Bill Christopher: A radical born on Bastille Day

From South Africa to West Yorkshire

Brian Bamford peruses the politics of the 1960s, 

as he talks to Joan Christopher about her husband, Bill

THE early 1960s was a time of great expectations in radical left-wing politics.  There had just been the Campaign to Boycott South African Goods, called by the Anti-Apartheid Movement.  The boycott attracted widespread support from students, trade unions and the Labour, Liberal and the then Communist Party.  The Anti-Apartheid Movement had begun as the Boycott Movement, set up in 1959 to persuade shoppers to boycott apartheid goods.

The Campaign to Boycott South African Goods had been preceded by another single issue social movement the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was founded in 1957 in the wake of widespread fear of nuclear conflict and the effects of nuclear tests.  In the early 1950s, Britain had become the third atomic power, after the USA and the USSR had recently tested an H-bomb.

 Joan and Bill Christopher on holiday in France

Politically this was the atmosphere of the early 1960s, especially in London where Bill and Joan Christopher were to be activist members of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) for most of their adult lives.  However, there were unofficial strikes and industrial struggles going on at that time, and in 1960 Bill had left the I.L.P. to join the Worker's Party [1] formed by Brian Behan [2], when Brian and others had broken away from the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League in 1960.  The Worker’s Party later merged with the Syndicalist Worker’s Federation (SWF).

Later together with the Freedom Press anarcho-syndicalist carpenter Peter Turner, Bill Christopher was to become joint-secretary of the Industrial Sub-committee of Committee of 100 [3], that was a time of great conflict and activity during the national campaign against nuclear weapons and the Bomb.  It was to be out of this Committee of 100 London Industrial Sub-Committee that the industrially based National Rank & File Movement (N.R&F.M)[4], an organisation of militant trade unionists and shop-floor syndicalists, developed and was founded at a conference in London in January 1961.

An article in Freedom newspaper covering this National Rank & File founding conference, of which Bill Christopher was an active member, announced:

'This week-end there is to be held in London the first Conference of the newly-formed Rank and File Movement.  Much work has been put into the preparation of this conference by liaison committees; discussion meetings have been going on in London, resolutions and amendments have been drawn up, and it may well be that this event will be a significant one for militants among the industrial workers at least.

(FREEDOM: January 28, 1961)

Joan Christopher speaking to N.V. in Todmorden, West Yorkshire

  Introduction to the interview by Brian Bamford

These were the days before Spies for Peace and before my own trip to Spain in February 1963 on behalf of the young libertarians of F.I.J.L in France, before the arrest of Stuart Christie in Madrid in 1964, well before the student sit-ins at the L.S.E. in 1967 and before the French events in 1968 and the 'Donovan Report' into the trade unions .  Back then I and my then compañera, Joan Matthews, who were staying with the S.W.F. national secretary Ken Hawkes at his home on Parliament Hill, attended this London national rank and file conference of perhaps 200 workers and activists; we were both employed at that time at the same engineering firm in the North West. At this conference we were sat in front of the Freedom Press anarchists Colin Ward, Philip Sanson and his compañera.  It was the first time that I’d met people like Bill Christopher, Brian Behan, Ken Weller of Solidarity, and Peter Turner of Freedom Press, with whom I became a close friend for the rest of his life.  

In a pamphlet authored by Bill Christopher entitled 'SMASH THE WAGE FREEZE!' (1960s), and published by the Syndicalist Worker's Federation, Bill wrote:

'It is obvious that today only a Labour Government would dare to implement a wage-freeze policy and arm it with heavy penalties for non-implementation...  The opening attack on workers' wages and conditions came with George Brown's Joint Statement of Intent on Productivity, Prices and Incomes.... shop stewards wishing to improve wages and / or conditions in their plant, are subject to the penalties of the Act.  The officials of their respective unions can also be penalised.'

 

The intention of the then Labour government here would be to discourage unofficial strikes, that is strikes not supported and financed by the trade unions: in the 1950s and early 1960s unofficial strikes represented about 90% of all the industrial action taking place.  Historically shop stewards were intended to be simply 'union card checkers', in the 1896 rule book of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, that later became A.U.E.W., this was stated to be the sole role of the steward.  Yet, after the Second World War the shop steward had become a key figure on the shop-floor.  Bill Christopher during his involvement with the S.W.F. and in his writings as an industrial editor on Freedom, was anxious to extend the responsibilities of the shop stewards as was the rest of us involved in the National Rank & File Movement.

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Political Journey - wartime South Africa to West Yorkshire

Bill Christopher in the North of England

Bill Christopher was born on Bastille Day in July 1924, and died in January 1993.

Brian Bamford's Joan Christopher interview on Bill Christopher:

Began April 2015 and was finally completed in July 2017.

Brian Bamford: When did you and Bill first move up to Todmorden?

Joan Christopher: We came here in July 1986. I was born an Essex girl in a town called Woodford in 1928, but my family moved to Walthamstow from around 1930.

Brian:  How did you find living up here?

