Brexit: Gibraltar & UK-Spain deal for open border

SPAIN has reached a deal with the UK to maintain free movement to and from Gibraltar once the UK formally leaves the EU on Friday.

To avoid a hard border, Gibraltar will join the EU's Schengen zone and follow other EU rules, while remaining a British Overseas Territory.

The deal was announced by Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya, just hours before the UK exits the EU.

The Rock voted Remain in 2016 and about 15,000 Spanish workers go there daily.*

"With this [agreement], the fence is removed, Schengen is applied to Gibraltar... it allows for the lifting of controls between Gibraltar and Spain," said Ms González Laya.

The Gibraltar deal will mean the EU sending Frontex border guards to facilitate free movement to and from Gibraltar. Their role is planned to last four years.

Gibraltarians are British citizens. They elect their own representatives to the territory's House of Assembly, while the British monarch appoints a governor.

The territory - home to a British military garrison and naval base - is self-governing in all areas except defence and foreign policy.

Ms González Laya did not say whether Spanish border guards would eventually be posted at Gibraltar's airport and/or seaport which, under the deal, will be de facto part of the EU's external border.

The Gibraltar deal would also mean the territory complying with EU fair competition rules in areas such as financial policy, the environment and the labour market, Ms González Laya said.

Twenty-two EU states are in the passport-free Schengen zone, as are Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, but the UK has never been in it.

Once Gibraltar joins it, EU citizens arriving from Spain or another Schengen country will avoid passport checks, while arrivals from the UK will have to go through passport control, as is already the case.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called Thursday's deal a "political framework" to form the basis of a separate treaty with the EU regarding Gibraltar.

The deal does not address the thorny issue of sovereignty. Spain has long disputed British sovereignty over the Rock which was ceded to Britain in 1713 and which is now home to about 34,000 people. The Remain vote there was an overwhelming 96% in the 2016 EU referendum.

The plan is to have a six-month transition period and then formalise the new arrangements with a treaty.

Under the current tight Covid rules, there are restrictions on UK citizens arriving via Gibraltar's airport, the UK Foreign Office says.

Dominic Raab said "all sides are committed to mitigating the effects of the end of the [Brexit] Transition Period on Gibraltar, and in particular ensure border fluidity, which is clearly in the best interests of the people living on both sides.

"We remain steadfast in our support for Gibraltar, and its sovereignty is safeguarded."

* There has been a history of Spaniards providing labour on the Rock going back to the Treaty of Utrect in 1713. Hence, any Spanish tightening of controls at Gibraltar’s land border would have also hurt about 10,000 workers like Mr. Moya who commute there daily, mostly from nearby towns that form an economically depressed area known as the Campo de Gibraltar.

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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

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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Spanish Civil War talk in Ashton-under-Lyne

LAST NIGHT Dr Mercedes Penalba-Sotorrio of Manchester Metropolitan University gave an exquisite talk on the Spanish Civil War at a crowded event at Ashton-under-Lyne Central Library.   Ashton has been the scene of several such events since the unveiling of a Blue Plaque on behalf of  a local lad, James Keogh, who died in the hills of Aragon in 1938 fighting for the freedom of Spaniards on the 25th, November 2011.

Dr. Mercedes Sotorrio gave a very interesting detailed account of the struggle to defend democracy in Spain of the 1930s.  She described the contribution made by working-class volunteers such as James Keogh, a tailor and the son of a local binman.*   But James Keogh, as she showed in her talk last night was one of a vast number of northern workingmen, who were so inspired that they fought in many battles on the Spanish peninsula, throughout the war.  People went from Ireland and as she pointed out fought for both sides.

She referred particularly to the Battle of the Ebro which occurred between July and November 1938.  Fought on the banks of the Ebro; the longest river in Spain, it became a slaughter house for the republic.  It was a folly described so well by Antony Beevor the military historian in his book 'The BATTLE for SPAIN':

'To continue the battle in such circumstances had no military justification at all, especially when the Republic was so vulnerable there was no hope of achieving the original purpose of the offensive.  But instead of withdrawing with their best troops in good order to fight again, the republican command continued to send more men across the Ebro.  And all this was because Negrin believed that the eyes of Europe were upon them and he could not acknowledge a defeat.  Once again, political and propaganda considerations led to yet another self-inflicted disaster.'

Dr. Sotorrio said:  'Some 35,000 people went to Spain to fight with the volunteers, mostly, but not only,  in the International Brigades and some 10,000 died in the conflicts'.   She agreed during the question time which followed that the Soviet Union, like the Fascist Axis powers, 'had its own agenda'; which sometimes contrasted with that of the Spanish Republic.

There was some criticism during the questions about the non-intervention of the British and French governments in the Spanish Civil War, and Dr. Sotorrio said 'it seemed that some of the British public had more understanding of the likely danger presented by Fascism to Europe'.  There were also queries about the role and relevance of British Gibraltar to the conflict.  In the early stages of the war the British authorities on Gibraltar had tended to assist the supporters of General Franco rather than the legally elected Spanish Republic.  Some Spaniards who supported the Republic, who sought refuge in Gib. were sent back to Spain and imprisoned by Franco's supprters, and a Republican ship that sought British protection was threatened  by the British that if it didn't leave the port of Gibraltar the authorities would illuminate it so that it would by vulnerable to nationalist bombers at night.

