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.

Don Pedelty, socialist and anarcho-syndicalist dies

In loving memory of Don James Donovan Pedelty

7th March 1926 – 12th October 2020

“Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease; Or was it made to preserve all her children?”

— Gerrard Winstanley, 1649 (founder of the True Levellers)

Hay Meadow Burial Ground, Glascwm, 12pm, 24th October 2020

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John Foley: A Liverpool Legend

Editorial comment: Most towns and cities have a colourful figure who stands out against the trend. In Liverpool, John Foley seems to have mastered the art of embracing an awkward squad to challenge the local scenario. The Liverpool Echo describes John as 'father figure of St John's Market', and a threat to those he felt were 'doing wrong'. He was a campaigner on many issues, including helping to rescue the famous market when it was threatened with closure. He died on the 9th, September, in Royal Liverpool Hospital after catching Covid-19. John gained the admiration of many from Liberals, like Cllr Richard Kemp, who campaigned with him on a number of issues, to Scouse anarcho-syndicalists in the local Solidarity Federation.

Colin Laphan, a close friend of John’s and the chair of the St John’s Market Traders Association, told The Echo:

'He was everything that was good about Scousers, he was salt of the earth, a fighter for justice – he was what Liverpool is all about.'

He added: 'The idea that anyone could think this virus isn’t serious is insanity. We have lost two of our friends and traders – John had no other illnesses before he got covid.'

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

Tribute to John Foley: Liverpool legend by Mike C.

CAMPAIGNER and market stallholder John Foley has passed away from coronavirus at the age of 55.

John was well-known in his native Liverpool where he was a formidable campaigner against injustice and a thorn in the side of the powerful.

He fought a long campaign against Ryanair, arguing that the airline had unfairly terminated his daughter's employment whilst profiting from the thousands of euros she had paid for her flight attendant training.

The campaign involved publicity stunts such as climbing onto the roof of Liverpool John Lennon Airport, picketing Ryanair's AGM in Dublin, disrupting the Grand National and handcuffing himself to the goalposts during a Premier League match.

His campaign was backed by the Liverpool branch of the Solidarity Federation who supported many of his pickets and organised a day of action at European airports through the International Workers' Association.

Latterly, he pursued a private company contracted by Liverpool City Council to enforce litter fines. John believed the company were profiting by unfairly targeting vulnerable people on low incomes. The council eventually capitulated and ended the contract.

As a stallholder in Liverpool's St John's Market, John campaigned against the council's attempts to charge traders sky-high rents, and organised a rally to demand the re-opening of the market which remained closed even though other retailers were open following lockdown.

His final campaign was to stop the closure of two local care homes, which was ultimately successful.

As well as being a passionate campaigner against injustice, John was a dedicated family man, and a warm and genuine bloke. I was proud to have known him and campaigned alongside him.

GO TO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0I-MZC2FEI

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José Netto Gibraltarian syndicalist & Jack Jones

José Netto at the Casa de la Memoria in Jimena de la Frontera

by Brian Bamford

Editorial note:  I first met José Netto in 
March 1964, when I, my wife and baby 
6-month-old son (born in Denia, Alicante
had to leave Spain where we had been living 
and working for 12 month, and crossed the 
frontier in order to to comply with the then 
Spanish law. 

We had a 'letter of introduction' when we 
arrived at his council house in a working-
class area on the Rock.  He was living with 
his own young family and then worked on the 
tools in the Her Majesties Dockyard, but being 
an anarcho-syndicalist who had joined the 
then Syndicalist Worker's Federation 
while working in London in the 1950s.  
He and his mates helped to find me a job 
working as an electrician at the airport for
the Ministry of Defence repairing the landing 
lights on the airstrip.

One of José's close mates was Navarro, who was an 
anarchist supporter of the CNT, and had fought
for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War in
following the military insurrection in July 1936.  

Although José was an anarcho-syndicalist in Gibraltar
the syndicalists were not sectarian and had close working
relations with historic labour leaders like Albert Risso*, 
who became the first president of the Gibraltar Confederation 
of Labour which, in 1963, merged with the  
Transport and General Workers' Union, now Unite.