Joan:  We didn't know how things were going to work out. Of course, we had been up to visit Aileen and Bob (daughter and son in-law) several times. But I soon learned to drive after coming up and I began to go to college to do A-level art. Some dear friends of ours Eric and Joan Preston (in the Independent Labour Party) lived in Leeds

Brian:  Has Todmorden changed much since you came?

Joan:  There has not been a great deal of change. There is more of a hint of tourism – a bit like (nearby) Hebden Bridge, and it's more gentrified now. We use to meet people who had not been out of Todmorden all their lives.

Brian:  How does life up here compare with London?

Joan:  Bill use to reminisce about about London. He didn't seem to settle down as much as me. For me I’ve liked living up here and I find ‘Tod.’ people very friendly – I like somewhere a bit rural and countryfied.

Brian:  How did you meet Bill?

Joan:  I use to work with Bill's sister, Jean; sewing. I started working when I was 14-years-old at a dress-making factory cutting, finishing and re-drawing from the pattern book on Hudson Street, Walthamstow for about 4 months.   I then worked at Cannels Ltd dress-making. It was through his sister Jean that I met Bill and we first went out at Xmas 1942. Jean use to say Bill only liked me because I liked playing monopoly.  He had asked me to go to the pictures a week before he went into the RAF.   Bill was a volunteer and didn’t wait to be called-up, nor was he influenced by his mates at the time into his decision to join up.   At that time he was at first doing air-training in St. Johns Wood.

Later he was based in South Africa training to be a navigator, and didn't come home until 1944. After that he was in the Army in India until 1947.

While he was in India during the troubles there; that is during the Bombay riots, I remember him saying that he shot into the air,.rather risk hitting anyone.

He didn't talk much about South Africa! It was the war that influenced his later political views as well as his later (post war) experience in India (in the Army).  When he went to the war he had been a Christian and as a boy he wanted to be a missionary in the Church of England. My Mum too had been a strong believer before she met my Dad.

After he left the Army, Bill (Christopher) went back to working in the print (industry) in the 1940s up to the 1970s.  He was an Imperial Father of Chapel (Works Convenor) at the Daily Mail in NATSOPA and Sogat. After he left school he worked flat-bed printing on 'The Queen' magazine, which was a glossy.  He was doing White Chapel preparation though his grandfather had been a copy-taker.   He left the Daily Mail, went on to Teacher’s Training College, and later began teaching in the early 1970s.  He taught at Leyton County High School for Boys.  Bill was a member of the NUT (National Union of Teachers).   Bill came into teaching as a mature student and ended up teaching sociology as part of his teacher’s training certificate.

Brian:  Why did you both come up North?

Joan:   In July 1985, he decided to retire, because Bill didn't have a degree and he assumed that he wouldn't get a job in a 6^th form College or High School. He was 61 (Bill was born in July 1924). We already had a daughter living in Cornholme in Todmorden. Our daughter, Aileen, has lived in the North longer than down in London. She originally lived in Cornholme, Todmorden, but is now over the border in Burnley.

When we got here Bill studied for a Master's degree (entitled) 'The women's role in the factories in World War II'. An oral history involving (research) doing interviews with workers (who had) worked in the mills and factories in the Tod(morden) area (in the War). It was a dissertation for his MA (Master's Degree), and I typed it up for him on a Word. Processor. He started studying for a Phd shortly before he died.

Brian:  What do you reckon of today's politicians?

Joan:  You can see that I am a Labour supporter (a Labour Party poster is in the window). Both me and Bill voted Labour in the 1945 and 1951 general elections: although I haven't got a lot of faith in any of them. Because they make promises and then can't deliver. I look on Labour as being the lesser evil. I always vote, because people died to get the vote. The trouble is that big business has more control, although you do get the odd MP who does a good job.

Brian:  But you were both in the Independent Labour Party (ILP)?

Joan:  (The I.L.P. merged with the Labour Party in 1975) when the I.L.P. stopped being the Independent Labour Party and became the 'Independent Labour Publications'.

Bob Galliers (Bill's son-in-law) intervene here to say that Bill had always been a syndicalist or anarcho-syndicalist, and that they (Bill and Joan) had been raided by the police in 1963 after the revelations in the Spies for Peace documents.

Joan Christopher then continued:

In the mid-1960s Bill wrote and edited industrial and labour reports for the Freedom newspaper with Peter Turner, who was a carpenter in the building trade.

I wrote for Freedom (the anarchist weekly newspaper) a piece about that raid after the 'Spies for Peace' [5] incident at Aldermaston at Easter in 1964. (At that time this 'subversive' document was being widely circulated by anarchists, independent socialists and pacifists and) at a Conference of the I.L.P. in Yorkshire [probably Scarborough] everyone were asked to reproduce the 'Spies for Peace' leaflet.  (At that time) Eric Preston, Bill’s friend in the I.L.P., was being followed by the police as he moved 'Spies for Peace' leaflets and other materials from Leeds to London, but when he his copies in the Left Luggage, the police moved in and took them. The organisation 'Solidarity'* (nothing to do with the current Solidarity Federation) started the 'Spies for Peace' campaign. (Bob then intervened to say the journalist Natasha Walter published a book on the 'Spies for Peace'): (her father was, Nicolas Walter the well-known anarchist writer, and the only member of the 'Spies for Peace' to go public on this matter).

