzer (deceased) who never let facts get in the way of a good story.  It is to my profound regret that before doing so they first drove the graceful old flagship FREEDOM onto the rocks.

7. Flaunting his ignorance, McKay celebrates the demise of the magazine 'Anarchist Voices', which 'lost its way long before FREEDOM did' but  I can reassure Iain that it’s alive and well and the current issue contains some excellent articles, including one by myself and a chap named Richard Griffin!   Interestingly, in his 'Anarchist Voices' piece Griffin reveals that he actually stopped reading FREEDOM many years ago but omits to explain whether it was his own or Iain McKay’s articles that caused him (along with many others) to loose interest in the paper.  



8. Echoing McKay’s mix of arrogance and ignorance, Griffin advises, 'Rather than spending hours on this (critique) why don’t you produce and distribute something along the lines you think FREEDOM should have taken?'  It’s clearly escaped Griffin’s attention that besides writing for 'Anarchist Voices' us Northern anarchists have also recently produced 'Boys on the Blacklist' and 'Northern Voices' magazine.  Anarchist campaigns and literature that not are only exemplify lots of imaginative ideas absent from FREEDOM but also popular and bought by ordinary people uninterested in the tired, formulaic nonsense trotted out by recent FREEDOM editors (copies available from the editor of this website).  For further ideas Griffin and McKay could also flick through copies of FREEDOM before 2001 where they’ll readily find articles written by myself and others that don’t simply reduce to their latter-day, 'fight capitalism and create heaven on earth' formula.  If they’re inspired enough they might belatedly reconsider another idea of ours, proposed back in 2001, that FREEDOM practices what anarchism preaches and introduce federated editorial control  (ie - each region contributing a couple of pages per issue through a local editor).  Despite the rhetoric, London wouldn’t accept our idea, retained central control and cultivated group-think.



9. None of this should have happened. Formally, the assets of FREEDOM are not ultimately controlled by the editorial collective but safeguarded by a Board, 'THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM PRESS Ltd (FFP)'.  As the main purpose of the enterprise is to publish the newspaper FREEDOM if it ceased then FFP are supposed to step in and appoint others to take over production but this did not happen. We will, in the course of time, reveal exactly what has been going on at FFP, for the time being we will simply say all is not well.  In 1982 the FFP Board was constituted with seven directors.  There has been much irregularity since and suffice it to say there is now urgent need to appoint additional directors with integrity and political credibility to restore proper oversight of the activities of the collective and recommence publication of FREEDOM. On the 24th June 2015 FFP are scheduled to hold a meeting to consider the appointment of two new directors; long-time peace activist, Ernest Rodker and libertarian writer and academic, Dr. David Goodway.  Predictably, the collective are already scheming to promote their own tame, rival candidates so the outcome of the Board meeting will have critical significance.  The result is not a foregone conclusion as the legitimacy of some Directors is open to challenge and there is a serious issue of conflict of interest. We will most assuredly reveal more in a future update.

Tussle Over Death of 'Freedom'

IAIN Mckay answers Chris Draper's Critique in an e-mail comment below:

'(CHRIS Draper writes) - Angry members of the collective attempted to portray my critique as mere personal criticism and proffered no substantive refutation'

 I'm glad to see that members of the Freedom collective have echoed my comments on these disgraceful emails being no more than personal attacks.

 I have written for Freedom but never been a member of the collective -- I have always found the editors to be open to printing articles from many viewpoints and they regularly put things into the paper I wish they hadn't.  The notion that Freedom closed its doors to other views is wrong -- it opened them and this seemed bother the reformist-liberals (as can be seen from the quotes from Jonathan Simcock below).

"It appears the destructive implications of regime-change engineered by Toby Crowe were presciently anticipated in Spring 2004 by Jonathan Simcock of Total Liberty in the magazine’s editorial column:   'Sadly, the longstanding flagship of British Anarchist journals, namely FREEDOM, has increasingly abandoned the broader church of Anarchist ideas, and has metamorphosed into a poorer version of Black Flag’.”

 A 'poorer version of Black Flag' is far better than being a poorer version of 'Total Liberty' (which showed how well it knew anarchism by proclaiming the so-called "Libertarian Alliance" as allies!).  As for "the broader church" (church, really?) of anarchism, Freedom regularly put in articles from a wide range of views -- which provoked responses from other readers.

