My Granny Made Me An Anarchist The Christie File: part 1, 1946-1964 by ChristieBooks

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Also available: The Albert Memorial. The Anarchist Life and Times of Albert Meltzer. 1920-1996, by Phil Ruff (24pp). ISBN 1 901172 10 4, £5.00; E8.00; $10.00 (inc p+p). We, the anarchists! A study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), 1927-1937, by Stuart Christie (134pp). ISBN 1 901172 06 6, £9.45; E15.00; $17.00 (inc p+p). The CNT in the Spanish Revolution (Vol. 1) by José Peirats Valls (edited by Chris Ealham) (324pp). ISBN 1 901172 07 4 (h/b £60.00); ISBN 1 901172 05 8 (p/b £17.70; E27.00; $29.00 (inc p+p). Remember... Poems of reflection. (26pp A4 book, audio tape/CD of poems on bereavement.) ISBN 0-9517251 3 0. £16.00; E27.00; $29.00 (inc p+p). The Floodgates of Anarchy, by Albert Meltzer and Stuart Christie (with new intro.). (eBook: £7.50; E12.00; $15.00). Stefano Delle Chiaie. Portrait of a ‘Black’ Terrorist, by Stuart Christie. (eBook: £7.50; E12.00; $15.00). To The Honourable Miss S..., by B. Traven (Ret Marut). (eBook: £7.50; E12.00; $15.00). The Great Game — The Russian Perspective, by Professor Grigory L. Bondarevsky. (eBook: £7.50; E12.00; $15.00). Three Plays: The Empire Builders; The General’s Tea Party; The Knacker’s ABC, by Boris Vian. Translated, with an introduction by Simon Watson Taylor (eBook: £7.50; E12.00; $15.00). Bending Bars. Prison stories by John Barker (eBook: £7.50; E12.00; $15.00).

Coming soon Franco Made Me A “Terrorist”. ‘The Christie File’: part 2,1964-1967. Edward Heath Made Me Angry. ‘The Christie File’: part 3,1967-1980. The CNT in the Spanish Revolution (Vol. 2), by José Peirats Valls (edited by Chris Ealham). The Spanish Revolution: 1936-1937, by Stuart Christie.(eBook) For up-to-date information on publications available please register with www.christiebooks.com

MY GRANNY MADE ME AN

ANARCHIST The Christie File: part 1 ,1946–1964 (The cultural and political formation of a west of Scotland ‘baby-boomer’) STUART CHRISTIE

www.christiebooks.com

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist by Stuart Christie First limited edition September 2002 PO Box 35, Hastings East Sussex, TN34 2UX e-mail: books@christiebooks.com Copyright © Stuart Christie, 2002 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Christie, Stuart, 1946 — My granny made me an anarchist : the Christie File Vol. 1 : 1946-64 by Stuart Christie 1. Christie, Stuart, 1946- 2. Anarchists - Scotland Biography 3. Anarchism - Scotland - History - 20th century I. Title 335.8’3’092 ISBN 1 873976 14 3 If you find mistakes in this publication, please remember that they are there for a purpose. We publish something for everyone, and some people are always looking for mistakes!

for ‘B’ the next link in the chain

‘Serve him right’. ‘A dangerous man’. ‘He is undoubtedly insane’. So they proceed to live their sane, and wise and altogether admirable lives, reading their Plutarch a little, but chiefly pausing at the feat of Putnam who was let down into a wolf’s den; and in this wise they nourish themselves for brave and patriotic deeds some time or other. We dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men, placing them at a distance in history or space; but let some significant event like the present occur in our midst, and we discover, often, this distance and this strangeness between us and our neighbours. David Thoreau A Plea for Captain John Brown There is only one thing more wicked than the desire to command and that is the will to obey. William Kingdon Clifford Lectures and Essays

Contents Mise en scène Preamble Caves in the Sandstone Canyons (growing up in Glasgow,1946-55) ‘Billies’ and ‘Dans’ The Rings of Abbeyleix Granny — 1890-1969 Mum and Dad Arran — Days of Whin and Rose-hips Wu’r no in Kansas ony mair... Blantyre —1960 Politicisation Ban the Bomb! ‘Trots’ and the Labour Party Ten Days that Shook the World The Glasgow Committee of 100 Glasgow’s Anarchists Spain and General Franco London — 1964 Why Me? Why Then?

1 3 7 38 44 51 58 69 86 100 103 121 129 140 144 155 173 179 198

Background briefs The FIJL — Aims and Principles The Post-War Guerrilla Struggle Against Franco The Hijacking of the ‘Santa Maria’ Defensa Interior The Execution of Delgado and Granados Freemasonry

204 206 208 214 236 245

Index

248

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Mise en scène

T WAS A TRYING TIME. It was 9.45 am on Tuesday, 1 September 1964 and I was in the First Permanent Military Court in Madrid’s Calle del Reloj facing a drumhead court martial, a Consejo de Guerra sumarisimo — case No 1154-64 — charged with ‘banditry and terrorism’. Spain’s fascist secret police had arrested me 18 days earlier in possession of plastic explosives and detonators to be used to blow up Generalissimo Franco and his inner circle in the royal box at Santiago Bernabéu during the final of the Generalissimo’s Cup. The penalty for this offence was death at dawn by garrote-vil, the grisly process of slow mechanical strangulation by an iron collar — and a bolt through the spine at the base of the neck for good measure. Madrid’s burning early morning September sun streamed through the tall windows into the otherwise darkened hall, picking out the burnished brass buttons, gold braid and beetroot-coloured and sweatdrenched face of the jack-booted cavalry major who was pacing up and down between me and the judges gesticulating wildly and stridently declaiming in Castilian Spanish. Every so often he would stop, turn with a grand pantomime flourish, point directly at me like some demented Latin Lord Kitchener and — modulating his voice — hiss something obviously dramatic. This did not bode well. Half cheekily, as if to indicate surprise that someone could be talking to, and about, me with such hostility, I turned in case he was pointing to someone behind me. The one friendly face I could see was that of my mum, the only woman in the hall; the rest of the audience — sitting impassively, sweating profusely in the humid, airless, long, high hall — were either military officers, secret policemen from the Brigada PolíticoSocial, heavily armed soldiers and Civil Guards, Falangist journalists, black-frocked priests or two British diplomats, the Consul and Vice-Consul. There was no doubt. It was me. I was the indiscreet object of the major’s ire. I was seated on a wooden bench with my fellow accused, Fernando Carballo Blanco, a forty-year-old Spanish carpenter, guarded on either side by two armed soldiers. Facing us on the wall, surmounted by a large crucifix bearing a bleeding, dying Jesus — an earlier, rebellious, carpenter — was a large, giltframed portrait of a thin-lipped, sullen Spanish warlord in heroic, victorious posture on a white horse surrounded by the dead and dying vanquished: Generalissimo Francisco Franco de Bahamonde, a hybrid Oliver Cromwell and Torquemada, with a sword in one hand and a holy relic in the other. The other walls were bedecked with fading tapestries, flags and pennants from old and long-forgotten battles. On a high table, in front of this dark fairytale metaphor, sat five bemedalled

El Caudillo: Generalissimo Francisco Franco de Bahamonde

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Súbdito escocés: Stuart Christie Dirección Generál de Seguridad Puerta del Sol, Madrid August 13, 1964

army officers, on either side of an even more highly decorated infantry colonel, the court president and military grandee, Colonel Don Jesús Montes Martín. Laid out on the table in front of them were their ceremonial swords. Installed in the corner, at his own table, sat the tall, jack-booted figure of the examining magistrate from the Juzgado Militar Especial Nacional de Actividades Extremistas, Lieutenant-Colonel Balbás Planelles, (looking for all the world like the villainous and treacherous General Huerta in the film Viva Zapata), with his highly polished bald pate and large silver-grey moustache. To my left was the table for the nervous translator, a captain, and prosecuting counsel, Comandante Auditor Don Ramón González-Arnau Diez — stalking up and down in front of me — and to my right was my unprepared and clearly intimidated British-Embassy-appointed civilian lawyer, Don Gabriel Luis Echevaria. I knew no Spanish so I had no idea what the passionate singing phrases and the vitriolic repetitions of the angry prosecuting counsel meant. It was unreal; as though somehow I had been transported into the final act of some Grand Opera without either the music or the fat lady. The major’s libretto, delivered with exaggerated flourishes, was in fact about how, since the victory of the ‘Glorious National Movement’ in 1939, Spain had been besieged domestically and internationally by the activities of an organization called the Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL), an anarchist organization committed to opposing to all forms of government by the use of the bomb and the gun — and that I was one of the agents of this conspiracy in a plot to kill Spain’s Caudillo. Unable to understand the noisy wave of words crashing down on me or the theatrical proceedings taking place around me, I began to fantasise about diving for freedom through the window; and if I did, would there be a high lorry waiting underneath it to break my fall and carry me off, chortling, to freedom? Returning to reality, I shifted track to musing about the complex influences and lines of fate that had brought me to this particularly traumatic situation just six weeks after my eighteenth birthday. How, in the name of the ‘wee man’, had I ended up here?

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Preamble

HE THREE PRINCIPAL political parties went to the polls in post-war Britain in July 1945, all claiming to be equally committed to a programme of social and economic reconstruction which would create a ‘compassionate society, free from poverty and unemployment’. Some were more believable than others. For liberal democracy, the only road out of the political impasse in which it found itself at the end of World War Two was to minimise or neutralise the opposing ideologies, opinions, beliefs and traditions which nourished the roots of conflict and encouraged a highly class-divided society and seek, instead, a ‘middle way’. The agent through which this social breakthrough was to be achieved was a benevolent interventionist Welfare State based on the 1942 ‘Beveridge Report’ which, working in tandem with enlightened capitalism, would ensure a continuing expansion of wealth to benefit all classes. The Tories, under Churchill, lost in 1945 because people knew the ruling classes didn’t really want a welfare state or a health service with treatment free on demand or public ownership of ‘the commanding heights of the economy’. The people who had fought the war did — and that is what they got from Labour, the self-styled ‘Socialists’, under Clement Atlee. It all went wrong because what the people didn’t get was control. The Welfare State promised social security for all, family allowances, major reforms in education, a national health service with equality of treatment according to medical need rather than the ability to pay; Keynesian budgetary techniques, full employment policies, town and country planning, and closer relations between state and industry. This political convergence or informal understanding between the elites of capital and labour introduced a new word into the political vocabulary: ‘consensus’. ‘Consensus’ was the new ideology of the ‘extremists of the centre’ which, they hoped, would usher in reform and evolution as opposed to revolution, and counter the influence of the ‘extremists’ of the left and right. The shift of emphasis of liberal rhetoric in the post-war period from discredited self-regulating laissez-faire capitalism to a more socially just society — one regulated by a benevolent State — was, however, more to do with enlightened self-interest, a reflection of the popular democratic mood of the period. It was an attempt by the politicians in Edwardian clothes and equally dated mentality to appear to be running ahead of the crowd. The ‘consensus’ — if such a thing did in fact exist between the major political parties — was an ad hoc compromise to contain what British ruling groups and elites saw as the destabilising democratic pressures for change. It also signalled an upward thrust in the material expectations of a mobilised population in the wake of a total war, a war which had been fought for high

Cradle to grave: Labour’s new National Health Service promised free medical care to all, with free treatment according to need rather than ability to pay.

Preamble

moral principles. The political and social elites were trying to adapt to rapidly changing post-war social upheaval by broadening their power base.

A River Runs Through It

Industrial Clydeside: the southern boundary of Partick ran between the mouth of the Kelvin in the east and the mouth of the Whiteinch burn in the west. Govan lay on the south bank. © Nigel Parry/The Glasgow Shoot (Glasgow: 24 hours in the life of a City, Chapmans Publishers.)

I WAS A ‘baby boomer’; one of the ‘awkward squad’ of optimists born into this ‘consensual’ but austere and bureaucratic world in the wake of the Second World War, a world satirised by George Orwell in his 1948 novel Nineteen Eighty Four. We were iconoclasts with social consciences, a strong sense of entitlement and great expectations of a changing world where anything seemed possible; a world for which so many people had sacrificed themselves in the previous decade. We grew up firm in the belief that society was moving purposefully towards an achievable goal — socialism — and that by our actions we would help fulfil this destiny. Having declared our faith in the essential goodness of human nature we were unwilling to tolerate an imperfect world. The generation which had grown up between the wars and who had lived through the Depression were less optimistic and much more frightened of unemployment than those of us who grew up in the late forties, fifties or sixties. We, on the other hand, had no past to regret and no stake in the present. Not for us a forty-year career path, with slow but predictable progress along the squares of the company Ludo board to retirement at 65, with a lifetime of loyalty and deference rewarded by a gold watch. In any case, the old ‘Ludo’ board of society was about to be tossed aside in favour of the ‘Monopoly’ board. What we learned and experienced in the late 1950s and early 1960s made us substantially less cautious, less deferential, less goal-oriented and more demanding than our parents; the ‘right to rule’ ethos was something that could now no longer be taken for granted. Our smouldering sense of grievance was far from unique in history. James Loch (1780-1855), the architect of the Sutherland clearances, complained of a similar collapse of forelock-tugging deference among his master’s tenants during the trial of one of his bailiffs, Patrick Sellar, for the murder of an old woman crofter during the clearances: — ‘…They contracted ideas and habits, quite incompatible with the customs of regular society and civilised life, adding greatly to those defects which characterise persons living in a loose and unreformed state of society.’ Charles Dickens evoked a similar picture of the optimistic euphoria that permeated the last quarter of the 18th century in his book A Tale of Two Cities: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. ‘ The turbulent conditions of late 18th century Europe so well described by Dickens, were about to be replayed in a modern setting with new players. When our generation came of age in the early 1960s we too felt we had history and destiny on our side; we were the Scotia Nostra, linked loosely, but inextricably, by chronological and cultural forces, and an escalating coincidence of events which covered the scariest, most dramatic moments of the cold war. We were the scene-shifters, the string-cutters, the ‘dreamers of dreams’ and the ‘movers and shakers’. We tried — each in his or her own way — to challenge the infamy and corruption of the world we had inherited and to make society live up to our expectations. A similar process is described in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, TE Lawrence’s account of the modern Arab movement:— ‘In these pages the history is not of the Arab movement, but of me in it. It is a narrative of daily life, mean happenings, little people. Here are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. It is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history, and partly for the pleasure it gives me to recall the fellowship of the revolt. We were fond together, because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The morning freshness of the worldto-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace. ‘All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.’ Our view of the world was one in which sin, conflict and injustice would be overcome in one decisive battle. The moral and political imperative of the time seemed to provoke a thrilling, Nietzschian, incitement to ‘push whatever was falling’ before the world collapsed into barbarism. It took a little while before it sank in that, unlike the stirring words of The International, there is never any ‘last fight left to face’; the struggle is forever — on constantly shifting battlefields against enemies who are endlessly reinforced from constantly receding horizons, and from among the tired, disillusioned

Preamble

deserters from our own ranks: ‘He who would fight monsters must take care not to become one.’ — Nietzsche. The reality, as I subsequently discovered, is that the world is a pragmatic place, and the youthful hopes and dreams that people have of shaping it tend to remain such unless both the will and opportunity are present. In my case the strongly ethical upbringing my granny gave me and the model she provided of a life lived nobly and richly in spirit, together with the West of Scotland New Labour: 1940s style. culture in which I grew up, provided the will; the opportunity came in the form of fortuitous circumstance. The actions, events, encounters and thoughts assembled here are culled from blurred and sharp memories seized hold of as they flashed by; they are recollections refracted through my subsequent experiences, knowledge, hindsight, insight and some imaginative use of l’esprit d’escalier — staircase wisdom — that which I thought going down the stairs as opposed to what I should have been thinking on the way up the stairs. This has allowed me to fill in the gaps and explain things which were beyond my childish comprehension. This is not a retrospective personal history of the late twentieth century, ‘the way it was’, but an attempt — as Yalta 1944: post WW II carve-up of the world a witness — to provide testimony; to seek meaning in by the Allies into regional spheres of influence. the complicated events, historical circumstances and the passionate or sentimental processes and fortuna of a vanishing political horizon that is fast retreating like a line of telegraph poles seen from the rear of a train, dwindling into an earlier infinity. The events described here may mean little to today’s youngsters and will be even more remote from the experiences of later generations, but to me they are part of a yesterday which Bikini Atoll: birth formulated the actions, thoughts and destiny of one individual Glaswegian of a threat. The travelling through the interstices of history and the temporal distance of half a nuclear bombs that vaporized Hiroshima century. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote: and Nagasaki on August 19 1945 ‘My experiences are significant inasmuch as they may be similar to those of many began an uncertain people like myself... I am not concerned with the particular meaning of one life. I era in which any new want to recall the rather curious evolution of a generation.’ global confrontation It is history, but not as you know it, Jimmy. could imperil the survival of mankind.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