We also duplicated a rank and file newsletter the ‘Seaman’s Voice’ in Cumberland Road, and as I recall one of the seamen ended-up stapling his own finger, but he was still enough of a gentleman to avoid swearing in front of a woman, although I’m sure that he wanted to.

Bill unsuccessfully fought the Walthamstow parliamentary seat (at different times) for both the ILP and CND.. He was a member of the (anarcho-syndicalist) Syndicalist Worker's Federation (SWF) and produced both 'Worker's Voice' (then the paper of the Worker's Party) and 'World Labour News'. Earlier in 1959, we were both involved in the 'Worker's Party'* with Brian Behan* (the brother of the play-write Brendan Behan and musician Dominic), but Brian was very mercurial.

Bill rejoined the I.L.P. around 1980ish, and the 'Friends of the ILP' are now part of the Labour Party.

Brian:  What did you do in the Miner’s Strike?

Joan:  We supported the miners! 

We had an ‘I.L.P. Miner’s Support Group’ through which we channelled our support. We were awarded a Miner’s Lamp for our efforts. I’ve still got that lamp here at the bottom of the stairs.

Brian:   I believe that William Morris was born in Walthamstow?

Joan.:  Yes, in the 1930s the house were he was born was turned into a clinic, and when I was a kid, I attended the clinic for treatment in about 1935.

Brian:  Many of those anarchists and syndicalists in London in the 1960s, I remember as having a wide variety of other interests as well as politics. Over the years from the 1960s I often stayed in London on the Peabody Estate behind Chelsea Town Hall on Kings Road with Bill’s old mate, the joiner Peter Turner and his then wife Gladys, and we often would talk about you and Bill.  Peter loved cinema, the arts and above all music.  As I recall from talking to Peter, he Bill and Jack Stevenson were all very enthusiastic about Jazz – I think Jack and Bill had disputes over their tastes in Jazz?

Joan:  Yes, we all had a passion for Jazz!  But at first I was into the Classics, and Bill was into Jazz.  When we were living on Cumberland Road we made it open-plan, and, on Jack Stevenson’s advice bought a Pye Black Box.  We liked Bruck, Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Oscar Peterson.  But it was through Jack Stevenson we came to know the track by Jack Teagarden ‘Tribute to Sydney Bechet’ (Joan at this point started to hum the tune). ‘I want that played at my funeral’, she said.

Brian:  Did you know many other people at Freedom besides Pete Turner? People like Vernon Richards, Colin Ward and Philip Sanson?

Joan:    Indeed, we were close to quite a few people at Freedom Press, and would go over for lunch on the odd Sunday to Philip Sansom and his partner’s house. We knew Tom Cowan and his Italian wife Gabrella. He was in the building trade. We were also close to Ken Hawkes, a sports journalist on the Reynolds News and the anacho-syndicalist editor of World Labour News – the journal of the Syndicalist Worker’s Federation (SWF) in the 1960s. Brian Behan, the brother of the play-write Brendan Behan, was another good friend who we knew Brian was a bit eccentric, he lived in a pre-fab with his wife and use to wear bicycle clips, and we asked him about this he turned his pockets out and showed us the holes. The bike-clips were there to catch the coins in.  His wife later went into teaching.  Brian was a carpenter in the building trade who was blacklisted and ended-up at university. I’m still in touch with Dave Picket who took over the S.W.F., when Ken Hawkes, who lived on Parliament Hill in Hampstead, left to go to work for the BBC.

Brian:  Thank you for that Joan, and please express my thanks to Aileen and Bob for all their help in producing this short rendering of the life of Bill Christopher.

******

[1] The Worker's Party was a breakaway from the Socialist Labour League in summer 1960.

[2] Brian Behan, the brother of the Irish play-write Brendan Behan, founded a short-lived 'Workers Party', which published Worker's Voice and was active in support of the Seaman's Strike.

In 1964, Behan wrote his first piece on his family life, With Breast Expanded. Forced to give up building work due to an arm injury, he moved to live on a boat in Shoreham-by-Sea and studied history and English at Sussex University. He then studied teaching, before in 1973 becoming a lecturer in media studies at the London College of Printing.[3] In 1972, he contested in a swearing match at the British Museum, to mark the republication of Robert Graves' Lars Porsena.[2]

[3] The Committee of 100 was set up after a difference in CND about the use of civil disobedience as a political weapon between Canon Collins and the philosopher Bertrand Russell,

[4] The National Rank & File Movement. Affiliates of SWF; the Worker’s Party; the ILP; Commonwealth; London Anarchists; Socialism Re-affirmed (publication Agitator - later Solidarity).

[5] The ‘Spies for Peace’ was a clandestine group of individuals including we now know the Freedom Press anarchist, Nicolas Walter, later admitted involvement: His Wikipeadia entry states: ‘Walter was a member of Spies for Peace, the only member to be publicly identified, only after his death. In March 1963, it broke into Regional Seat of Government No. 6

(RSG-6), copied documents relating to the Government's plans in the event of nuclear war and distributed 3,000 leaflets revealing their contents.’

