Stuart Christie: an insider's study of an authentic classical anarchist by Brian Bamford - Part Two

ANARCHISM IS not a very well understood doctrine in British politics. I realised this when Tameside Trade Union Council first published a booklet commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War in 2006 with Durruti on the cover. The then delegates of the Greater Manchester County Association of Trade Union Council clearly didn't appreciate the publication at the time, but during the meeting a large party of French trade unionists from the CGT [communist] happened to be present and while many of the local English trade unionists held back the French delegation waded-in to buy up most of the commemorative booklets we had to hand, and even later following me to the toilets to get extra copies.

It struck us at the time how utterly frigid the English trade unionists were compared to their French 'communist' CGT comrades.

This thought occurs to me now as I now with sadness write my friend and comrade, Stuart Christie's obituary. I remember that sometime after Stuart wrote the first volume of his autobiography 'GRANNY MADE ME AN ANARCHIST', I wrote a critique of it entitled 'God Help the Anarchist movement that Needs Heroes'. This in turn led to a bitter altercation between me and Stuart on the website 'Libcom' in which I believe he labelled me 'an arsehole'. However, in 2006, it was a measure of Stuart's nobility that when I invited him to write an introduction to Tameside TUC's Spanish commemorative booklet he had no hesitation in agreeing to do the job.

He probably did it because he knew me from when I first met him in Paris in August 1964, when he was about to go on to embrace the risky venture in his ill-fated journey to Madrid and ultimately to a Spanish jail for his part in a proposed attempt to assassinate General Franco. At that time we were all staying in a 'safe house' with Germinal Garcia at his apartment near Place de la République*. My wife Joan and I were returning from Spain, having first worked in Denia, Alicante throughout 1963, and later on in early 1964 moved on to La Linea on the border with Gibraltar where I worked for the MOD at the Gibraltar airport. While in Denia my eldest lad was born at the clinica there in September 1963. While in Spain and later Gib. we had taken photos of the conditions in the shanty towns in Barcelona and we sent back reports on working conditions over there for the FIJL publication Nueva Senda. At that time we were being debriefed, and thought Stuart may have been on a similar mission to us, but soon found out that they had other plans for him. At one stage he asked for our advice and was naturally interested in our own experiences.

Stuart was still in Carabanchel jail [Madrid] when my family again returned to Spain in early 1967 on our way to work in Gibraltar having had difficulties working as an electrician in Rochdale following my involvement supporting the national engineering apprentice strikes in November 1964 and February 1964. Having been blacklisted by the British MOD and throughout Gibraltar with private companies with contracts with the MOD and other contracts with the British authorities the only place on the Rock that I had a serious chance of work was with the Gibraltar City Council, supported by the Transport & General Worker's Union and Albert Risso who had close links with Sir Joshua Hassan the Chief Minister.

The anarchists on Gibraltar at that time were active within the Transport & General Workers Union and were basically anarcho-syndicalists. Stuart identified with the syndicalists, and had fallen under the influence of Bobby Lynn who he says 'had become the backbone of the Glasgow anarchist movement'. I'd stayed with Bobby Lynn in the Gorbals in 1961 and he gave me his copy of 'The Sexual Revolution' by Wilhelm Reich. Bobby was a member of the Syndicalist Worker's Federation when I stayed with him in 1961. As news leaked of Stuart's arrest Peter Turner [FREEDOM EDITOR] had contacted Bobby Lynn in Glasgow and up there they had assured him that Stuart was so dedicated to the peace movement and that it was not likely that he was guilty as claimed by the Spanish authorities. This may have influenced the report in the syndicalist Direct Action which took the line that he must be innocent, and Wynford Hicks on behalf of the anarchists argued on TV news that he was probably the victim of an 'agent-provocateur'. Another Freedom editor Vernon Richards argued more sensibly that it mattered little whether Stuart was innocent or guilty the anarchist position should be to support him.

For my part I knew what had taken place, but anticipating returning to work in Spain and expecting to continue to help the group of young Spanish exiles of the FIJL involved with the failed attempt, I decided to remain silent. Stuart himself had not been prudent before his departure for Spain and had actually participated in a BBC2 program entitled 'Let Me Speak' hosted by Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge, who had been a friend of George Orwell, had often identified morally and intellectually with Tolstoy and anarchism.

In his autobiography 'MY GRANNY MADE ME AN ANARCHIST'[2004] Stuart documents the sequence of events in the summer of 1964: 'In mid-July Salvador and Bernado [Gurucharri] told me I should be ready to leave for Paris by the end of the month. Everything was now in hand for my trip to Spain. Shortly before I left... I was invited to appear on what later turned out to be, for me, an almost disastrous chat show called Let Me Speak, on ...BBC2. Having a small spectrum of anarchists, with me and another young lad called Vincent Johnson representing the "revolutionary anarchists" Muggeridge asked me if I was sincere in my revolutionary aims...would I, for instance, given the opportunity, assassinate Franco?" It was an unlucky shot in the dark, for that was pretty damn close to what I was hoping to do. What could I say but yes?.'

It is an extraordinary admission for a revolutionary anarchist to make! I doubt that the Spaniards I knew in Paris or in Spain in the 1960s would have made such a confession on the BBC or before going on a mission such as Stuart anticipated. It's almost as if he had a death wish or secretly wanted to get caught. When we knew him in Paris in August 1964 he was hopelessly naive and clearly knew little of the reality of everyday Spanish life or working conditions. He struggled to pronounce the Spanish word for 'workers'.

On page 107 of his autobiography he writes: 'I may not have been wise or competent in what I did or the way I went about it, but I did not have the benefit of hindsight'.

Never mind 'hindsight' given what he had done did he have the benefit of foresight or even a glimpse of common sense? I say this knowing, as Stuart did, that other people suffered as a consequence of what he did and the mistakes that he and his handlers made at the time. I also say this as a friend of Stuart who exchanged correspondence with him regularly over the last few years, and had documented and detailed our differences in my earlier pamphlet. One thing that troubles me is not that he wore a kilt, but that he sported a war resister badge of a broken rifle on his chest while walking around Paris in 1964 as he carried our one-year-old son Deon. He told us that he'd visited Paris the year before in the Spring; it was more 'romantic' than in August. Being romantic was probably what attracted most people to Stuart as it was part on his charm.

Yet, when we had visited Ken Hawkes, then secretary of the Syndicalist Workers Fed., and his wife before we went to Spain in February 1963, the worst winter since 1947, they treated us to a bottle of Champagne as we'd just got married and reminded us to remove our Ban the Bomb badges before we left their house on Parliament Hill for Spain. I wonder why none of us thought to urged Stuart Christie to take off his tell-tale War resister badge?

I suppose that in August 1964, we were all a bit intoxicated by the atmosphere of a time in which Franco had just celebrated 25-years of peace, and a pale-faced Salvador Gurucharri and others had just been released from jail. In Paris, at that time, we were all in high spirits as things seemed to be moving in the right direction.