WAS BORN in 1946 in the West End of the bustling and cheerful cosmopolitan cobble-streeted and tram-lined decaying conurbation of pre urban-blighted Glasgow — a time before deep-fried Mars bars and curriedmutton pies. My father’s family was Episcopalian and Jacobite going back at least 250 years, so I reckon that was why my father named me Stuart, after Bonnie Prince Charlie, “The only man in history to be called after three separate sheepdogs” according to fellow Partiquois, Billy Connolly. In spite of this I was brought up a Presbyterian, probably due to the fact my dad was mostly at sea — and on my granny’s insistence. To clarify arcane matters of religious procedure for later, possibly godless and less historically informed generations, the first Protestant Church in Scotland was founded by John Knox, a Scottish cleric, in 1560. Knox forged his revolutionary theories of resistance to sovereign authority and launched the first fully-fledged doctrine of popular sovereignty in Europe. In so doing he released the fundamentalist Protestant cat among the Romish pigeons throughout Britain on a wave of popular revulsion against the tyrannical and zealously Catholic government of queen Mary (the eldest daughter of Henry VIII by Catherine of Aragon). Between 1555 and the end of her reign in 1558, ‘Bloody Mary’ had undone the work of her father and restored papal supremacy and sanctioned the persecution of Protestants. She authorised the deaths of at least 227 men and 56 women who refused to recant their Protestant faith and were burnt alive, some with their babies and older children. Originally a Roman Catholic priest, Knox had been converted to Protestantism and forced into hiding. Arrested by French troops in 1547 after the Battle of Pinkie, near Edinburgh (a battle in which one of my own forebears had carried the ‘Stuart’ standard) he spent two years on the Way to go: John French prison galleys. Knox returned home in 1549 and, as a royal chaplain from 1551, was Knox, 1505 (?)-1572. involved in compiling the Prayer Book, but when Mary Tudor came to power in 1551 he fled to Geneva. Tried in absentia he was sentenced to be burned at the stake as a heretic in 1557. Knox eventually returned to Scotland in 1559 to promote his personal brand of Presbyterianism. The paternalistic Knox, however, did not entirely trust his congregations to pursue the path of righteousness unaided and so he appointed a number of senior ministers called ‘superintendents’, who were placed in overall charge of

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

the clergy in a particular area. They were bishops in all but name. There was little unanimity in the Kirk about handing over all power to the Presbyteries — councils of local Church elders as opposed to the more autocratic Pope- or King-appointed bishops — and many members, who were happy to be Protestant, nonetheless wanted to keep their bishops. After Knox’s death in 1572 the ‘democratic’ or Presbyterian tendency within the Kirk won out until the early part of the 17th century, after James VI of Scotland was crowned James I of England. James VI/I had seen the political and personal advantages of being able to appoint bishops in England and forced bishops on the Church in Scotland. After the Civil War, the Scottish bishops and their congregations or ‘flocks’ were recognised as constituting a separate Province under its own ‘primus’ or presiding bishop, as York and Canterbury are the Provinces of the Church of England. After William III came to the throne, the more democratic Presbyterian system was again recognised by law. The bishops and a number of priests and part of their congregations continued as the ‘Episcopal Church in Scotland’.

Caves in the caverns: White Street, Partick. We lived in the top flat at number 52, the fourth or fifth close along on the right hand side.

PARTICK GAVE ME my first loyalty and sense of identity. I lived, happily and unabused, in a top floor apartment of a friendly, four-storey Edwardian tenement at 52 White Street in the working class district of Partick. It was one of the sturdy, tall, smogged-brown-red sandstone hives on the north bank of the river Clyde — on the outer, southern, reaches of effete Hyndland’s middle-class spread, with the River Clyde and industrial Govan in the south, suburban Whiteinch in the west and refined Kelvingrove and Hillhead in the east. The district was a ‘Scotch broth’ of the best and worst parts of the Empire’s second city (our maps were coloured pink then), with its mixture of Highland, Lowland, Irish, Italian, Lithuanian and Polish immigrants, awesome contrasts of wealth, comfort, tolerable existence and bare subsistence. White Street was located halfway up the gentle declivity that is Hyndland Street, just past the brooding Gothic red sandstone building of St Peter’s Roman Catholic Church. White Street straddles the leafy, hilly purlieus of Hyndland, overlooking the proletarian Clydeside plain and the parallel industrial arteries of Dumbarton Road and the River Clyde. From White Street, down the right hand side of Hyndland Street to Dumbarton Road, rows of little shops interrupted the close ‘mooths’ of the tenements. Directly opposite the chapel was a shop that sold papist statuary and religious gewgaws, then there was a cobblers, a chip shop, a hairdressers, a dairy, a sweet shop / newsagent, laundry, and a drysalters. Small shops between Chancellor Street and Fordyce Street included a fruit shop, a ‘Tally’s’ ice cream parlour, a chemist, a home bakery and a pub. Other shops down to Dumbarton Road included a licensed grocer, a butchers’ where

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

you could buy sausages at 4d a pound. Next door was a wet fish shop whose identifying shingle was a large bronze-coloured fish hanging out over the door. And at the bottom of Hyndland Street was my grampa’s first stop on his way home from work, the The Quarter Gill pub. Social standing among tenement dwellers was graded as finely as McDougall’s flour. People in the tenement pecking order were expected to show deference to those further up the hill from them, and accept their condescension in return. Our street, which had small gardens at the front, was considered ‘better class’ than the one down the hill from us, Chancellor Street, but ‘not quite as nice’ as Caird Drive, the next street up towards the tree-lined terraces between the even-nicer Partickhill and Hyndland Roads, where they spoke with an affectedly refined, or ‘pan loaf’ accent. In White Street there was no ‘hinging oot o’ windaes’. This was the practice by turbaned ‘wifies’ in multi coloured pinnies of leaning out of the tenement windows on cushions, arms crossed, keeping an eye on the comings and goings in the street, bantering with neighbours and passers-by. Walking down these ‘mean streets’ was for all the world like being in the middle of rows of battery hens all clucking to the left, right, up and down. A ‘hing’ as it was called colloquially, may have been the practice down the hill in Chancellor Street and in my gran’s previous flat in Henderson Street, Maryhill — but not in White Street. If my granny even twitched a net curtain, grampa would be telling her ‘tae keep away frae the windae’. A ‘hing’ © Oscar Marzaroli (Shadesof Grey, Mainstream Publishing)

The Kindness Of Strangers SOCIAL STANDING WAS flagged by the style of the ‘close-mooth’ — the tenement entrances or ‘caves in the canyons’ as described by Glasgow songwriter Ian Davison. There was no anonymity. Each close provided an informal but dynamic community support structure with its own sense of mutual aid which helped people to surmount the problems of everyday life. If someone in the close was taken ill or had fallen on hard times, most people on the stairs rallied round to do what they could to help with soup, ‘gettin’ the “messages”’, taking in their children and making sure they had clean clothes and linen. Doors in ‘wally closes’ were usually of varnished wood with highly polished brass nameplates and stained glass panels depicting sunrays, flowers, colourful birds or butterflies. Some closes were decorated with plaster, others, like ours, were ‘wally closes’ — lined with plain white, cream or elaborately ornamented china tiles with motifs and stained glass windows overlooking the back courts of the tenement buildings. Tenants in ‘wally closes’ took great pride in keeping the tiled walls washed and gleaming, the plain plastered ones well scrubbed and whitewashed. The women in the close had to take their turn at washing the close mouth, the

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

‘Wally’ close: the more decorative the tiles in the tenement close, and the more detailed the stained glass windows overlooking the back courts, the higher the ‘class’ of the occupants.

stairs, the stained glass windows which overlooked the back courts as well as polishing the banisters and Brassoing the wee decorative brass knobs to prevent us kids using them as a slide. Heaven help anyone who didn’t leave the close spotless when their turn came. In the tenements where the respectable hoi polloi lived, dignity was maintained by decorating their close ‘mooths’ with fancy scrolls drawn in white pipe-clay with designs unique to each close ‘mooth’. The poor folks in the toilet-less ‘single ends’ in the really run-down tenements south of Dumbarton Road simply didn’t care and the factors (the landlords’ agents) didn’t bother; peeling stucco, flaking plaster, broken window panes and unswept, dank ‘closes’ stinking of stale beer, vomit, Vimto, Irn-Bru and fish and chips remnants on greasy paper identified them as the warrens of the rickety damned — and probably Catholics! If there was any melancholy and despair in Partick it was down these mean streets and up these darker, meaner, closes. Backcourts were divided into what were euphemistically called ‘greens’, divided by high, spiked palings. Each tenement staircase had its own midden — a brick-built lean-to with dustbins for ashes and rubbish where diphtheria and scarlet fever lurked for the unsuspecting ‘midgie-raker’ who trawled through the rubbish bins in the hope of finding something of use, value or ornament. Air raid shelters still stood here from the war as did communal wash-houses to which access was allocated on a one-day-a-week basis to each tenant. The backcourts were criss-crossed with clotheslines for drying clothes. They also provided the venues for street singers and the occasional tenement party and play or variety show put on by us kids, usually inspired by a Mickey Rooney film or by what we had seen recently at one of Glasgow’s many music halls. One particular backcourt recitation was: — ‘Keech, bum, tolly, fart A’ went doon tae Bramble Park, keech, bum, couldney swim, tolly, fart threw ‘em in.’ Keech, bum, tolly and fart was about the extent of our bad language until we were much older. We rarely swore or even used the name of Jesus or Christ as an expletive, knowing we would go straight to the ‘bad fire’ or be struck by a thunderbolt if God was listening or — if granny were listening — I’d have my mouth washed out with soap. Another rude one was: — ‘There wis a wee man who peed in a pan The pan wis too wee so he peed in the sea The sea wis too wide so he peed in the Clyde An’ aw the wee fishes ran up his backside!’ The first and only time I had my ‘mooth washed oot wi soap’ was in Ardrossan, when I was about eight. 10

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

I had been playing with my pals on the disused railway turntable, trying unsuccessfully to turn the enormous cast-iron handle which controlled the mechanism. A couple of bigger boys were passing and asked what we were doing. They jumped over the fence to show off their strength, but after a few goes they announced it was impossible. When I asked why, one said ‘Cos it’s too fucking stiff’ and walked off. Surprisingly, neither my pals nor I had heard the word before and didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded descriptively commanding. Recounting my adventures of the day to gran before I lay down to sleep, I told her how we had tried to get the turntable to move, but had to give up because ‘the wheel was too fucking stiff’. With a look of jaw-dropping horror spreading over her face as though she had just witnessed the ultimate demonic obscenity, granny was left open-mouthed wondering if she had misheard me. Could her grandson have somehow been possessed by the Devil or was I some doppelganger she had inadvertently taken in off the street? I was wheeched out that bed, dragged across the room to the sink and a bar of carbolic soap rammed into my mouth. I never swore in front of my granny again.

Servants Of The Light THE STREETS AND the tenements were lit by gas. Corporation ‘Leeries’ (lamplighters) would come round in the evening, at dusk, to light the honeycombed cupolas of gas mantles which projected out into the close on their thin metal brackets and on the ‘stairheid’ landings. Their staffs of office were long poles with fiercely burning jets of blue-white flame at one end, with a brass device for turning on the gas tap. The mantles would slowly incandesce to an intense white heat, then the glare would decrease until it settled to a shimmering, mellow yellow light, casting phosphorescent shadows up and down the adjoining stairs. The ‘Leeries’ would come round again at dawn to turn them off. We were one of the fortunate 57 per cent of the Glasgow families to have an indoor plumbed-in bath and one of the 60 per cent to have our own WC indoors. The apartment consisted of a bedroom, front room, a lobby or hallway, the indoor bathroom with toilet and a kitchen, the latter also doubling up as the living room with a ‘hole in the wall’ recess bed near the door and a black-leaded coal-fired kitchen oven and grate with a gas hob. When you wanted coal, a large white card, like a driver’s ‘L’ sign, was placed in the window with the initials of your coalman printed in big red letters which he could see as he clip-clopped through the streets on his Clydesdaledrawn cart shouting ‘coal briquettes and paraffin oil’ at the top of his voice.

Backcourt: note the stairhead ‘cludgies’ by the back close. © Oscar Marzaroli (Shades of Grey, Mainstream Publishing.)

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

When he spotted his card in a window he would rein in the cart at the close ‘mooth’, manoeuvre a dirty hessian bag with a hundredweight of coal onto the leather tabard which protected his back and climb the four flights of grey concrete stairs to empty it with a crash and clouds of coal dust into the wooden coal bunker in the lobby.

Operation Kitchen Table THE KITCHEN WAS the most important room in the house; everything happened here: meals, socialising, listening to the wireless, cooking — in short anything — including major surgery. One afternoon, when I was about five or six, I came home from school to be introduced to a surgeon, anaesthetist and a couple of nurses in the front room, the ‘best’ room. I knew something was up when I was ushered into this Victorian style parlour with its fancy floral wallpaper, borders, heavy damask curtains and blinds, a three-piece suite covered in uncut moquette, tiled fireplace with a fireguard and an ornate carpet. This room was usually kept locked. The guests were already in there, drinking tea out of the best china cups and saucers. Plates were heaped with biscuits and sponge cake, and a little silver dish piled with lumps of sugar. The table was laid out with a dazzling white linen tablecloth, stiff as cardboard, with hard ridges where it had been folded and put away after some previous festive occasion. Dominating the scene on the wall above the tiled fireplace was grampa’s enormous oil painting of Lord Roberts accepting the surrender of a whiskered Boer leader. This painting always reminded me of the label on grampa’s square ‘Camp Coffee and Chicory’ bottles — the one with a camp-looking Scotsman in full highland dress being served coffee on a silver platter by an equally camplooking turbaned Indian on some god-forsaken camp site, probably on Hampstead Heath; a disgusting brew. The ‘Leerie’ I was introduced to these sinster visitors and told, out of the blue, they had © Oscar Marzaroli (Shades of Grey, Mainstream come to perform something called a ‘Tonsillectomy’ on me. They were going to Publishing.) remove my tonsils. Not only that, but they were going to do it on the kitchen table — and they were going to do it there and then. Dumbstruck, I changed into my pyjamas and, like a lamb to the slaughter, climbed on to the table which was surrounded by gas bottles, rubber pumps and other paraphernalia of bondage and field surgery and then told to take deep breaths and count to ten while this enormous gas mask with two, circular, fly-like eyes was strapped on to my face. I can still remember the ominous hissing as the valve opened and the sickly sweet smell of gas and rubber filled

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

the mask while I watched red and green stars exploding through the blackness and fell through infinite space. I woke up the next day in the ‘hole in the wall’ bed closet like a victim of Jack the Ripper, my pyjama jacket covered in blood and bringing the stuff up by the pint. I must have lost a neckful. The good thing about it was living off creamy homemade ice cream from the local ‘Tally’s’ (the affectionate Glaswegian term for an Italian café, ice cream parlour) for the next two or three days.

The Italian Connection ITALIANS HAD CORNERED the ice cream, café and fish and chip market in Glasgow and West of Scotland in much the same way as Indians have cornered the curry market today. The first influx of Glasgow Italians came from Barga in rural Italy in the 1880s, and sold ice cream or roasted chestnuts from barrows on the streets. In the 1881 census only 328 Italians were registered in Scotland, but by 1921 this had increased to 4,500. The successful entrepreneurial Italians opened cheery cafés which stayed open late and sold ‘pokey hats’ (ice cream cones), sweets and cigarettes. Their cafés were brightly and ornately decorated in a continental and often art deco style with comfy, partitioned alcoves with red leather cushioned benches and mahogany tables that provided a comforting, cosy privacy where people, mainly youngsters, could meet away from home before going on to the cinema or the dancing. Best of all, they usually had a juke-box, the big, majestic, multi-coloured ‘Wurlitzers’ with flashing lights, coloured glass and the latest 78s with their intriguing stacking turntables. The Italian cafés offered the only attractive and sociable alternative to the pubs, which were fairly unwelcoming spit and sawdust places in those days, designed as they were mainly for single men and serious drinkers. The fish and chip shops were more Spartan, but still looked as though they had been designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Another reason for the Italians’ success was their willingness to work on Sundays, something which in the pre-WWI period drove Glasgow’s stricter sabbatarians up the wall with fury. An interesting illustration of this is the fact that the literature of the Sunday Traders’ Defence Association was published in both English and Italian. A job I disliked intensely was black-leading the kitchen range with a messy black cream called ‘Zebo’ from a toothpaste-like tube with Zebra stripes.

The ‘Tally’s’: attractive art deco shop exteriors of a Partick dairy and Italian ice cream parlours where they also sold the popular hot peas and vinegar.

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

Grate expectations: blackleading the kitchen range was an irksome, dirty, job, but somebody had to do it — me!

