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.

*******

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.

Eric Preston former ILP activist has died

by Brian Bamford

ERIC PRESTON who lived in Leeds died last month.

Eric Preston who had been an active member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) since the 1950s has died. In 1959 when I first met him he was involved in founding the Rank & File Movement in London: the ILP together with the London Anarchists; the Syndicalist Workers Federation (SWF); the Solidarity Group (formerly 'Agitator'); the then Worker's Party which later merged with the SWF; and some subscibers to the paper Freedom set up the Rank & File movement to try to introduce an organised shopfloor form of libertarian campaigning element into the then active shop-stewards movement.

This Rank & File movement was mainly London based and according to Pete Turner later an editor of Freedom, this movement merged into the London Industrial Sub-Committee of the Committee of 100. Futher events like the Spies for Peace revelations emerged as a natural consequence of political evolution of these activists in the early 1960s. Eric Preston, who lived in Leeds, and his friends Bill and Joan Christopher at that time based in London, were central to these developments on the libertarian left.

Bob Galliers writes: Eric's funeral will be next Thursday but because of Covid restrictions etc we will not be going as numbers allowed to attend are few and standing outside is impractical and limited numbers too. The plan is that someone will film the ceremony so that those who cannot attend will be able to access it - not sure yet if this will just be recorded or live. There is a lot of research going on about Eric's early involvement in the ILP/ politics but sadly so many have passed on and those that are still alive have very vague memories. Seems that there are plans to have a good bash next year sometime to remember Eric. If there is a written obituary or I get any more information I will pass this on.

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

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

Jack Stevenson Obituary

by Donald Rooum 

JACK Stevenson died on Easter Sunday.  

An electrician by trade, and a keen gardener of vegetables on his allotment, Jack was prominent among London anarchists and in the 1960s.  Among other achievements, he was the founder, treasurer, and inconspicuous donor to the Sit-Down-Or-Pay-Up fund.  Which subsidised legal expenses and fines of supporters of the Committee of One Hundred anti-bomb campaign, mostly charged with obstructing traffic.

****** 
 

The Jack Stevenson I knew!

by Brian Bamford 

 I first attended a meeting of the London Anarchist Group in November 1961, and that’s when I first heard Jack Stevenson speak at a meeting.  Laurens Otter was there, and I’d already known Laurens for over a year, through my acquaintance with him on the Coast-to- Coast March against nuclear weapons up North, and at other meetings and conferences associated with Ban the Bomb and the Labour Party.  During the London Anarchist meeting, as I recall, there was a disagreement between Jack and Laurens over the the latter’s willingness to court imprisonment and submit passively to the authorities during his campaign with the Direct Action Committee at Holy Lock.

Jack, as I recall, asked Laurens why he and the others imprisoned for the offences in Scotland hadn’t attempted to escape, as that, according to Jack, would have been the anarchist thing to do. Laurens said at the time that they had been asked to give their word that they would not attempt to escape, but they had refused to do so.

Both Jack and his wife, Mary, were close to the anarcho-syndicalist wing of anarchism. Consequently, Jack was among that group of anarchists and syndicalists who in late 1960 wrote a letter to Freedom calling for a conference of Rank & File workers*.  Among those promoting this conference were such figures as Peter Turner, a carpenter and later one of the editorial staff of Freedom; Brian Behan, also a carpenter; Ken Weller, a shop steward in the car industry and member of a group, initially known as Socialism Reaffirmed, which published a journal, The Agitator; Ken Hawkes the national secretary of the Syndicalist Workers Federation (SWF); Bill and Joan Christopher (see ‘A Radical Born on Bastille Day'); and of course the electrician, Jack Stevenson.

I spoke to Joan Christopher about the death of Jack Stevenson last night, and we remembered that when I interviewed her a year ago that we had reminisced about her and Bill’s friendship with Jack and Mary Stevenson. How they disagreed about how Bill and Jack Stevenson had had so many disputes over their tastes in Jazz. Peter Turner, who witnessed these disputes was always going on to me about these disagreements over music.

Joan had said ‘we all had a passion for Jazz! But when were living at 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.’ The Joan said: ‘It was through Jack Stevenson we came to know the track by Jack Teagarden called “Tribute to Sydney Bechet”.’

At that point Joan started to hum the tune, and she said movingly: ‘I want that played at my funeral’. 

Strangely enough the last time I saw Jack and Mary Stevenson was at Peter Turner's funeral in London, and Laurens Otter was there as well.

