Farewell, Brian

I first met Brian over fifty years ago, when we were launching Rochdale’s Alternative Paper (RAP); our friendship was cemented then and thrived until his sad demise last Friday.

Our first encounter was over a story I wrote, in which he displayed a number of characteristics that were, for me, to help define his life. Always a staunch trade unionist, for him the rights of his fellow beings trumped any formal structures. So, the story - in brief - was of a number of Asian workers who were being abused, discriminated against and under-paid on the night shift of Arrow Mill, one of Rochdale’s last functioning textile mills. Neither management nor textile trade union cared a hoot - the latter was happy to turn a blind eye. Brian’s instinctive decency and concern for his fellow worker came to the fore, and he was able to organise the shift, from the outside and provide support that saw many of their grievances addressed.

Brian’s pro-worker, anti-union bureaucrat stance was often to get him into trouble. Others will know more of his more recent struggles on behalf of the anti-black-listing campaigns.

The gratitude of many of those he supported at Arrow Mill remained until Brian’s dying days, as some, who had long departed Rochdale remained in touch. The fact “the lads” were recent Pakistani immigrants was of no concern to Brian. His support was driven by his discomfort at the injustice they experienced. That “colour blindness” later got him denounced as a racist, when he was vocal in condemning textile sweatshop labour in the town, because it was perceived, by the hyper-sensitive, to be anti immigrant, rather than pro workers rights and working conditions that had been fought for over the previous century and a half.

Brian played a significant role in helping uncover RAP’s biggest story, and later national scandal - the exposure of Cyril Smith as a child abuser. Brian knew some of the victims and helped RAP trace them, in the 1970s, and later assisted distinguished national journalist and son of Rochdale, Paul Waugh, with his revelations thirty five years later. He had no truck with the trashy “drama-documentary” on the subject published by local disgraced MP, Simon Danczuk and his side kick eight years or so, ago.

Brian assisted RAP in much of the unglamorous stuff too - the collation, folding and the distribution. It was early mornings and late nights, with zero recognition or reward, except for feeling that you were attempting to get messages of injustice publicised and showing solidarity with the under-dog. Brian was no glory hunter, although his struggles often gained attention, he never sought it.

Often intense and serious, Brian was not without a mischievous sense of humour, as many who recall his hearty cackle will testify. On one occasion in the 70s we persuaded him to stand as a candidate in the Rochdale municipal elections, to represent Rochdale’s Alternative Party (RAP). He stood in the town’s most affluent ward, which just so happened to be called Bamford (“Bamford for Bamford” had a certain campaigning appeal!). Among his pledges was to have a Travellers’ Site erected on Norford Way (the poshest road in town, which at the time housed a member of pop group 10cc and a Lancashire and England cricketer, as well as the area’s wealthier professionals and business owners. To nobody’s surprise and Brian’s great relief, he was spectacularly unsuccessful!

On a more serious note was Brian’s great love of Spain, brought about initially by periods working as an electrician in Gibraltar. At some considerable personal risk, he was involved in supplying anti-fascist resisters in Franco’s Spain with literature and materials he was able to smuggle over the border. He had little truck with other more celebrated anarchists who publicised their actions and put others at risk, as a consequence.

His periods in Spain engendered in him a love of the country, its literature and cuisine, and he was a dab hand at putting together a tasty Spanish culinary delight or two.

Brian has always been a polemicist and publisher - not only through RAP, but with any number of leftist/anarchist publications. The original, paper copy of Northern Voices and this blog being the latest manifestation. It is hard work, particularly trailing round newsagents and bookshops, often by public transport to deliver copies and pick up returns and payments. It’s the nature of small publications that they rarely get pride of place in shop displays, and sales can be hit and miss and often disappointing. Brian would not be put off - he always soldiered on, without complaint.

I left Rochdale 40 years ago, but we maintained our friendship. He was a frequent visitor, and always stayed when he was down for conferences and the annual Anarchist Bookfair. There was always a campaign to be fought, and important discussion to be had, by his ever inquisitive mind.