Another tedious Saturday chore was turning the drive wheel of the great green baroque mangle with the rhythmic push of straight arm and shoulder on the handle which projected out from the rim, and then pulling back with the whole of the upper body, while helping gran feed layers of wet washing between thick wooden rollers. A tin bath filled with clean water stood underneath and as the washing came out of the wringer it went straight into the rinse water. The washing would be rinsed until the water ran clear — and then everything went back through the mangle again. This relentless labour made me feel like a Roman galley slave. After they had gone through the mangle for the last time I would have to lower the pulley, a contraption which hung from the kitchen ceiling, help fold the heavy, wet clothes over the long wooden poles and haul it back up again. Pulleys were dangerous and could deliver a nasty or even fatal blow if the poles fell out of their cast iron sockets and hit someone on the head, as it did to grampa on one occasion. Another irritating job was holding out skeins of wool between both outstretched palms and vertical thumbs while gran wound the wool into a ball. The apartment was linoleumed throughout, which must have made life uncomfortable for the people downstairs though we were all right as we were on the top floor. Gran and grampa, however, were always considerate of other people so everyone had to wear slippers indoors so as not to disturb the neighbours below. The rent — about £9.00 a quarter which was paid to the estate’s factor in near-bye Byres Road — was covered by my grampa’s army pension of about £10.00 a quarter. I loved going to the Factor’s office with gran to pay the rent. Afterwards we would go down the ‘Tally’s’ at the bottom of Byres Road, the University Café, where in winter I would get a threepenny plate of hot peas with pepper and vinegar or, in summer, a ‘McCallum’, a creamy home-made ice cream covered in raspberry sauce. ‘Pea-souper’ fogs were another phenomenon of the highly polluted Glasgow of the early to mid-1950s. A dense, damp and acrid smog the colour of ‘pea brae’, the thickened water in which the peas had been boiled, would hang heavy and motionless in the airless city streets, ‘rubbing its back upon the window panes’, while people slowly edged their way through the khaki-yellow fog with hankies clutched over their mouths and noses, barely able to see beyond their outstretched hands. These pea-soupers, which lasted many days, brought the city to a standstill and killed a lot of people from heart and lung diseases, ended after 1955 with the

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

introduction of the Clean Air Act, which restricted the use of coal on domestic fires. Excitement also came in the guise of a trip in the tramcar to the ‘Barrows’, in the East End of Glasgow. The ‘Barrows’, in the Calton district of Glasgow, was a labyrinth of colourful, bustling, cavernous souks of treasure-laden stalls, indoors, upstairs and outdoors, which sold clothing from kilts to kimonos, domestic goods, paintings, sculptures — every conceivable piece of arcane ephemeral tat under the sun. The more Hogarthian ‘Paddy’s Market’ nearby sold fourth- and fifth-hand clothes and goods in unsorted colourful piles on the ground in the cobbled lane or from makeshift stalls in the adjoining railway arches. The friendly patter of the stallholders would sometimes sound aggressive to a non-Glaswegian. If someone ugly disputed the price or the quality of the merchandise they would be met with banter like “Whit’re you gaunny dae fur a face when King Kong wants his arse back?’

Houston, We Have A Problem… MY BEST FRIEND was ‘Houston’ Brodie, who lived across the road from me. Why he was called ‘Houston’ when his real name was John was a mystery I never inquired about. He was also his granny’s ‘golden boy’, made famous on one occasion when she fed him ‘Tiddles’ cat food in mistake for tinned meat and ran out into the street screaming ‘A’ve killed ma golden boy’. Our mums had been best friends, going to the dancing together, until they fell out. I suspect it was over a man, and I have an idea Houston’s mum, Jenny Brodie, thought my mum had been making passes at ‘her man’. Who knows? Anyway, my playing with Houston was frowned upon, but it didn’t make much difference to us. Paddy’s Market. One occasion we were in his front parlour hanging out of the bay window on © Oscar Marzaroli (Shades of Grey, Mainstream the second floor when one of the ‘rag and bone’ men who used to salvage and Publishing.) reprocess household waste announced his arrival in the street with his unique bugle call, ambling along with his horse and cart calling out for old rags and whatever else we had which could be recycled. He had balloons and goldfish to exchange for unwanted household adornments so we shouted down at him to stop while we ran to the mantelpiece and display cabinets and stripped them of brass candlesticks, ‘wally dugs’ and any other piece of bric-a-brac we could find and threw them out of the window at the delighted tinker below who left us with two wee goldfish in a jam jar and a couple of balloons. Houston’s mum was raging when she came home and found out what we’d done. My socialisation mirrored that of most Presbyterian West of Scotland working-class boys growing up in the 1950s. It was a street culture which

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

provided my introduction to the democratic decision-making process, the ‘wan potato’ method, of electing the ‘het’. This was done by forming a circle with our fists outstretched with one person counting down a fist to the chant:— ‘Wan potato, two potato, three potato four, Five potato, six potato, seven potato more.’ The person touched on the word ‘more’ put that fist behind their back and the count would start again until only one person remained with an outstretched fist. That person was ‘het’. Other variations were: — ‘Eenty teenty haligolum, Throwin’ totties up the lum, Santa Claus got wan in the bum, you ur oot!’ ‘Wan, two, three-a-leerie Ah saw Mrs Peerie Sittin’ on her Bumbaleerie Eatin’ chocolate biscuits, you ur oot!’

The Games People Play WE MADE THE MOST of good weather; our playgrounds were the streets and backcourts. Street games included ‘peever’ (hopscotch) which involved manoeuvring a flat polish tin across chalked and numbered squares on the pavement on one leg: ‘dreeping’ dykes’, climbing over the high walls which separated the back courts of the tenements then lowering Rag and Bone yourself down by your hands and dropping the last few feet, or scrambling over Man: the first high spiked palings; and, of course, hide-and- seek, shops, ‘release the box’, recyclers. ‘hunch cuddy hunch’ and ‘kick the can’, tying door handles together, tugging © Oscar Marzaroli (Shades of Grey, Mainstream bell-pulls and running away, spinning round like whirling dervishes until we Publishing.) got so dizzy we collapsed to the ground in a stupor. Cricket was played in the backcourts with the stumps chalked onto the tenement walls. Cadging lifts on passing midden wagons or Jimmy Stewart the coalman’s cart, hanging from the ends of passing open-backed lorries, swarming in and out of the close-mouths, clattering up and down the stairs, sliding down banisters, moving in gangs from court to court, midden or ‘midgie’ raking — rummaging through the backcourt rubbish bins looking for discarded goods we could use ourselves or sell to the rag and bone man in exchange for balloons or goldfish, despite dire warnings from granny about catching diphtheria; leaping from roof to roof across the derelict brick Anderson air-raid shelters and wash-houses of the back courts. We also played with metal hoops called girds and cleeks. Cleeks were the metal batons with which we manoeuvred the gird and kept it spinning along smoothly over bumpy cobblestones and across tramlines. Occasionally we would venture down to the ‘coup’, the rubbish dump by the Clyde at the back of the Sick Children’s Hospital, and search for ‘treasure’.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Particularly valued were the discarded enamelled and decorative tin hearths which were placed in front of the kitchen ranges to catch any burning embers which fell out of the fireplace. These we would bend into sledge-like shapes and then spend a good part of the day careering down steep improvised toboggan runs down the sides of the dump to the edge of the Clyde. When it rained, we sheltered, noisily, in the musty narrow back closes or close mouths, the ‘stairheids’ avoiding, where possible, the ‘dunnies’, the dank, ominous, malodorous smell of mildew and decay rising from the pitch black, tenement basements which resembled the entrances to hell (as described by the discombobulated narrator in the sinister allegories of Howard Phillips Lovecraft). To gaze into these black holes where atavistic terrors and mephitic vapours lingered was like staring into the emblematic Abyss mentioned by Nietzsche, of which the tortured philosopher said so cryptically, the deeper you look into it, the deeper it looks into you.

Chapel Perilous WHENEVER YOU MET someone new and went up to their house for them, you automatically checked to see if there were any Catholic ornaments, pictures and other faith-propping objects about the house: the Sacred Heart of Jesus on Abilone shell, the Virgin Mary dressed in rhinestones or ‘instructive’ compassion- and fearinducing depictions of noble pathos and martyrdom — roastings, disembowelments, mutilations, stonings, impalements — or any Backcourt games. visible reference to Celtic Football Club. If we felt particularly brave we would sneak into the local Chapel — St Peter’s, in Hyndland Street — and fill our water pistols with Holy Water from the font. This was a gesture of supreme defiance at the Holy Roman Catholic Church. To us this was like Sir Lancelot entering the Chapel Perilous, the haunt of chalice-swinging priests chanting sinister unintelligible mantras and invocations to The Dark Lord in the shimmering candlelight, shadowed by their unspeakable acolytes who fed on the immortal souls of Protestants: — ‘Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur, et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per Prophetas. Et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.’ It was the anteroom to the ‘bad fire’. At least we could enter a Chapel freely; Catholics, on the other hand, weren’t allowed to set foot inside the door of a Protestant church without a letter from their Bishop.

A Tramcar Named Auchenshuggle ONCE — IT MUST have been round about Guy Fawkes time — a gang of us boarded the Auchenshuggle-Dalmuir tramcar in the driving November rain

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

The Old Straight Track: tramcar on Dumbarton Road, looking west past the Rosevale Cinema towards Whiteinch.

after seeing some old war film in the Western cinema. Under our jackets we clutched water-filled balloons, bangers, rockets and a milk bottle, our makeshift grenade launcher. Trams, or ‘shooglies’ as they were known, had a driver’s cabin at each end and, when the terminus was reached, the driver would change the points, and the conductor or ‘clippie’ reversed the seats, they would change compartments and the tram would then trundle off back the way it had come. We scrambled up the spiral staircase and along the top deck to the small compartment directly above where the driver stood manipulating his polished brass lever. This front section of the upstairs deck was our top choice: it felt just like being on the bridge of a spaceship, or in this case a tank. A door cut it off from the main top deck where we could sing or make as much noise as we liked without disturbing anyone other than the driver below. As the tall orange, green and glass-sided ‘caur’ built up speed, its wheels grated on the metal rails as it ‘shoogled’, lurched and whined to a noisy crescendo along the grey cobbled old straight track that was Dumbarton Road. When no one was looking we released the leather strap which opened the front upper compartment window and fired off the rockets down the centre of Dumbarton Road, our faces demonically illuminated in the rockets’ trail of whooshing sparks and the phosphorous red of the streetlights. Water-filled balloons and bangers followed, exploding left and right among the homeward bound pedestrians and bemused bystanders. It was a replay of General Leclerc’s liberation of Paris — except our armoured tramcar was liberating Whiteinch not the Place de la République! We were forced to abandon our mission when the now apopleptic driver tumbled what was happening, screeched the tram to a halt, came roaring up the stairs with an equally angry conductor, forcing us into a hasty tactical retreat back to Partick. Our natural boundaries were the River Kelvin in the north-east and east — Great Western Road and the Botanical Gardens with its enormous, humid Victorian glass hothouses, the Kibble Palace built in 1872, in which grew exotic great ferns and tropical rainforests, down busy Byres Road to the Clyde with Kelvingrove Park as our no-man’s land. Our western frontier was the Crow Road, with the River Clyde and Govan on the southern bank. We were dressed either in below-the-knee grey flannel or short cotton trousers, depending on the weather and the occasion. These crutch-crunchers were held up with either a colourful two-tone snake ‘S’ belt from the Co-op drapers or braces. In summer, we’d wear sleeveless pullovers, open-necked shirts with tightly-rolled up sleeves, cotton socks, Galilean trainers (round fronted Clark’s sandals with ankle straps of hard brown leather with cut out designs in the front for ventilation; most shops had special X-ray machines to make sure they fitted comfortably), or white sandshoes. These were a sort of

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

proto-trainers with canvas tops and cahoutchie rubber soles, similar to Spanish alpargatas. In winter it would be the same except for the sou’ wester oilskins and hats which looked as though they had been designed for a lunatic asylum for rubber fetishists — and the footwear, which would be Wellingtons, or tackety boots with soles covered in metal studs. In the raucous backcourts, folk down on their luck would sing for people to throw down some change while hungry weans would shout up to ‘mithers’ and grannies to ‘throw doon a piece ‘n’ jam’ or a ‘piece ‘n’ sugar’ (a slice of bread thinly coated with margarine and sprinkled with sugar), which would arch down from tenement windows wrapped in waxed ‘Milanda’ pan loaf paper to keep it dry in case it fell in a puddle. This practice disappeared with the redevelopment of Glasgow in the late 1950s and early 1960s and the move by tenement dwellers to the new multi-rise blocks of flats in Castlemilk, Cumbernauld, Drumchapel, Easterhouse and East Kilbride.

Penny Caramels THE DAY SWEETIE rationing finally ended in 1953 was memorable; from then on, depending on how much money we had from parents, returned lemonade bottles or wedding ‘scrambles’, our problem was transformed from near sweetie famine to one of ostentatious 1953: the day consumption: McCowans big penny caramels with their distinctive green, sweetie rationing white and red wrappers, a bar of Highland Toffee, gobstoppers, pokes of ended. sherbert with liquorice straws, swizzles — or cinnamon sticks to smoke. © Hulton Getty Images If we felt particularly well-off we would share a bottle of Barr’s Irn-Bru, promoted by the cartoon adventures of ‘Ba-Bru’, a turbaned wee Indian boy and Sandy, his kilted mate, who spent their days hunting for a fix of their favourite rust-coloured drink. Maybe it was the trace elements from this liquid refreshment which was responsible for the sophisticated sarcasm, which passed for irony in the West of Scotland and which gave the drink its name. We got our ‘messages’, our shopping, at old-fashioned grocers like Cochrane’s, Massey’s, Templeton’s and Lipton’s; the only supermarket at the time was the Co-op. Here men in starched white coats would serve you from across a long mahogany counter, beside which there was a chair for the next in line while they waited their turn. Service was slower as fewer items were prepacked. For example, a large barrel shaped mound of butter sat on the counter and your order was levered off with two wooden spatulas which patted your order into shape before it was wrapped in a sheet of greaseproof paper. Cheese was sliced from a similar shaped mountain by means of what looked like a Thugee’s garrote. Eggs were sold loose and the shop attendant would hold these up, one by one, to an electric bulb to test their freshness. Most foodstuffs

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

were sold loose in brown paper ‘pokes’, which meant a certain percentage of damaged goods which could be sold off cheaper, such as broken biscuits and ‘chipped’ fruit. I was addicted to standing at the top of the stairs at Partick Cross underground station, just off the Dumbarton Road in tiny Dalcross Pass, and inhaling, deeply, the spine-tingling aroma which wafted upwards on the warm subterranean wind whenever a train approached the narrow platform. The smell was an alchemic distillation of rat and human urine, oil and grease all flash-cooked by electrical sparks from the Subway motors. The artist who drew the original Bisto kids advert must have got his inspiration from the Partick Cross subway sniffers. Granny worked in a ‘home bakery’ at the bottom of Hyndland Street. Often when I was out playing with my pals we would congregate, like coyotes, around the shop doorway sniffing the mingled savoury and sweet warm aromas that came out of the shop. We would watch hungrily as the assistants unloaded the trays of cakes and bread into deep baskets until, to get rid of us, gran would come out with a large slab of steaming, square apple tart with shortcrust pastry lightly dusted with powdered sugar to share between us. Breakfast consisted either of porridge or a boiled egg The Glasgow and a slice of Milanda pan loaf with butter or margarine. Lunch was at the top Subway: of the day when we came home from school for a bowl of broth, which gran Partick Cross. always had on the go on the kitchen range, mince ‘n’ tatties, stews with dumplings or square sausage, buttery mashed potatoes and onions. Tea would be potatoes with boiled cabbage, corned beef, Spam or, occasionally, potted ‘heid’ or Gran’s home made cow’s tongue, a monstrous looking country delicacy which had been boiled and pressed under a flat iron. For Sunday ‘dinners’ we would very occasionally be treated to a chicken or a roast of some description.

Radio Times WE ROAMED THE streets as soon as we got back from school until bedtime, which was about 8 or 9 o’clock, when we would be shouted at from the tenement windows: ‘the ba’s oan the slates’ or ‘come oot, come oot whaurever ye ur, the game’s a boagey, there’s a man in the loaby!’ were some of the cries that went up whenever one of us was called in for their tea or there was a crisis. Anyone hiding up a close or ‘doon a dunny’, the dark dungeon-like tenement basements, knew the game was over and we had to pull stumps and go in for tea. Laboriously we would traipse up long flights of stairs to a warm kitchen for a last cup of tea and bread and jam. If it had been raining or I hadn’t been allowed out in punishment for some misdemeanour, I would sit, mesmerised

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

by the flickering red coals of the fire in the grate of the kitchen range, toasting a slice of pan loaf on the end of a long-handled brass fork, listened attentively to The McFlannels on a Friday night, or It’s All Yours, with Jimmy Logan and his catchphrase “sausages is the boys”, The Goon Show, Educating Archie, Take It From Here, The Clitheroe Kid on the Light Programme; or the exciting game shows and The Ovalteenies on a Sunday with ‘Uncle Clarence ‘on Radio Luxembourg, when we twiddled the knobs of the big valve wireless with its strangely named stations. Our streetwise urban culture, psychology and ‘patter’ was acquired by absorbing the things we overheard, observed and had hammered into us. I was brought up to be God-fearing, polite, courteous and well behaved, to the point, I felt, of obsequiousness and servility. Whenever I was out with my gran or my mum I would have to walk on the outside, nearest the road, and when we met her friends in the street I would have to doff my cap, say how-do-you-do and then not speak until spoken to. There are times when social deference and respect is appropriate, as in the case of deserved individual merit or normal polite behaviour, but I resented the implication in these social protocols that I was somehow ‘inferior’ because of my age. The problem was striking a balance between maintaining the proper regard people should have for one another — and youth for old age — and the healthy irreverence which defies class-based deference. When adults stopped to gossip on the street, we had to stand in impatient silence. If we fidgeted or showed the slightest bit of cheek or petulance we’d get a clout on the back of the head and a promise of worse when we got home. When a funeral procession passed we would stop by the kerbside, I would remove my cap and hold it to my left breast, facing the road impassively until the cortège had passed. Armistice Day each year was an eerie experience. On the 11th of November at 11 am everything and everyone stopped as though their clockwork had run out at the same time, frozen into a Lowry-type city landscape, in memory of those killed in the wars. Pedestrians stood stock still, with men, their heads uncovered, standing firmly to attention. Nothing moved — cars, buses, tramcars, lorries, horse and carts — everything stopped where it was, even in the middle of the road, until the end of two minutes silence was signalled by the tolling of church bells and the wailing of sirens and shipyard horns.