In the following edition, Simcock rammed home his analysis and critique:
'To reach ordinary people Anarchist papers need to re-evaluate Anarchist ideas and to hold an open debate. I am afraid the regular dose of 19th century Marxist and Class Struggle dominated viewpoints to be seen in FREEDOM will repel not attract people to anarchism.  FREEDOM has lost its way.' 

The notion that class struggle has something to do with '19th century Marxist' views is pretty ignorant of the views of the anarchists who founded Freedom in 1886 -- and relaunched it in 1936. It is nice to see that Simcock would not be happy to see Freedom opened up to the likes of, say, Kropotkin...

 And what of 'Total Liberty' ? If this analysis were accurate then that should have gone from strength to strength. If I remember correctly, it became 'Anarchist Voices' -- does that still exist?  I can find issues up to 2010 on-line.  It looks like it "lost its way" long before Freedom did...

As Richard noted, 'Black Flag' is still going and if you want to do something constructive for anarchism in the UK rather than ignorantly slang others off, we would like to hear from you.  It's is, as noted, an anarcho-communist paper -- in the same way that Freedom was when Kropotkin helped found it.

The major problem with the movement seems to be an unwillingness for people to get actively involved in projects -- that is the fundamental reason why Freedom is no more.  Perhaps rather than produce nasty little attacks on individuals, perhaps a more constructive activity could be found? Show us all how it is done... that would be a nice change.

Who Killed FREEDOM?: an update: March 2015

by Chris Draper

IN 2014, the world’s oldest radical newspaper, FREEDOM, ceased publication.  In February 2015 I identified the culprits and causes of its destruction in a ten-page critique, 'Who Killed FREEDOM?'  Angry members of the collective attempted to portray my critique as mere personal criticism and proffered no substantive refutation, excepting the claim by Simon Saunders that, 'readership of the paper remained broadly stable from the time Vernon (Richards) died (2001) until it closed – around 300-400.'  More typical responses endorsed my analysis and forwarded supplementary evidence.  As a brief update I summarise a small selection of these new insights:

1.  In response to Saunders’ claim, I’ve been reliably informed that in the summer of 2003, Toby Crowe, the editor responsible for introducing FREEDOM’s controversial 'class-first' regime addressing a meeting at Height Gate, Hebden Bridge claimed, 'that the circulation of FREEDOM was then around 800 copies.'

2.  It appears the destructive implications of regime-change engineered by Toby Crowe were presciently anticipated in Spring 2004 by Jonathan Simcock of Total Liberty in the magazine’s editorial column:
'Sadly, the longstanding flagship of British Anarchist journals, namely FREEDOM, has increasingly abandoned the broader church of Anarchist ideas, and has metamorphosed into a poorer version of Black Flag.'

In the following edition, Simcock rammed home his analysis and critique:
'To reach ordinary people Anarchist papers need to re-evaluate Anarchist ideas and to hold an open debate. I am afraid the regular dose of 19th century Marxist and Class Struggle dominated viewpoints to be seen in FREEDOM will repel not attract people to anarchism. FREEDOM has lost its way.'

3.  A third correspondent offered a graphic illustration of the regime’s determined imposition of its collective will, not only on recent contributors but also on FREEDOM’s political legacy.  Colin Ward’s 1971 classic statement of peaceful, constructive libertarianism, 'Anarchy in Action' was, in 2008, given a makeover insurrectionary cover featuring hooded youths and an anonymous “anarchist” lobbing a missile.  A grotesque, perversion of the political philosophy of an author who believed, 'Ideas not armies change the face of the world,' whose self-declared intention was, 'to put anarchism back into the intellectual bloodstream, into the field of ideas which are taken seriously.' 

4.  An example of FREEDOM’s abuse of editorial responsibility so upset one subscriber that he recalled the incident (and forwarded the evidence to me) fully 5 years after the event, though not themselves the injured party.
'I have been a subscriber to FREEDOM for some 30 years at least, and so it is with sadness that I have decided I no longer want to receive the paper', wrote Ian Pirie to FREEDOM in January 2010. 'Two recent issues of the paper finally made me realise I had enough.'

Mr Pirie, whose father, incidentally had subscribed to FREEDOM long before him, was no longer prepared to put up with the paper’s use of gratuitously offensive language and celebration of violence.
 