In his book ‘Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow’ the historian David Goodway wrote:

‘The Spies for Peace were essentially this group (Solidarity), locating and entering the Regional Seat of Government (RSG) at Warren Pow, Berkshire, and circulating the pamphlet, Danger! Official Secret: RSG-6.

[6] ‘Solidarity' publication of the Socialism Re-affirmed Group edited by Christopher Pallis and Ken Weller, was originally entitled the 'The Agitator' until 1961.

Regarding Stuart Christie by Martin Gilbert

I ONLY met him once. It was outside the gates of Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, in 1963, Stuart had only been in London a short while. His accent was so thick I had difficulty understanding him. We were both selling papers. I had PEACE NEWS, and SANITY, (now long-gone, published by national CND). Also, we were both selling FREEDOM, a very different paper from what it has declined into. Stuart indicated that the papers were selling very well. Soon, we were were both busy chatting with different people and I never saw him again.

When he was arrested [in August 1964] reactions were very mixed. Predictabley, the media’s response was something like”….typical anarchists...”. Young CNDers and our fellow travellers showed 100% solidarity with Stuart. We had an old motor coach to aid our campaigning, so drove to Blackpool for the Labour party conference.

Readers may know that back then CND was much more establishment oriented. The line was only to approve of traditional methods of getting our messages across. This was years before national CND voted to support non violent direct action; thanks to the women at Greenham Common in 1980. So instead of following the (then) strict line we lobbied for Stuart’s release. Old campaigners were furious with us. In mitigation we claimed, incorrectly, that he was only carrying literature; which was also illegal in Franco’s Spain.

Lessons were gained from it all. One was awareness of the extent of Franco’s spies. Also, how open we and other groups were to infiltration from different kinds of Cops. But too much caution can only lead to quietism.

martin gilbert Sept. ‘20

Swinson would press the nuclear button!

This is a disgraceful response from @JoSwinson. Not for the 1st time in this general election, she confirms she's ready to press the nuclear button. Not even a moment's hesitation about the prospect of killing millions of people. We need better than this#ITVDebate #VoteOutNukes pic.twitter.com/W84cuLTuoy

— CND (@CNDuk) 19 November 2019

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

THE Lib Democrat leader Jo Swinson has been heavily criticised by CND and others for saying that she would press the nuclear button if she became the next Prime Minister. During an interview with itvNEWS, she was asked:  "Would you ever be prepared to use a nuclear weapon?"  Without any hesitation, Swinson says "Yes." 

The female interviewer then replies:  "That was a brilliant short answer, thank you very much." 

She was then asked:   "Which world leader would you call first, if you became Prime Minister?" 

Swinson, replies:  "Jacinda Ardern".

Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister, opposes the use of nuclear weapons and supports nuclear disarmament.  Despite the serious consequences of nuclear war  and being capable of killing millions of people at a whim, Swinson still managed to keep a smile on her face.  Is this clueless numpty head, fit to be Prime Minister?

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Cumbria Hiroshima Day

Cumbria and Lancashire Area Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

East Lancashire CND, Lancaster District CND, CND North Cumbria and South Lakeland CND

Thank you for supporting our aim to bring about a safer world!

Latest news about the events in Cumbria for Hiroshima Day 6 August when we shall display the CND logo, now the world symbol for peace, at three iconic sites, unfurl our banners and petition for a global nuclear weapons ban. 2018 marks 60 years since the founding of CND and to spotlight the urgent need, now more than ever, for nuclear disarmament we link these events with the commemoration of the first atomic bombing - Hiroshima, 6 August 1945.

Reasons for hope. The vast majority of the world's countries still shun nuclear weapons and in July 2017 more than 120 nations signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons. We are asking our government to add the UK to the list of signatories and abandon its plan to replace the Trident system with ever more dangerous and ever more expensive nuclear weapons (this renewal alone now estimated to be over £205 billion).

We are urging you please to:

* Publicise and promote these events Tell your friends, family and neighbours; Seek support from your trade union, party branch and/or groups to which you belong;

Write to your local news media.

* Attend the events - feel free to join with us at any or all of these:

9.30am Monday 6 August Meet in the car park of the Dock Museum, North Road, Barrow-in-Furness LA142PW opposite the massive BAE Systems Submarines Devonshire Dock Hall (DDH) shed to raise our banners at the gates for our first photo-opportunity.

Mid-morning Petitioning in Barrow centre at the Workers Statue, Dalton Road LA14 1PU

11am Head out and on to Sellafield to highlight the present and urgent dangers of the radioactive legacy of our arms race. The A595 is a slow winding road so the journey although under 40 miles may take 1 hour 30 minutes. 12.45pm for 1.00pm Gather at the car park for a vigil at Main Gate, Sellafield CA20 1PG on the road to Sellafield station.