While there Stuart met other major figures in the exiled Spanish anarchist movement, the organised FIJL [Fed. of young libertarians] around the Internal Defence (DI), and including militants of long standing like Octavio Alberola* and Luis Andres Edo.

In his autobiography he describes what he did as 'the act of an adolescent' and he quotes a verse from Longfellow:

'A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' [page 120]

On reflection he goes on to admit: 'Now it will seem like to many a foolish, naive, impulsive act...'

and 'I cannot claim, either, that it was entirely altruistic - my motives were certainly in part a desire for excitement and adventure.'

On reflection he goes on to admit: 'Now it will seem like to many a foolish, naive, impulsive act...'

Essentially he was doing what we had done a year earlier when we went to Spain to escape from what then seemed like dreary Manchester; he was he says not satisfied with what would now be called 'gesture politics' of petitions and protests, and sought to engage directly with a struggle in Spain. Foresight or prudence would make cowards of us all; it was not part of his engaging personality at that time. It set Stuart outside the smelly little left wing orthodoxies which he left behind. Yet it led him to get a 'GO TO JAIL' card to a Madrid prison cell, and was for him a life changing event.

Once in Paris Stuart had made contact with the action groups of the exiled Spanish anarchist movement, organised around Internal Defence (DI) and involving militants of long standing like Octavio Alberola and Luis Andres Edo. As such during his disastrous mission he was later arrested in Madrid and charged with the possession of explosives. These were intended for an attempt on Franco’s life and he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Thanks to a continuing international pressure he was freed after 3 years.

Why was General Franco and the Francoist regime so susceptible to international public opinion in the 1960s?

I think it was in his book 'The Face of Spain' [1950] that Gerald Brenan tried to explain the mellowing of the Franco regime. In that book he explained how the Falange and those who adhered to Franco began invest in real estate and escape the relative poverty of the 1940s and 1950s. We too quickly forget that it was not just the Spanish working-class that suffered after the Civil War, but the Spanish middle-classes experienced insecurity also. My boss Senor Such told me of how in the 1940s everyone in the fishing village where I lived and worked in 1963-4 had suffered depravation after the war and some had to eat cats. Later on it had become possible to make some progress and by the time we got there in the early 1960s things were looking up as the tourists began to arrive and with the development building work on the costas things were much more prosperous for many including the low-level Falangists. This allowed some softening of the regime which may some helped Stuart Christie escape with what turned out to be a relatively short sentence of 3-years in the end. Had he been arrested some ten years earlier for the same offence it may have been an altogether different story, but by the mid-1960s the supporters of the Franco regime felt much more secure than they had been during the Second World War or in its aftermath when to some extent Spain had been isolated internationally.

* FOOTNOTE: In the early hours of 11 May 2011, 86-year-old Germinal García, a militant of the Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL) and the Paris Local Federation of the CNT in the 1950s and 1960s, passed away (in Paris). At the end of the Spanish Civil War, 13-year old Germinal had been interned in Argeles-sur-Mer concentration camp where an unknown English woman, to whom he was ever grateful, cared for him. Stowing away on a Danish freighter, the Kitty Skov, from the port of Barcelona, he escaped to the United States, where he remained for a time in New York, passing himself off as a French citizen, returning later to France to became active in the anti-Francoist struggle. Shunning the limelight, but always in the background with his strong sense of solidarity, Germinal’s apartment in the Rue Lancry was a safe haven for comrades who had escaped from Franco’s Spain — and for guerrillas such as Quico Sabaté whenever he was in Paris (it was also used by Stuart Christie prior to his trip to Spain in 1964). For that and for his ongoing service to the libertarian movement, Germinal won the respect and friendship of all who knew him. With his passing, we have the satisfying memories and the privilege of having known the friendship of a good comrade. Germinal’s remains were cremated in Paris on 17 May 2011.

Octavio Alberola, May 12, 2011 SEE ALSO https://www.facebook.com/TheOrwellSociety The Orwell Society - Home | Facebook The Orwell Society. 1.4K likes. The Orwell Society aims to promote the understanding and appreciation of the life and work of George Orwell. Join here:... www.facebook.com

CNT / CGT union's statement on Catalonia

AS signatory organizations, unions at state level, we share our concern about the situation in Catalonia, the repression that the state has unleashed, including the diminution of rights and freedoms and the rise of a stale nationalism which is appearing again in much of the state.

We defend the emancipation of all the working people of Catalonia and the rest of the world.  Perhaps, in this context, it is necessary to remember that we do not understand the right to self-determination in a statist way, as nationalist parties and organizations proclaim, but as the right to self-organization of our class in a given territory.  Thus understood, self-determination passes more by control of production and consumption by workers and by direct democracy from the bottom up, organized according to federalist principles, than by the establishment of a new frontier or the creation of a new state.

As internationalists, we understand that solidarity among working people should not be limited to state borders, so we are not really concerned where these are drawn.  What we do find very disturbing is the reaction that is being experienced in many parts of the rest of the State, with the enthusiasm for a stale Spanish state, which is more reminiscent of past times, brewed by the media and in line with the authoritarian drift of the government, notable after the imprisonment of persons for summoning acts of disobedience or the application of article 155 of the Constitution.  We do not forget that this nationalist outbreak lays the groundwork for further cuts in rights and freedoms which we must be prevent. The shameful unity of so-called “democratic forces” in justifying repression shows a gloomy picture for all future dissents. It seems that the post-Franco regime that governs us for 40 years, close its ranks to ensure its continuity...

...The Catalan crisis may be the brink of a dying state model.  Whether this change is in one sense or another will depend on our ability, as a class, to take the process in the opposite direction of repression and the rise of nationalisms.  Let us hope that the final result will be more freedoms and rights and not the other way around.  We risk a lot.

CGT – Solidaridad Obrera – CNT, October 26, 2017. Original article in Spanish here. Translation made by and reposted from Enough is enough.

libcom report on Catalan strikes

 Posted By

Cipo Fraioli
Oct 3 2017 12:14

WORKERS in Catalonia have launched a general strike today in response to the brutal police repression following Sunday's Catalan independence referendum.