Meanwhile, although it wasn't mentioned  last night, in 1937, it is worth mentioning that during the Spanish Civil War, the British Governor of Gibraltar was successful in obtaining permission from Franco to continue the Hunt.^[23] The tradition of the Royal Calpe Hunt continued for more than a century. The last Hunt took place on 4 April 1939.  It could not be resumed the following autumn due to the outbreak of the Second World War.  Although the horses and the pack were maintained in the hope that the Hunt would resume, and the Hunt Committee remained active until 1973, the Second World War brought the end of the Royal Calpe Hunt.^[4][5][7]

After the questions to Dr Mercedes Penalba-Sotorrio, the archivist who organised the event thanked the speaker and expressed his delight at the turn-out having originally worried that perhaps the subject was not sufficiently local. 


*  See more:   www.northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2011/12 › james-keogh-commemoration

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Gibraltar concerned about violence in Catalonia

“I am very concerned to see violence in the streets of our neighbouring nation,” Chief Minister Fabian Picardo told Reuters in an interview at the Conservative Party conference in the northern English city of Manchester.

Gibraltar, a tiny British enclave on Spain’s southern tip, is dubbed “the Rock” because of its famous cliff-faced mountain. Spain claims sovereignty over the territory it ceded to Britain in 1713.

Spain’s Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis last month said Gibraltar was an anachronistic colony that had no place in the modern world.

“The claim by Spain to the land that I call my home is anachronistic and remnant of a bygone era,” Picardo said. “But anyone who visits Gibraltar realizes it is far from anachronistic - it is modern, it is digital, it is thrusting and it is prosperous.”
Residents of the territory voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the EU in last year’s Brexit referendum. Gibraltar wants London to negotiate a “special status” with the EU for it after the British exit.

'Social action or social media' asks Michael Netto

'Social media is no replacement for social action', says 

Michael Netto*, former regional President of Unite on Gibraltar

May 05, 2015

PEOPLE need to stop using social media in order to let off steam and direct their complaints to the unions who can do something to remedy them.

This is the opinion of Michael Netto, who has recently retired from his positions in Gibraltar Unite the Union, and whose efforts in the union movements have been second to none in the community, especially during May Day celebrations.

Netto started getting involved in the unions leafleting households to inform the public leading to his participation in the first real general strike for workers' rights and conditions in 1972.  'Whereas nowadays we have internet, when I was 16 I would go with brother and father handing out leaflets door-to-door about any issue which the union at the time wanted to highlight,' he said.

He stepped up his participation in the unions after finishing his studies at the technical college, where he remember the festivities at this time of the year:  
'The May Days of those years were done in the Regal Cinema where issues of the public and private sector were highlighted through films and documentaries that described the military coups in Chile or the strikes in England.
'However, the conditions of workers, both in Gibraltar and the rest of Europe were not what they were today. Even with the economic crisis now, they aren't as degrading with very little consideration for health and safety or employment rights back then.'

For workers

He recalled a May Day in the 1980s, which he spent picketing the South Depot of the MoD's Department of the Environment where a UK duty manager with a very colonial attitude tried to run over one of the union's shop stewards:  'Everybody was saying that unless that guy wasn't sent back to the UK we wouldn't start work and even though the MoD didn't shift him immediately, he was moved to the North Depot before finally being sent back after a couple of months.'
Netto, who headed the Trade and General Worker's Union (TGWU), constantly fought the GSD's decision to move May Day to the first Monday of the month, as along with its successors, Unite the Union, they felt that what was being celebrated were all the past victories for all our workers.
'We take for granted the 40-hour week, health and safety, maternity and paternity rights which among 1001 things have been achieved through union struggles all over the world," he continued. "Gibraltar has still got many rights that have been lost in many parts of Europe and there are still many things that need to be achieved so we are keen to maintain the May Day tradition.'
When the GSLP (Gib. Socialist Labour Party)/ Liberals came to office in 2011 they not only reinstated May Day but also chose to celebrate Worker's Memorial Day, reinforcing that desire to honour the unions' efforts, and those individuals that have lost their lives at work.
'In line with other European countries, political parties that pursue progressive ideas tend to do events on May 1,' said Netto.  'Unfortunately, there's only one party that has done that and that's the GSLP/Liberals, reflecting a very good relationship between them and Unite.'
He described the current Government having been 'more courageous' than the GSD ever was in pursuing worker issues both in the public and private sectors.

'Guerilla typists'

 Netto said he gets very disappointed with the way that ex-union activists criticise Unite's activities in the street or social media:  'I'm retired now but I intend to contribute in one way or another to the trade union movement rather than take on this bitterness that only aims to bring down the trade union movement.'
While he recognises that the trade unions locally and abroad are different to what they were in yesteryear, he believes that change has come because society itself has shifted.
'We no longer measure the success of the unions by the number of strikes we've had," said Netto. "Moreover, the way we do things has changed and people prefer to go to a lawyer than a union to the extent that sometimes our achievements work against us because people don't feel aggrieved anymore.
'Not only that but while previously workers would discuss their issues in the workplace or with the union, nowadays they become 'guerilla typists'. They explain their issue on social media to make themselves feel good rather than taking further action to find solutions.'