Pirie cited recent publication of the 'Bookfair Song' with its first line ending 'you cunts', asking 'How are you going to get anarchism a broader public if you print such sexist and frankly juvenile, stuff?'  ('It’s the place to settle scores / And you know you’re getting yours” and “our scene is not a playground / For wankers to hang out').

Pirie further cited an article by Ian Bone praising the group Os Cangaceiros, who apparently 'join demos armed with sling-shots, rice flails and an array of martial arts weapons' and linked in the paper with Mesrine, described in the same issue as a 'loony who killed two policemen…beat his wife up…kidnapped and tortured a journalist.'

Wondering 'What has this thuggery got to do with anarchism?' Pirie concluded; 'I will continue to do my best to propagate the positive and constructive aspects of anarchist politics where I can. But FREEDOM is no longer any help to me in doing this.'

Rather than reflect on the implications of loosing yet another long-time subscriber the paper printed a mocking response from “Gawain the cunt Williams” (his self-chosen appellation) of the 'Whitechapel Anarchist Group':
'Ian Pirie wrote how this paper no longer represented his liberal whining politics because it printed the word ““cunt”” and apparently his pacifist eyes couldn’t handle it…  Throughout the ‘70s the feminist movement fought against its use. I wasn’t around then so I don’t know if cunt actually meant cleft of venus then, but I know that since I’ve been on this earth it sure as fuck hasn’t. Instead it describes people who are muppets, arses, tossers…  People who hate the word cunt seem to hate it because they’re tired of being called one or because they’re middle class cunts trying to impose some sense of decency on working class men…Makhno was a great anarchist because he used to shoot people. If you can’t handle people being called cunts then how are you going to handle an article about Mahkno?...  Finally, Mr Pirie, maybe you should realise that if the word cunt offends you so much it might be because you are in fact…a cunt. FREEDOM’s been doing a cracking job under its new editors.'!

Future updates will include observations and conclusions from inside the final collective and the Board of 'FRIENDS OF FREEDOM PRESS'.  For now I’m content to leave readers to contemplate the implications of an editorial collective that derides the constructive, intellectually respectable anarchism of Colin Ward as 'reeking of allotments, of forgetting class, of irrelevance and reformism' yet receives such glowing commendation from Gawain “the cunt” Williams.

Christopher Draper, Llandudno

Who Killed Freedom?: an unauthorised history 4.

The End but Not for Everyone…

by Chris Draper

ON March 10^th, 2014 FREEDOM announced:

“We have come to realise that a solid hardcopy newspaper is no longer a viable means of promoting the anarchist message…An underlying problem has been a lack of capacity to sustain it. We had hoped that Freedom would be adopted as THE paper of the anarchist movement…Although Freedom Press has changed from a political group with a particular point of view to a resource for anarchism as a whole, we have not managed to shake the legacy of the past and get different groups to back it as a collective project…the shop, publishing and book distribution will continue…As will the use of Angel Alley for meetings, events, offices…”   

Four aspects of this statement deserve close scrutiny:

1. no longer viable
2. a resource for anarchism as a whole
3. not managed to get groups to back it
4. shop, publishing, book distribution…meetings, events, offices.  

I dispute all four, interconnected, elements.  

Viability

FREEDOM’s viability was adversely affected by the development of the internet but in 2000 Freedom Press published a quarterly journal, the Raven, and a fortnightly newspaper so it should now be possible to finance a monthly paper.  The premises are owned freehold (and contribute almost 6K annual rental income), Aldgate Press printed the paper free (which alone equates to a 10K annual subsidy), hundreds of subscribers paid upfront, the paper had an established brand name and distribution network so FREEDOM enjoyed huge commercial advantages over other aspiring anarchist publications but as I’ve attempted to illustrate, successive collectives took all this for granted, alienated existing writers and readers and failed to secure a new constituency.

 

Resource for All

Under Charles Crute’s editorship FREEDOM welcomed articles of every variety of anarchist thought and practice.  When two articles presenting opposite sides of an argument were submitted both were published. Until 2001 FREEDOM relished controversy and open debate, after Toby’s ascendancy a narrow class-struggle line was enforced.  The collective’s claim to be a resource for 'anarchism as a whole' whilst consistently refusing to publish material that challenges their party line exemplifies their arrogance and dishonesty. 