Originally called by a group of alternative unions including the anarcho-syndicalist CNT, who represent the majority of linesman at the Port of Barcelona, the revolutionary syndicalist CGT and Catalan unions the IAC and the COS, the strike is now also being supported by the dockworkers' Coordinadora as well as mainstream trade unions the CCOO and UGT.
They are also being joined by a wide range of student groups, social centres and Catalan nationalist organisations such as La Taula per la Democràcia, an organism created just before the referéndum, the ANC (Catalan National Assembly), FAPAC (the Federation of Catalan Neighbourhood Assemblies) and UFEC (Union of Catalan Sports Associations).
Neighbourhood defense committees which have been developing alongside the repression of the referendum vote met last night in squares around Catalonia to prepare for the strike. Many neighbourhoods held protests outside hotels at Calella, Pineda de Mar and Figueres to protest the hospitality given to National Police and Civil Guard, successfully forcing the hotels to end their stay.
Demonstrations involving tens of thousands have broken out in the streets this morning. Central Barcelona has an ongoing march of thousands led by the 'bombers' firefighters who were brutally attacked by police last week when they tried to protect demonstrators. Around Barcelona different groups have blocked roads and motorways both with throngs of people and barricades of tires. Tractors have driven into town from local villages to block roundabouts.
Strikes are taking place on Barcelona public transport, and ports at Barcelona and Tarragona are completely shut down. The University of Barcelona has been in occupation since September 22nd with most schools closed for the day. Flying pickets along demonstration routes have been calling on shops to strike for the day.
In a statement, the CNT said: "the unity of Spain has always been a rallying flag for the far right here. Therefore, any calls for self-determination from any part of it, as is the case now in Catalonia, spark a vicious response. We are already seeing an increase in the presence of fascist groups in many towns across Spain and the conservative government is taking an increasingly authoritarian stance, trampling on many fundamental freedoms. These are ominous signs of what might lie ahead for us. Repression is only likely to worsen on many fronts, maybe even involving the military.
"Make no mistake, while we firmly oppose repression from an increasingly authoritarian state and their fascist allies, we are in no way supportive of the nationalist agenda."
The statement also explained that CNT activists have "been busy making things uncomfortable for the nationalists, bringing economic and social issues to the fore, reminding people that the Catalan government was very keen to introduce social cuts only a few years ago.
"This should not be a fight between nations, but between classes. Between an oppressive regime and its fascist allies (as much a part of the “people” as anyone else) and those of us who stand for freedom and rebellious dignity.
We expect repression to increase during the following weeks and days and we will use our weapon of choice, the general strike, to make it difficult for police to move around, get supplies and do their work in general.
The statement concludes: "As revolutionaries, we don't believe we can just remain idle, while the police attack the people in the streets and fascist gangs roam our towns freely."
On Sunday, what should have been a peaceful referendum turned into a carnage. Ten thousand police officers from the Guardia Civil, sent by the central government in Madrid, surged against the peaceful voters, trying to thwart the referendum, by shutting down polling stations and seizing ballot boxes

Violence erupted quickly, and the Sunday turned bloody. More than 800 hundred people were hurt. Everyone from young children to pensioners were victims of an unnecessary display of police brutality. Female protestors have also complained of police sexually assaulting them during arrests.
All in all, police actions in Catalonia have felt to many like a revival of the ghost of Franco still alive in the Spanish right. At least 884 people were injured, after the police savagely attacked the people who were trying to cast their votes. Police officers resorted to rubber bullets (forbidden in Catalonia since 2013), truncheons and even tossed people away from polling booths. The gruesome images of police officers dragging by the hair several women, using tear gas on voters and brutally clashing their batons on even elder people, are available in the internet for everyone to see the strength that fascism has nowadays in Europe.
President Mariano Rajoy, of the right-wing Partido Popular, refuses to recognise the referendum, even declaring that “there has been no independence referendum”, before paying tribute to the Spanish Police, that responded with “firmness and serenity”.
The referendum bill was turned into law by Catalan President Carles Puigdemont on September 6, after being voted in the Catalan Parliament, with 72 votes in favour and 11 abstentions, in the 135-seat chamber in Barcelona. This law stated that 48 hours after the referendum, a yes vote would be followed by the declaration of independence, but was quickly suspended by the Spanish Constitutional Court the day after, with the Spanish government claiming the vote illegal and unconstitutional.
The Catalan government declared that the referendum had been approved by 90% of the 2.3 million people who voted out of a total voter pool of 5,343,358. This means that the turnout was of 42%, with 58% abstaining.
The EU still remains largely silent, and hasn’t condemned the police violence in Spain. This represents the tension in the EU as a whole, where national independence campaigns in Scotland, Flanders, Veneto and elsewhere in other EU member states as well as the Basque Country in Spain. Catalonia is a major player in the Spanish economy and growth, accounting for around 19 percent of its GDP.
Lead image: twitter/@janinavilana

Who Was Guy Bowman?

 by Christopher Draper

Fortunately for the rich, World War I transformed Britain’s raging class war into a murderous conflict between Nations.  Pre-war militancy was inspired by Syndicalism, a scheme for workers to organise into one big class-conscious union to run their own industries and revolutionise society and the prime movers were Tom Mann and Guy Bowman.  Curiously, whilst Mann’s story is well known the life of Guy Bowman remains a mystery.

Manchester’s Massed Militants

Britain’s first national syndicalist conference was convened by Bowman at Manchester Coal Exchange on 26th November 1910. Two hundred delegates representing sixty-thousand organised workers gathered with the speakers including Liverpool stonemason Fred Bowers, Huddersfield socialist Fred Shaw, Irish activist Jim Larkin and Spanish anarchist Lorenzo Portet. Tom Mann moved the founding motion; “That whereas the sectionalism that characterises the trade union movement of today is utterly incapable of fighting the capitalist class and securing the economic freedom of the workers, this conference declares that the time is now ripe for the industrial organisation of all workers on the basis of class – not trade or craft – and that we hereby agree to form a Syndicalist Education League to propagate the principles of Syndicalism throughout the British Isles with a view to merging all existing unions into one compact organisation for each industry…”

Don’t Shoot!

The authorities responded to strikes by sending in the army; shooting dead a miner at Tonypandy, killing 2 railwaymen at Llanelli and 2 dockers in Liverpool.  Unbowed, in 1912 Guy Bowman published in”The Syndicalist” a “DON’T SHOOT!” appeal to soldiers to refuse to fire on fellow workers and was sentenced to 9 months with hard labour as a consequence.

International Man of Mystery

Despite more than a decade of high profile activism Bowman revealed little of his personal life and what he did say is difficult to substantiate.  He claimed to have been born in St John’s Wood, London in 1871 to a French mother and Scottish father yet there’s no official record of his birth.  As an anarchist he might well have chosen to dodge officialdom yet at the height of his political activism he duly completed the 1911 census form, which bears his characteristic signature, yet he’s oddly absent from records covering both his pre and post-political years.

Guy Takes a Bow

Guy’s claimed birth year seems about right so he was already in his early thirties before he became known to English activists.  In 1906 he popped up in London as a journalist claiming specialist knowledge of European political movements.  Joining the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) he pursued a journalistic interest in the recent anarchist assassination attempt on the Spanish king. The founder of the International Modern School movement, Francisco Ferrer, had been arrested by Spanish police and charged with complicity in a move widely interpreted as a political frame up. In September 1906 Bowman published an article in the SDF’s newspaper “Justice” defending Ferrer and the following month he travelled to Spain to cover the continuing prosecution.