* Albert Risso was one of the first political activists in the British territory of Gibraltar. at a very young age, he was one of the campaigners for the involvement of the Gibraltarian civilian population (and especially its working class) in governing the colony. In 1919, he was one of the members of a so-called "deputation of working men" who went to London to meet the Secretary of State for the Colonies and ask for the creation of a representative body that could succeed the Sanitary Commission, an unelected body whose members, usually belonging to the upper class, were nominated by the Governor. The campaign, driven by the trade unions, brought about the creation of the Gibraltar City Council in 1921.^{[2] 
By the start of World War II,[1] Risso was a foreman mechanic and a City Council employee. When most of Gibraltar's civilian population was evacuated, Risso was one of the few Gibraltarians that remained on The Rock.
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José Netto, the historic syndicalist anarchist trade union leader in Gibraltar in the last half of the 20th Century, visited the Casa de la Memoria in Jimena de la Frontera (Cádiz), on the 28th, January 2019, a few months after the donation of a library of this entidad of five volumes of the encyclopedia El hombre y la Tierra, a history of humanity written by Eliseo Reclus in 1905.  Reclus was a French scientist and creator of the Geografía Social, being one of the first theoreticians of anarchism and a man of action who participated in the Paris Commune, together with other famous historic activists.

These five volumes of El hombre y la tierra were edited in Barcelona en 1933. The translation is by Anselmo Lorenzo, the principle great leader of Spanish anarchism and its representative in the First International.

These volumes form part of the particular library of José Netto, and they were offered up from the hands of a syndicalist of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) when the Campo de Gibraltar had suffered in 1936, and  Spaniards in the area had struggled with death at the hands of the military coup that rose against the Second Republic.

José Netto received the books from a man who had been an exile since the 1950s and a few days after learning that that anarchist had committed suicide. The donation to the Casa de la Memoria was effected months later during the last session of the seminar of the Cursos de Verano de la Universidad de Cádiz in San Roque, the son of José Netto, Michael Netto, in Gibraltar, and was received by the President of the Foro for the Memoria del Campo de Gibraltar, Andrés Rebolledo, to deposit in the Casa de la Memoria La Sauceda.

In his visit to the Casa, José Netto, who now lives in Atajate (Málaga), had also donated two poster images of the Second Spanish Republic. 

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The donación to the Casa de la Memoria took effect during the last session of the seminar

la efectuó meses atrás, durante la última sesión del seminario de memoria histórica de los Cursos de Verano de la Universidad de Cádiz en San Roque, the son of José Netto, Michael Netto, in Gibraltar, and was received by the President of the Foro for the Memoria del Campo de Gibraltar, Andrés Rebolledo, to deposit in the Casa de la Memoria La Sauceda.

El histórico sindicalista de Gibraltar José Netto visita la Casa de la Memoria tras donar a la Biblioteca la enciclopedia de Eliseo Reclus

14/02/2019

Biblioteca para la Memoria, Libro de la semana

José Netto wrote the following obituary for Jack Jones of the T&G:

My relation with Jack stretches back to the late 60s early 70s when I was appointed District Officer in 1972, and he was the TGWU General Secretary.  He has always been my mentor, as we shared common ideology, and has been a tremendous influence in my professional development as a trade unionist.  He was responsible for financing the construction of our premises in Town Range, which at the beginning we used to call?  La Casa del Pueblo?  He played a very leading role in supporting our fight for parity of wages and salaries, against the MOD.  As the British and local government had rejected this claim, on the grounds that it could not be sustained economically, a fact that was later proved wrong.

The intention of the fascist forces in Spain, during the Franco regime, to strangle the economy, with its restrictions and the closure of the land frontier, was defeated by the contribution of the labour movement in Gibraltar, of which I feel very proud of.

I wish to pay tribute on behalf of the working class of Gibraltar, to this comrade, so that we never forget how much we owe to him.

Rest in peace, Bro. Jack.

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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.
. 