*  The National Rank & File Group (NR&FM) of militants had some effect in the early 1960s.   In 1961, Peregrine Gerard Worsthorne was to be appointed as the first deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph; a job with fewer responsibilities than its title implies, and he rang Jim Pinkerton, then the international secretary of the Syndicalist Workers Federation, to ask about the National Rank & File grouping.  It was in his column in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Worsthorne gave some critical coverage to the NR&FM entity at the time.  Years later, Peter Turner told me that with the dramatic rise in the 1960s of the anti-nuclear Ban-the-Bomb movement around CND and the Committee of 100, the industrial struggle was sidelined and the Nat. Rank & File groping of militant was absorbed into the C. of 100.
. 

******

 

THE OTTER MEMOIR

by Séamas Cain
'I first met Laurens Otter outside a Labour Party Conference in Blackpool in 1959:  he was selling Peace News and I was with some Young Liberals from the North West demonstrating.  Later, in 1960, Laurens came to address the Rochdale Young Liberals on anarchism and worker's control.  He was involved in the peace movement and the Committee of 100, and for some of us he had a big influence on our development as anarchists in this country in the 1960s.  A member of the Syndicalist Worker's Federation, he had been a founding member of the National Rank & File Movement in London in 1959-60.'  (editor) 

LAURENS Otter was a prominent activist in the Ban-the-Bomb Movement in Britain during the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Indeed, he was a strategist and theoretician for The Committee of 100 and Polaris Action.  Mr. Otter has now published a Memoir of his life and activism.  I think it will prove to be of some historical interest.

Over the years Mr. Otter has been a prodigious small-press publisher.  He has published any number of collections of essays, as well as collections of poetry and plays by various authors.  His Memoir, however, provides a wealth of specific details and glimpses of movements that challenged established institutions throughout the world.

Laurens Otter has written:  “My parents knew Gandhi in India — mother had first contacted him when she was in South Africa, she used to fast whenever he did and my elder brother and I (in my case from the age of 4) used to fast for a day or two whenever Gandhi began to fast.”

Martin Bashforth, the editor of The Otter Memoir, has written that “Laurens belongs to a generation who, though they did not know it at the time, laid the foundations for the New Left in the 1960s and beyond.  Laurens was very much one of the activists from that generation — people who gave the movement its practical impetus.  They created organisations, movements, and publications to which those of us born after World War Two could turn as we worked out our response to the world around us.  In particular, during the late 1950s and early 1960s their use of non-violent civil disobedience was an inspiration, even for those of us too timid to adopt these tactics ... The Memoir as it stands admirably sums up the culture on the Left that had been created since 1945 and that deserves to be revisited by today's networked dissident generation.  They need to honour their forebears and learn from them.”

The Otter Memoir is available here as a free download ...