Expelled

On Tuesday 23rd October Guy Bowman was arrested in Madrid and interrogated by Spanish police for two days before being “conducted over the border” into France.  It was variously speculated that the police had been tipped off by either the Spanish Embassy in London or the British Government that Bowman was an undesirable alien intent on promoting anarchist insurrection.

Meeting of Minds

Thanks to the campaigning of Bowman and other activists around the world in June 1907 Francisco Ferrer was released after a year’s imprisonment. Immediately resuming his promotion of libertarian education Ferrer made an extended visit to England over the springand summer of 1909 (21 April to June 12). Bowman was then employed as General Manager of the SDF’s print & publications department, ”Twentieth Century Press” and was living at 4 Maude Terrace, Walthamstow (outer East London).

During his time in England Ferrer met the respected anarchist Peter Kropotkin and was reacquainted with his old Spanish comrade Lorenzo Portet. Ferrer entrusted Portet to continue his educational work (LP founded a “Modern School” in Liverpool) in the likely the event that the Spanish authorities would ultimately succeed in silencing him.  A few weeks later Ferrer was duly silenced.

On his return to Spain he was arrested, subjected to a show trial and shot dead by firing squad.

The French Connection

Bowman supported Ferrer’s educational ideas but was ultimately more interested in French Syndicalism. Guy was particularly impressed by the approach of the French Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) trade union. So much so that when leading labour activist Tom Mann landed at London’s Victoria Dock on May 16th 1910 (having returned from 8 years organising overseas) Guy persuaded Tom to accompany him to Paris, “to meet the men of direct action”. On their return to the UK the pair commenced publication of The Industrial Syndicalist (with Bowman as publisher, Mann as editor) and set about organising a national conference in Manchester.

Bowman’s French connection is intriguing. He spoke fluent French as well as English and German and it was frequently noted that Bowman didn’t look or sound English. Newspapers repeatedly questioned his claimed origins with the Globe typically asserting, “Bowman, of olive complexion and with pointed grey beard and hair brushed back has the appearance of a foreigner. In fact he speaks with a pronounced foreign accent, but is stated by his friends to be an Englishman.”  The Pall Mall Gazette observed,  “Guy Bowman is an Englishman who looks like a Frenchman”.

Bowman was certainly in Paris in 1905, where he attended the International Freethought Congress. After meeting Gustave Herve at the Congress he agreed to translate his “Leur Patrie” for an English edition published as, “My Country, Right or Wrong”, but was Bowman there as a French resident or merely a roving English reporter?  Everyone recognised that Bowman was a highly educated and fluent linguist so how did he acquire this learning?  Where was he educated and who were his parents?

Don’t Shoot!

When a DON’T SHOOT appeal to strike-breaking soldiers appeared in the January 1912 Syndicalist, Guy Bowman as the publisher was arrested.  Charged with, “Feloniously endeavouring by publication of a certain article…to seduce persons serving in His Majesty’s land forces from their duty and allegiance to His said Majesty and to incite them to commit divers mutinous acts and traitorous practices”, Bowman was sentenced to serve 9 months in prison with hard labour.

Tom Mann was subsequently prosecuted for reading out the DON’T SHOOT appeal at a demonstration.  Two printers of The Syndicalist were also prosecuted although Bowman received the severest sentence.  Fortunately public protests forced the authorities to relent and Bowman was out after two months.  Curiously Guy was back in court within weeks and fined £1 for two counts of travelling in a first class train carriage with a third class ticket.

Organiser or Disorganiser?

With 41 million strike days in 1912 industrial militancy eclipsed parliamentary politics as syndicalists prepared to organise internationally. Several continental groups offered to host an international conference but Bowman insisted it was held in England.  The FIRST INTERNATIONAL SYNDICALIST CONGRESS was duly held in London, in September 1913 but Bowman’s unreliable behaviour cast doubt on his integrity.  He was accused of dragging his feet in arranging the event and questions were raised about his inability to account for monies he’d been entrusted with. Regarded as divisive by both local and international comrades Bowman subsequently failed to furnish the Bureau set-up by the Congress with promised minutes, delegate addresses and other essential documents.

The International Bureau was left with little alternative but to appeal over Bowman’s head direct to English comrades , “to assist us to remind Guy Bowman of his duty of conforming to the decision of the Congress. By his conduct he renders the functioning of the Bureau particularly difficult.”

Class War or World War?

Meanwhile continental comrades confidently pronounced that if national governments declared war then organised workers would simply down tools and refuse to take up arms against fellow workers, regardless of nationality.  Throughout 1914 Bowman continued to tour Britain promoting syndicalism. In January he brought the gospel to the Pioneers Hall, Rochdale and over following weeks he spoke in Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham and London.  On Sunday 8th February Guy publicly advised, “SABOTAGE” at the Co-operative Hall, Charing Cross whilst on Friday 13th March he informed an audience at Sheffield’s Temperance Hall that his advice wasn’t really DON’T SHOOT but DO SHOOT!  “When they (soldiers) were asked to shoot the working class they would turn and shoot those who gave the order...”

Bowman’s Misdirected Arrow

As World War approached, rifts developed between Bowman and Mann.  Both agreed organising industrially was the way to go but Mann was less willing to completely abandon parliamentary politicking.  Bowman was sympathetic to the idea of “dual unionism”, creating parallel anarchist style unions alongside existing organisations whereas Mann insisted on revolutionising established unions from within.  Just as ISEL began losing influence in March 1914 Bowman sued the National Labour Press over its publication of, “From Single Tax to Syndicalism” (Tom Mann wrote the text and Bowman supplied the introduction).  As publisher of the book, Bowman had the previous year contracted with the printers to produce 2,000 copies but then failed to pay the bill so to recoup their costs the printers published the book themselves and kept the proceeds.  Whilst accepting that the printers had technically violated Bowman’s copyright the court offered him no recompense and Guy was left having to pay his own costs and with his reputation in tatters.

Puff of Smoke

Once war was declared in August 1914, socialists everywhere abandoned their promises and rallied round their respective national flags whilst Guy Bowman was nowhere to be seen. In his introduction to a reprint collection of Syndicalist newspapers, Geoff Brown observed, “The last references I have found to him (GB) in the labour movement press are in the Labour Leader in January and March 1915…”   But that wasn’t quite Bowman’s last acknowledged outing.  Guy still occasionally visited Kropotkin who was by then similarly isolated from former comrades (because of his un-anarchist support for the war).  I’ve discovered that Bowman also spoke at Hounslow Adult School, Whitton Road on Wednesday 12th April 1916 on, “The Fraud Called Democracy”, under the auspices of the “Syndicalist Education League (SEL)”.

Partners in Crime?