******

 

CNT / CGT union's statement on Catalonia

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

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

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

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

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

libcom report on Catalan strikes

 Posted By

Cipo Fraioli
Oct 3 2017 12:14

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

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

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

CNT STATEMENT ON REFERENDUM

The International Solidarity Department has received and is happy to share this statement from the CNT Catalonia & Balearic Islands:
“The CNT local unions from Catalonia and the Balearic Islands publicly state our support for the self-determination of the Catalan people.
As anarcho-syndicalists, we don’t think that political reforms within a capitalist framework can reflect our desire for social transformation, a change that would place production and consumption means in workers’ hands. Because of this, our daily struggles do not focus on creating new states or backing parliamentary initiatives.
However, we can’t look the other way when regular people are being attacked and repressed by any state. A state that has, in this case, removed its mask and revealed itself as an authoritarian rule, the true heir of the Franco regime. This is something that could be glimpsed before through many instances, such as labour law reforms, bank bail-outs, cuts on health and education, mass evictions of out-of-work families…many of which were implemented by the Catalan government itself.
CNT Catalonia and the Balearic greet this spirit of disobedience against a dictatorial state, a discriminatory and fascist state, and want to assert our strongest denunciation of repression against workers and of those who carry it out.
The men and women in CNT will stand as one to defend their neighbours and townsfolks, as couldn´t be otherwise with an anarcho-syndicalist, and henceforth revolutionary, organisation.”

You can also view the original statement published here in Catalan, Spanish and English.

Update 29/09/2017: we now have confirmation the regional CNT of Catalonia and Balearic Islands has voted to join the call out for a general strike on Wednesday 3rd October. The other big radical union in the Iberian peninsula – the CGT – has also called out for a general strike, and various smaller alternative unions have joined. 
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The Banks & other agents of Social Change

Toxic Meltdown Still Has Knock-on Effects on Banks

CRITICISM of the Obama administration still continues, owing to its failure to prosecute Wall Street executives over their responsibility for the bundling and structuring of dodgy mortgages on American homes into sold to investors around the world, which became a highly profitable business for the Wall Street banks as well as European banks before the catastrophic 2008 meltdown.  This represents the latest hangover of the sub-prime property market meltdown.

At the year end, some European banks did deals with prosecutors over historic claims that they pushed toxic mortgage securities in the years in run up to the financial crisis.  Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse will pay-out nearly $13 billion combined to settle with the United States Justice Department.

These banks have now settled and may, according to the New York Times, have benefited from paying billions less than was once anticipated.   The $7.2 billion settlement with Deutsche Bank produced relief among investors who had been upset when it became clear in September that prosecutors were after a penalty of something like $14 billion. 

Deutsche Bank shares, on the news of the settlement, rose by 5% in Frankfurt, before settling up 0.8%.

The UK bank, Barclays, was a smaller operator in the mortgage backed securities market, and it seems to be prepared to wait and take a chance on waiting to see how things work out once Donald Trump takes over as President.  Barclay's shares fell in London trading last week as investors assessed the risk of forthcoming legal action.   Barclay has said it will 'vigorously defend' itself against a complaint brought by the Justice Department after recent settlement talks collapsed.

Holding banks accountable for the sub-prime meltdown is still being debated in political discussions, books and films like 'The Big Short' which came out last year. 

The Banks, mostly American, have already paid out over $100 billion in settlements with the US government.  But though the banks have written cheques but the Obama administration has been criticised for not prosecuting Wall Street executives. 

Last May, a federal appeals court over-turned a $1.27 billion penalty against Bank of America over the sale of  bad mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The appeals panel found that prosecutors 'didn't provide enough evidence that        either the bank's Countrywide unit or a former Countrywide executive had committed fraud in a loan program known as “the hustle”.'

The Deutsche Bank settlement lifts the shadow hanging over the bank.  Since taking over in mid-2015, John Cryan, Deutsche Bank's chief executive, has been trying to break with the bank's legacy of the legal woes. 

Banks, Values, & Corruption

In 1961, Philip Holgate wrote in Freedom, which was then the main British Anarchist journal, an essay entitled 'CAPITALISM – The Image of the Truth' in which he noted:  :

'In sentencing executives of two electrical engineering companies, and twenty-one companies themselves, to fines of nearly two million dollars, and terms of imprisonment, an American Federal judge accused them of having “mocked the image” of the nation's free enterprise system by their offences against the Anti-Trust Laws.'