2pm Peace Picnic by Wastwater on the shores of England's deepest and most awe-inspiring lake, now UNESCO World Heritage Site (go through Gosforth village past the famous pie bakery following the road to Wasdale Head to the shore facing the screes)

3pm "Act of Hiroshima Remembrance" with sayings, symbols, poems and prayers, led by Rev David Penney, Priest in Church of England, and shared with members of the Peace Movement in commemoration of the A-bombing of Hiroshima and all suffering caused by nuclear arms; scattering petals on the waters of the lake from where daily 4 millions gallons of the water are drawn for cooling the radioactive waste.

* Wear your gorgeous costume, bring your banners and flags - Musicians, Singers, Artists, Knitters, Photographers, Young and Old, etc – all very welcome!

* and please bring some picnic to share!

* Donate to the costs of campaigning materials and transporting them

Please send cheques payable to ‘CND North Cumbria’ or make a direct bank transfer to CND North Cumbria [Unity Trust Bank, Account Number 54004777, Sort Code 60-83-01]

For full details of these events please contact:

Irene Sanderson (CND North Cumbria) Brookside, High Bank Hill, Penrith CA10 1EZ

Telephone: 01768 897071 • Mobile: 07720 842 529 • Website: www.cnduk.org

E-mail: irene@irenesanderson.co.uk facebook: north cumbria campaign for nuclear disarmament

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Jeremy Corbyn & Trident

Out of Step

‘SOME of Corbyn’s positions are flatly unpopular,’ Tom Crewe writes (LRB, 11 August).  ‘On Trident especially he is way out of step with public opinion.’  He supplies no evidence in support of this wild statement.  The CND’s website lists 11 different polls over the last ten years that have indicated majorities against renewal of Trident:  63 per cent in the Mail on Sunday in June 2010, 58 per cent in the Independent in September 2009 and so on.  Stop the War cites data compiled by Nick Ritchie and Paul Ingram, who reviewed all the polling data between 2005 and July 2013.  They found that ‘13 representative polls have offered a straight choice between renewing Trident or not. Opinion has varied from poll to poll and from year to year, but seven surveys have found more opposition to renewal than support.’  The average was 39.4 per cent in favour of renewing Trident and 44.4 per cent against, with the rest unsure.  When the cost of Trident is mentioned, support tends to drop significantly.  In a study conducted by Greenpeace in 2005, for example, 44 per cent supported Trident and 46 per cent opposed it, but if an alternative spending proposal was mentioned – the number of schools that could be built instead – just 33 per cent remained in favour and 54 per cent against.  A YouGov poll in 2009 that offered alternative spending proposals found that just 30 per cent opted to spend the money on nuclear weapons.

What’s more, these polls were taken when the costs of Trident were estimated to be much lower than they are now.  The lifetime cost of Trident is currently estimated at £205 billion and, according to the Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, could rise exponentially.   ‘This is a colossal investment in a weapons system that will become increasingly vulnerable,’ he has said, ‘and for whose security we will have to throw good money after bad – in fact tens of billions more than already estimated – to try to keep it safe in the decades to come.’

Frank Stone
Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

 

Letter in London Review of Books / Sept 2016

Letter sent to NV from Trevor Hoyle, Rochdale.

Ernest Rodker on Radical Action

Commonweal Lecture 2015

VETERAN activist and cabinet-maker, Ernest Rodker, addressed the problems and opportunities for those of us who regarded ourselves as radicals in the last half of the 20^th century, last Tuesday night, at Bradford University.  It was pointed out that this Commonweal lecture was being held on the precise anniversary on the 17^th, February 1958, of a meeting of CND which ultimately resulted in Cannon Collins calling on those present to go down to Downing Street to protest against, what was then known as 'the Bomb'.   Mike 'Randle', who was introducing the talk by Ernest described how while he was outside Number 10, he saw Ernest on the ground being beaten by the police and was told to 'Shut up!', when he questioned their conduct.

Later, in 1961, Mike and Ernest renewed their friendship when they spent time in prison together.  By that time Cannon Collins, who had initiated the provocative Downing Street protest in 1958, was to oppose Bertrand Russell's proposals for civil disobedience and direct action which had led to the formation of the Committee of 100.   

Ernest used graphic images of news reports and pictures to show events and historic posters of the time by people like the poster-designer Robin Field.  This continued later when he came to deal with  the 'Stop the 70s Tour' of the South African rugby and cricket teams.  At that time sport became an issue of protest in a way it hadn't previously, except perhaps for the rare case of suffragettes before the First World War.   Despite all the challenges the Labour Government's Home Secretary, James Callaghan, assured us that 'the tour is going to go ahead!'   

The Springboks arrived in November 1969 and stayed in the Park Lane Hotel, and the tour ended following protests in February 1970.  At the time of the cricket tour John Arlott, the then famous cricket commentator, announced that he would not cover the tour, and on the 22^nd, May the tour was cancelled.