A Bunch o’ Comedians OUR IMAGINATIONS WERE fired and our wit honed by the pantomimes and variety shows which my gran and grampa took me to almost every other week it seemed – the Empire, Pavilion, the Theatre Royal, the Alhambra, with its Five Past Eight Revue, the King’s Theatre, The Metropole in Stockwell Street.

Hyndland Street: looking north from Dumbarton Rd with the tall steeple of Dowanhill Church in the distance.

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

The entertainers who made us laugh and contributed to my generation’s appreciation of repartee, droll wry humour and irony included Dave Willis, Rikki Fulton, Jack Milroy, Jimmy Logan and Harry Gordon, Will Fyffe, Lex McLean, Tommy Morgan, Stanley Baxter, Duncan MacRae, and, in my estimation, towering above all the others, the master of surreal ‘Kelvinside’ banter Chic Murray – the ‘Tall Droll’ and his partner Maidie: — ‘This friend of mine had a terrible upbringing. When his mother lifted him up to feed him, his father rented the pram out. Then when they came into money later, his mother hired a woman to push the pram — and he’s been pushed for money ever since! I asked him once what his ambition was and he replied it was to have an ambition. In the end tragedy struck — as he lay on his deathbed he confessed to three murders. Then he got better.’ ‘I got up and crossed the landing and went down the stairs. Mind you, if there had been no stairs there I wouldn’t even have attempted it.’ ‘I went to the butchers to buy a leg of lamb. “Is it Scotch?” I asked. “Why?” the butcher asked. “Are you going to talk to it or eat it?” ‘In that case, have you got any wild duck?’ “No,” he said, “but I’ve got one I could aggravate for you.”’ ‘I rang the bell of a small bed-and breakfast place, whereupon a lady appeared at an outside window. ”What do you want?“ she asked. ‘I want to stay here,’ I replied. “Well, stay there then,” she said and banged the window shut.’ ‘My wife went to a beauty parlour and got a mud pack. For two days she looked nice, then the mud fell off. She’s a classy girl though, at least all her tattoos are spelt right.’ ‘Man rings the bell late at night and a woman opens the door in her nightie. Funny place for a door.’ Hair raising stories of the Glasgow Empire audience and visiting English comedians abound. Jimmy Logan tells of Morecombe and Wise arriving at the theatre when the Corporation was digging up the street outside. Outside the stage door was a deep trench which Eric Morecambe spotted on getting out of the taxi. He said: ‘They’re digging our grave and we haven’t even done the act’. On another occasion Ernie had just completed his big number, to complete silence in the auditorium, when Eric walked on. ‘Dear Gawd almighty’ arose a lone voice from the auditorium. ‘Therr ur two o’ them.’ On one occasion Roy Castle’s multi-talented act — he The ‘Tall Droll’: sang, danced, played the trumpet and was a comedian to boot — dragged on a Chic Murray and bit too long for his Glasgow audience, one of whom interjected during a silence Maidie. which followed his finale: ‘Is there no end to this man’s fucking versatility?’

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Travel In Mind TRAVEL BROADENED OUR minds as well as our horizons. There were no such things as foreign holidays then. If a friend went to Australia, New Zealand or Canada you never saw them again. A package holiday abroad in those days meant, for Protestants, an educational tour of Palestine and the ‘Holy Land’ with the minister to see where Jesus was born, lived and died. For Catholics, it meant a pilgrimage to Lourdes in France or Fatima in Portugal where apparitions of the Virgin Mary had appeared to daft local ‘weans’, whose stories got out of hand, thanks to the far-sighted parish priest and bishop. These trips to Catholic grottos and shrines were motivated to a large extent either by an ennobling sense of reason-sullying sanctimony or pure unenlightened self-interest on the part of the pilgrims; the hope being that the Virgin Mary would alleviate suffering and hardship by putting in a good word on their behalf with her Boy’s Father. From the Catholic Church’s point of view it was good PR and a great merchandising opportunity, from travel and accommodation to the sale of cheap bakelite crucifixes, plaster statues, relics and other iconographic tat depicting the 5000 and more saints who would also intercede with the Almighty on your behalf in return for Lourdes: where a prayer, a candle or some flowers on his or her particular Saint’s day. nobody throws away My mate, Andy McGowan, went on one of these pilgrimages to Lourdes in their false teeth. 1958, on the Centenary of the Virgin Mary’s visitation to Bernadette, the pubescent peasant girl who started the whole thing. The trip cost Andy’s mum £26.00, which was an awful lot of money in those days and which she saved by putting aside 10 shillings each week for a year. It was the first time any of them had ever visited a foreign country so they were excited, even though all they did was go on one religious procession after another. Finally, one day they got to the grotto where the Virgin Mary allegedly manifested herself. Hanging above this holy spot were discarded walking sticks and crutches and when Andy asked why these were there, he was told people cured by the holy waters had left them. Andy, in his innocence, asked why there were no wooden legs or glass eyes and the next thing he knew he had been knocked to the ground by an almighty blow on the side of his head by one of the teachers and accused of blasphemy — all this in full view of hundreds of people. As he said, it was a good job he didn’t ask why there were no false teeth as well.

Transports Of Delight ANY MONEY LEFT over after penny caramels, ‘Spangles’ or sherbert tubes, we would spend on tram rides to the end of the different lines, to strange sounding places such as Yoker, Auchenshuggle, Rouken Glen or Milngavie.

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

Gourock Esplanade: the enclosed seawater pools were freezing.

Milngavie tram terminus was a popular destination, as from there we were two minutes from the countryside. Here we could explore the woods, clamber over long-neglected dry stone dykes and broom-covered slopes towards Carbeth Muir. Up here, above the city, there was a tranquil world of yellow, brown and green moorland, copses and burns, sun-dappled trees shimmering in the wind off the Clyde, ranks of red-brown or green bracken standing stiffly, and golddusted, scented broom swaying in the breeze. For the Glasgow Fair, the traditional mid-July Glasgow holiday fortnight, we would usually go ‘doon the watter’ by sooty, noisy, steam trains from the Central Station or the broodingly Gothic St Enoch Station. We travelled in corridorless but comfy compartments decorated with sepia coloured views of Scotland through the green fields of Renfrewshire to one or other of the three Clyde ports of Weymss Bay, Greenock or Gourock. From Gourock station we would walk along Kempock Street, named after a ‘Granny Kempock’, an alleged witch, to rooms in an impressive red sandstone tenement building on the Esplanade. Our bedroom window had a spectacular view of Kilcreggan and the Cowal Hills across the Clyde. Perhaps because of the number of boating tragedies and superstitious seamen in Gourock, the town had been the scene of major witch trials in the seventeenth century and a number of alleged witches were burned to death, including a young girl who confessed that she had made a compact with the devil to throw the Kempock Stone, near the pier, into the Clyde and wreck vessels. Occasionally we would alternate with Wemyss Bay, further down the coast on the Renfrewshire/Ayrshire border, Largs with its magnificently continental Nardini’s Ice Cream Parlour, Fairlie, Seamill, Ardrossan or Saltcoats. At other times of the year mum, granny and grampa would take me by train to Gourock pier and from there we would embark on squat paddle steamers with great thundering engines to seaside towns on the other side of the Clyde such as Dunoon, Rothesay, Millport, Brodick or Tighnabruaich. Grampa would quickly disappear below for a pint of ‘heavy’ and a ‘dram’ while mum and gran went for a cup of strong, black MacBraynes’ tea, a scone and French ‘fancies’ in the wood-panelled lounge on small round tables with brass rails to prevent the plates falling off in rough weather. I preferred to remain on deck as the fresh salty sea breeze helped waft away the oppressive cocktail of tar, oil and hemp mooring rope smells. I was also fascinated by the engine room with its revolving brass wheels and pounding shafts which you could watch from the deck directly above the paddles. We were followed by an army of screeching seagulls and a churning white foam wake stretched far behind us. There were also ‘bus runs’ and ‘mystery’ tours into the Highlands and the Trossachs to visit places such as the Brig o’ Turk where the last wolf in Scotland

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

is supposed to have been killed, or places made famous by the old tartanic myth-maker Sir Walter Scott, in The Lady of the Lake and in Rob Roy. The bus would stop for bladder and bowel relief, leg stretching, lunch or high tea in places like Balquhidder, Aberfoyle, Callander or Fort William. The only mystery about them was that no one ever knew where they were going until everyone had paid and was securely on the bus at Killermont Street or Buchanan Street Bus Stations — and it was then too late to change your mind.

Old Torry MUM AND I were also going backwards and forwards to Aberdeen up until about 1951 or 1952, to where my Christie grandparents lived at 11 Wood Street, in the heart of the fishing community of Old Torry, on the south bank of the River Dee. My last recollections were of them in the small upstairs bedroom, together in bed, Grampa in his pyjamas and Gran in her flannelette nightie. What struck me as odd was that two apparently healthy and cheerful people should be in bed in the middle of the day. The Christies had lived in Wood Street since the 1890s when they had moved, along with many other closely linked fisher families — named Wood, Masson, Leiper and Lees — from Skateraw, a ‘fishtoun’ a few miles down the coast in Kincardineshire. Skateraw had been their home since at least the 1630s and most of them were buried among the grey ruins The Christies of of the 7th century churchyard of St Mary of the Storms, impressively located on Wood St., Torry, a rocky headland of the cliffs at Cowie on the north side of Stonehaven Bay. The Aberdeen, 1916. year before my paternal grandparents moved to Torry, in 1891, there were 49 families living in Skateraw — 22 of them named Christie! There was a strong sense of community, particularly as I had so many cousins. Dad had 14 brothers and sisters and all had big families. We would play in the quiet, sparkling, light grey granite streets, narrow lanes and the back courts of the fisher cottages and two-storey granite tenements, up by the Battery overlooking the harbour, down on the sandy foreshore by the old pier or go down to the fish market or Torry Dock to see my dad’s boat come in. Once, when the boat’s compass required orienting, he took me out on the trawler around Torry harbour and into Aberdeen Bay where he let me take the wheel and sound the ship’s horn as we steamed past Wood Street.

Just Another Saturday… WE DIDN’T HAVE television until I was 13. I was 7 when I first saw TV at a posh pal’s house in Caird Drive. There were only about 2 million sets in the whole of Britain at the time. The occasion was the Coronation and Hillary’ and Tensing’s conquest of Everest, both of which are jumbled together in my memory. The world was brought to us through the cinema, the ‘pictures’. We weren’t

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

The Box: TV with its snowy pictures and rolling screen interference only became popular after the Coronation in 1953. No programmes were broadcast between 6 and 7 in the evening until 1957 to make children go to bed more readily, in the belief the night’s entertainment was over. © The Ronald Grant Archive

movie-besotted escapists, but the ‘flicks’ did fill gaps in our social calendar and provide a magic window on another world. Our local Cinema Paradiso was the fleapit Western Cinema in Dumbarton Road, near the F&F Ballroom at Partick Cross. Entrance to the Saturday matinee was 6d, six scrounged jam jars or two screwtop lemonade bottles. There were no polythene bags in those days so we had to carry these carefully, three to a hand, all the way down Hyndland Street and a hundred yards or so along Dumbarton Road. The Western management was not very canny because this glass revenue was kept in crates outside the back door of the cinema, where everyone simply swarmed around helping themselves and took the bottles back to the cashier’s kiosk where the recycling would begin again. The more elegant cinemas in our parish were the Tivoli up the Crow Road, the Rosevale further west along Dumbarton Road and the Grosvenor in Byres Road, the home of the ABC Minors on a Saturday morning. Cinemas changed their programmes three times a week and showed two films nightly. There was a Pathé newsreel with its raucous opening and closing cockerel, trailers, maybe an educational government propaganda film, a couple of cartoons, a two-reeler B film and the main feature, the ‘big film’. On Saturday mornings there were Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello and Jerry Lewis comedies, two or three cartoons and one-reelers such as The Bowery Boys, or serials such as Rocketman, Flash Gordon or Tarzan of the Apes. Unlike the young Stanley Baxter, the Scottish entertainer who traced his later career to a penchant for dressing up as the platinum blondes in the Thirties and Forties musical extravaganzas he had seen on Glasgow cinema screens, the ‘big’ films which effortlessly moved our imaginations were mainly gangster, western and war movies. Baxter wanted to dress up as Myrna Loy or Judy Garland, whereas our preference had been to dress up as Fess Parker and Audie Murphy. The war had been over for five years, but it still had a huge psychological effect on all of us. Perhaps more so, as we were the first children that century not to be called up and have to fight. It seemed as though a great adventure had passed us by. Friends’ fathers or brothers who had fought in WW II or the Korean War and came back were held in awe for their bravery and suffering. After all, we had shared their experiences by proxy in the pages of the war comics we collected and read avidly and the films we watched, enthralled — The Sands of Iwo Jima, Reach for the Sky, Carve Her Name With Pride, The Dambusters, The Colditz Story. Films also worked for us on an allegorical level, as well as providing snapshots of some historical reality. They were fables and parables whose sub-

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

text was that for evil to be eliminated from the world it must first be resisted and challenged. Life for us was unambiguous: black and white, like the films and newsreels we saw — good against evil. Our moral tutors included John Wayne, Audie Murphy, James Stewart, Jeff Chandler, Robert Mitchum, Humphrey Bogart and Stewart Grainger. The bad guy was usually Jack Palance. When the cavalry appeared in the nick of time to save the ‘good guys’, racing across the plains, bugles sounding and pennants fluttering, we stopped fidgeting and lolling about on the seats and stood up to cheer and throw empty ice cream cartons at the screen. The near hysterical pandemonium which broke out in the auditorium so scared the manager that he would stop the reel, turn up the lights and stomp about on stage threatening to throw us all out unless we behaved ourselves.

High Art IT WAS NOT all philistinism. We had access to ‘high art’ in the nearby Kelvingrove Art Gallery, which we visited regularly to be enthralled by aboriginal artefacts and paintings of naked women, or snigger at the suits of armour with huge lance-like codpieces. Some appreciation of art did rub off on us; we were awe-struck by the eerie mix of light and shade and plunging perspective of the gallery’s recently acquired ‘Christ on the Cross’ by Dali. Its dark alcove up on the first floor corridor of this gothic cathedral was always one of our regular stations of the cultural cross. There were also the occasional school outings to the Citizens’ Theatre in the Gorbals. I remember, vividly, the impact John Cairney, playing Hamlet, had on me. I often wondered why he never became a star; he certainly had the charisma. Like Scobie and Melissa in Laurence Durrell’s Balthazar: — ‘In the golden light of those Sundays they live on, bright still with the colours that memory gives to those who enrich our lives by tears or by laughter — unaware themselves that they have given us anything.’ Early Saturday afternoons were spent hanging around churches and chapels in the hope of a ‘scramble’, a wedding ritual where the groom throws the loose change from his pockets into the street for the local kids to fight over. For those of us who survived, it was an easy way of supplementing our Saturday spending money for a ‘poke’ of broken biscuits or a quarter of ‘soor plooms’ from the sweet shop. The rest of the day we would mooch around the backcourts of the neighbourhood tenements, getting free rides across the Clyde on the Govan Car Ferry or the smaller passenger puffers until they got fed up with us and marooned us on the Govan side, in ‘Indian’ territory; or having suicidal ‘hurls’ down precipitous Gardner Street on home-made bogies

Saturday morning pictures. (Bottom: The Western Cinema on Dumbarton Road looking towards Partick Cross. The photograph is of a Saturday morning ‘jeely jaur’ session, probably around 1956. The ‘big’ film is ‘The Jalopy’ with Jerry Lewis.

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

engineered from wooden fruit boxes and pram wheels — with our Clarks’ sandals for brakes.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday!

The Clyde Ferry: Partick to Govan — and back again (if you were lucky). © Oscar Marzaroli (Shades of Grey, Mainstream Publishing.)