https://oldredfogey.wordpress.com/laurens-otter/

This Memoir contains descriptions of encounters, disagreements/agreements, and/or interactions between Laurens Otter and Richard Acland, Alex Alexander, Frank Allaun, Andy Anderson, Lady Clare Annesley, Pat Arrowsmith, Brian Bamford, John Banks, Donald Bannister, Robert Barltrop, Ernie Bates, Olwen Battersby, Brian Behan, Desmond O'Neill Belshawe, John Bishop, John Boland, Claude Bourdet, Maurice Brinton, Eileen Brock, Hugh Brock, Lily Brown, Peter Copper Brown, Tom Brown, Dr. Noel C. Browne, Oliver Browne, Forbes Burnham, Melita Burrell, Mike Callinan, Mary Canipa, April Carter, Ian Celnick, Ray Challinor, Terry Chandler, Terry Chivers, Stuart Christie, Bill & Joan Christopher, Chichester Clark, Howard Clark, George Clarke, Tony Cliff, Ken Coates, Kelso Cochrane, G.D.H. Cole, Canon John Collins, Phil Cooke, Mike Craft, Rikki Dalton, Lawrence Daly, Sir Tam Dalyell of the Binns, baronet, Dorothy Day, Francis Deutsch, Ian Dixon, Dr. Richard Doll, Kurt Dowson, Peggy Duff, Raya Dunayevskaya, Father Alan Edwardes, Freda Ehlers, Robert Ehlers, Stanley Evans, Marianne Faithful, Baron Brian Faulkner, Leah Feldmann, Michael Foot, George Foulser, Crystal Gates, Dorothy & Norman Glaister, Ygael Gluckstein, Victor Gollancz, David Goodway, David Grahame, Martin Grainger, Eddie Grant, Robert Green, Jo Grimond, Reg Groves, Stephen Gwynn, Denzil Harber, Margaret & Bryan Hart, Ernie Hartley, Ken Hawkes, Stephen Hawking, Eric Heffer, Ammon Hennacy, Wynford Hicks, Axel Hoff, Philip Holgate, Gerald Holtom, Bishop Trevor Huddlestone, Cheddi Jagan, C.L.R. James, Brenda Jordan, Pat Jordan, Francis Jude, Matt Kavanagh, Douglas Kepper, Jim Kilfedder, Father Gresham Kirkby, Charles Lahr, John Lall, Kitty Lamb, Bill Lean, Father Kenneth Leech, John Lloyd, Meng-Tse Lo, Keith Lye, Freddie Lyons, Seán MacStíofáin, Ollie Mahler, Father Donald Manners, Harry Marsh, André Marty, Madame Natalia Trotskaya, Tom Mboya, John McGuffin, Pronchais McGuinness, George McLeod, Harry McShane, Clifford Mélotte, Albert Meltzer, Hélène Michon, Renée & Lucien Michon, Yvonne Michon, Bernard Miles, Rita Milton, Harry Mister, Ron Moir, George Molnar, Sybil Morrison, Ken Morse, Peter Moule, Arthur Moyse, Hilda Murrell, Colin Myers, Mike Nolan, John Olday, Captain Terence O'Neill, Dr. Chris Pallis, Jeanne Pallis, Max Patrick, Geoffrey Payne, Inge & Donovan Pedelty, John Pilgrim, Carl Pinnel, George Plume, Eric Preston, J.B. Priestley, Stu Purkiss, Jim Radford, Mike Randle, Vero Recchioni, Vernon Richards, Archbishop Tom Roberts, S.J., Adrian Robertson, Mary & Jack Robinson, Jeff Robinson, Ernie Rodker, Roger Rolph, Donald Rooum, Father John Rowe, Bertrand Russell, Raphael Samuel, Philip Sansom, Simon Schama, Ralph Schoenman, Father Michael Scott, Natalia Ivanovna Sedova, Mike Segal, Gene Sharp, Dr. Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, Sydney Silverman, Allen Skinner, Jim Slater, Colin Smart, Harry Smith, Joan Smith, Dr. Donald Soper, Harold Steele, Mary & Jack Stevenson, John Stockbridge, Bishop Mervyn Stockwood, George Stone, Douglas Stuckey, Buck Taylor, Carol Taylor, Joe Thomas, E.P. Thompson, Tommy Thompson, David Thornley, Charles Tillon, David Toogood, Peter Turner, Arthur Uloth, Fred Walker, Barbara Wall, Bernadine Wall, Digger Walsh, Nicolas Walter, Colin Ward, Tom Wardle, Will Warren, Kate & Bobby Waters, Kurt Weisskopf, Fran White, Roma White, John Whiteley, David Wicks, Kathy & Wilfred Wigham, Thomas Willis, Tom Wintringham, and Lillian Wolfe.

The Otter Memoir is available here as a free download ...

https://oldredfogey.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/the-accidental-making-of-an-anarchist.pdf

For Séamas Cain go to:

http://www.priosma.net

http://seamascain-writernetwork.org

Next Meeting of Freedom Friends

Donald Rooum Resigns from Collective

PROVISIONALLY it is anticipated that the next meeting of the Friends of Freedom Press will be held next Monday the 11th, January 2016.  The last meeting of the Friends which we are told was poorly attended was held in December last year.

None-the-less, the board of Friends which has ultimate power and responsibility for the running of the property in Angel Alley is now meeting on a regular basis following criticisms on this Northern Voices' Blog and in the national journal Private Eye. 

As yet, there is little sign that a serious anarchist newspaper will be produced, as is required under the Articles of Association: which are the rules under which the managing body must operate.  The Freedom website, edited by the well-intentioned student Adam Lawrence Bar, is at present a rather poor substitute for the journal which I remember in the last half of the 20th century.  During that time it was edited by mature intellectuals like Vernon Richards and Colin Ward; experienced shop-floor workers like Bill Christopher, and the building worker like Peter Turner; people interested in the arts like John Rety and Arthur Moyse.  More recently in this century the quality of those who have contributed to Freedom seems to have declined to the likes of Simon Saunders, who not long ago admitted he didn't know the meaning of the word 'syndicalism', and the rather voluble figure of Nick Heath, a one-time librarian/ historian and leader of the Anarchist Federation.

A source close to the Friends of Freedom reports that the veteran anarchist and cartoonist, Donald Rooum, has now resigned from the Collective that closed down Freedom newspaper.  Mr. Rooum , who is also on the Friend's of Freedom Board has done this because he does not want a conflict of interests.