                                                                                      05-05-15 PANORAMAdailyGIBRALTAR
*   Michael Netto was a member of the anarcho-syndicalist Direct Action Movement (DAM), when he was working in England in the early 1980s, and his father, who became Regional Secretary of the then Gibraltar Branch of the British Transport & General Worker Union in the 1980s was a member of the Syndicalist Workers' Federation (SWF) in the 1960s.
gibraltarpanorama.gi/mobile/displayarticle.aspx?smid=15209&aid=118306 

Gibraltar, Treaty of Utrecht & political rhetoric

by Brian Bamford

THE International New York Times today carried a report by Stephen Castle declaring that to the 'formidable list of problems facing Prime Minister Theresa May ... as she negotiates the nation's risky withdrawal from the European Union, add one more:  the future of the rocky out-crop of Gibraltar.'
After the Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, the Spanish Crown ceded the territory of Gibraltar in perpetuity to the British Crown in 1713, under Article X of the Treaty, although there were later attempts to recapture the territory.
On May 18th 1966, the Fernando Castiella the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs in the regime of General Franco, made a formal proposal to the British Government requesting the cancellation of the Treaty of Utrecht and the subsequent return of Gibraltar to Spain. 
In response the UK Government held Gibraltar's first sovereignty referendum on September 10th, 1967; the result was: 

For British sovereignty

12,138 votes:  representing

99.64% of the votes cast.

In favour of  Spanish sovereignty

44 votes: representing

0.36% of the votes cast.

As a consequence of this referendum a new constitution for Gibraltar was passed in 1969.  Which has been adopted as Gibraltar's National Day, and has been celebrated annually on September 10th since 1992 to commemorate Gibraltar's first sovereignty referendum of 1967.
In 1969, the General Franco's regime closed the border between Spain and Gibraltar, cutting off all contacts and severely restricting movement.  The border was not fully reopened until February 1985, ten years after Franco's death.
The Gibraltar Chronicle today reported on what Spain’s Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis is saying:
“The Spanish government is a little surprised by the tone of comments coming out of Britain, a country known for its composure,” Sr Dastis said.
“I think some people in the UK are losing their temper but there’s no need for that.”
Meanwhile, speaking to Reuters this morning, Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo was critical of European Council president Donald Tusk for allowing Gibraltar’s inclusion in the EU draft guidelines.
“Mr Tusk, who has been given to using the analogies of the divorce and divorce petition, is behaving like a cuckolded husband who is taking it out on the children,” Mr Picardo said.
“We are not going to be a chip and we are not going to be a victim of Brexit as we are not the culprits of Brexit: we voted to stay in the European Union so taking it out on us is to allow Spain to behave in the manner of the bully.”
At the same time reports from London in the Spanish daily newspaper El Pais, cover the utterances of the former Tory leader Michael Howard suggesting that Theresa May would be willing to go to war to protect the rights of Gibraltarians.

Gibraltar left in 'legal limbo' by Brexit!

by Brian Bamford

IT now seems that Spain has was given an effective veto over the Brexit deal last Friday, when the EU Council's draft negotiating guidelines said Madrid could exclude Gibraltar.

It has been claimed Spain took this advantage when Theresa May failed to specifically mention Gibraltar in her Article 50 letter on Wednesday - prompting claims of a rift with the peninsula's government.

In the Spanish newspaper of record, El Pais yesterday, the journalist Lucia Abellan in an article entitled 'Spain could veto the application of a pact over Gibraltar between the EU and London' wrote:
'This situation leaves the British colony in a legal limbo that is able to force a negotiation between Madrid, and London.'   

There have been continual tensions in the relations between Spain and Gibraltar since the days of General Franco in the 1960s, when I first worked in Gibraltar.  I was living in Gibraltar at the time of the 'British We Are, British We Stay' referendum in 1967, shortly after which General Franco closed the frontier with La Linea completely.

Before that over 10,000 Spanish workers had been crossing that frontier from the Spanish towns of La Linea, San Roque and Algeciras to work in the dockyards and at the airport for the MOD  each day.  Today, similar numbers of Spaniards still work in Gibraltar despite the decline of the MOD as an employer.  If Spain closed the frontier restricting this movement of labour then Gibraltar would have difficulties replacing the Spanish labour.  It wouldn't be so easy to bring in labour from Africa as happened when the frontier was closed in the late 1960s under Franco.

Pale-faced Reply by Irrelevant Old Man!

Dear Adam Lawrence-Barr,

NICE to hear from you.  I only became aware of you after someone drew my attention to your spat with Nick Heath over your interview with the Catholic Worker.  I think he accused you of returning to the 'Big Tent' approach to anarchism, and you humbly said that Freedom had no intention of returning to the 'Big Tent' approach.  I don't know what the alternative is perhaps it amounts to proclaiming what Orwell called the 'smelly little orthodoxy' of left wing politics.  Whatever is the case, Northern Voices would be more than happy to publish your ideas on the NV Blog.

 You mention a few groups or tenants of Freedom that are doing 'work', implying that by offering rooms or collecting rents and standing in their shadows Freedom is somehow made more significant by its proximity to these bodies.  It's a curious argument to pursue, especially when at the last meeting of the Friends of Freedom you revealed that the inmates at Freedom had managed to 'squander' a large sum of money left to Freedom by a benefactor some 7-years ago.  You did say 'squander' didn't you?  And did you go on to absolve yourself by saying:  'It was before my time'?  Also, is it true that a member of the Friends has been financing the Collective out of their own pocket? 