Not Managed to Get Groups to Back It

I lied about disputing this section of the statement, for it indicates a rare flash of insight on the part of the collective.  As I argued from the beginning, groups, like SolFed and AF have enough problems maintaining their own organisations to put much effort into FREEDOM.  It’s the bit claiming:  

We have not managed to shake the legacy of the past'  that I dispute. 

Successive editors have not just shaken the legacy; the intellectual, moral and political legacy of pre-Crowe FREEDOM has been razed to the ground. 

Spoils of Class War (shop, book publishing, offices, meeting rooms etc)

Having provided a political play-school for aspiring class warriors FREEDOM newspaper is no longer of interest.  Like the Revd Toby Crowe, several members of the collective past and present have gained other pulpits for their sermons. Political organs from libcom to Morning Star now 'benefit' from the opinions of interns schooled in Angel Alley.   The alumni’s attention is now focussed on other assets in the FREEDOM portfolio and the collective privately admit that most were always more interested in getting their hands on the building than producing the paper.   'Within the Freedom Collective only a small minority were involved in producing the paper, not so much lack of commitment as not seeing it as central to what Freedom as a building was for.'   Vernon Richards must be spinning in his grave.

Conveniently situated between Aldgate East tube station and Whitechapel Art Gallery; the premises now provide convivial clubrooms for members and friends of the FREEDOM collective. Class-struggle groups might not have done much for the paper but ironically FREEDOM now provides them with convenient London meeting rooms.

FREEDOM’s book-publishing business was initially exploited by the clique to produce the decidedly dodgy,'Beating the Fascists'.  In 2014 they reprinted John Quail’s, 'Slow Burning Fuse' with the added 'benefit' of a new introduction penned by collective member and leader of AF, Nick Heath.

The collective have grand ambitions as Andy Meinke, who now runs the bookshop explains:

'At some point we want to move out of here, somewhere on a street front to get more passing trade.'  Sale of the freehold could raise around a million pounds.

Many of FREEDOM’s lesser assets have already been disposed of to friends and associates of the collective. In 2008, former FREEDOM editor John Retty discovered classic books from the shop of no appeal to class-struggle types were being destroyed en masse.  Confiding to friends at the London Bookfair that he’d managed to salvage a few copies of his own literary works, he appeared gloomy and depressed as he reflected on the significance of the destruction.

FREEDOM’s archive of historic books and newspapers has been similarly looted:

'We have multiple copies of pretty much every issue ever printed of our august newspaper, along with a big batch of foreign publications…Multiple copies are already kind of getting promised out…With the books, we’re hoping to keep a lot of them but of the ones which are going it’ll probably be first come first served.'   'I was in Freedom this week with Iain Mckay flicking through back issues of Freedom and War Commentary…We in AF have been discussing setting up an archive…its our history and pretty interesting too'.  Pretty interesting it undoubtedly is but is it not outrageous that individuals and groups like AF and Black Flag who unceasingly denigrated FREEDOM now exercise proprietorial rights over its assets?  

Authoritarian Asset Strippers

The takeover of FREEDOM didn’t require much planning, the new boys on the block were astonished how easily they gained control, 'When Vernon Richards died (2001) he handed over FREEDOM to the “Movement” on a plate but it was too surprised to notice, it was comrades coming out of the Anarchist Youth Network (AYN) who saw the opportunity with the paper and reclaimed it for class-struggle.'

Whilst the class warriors consider this coup commendable, to me it was invasive, cynical, dishonest and exploitative. The people who piled into FREEDOM had nothing but contempt for the paper’s political outlook. FREEDOM embraced a gentle, considered, constructive range of anarchist ideas and practice that contrasted sharply with the class-struggle politics of alternative anarchist organs (Class War, Black Flag, Organise! etc).  The new regime swept into power on a triumphant wave of youthful enthusiasm. Once Simon Saunders found his feet, stopped admitting his own ignorance and started proclaiming his infallibility there was no going back.  Gainsayers were systematically treated with contempt.

In 2006 Saunders described FREEDOM stalwarts as:

'reeking of allotments, of forgetting class, of irrelevance and reformism.'   

An obvious, yet demeaning, reference to Vernon Richards who ran a commercial organic market garden and Colin Ward who wrote extensively about allotments as a model of mutual aid.