James Pinkerton, a northern anarcho-syndicalist member of the Syndicalist Worker's Federation (SWF)* and its international secretary, used to say that by saying a society was 'corrupt' one hasn't even begun to describe a society, because all societies are corrupt in so far as their members in the nature of things would breach the salient values of that society.  Thus it ought not to surprise us that the bankers in the USA and Europe in 2008,.would shun banking ethics to stoop to either create dodgy sub-prime packages; manipulate benchmark interest rates; or launder Russian money, and that in the same way the electrical engineering companies in 1961 would 'mock' the values of free enterprise by price-fixing to place high tenders to diddle the government's Tennessee Valley Authority.

Mr. Holgate in his 1961 Freedom article, argues that the electrical engineers are simply perpetuating a capitalistic myth of free enterprise which they and other capitalists don't really believe in.  Mr. Pinkerton the anarcho-syndicalist, would I suspect suggest that despite their beliefs in the values of capitalism, the real life capitalists are only human and would breach their own values for practical advantages.

Big or small:  Social Change & the Economy

In an article entitled 'Unfree Enterprise' in Freedom in January 1962, the paper's then 'Italian' anarchist editor, Vernon Richards, wrote:

'We are always pointing out that the capitalist economy is monopolistic, and that all this talk about free enterprise, and the stimulus of competition is just a lot of talk with no basis in fact.'

Mr. Richards then ponders:

'.... from the point of view of those who seek to completely reverse the values of society so far as production and distribution are concerned – does the growth of monopoly make change more difficult or easier?   Are the chances of change greater in a nation of small shop-keepers, small farmers, small industrialists, small businessmen than in one of huge combines in which agriculture has been industrialised, industry virtually internationalised and distribution centralised?'

Vernon Richards' claims 'that the growth of huge impersonal corporations tends to unite the ordinary people in a way which “individualist capitalism” did not'. 

It's strange that Mr. Richards in another essay in the 1960s when comparing the Spanish workers with that of the American, should say that the average U.S. worker usually 'hasn't two radical ideas to rub together'.    Another Italian, Ignazio Silone wrote in his book 'School for Dictators' that perhaps the lack of dynamism of the industrial workers 'is a consequence of the of the growth of big industry.'  Developing this argument Silone argues persuasively:

'Moving from the artisan's shop and the small plant to the great factory, the worker in time undergoes a considerable transformation.  His [sic] mental horizon is broadened and his class consciousness increased, but at the same time he loses his taste for freedom and his readiness for individual action.  The worker in the great factory is apt to be bolder and stronger in mass actions, whether peaceful or violent, whereas he he is generally unable to act alone or in a small group.'

It's worth noting that in the May 1979 General election about a third of British trade unionists voted Conservative.  It was after this election that the communist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, wrote his critique of the traditional labour movement entitled 'The Forward March of Labour Halted', in which he argued that by itself trade union militancy could not automatically create class-consciousness or organise a radical socialist advance. 

Trade Union Bosses &amp the Decline of Industry

In September 1982, the sociologist Tony Lane in a controversial and important article in Marxism Today entitled 'The Unions:  caught on the Ebb Tide' wrote criticizing the 'sectional interests' of the trade unions and their 'a lack of will to fight' causing a 'crisis of legitimacy', further explaining that this had caused a schism between the trade union leaders (including shop stewards) and the rank-and-file members feeling that there was little democracy in the movement.  In his critique Tony Lane wrote censuring the trade union bureaucracy for failing to deal with the significant changes to the manufacturing industry in the UK and decline in large-scale urban factories where traditionally the organised trade union membership was based, and he predicted, almost two years before the Miner's strike, that unless there was clear leadership on how to tackle these problems with more interactive democracy at the workplace, the rank-and-file membership would face 'uncertainty as to whether the unions are worth fighting for'. 

For Tony Lane in his Ebb Tide essay, it was not so much the Thatcher's anti-trade union legislation or the 'resurgent laissez-faire Toryism', but the longer-term economic shifts that were having an impact in undermining the influence of the labour movement.  In the mid-1970s, Tony Lane, then at the University of Liverpool, had been invited by Derek Pattison, now the current President of Tameside TUC, to address a body of northern anarchists and in the North West Worker's Alliance (NWWA) and some members of the Syndicalist Worker's Federation (SWF)**, about the theme of his book  'The Union Makes Us Strong' at a pub on Union Street in Oldham, and Bob Holton had just written his book  'British Syndicalism 1900 to 1914:  Myths & Realities' in 1976.