None of these misdemeanours seems to inhibit you from taking that moral high ground in your e-mail and accusing Northern Voices an 'attempt to steal away the means of production from the workers using it by a bunch of old irrelevant white men'.  I'm glad you raised the matter in this for it suggests that you have not read a word of the Freedom archives or even of Northern Voices.  By couching your profound critique in such terms I suppose that you are claiming that you are more in touch with the shop-floor and the world of work?  And that your record in anarchist politics is somehow superior to mine and the other three supporters of the 'Modest program'?

Well, that is interesting:  how long have you been involved in Freedom?  The problem is that you seem to be representing the Metropolitan elite, and apart from David Goodway from Yorkshire, who is on the Friends of Freedom to represent the provinces?  Your own name sounds like something from the Home Counties and the middle-class, it doesn't have a proletarian ring to it does it?  It doesn't sound owt like someone who has been apprenticed in a factory, or has worked in the shipyards in Gibraltar like me, or has been a weighman in a Lancashire textile mill.  Or someone who has done time in Strangeways, or been detained in a dungeon in the province of Segovia in the summer of 1963, before even Stuart Christie went to Franco's Spain.  I'll not mention about the interviews I did for Freedom during the pyramid sales riots in Albania in 1997, and in Belgrade during the general elections there in December 2000.  What today seems to be held to be 'irrelevant' on the left of politics is the concerns of the blue-collar worker:  take the lack of interest in many quarters in the recent High Court case over blacklisting - that is the elephant which has somehow been left outside the room.  Where are the representatives of North & South Wales on the Friends of Freedom?  Where is the Scottish connection?  Where are the Northerners?  Where are the genuine Proles and blue-collar workers? 

 Come-on Adam Lawrence-Barr, who are you kidding? 

 Kind regards, 

 Brian Bamford

Charlie Pottins on police surveillance

Charlie Pottins died in October 2015, and I last saw him in Crew

Cheshire, at the National Conference of Trade Union Councils.

We discussed the Lord Janner and the sex abuse scandal as

well as the blacklist.  We had both been in the National Shop

Stewards Network and left it together when it became a front

for the Socialist Party.  Below are Charlie's thoughts on blacklisting:

Sparks off the Rock:  Sunday, July 12, 2009   

THE row over some of Rupert Murdoch's minions routinely tapping telephones for their stories has brought diverse reactions. A journalist friend, inclined perhaps to defend his colleagues rather than consider how his skills (not to mention scruples) were being rendered redundant, has remarked on the hypocrisy of those in government who authorise telephone tapping and surveillance of mere working folk and political dissidents, yet show outrage on hearing it is done to them, as well as showbiz celebs.

On the other hand, many people point to what seems like police reluctance to go into this, compared to the alacrity with which others are prosecuted. "I wonder what the News of the World has on the Yard?", asked one cheeky letter writer. Whatever it is, those of us who remember the charging police horses outside Fort Wapping tend to assume that, broken laws or not, the Met and Murdoch's merry men and women understand they are on the same side.

Britain is said to have more surveillance than any other country. For my generation "Big Brother" held menace, for the young it's just a naff television programme offering instant "celebrity" to anyone desperate for attention. The way some people use their mobiles you can listen into them from a distance whether you like it or not, without needing any bugging equipment, though what with the over-acting performance I sometimes suspect if you could hear the other end it would just be a clear voice saying "the time now is...exactly".

But those of us who do worry about surveillance and eavesdropping are aware that they are often linked with the other, less entertaining aspects of Big Brother, such as police repression and blacklisting. Now and then the kind of thing we all suspect, or know, goes on comes into the public gaze, and people who have previously sneered that we were paranoid turn to shrugging and saying "of course, so what?", even "don't you think it is justified?"


Back in December I wrote about a new little book that was out, telling how the British government insisted on a Gibraltarian trade unionist, Albert Fava, being removed from his home and exiled , perhaps because he was too good at organising.
http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2008/12/labour-in-government-and-rights-on-rock.html

That happened in 1948, and yes we had a Labour government then. As we did when Brian Bamford had his experience, as he tells in the Summer issue of Northern Voices magazine.

"One Saturday morning in the Summer of 1967, I met Alberto Risso, then boss of the Gibraltar branch of the Transport and General Workers' Union and Gibraltar's Minister of Labour, outside the Town Hall on Main Street, Gibraltar . We were there to get the aid of Sir Joshua Hassan, who became Gibraltar's Chief Minister, to help me to continue to work as an electrician and let my young family stay in Gibraltar. Our residence permit had been cancelled by the British authorities".

Albert Fava's expulsion was ordered on the basis of intercepted correspondence with British trades unionists and the Communist Party. In Brian's case, as he was told by Alberto Risso, the authorities knew he was "not a communist", but they saw him as a "dangerous anarchist". As Brian recalls, this was at a time when General Franco was stepping up pressure on Gibraltar and about to close the frontier. Faced with a hostile fascist dictator, the British Foreign Office and security services naturally had to clamp down on Franco's enemies, the communists and anarchists!

Harold Wilson's Labour government was in office. Back in Manchester, Brian, the "dangerous anarchist" had been involved in the 1960 engineering apprentices' strike, and had served four days in Strangeways for taling part in a Ban-the-Bomb sit-down in 1962. So now he was blackballed to prevent him working in Her Majesty's Dockyard, or for any of the contractors engaged in government work. A memo was sent out to local firms warning them not to employ this man.