So what did Bowman do next?  If he’d simply opted to dodge the draft that doesn’t explain why he never reappears in records after the war (or why he wasn’t recorded before his 1911 census declaration).  None of Bowman’s erstwhile associates seem any the wiser and there are further mysterious circumstances.  Bowman’s self-completed 1911 census return recorded that he was then living with two French nationals, “39-year-old Jeanne Bonnard and 10-year-old” Jack Bonnard. “Jeanne” was a “Widow” and Jacques presumably her son.  Like Guy, neither of this pair appear in subsequent records except on 17th April 1912 Jeanne, the widow, had another child, Guy L Bowman. So who was this equally mysterious partner of Guy senior?  My theory is that she was none other than the abandoned common law wife of the deceased Francisco Ferrer.  If I am correct her real name was not Jeanne but Leopoldine Bonnard who partnered Ferrer in Paris from 1898 until 1905 when they split acrimoniously.  I think the boy “Jack” was really Regio Bonnard, the son of Leopoldine and Ferrer, born in Paris in 1900.

Unlike his parents, Guy L Bowman does feature in subsequent official records and his middle name appears to substantiate my theory of his parentage for on 13th September 1949 the UK Air Ministry announced that, “The KING has granted unrestricted permission for the wearing of the undermentioned decorations conferred upon personnel indicated in recognition of valuable services rendered in connection with the war – Bronze Star Medal - Sergeant 1376906 Guy Leopold BOWMAN, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve”

So it seems the son of the man sent to jail for publishing “DON’T SHOOT” in WWI was decorated for his contribution to WWII! It is also recorded that in the years 1938-9 Guy Leopold Bowman served at a trio of London’s top hotels (Dorchester, Ritz, Langham respectively) as a “reception clerk”.

Syndicalist or Sinner?

Bowman’s disappearance from the political spotlight is not unusual, many labour activists retire into obscurity but few cover their tracks so effectively.  Research almost always uncovers backgrounds and life stories but I’m not the first to remark on Bowman’s elusive biography.  I might, though be first to suggest that Bowman’s “invisibility” appears artful.   I’m inclined to believe he concealed his curriculum vitae for good reason.  His unexplained high level education suggests his origins and possibly allegiance were not working class.  It is quite possible “Guy Bowman” was in fact raised abroad by a military family bearing an entirely different name and committed to an imperial mission anathema to socialism.  I can’t prove Guy and his family concealed the truth for cynical reasons but it would make sense of otherwise inexplicable evidence.  It is curious that after Bowman’s family disappeared during WWI the sole member to resurface was decorated by the RAF having previously served in the run up to war in a role notoriously employed by secret services to keep tabs on visiting foreign “diplomats”.

Tom Mann, like many fellow labour leaders, published a memoir so why not Guy Bowman?  His widely published expulsion from Spain and high profile imprisonment would surely have guaranteed good sales and his extensive knowledge of labour activism would have ensured historical value yet he kept it all to himself, an odd response for a professional journalist.

The Secret State

Recent events uncovered extensive State infiltration of every level of radical organisation (even NV is currently subject to legal threats from a secret policeman involved in blacklisting) so it’s time to re-examine the credentials of past “activists”.  Guy Bowman’s integrity is questionable.  Kropotkin’s confidante Varlaam Tcherkesov was certainly dubious; “Bowman, half-English, half-French, quite an esprit boulevardier, a despotic man, wanted the entire movement for himself and kept it in his hands. He quarrelled with young syndicalists, scorned them, and stood alone”.

In contrast to the subject of my next article in this series there’s no smoking gun. Bowman might yet be innocent but I submit he has a prima facie case to answer.  Perhaps modern day advocates might care to submit snippets of new evidence in Bowman’s defence.  Meanwhile, I invite readers to adjudicate for themselves.

Christopher Draper (May 2017)

INTERPRETING BALKAN FAIRYTALES

'Serbia's October Revolution'

The article below was written in January 2001 by Brian Bamford
then working as Northern Editor for Freedom, and was first published on the
  A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E   http://www.ainfos.ca/ 
 after being sent to them on Sun, 25 Feb 2001 from Madrid by
Chris Robinson, a Canadian anarchist then linked
to the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist trade union CGT trade union. 
It was published on that site after having been rejected by
Freedom then edited by Toby Crow, a friend of Donald Rooum. 
The article below is of some interest now because Serbia is now on
the route to Hungary being followed by many of the refugees from
Syria.

   ________________________________________________

WAS the storming of Belgrade by enraged citizens of Serbia in October of 2000 really a piece of showmanship comparable with the script in Eisenstein's film October?  Some independent writers in the Belgrade press and the Belgrade anarchists are sceptical about some of the more theatrical scenes portrayed in the media, with crowds leaping up the steps of the Federal Parliament and flames flaring from the television studio RTS on October 5 2000 while the NEWS cameras whirled. 

What the Belgrade anarchists are cautioning is that people should distinguish between those features of the Serbian October revolt which were orchestrated and those that were spontaneous. And if stage management occurred who was behind it? 

My main contact in Belgrade, Vladimir Markovic, called what happened on the final day the Agit-Prop Revolution". He urged us to consider the stagecraft and media management used to arouse in the public mind the idea that something world shattering was happening - something like a 'revolution'. On reflection, he and other Belgrade anarchists feel the events of October 5th, with the change of rulers of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, though  necessary and overdue were less significant than the media images suggest.   

BELGRADE ANARCHIST INSIGHTS

The Belgrade anarchists do not just base their doubts about the degree of  political change in Yugoslavia after October on their own anarchist dogma.  They are employing practical reasoning and straightforward observation of the groups, parties and individuals acting in Serb society. 

They are keenly aware of the entrenched nature of the economy which has evolved since the West imposed sanctions in 1992. And because they have insights into the developments in the regime which go beyond the websites and newsprint, they know what to expect from opposition leaders like the Federal President, Vojislav Kostunica and Zoran Djindic the boss of the DOS (Democratic Opposition of Serbia) coalition. More importantly for anarchists, they have grave misgivings about 'Otpor' (Resistance) in which many anarchists outside Serbia have had high hopes.

The British anarchist paper Freedom ran in October (2000) a front page report stating:

'The biggest catalyst for change ... has been the movement known as Otpor (Resistance), a leaderless (and for that matter anarchistic) organisation, with no formal membership.' 

Ratibor Trivunac disputed this in his Summary of the General Strike in Serbia, in October last year. When I spoke to Vladimir Markovic, Ratibor's friend and another Belgrade anarchist,  he confirmed Ratibor's criticisms and gave me an outline of the nature of Otpor. 

Otpor was founded in 1998 and was made up mainly of students. It claims to be a 'leaderless movement'. Markovic admits that as an organisation in the universities Otpor was a useful campaigning group to begin with, and it still has decent people among its members. But Markovic claims the organisation does have senior figures in it who lead the organisation, and that this leadership is composed of about ten key individuals. 