But Tony Lane by 1982 had identified the dilemma in the British labour movement in so far as it lacked a strategy which proved fatal during the Miner's strike of 1984-85.  It lack a strategy because on the shopfloor the workers during the periodic boom years from the late 1960s until the early 1970s had been able to depend on day-to-day tactics in dealing with their managements: if the worker's loss a fight with their boss one day they could always look forward to fighting another day under more favourable circumstances.  This bumping along approach led to laziness with regard to a strategy for solidarity with other workers.  In the 1980s when the rainy days came and didn't go away they were ill-fitted to take the employers and the state as Tony lane had predicted. 

Curiously in the mid-1970s the northern anarchists in the North West Worker's Alliance around Manchester, were anxious to break with what some saw as the 'sectarian syndicalist' approach of the English anarchists who had failed to impact upon the British labour movement during the period of change from the Roberts Arundel dispute in Stockport in 1967 onwards, the anarchists who had been active on the ban the bomb demos failed to bring anything to the picket lines as was shown by their lack of involvement of either the anarchists or syndicalists in the Pilkington's glass-worker's strike of 1970.

In 1976, Bob Holton had written his book on 'British Syndicalism – 1900 to 1914: Myths & Realities' at a time when shop-floor syndicalism showed some promise .  But Tony Lane by 1982 had identified the real dilemma in the British labour movement in so far as it lacked a strategy which proved fatal during the Miner's strike of 1984-85.  It lack a strategy because on the shopfloor the workers during the periodic boom years from the late 1960s until the early 1970s had been able to depend tactics in dealing with their managements: if the workers loss a fight with their boss one day they could always look forward to fighting another day under more favourable circumstances.  This bumping along approach led to laziness with regard to a strategy for solidarity with other workers.  In the 1980s when the rainy days came and didn't go away they were ill-fitted to take the employers and the state as Tony lane had predicted.

Curiously in the mid-1970s the northern anarchists in the North West Worker's Alliance around Manchester, were anxious to break with what some saw as the 'sectarian' approach of the English anarchists who had failed to impact upon the British labour movement during the period of change.  Despite valiant attempts this group failed to mobilise the dormant core of anarchists in the Syndicalist Worker's Federation (SWF) in Manchester who failed to interact with the struggles of working people in the region.  As Tony Lane has shown in 1982, the British labour movement continues to lack a strategy but tiny groups like the SWF, the Solidarity Federation and the anarchists often show no signs of having any grasp of tactics either.

*    The Syndicalist Worker's Federation was founded in 1954, when it emerged as an anarcho-syndicalist organization from the then Anarchist Federation of Great Britain.  In 1994, it adopted its current name the Solidarity Federation, having previously been the Direct Action Movement since 1979.

**  The rather London-centric Albert Meltzer, in his autobiography 'I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels' wrote: 'The SWF, anarcho-syndicalist but choked by weeds of the neo-leftism surrounding it, disappeared as an organised body soon after Tom Brown's death (Brown was seen as the main London theorist of the SWF), apart from the  Manchester stalwarts.'

This shows Mr. Meltzer's parochial attitude in so far as the genuine anarcho-syndicalist activists in the North at the time were outside of Manchester in traditional industrial and mill towns like Oldham, Ashton-under-Lyne, Middleton, Rochdale, Bury, Burnley.and Bolton.   In 1971, there had been the Arrow Mill strike at Courtaulds in Castleton, Rochdale, involving mostly Asian workers.  During that dispute which included a sit-in strike, an anarcho-syndicalist 'work's counsellor' had been arrested.  After this dispute and the trial that followed, the local publication Rochdale's Alternative Paper (RAP) was founded, and textile trade unionists and syndicalists in the National Union of Textile & Allied Worker's Union (NUTAWU) in the towns to the north of Manchester began a campaign for shop-stewards in textiles.  This campaign was resisted by union bosses like Joe King at the NUTAWU headquarters in Accrington, and Albert Hilton, Arnold Belfield at the local office in Rochdalre and the local official in Oldham.