Ernest mentioned that had at the time,  had contact with Peter Hain and his family.  Peter Hain was later to write of the protests:
'I, along with many others, was outraged at their moral cowardice and hypocrisy, and helped form the Stop The Seventy Tour (STST) campaign to organise non-violent direct action protests against the tour.  These initially focused on country wide demonstrations against 25 matches of a South African rugby tour to Britain in the winter of 1969-70.  The campaign against the racism of South African sport took off with mass protests that quickly escalated to become a national and international controversy.  Eventually the pressure caused the MCC to cancel the cricket tour - by far the biggest victory the anti-apartheid movement had achieved. Australia and New Zealand soon followed suit in rugby as well as cricket, and white South Africa was expelled from the Olympics. ' 

On the 1^st, April 1990, the Poll Tax was launched by the Thatcher government, initially in Scotland, where about 1 million refused to pay the tax.  This was merely the springboard to what was to happen on its introduction in England, where ultimately a riot ensured in London as well as mass refusals to pay the tax.  The consequences of this were that Margaret Thatcher left office in 1991, and John Major proclaimed:  'The Poll Tax is un-collectable!'   

Ernest described a  local campaign to save from closure the local school of Chestnut Grove in Balham as part of a series of school closures.   This was successful, as for the most part was his part in the scheme pursued between 1971 and 1981 to convert Dormobiles into vehicles to smuggle literature and duplicators into Czechoslovakia, which functioned until they got rumbled in 1981.  Less successful was Ernest's role in the campaign against pit closures and open-cast mining, culminated in digging holes looking for coal protests on Michael Heseltine's paddock.  

Tony Benn & Bob Crow!

High Mindedness, and the Fat Fan of Fried Fish    

TWO esteemed titans of the far left died last week; the ex-Labour MP and former Minister, Tony Benn, formerly known as Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn, at 88-years, and the RMT trade unionist, Bob Crow, at 52-years, who two years ago enjoyed an F.T. Lunch at an expensive and distinguished fish and chip restaurant in the metropolis; an occasion on which he  proclaimed that the fried halibut was good for building up the brains.  Reviewing their lives is rather like analysing the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza: the noble tall  high minded thin man and the pleasingly plump trade unionist.  Despite the radical views he espoused in his later life in Labour Party politics, Mr. Benn managed to turn himself into a little public treasure much loved beyond the main stream left.  Mr. Crow represented rougher tackle purveying himself as the quick-witted cheeky cockney on Any Questions on Radio Four, and even cuddling-up to Ukip and Nigel Farage, in his anxiety at displaying his hatred of the European Union and all its works.   

For his part Wedgwood Benn has been a life-long devotee of the parliamentary system, clearly at ease in the chamber of the House of Commons.  It seems that this passion for all things parliamentary has been something of a family tradition with the Wedgwood Benn clan, because in 1932, when the then Minister of Labour referred to parliamentary proceedings as a 'performance' the then Mr. William Wedgwood Benn, the father of the Tony Benn so recently deceased, complained of this slighting representation of the business of the House, and demanded the withdrawal of a remark so offensive in its implications.  Despite the adoration of the Benn family for parliamentary government throughout the generations the institution has certainly fallen on hard times today; yet even then in his book 'The Thirties' Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge was to observed:

'It is not power which Parliament lacks... rather the will to exercise it.  Power without resolution is as vain as desire without virility, and evokes scant respect.  The proportion of voters who care to register their votes has fallen sometimes as low as thirty per cent, and since 1932 has rarely been above fifty per cent.'

Benn, the son of a hereditary peer who renounced his peerage ultimately was to become a bit of a champion of the hard left, after being a middle-of-road moderate as a Minister and serving as postmaster general under Harold Wilson.  Born in 1925 to a privileged childhood that included   Westminster School and New College, Oxford. His father was a Liberal MP who joined the Labour Party and became India secretary, and later a hereditary peer under  Ramsay MacDonald.   

Mr. Benn, who met Ramsay MacDonald when he gave him a chocolate biscuit when he was five-years-old, is in some weird ways in the MacDonald tradition of Labour politics, as Bob Crow was more like MacDonald's adversary Arthur Henderson.  Malcolm Muggeridge expresses the two crucial elements in the Labour Party thus:  'They (MacDonald and Henderson) represented two elements in the Labour Party whose incompatibility had been perhaps its greatest weakness – the urge on the part of prudent, industrious manual workers to improve their conditions, and the romantic discontent of would-be, and sometimes actual aristocrats.  The trade unions and the Co-operative movement are characteristic products of the former; National Labour and the Left Book club,of the later.'  Benn rather like MacDonald is the romantic idealist who could in the 1930s have so easily slipped into the MacDonald role of appeaser of international conflicts and champion of oppressed peoples, while Crow was clearly more parochial bent on setting up National Shop Stewards Networks, tending his allotment, and eating fish and chips in London's east end.  As Muggeridge says of MacDonald:  'The romantic idealist invariably turns his eye abroad...It is so much easier and more exciting to side with the weak and defy the strong in other countries than at home.'   

Despite their high minded similarities, the difference between MacDonald in the 1930s when he was Prime Minister, and Benn in the 1980s at the peak of his influence is that while MacDonald was an electoral asset to his party, Benn made the Labour Party unelectable helping to craft the Labour manifesto in the 1983 election which came to be entitle 'the longest suicide note in history', and he later defended the Militant Tendency, now re-erected as the Socialist Party, which Mr Crow embraced after he fell out with Arthur Scargill and the Socialist Labour Party.   