He managed to get a job as an electrician with Gibraltar City Council, but that was when the British government stepped in with its powers to take away Brian and his family's residence permit.

What prompted Brian to recall this episode was the raid on the Droitwich premises of a Mr.Ian Kerr and the Consulting Association which led to Kerr's appearance in court in May and his case being sent to Crown Court for prosecution. Kerr had begun with the right-wing Economic League, which gathered and circulated information on thousands of people it considered left-wing "subversives", and had its activities funded by some of the leading names in British business. .After the League was officially wound up in 1993, Kerr set up his own operation, with building firms like Costain, Laing, Balfour Beatty and McAlpine as clients, pooling informaton and paying for dirt on job applicants.

For their £3,000 a year plus £2.20 per inquiry they could receive information such as that so-and-so was "Irish, ex-army, bad egg", or someone else an "ex-shop steward". There were files on more than 3,200 people. Some workers were listed for going to employment tribunals or even raising health and safety issues.

Blacklisting is not illegal - the Labour government resisted calls from trade unionists to outlaw the banning of workers from jobs in its 1999 Employment Act, claiming it did not have enough evidence of the practice. Kerr was raided and faces prosecution under the Data Protection Act, for keeping information on computer about individuals, without their knowledge, and denying the existence of these files.

One group of workers for whom the news of the blacklist was not news were some of Brian Bamford's fellow electricians in Manchester area, who have been in dispute at the Royal Infirmary site since 2006. Sure enough their names appeared in the files. Steve Acheson, secretary of the Manchester contracting branch of my own union Unite is described as a master militant. The workers' suspicion that they were blacklisted had already been confirmed when former Haden Young manager Alan Wainwright accused his company -Balfour Beatty's electrical subsidiary - of fraud and blacklisting. Wainwright said they employed a firm to gather information, and he released names of 1,000 electricians on the blacklist. He lost an unfair dismissal claim against Hayden Young, and now it is understood his own name is on the blacklist.

One entry quoted by Brian Bamford says that "EPIU site activity in Manchester is in the hands of **** *****, and other role apart from becoming an anarchist, is to travel around the country addressing meeetings."
Clearly, a dangerous type!

The Electrical and Plumbing Industries Union(EPIU), formed when the EETPU electrical union was expelled from the TUC after Wapping, merged into the TGWU which is now part of Unite the Union. The EETPU meanwhile had merged with the engineers' union, and thus via Amicus is part of Unite's other wing. Brian notes that UCATT, the building union, is campaigning for blacklisting to be made unlawful. He wonders why Unite isn't doing more.

For now, this is a free country. You're free, more or less, to say what you like, to object to unsafe working conditions, for instance, and to join a trade union. If you gather some mates to picket, say, or go to another place to persuade others to come out, you may be accused of "conspiracy", as the Shrewsbury building workers were, and if you stop work in solidarity with others you may be in breach of the laws on secondary action, as we saw when airport workers were forbidden to come out in support of fellow workers - some of them family members -sacked by catering firm Gate Gourmet. The employers on the other hand can band together to exchange information and deny employment to someone, preventing that person earning their livelihood and providing for their family. But that is not considered "violence", or "conspiracy", and the threat that persuades you to keep your mouth shut and "nose clean" if you want to work, is not considered intimidation. Of course it is not illegal.

See also:
Haden Youngs whistleblower:
http://www.cnplus.co.uk/news/haden-young-director-tells-tribunal-that-firm-used-blacklisting-company/374072.article


Kerr in court:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/27/construction-worker-blacklist-database1

UCATT leader on blacklist:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/features/blacklist_shame

To contact Northern Voices, e-mail northernvoices@hotmail.com

Labels: building, Gibraltar, Manchester, snoops and blacklists, trade unions

Gibraltar & the Spanish Civil War

ON the 17th, February 2016, the Gibraltar branch of Unite

the Union held a  symposium at the John Mackintosh Hall

Gibraltar is about to add to the story of the role played

by Gibraltar during the Spanish Civil War.  Several retired

members of Unite were involved, including Alfred Sacramento,

Alfred Olivero, and Michael Netto, who all helped to set up the undertaking.

The Gibraltarian, Mr. Netto was himself a member of the British

anarcho-syndicalist Direct Action Movement (DAM) in the 1970s. 

The Gibraltar Chronicle reported (17/02/16):

'With close to 500 people attending tonight’s symposium

at the John Mackintosh Hall Gibraltar is about to

add to the story of the role played by Gibraltar during the

Spanish Civil War.  Historians Dr Gareth Stockey,

Dr Chris Grocott and Professor Pepe Algarbani,

all experts in the field will form part of the

symposium which will include an interview, exclusively recorded

for the event, with Professor Paul Preston author of the

book ‘The Spanish Holocaust’.