OUR SPIRITUAL AND ethical backbones were stiffened by the long — up to an hour and a half sometimes — Church of Scotland services which we attended twice on the Sabbath. Here we would experience the interminable tedium of extempore prayers in uncomfortable pews, punctuated by hymns and long pauses for inner reflection relieved only by surreptitious sucking of sweeties or ‘pan drops’ under the baleful gaze of the ‘meenister’. After an hour or so, we children would be marched out to the adjoining hall for half an hour of Sunday School to listen to biblical adventure stories and bloody battles, or be indoctrinated in the basic tenets of the faith, threatened with hellfire and eternal damnation, and improved by dramatic presentations of the Gospel stories or missionary tales about the ubiquitous Blantyre folk hero David Livingstone, Mary Slessor in Nigeria and someone called McKay of Uganda. We may not have learned much from a religious perspective, but from the point of view of imparting social and ethical values I’m sure it did us a power of good The rest of the Scottish Sabbath was gloomy, Victorian and purgatorial; frivolous entertainment and unnecessary travel was out. We read, walked in the park in our Sunday best and listened to the wireless. Pubs closed on a Sunday, as did all the shops, and the only way an adult could get a drink was as a bona fide traveller in a hotel. Nor were any sporting fixtures allowed. Grampa would sit by the range puffing away on his pipe, belching out vaporous wraiths of smoke as he leafed through The Sunday Post or The Weekly News, while I marvelled at that week’s exciting exploits of ‘Oor Wullie’ or ‘The Broons’ and gran would be totally absorbed in her knitting, purling and casting off or engrossed in The People’s Friend. The hypnotic spell of the quick clicking of the needles or the gentle hiss of the kettle ‘on the glimmer’ on the range would occasionally be broken by the stentorian voice of an evangelist or lay preacher in the streets below hectoring the net curtained tenement windows.

‘Lordy, Lordy ah didnae ken...’ MIND YOU, the disciplined Presbyterian Sabbath had improved a bit since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before Scotsmen had begun to liberate themselves from the tyranny of the Scottish Kirk, whose closest parallel was the Spanish Inquisition — without the burnings and torture. Under the testificat system, for example, no one could move from one parish to another without a certificate of good behaviour signed by the minister. It was a sin to travel in a Roman Catholic country; let Catholics into pubs or inns; hold

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

a market on a Saturday or Monday, because both days were close to Sunday; allow a Scots woman to serve in a tavern; permit a Scots woman to live alone or live with unmarried sisters; travel from one town to another on a Sunday; visit friends on a Sunday; water the garden; shave; exercise a horse; walk in the fields or meadows; sit by the door enjoying fine weather; sleep before the duties of the day had been completed; swim; relish one’s food — or, more tellingly, to want to advance oneself in life. As late as the eighteenth century Scottish farmers believed that weeds were a consequence of Adam’s Fall. God sent them to punish Adam’s descendants for his wickedness. To pull up dock leaves, nettles or wild mustard was to defy God! They would not use fans for winnowing grain, because the Bible said ‘the wind bloweth where it listeth’. The fans caused ‘the Devil’s wind’ and took power out of the hands of the Almighty, so they beat the grains with flails and winnowed away the chaff by throwing it into the air. The Scottish Presbyterian Church also disapproved of sex on the grounds that it might lead to dancing! It was all folk dancing then, anyway, The contradictions and tension between the oppressive nature of Scottish presbyterian society and its proclaimed egalitarianism often made me wonder if there was something I was missing.

‘...Ay, weel, ye ken the noo!’ THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE from a sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, preached by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), scholar, preacher and president of Princeton College (now Princeton University), provides a flavour of what Presbyterian congregations and communities had to contend with from their ministers, even as late as the 1950s in some areas. Edwards is considered, historically, to be the most important Puritan theologian, at least in America; the Inquisition could no doubt have done with a few like him. There’s Protestantism and Protestantism! ‘They [sinners] deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God's using His power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment on their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, ‘Cut it down. why cumbereth it the ground?’ Luke xiii, 7. The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God’s mere will, that holds it back. ‘They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God that is expressed

Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John, Kelvingrove Art Galleries (bought for £8,200 in 1952). © Kelvingrove Art Galleries

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

in the torments of hell: and the reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment is not because God, in whose power they are, is not then very angry with them; as angry as He is with many of those miserable creatures that He is now tormenting in hell, and do there feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath. Yea, God is a great deal wore angry with great numbers that are now on earth; yea, doubtless, with many that are now in this congregation, that, it may be, are at ease and quiet, than He is with many of those that are now in the flames of hell. ‘So that it is not because God is unmindful of their wicked-ness and does not resent it that He does not let loose His hand and cut them off. God is not altogether such a one as them, though they imagine Him to be so. ‘The wrath of God burns against them; their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared; the fire is made ready; the furnace is now hot; ready to receive them; the flames rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet and held over them. and the pit hath opened her mouth under them. ‘The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much an one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; His wrath towards you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes than the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended Him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet it is nothing but His hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; it is ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep; and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up; there is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God provoking His pure eyes by your sinful, wicked manner of attending His solemn worship; yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell. ‘O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell: you hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment. ‘Consider this, you that are here present, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fierceness of His anger implies that He will inflict wrath without any pity.' So don’t say nobody told you!

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Divine Authority THE SCOTTISH PRESBYTERIAN Divines, like Machiavelli in The Discourses, clearly understood that political power could only take root and flourish when it was perceived to be endowed with divine authority: ‘And, as the observance of divine worship is the cause of greatness in republics, so the neglect of it is the cause of their ruin. Because where the fear of God is wanting, it comes about either that a kingdom is ruined, or that it is kept going by fear of a prince, which makes up for the lack of religion. And because princes are short-lived, it will happen that when a kingdom loses its prince, it loses also the virtue of its prince. Hence, kingdoms which depend on the virtue of one man do not last long, because they lose their virtue when his life is spent, and it seldom happens that it is revived by his successor.’ (The Discourses, 1.11) Machiavelli saw in religion a tool of state, the source of legitimacy and the means by which the State transcended the lives of individual and mortal governors: ‘Numa, finding the people ferocious and desiring to reduce them to civic obedience by means of the arts of peace, turned to religion as the instrument necessary above all others for the maintenance of a civilised state, and so constituted it that there was never for so many centuries so great a fear of God as there was in this republic.” (The Discourses, ibid.) Religion, in the service of the State was a means by which a new authority could be imposed on the people without recourse to violence and oppression. Clearly, in order to rule people you had to be able to subvert their natural expectations: ‘Nor in fact was there ever a legislator who, in introducing ordinary laws to a people, did not have recourse to God, for otherwise they would not have been accepted, since many benefits of which a prudent man is aware, are not so evident to reason that he can convince others of them. Hence, wise men, in order to escape this difficulty, have recourse to God.’ (The Discourses, ibid.)

Bible Stories You Never Heard Before. BILLY GRAHAM, the itinerant American Evangelist preacher, came to town on a Crusade in 1954 and ‘saved’ my mother at the Kelvin Hall, but from what I never found out. Lively evangelist meetings would sometimes be held on weekdays in the Abingdon Baptist Hall in nearby Stewartville Street. The lay preacher would hand out notices about these meetings outside the school at going home time and for some inexplicable reason we loved these; kids would crowd the door of the long, narrow hall with acrimonious pushing, shoving and swearing in the rush to get a seat near the front. The preachers were riveting story-tellers; you could have heard a pin drop as they told nail-bitingly exciting tales from the

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

Spreading the word: the Abingdon Hall in Stewartville Street provided lay preachers for open air religious meetings throughout Partick.

Old and the New Testaments. They were easily understood metaphors, providing us with noble examples and offering a plethora of awful warnings as to what would happen should we offend against divine good order and dicipline. They were graphically illustrated by cloth figures which they shuffled around on a painted scenic backdrop balanced on a large easel frame. Calvinistic stoicism postulated the idea that fortitude, self-control, mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life, as is the cultivation of indifference to — or acceptance of — things beyond our control. However, reason and emotion are just as important — and equally necessary. If too much passion is bad for reasoning, so also is too little. Scottish Presbyterians seemed to get round this cultural/psychological conflicy by substituting lack of passion with a deep sense of justice and varying degrees of violent sentimentality. One thing in particular I felt strongly about was the idea of the perfectibility of man and the conviction that it was neither safe nor right to act against one’s conscience. This probably came from the Covenanter background of my granny’s side of the family. The philosophy of the Covenanters was that ‘one with God is a majority’ and that it was legitimate to wage defensive warfare against tyranny. At least 18,000 of these jaw-droppingly brave men and women had been summarily executed in cold blood, by law, sold as slaves or maliciously persecuted for refusing to accept the ‘Anglican Book of Common Prayer’ and defending their principles against both Church and State during ‘The Killing Times’ (1685-1688), which heralded the collapse of the Stuart dynasty. In 1664 the Royal Council had passed an order that any man convicted of holding the principles of the Covenanters would be hanged ”immediately in the place according to law”. Female Covenanters were drowned, as happened in the case of the two Wigtown martyrs: 63-year old Margaret McLachlan, a locally respected widow and 18-year old Margaret Wilson, both of whom were tied to stakes and drowned by the rising tide of the Solway Firth in 1685. I still have a vivid memory of myself as a small boy in Wigton, with Gran, walking along the well-worn grassy track which runs between the graves in the churchyard to those of the women martyrs, and hearing her read out to me the heart-rending inscriptions describing the cruel manner of their deaths, carved roughly and simply on the white tablestones and headstones within iron railings.

Beyond the Pail I LOVED READING, especially the Hotspur, Victor, Rover and Wizard boy’s papers — eagerly devoured every Friday when they appeared — with their

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

adventure serials focusing on aggressively dominant all-powerful but amateur patriotic characters who solved everything with a sock on the jaw. But these characters were blatant reactionaries; personally, my heart and mind had been captured by the ribald and subversive characters from the more anarchic cartoon comics such as The Dandy, The Beano and Topper where ‘toffs’ such as ‘Lord Snooty’ tended to be satirised and always got their comeuppance. There was also the recently launched glossy Eagle, with its cast of ugly reptilian villains, the ‘Treens’, ruled by the super-intelligent ‘Mekon’ — thinly disguised Communists. I never really warmed to the Eagle, it was too worthy, earnest and proselytising in a middle-class sort of way. Maybe I couldn’t relate to the obviously public school and university-educated, square-jawed ‘Dan Dare’ in his immaculately pressed officer’s uniform and his wimpish assistant, Digby. University students in those days occupied a world apart from the riff-raff such as us — with their nice Kelvinside accents, blazers, collars and ties, being prepared for what they thought would be a secure, predictable career as architect, lawyer, accountant, doctor, engineer, teacher — or tough space commander. Although I was never in the least competitive or sporty, the underprivileged but feisty working class character of ‘Alf Tupper’ appealed to me in the same way he must have appealed to thousands of other boys. Tupper was as common-as-muck, dossed on disused barges and under railway arches, but he was an obsessive, wonderful, runner. Alf trained at night in dimly lit streets and along dark canal banks and lived on fish and chips, but he was also a skilled tradesman, a mechanic or a welder — which meant he was probably a Protestant — and the nemesis of the posh cheats and swarthy foreign types he humiliated regularly on the running track. In these stories Frenchmen and Italians were excitable and sometimes leaders of international anarchist gangs; Spaniards were backstabbing, sinister and treacherous, as were Arabs, Persians and Central Asians; Scandinavians were kind-hearted but simple-minded; Negroes faithful and deferential jesters while Germans were beastly Huns. Officials and officialdom constantly thwarted Alf in his attempts to enter championship races, but he always won in the end. In one story he competed in a road race round his hometown, during which an old man got stuck up one of those huge factory chimneys. Alf interrupted the race to climb the chimney, freed the man using his welding skills, climbed down and still won the race.

Opinion formers: comics played an important cultural role in the 1950s.

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

Pre-steroids role model: Alf Tupper, the ‘tough of the track’.

On a visit to Edinburgh to compete in an event he found the bed in his B&B too soft to sleep on so he ran up Arthur’s Seat and slept out on the top of the hill. ‘Wilson’, a 200-year old character who was probably the first to run in a preLycra black skin suit, and ‘Braddock VC’, the non-commissioned working class pilot who single-handedly defeated the Nazi Luftwaffe and defiantly refused all promotions appealed for the same reasons. On Sundays it was a race to grab the centre spreads of The Sunday Post to read about the latest adventures in the tenemental existences of ‘Oor Wullie’ and ‘The Broons’ and the darkly drawn dramas of ‘Andrew Glen’ and his border collie, ‘Black Bob’ in The Weekly News. The world inhabited by ‘Oor Wullie’ and ‘The Broons’ more closely resembled our own, and the characters spoke just like us. American comic books, mainly Dell, were not only devoured, but were highly collectable as well: Superman, Batman, Archie, The Blackhawks, and Plasticman. But head and shoulders above all of them stood EC Comics with their beautifully crafted drawings and really scary Poe-esque and H.P. Lovecraftinspired storylines by Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein: Tales from the Crypt, Weird Fantasy and Vault of Horror. Unlike UK comics, which focused blandly on ultimately victorious gung-ho macho types defending reactionary values and the status quo, EC’s comics had distinguished themselves by exploring alternative points of view. Their war comics — such as Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat — were highly realistic with a decidedly anti-war and slightly subversive bias. They addressed subjects such as misguided patriotism, soldiers suffering from shell-shock and even stories about innocent North Korean civilians, racial bigotry and so on. EC published well-written comics with the finest artwork — unlike anything that had gone before, particularly the tongue-in-cheek and ghoulishly humorous stories, with their intricately drawn, lovingly detailed rotting and diseased corpses. These had the most wonderful ‘O. Henry’ type endings with shocking plot twists which left us gasping in horrified disbelief. EC’s comics were quickly made the scapegoats for undermining the social order and the rise in juvenile delinquency. I clearly remember the first shiver of clandestine excitement walking down Sauchiehall Street one day about 1953 or 1954 and seeing the newsstand headlines — ‘Horror Comics Banned!’ I was clutching one in my hand at the time and surreptitiously tucked it under my jumper and into my short trousers, nervously checking to see if I had been spotted by the ‘polis’.

Dowanhill Primary School — 1950 THE HEADMASTER of my first school, Moultrie A. Kelsall, was a bit of a character who had another job with the BBC as Senior Producer for Radio Drama. He was also reputed to be one of the radio voices on Lavinia Derwent’s ‘Tammy Troot’, a very popular BBC Auntie Kathleen’s Children’s Hour programme at the time.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

The voice of the ‘glaikit’ fish, Tammy, was that of wireless actor Willy Joss, but we never figured out which part Moultrie played. He would appear whenever there was a hiatus in the class — due to one of our teachers, Mrs Brock, Mrs Patterson or the redoubtable Mrs Porter being delayed or indisposed — and recite Scottish poetry to a not very receptive classroom of 30 plus six, seven and eight year olds. I was less impressed with Moultrie’s sardonic manner following a classroom incident that led to him threatening to break a stink bomb he had confiscated from me over my head. Most of us thought he was an ill-tempered ‘baldy-heided wee bauchle’ (an insignificant little man), but maybe he had good reason; certainly ‘Tammy Troot’ lost his appeal after that. In the words of the song: ‘Our wee school’s a fine wee school, the best wee school in Glesca. The only thing that’s wrang wi’ it is the baldy-headit maister. He goes tae the pub on a Saturday night, goes tae the church on Sunday. Prays tae the Lord tae gie him strength tae murder the weans on Monday.’ The school toilets, with their low pans and urinals, stank of pee and red carbolic soap. Paper was scarce so our letters were drawn on sand trays or miniature wooden-framed blackboards, called slates. Later, when we were learning joined-up writing, we were given jotters with messy and painful-to-hold scratchy nibbed pens. We sat, bemused, with tightly crossed arms, hands clamped under our oxters, listening to BBC Schools nature broadcasts from big loudspeakers hung from the walls. These were invariably about whispering naturalists crawling about in haunts of coot and hern enthusing breathlessly about the loud chattering of birds and making sudden sallies through soggy fern to capture creepy-crawlies down some god-forsaken valley. Who were these people? Boys sat with boys and if we misbehaved we were sent to sit with the girls, something the teacher, usually female, obviously thought as shaming. Campbells and MacDonalds in the same class were kept well apart. For those not well-versed in Scottish history this was because of the memory of the treacherous massacre of the MacDonalds of Glencoe in February 1692 by 72 government troops who slaughtered their Highland hosts after 12 days of hospitality. Campbell of Glen Lyon led the government troops, but only about 9 of the 72 soldiers were in fact Campbells. This infamous episode passed into mythology, helped by teachers such as ours, as the culmination of a long and bloody tribal feud between Campbells and MacDonalds; in fact, the simple fact was that the slaughter of a clan who were politically and religiously opposed to the new 35

Scapegoats: EC’s horror comics were accused of undermining the social order and causing the rise in juvenile delinquency.

Dowanhill School (below): opened in 1896 and operated by the Govan Parish School Board.