MacDonald, high minded and believing his time had come, and though he had been unpopular in his stand against the Great War, the historian AJP Taylor wrote that 'most English people [at the time of the second Labour government in 1929]  agreed with MacDonald that nations had the same interests if they did but know it and that all conflicts could be dispelled by “strenuous and good will”.'  Mr Taylor somewhere describes MacDonald as the 'patron saint of appeasement'.  In the 1980s, with Tony Benn, of course,  it was nuclear disarmament with CND.  Both MacDonald and Benn were great orators: MacDonald with his 'rich Highland voice'; Benn with his southern brogue, and both managed to carry their Christianity lightly into their politics.  Bob Crow, for his part, kept the promise I heard him give defiantly on Radio Four the day before he died:  'I was born in a council house and I'll die in a council house!'  Sancho Panza couldn't have forecast at better result.

How the police infiltrated 'Class War' and Direct Action Movement'!

IN an article in today's Guardian newspaper, it was reported that the police body the 'National Domestic Extremism Unit' (NDEU), is currently monitoring by surveillance techniques, intercepts, some 9,000 people who they have deemed 'domestic extremists'. The police have confirmed that many of the people held in the NDEU database, have no criminal record. Moreover, the term 'domestic extremist' has no legal basis in English law and has been completely invented by the police authorities. The disclosures about the nature of spying in Britain, has come at a time when it has also been revealed by the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, that CCHQ have been monitoring global phone and internet traffic under 'Project Tempora'. 

The government says that there is always a balance to be struck between protecting civil liberties and privacy as well as protecting the security of people in this country. One can perfectly understand this, if the people being monitored, were people who had fallen under suspicion, but this is not always the case. We know from past whistleblowers who have worked for the security services, such as MI5, that the organisation spies on British citizens. Former MI5 officer, Michael Bettaney, claimed that MI5 "cynically manipulated the definition of subversion". Cathy Massister, also an MI5 officer, revealed that the organisation spied on CND and trade union leaders and former MI5 officer, Miranda Ingram, claimed that "counter espionage is the acceptable face of MI5 and that working in 'F' branch, means spying on one's fellow citizens and engaging in activities of dubious legality."

The following piece which we are publishing, has been taken from Ian Bone's blog. It concerns recent revelations about the infiltration of political groups by police officers working within the 'Special Demonstration Squad' (SDS). It is an excerpt from  'Undercover' by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans.

WHAT ‘UNDERCOVER’ SAYS ABOUT ANARCHIST INFILTRATION:

Thanks to Chris Mitchell for this excerpt from ‘Undercover’ by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans:

'As Black prepared to start his covert mission, senior officers in the SDS were deciding on his future undercover role.  They were constantly working out which political groups needed infiltrating and which officers would make suitable spies. Initially, Black was lined up to become an anarchist.  At least three SDS officers had already been embedded in anarchist groups in the early 1990s.  One was in a small anarchist group called the Direct Action Movement (DAM), which had existed since 1979. Its associates believed capitalism should be abolished by workers organising themselves at the grassroots level, a political philosophy known as anarcho-syndicalism dating back to the late 1890s. One confidential Special Branch document states that a detective constable who worked as an SDS spy "successfully" infiltrated DAM between 1990 and 1993.'

Another group of interest to the SDS was the better-known Class War, which achieved some notoriety after it was set up in the 1980s.  Anarchists linked with Class War produced a newspaper of the same name, styling it Britain’s most unruly tabloid.  At its zenith, it was reputedly selling 15,000 copies per week.  It provoked a lather of indignation from the right-wing tabloid press, which was enraged by the publication’s tongue-in-cheek promotion of violence against the wealthy.  One front-page headline suggested that the newly married Duke and Duchess of York were ‘Better Dead Than Wed’, while the birth of Prince William was greeted with ‘Another Fucking Royal Parasite’.  A third showed the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher with a hatchet buried in her head.

A regular feature was the ‘hospitalised copper’ page – a photograph of a police officer being assaulted. ‘We loved that. But it was done with humour, so even though it was violent, it didn’t come across as psychotic violence,’ says Ian Bone, Class War’s loudest advocate.  There was an element of pantomime about the group – in their ‘Bash the Rich’ demonstrations, supporters were invited to march into affluent areas of London such as Kensington and Hampstead.

Bone, a wiry sociology graduate with small round glasses who was once dubbed ‘Britain’s most dangerous man’ by the press, said later that no rich people were actually ‘bashed’ – ‘but it felt good walking down there. We gave a lot of abuse and shouts and they did cower, a few of them, behind their curtains.’  The SDS viewed Bone and his friends as considerably more sinister. The unit posted at least two undercover police into the group.

'One was in place in February 1992 when he had a meeting in a London safe house with David Shayler, the MI5 officer later jailed for breaking the Official Secrets Act after leaking details of alleged incompetence in the secret services.  Shayler had at that time been assigned to investigate whether Class War posed a threat to British democracy.  The SDS officer supplied intelligence to the Security Service, and had become an official MI5 informant, designated the code number M2589.