Labour Leadership & Jeremy Corbyn

by Laurens Otter

THE reasons anarchists refuse to vote are diverse, it by no means follows that any one anarchist will accept all the reasons advanced by his / her comrades.  For me (as a syndicalist) it is purely because the institutions of government are so organised that it is impossible to use them to change society.

 

A new MP when elected is conditioned in the House of Commons:

'You won't get on unless you compromise', 'if you want to change society, you've got to get power, and if you want to get power you've got to...'  etc.

 

You either play the game or you sit on the back benches.  Before people get to Parliament the conditioning has begun already.  Every shop steward was subjected to the same process.  Every aspirant to adopted as a constituency candidate, as indeed for every official of the constituency parties it is the same.

 

At the same time the forces of finance, capitalist control of the media, the conditioning through the education system of every child in the land; the way that workers are conditioned.  Many young workers are told:

'You can only get change if you become a foreman/ manager etc, so conform for the moment and then when you're promoted you can get changes.'

 

So what happens when once the conditioning system breaks down?  When because the system  has over-reached itself, and popular reaction seizes on an Obama for President or a Corbyn for Labour leader?

 

Well, it still holds that the system is such that there was no conceivable way that Barrack Obama could implement his promised policies; no way that he could have carried all his Party in voting to shut down Guantamano.   But let us have the honesty to admit that the 'Yes We Can'  Campaign – despite the fact that it was easy for an anarchist to see and say:  'No, unfortunately you can't' – did mobilise a large number of people who had previously lacked hope.  Many, if not most, will have ended up disheartened.  But some will remain sufficiently inspired to move on from Constitutional Politics.

 

No doubt Obama's contribution to progressive politics ended the day he was actually elected and from then on he was a prisoner of the system:  Though he does do some good as a 'Lame Duck President', while he is unable, constitutionally to do anything, he can campaign and show up how the system works.

 

In much the way here the system over reached itself, and behold a back-bencher, who has consistently refused to be conditioned, turned away from the Parliamentary flesh-pots and has now been thrust into the affray.  Jeremy Corbyn was Chairman of the Wrekin Young Socialists, when I first moved up here to Shropshire.  Wrekin Young Socialists was one of the first young socialist groups that refused to align itself with either Transport House or Militant.

 

Jeremy moved to London very soon after I moved to Wrekin.  In London, he contacted high-profile campaigners like the anarcho- syndicalist and former editor of Freedom, Peter Turner, who would refer any industrial victimisation cases to Jeremy that could be dealt with in a Parliamentary capacity.  Jeremy also worked with Rob Green over the issues arising from the murder of Hilda Murrell.

 

So we must concede that Jeremy is an honest socialist, though admittedly reformist, and that if it were possible that a parliamentarian could advance socialism and could start Labour on the road to change; then Jeremy would be a good choice.

 

That said it needs to be pointed out that his platform doesn't go very far.  He wants to restore some of the nationalisation done by the Clement Attlee Government.  Most of which had previously been enacted by the Churchill-led war-time Coalition. 

 

The media has of course thrown all the mud it can at Jeremy Corbyn.  That is to be expected.  The nearest they came to a good argument is the claim that Michael Foot moved Labour leftwards and then lost badly.  That is only part of the truth.  Foot campaigned from the Left, but immediately he was elected he change tack.  He made an alliance with Healey, announced that he would 'do nothing to offend the consciences of Multi-nationalists' who had backed  backed him:

'Stuff you,  you're used to keeping your consciences in your pockets, you can go on so doing.'  

He then attacked Tony Benn – until then his partner in the campaign to change the leadership – in a

most opportunist and unfair way.  Not surprisingly, the Left in consequence, sat on its hands, and did not support Foot in the subsequent election.

Postmortem on one of the oldest papers in England

WHAT follows on the next post on this Blog is a postmortem assessment or examination of FREEDOM newspaper by the cultural and arts correspondent for Northern Voices, Christopher Draper.  Mr. Draper has produced a remarkable and insightful autopsy on the corpse of FREEDOM, which at the time of its death last year was one of the oldest political newspapers England, if not the world.  Many distinguished figures wrote in it including Augustus John, George Orwell, Herbert Read, John Arden, Colin Ward, Nicolas Walter, Peter Turner, Bill Christopher, John Hewetson, Geoffrey Ostergaard, Philip Sansom, George Woodcock, and Vernon Richards.  Northern Voices believes Mr. Draper has done us a great service by his investigative research into who killed FREEDOM.  What follows here is merely the first installment of a series of articles uncovering what happened to FREEDOM over the decades of its existence.  We believe this will now be the historic documented record of what happened at Freedom Press.