He was a frequent phone caller, to discuss current affairs, or just plain gossip. For a while the calls always lasted 59 minutes and 30 seconds- the maximum free call time allowed by his service provider. His timing was immaculate!

In recent years we came to share a delight of holidays in Norfolk (although never together); Brian with Pat, his partner over 30 years and wife for the last two months of his life, and me, my wife and two dogs (I am writing from there now). We took great delight in our respective times in this glorious county: we in our rented cottage. And Brian, until his 80s, never one for ceremony or appearance, with Pat in youth hostels. 

And how fitting, because Brian was Forever Young (yes the works and songs of Bob Dylan were frequent topics of discussion.

Farewell, Brian.

I’ll miss you, comrade.

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

“The Red Flag of Anarchy” by Andrew Lee

A Book Review by Christopher Draper

DO you remember those wooden rulers on sale at Woolworths with the names and dates of all the British Kings and Queens on the back?  That was the kind of history I learnt at school.  Regrettably, a lot of alternative history isn’t much better with a similar emphasis on London-based leaders.  I’ve always preferred to read about radical lives and politics away from the metropolitan bubble and Andrew Lee’s new history of Sheffield’s pioneering socialists and anarchists is a perfect paradigm of “people’s history”.

ANDREW Lee’s book embodies the ideals it chronicles with a beautiful cover designed by libertarian socialist Walter Crane.  The text is printed on decent quality paper and it’s lavishly illustrated with numerous portraits and political posters.  Computer screens might usefully churn out dry facts but Andrew Lee appreciates that wisdom is more surely gained through a slow, aesthetically pleasing book-read and there is a lot to mull over in “The Red Flag of Anarchy”.

Focussed on the Sheffield scene from 1874 to 1900 the author depicts a rich political culture created by predominantly working class activists of every flavour.  He doesn’t push any political line but the book is suffused throughout its 178 pages with an inspiringly libertarian spirit.  Lee’s achievement is to conjure up a vivid picture of a welcoming, inclusive yet militant socialist milieu.  Activists who for an all too brief moment managed to create the germ of a new society within the shell of the old. An alternative society that created communist colonies, embraced gay lifestyles, published a regular anarchist newspaper, operated a “Commonwealth Café”, organised picnics and ran raffles with books by Bellamy and Thoreau as prizes or alternately “A Handsomely Framed Portrait of Ravachol”!

“The Red Flag of Anarchy” is invaluable not just for its contents but as an inspiration and model for socialists all around Britain to get your shovel out and start digging down into your own local libertarian past.  I know from my own researches that there’s always been far more going on out of London than our erstwhile chroniclers would have us believe.

I have just two criticisms which I hope Andrew might address in future editions.  The first is the absence of an index.  This isn’t so much of a handicap as it would be in a text-only volume as the extensive contents list and numerous illustrations facilitate navigation but digitisation makes compiling an index simple and speedy.  Secondly I would like some analysis of why Sheffield’s socialist oasis became barren.  At the end of the book Lee observes, “It was the end of an era, everything was going to change…Parliamentary politics was to become the order of the day” but it wasn’t inevitable, what exactly occurred in Sheffield? My own research, for example, shows that in Leicester all manner of socialists cooperated for years until the foundation of the ILP in 1893.  Thereafter Leicester ILP refused to have any truck with local anarchists whose direct-action was thought detrimental to attracting votes. ILP sectarianism thus transformed Leicester’s lively socialism into bureaucratic electoralism. Were the same forces at work in Sheffield?

If we are ever to regain the radicalism and comradeship of early socialism it’s crucial that we identify what went wrong last time.  Andrew Lee reminds us of an era when Labour Clubs were far more than dreary drinking dens.  Available from Amazon for £10.00, in my opinion “The Red Flag of Anarchism” is the most valuable and entertaining study of grass-roots, pioneering Anarchy in the UK since John Quail’s classic “Slow Burning Fuse”.