Caves In The Sandstone Canyons

order had been personally approved by the new King, William of Orange. Colquhouns and Macgregors were also kept well apart. In 1603 clansmen loyal to Alastair Macgregor had clashed with members of the Colquhoun clan, the former having relieved the latter of some of their livestock. As a result, the Colquhouns had the Macgregors hunted down, evicted from their homes, many were murdered, outlawed and the clan proscribed for the next 173 years. But the memory lingered on. Primary schools of the time had to cope with the post-war ‘baby-boom’ and classes of more than 50 were not uncommon. Teachers had their work cut out to give us a grounding in the Queen’s English. Nevertheless we quickly acquired a basic proficiency in the ‘three Rs’ with the aid of traditional teaching methods: spelling by rote and long division of pounds, shillings and pence, with farthings. Whenever we slipped into the vernacular, the Glasgow patois, the urban West of Scotland dialect, she would point out where we had deviated from the norm of Standard English. The following apochryphal account gives a flavour of the problem:— ‘Children,’ she would say, ‘Stuart made a mistake just now when he said “Ah wisht Ah had goed”. “Now who can tell me what he should have said?’ Hands shot up and she chose one of the most enthusiastic volunteers. ‘Miss!’ cried little Maggie, ‘Ah wisht tae Goad Ah hud went!’ The teacher did not give up easily and persisted: Moultrie A. Kelsall: headmaster of Dowanhill ‘And another thing: one of you said earlier that you liked to Primary School. drink tea with a “wee tait” of sugar in it. If you went to England they wouldn’t have a clue what you meant. Who knows what an English person would have said?’ ‘Easy peasy, Miss!’ cried an eager Houston, ‘A little tait!’

‘Big Fight In The Wee Park!’

Class of ‘55: note the wee boy in the flying helmet, the baseball cap of the day.

MOULTRIE WOULD ALSO berate us from the playground steps for our occasional mid-day pitched street battles with the pupils from nearby St Peter’s Roman Catholic primary school. These battles involved opposing Catholic and Presbyterian mobs surging up and down the hill from the opposite ends separating the schools in a tumult of shouting and yelling and cursing sectarian defiance. Stones and, in winter, stone-filled snowballs, were lobbed from one crowd to the other before the front ranks met. The little street traffic there was in those days would be held up and passers-

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

by would be swept into the riot by the pressure of an ever-increasing crowd. Windows on either side of the street would be broken and the mob would reel and sprawl, swirl and eddy like a flooded river in torrent. These battles would usually last thirty or forty minutes before the police or janitors and teachers arrived to separate us. Andy McGowan, a friend who attended a Catholic St Mark’s Primary School in Shettleston, in the East-End of Glasgow, used to have similar battles in Tollcross Park with the pupils from the Protestant Wellshot Road Primary. However, it was never really a problem when we got to Secondary School. Fights among ourselves took place in the adjoining ‘Wee park’, which I don’t think ever had a name. An ‘Ah’ll see you efter school’ would trigger an excited buzz of expectancy around the playground and at 3.00, when we finished for the day, the contenders would be escorted by a phalanx of snottynosed weans chanting ‘big fight’ to the ‘wee park’ where they or we (if I was fighting) were surrounded by a heaving, screaming, wall of kids, marking each delivered blow with gasps of awe, delight or commiseration. If the fights were broken up by an adult, the ‘jannie’ or the ‘parkie’ they had to be continued the next day, or whenever, until honour had been satisfied and a clear winner had been established.

St. Peter’s R.C. School: scene of pitched battles between Protestant children from Dowanhill and Catholic kids from St Peter’s.

The ‘wee’ park.

‘Billies’ and ‘Dans’

‘Billies’ and ‘Dans’ WHY DID WE hate Catholics and they hate us? Didn’t we both, after all, rely on hell to underpin our faiths? To anyone who didn’t grow up in this allpervasive culture of sectarian division our historical animosity is difficult to understand. Bigotry in the west of Scotland was like yeast — it was ‘in bred’. We certainly were not enthusiastic churchgoers, or even religious. We didn’t see ourselves as bigots, just God-fearing weans with The Alamo mentality fighting off the modern-day papal equivalent of Santana and his Mexican hordes. The film Davy Crockett has a lot to answer for. ‘No Compromise. No Surrender!’ Tribal hostilities and suspicion had rent West Central Lowland Scotland society since the first wave of Ulster Irish immigrants in the 1840s, after the end of the Irish Potato Famine. This influx of Ulster Catholics and Presbyterians, more than any other immigrant group, including Italians, Lithuanians, Jews, Poles, Asians or English, was to make a profound and enduring impact on Scottish life. To understand this problem it is important to remember that, historically, Scotland’s collective identity has been derived from Presbyterianism, a religion built on the premise that Roman Catholicism is, at best, superstitious flummery and, at worst, a demonic conspiracy for world control. An example of this credo was the 1923 publication of a report by the Church and Nation Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on ‘The Menace Of The Irish Race To Our Scottish Nationality’. The report argued that Irish Roman Catholics were taking employment from native Scots, were part of a papist conspiracy to subvert Presbyterian values, and were the main source of intemperance, improvidence and criminality. These conclusions were debated seriously by the General Assembly every year thereafter until 1939. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, established Presbyterian opinion saw Irish Catholic immigrants as inferior, inadequate and a racial threat to the Scottish nation’. In 1926 a Scottish Presbyterian minister went as far as to state publicly that Irish Catholics presented a far more insidious and formidable menace to the people of Scotland than the Germans. In the months preceding the Catholic Eucharistic Congress held in Edinburgh in the early 1930s Catholics were subjected to all sorts of verbal and physical abuse. During the three or four days of the Congress busloads of children were ambushed and stoned mercilessly and priests, old men and women were attacked savagely in the street. The German Calvinist journal, the Protestantische Rundschau (‘Protestant Review’) of July 1933, argued that the Church of Scotland should not condemn anti-semitism in Germany, but should recognise that the Judenfrage in Germany had parallels to Scotland’s own Irischenfrage. Certainly, up to the end of the Second World War there had been some element of fighting over scarce resources. Since the end of the Famine, Irish Catholics had provided an apparently unending supply of unskilled and semiskilled labour at the bottom end of the market and, for some employers, they had provided a useful pool of scabs and strikebreakers in the early days of the union movement.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

There was a starkly horrifying example of this in 1937 when ten young men from the Achill Islands in Western Ireland, over in Scotland for the potato harvest, were burned to death in suspicious circumstances in a locked barn in 1937, in the small Lanarkshire town of Kirkintilloch. Irish Catholics were also handy scapegoats for the depressed state of the labour market and falling wages, and were viewed as a burden on the rates as drunken, shiftless scroungers. Ulster Presbyterians, on the other hand, were not thought of as outsiders. They were ‘one of us’; their ancestors were Scots who had been part of the original plantation of Ulster in the 17th century and, culturally, racially and in religion were indistinguishable from the indigenous Scots. They had returned to their roots, bringing their tribal loyalties, hostilities and prejudices with them. But our enmity had to do, primarily, with ideology, opinions, beliefs and traditions. It had been forged in response to historically perceived injuries in the 17th and 18th centuries and a conviction that Catholics still represented a clear and present threat to our ‘Protestant heritage’, in the 20th century. In 1798, after the Irish Rebellion had collapsed into bitter and bloody tribal infighting between Protestants and Catholics, the Loyal Orange Order came into its own as an armed, parallel, security force to defend majority Protestant rule against the rebellious activities of the local Catholic secret societies. The organisation, originally formed in Armagh in 1795, was a hierarchically structured system of local, district and county lodges under a National Grand Lodge. The Order’s security, exclusivity and cohesiveness was tightened by a system of handshakes, signs and secret passwords closely modelled on the rituals of Freemasonry, to which body many Orangemen also belonged. The Orange Lodges provided the Ulster Presbyterians — who, unlike the Catholics, did not have to face racial or religious discrimination in Scotland — with the cultural glue of their identity and a ready-made mutual aid network . The Lodges, in collaboration with the big employers and the craft unions, ensured the Ulster-friendly brethren secured the skilled jobs in the mining and iron-making towns of Lanarkshire and in the shipbuilding centres of Partick, Govan and Whiteinch on the Clyde. In the Clyde shipyard of Belfast-based Harland & Wolfe, for example, apprenticeships were strictly controlled by the old, reactionary, craft-based unions and were granted only to Protestant Scots or Irish boys. This ensured that Catholic men remained outside the loop of good career opportunities. So closely tied in with the Lodges were the big employers and the craft unions that the local Orange Hall in Clydebank was located just outside the main gates of John Brown’s shipyard. Catholic organisations such as The Ancient Order of Hibernians, The Knights of Saint Columba, the Saint Vincent de Paul Society and the League of the Cross held the Ulster Catholics together. The former were Catholic secret societies paralleling the Orange Order, while the latter two were self-help bodies attached to most chapels to ensure young Catholics mixed only with

‘Billies’ and ‘Dans’

The Alamo: we acquired a fortress mentality of ‘no compromise, no surrender’.

those of their own faith. Football clubs such as Hibernians and Glasgow Celtic were set up to provide a focal point to mobilise and consolidate the Catholic loyalties of the Scottish-Irish communities. All this reinforced the fortress mentality of the Protestants that the Catholics constituted a distinctly introverted and subversive community, an ‘enemy within’ whose loyalties were first and foremost to Rome and Dublin. Faced with such overt hostility from the host Scottish society, they increasingly looked to their own economic, physical and spiritual resources to survive. They had their own Chapels, schools, teachers, social and welfare organisations, all held together by the clergy and laity of the Roman Catholic Church. They also had their own political agenda, which — because of the proGerman stance of both the Irish Republic and the IRA during World War Two and their ongoing commitment to Home Rule and nationalism — was seen as being anti-British and anti-Empire. This new, alternative, voice in Scottish politics contributed in no small way to raising the political consciousness of a wider section of unskilled workers, including Catholic leftists such as James Connolly, the syndicalist and Citizens’ Army leader executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. In turn, the execution of those who took part in the Easter Rising gave fresh momentum to the cycle of violence by creating political martyrs for the Irish nationalist cause, a cause which was given a further boost after the exposure of the murderous and barbaric activities of the ‘Black and Tans’, the paramilitary ‘police force’ which operated under the control of the British Army. Our sectarian bitterness was compounded by suspicion, resentment and the fear that this somehow pathologically turbulent Irish lumpenproletariat was constantly seeking to reduce us to the low level of ignorance, subservience and poverty of Catholic Europe. Catholics, on the other hand, interpreted the disparities in wealth and power between the two communities as a consequence of Presbyterian religious and cultural elitism. For many Protestants this hostility and sense of superiority become an obsession, a parasite that ate away at their peace of mind. The easiest and simplest option for them was to strike out, to hurt their enemies by abusing and humiliating them rather than by respect, intellectual engagement and debate. Collectively, then, we young Presbyterians saw Catholics as agents of alien authority: the Pope, his prelates and the priesthood. To us, the Roman Catholic Church constituted an oppressive instrument of power, an institutionalised authoritarianism based on a dogmatic code of ethics and morals. It was a church erected upon the need to subordinate mysticism to power and to justify and enforce the actions of papal power throughout superstitious, priest-ridden countries like Ireland, Spain, Malta and Italy.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

The Irish priests who stalked the streets of Glasgow were sinister ‘Men in Black’ with dark, broad-brimmed Trilby hats and corned-beef or sallow complexions; these MiBs served the ‘Men in Red’, the cardinals, in turn controlled by old-Redsocks himself, the Pope. We believed this because of the stories we heard as to how ordinary Catholics lived in fear of the wrath of the parish priests and an extended stay in an overheated Purgatory or, worse still, all eternity with the black, yellow and brown babies in Limbo, the place where heretics and all non-Catholics ended up without the possibility of earning themselves a place in Heaven — not, as I first thought, a town in Southern Ireland. Their undisguised abuses of power and influence over how Catholics lived their everyday lives: where they shopped and what they bought; the ‘fact’ that a penny from every packet of Senior Service cigarettes went straight to the Vatican; irresponsible and reactionary statements by Catholic politicians; the practice of instructing Catholics how to vote, often in peril of excommunication (as exposed in the scandal of the Vatican’s interference in the elections in Malta) to say nothing of the sexual debauchery of priests and nuns as recounted in lurid pamphlets such as Maria Monk; the questions of birth control and abortion; where they went to school and what they were taught and what they read. Catholic religious instruction had little to do with the Bible (Douay version) and a lot to do with learning their Church Laws and Catechisms, particularly so in Primary Schools where the children’s characters were moulded. As the Jesuits say: ‘Give us a child for the first seven years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards’. If they did not learn the Catechisms they had been set — or the names of Our Lady’s parents —they were beaten mercilessly with canes, belts or straps by the bad-tempered and spiteful priests, nuns or Christian Brothers if they didn’t know that catechism: — ‘Hail Holy Queen Mother of Mercy, Hail Our Life, Our Sweetness and Our Hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus…’. The stories were legion. Shortly before my mate Andy McGowan left school his class received a visit from a priest preparing them for their entry into the big wide world. He warned them to be on their guard at all times as they would meet people from all sorts of religious and political backgrounds, including Communists. They would meet these Communists in their places of work, but as long as they kept their faith by going to Mass and Communion every Sunday, and said their prayers and their Rosary they would be kept from harm. They would also meet girls and eventually want to get married, but they had to make sure they married a nice Catholic girl as ‘mixed’ marriages did not work, nor would it be good for any children they might have. Little wonder then that to us simple-minded Presbyterian ‘weans’,

‘Billies’ and ‘Dans’

The caped crusader: cold warrior, Pope Pius XII (r.1939-1958).

proselytising Catholics were enemies of freedom, knowledge and progress, always looking for the ‘edge’ to bring us down to their level of ignorance and subservience. But mainly they provided an excuse for a ‘bit of a rammy’. Individually, however, in spite of all the confrontation, on a one-to-one basis, Catholics and Protestants (and Jews) were usually the best of pals and played together after school without too much rancour or reference to religion unless there was a falling out — then we were ‘Proddy dogs’ or ‘Billies’ (after King William III — of Orange) and they were ‘Fenian bastards’ or ‘Dans’. Why ‘Dan’ was shorthand for Catholic I never found out, perhaps it was because it was more an Irish name than Scottish. Catholics and Protestants came to terms with each other better than did many of the more sectarian Protestant sects who tended to live side by side with their neighbours as distant strangers. Jews were ‘old tin cans’ for some reason, probably because they were always being kicked around. The cry on streets was ‘A Billy or a Dan, or an old tin can! Billy Connolly tells the story about him and Matt McGinn being confronted by drunken Rangers’ supporters. To confuse the potentially violent situation, the quick-witted Matt shouted at them: “Ya bunch o’ Orange Fenians!’ If challenged on strange territory as to which team we supported — Rangers of Celtic — and there was no way of knowing to which faction our interrogators belonged, we would reply ‘Partick Thistle’, a non-sectarian team. This answer always met with suspicious scowls, but there was no way its logic could be challenged, Although we didn’t fully comprehend it at the time, we had good reason to fear the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. This was, after all, the era of the Nazified Catholic Church of Pius XII (1939-1958). Between the wars, influential reactionary cardinals in the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church had played important roles in the most terrifying and diabolical political events of the 20th century, but in 1939 one of these fanatical characters made it to the top of the pyramid. Before he died in 1939, the more liberal Pope Pius XI had written an Encyclical in which he condemned Hitler and Mussolini and their preparations for war. It was due to be read on 12 February 1939, but unfortunately he died on the 10th. Cardinal Pacelli, about to become Pius XII, saw to it that its contents never became public. Subsequently, Pius XII’s Vatican pursued an unrelenting right-wing programme until his death in October 1958. Under Pope Pius XII, a fanatical cleric obsessed with the destruction of Communism, Catholicism became the handmaiden of fascism and reaction. He was also a long-standing anti-Semite. While researching the life of Pope Pius XII, author John Cornwell discovered a damning letter written by Pacelli (Pius XII)

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

— then papal nuncio in Munich — in the Vatican’s Secret Archive of External Affairs. This is the equivalent of the archives of the Foreign Office and is located deep in the basement of the Borgia Tower. In it Pacelli described people he assumed were Jews who were involved in the revolutionary Munich Uprising that year. His repeated references to the Jewishness of these individuals and the catalogue of epithets describing their physical and moral repulsiveness, leaves no doubt as to Pope Pius’s anti-Semitism. Before and during the Second World War Pacelli had supported Italian, Spanish and German fascism. In other Catholic strongholds such as Croatia, fascists were often led by priests, committing crimes reputed to horrify even the German Nazis. After World War II, Pius XII supported the cold warriors of the West, particularly the supposedly neutral Franco. He was bitterly disappointed that Hitler had failed to destroy Russia and hoped that nuclear brinkmanship, even perhaps a Third World war would eventually wipe out Communism as a world force. Pius XII believed and declared that God worked miracles specially for him. He was responsible for giving credibility to the cult of Fatima which he saw as a vehicle for advancing his own political and religious imperialism. Originally dismissed by the Portuguese clergy as childish hysteria, but taken up wholeheartedly by Pius Miracle at Fatima: the day the sun fell XII, the cult of Fatima, which was primarily anti- to earth. Why didn’t they photograph that communist, involved the appearance of the Virgin Mary instead? to three Portuguese shepherd children six times throughout 1917 and the imparting of three secrets, two of which related to visions of hell if Russia was not brought back into the fold of Holy Mother Church. ‘Our Lady’s’ warnings about Russia became increasingly frantic after the October Revolution in Russia, involving the sun ‘dancing’ in the sky above Fatima and then ‘falling to the ground’. Again and again, Pius XII reaffirmed the significance of this prophecy whenever his anti-communism crusade wavered. In 1946, the year of my birth, Visionaries of he went as far as solemnly crowning the statue of Our Lady of Fatima before Hell: the half a million pilgrims: ‘Be ready’ he warned. ‘There can be no neutrals. Never Portuguese shepherd children step back. Line up as a crusader!’ who saw ‘Our Lady’ six times during 1917, warning the world of the dangers of communism.