On the 24th, February 2016, the following report appeared in the Gibraltar Chronicle by

Alice Mascarenhas:



GIBRALTAR played a very significant role in the unfolding of the Spanish Civil War, particularly in the early months according to Dr Chris Grocott. One of the key note speakers at the Unite Symposium, he spoke of how in the opening days of the Spanish Civil War virtually all communications between British diplomats in Spain and the British Government were relayed through Gibraltar. A lecturer in Management and Economic History at the University Of Leicester, School Of Management, Dr Grocott, has written several articles and book chapters on the history of Gibraltar examining aspects of its politics, industrial relations, and economic development.
In an interview with the Chronicle he said it was in Gibraltar that the first British response to events in Spain had to be formulated.
'Ironically, the Colonial Authorities decided to adopt a position of official neutrality whilst at the same time working behind the scene to assist the rebels whilst prevaricating at requests for assistance from the Spanish Government.  Effectively, of course, this became Britain’s position more generally once the non-intervention treaty was signed,' he says
Dr Grocott who has studied Gibraltar for over fifteen years is looking forward to the symposium and acknowledges he is always happy to talk about the “very interesting history of its people”.
He believes the Spanish Civil War period remains fascinating because one can see so many of the international debates over Spain being played out in Gibraltar too.
'We also have very rich archival material both in Gibraltar and in Britain to help understand this period. Excitingly, there also appears to be increasing amounts of material relevant to Gibraltar and the Civil War being discovered in the Spanish archives and in private collections. Whilst in recent years there have been some excellent histories of Gibraltar and the Spanish Civil War written, what is exciting is that there is definitely more to learn,' he says.
Although presently his research often takes him far away from Gibraltar’s history he is now combining the history of Gibraltar with the history of industrial relations.
With Gareth Stockey (who will also be in Gibraltar) and Jo Grady he is looking at anarchist movements in Gibraltar and the Campo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Their next project will be to look at how the Transport and General Workers’ Union, now Unite, came to displace anarchist organisations from Gibraltar’s industrial relations scene in the aftermath of the Great War of 1914-18.
Talking about the Spanish Civil War he suggests it is clearly still a period of history which affects life in Spain tremendously.
'At a grand level, policies such as the Law of Historical Memory remind us of what is at stake in relation to the events of 1936-39.  But even little things keep the events and participants of the Civil War in people’s minds such as monuments and street names.  In other words, for many the Civil War is actually hard to forget.
'However, in many of the older histories of Gibraltar, the Spanish Civil War is often ignored, or else seen as a breaking point between Gibraltar and Spain. This was not the case, as Gareth Stockey has persuasively argued, and events such as this commemoration of life in Gibraltar during the Civil War help us to reclaim this past.'
Dr Grocott believes that in many ways, the Spanish Civil War was uniquely Spanish in its origins. But the themes and ideological contrasts of the Civil War – democracy and dictatorship, fascism and communism, regionalism and nationalism, caught the imagination of people in Europe and globally.
'For many, the politics of the Civil War spoke not only to the conflicts that were going on in Spain but also to those which they faced every day themselves.  or governments, the Civil War was not so much a “dry run” as a proxy for their foreign policy goals – the UK and France attempting to avoid war, Germany and Italy flexing their military might, and the Soviet Union struggling to come to terms with how to deal with capitalism and fascism, both economic and political systems its rulers profoundly disagreed with,' he adds
'Much of this international political landscape was swept away after 1945, but Franco remained and so too did the ability of the politics of the Civil War to speak to the convictions of people far beyond Spain.'
And of his own contribution to the symposium he looked at what had been written about Gibraltar and the Spanish Civil War and asked how we might broaden the debate out.
'We know that the TGWU campaigned actively on behalf of the Republic but given the diversity of political positions in Spain, might we now re-interpret some of the events of the Civil War years and suggest ways that we can identify more complex political positions playing out in Gibraltar’s history?' he asks.
This year represents the anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, but it also holds a new beginning – the inaugural academic year of the University of Gibraltar, he continues:
'I think having a university in Gibraltar invites us to think about the history of Gibraltar as an academic subject.  What themes are important to examine, and what debates do we want to have?'
Dr Grocott also looked at the changing ways in which historians have seen the Civil War in the past thirty years or so.
'Traditionally historians have viewed Gibraltarian’s sympathies in the Civil War to have been filtered through an ‘us and them’ lens.  In reality, I will suggest that the connections between Gibraltar and Spain were so close that the response to the Civil War was raw and heartfelt; we need to decide how we are going to integrate that into the writing of Gibraltar’s history and question why it isn’t already part of it.'
In Spain, of course, the Civil War was utterly crucial, he adds.
'The repression in the years following the Civil War led to death or to exile for many Spaniards.  Internationally, the dictatorship provided support for the United States and Britain in the Cold War, but this relationship was one of necessity given the perceived Soviet threat.  But closer to Gibraltar, the obvious outcome of the Civil War – economic ruin in Spain and the need to deflect domestic discontent outwards – led to increased tension at the Gibraltar-Spain frontier from 1954 and, as we all know, its closure from 1969 for well over ten years.'
He also suggested that in some ways, it is easier to focus on the cleavages between Gibraltar and Spain since 1939.
'The closure of the frontier, the Spanish propaganda campaign against Gibraltar, and the vicissitudes Gibraltarian politicians have faced in dealing with international organisations such as the United Nations all go a long way to helping us forget that up until 1954 the relationship between Gibraltar and the surrounding hinterland was very close.  Events such as this commemoration of the anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War remind us of the personal ties that existed at the time between people in Gibraltar and in Spain.'
And he added how these ties were on-going and cruelly disrupted – at times severed – during the closure of the frontier.
'It’s natural to hope that this event will help people to reflect on the relationship between Gibraltar and the Campo.'