Ersatz Anarchists and Fake 'FREEDOM'

by Chris Draper

THERE’s a lot of fake “Anarchy” about these days.  Authoritarians wrapped in the black flag proclaim the pseudo-science of Marx whilst practicing the politics of Trotsky and Lenin.  Their “class-struggle” rhetoric replaces the rejection of authority that properly defines Anarchism.

Kapital' Idea Vicar!

THE rot first set-in at 'Freedom', the movement’s erstwhile newspaper, with the bizarre appointment of a Marxist editor who found Jesus and was reborn as a Vicar.  

Closing the paper down in 2014 with the triumphant declaration, 'Kropotkin Might Have Started it but We Fucking Finished It!'  the ersatz 'anarchists' refused to vacate the building and now run the premises as rentiers issuing occasional press statements like their 6 March 2018 celebration of the violent suppression of free-speech. 

 

'Freedom’s' response to my reasoned critique betrays an utter absence of anarchist values.  In place of a thoughtful, cogent, closely-argued libertarian response all Northern Voices received from 'Zofia Brom' of 'Freedom' was a random string of abusive invective;

• ‘I couldn’t care less what you think’…
• ‘can not (sic) be arsed to read Northern Voices’
• ‘nobody cares what your shitty blog has to say’………etc.

Essential Anarchism

Regrettably this behaviour is all too common. Free-speech, truth and reason are essential ingredients of anarchism.  Other varieties of socialism accept 'means-to-an-end' politics; Marxism-Leninism-Trotskyism demands party-discipline, subservience and uniformity whilst Labourism eschews principles in pursuit of popularity. 

For Anarchism 'the personal is political', to build an anarchist society you need citizens with a libertarian psychology. Communists might imagine they can smash capitalism and mechanically rearrange the pieces to re-engineer citizens in a chillingly instrumental fashion but anarchism’s bottom-up approach demands patience and humanity. 

Old-school anarchists Colin Ward and Gustav Landauer remind us:  

 'The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.'

Ignoring, insulting, censoring, no-platforming and even physically assaulting critics reinforces the sort of authoritarian relationships anarchists oppose and ultimately strengthens the state.  Rather than expound on the sociopathy of ersatz anarchists I prefer to articulate a positive alternative. 

To offer a practical guide to 'everyday anarchy in action', originally compiled by A K Brown and, incidentally, published in 'Freedom' in the years before the authoritarians took over.  Of course, there’s more to Anarchism than just these eight bullet points but if you’re uncomfortable adopting them you’d probably be more comfy under the duvet with the Commissars.

 

Everyday Anarchy

1.  Say what you honestly think, not what some theory says you ought to think.  If the evidence of your eyes contradicts your theory (and I include anarchist theory under this), ditch the theory, don’t go blind.

2.  Don’t join organisations whose ideals you don’t share simply because they are bigger than you. Campaign openly and honestly whenever you can and if you can’t form your own organisations and have to join someone else’s (eg a union at work), don’t try to take it over unless the majority agree with you and you want to help. Argue for your ideas instead.

3.  Never ask for something you don’t really want in order to take 'workers' through the experience. Campaign for things which are worth winning (and preferably which may be won soon).

4.  If you are in an organisation, don’t be scared to disagree with each other in public and to accept varieties of opinions. You don’t have to split every time you disagree over what’s happening in Nicaragua.

5.  Respect the rights of minorities. Listen to what others have to say and try to avoid imposing the majority will on them until there’s no alternative.

6.  Participate in campaigns and actions when you want to, not when others make you feel guilty. This will lower your political activity in the short term but enable you to be active for much longer and be more effective (you will sound like you mean what you say not like you would rather be at home).

7.   Accept that no one organisation has a monopoly of the truth. Just because other people belong to other organisations doesn’t make everything they say wrong.

8.   Trust people who are putting forward sensible ideas now (they are the only leaders we need). Never trust anyone calling themselves a leader and thus assuming the right to have all their ideas treated as if they were all good ones.