These star figures, it is suggested, work closely with both elements within the party system of the new regime and co-operate with foreign agencies. I wasn't given hard facts, the local anarchists in Belgrade are in the main working on hunches here. Their claim that the US authorities are linked to the Otpor leaders can only be speculation. What they do argue persuasively is that here is an organisation which seems to be well funded, and had no trouble mounting expensive protests during the era of Milosevic and his Socialist Party of Serbia. Markovic argues that eventually Otpor got backing from people inside the Milosevic establishment, from media people and from people in the opposition parties. 

Inside Otpor Markovic says the Council of Otpor operates. He says this is made up of professors from the universities and members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. The novelist and politician, Dobrica Cosic, has links with this Council of Otpor. Cosic was President of Yugoslavia in 1992 and 1993. He has long been a promoter of the idea of the culture of Serb nationalism.

Misha Glenny, in his book The Fall of Yugoslavia (1992) claimed 'Cosic and some like-minded academics from the Serbian Academy of Sciences had been behind a notorious document called the Memorandum - in 1986 - (t)his bitter attack on the Kosovo policy of the then Communist authorities anticipated the atmosphere of national intolerance which was about to smother reason in Yugoslavia.'  

Curiously both Misha Glenny, the BBC journalist, and Vladimir Markovic, the Belgrade anarchist, identify the intellectuals at the Academy as being the chief culprits culturally creating the conditions of new Serb nationalism.

Misha Glenny argues 'The Memorandum (of 1986) both prepared the ideological ground for Milosevic by focusing public opinion yet more tightly on the Kosovo issue and indicated to this ambitious apparatchik that here was a real base among intellectuals for a nationalist assault .. '

Some anarchists, like most Marxists, are intellectual snobs who focus readily on the politician's dirty hands but who avert their eyes from the vanities of the ideas merchant who creates the cultural conditions in which the politician works. Vladimir Markovic was one of those anarchists who wanted to stress the danger of what George Orwell called The Dictatorship of Theorists.

Here we have the image of the intellectuals at the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences and theologians in the Serb Orthodox Church sowing, while politicians like Milosevic merely reaped. Markovic maintains that the Serb intellectuals were the dogmatic nationalists, and the politicians practical people at once more utilitarian and pragmatic. But it was these practical men who ended up with dirt on their hands. Meanwhile the illustrious theorists, like Dobrica Cosic, at the Academy and in the church go on to sow more seeds.

ETHNIC NATIONALISM TO CULTURAL RACISM : A MAGGOT BECOMES A BLUEBOTTLE

The Balkans, with its legacy from the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs, is often seen as a bridge between East and West. This seems to be important to understanding what is going on in the new governments of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Serb Republic and, importantly, in Otpor.

The theorists of Otpor, according to my informants in the Belgrade anarchists, have developed their ideas rooted in ancient attitudes and hatreds of all things they see as being 'Eastern'. These ideologues are stirring up the concept of a culture clash in Serbia between two traditions - one eastern, the other western.Vladimir Markovic calls this Cultural Racism; the dichotomy is thus defined:

An alien Asian, oriental culture which was introduced by the Turks in the 14th century and continued by Tito in the 20th century. Crudely classified as 'Oriental Despotism', an era of Turks, Sultans and Communist Commissars, belonging to a history which the Serbs should shed, together with the music and way of life that goes with it, like dead skin. 

The Otpor idea is that Serbian 'real' culture is Western, European and of the Enlightenment, but curiously it also embraces the Serbian Orthodox Church as part of this tradition. This approach proposes the spirit of individual enterprise and liberal values in contrast to Muslim and Middle Eastern ideas and values. This, according to Markovic, is a Western Enlightenment vision at once intolerant, totalitarian and ignorant.   

Let us consider the sinister sequence of events which started in 1986 with the Memorandum; in April 1987 Slobodan Milosevic made his dramatic speech at Kosovo Polje which one Kosovo Serb, Miroslav Soljevic later said 'enthroned him as a Tsar'; on May 8th 1989 Milosevic assumed the presidency of Serbia, but timed the ceremony to coincide with the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, which took place on June 28th at Gazimestan on the battlefield in front of all Yugoslavia's top politicians and an audience of one million.   

The Memorandum was put together by academics at the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, some then in the Serbian Communist Party (now re-named the Socialist Party of Serbia); today some of these same people, like Dobrica Cosic, are now influentially linked to Otpor and the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). In an essay written last June, entitled 'The Serbian opposition during and after the NATO bombing', Vladimir Ilic warns us about the efforts of the then opposition to the Milosevic regime to recruit 'elite' figures from the University, Writers' Union, Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He says 'These institutions were the ideological strongholds of ethnic nationalism in Serbia and gave a big contribution to the creation of the  phenomenon that is most frequently coupled to Milosevic's name.'   

What the Belgrade anarchists and other critics are now arguing is that, with the fall of Milosevic regime and development of the new system dominated by the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, Serb politics is undergoing metamorphosis. This is the kind of change which occurs when the maggot becomes a bluebottle. Thus Serbian intellectuals at the Academy of Arts and the Universities, who previously influenced the Serbian Socialist system of Milosevic, are now admired by the elements in the new regime of Kostunica and Djindic, and among the supporters of Otpor (Resistance). 

Markovic illustrated this by describing an Otpor demo last year in his in southern Serbia.  At that demo the organisers invoked the epic poem The Mountain Wreath, declaring:

Have done with minarets and mosques!

Let flare the Serbian Christmas-log;

Paint gaily too the eggs for Easter-tide;

Observe with care the Lent and Autumn Fasts,

And for the rest - do what is dear to thee!

It continues in a warlike tone:

Though broad enough Cetinje Plain,

No single seeing eye, no tongue of Turk,

Escap'd to tell his tale another day!

We put them all unto the sword,

All those who would not be baptiz'd; .

We put to fire the Turkish houses,

That there might be nor stick nor trace

Of these true servants of the Devil!

Now however suitable this kind of literary epic may be in seminars at the Academy, one wonders if it is seemly that it should be profiled at a political function in Nis. Least of all at a gathering of Otpor, who some claim has libertarian and anarchistic credentials, and many credit with contributing to the popular overthrow of Milosevic and the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS),. Time Judah writes in his book 'The SERBS - History, Myth & the Destruction of Yugoslavia' " . it is essential to understand that many Bosnian Serbs went to war in 1992 elated and in the spirit of . The Mountain Wreath.'

THE NATURE OF SERBIAN ANARCHISM

Under the Tito regime the ethnic elites in Yugoslavia sought to restrain the nationalism of their various regions. In June 1968 there was uproar at Belgrade University as it followed in the trail of events in Paris, Prague and other places that summer. The Belgrade student strikes focused on conditions at first, but quickly became political. Authoritarianism, unemployment and the Vietnam war were denounced, but there was no sign of Serb nationalism. Much of the inspiration came from the philosophy faculty of Mihailo Markovic and others associated with Praxis, the liberal Marxist journal.  