Crowe, Saunders, Talent and associates ridiculed FREEDOM’s prefigurative politics and dismissed the paper’s distinctively anarchist critique of Britain’s welfare state, characterised by David Goodway as, 'Freedom Press being unswervingly hostile to the Labour governments and their nationalization and welfare legislation.'  

As a disenchanted subscriber posted on the History Workshop web-site following FREEDOM’s demise:

'The problem is that, for many years now, Freedom has been run by dimwits.  It has had nothing of value to say for a long while.   It is such a shame that this historically important paper has been ruined…In recent years, every edition of Freedom was anti-denationalisation and pro-welfare.  It was often difficult to tell it apart from a left Labour paper except for the juvenile photos of people in masks throwing things at the police.'

In 1986 Tony Gibson could still claim:

'FREEDOM has survived while many other anarchist journals have failed, because among its many virtues it has been flexible, intelligent and able to withstand periods when this or that bunch of bone-headed zealots have striven to turn it to the service of their own narrow creed.'  

From 2001 the 'bone-headed zealots' imposed 'their own narrow creed' with predictable consequences. 

Although the zealous class warriors had a range of apparently more appropriate newspapers available in which to indulge their class struggle fantasies they latched onto the fact that capturing FREEDOM offered them unique advantages.  FREEDOM loyalists were too polite, trusting and geographically scattered to react as swiftly and determinedly as the situation demanded.  Those of us who spoke out were constantly frustrated by the censorship and evasion of the new regime.

FREEDOM was taken over by entryists with no allegiance to the organisation whose assets they have now monopolised and exploited for more than a decade.  The collective have doubtless convinced themselves of their entitlement but are living off the hard won gains of anarchists they despise.

In the end just 2 of the collective of 14 voted against ending FREEDOM. For most of them, their heart was never really in it, their allegiance lay elsewhere.

Collective member, Nick Heath dismissed the newspaper as 'a pole for liberal anarchists' and used an internet thread mourning the passing of FREEDOM not to offer condolences but to advertise his own newssheet ('if you want to spread real class struggle anarchist ideas then think about ordering a bundle' ) until informed by a fellow contributor that it was;'in bad taste on a thread about the ending of another paper.'

Collective member Meinke was always, 'very sceptical of its (FREEDOM’s) liberal bent'  whilst Jim Clarke wasn’t at all bothered about FREEDOM’s disappearance:  

'I’m not sure FREEDOM had much of an illustrious history…I’m more concerned about Black Flag to be honest'. 

The tone of Charlotte Dingle’s joyful celebration of the ending of the newspaper more befits a party invite than the passing of an invaluable institution:

' * Waves * Hello, Freedom editor here…Frankly I am overjoyed that the paper is going online…(SMILEY FACE)…'

What is to be Done?

Those of us who loved FREEDOM are not prepared to sit back and see its ideas traduced and its legacy misappropriated by authoritarians. The primary aim of this essay is to puncture the myth and challenge self-serving accounts of the downfall of FREEDOM propagated by successive editors since 2001.

This is also an extended appeal to Steven Charles Sorba (Aldgate Press); Sonia Markham (Retired Illustrator), Richard Parry (Solicitor); and even rather plaintively to Donald Rooum (Cartoonist and collective member), the directors of the holding company, FRIENDS of FREEDOM PRESS Ltd. to belatedly get a grip on the legacy, both intellectual and material, handed down to us by anarchists who didn’t hide behind aliases or enforce their own narrow political creed.  Please do not allow the collective to sell the building without yourselves ensuring that the whole anarchist movement benefits not just the current ruling clique.

Finally the destruction of FREEDOM should give all anarchists pause for thought.  The very openness of FREEDOM left it vulnerable to subversion of its political ideals. We tolerated illiberal behaviour for too long and allowed authoritarians to take over.  FREEDOM stalwart Nicolas Walter had forewarned us:

'In a sense, anarchists always remain liberals and socialists, and whenever they reject what is good in either they betray anarchism itself.'  

A Final Challenge

I challenge any, or all of the current clique that closed down the paper to leave your comfy clubrooms for the day, come up North and politely debate, 'THE FATE of  FREEDOM' at the next (2015) Manchester Anarchist Bookfair. Hopefully you will offer a positive response, though I rather suspect open debate is not your preferred medium.                         

                                                            Christopher Draper, Llandudno, February 2015