Christopher Draper (March 2018)

******

ANARCHY CAME TO MANCHESTER

 by Steve Watson (Eastern Correspondent)*
 

EACH generation carries those special dates with them as they age. Dancing in the street on VE day, Manchester Woolworths grand opening and a fairly obscure date of a concert held on 4th June 1976 with hardly anyone in the audience.

Anarchy came to Manchester, the Lesser Free Trade Hall to be precise, and apart from the Sex Pistols entertaining a sparse crowd the date has also gone down in legend because if you tot up all the people who claim to have been present on the night the floor would have collapsed under the weight. In fairness the follow up gig, same band same venue six weeks later on (20th July) was quite popular with more paying public, more spitting and bottles being lobbed at the band as a show of affection so its quite possible that many of those claiming to have been at the first gig were confusing the two or just making things up for affect.

One person who was most certainly at the first gig was one Mark E Smith who along with a smattering of others that were genuinely there went on to pick up cheap instruments from Johnny Roadhouse or Mazel Radio and by a combination of luck and hard work ended up in famous or almost famous bands.

Mark E Smith was a quintessential northerner in every sense of the word and apart from what amounts to an extended holiday in Edinburgh whilst he attempted to sort his head out he lived in Prestwich for all but the first six months of his life. While his contemporaries ‘bought’ out of the North or moved to Alderley Edge, Smith stayed put and as an adult trod the same streets that he played in decades earlier.

Leaving school at 16, following a stint in a meat processing factory Smith graduated to the Docks, then a hive of industry and employment now a mix of gentrification behind security fencing, plush shopping with the odd surviving bit of the past including kids throwing stones at cars. Whether Smith had read it or not isn’t known but he quit the docks to form The Fall from the Albert Camus novel, and then set about redefining the terms ‘abrasive, curmudgeon, irritating, shambolic and literary genius’ to name but a few!

Mark E Smith died on 24th January this year. For an admittedly limited number of people it was one of those shock moments filtering through on BBC News late at night. Not his actual demise as he’d looked closed to the grave exponentially over his final years more for the fact that this anti hero, argumentative Rottweiler with a unique wit was no longer able to reignite that spirit of the late 1970s with his drunken outbursts and spectacular stage presence. Described as ‘a strange kind of ant-matter national treasure’ Smith’s slurred lyrics were rarely printed on The Fall’s many albums, and even though their output followed the standard pop pattern of having maybe two or three catchy dance tunes on each offering then eight so so’s to fill up space you were drawn in just wondering what the hell he was on about and eventually obscure tracks became favourites.

A Fall gig became over 40 years something of an event to witness not for the music, but his on stage presence, would he turn up, would there be an on stage fight or would he wander off and perform vocals from the dressing room? It really was a lucky dip helped by a constantly changing line up (over 60 Fall members came and went over the years with the longest, bassist Steve Hanley quitting after putting up with Smith for nineteen years following a real fisticuffs scrum on stage in New York in 1998!

He hated London and seemingly most other places apart from North Manchester so he lived in Prestwich, shopped in Prestwich with the odd foray into Whitefield, and would insist that journalists from the music industry meet him in either his local The Woodthorpe Hotel or somewhere in the urban oasis of Manchester. Often drinking the journalist under the table at their expense! A not infrequent shopper in Whitefield’s very own Willy Wonka cake shop Slattery’s he was one of an elite group of musicians to purchase iced buns on Bury Old Road, a list that included Nico from the Velvet Underground and John Cooper Clarke, who likewise lived in Prestwich before sodding off to Colchester, various members of Elbow and more!

Described as a ‘a kind of northern English magic realism that mixed industrial grime with the unearthly uncanny’, which sounds pretty heavy going and probably the better tribute came from Smiths ex wife, but one who put it much simpler on hearing of his death and said he was ‘defiantly Northern England’.