Initially Tito declared his backing for the students. He went on TV and protested that the nation's bureaucracy had obstructed the common aims he shared with the students. Two weeks after the students surrendered the University, Tito demanded the sacking of Markovic and others in the philosophy department on grounds that they were corrupting the country's youth.

Some of today's anarchists in Belgrade trace their history back to those events in 1968. By the 1970s Zoran Djindic, now leader of the governing coalition in Serbia - the DOS - became an anarchist and remained so for about 10 years. Today younger people are in evidence among the Belgrade anarchists.

Some of these young anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists are wary of the students in Otpor and the whole university scene. Ratibor Trivunac claims:

'Otpor is a nationalistic, neo-liberal organisation which is led by a few organisers . , they are also funded by western countries.'  

Even in 1991, Misha Glenny describes how the politicians were using the students:  
'I bumped into Zoran Djindic organising his student battalions.  Djindic was in his element - a leading and respectable D.S. (Democratic Party) parliamentarian, he had never been able to discard his Marcusian memories gained as a disciple of the Frankfurt School.'  
The political writings of the anarchist academic, Noam Chomsky, had been selectively published under the Milosevic regime to justify its own case against the west. In such publications Chomsky was not identified as a libertarian socialist.

These Belgrade anarchists now look to the workers' movement and some of the trade unions as a focus of resistance to the new DOS regime of Djindic and Kostunica. To them the General Strike and the spontaneous actions of workers in the coal mines, at Cacak and in Belgrade, were crucial to the final overthrow of Milosevic. They see the more photogenic scenes outside the Federal Parliament on October 5th, 2000 as largely froth.

The Belgrade anarchists are seeking a meeting with Branislav Canak, President of 'NEZAVISNOST' - United Branch Trade Unions (UGS). This union federation has 157,000 members based in engineering, education, public utilities, transport, agriculture and mining. Canak himself voiced his backing for the demonstrations in Seattle against global capitalism. The fairytales which the Belgrade anarchists are challenging are: the 'anarchistic' credentials of Otpor; the 'revolutionary' status of the new regime and the nature of its transformation, which they would liken to metamorphosis; and the 'radical' role of the intellectuals in Serbian society. The Balkan experience ought to warn us all against absurd generalisations and cookbook critiques drafted in a rush on far-flung  campuses to prop-up some grand theory of global politics. 

BRIAN BAMFORD

Northern Editor of Freedom UK, January 2001

Iberia, the CGT & Unite: Fighting Redundancies

THREE years ago members of the Spanish ('anarcho-syndicalist') CGT trade union at Iberia in Madrid contacted Northern Voices, and through us got the Bury branch secretary of Unite to fix up a meeting with the regional officers of Unite at their office at Salford Quays and with the Unite union's representatives at Manchester Airport.  At that time the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) and its members were concerned about the consequences of the then forthcoming merger between British Airways and Iberia:  the desire was to exchange information over wages and conditions etc. in the hope of co-operation between labour in both countries.  In the end two representatives of the CGT from Madrid came over and held talks with representatives of Unite the Union, and later representatives from Manchester went to Spain.

Recently the secretary of Bury Unite Branch was contacted by Carlos Figueroa from the Spanish CGT asking for information regarding any developments or signs of activity with regard to British Airways because the situation for the workers at Iberia had deteriorated somewhat of late.  Last Saturday, the Financial Times reported that 'International Airlines Group's [IAG] pre-tax loss widened to 670 million euros in the first quarter, as more restructuring costs were revealed yesterday (last Friday) at Iberia, its Spanish unit'.  IAG was formed in 2011 from the merger of British Airways and Iberia: it is now reporting 'operating losses at both its subsidiaries', and the group's results fell below analysts expectations.  Yet, Willie Walsh, the group's chief executive, described IAG's first-quarter performance as 'encouraging'.

Mr. Walsh said:
'These results are encouraging, with underlying revenue strength in strategic markets' but he added 'while the first step towards restructuring Iberia has been taken, there is more work to be done.'

The Financial Times reports:
'IAG recorded 311 million euro exceptional items in the first quarter relating to the restructuring of Iberia, which had been running up losses as it struggled to compete with more nimble competitors.'

This means that the group has accepted a Spanish government mediator's proposal that Iberia cut 3,300 instead of 4,500 that the bosses had originally planned to make redundant in November.  IAG's plan to cut the workforce by 22% had run into strong opposition from the Spanish trade unions, which had launched 10 days of strikes in the first quarter of the year.  Never-the-less, Mr Walsh said that he intended to pay shareholders a dividend in the future.

James Pinkerton obituary

From Freedom #6315 (27th July 2002)

One of the most brilliant anarchist intellectuals in the north of England died in March. James Pinkerton, secretary of the Syndicalist Workers' Federation (SWF) until 1963, had been involved in anarchism when he came out of the army not long after the Second World War.  He'd stumbled on some anarchist speakers at London's Speakers' Corner while on a visit to the opera.  After that, he and his friend Jack McPhearson set up the Dukinfield Anarchist Group north of Manchester.

Although they were both opera lovers and played musical instruments - Jack was an excellent pianist and Jim played the cello - they were unimpressed by English middle class pretensions.  Ken Hawkes, the leading figure in the SWF, called them 'the musical anarchists'.

Both lived in council houses up to the end of their lives and both considered it best to belong to the working class.  When, in recent times, a friend of Jim's who'd become middle class said 'there's nowt better than being working class', Jim said he understood perfectly how he felt. 'The English middle class live in a no-man's land', he said.  There was a paradox, of course.  Here was a man living in a council house, playing the cello and deafening the neighbours with his treasured collection of records, which he blasted out daily from powerful speakers, his pantry full of the best Burgundy and clarets and a library of books to rival the contents of the Hay-on-Wye literary festival.  Many's the day he'd insist on playing Caruso, Nelly Melba, Alfredo Kraus or a Zarzuela from Spain, before we went down to the Trades Council meeting in Ashton town centre.

This paradox of the English social classes in the north was brought home to us when Jim was on his deathbed and unable to talk.   A Manchester book dealer, who'd befriended Jim in his later years, left his business card with a neighbour. For an anarchist this would be unseemly.  But a business card has a certain magic it would take a Balzac to explain.

The book dealer was given the key and, while creaming off the first editions, noticed letters written by Brian Bamford from Franco's Spain.  It looks like the main body of anarchist archive material went to the tip with Jim's prize collection of records, simply because English working class people don't understand these things.

Competing with the bourgeoisie

Brian remembers that in the 1960s his mother was donkey-stoning the doorstep when an anarchist friend turned up and, because of that and his middle class accent, she took an instant dislike to him. Even when Jim was best man at Brian's wedding, he said he felt uncomfortable with Brian's father and left early.  Brian reckons his father thought Jim was leading him astray, sending him to Spain to fight the Franco regime.