According to Shayler, the ‘peculiar arrangement’ in which the SDS officer lived the life of an anarchist for six days a week, returning only occasionally to his friends and family, had ‘affected the agent psychologically’.
Shayler recounts:
‘After around four years of pretending to be an anarchist, he had clearly become one. To use the service jargon, he had gone native.  He drank about six cans of Special Brew during the debrief, and regaled us with stories about beating up uniformed officers as part of his “cover”.  Partly as a result, he was “terminated” after the 1992 general election.  Without his organisational skills, Class War fell apart.’

According to Black, the true story was a little different. He says the SDS officer in question was a ‘top end’ operative who served the unit well. During the encounter with the MI5 officer, he acted the part of a coarse anarchist because he had little time for Shayler, who was perceived to be a ‘desk wanker’ – though Black concedes that ‘some MI5 desk officers who came out to talk to us were superb and we had a very, very good relationship with them’. A second SDS officer was later sent into Class War, but it became apparent the group was fading out. Rather ignominiously for the anarchists who wanted to tear down the state, the SDS concluded they could no longer justify spending money to infiltrate them.

Hence, in 1993, when Black was due to begin his life as an anarchist protester, the plan was suddenly changed. Black was disappointed; he had spent months perfecting his persona as an anarchist. ‘It was all based around the fact that I was a half-German anarchist with tenuous connections to the Baader-Meinhof group. It sounds ridiculous when you say it and it’s hard to imagine that it would stand up to scrutiny, but it would have,’ he says. ‘I used lots of elements of my own life to ensure it came across realistically.’

Instead, weeks before he was due to be deployed, he was called into the office by the head of the SDS. ‘The boss pulled me in and said:  "This anarchist work you’ve been doing, absolutely spot on.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody work so hard on their cover. First class. Now you can fucking forget all about it because you are not going into the anarchists. We’ve got something else in mind".’

RAF Waddington: Ground the Drones Campaign

LAST Saturday saw hundreds march to RAF Waddington against the UK government's use of Drones in Afghanistan, now controlled from the military airbase near Lincoln. 

The largest demonstration against drones to date brought together Stop the War, War on Want, the Drone Campaign Network and CND and more than 600 members of the public to launch a national campaign against drones.

The pressure of our campaign has already been felt after the Ministry of Defence was forced to admit just two days before the protest that the Waddington control centre is now in operation. But much of the secrecy about how British drones are being used, and the threat of new interventions, remains.

A comment in January by the Secretary of State for Defence showed just how easy a new intervention might be when he had turned down a request from France to send drones to Mali because of the "unacceptable impact on our operations in Afghanistan". The question of whether or not British people want a new war in Mali was not even raised.

The widespread media coverage on drones that Saturday's demonstration has provoked has started an important debate about their use and showed just how important a strong anti-drones campaign will be in the coming months.

Stop the War would like to thank all those who participated in Saturday's successful demo.

Read the report from Common Dreams on the Ground the Drones demo, including TV reports from Sky and the BBC.
David Shariatmadari argues that drones might be changing more minds about war now that killing is conducted from our doorstep. 

Ground the drones demo hits the headlines.

This is an eye witness account of the Ground the Drones protest last Saturday at RAF Waddington organised jointly by CND and Stop the War Coalition.    The remarkable aspect of a comparatively small demonstration was the degree of media interest which was intense judging from the TV crews on the ground and subsequent news bulletins.   There was prominent reportage on the main BBC news.    An interesting departure for official news outlets which have consistently blanked out news coverage of many anti nuclear and anti war protests over the last few years.    So why the sudden media concern?    This can best be answered by describing what drones are

Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles and are aircraft either controlled by "pilots" on the ground or autonomously following a pre-programmed mission  they are either used for reconnaissance purposes or armed with missiles and bombs.   Armed drones were first used in the Balkans War and then in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan by the United States.    In June 2008 the MoD confirmed that a British Reaper UAV had fired its weapons for the first time.    In May 2012 MoD reported  that British Reapers had undertaken 281 armed attacks in Afghanistan since 2008.   In July 2011 the MoD  was forced to admit that Afghan civilians had been killed in a British drone strike.

British Reaper drones will be controlled from RAF Waddington and it is likely that yesterdays march and rally will be a prelude to further such protests.   Will the British media sustain its interest as the obscenity of drone warfare in the coming months as their use filters through into the public consciousness.    What is also disturbing is the probable use of drones for domestic surveillance and thus a dramatic expansion of the power of the state  and a further erosion  of human rights.

The protest was conspicuous by the absence of young people and most of those present were either veteran peace campaigners or politicos from groups such as Counterfire, SWP, Socialist Resistance.and a small group of Marxist Leninists.    Trade Union banners and anarchist flags were nowhere to be scene.   Overall it was a pleasant afternoon out in the Lincolnshire sunshine but the rally on waste ground near the base was fairly perfunctory.    In a way the day was saved by the presence of the news media and hopefully future direct action will challenge the legitimacy of these pernicious war machines.