A drinker of Olympic standards as the band’s finances ebbed, and flowed his main problem as far as alcohol went was that he couldn’t afford it, but with a long list of hacks prepared to foot the bill as the band floundered Smith’s presence in print gave him the chance to keep things ticking over until he reinvented himself with another set of musicians ‘falling’ into the line up and reinvigorating The Fall brand! The last eight years of The Fall were a renaissance with sell out gigs, and a mix of all ages watching the spectacle, and proving the point that while Smith was the key the musicians deserved as much praise for their tight playing if not putting up with him!

Last appearing on stage in November confined to a wheelchair and looking as grim as he had for the past few years the only positive was that his days of kicking the drum kit over and twiddling with the amps had passed. His funeral was held last week at Blackley Crem or Crematorium as outsiders call it followed by a final knees up at The Woodthorpe near Heaton Park where if The Daily Mirror is to be believed bottles were thrown and beer generally thrown about at random. Other less reputable sources simply say it was fitting for Mark E Smith and all he embodied!

*  Watson is very much a hypocrite and sodded off from Manchester in 1991 first to Bedford and then Norwich.  He returns several times yearly to visit various Watsons around North Manchester and Oldham.  The Beatles played the Co-op Hall in Middleton, April 1963.  His 88 year old Auntie swears she was there!)

'anarchy in a Cold War'!

We publish the blurb about the book below without comment, not having read it.

Perhaps if any of our readers have read it, they would comment on it?  (Editors)

This book by Kurtis Sunday might be of interest:

Book description:

Anarchy in a Cold War is a novel by Kurtis Sunday set in the West Berlin alternative-squatter-Punk scene during the latter part of the Cold War. The city, a focal point in the conflict between East and West, was a capitalist enclave smack in the middle of Communist East Germany. It was entirely surrounded by the Berlin Wall, complete with razor wire and machine gun posts. There is much that is familiar and much that is not. The Cold War is raging and the missiles are armed and waiting in their silos. If nuclear war breaks out there will be a four minute warning. There is no internet and perhaps NO FUTURE. Reality? Sur-reality? Or hyper-reality?

There is a also a free (Creative Commons) the ebook version (PDF, epub and mobi) of Anarchy in a Cold War now available at

Unglue.it:

https://unglue.it/work/191661

and/or

the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/AnarchyInAColdWarKurtisSunday

Grüße,
K

The Radical North & Melvyn Bragg

TODAY, Melvyn Bragg explores the radical movements that sprang from the North - Chartism, the campaign for women's votes, anti-slavery protests, the birth of the Labour Party.  The programme begins outside Manchester's Midland Hotel where Mr Rolls met Mr Royce.  It's also near the site of the Peterloo Massacre - one of the defining moments in British social history.  People had gathered here in their thousands from the city and surrounding towns and villages - protesting for parliamentary reform. fifteen were slain and hundreds wounded by charging cavalry troops.  Melvyn visits what one contributor Dr Robert Poole describes as Democracy Wall - it runs alongside of the nearby Quaker Meeting House - many people were crushed against it at the time of the Massacre. The wall is the only structure left from the period.  The massacre inspired the poet Shelley to write the Masque of Anarchy, part of which is read for us by the actor Maxine Peake.
Melvyn goes on to describe the rich history of dissent nurtured in the north - the women's suffrage movement, the campaign to abolish slavery, chartism, and the founding of the Independent Labour Party.
Why the north?
Was it Methodism, the size of the population, the isolated landscapes, the topography of the cities or even the weather?

'Anarchy' = Absence of government in Spain?