Anarchy in the UK(‘s) most famous fortress II

Part 2 of a report in the New Statesman by Gareth Stockey and Jo Grady and Chris Grocott

LAST week we left Gibraltarian workers fascinated by the beliefs of anarchists. Gareth Stockey, Chris Grocott and Jo Grady continue with the story:

The result was a noticeable increase in labour agitation on both sides of the frontier. The tactics adopted by local workers confounded local employers and the Gibraltar authorities, not least because anarchism proved remarkably successful at encouraging boycotts of businesses and ‘sympathy’ strikes in favour of fellow workers in disparate industries.  When necessary, anarchists were also willing to adopt ‘direct action’ to combat what they perceived as the inherently violent practices of the bosses and local political authorities who protected them.  The rhetoric of meetings gives us a flavour of this new-found militancy, with one worker threatening to ‘eat the liver’ of a local tobacco merchant during a strike in 1902. Following an earlier dispute in October 1901, a local anarchist newspaper urged its readers to remember the long-term goal of ‘total and definitive emancipation […] the abolition of private property with all its consequences, state, religion, militarism, magistrates […] a great work, larger than the massive Rock we have in our view’. Crucially, anarchists were willing to act as well as to talk. Several local bosses were assaulted during industrial disputes in the period – so much so that Gibraltar’s employers occasionally resorted to using firearms in self-defence – and ‘scab’ workers had stones thrown at them as they attempted to cross picket-lines.

Arguably what offended local businessmen more than the threat to their person was the very real challenge that anarchism offered to their economic interests. If we might dismiss as hyperbole, in the context of a heavily garrisoned British colony, the question posed by one local businessman to the Governor of Gibraltar in 1892, ‘are our goods and chattels safe?’, we can nonetheless point to several successes of anarchist militancy at the turn of the century. Across numerous industries, wage settlements favoured workers thanks to the effectiveness of strikes, boycotts and the occasional spot of physical intimidation. Most impressive of all, employers were forced to concede the dream of the ‘tres ochos’ (three eights) to many local workers – that is to say eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for leisure. Committed to improving living as much as working conditions, local anarchist groups also made up for the absence of state provision by offering schooling to hundreds of local children, as well as myriad cultural initiatives to bring learning to the local working classes.

Gibraltar’s employers were so shell-shocked by the growth and success of anarchism that they offered to pay the salary of a British union official who had been sent to the Rock in 1898. In his memoirs Lorenzo Quelch, who had been sent by the nascent Social Democratic Foundation, left a vivid account of his time in Gibraltar, but he decided not to take up the employers’ offer. The culmination of all of this activity was a ‘general strike’ of industries in Gibraltar in 1902. This time, having prepared meticulously and coordinated their response to the dispute, the employers emerged victorious. On the Spanish side of the frontier, the anarchist movement was to face worse, as the local political and military authorities staged a bloody massacre of local militants in October 1902, closing down workers’ centres and confiscating their funds. 

Much work needs to be done, but this brief account of the infancy of labour organisation in Gibraltar highlights the intimacy of relations across the frontier. Many years later, in 1919, Gibraltarian workers would formally attach themselves to a British gradualist, rather than Spanish anarchist, form of organisation through the TGWU. But as we have noted, the Gibraltar TGWU retained strong links with its counterparts in the Campo for several decades and workers continued to fight side-by-side for better living and working conditions. The early successes of Gibraltarian and Spanish anarchists shows just how much workers on both sides of the frontier stood (and stand) to gain by recognising common grievances and acting collectively to address them.

Gareth Stockey is lecturer in Spanish studies at the University of Nottingham. He has published widely on the history of Gibraltar and Spain, including (with Chris Grocott) Gibraltar: a Modern History (University of Wales Press, 2010).

Chris Grocott is lecturer in Management and Economic History, and Jo Grady is lecturer in Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management, at the University of Leicester.

Anarchy in the UK(‘s) most famous fortress I

Part 1 of a report in the New Statesman by Gareth Stockey and Jo Grady and Chris Grocott

IN February 2016, the Gibraltar branch of the Unite union is helping to organise a conference to explore Gibraltar’s role in the Spanish Civil War. The event comes in the year in which we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the start of the civil war, but also takes place not long after the 40th anniversary of the death of Franco. Doubtless under discussion will be the role that the Rock played in providing sanctuary for over 10,000 Spaniards fleeing the early fighting (and savage Francoist repression) in the neighbouring Campo de Gibraltar in the summer of 1936. But also of note is the solidarity and activism of Gibraltar’s Transport and General Workers’ Union (now Unite) in support of Spanish democracy during the civil war. This ranged from fundraising and parliamentary lobbying on behalf of the Spanish Republic to practical and symbolic assistance. Many Gibraltarian workers offered unpaid overtime in the winter of 1938, for example, in a bid to repair the damaged Republican warship the José Luis Diez. The TGWU’s organiser, Agustin Huart, appeared at one point in the civil war in a Republican newspaper, at the front with a revolver in his hand. His (and the union’s) commitment to those republican refugees left in Gibraltar after 1939 remained unwavering well into the 1950s.

Official and elite interaction across the Gibraltar frontier is widely recognised in the period before Franco’s dictatorship. Most famously of all, British and Spanish officers and aristocrats would join local civilian dignitaries by hunting foxes in the Campo. The ‘Royal Calpe Hunt’ boasted as its joint patrons the kings of Britain and Spain. Dozens of Gibraltar’s wealthiest inhabitants owned businesses across the frontier and built summer houses in the Campo, while local Spanish notables were intimately embedded into the social and economic life of Gibraltar. The Larios family, for example, had property on both sides of the border and the head of the family acted as the Master of the Calpe Hunt for decades. The family also insisted on speaking English and serving meals at ‘English’ times.