Stuart Christie said that, at the time of his trial in Madrid, his mother turned up and bumped into fellow anarchist prisoner Fernando Carballo.  'I introduced my mother to Fernando, who was handcuffed to my wrist.  I could not help but feel that she believed he was the evil monster who had lured her boy into this mess'.

It was the same at Jim's funeral.  His relatives were polite, but there was an air of distrust about the anarchist contingent, the healthy distrust all English people have for politicians of all kinds.  The irony of it all would have tickled Jim.

Once, when asked at a wine tasting if he was 'in the trade', Jim responded typically.  'No', he said. 'I'm that rare thing, a working class wine drinker'.  And even in his drinking, he had a contempt for the English middle classes, saying he was reluctant to buy his wine from supermarkets 'because the middle class have a cut-off price of about £9 a bottle'.

That was about ten years ago, but as he poured a glass for Brian in the 1960s he said, 'you know, we're not aping the bourgeoisie, we're competing with them'.  Anyone who could wean former Dukinfield refuse collector and Trades Council anarchist Derek Pattison from beer and savoury ducks to fine wines, pheasant, partridge and wood pigeon must be quite remarkable.

Despite his love of the English working class, on one occasion Brian mentioned that Vernon Richards, former editor of Freedom and another music lover, was Italian. Jim replied that he would most liked to have been a member of the Italian middle class.  That was the class he most envied, and this comment was obviously associated with his passion for Verdi and Italian opera. When he was lying on his deathbed,  Derek and Brian went with Harold Sculthorpe to put headphones on Jim to play him Verdi and Puccini.

Politically he identified with the Spaniards and the Anarchist Federation of Britain, which later became the SWF.   At the time of the split within the British anarchist movement, he sided with them against the then Freedom Press Group.  His feeling, as we understood it, was that Freedom Press was too remote and aloof from ordinary people.

He thought that Freedom in the 1960s had a good position on civil liberties and that, under Vernon Richards's editorship, it was 'a good bedside read'.  But he felt it lacked a grasp of the economic and social conditions of everyday life.  For him, it was never a paper that could become part of a movement as the Spanish anarchist papers had become.

He admired the Spanish anarchists politically and socially, even if he was drawn to the Italians culturally.  In June last year, after we'd had some Spaniards from the CGT round to his house, he remarked that 'we English are like shrivelled-up prunes compared to the Spaniards'.  He clearly took a dim view of the English anarchist movement.

Jim resigned as national secretary of the SWF in 1963, at a time when the peace movement was in ferment. Many young people were joining the anarchist movement, and some had gone into the SWF. While he was happy to see the numbers increase, he said that not many of the newcomers were workers.

In the 1950s he'd translated the SWF pamphlet Communist Terror in Bulgaria from French and, with Jack McPhearson from Dukinfield and Julian Pilling from Burnley, had gone on to reproduce Direct Action as a propaganda sheet on a flat-bed duplicator.  He'd been treasurer of Northern Industrial Action, a group of libertarians including anarcho-syndicalists from the SWF, people from the old Solidarity Group, the Independent Labour Party and miscellaneous anarchists.  This group, formed in Manchester around 1962, was the North's answer to the National Rank and File Movement. He attended meetings of the reformed Manchester Anarchist Group from 1964, as well as the 1965 SWF conference. He also wrote for Freedom on the anarchist movement in Manchester.

Adviser to apprentices

He was an adviser to the engineering apprentices in Rochdale when they put out their paper, Progress, in 1960.  This was in the wake of the national apprentices' strike for improvements in wages and conditions in May that year.  He also assisted with the production of Industrial Youth (IY), which came out during the engineering apprentices' strikes of 1964 and 1965. This paper was supported by the Manchester Apprentice Wages & Conditions Committee during the dispute, and continued as a publication for apprentices until late 1966.

Jim was named at the time by the Economic League, an organisation of bosses' informers, as someone implicated in the apprentice's paper.  One employer circularised the Economic League's findings to its apprentices, warning them of anarchist involvement.

In 1970, Jim attended the trials that followed the Arrow Mill strike at Rochdale, where the police had been brought in to break up a sit-down strike of Asian workers.  An anarchist had been arrested for actions that took place on the premises during the dispute.  After the strike and the trials, he backed the Campaign for Shop Stewards in Textiles in Oldham, Shaw and Rochdale, which had Asian and anarchist involvement. It was during this campaign that he first met then mill operative Bob Lees.

Later in the 1970s, he was involved with the North West Workers' Alliance which used to meet in Oldham.  This was an anarcho-syndicalist body which was associated with the SWF.  A copytaker on several newspapers in Manchester, he was an active trade unionist in NATSOPA and SOGAT and Father of the Chapel on the Daily Herald and the Sunday People.

Most people outside the North West won't have heard of Jimmy Pinkerton. That's because he was never a prolific writer or regular public speaker. He despised oratory.  He was really a Socrates of the north of England, who stimulated those with whom he came into contact.  Not just with wine and music, but with his intellectual rigour and the breadth of his ideas.

He'd left school at 14 and was near enough self-taught but we, who've done our stints on the treadmills of the universities, have seldom found anyone to compare for clarity of vision and thought with Jimmy Pinkerton.

When he attended the Marseilles Conference of the AIT as an SWF delegate in the late 1950s, he later said the French delegates had considered him an 'opportunist'. He spoke fluent French and was always determined to discover practical solutions for the presentation of an anarchist programme.

He'd often upset people, such as when he supported the 1999 NATO action in Kosovo. He considered the action necessary to stop Serbian ethnic cleansing, and quoted the historical example of the Roman legion that had done a detour to put down a case of child sacrifice in the empire.  'Sometimes', he said, 'the big battalions do the decent thing'.

He was critical of Chomsky's line over the Balkan conflict, which he saw as worn-out anti-Americanism. Many of our discussions in recent years centred on Chomsky, following the criticisms of Chomsky's linguistics and philosophy in a recently published journal, Chomsky and his Critics.

Jim was puzzled by Chomsky's hostility to the late novels of George Orwell, and he said some of Chomsky's comments were 'intelligent'.  He took the view that Chomsky was jealous of Orwell because he was a creative writer and a novelist, while Chomsky - for all his brilliance was simply a 'functional writer'.

With Jim Pinkerton's loss, there will be a gap in the lives of so many of us who looked to him for intellectual stimulation, moral guidance and friendship. A couple of years ago, referring to his regular talks with some of the northern anarchists, he told us 'you lads keep me going'. Jim was the father of northern anarchism and we are his children.

Brian Bamford, Bob Lees and Derek Pattison

A shorter obituary by Brian Bamford for the Guardian, can be read here.