THE word 'anarchy' in its dictionary definition is often defined as 'an absence of government'.  Though pedantic thinkers, including anarchists, will often rely on narrow dictionary definitions of the meaning of words, modern philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein have discredited this approach to the pursuit of meaning.  Those of us come from a Wittgensteinian or ethnomethodological tradition consider the meaning of a word to be in its use.
Ironically the reality of the present situation in Spain is that for the first time since January 1492, when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon – the Catholic monarchs – occupied Granada completing their conquest of Moorish Spain, Spain has always had a government.  Even at the time of the Spanish Civil War in 1936-37 when the Spanish anarchists were at their strongest, their was a government in Spain (actual there were two if we count the Nationalist one and even the anarchists ultimately accepted the invite to join the governments in Madrid and Barcelona).
And yet, since December 20^th, last year., when the elections failed to give any party a necessary majority to form a government and attempts to form a coalition failed, Spain has had no effective government.   Under the Spanish system a Spaniard votes for 'diputados' (MPs) who elect the prime minister.  Then with a parliamentary majority, the winning party proclaims its leader, but without a majority, the parties need to negotiate.  This means a voter may end up supporting positions he/ or she would not normally support.  Today voting for the Socialist Party may mean a leftist coalition if the Socialists join with the Podemos Party, or a vote for the centre-right may involve voting for the conservative Popular Party (PP) and then get an alliance of the PP and the Ciudadnos Party.  It offers a blank cheque to the parliamentary parties, but even then the Spanish parties have not been able to get any agreement.  
Because of this failure to get agreement a second election had to be called on June 26^th, which ended in a very similar result to the one last December.  For more than 250 days Spain has been unable to elect a government. 
As things stand a 'caretaker' government is in place: the Partido Popular.  But it can't appoint new ministers, and from its original 13-member cabinet, only 10 are left.  The caretaker government has no authority to approve next year's budget, a basic tool of government and which should be in place by October; as you read this experts in constitutional law are pouring over the legal texts to search for a line that suggests authority in the current situation.  It has been nine months since the government enacted any laws:  its members are too busy campaigning and negotiating. 
Martin Caparrós, a journalist on the New York Times writes:
'These days, the “meanwhile” government manages everyday matters, and not very well.  In a situation that lacks legal status, no one wants to be in charge of important decisions, affairs are delayed and decisions never made...'
The life of ordinary people continues much as always, and Seňor Caparrós continues:
'In everyday life, a country without a government looks dangerously similar to one with one. ...  There are those who wonder if governments are so necessary and seem uninterested in any attempt to form one.'
This week, Mariano Rajoy of the PP will try to be reinstated as qa fully functioning prime minister.  But his option are limited.  If he fails, his party will probably call for new elections to be held on the 25^th, December.  If so that should give a boost to any latent anarchism in Spain, because Seňor Ranjoy and his party will be hoping the by calling an election during Navidad will benefit the right with a low turnout, but it will merely deliver a death blow to any vain expectations in elections whatever the outcome.  Especially since the Spaniards have a long history of distrust of governments.

The Secret Agent in the City

IN the light of the recent showing of the The Secret Agent on BBC, I note that the anarchist Colin Ward in his introduction to the Folio edition writes: 

'A series of journeys are evoked as a cast of characters traverse “the whole town of marvels and mud, with its maze of streets and mass of lights”... and the secret agent's walk through shadow and sunlight from Soho to the Embassy, as well as several more sinister or desperate urban voyages which an extraordinary shift in scene and mood for the chronicler of travels under exotic skies.'

Reviewers, when The Secret Agent first appeared in 1907, were surprised and commented on the Dickensian evocation of London, because hitherto the author, Joseph Conrad, had dealt with exotic places and adventurers on the high seas.  Last Saturday, in the FT Janan Ganesh wrote of a London which not only embraces the enlightenment of other European nations but that 'tips over into something else.  It  has a taste for chaos, whose ultimate expression is the physical anarchy of the city itself – the architectural incoherence, the “labyrinthine obliquity” of its layout, as Peter Ackroyd puts it, You can see it from the hill on Greenwich Park: a weird panorama of Christopher Wren and Norman Foster, the Georgians and the Brutalists.  In Conrad's time too, the city was a maze.' 

Anomie or the 'absence of social consensus' in the society of the turn of the 20^th century was a big influence upon writers such as Joseph Conrad and Henry James who in the late 19th century wrote another novel about London anarchists in London called 'The Princess Casamassima'.  The mood music was perhaps best expressed in the poem written in 1919 by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1935):  

       THE SECOND COMING

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre

    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.