As social history has become more common in Gibraltar and the Campo in recent years, a similar picture has emerged for the local working classes, that is to say the vast majority of the local population.  Now rescued from what E.P. Thompson referred to as ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’, a vivid picture of extensive and daily interaction between Gibraltarians and Spaniards has emerged.  This went well beyond the workplace – at times over 12000 Spaniards were crossing into Gibraltar each day to work alongside Gibraltarians – and extended to thousands of friendships, marriages and children.  Sport was another bonding agent for the local population, and while football remained the most popular cross-frontier sporting fixture, bullfighting boasted thousands of fans on the Rock.

As noted above, Unite and its predecessor the TGWU are testimony to this shared history of working-class cooperation across the frontier.  Few people realise, however, that the origins of organised labour in Gibraltar are not British, but in fact derive from a very different tradition: that of Spanish anarchism.  In a recently published article, we have attempted to chart the origins of labour organisation on the Rock.  What is notable is not only the fact that early ‘union’ activity in Gibraltar drew its ideological and organisational inspiration from anarchism, but also just how radical and effective these anarchist activities proved to be.

Anarchism was gaining ground quickly in southern Spain in the last two decades of the nineteenth century.   While there is great debate as to the reasons for anarchism’s popularity in the region, it is widely acknowledged that one of the principal attractions of the movement was its roots in the everyday experiences of workers, not only in the workplace itself, but also in response to the harsh living conditions of the population and the repressive nature of the Spanish state.  Living and working conditions on the Rock were generally acknowledged to be better than those across the frontier, but it should be remembered that Gibraltar was a heavily garrisoned and strictly regulated fortress community in this period. There was also a perception (not always warranted) that the British officers and colonial administration in the territory favoured the interests of local employers and merchants over those of workers.  As anarchist ideas were brought  to the colony by those thousands of Spanish labourers each day, it is little surprise that Gibraltarian workers found much to commend in the ideas and practices espoused by anarchists.

Crewe Conference of Trade Union Councils

Where Are The Workers?

THE Sunday Times in an editorial following the May 2015 elections declared:

'Trade unionism is a minority cause.  The days of an economy dominated by large manufacturing industries are long past.  The proportion of private sector employees who belong to a trade union is just 14%.' 

Last weekend's Crewe Conference dramatically displayed the gulf between private sector trade unionism, and  public sector unions like the PCS.  Some eight Motions were dedicated to the attacks on trade unions and about half referred to the PCS union.  Other Motions  expressed concern about the representation of the working class following the defeat of the Labour Party in the General Election.   

A Motion 7. from Cardiff noted 'attacks by local government on union branches' and the 'clear intention of (Francis) Maude and the Tories is to destroy PCS financially by withdrawing the check-off from government departments'.  From the building trade, a UCCAT delegate questioned this domination of the public sector when things were so bad on the building sites, and the anarcho-syndicalist trade unionist Dave Chapple from Bridgewater TUC, challenged the call in Motion 17. from Merseyside TUC that the TUC should 'wave affiliation fees from [the] PCS [union]'. 

Similarly the reference to the 'blacklisting and victimisation of union reps' in Motion 7. must strike people working in the British industrial wild west of the building sites as strange, when they have suffered for donkey's years from blacklisting on a massive scale.  To a former blue collar worker like myself; the delegate from UCATT; the thousands of workers in the British building trade; and even a postman like Dave Chapple, the Secretary of Bridgewater TUC who said that his delegates 'would be displeased if the PCS delegates had their affiliation fees waved'; the plight of the PCS would seem somewhat feather-bedded.


In Spain, in the famous anarchist trade union, the CNT, there were times when the land-labourers of Andalucia had their union dues waved because of the hardship they suffered through the irregular work pattern in the field with unpredictable harvests:  the anarcho-syndicalist industrial workers in the factories of Catalonia and Barcelona were more than willing to shoulder the costs of their Andalucian brothers and sisters. 

But, comparing the English PCS union today to the Spanish trade union confederation the CNT of the 1930s is like comparing a white-collar pygmy to an industrial giant: it just doesn't bear comparison on any scale of reference. 
In 1966, I led a raid with group of Manchester anarchists on my local dole office in Rochdale to obtained a my labour exchange file.  When we examined my file compiled by Labour Exchange staff (the kind of people who are now members of the PCS) we found that it contained a section marked 'Derog' in this derogatory dossier, as part of my labour exchange record since I was involved in the national apprentice strike in 1960, there was a stream of derogatory references entered by those law abiding employees at the Rochdale Labour Exchange who had interviewed me over the years after I'd been sacked after the apprentice strike up to 1966 when we purloined my dole documents. 

It's nice to know that the people in the Labour Exchanges of the 1960s, and would now be members of the PCS union working in Job Centres, were routinely black-balling me back then and for all I know may still be blacklisting claimants now.  Yet, these people in the PCS, who operated as willing blacklisters of working people in the 1960s, are now asking me and my Trade Union Council for support because the Government, to which they have been for years the loyal  servants of the State is getting at them. 
I have a heart, but isn't this kind of cant and humbug asking rather too much of me under the circumstances?