The Rings of Abbeyleix

RONICALLY, my grandparents, who brought me up, were ‘mixed’, that is one was Protestant and the other Catholic. This was not a problem for my granny, but it was a very serious religious and spiritual impediment for my grampa. To intermarry with a Protestant Scot meant coming close to having anathema pronounced on you, particularly after the Vatican’s rigorous Te Temere decree of 1908. This grampa on my mother’s side, John Ring, was a devout southern Irish Catholic; one of the Viking and/or Celtic Rings from Abbeyleix, and Ring’s Cross, Ballyouskill in Castlemarket, County Laoise, Kilkenny and Cork City. In fact, his grandfather now has a blue plaque to his memory on the wall of Cork jail as the first man to be imprisoned there. Perhaps the most famous of the Rings was grampa’s cousin, BrigadierGeneral Michael Joseph ‘Joe’ Ring — of whom, understandably, he never spoke — who had been an aide de camp to the Sinn Fein leader Michael Collins during the Irish Civil War. Joe had fought on the other side to Grampa during the Irish civil war, he was the first man in Ireland to form a ‘flying column’ and was killed, aged 31, in the Battle of the Ox Mountains on 14 September 1922. Twenty-three-year old Joe was appointed Commander of the Volunteers in Westport, County Mayo, on their formation in 1915, and took part in the Easter Rising of the following year, having formed his own guerrilla flying column. When the Easter rebellion was put down in the West of Ireland, Joe was arrested and interned in Frognoch south camp, in South Wales. Released a few months later under the general amnesty of Christmas 1916, he returned to Westport where he set about reorganising the Volunteers and training the youth movement, Fianna Eireann, their prospective recruits. When the civil war broke out in earnest in January 1919, Joe was suspected of involvement in the 29 March murder of Westport’s Residential Magistrate, Mr John C Milling, but no one was ever charged with the killing. With the formation of the West Mayo Brigade of the IRA in September 1920, under Tom Derrig, Joe Ring was appointed OC the Westport district battalion area. A few months later, in November 1920, the arrival of the ‘Black and Tans’ — the hated British paramilitary police units recruited from prisoners and ex-servicemen — ratcheted up local tensions considerably. It did not take long for the local military authorities to identify him as an Active Service Unit (ASU) leader and Edward O’Malley, in his book Memories of a Mayoman, refers to an incident in which Joe read out the following dispatch: — ‘The Crown Forces at Westport Quay have a life-size photograph of you. If captured, you will be shot, and your body dragged through the streets of Westport. This information comes direct from Military headquarters’. Joe’s notoriety increased following gunfights with the RIC and ambushes of ‘Black and Tan’/RIC military convoys. His house in Drumindoo outside

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Westport was burnt to the ground and a £2,000 reward posted for information leading to his capture. Following the truce of July 1921 he was asked to assist in setting up the Irish Civic Guard, the Gardai, in which he held the nominal rank of Chief Superintendent. In May 1922, after the formation of the Irish Provisional Government, he was involved in what became known as the Kildare Mutiny, a confrontation between the new Gardai’s old Royal Irish Constabulary officers — those who had collaborated with Michael Collins, the IRA’s Chief of Staff — and the new recruits of old republicans. By this time the civil war in Ireland was raging and Joe Ring had been appointed a Brigadier-General of the Irish National Army. He was given a cross-channel ferry, the Minerva, which had been hurriedly fitted out as a troop carrier and given command of a sea-borne landing in Clew Bay to capture the towns of Rosmoney and Westport while Major-General Mac Eoin attacked the town from the landward side. Brigadier Joe Ring was finally killed in an ambush by Irish Irregulars at Tubbercurry, on the outskirts of Bonnyconlan, Ballina, on 14th September 1922, a skirmish that became known as ‘The Battle of the Ox Mountains’. When the news of his death broke in Westport on market day, all the shops and business immediately closed and shuttered their shops, while the blinds on private residences were drawn. The well-known Kerry author, Padraig O Siochfhradha, wrote the following appreciation of Joe’s contribution to the Irish war of independence in the Mayo News the week after his funeral, which ended: — ‘The marching tread of his fighting column will never again re-echo in the night through his native hills, and the red grouse squat in the purple heather undisturbed. Woods and stream and western sea are hushed in sorrow. A chivalrous heart is stilled, a brave and generous soul gone. Mayo, you dare not claim a braver soul than Ring.’ Grampa, as Regimental Sergeant Major of the HLI John Ring : (Grampa) 1878-1955. during this period, was training troops to fight in Ireland, and I have often wondered if these included the ‘Black and Tans’. If so, a terribly irony would have been born.

Grampa Ring — 1878-1955 TECHNICALLY, GRAMPA was English. His parents had emigrated to England as part of the Irish diaspora to escape the poverty and misery of rural Ireland in the mid 1870s and grampa himself was born in Salford. The southern Irish had tended to emigrate to Abbeyleix, Co Laoise, Ireland (c1870s).

The Rings of Abbeyleix

John Ring: Regimental Sergeant Major, 5th Batallion, HLI, 1915-1918.

England (or America) while the Ulster Catholics and Protestants found it easier to immigrate to the west of Scotland. Portpatrick in the Rhinns of Galloway was, after all, only twenty miles across the Irish Sea from Donaghadee on the County Down coast. Grampa was 71 years old when I was born. A war wound had left him with a limp and a slight stoop. He was fresh-faced in spite of his years, of medium height, finely built and slightly cadaverous looking. Traces of auburn flecked his steely, thinning hair. The liquid appearance of his deep-set grey eyes could give his stare quite intimidating ambiguity. He had two suits, one for best and another for everyday wear — a ‘scuffin' suit’. At night the trousers would be folded neatly and placed between sheets of brown paper and placed below the mattress on the bed. He always wore a collar and tie and, when he was out, a soft hat or cloth cap, a ‘bunnet’ from Dunn’s in Queen Street, and a gabardine coat from the Fifty Shilling Tailors. His grooming was military and meticulous; his tied shoelaces had to be exactly the same length at either end and because he couldn’t bend my gran or myself had to tie them. Rising early, he would kneel, stiffly and laboriously, on the floor with his elbows on the kitchen table or on the bed and say his prayers. It was the same procedure before retiring for the night. Shaving was another of his rituals that fascinated me. He would take a long, thick leather strap from the drawer, attach it to a drawer handle at one end then, taking his scalpel-sharp cutthroat razor and holding it carefully by the rounded butt edge he would slide it back and forth, up and down, from butt side to the hair-thin edge, then swivel it over and on to its other face and slide it back again across the leather strap, back and forth, back and forth, in a smooth rhythmic motion. Every so often he would stop to test the edge with his thumb and when he felt it was sharp enough he would fold the blade back into its cream ivory guard and place it carefully into a silklined fish-skin or sharkskin case and close the lid. A large mahogany chest of drawers stood beside the bed recess in the kitchen, two drawers on top and three larger ones underneath. His medals were kept in the top drawer of the tallboy along with his strangely aromatic khaki handkerchiefs and his black ‘housewife’, a long, rolled-up cloth issued to all soldiers and containing needles, threads and buttons. Grampa always sewed on his own buttons and darned his own socks. Grampa made up for his Catholic and nationalist relatives by an unswerving loyalty to the British Crown during its most expansionist phase. He spent 29 years in the service of the old,

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

mercenary, long-service British Army, which he joined in 1892 at fourteen — having given a false age. He fought in the north-east of India and in Africa and received the Queen’s Medal with clasp and King’s Medal and clasp for his part in the South Africa Campaign, 1900-1902. Discharged in January 1913, just before the First World War, he served twenty-one years — a number of them abroad — with the 3rd Reserve Battalion of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, where he completed his service as Colour Sergeant. When the First World War broke out he was recalled to Maryhill Barracks, Glasgow, as a reservist to join the 5th Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry (HLI), in which he served as Regimental Sergeant Major for a further nine years, training troops for ‘The Big Picnic’ and other political and military disasters such as Gallipoli, Loos, Mesopotamia (Baghdad), the invasion of Russia at Archangel, and even Ireland— a campaign he never mentioned. But it was his memories of India that gave him most pleasure. My earliest recollections are of sitting on his knee, comforted by the reassuring odours of old pipe tobacco and soap, listening to his Kiplingesque stories of a bygone India, a colourful place of hot adventurous nights, savage animals and deeds of ‘derring-do’; of the mongoose, of fabulous riches and squalid poverty, callous cruelty and selfless loyalty, of the flaming orange of the frontier hills at dawn and the golden-lilac mist of a Punjab sunset, of his adventures fighting the tribes of the north-west frontier of India, which I suppose was similar in many ways, topographically and tribally, to the highlands of Scotland, with its inter-clan warfare and rivalries. He told me gripping tales of expeditions into the Afghan mountains, beyond the Khyber Pass, along stony tracks, fording waist-deep, fast-flowing rivers, sometimes in great heat, sometimes in twenty degrees of frost, picketing lofty crags while the rest of the troops moved through the narrow gorges, driving the enemy off mountain tops. Often, after heavy rainfall in the hills, a wave of water seven or eight feet high would come rushing down the rocky dried up river beds which would carry away camels, mules, guns and soldiers The Pathans they were fighting were rarely seen; their usual tactics consisted of lying very low and watching for an opportunity. If they could catch a small platoon unaware, no time would be lost in rushing in with knives and then disappearing again, leaving bodies, stripped of every bit of clothing and equipment; genitals too, according to writer John Masters. They would hang around a rearguard and spend every night sniping at the camps. Occasionally the tribesmen would attack in masses, but more often they occupied hilltop positions, firing from well-sited parapets, in the hope of

Monte Pathans: beyond the Khyber Pass the Pathans would spend every night sniping at the camps from their rocky hilltop crags.

The Rings of Abbeyleix

The dead of Spion Kopp, Natal, 1900: one of Grampa’s battles during the Boer War.

inflicting many casualties and then vanishing at speed down the other side of the hill, at the last moment. To me, the magic of India was somehow made real by the rich colour and smell of the curry powder that was always on the dinner table, in an exotic looking tin, to sprinkle over his mince ‘n tatties. The South African wars, in which grampa fought at the Transvaal, Paardeberg and Cape Colony between 1900 and 1902, were also a source of gripping stories of battles against dour grey-whiskered Dutch Boer commandos and about how the young Winston Churchill escaped from a Boer prison camp in a laundry basket. I was never quite certain whether or not grampa had had a hand in the latter incident. Perhaps I am getting this confused with Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows who escaped from a jail dressed as a washerwoman. Grampa never mentioned the British concentration camps in which thousands of Boer men, women and children died, but then again, it was not the sort of bedtime story you would tell young children. But his stories did provide me with resonant, enduring, mental images and emotions of a gritty world of Empire far from the protective sandstone tenements of Partick. I have powerful memories of sitting on his lap, listening to him singing along with the pure, shrill tones of Gracie Fields’ ‘Sally’ on the wireless, a song about Salford, near Manchester, where he was born, and other songs which I suppose evoked happy memories in him of the camaraderie and experiences of his two wars: ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ and ‘Goodbye Nellie Gray’. The latter was a popular song of the Boer Wars. Also, listening with him to Auntie Kathleen’s Children’s Hour at 5.00 p.m. on the BBC, Listen with Mother, Dick Barton or The Boys of Glenmarnock with its swarthy middle European villains on the tall, humming and crackling, bakelite ‘ECHO’ wireless set on the chest of drawers and which took forever for its big glass valves to warm up. Children’s Hour often ended with goodnight admonition from a grandly-named Commander Stephen King-Hall telling us to be good ‘but not too good’. I suspect the Commander has a lot to answer for! The BBC Light Programme featured popular features such as live broadcasts on a Friday or Saturday night from the ominously lugubrious strains of Reginald Dixon, the Phantom organ player of Blackpool Tower Ballroom, to the cheery Billy Cotton Band Show with the leader’s catchphrase ‘Wakey, Wakey!’ and memorable surrealist hymn to paranoia, ‘Shut the Door, they’re Coming Through the Window’. There was also Sunday’s comfortable Two Way Family Favourites with its cheerily eclectic mix of songs from ‘Roll Along Prairie Moon’ to the Max Bygraves cover version of ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’, ‘Get out of here with your … before I call the cops’. There were also the hilarious (at the time) and quick-fire repartee comedy programmes like Take it from Here and Much Binding in the Marsh.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

The BBC Third Programme (or the Home Service) catered for the more refined listener further up the hill in posh Hyndland. But for me the really interesting records were by artists such as Jimmy Rogers, Carson Robison, Hank Williams, perhaps the first rock star, and Bob Wills and, later, Rock and Roll pathfinders such as Bill Haley, which could only be heard on Radio Luxembourg or American Forces Broadcasting, if you were clever enough to find the constantly moving wavebands. Christmas was just beginning to be celebrated in Scotland, but to most shops and businesses it was a normal working day. Stockings were hung at the end of the bed to be stuffed with oranges and sweets. The big presents were parcelled up nicely on the floor in front of the grate: painted lead soldiers and cowboys, wooden castles, Dinky cars and lorries or, best of all, a new Meccano set with its green and red drilled girders and minute brass nuts and screws which could be turned into anything your imagination dictated. The Christmas present which sticks most in my mind, however, was ‘The Magic Robot’ as it was a good stimulus to my interest in general knowledge. The robot revolved around a central pivot, pointing alternatively to questions and answers on every conceivable subject on an overlay card which you changed according to the subject. Hogmanay and New Year’s Day were the main holidays of the year, with a table that was laid out with piles of food and drink for anyone and everyone who chapped on the door on a ‘first-footing’ expedition. Hogmanay was hard work. It was considered bad luck to have a dirty house ‘at the bells’ so everyone had to do their bit to ensure the house was immaculately clean and all the rubbish bins emptied. Preparations began early in the morning and lasted until ten o'clock at night. By then we would be dressed in our best clothes and the table in the front room stacked with food and drink: — whisky, beer, fruit cordials, Irn-Bru, Madeira cake, sausage rolls, biscuits, shortbread, buttered rolls, cheese, and a great pot of home-made highland broth or mince ‘n’ totties simmering on the hob. All the windows would be thrown open a few minutes before midnight to let the Old Year out and the New Year in, and the stroke of midnight the pealing of church bells and the deafening blast of ships’ hooters from the river, some of them blasting off up to five minutes before midnight, would signal the arrival of the New Year. My grandparents would toast the New Year with mum and me and then wait expectantly for the first chap on the door, and wonder, anxiously, who would be our ‘first-foot’. Traditionally — being before the days of ‘political correctness’ — the halt and the lame were not welcome: the ‘first-foot’ had to be a tall dark man with all his faculties, limbs and features, carrying a lump of coal, a piece of cake, a drink and some silver. The coal meant there would always be a fire in the hearth, the shortbread or cake ensured food on the table, and the silver meant money in your pocket. The tall, dark, handsome and well-proportioned man

The Rings of Abbeyleix

* One traditional song sung by young first-footers was ‘Rise Up Goodwife’:

Rise up, goodwife, an’ Shak’ yer feathers, Dinna think that we are beggars — We’re good children come to play, Rise up and gie’s our hogmanay. Our feet's caul’, our sheen's thin, Gie's a piece an’ lat's rin. Yer drawer's fu’ o’ money, Yer bottle's fu’ o' beer, — Rise up and gie’s our hogmanay, And we'll wish you a happy New Year! Rise up, aul wife, an shack yer feathers; Dinna think it we are beggars; We’re only bairnies come to play— Rise up an gee’s wir hogminay. Wir feet's caul, wir sheen's thin, Gee's a piece an lat’s rin. We'll sing for bread, we'll sing for cheese, We'll sing for a' yir orra bawbees, We'll sing for meal, we'll sing for maut, We'll sing for siller to buy wir saut. Get up, goodwife, and binna sweer, And deal your bread to them that's here, For the time will come when ye'll be dead, And then ye’ll neither need ale nor bread.

would guard the house and its occupants against bad luck and unwelcome visitors, such as bailiffs, throughout the year. Gran lived in permanent dread of a downstairs neighbour with a ‘turn’ to his eye (cross-eyed in fact) first-footing us. One year he did manage to be first across the door and it turned out to be a disastrous year, leading up to my grampa’s death. When the first visitors arrived after ‘the bells’ and had been offered a dram and a bite to eat, it was time to start the traditional singsong in which everyone had to participate. There were unwritten rules to follow. The main singer was given full attention, then at the appropriate juncture everyone would join in the chorus enthusiastically.* When I had been given my chance to sing, I would be ushered off to bed in the back bedroom or the curtainedoff hole-in-the-wall and the adults got on with the serious celebrations. *

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Granny — 1890-1969

RANNY WAS 56 when I was born and was the unspoken driving force in the marriage. She was tall, carried herself well with a straight back, greying brown hair, intelligent brown eyes, a strong square jawed face — handsome as opposed to pretty — with a clear complexion and always quick to smile. She had what was known as a ‘comfortable’ figure, and a reassuring hug from her dissipated all our woes. Her dress sense was impeccable and she always insisted on quality. Her blouses were fastened high under the chin with a brooch. In summer she wore lightweight floral-patterned shortsleeved cotton frocks and, on special occasions, tailored costumes, as suits were then known. A tailor at St George’s Cross, a Mr McNab, made these costumes — with two skirts, which could be alternated to prevent them becoming ‘seated’. Her hats she bought from a milliner in Argyle Street, who trimmed them with feathers or flowers. These were kept in place with a jewelled hatpin. A ‘Vanderbilt’ bag from which she magically produced appropriate and timely goodies accompanied her everywhere. She was intelligent, wise and frighteningly intuitive, fey almost. As they say in Galloway, she could ‘herd mice at a crossroads’. She was a quick and discerning judge of character who could recognise good or malevolence where it might not be obvious to many people. Gran was the most important influence on me during my boyhood and she imbued me with a strong sense of right and wrong. She had a tremendous ability to negotiate life and appeared to overcome all obstacles placed in her way. Life’s difficulties and problems she looked upon as valuable opportunities to be overcome. Her dry wit made her an intelligent and stimulating conversationalist. A good neighbour and friend, she was always making pea and ham or mutton flank soup for ill neighbours or people she thought were deserving cases. She cooked and washed and darned and mended and knitted and sewed and made sure I was always warm, clean, comfortable and well fed. I don’t think I ever saw her idle nor heard her complain about the hardness of her lot. Gran had apparently unending resources of wisdom common sense, level-headed practicality, energy and ability. She was a rebel in her own way and highly independent. Looking at a photograph of her now, I am reminded of Walter Pater’s thoughts on Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Mona Lisa: —

Agnes McCulloch Davis: Granny, in one of Mr McNab’s tailored suits.

Granny — 1890-1969

‘She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her...’

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist ON REFLECTION, I think it was probably my granny who made me an anarchist. I mean by this that by her example and the wisdom she showed she gave me a clear moral map and inculcated in me an inerasable ethical code — a sort of secular Calvinism — which led me, directly and inexorably through the political and ethical quagmire to anarchism — to me, the only honest nonreligious ideology which aspired to social justice without seeking social, political or economic dominion over others. Although a lifelong Presbyterian, gran was in no way sectarian — as could be seen by her marriage to a Catholic — nor had she any sympathy with the Orange Lodge, which in fact she despised. She was of respectable Ulster Protestant and Covenanting stock from the Rhinns of Galloway, a ‘doonhamer’, as exiled Gallovidians referred to themselves. The original inhabitants of Galloway, the Galwyddel — the stranger Gaels — were usually spoken of as the ‘Picts of Galloway’, though the connection with other Picts is not clear. Even as late as 1124 Gallovidians were still reckoned to be a distinct and ancient race with surnames not found anywhere else, like McClumpha or McGook. It is said that the Irish Gaelic, or Erse, died out in Galloway in the seventeenth century, but I can remember gran talking about people she knew who ‘had the Erse’. In fact, when I was a little boy, one of my great aunts in Stranraer, who had the most wonderful King Billy china tea service and an enormous painting on the wall of King Billy crossing Boyne Water in 1690 , taught me to say ‘please pass the bread and butter’ in Gaelic. King David the First of Scotland, on ascending the throne that same year, 1124, addressed a proclamation to “all good men of my whole kingdom — Scottish, English, Anglo-Norman, and Gallovidians”. It was, incidentally, David I who introduced the feudal system to Scotland and divided the land up under a thousand Anglo-Norman ‘noble’ hangers-on of his English wife, including John Balliol and Robert de Brus, forefather of Robert the Bruce and progenitor of the House of Stuart. More recently its people and the break up of agricultural life which forced the rural exodus to the industrial centres in the early twentieth century were described in James Barke’s 1930s’ novel, Land of the Leal. The tale of young David Ramsay and his wife Jean, the main protagonists of this book, and their search for something better than the unremitting harshness and brutality of life in rural Galloway, closely resembled the story of my grandparents — who made a similar journey through life, even ending up in the same part of Partick!

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

‘Land O’ Birk An’ Rowan Tree — Bonny Gallowa’ GALLOWAY IS THE most south-west region of Scotland and encompasses ‘The Shire of Wigtown’ and ‘The Stewartry of Kirkcudbright’; it now also includes Dumfries. The Stewartry was governed, traditionally, by a Steward, unsurprisingly called ‘The Steward of Galloway’. The Shire was controlled through a hereditary Sheriff, who was styled, equally unsurprisingly, ‘The Sheriff of Galloway’. Wigtownshire consists mainly of two peninsulas — the Machars between Luce Bay and Wigtown Bay, and the Rhinns between Luce Bay and the sea. The district known as the Rhinns, the long, narrow, green ridge that would have been an island but for the low isthmus between Loch Ryan and Luce Bay, is the conspicuous club-shaped peninsula in south-west Scotland which juts out towards Ulster. On a clear day, granny would say, you could see the sunlit fields of Antrim where the land slopes down to the sea like squares on a draughtboard. The highest point visible in Antrim from Galloway is Agnew Hill, above Larne, which for centuries belonged to the Agnews of Lochnaw, clear evidence of much toing and froing between Scotland and Ireland over thousands of years; one reason perhaps is that the Irish immigrants to Galloway thought they were going to Galway.

Great Grandfather MY GREAT GRANDFATHER, Henry Davis, was an Ulster Protestant born in either Armagh or Tyrone in the mid 1830s. He immigrated to Galloway where he married my great grandmother, Elizabeth Irving, (b. 1854) at Clenoch, Inch, Stranraer, in 1871. For thirty-six years he worked for Sir Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw, where he became head landscape gardener. Sir Andrew Agnew was an enthusiastic planter, and it was entirely due to him that so many parts of the parish — which apparently were quite bare before his time — were wooded. He planted the castle grounds with many exotic trees: there was the impressive araucaria avenue on the Leswalt side of the house, and the old beech grove towards Portpatrick. There were yews and many varieties of cypress; and even from the main road can be seen specimens of Wellingtonia Gigantea, the giant redwoods of the Yosemite Valley; Sequoia Sempervirens, or California redwood; Cryptomeria Japonica, an important feature in Japanese landscapes. Great grandfather worked closely with Sir Andrew on the upkeep of the grounds, including the Italian garden, with its bright and colourful flowerbeds set among the beeches in a broad expanse of smooth turf. Great grandfather ’s particular pride and joy, however, were the water lilies he planted on the loch himself, which are still there to this day.

Granny — 1890-1969

Lochnaw Castle LOCHNAW ESTATE IS reached by the shaded and steep wooded road from Leswalt, which winds upward among the trees on the south bank of the Aldouran Glen for about three quarters of a mile, the glen of the otters, and then down through the woods of the Lochnaw grounds. In early summer, blooms of rhododendron, laburnum, whitebeam, and wild cherry bank the road and in autumn the hillside is a glowing mass of crimson, brown, and orange. The road bends to show a first glitter of water and then the whole loch appears, and beyond it tantalising glimpses of the Castle of Lochnaw on a green eminence across the water, surrounded by its woods and its terrace, with the water for a foreground, and the ancient and modern towers grouped together against the sky. This was, until the 1920s, the ancestral home of the Agnews of Lochnaw. The estate had been in the possession of the Agnew family for nearly 600 years. Patrick Agnew had been appointed Constable of the King's Castle of Lochnaw in 1330 and had received a grant of the adjoining lands at the same time. For security, the castle in those days stood on the island in the loch. About 1395 the ‘Black Douglas’ tried to force the Galloway barons into a state of vassalage to himself, and Agnew of Lochnaw refused to comply with his demands. The Castle was besieged, the Agnews starved out and finally forced into hiding, and the castle destroyed. When it was rebuilt, a new site was chosen on the shore of the loch and a solid, square, tower Lochnaw erected which was added to over the years, until it finally grew into the castle Castle, Leswalt, that I knew in the 1950s. Galloway: 1880s In 1451 James the Second appointed Andrew Agnew to the sheriffship, and the office remained in the family until 1747, when hereditary jurisdictions were abolished. The only break in the tenure began in 1682, when Sir Andrew Agnew, the tenth Sheriff, who was considered too lenient in administering the Acts against the Covenanters, and declined the Test, was superseded by John Graham of Claverhouse. The Sir Andrew Agnew of that day is said to have taken refuge in a cave on the nearby Larbrax shore, together with his eldest son, while a detachment of the despised ‘Highland Host’, soldiers recruited from the Scottish highlands and islands, were quartered at Lochnaw and looted and pillaged it of all that it contained. Sir Andrew was restored to the office in April 1689, after the Revolution, on the accession of William and Mary. The castle had magnificent grounds and its impressive turreted buildings had been built up from the 16th to the 20th centuries. The original tower has remained practically untouched. It is five stories high with thick walls and a steep, winding staircase of rough stone leading up to a picturesque cape-house. This was where gran slept as a young girl.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

A peculiarity about the staircase was that it began on the first floor. The ground floor, which was the kitchen, communicated with the rest of the house by means of a temporary staircase, which could be drawn up in case of attack: when the cattle would be driven into the lower chamber. The walls were surmounted by battlements, which gave an extensive view of the area before the surrounding woods grew up. Immediately above the entrance doorway, a portion of the parapet projects, so as to leave an opening through which missiles could be dropped on the heads of any would-be attackers.

Gran’s early years GRANNY WAS BORN in 1890 in the West Lodge gatehouse of Lochnaw Castle, in the parish of Leswalt in the Rhinns, about six miles from Stranraer. Gran was two when John Singer Sergeant came to paint his haunting portrait of the ethereal ‘Lady Agnew of Lochnaw’, the mistress of the Castle. Gran came into the world of the penny post and carrier pigeon. It was a time when people travelled by horse and cart and train; when telegrams were for emergencies and operations were performed without anaesthetics and antibiotics. If patients didn’t die of shock, they died of gangrene. Her parents — and their parents before them, who remembered life before Waterloo, who also worked in service to the Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway were the poor folk at the gate. My earliest recollections are of granny’s stories about life in the castle, particularly how one miserable and overcast morning when she was about ten, she left her home in the castle’s west lodge with its leaded windows and ivycovered walls and went to work and to live in the cold, damp and tiny turret room at the top of the long, winding castle staircase. This was before the age of electricity, which was the great accelerator of change, particularly for those raised in the gloom of candlelight and the smeech of oil lamps during an era steeped in folklore and superstition. Gran’s accounts of near slave labour conditions and pre-dawn to lateevening work scrubbing, polishing, washing, ironing, baking, cleaning fowls, appalled me, conjuring up fairy-tale visions of wicked barons and baronesses abusing innocents and children. This was not the way it should be, I noted to myself darkly as I mentally marked the cards of the gentry. At least I knew where they lived. Life was hard at the turn of the 20th century, especially with a big family to support in the limited confines of a small gatehouse: Harry, Willie, Mary, Bella, Bess, Louis, Ida and gran, Agnes McCulloch Davis, who slept in the attic. But there was always enough to eat. Sir Andrew Agnew, the eighth baronet, my great grandparents’ employer,

West Lodge, Lochnaw Castle: with greatgrandmother seated.

Granny — 1890-1969

who died in 1892, was considered an enlightened employer who provided food for estate workers and tenants from the nearby home farm. There was plenty of land and each of the children had their own plot to cultivate and tend. Gran had what was considered the best vegetable garden. Great grandmother, Elizabeth Irving, was proud, vain, hard-working and rarely showed any affection to the children, according to what Gran told my mum. The kids were always being slapped for something or other. The family was never allowed to be idle and there was always knitting, sewing or mending to be done. Reading was considered frivolous. When she was eight years of age my gran was stacking peat and working in the fields. Many years later, the current owners of West Lodge, Rosemary and Bill McCormack, discovered a copy of the attendance record of Lochnaw’s Sunday School, Galdenoch Hall Sabbath School, for the years 1896 to 1900. The sporadic nature of her and her brothers’ and sisters’ attendance shows that work took precedence over spiritual requirements. School was a small house adjoining the estate at Larbrax on the Portpatrick Road where my Uncle Louis etched his name in the glass window in the porch, where it can be seen to this day.

Soldier, Soldier… IN 1915, at 25 — which was around the average age of marriage at that time — granny married a soldier and left the rich folk in their crumbling castles and declining estates to their own devices to move around the married quarters of army barracks in Catterick and Dumfries. It was the end of the Edwardian era and the twilight of feudalism; it was also the second year of the Great War when electric light, power and other advances in communications and technology made it obvious that the future would not be the same as the past. Grampa had been married before and had two young children by his first Newlyweds: Dumfries, 1915. wife, Mary Margaret Kirkpatrick, who had died prematurely — my uncle Jackie, born in Catterick Barracks in 1906 and aunt Eileen, born in Dumfries Barracks in 1909. Strangely, he did not tell his new wife about his existing children until after they were married, but gran took it in her stride when she found out she had been lumbered with a ready-made family. When grampa finally retired from the army in the early 1920s, slightly lame from shrapnel in his leg, they moved to Glasgow where he worked for the North British Locomotive Engineering Works in Springburn, an industrial suburb of north Glasgow, remaining with them as a labourer for the rest of his working life.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

I remember having to wait for him at the tramstop in Dumbarton Road, on his way back from work in the evening. He would give me a threepenny bit and I would head for the sweetshop for a penny caramel or a bar of McCowans ‘Highland Toffee’ while he disappeared into the exclusively adult world of the The Quarter Gill with its thick tobacco smoke and a sawdust covered floor with brass spitoons strategically placed along the foot rails. At weekends he would sometimes take me on the tram to Scotstoun where he would stop for a pint in the Anchorage Bar, while I waited outside, then we’d catch the ferry over to Renfrew where I would play in the park while he read the paper. With his own children he had been a strict disciplinarian, making sure they sat erect in their chairs. When they were older they had to be home before ten and if late they were kept in for a week. He was very religious and throughout his life, every morning and night, without fail, he would kneel by the bed and say his prayers.

Off to the ‘Big Picnic’, 1914-1918: RSM Ring having a banter with the young Highland Light Infantry recruits, many of whom would had died at Mons, Loos, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and even Archangel.

Kelvingrove Park, 1923: Grampa, Mum and Granny.

Mum and Dad

Y MOTHER, born in Glasgow in 1922, grew up to be apprenticed as a hairdresser at Bambers at Charing Cross Mansions. Bambers was Glasgow’s main theatrical costumier and wigmakers to the variety music halls. Chestnut-haired, petite and attractive, she loved to dress differently from everyone else. She was also slightly eccentric, going as far as having a pet monkey for a time, until grampa made her get rid of the poor creature. The monkey had been a present from the stage manager of the Metropole Theatre in Stockwell Street, a friend of my gran’s whom they had gone backstage to see after a Laurel & Hardy performance. Mum, unwisely, had admired the small creature in its cage and he promptly presented it to her, thinking she could keep it in the barn down on the farm where she was working. This was during the war and at the time she was in the Women’s Land Army, working on a sheep farm at Kilbirnie in Ayrshire. Grampa quickly got fed up with the monkey, Jennie, pulling down the pulley struts, eating his slippers, ripping the curtains and chewing his tobacco so Mum eventually gave it to the Pet Corner in Lewis’s department store in Argyle Street who insisted on giving her five shillings for it. Once, after the war when I was about four or five, she took me back to the farm to visit the farmer and his wife. While the grown-ups were having a cup of tea, I went out to explore the barn where I discovered still warm eggs in the hay bales. Thinking I was clever and saving the farmer time and effort, I found and smashed about six eggs against the barn wall because they had henshit on them, and proudly took the clean ones back to the farmhouse and announced what I’d done. We never went back. Mum usually spent her holidays in the Rhinns village of Kirkcolm, on the Mum: born in west shore of Loch Ryan between Corsewall Point, Lady Bay and Stranraer, and Glasgow in 1922, she was it was here she met my father, Albert Christie. apprenticed as a hairdresser at Bambers at Charing Cross mansions. Chestnut haired, petite, attractive and charming, she loved to dress differently.

Dad — 1915-1974 MUM AND DAD married in Glasgow, on June 2nd, 1945, and spent the first six or seven months of their lives together in the lighthouse, a shore station with married quarters, built by Robert Stevenson in 1815 at Corsewall Point, at the head of Loch Ryan, where it meets the Irish Sea. Dad was thirty years old when my parents married. He was a trawlerman from the fishing village of Torry, in Aberdeen, who had been seconded to the lighthouse service during the war. Tall, slim-built and over six foot he was good-looking: rather rakish, pensive

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

with a wry smile and droll sense of humour. His hair was dark and he had a narrow forehead, bushy eyebrows, keen grey-blue eyes, an aquiline nose and a generous mouth set in a longish, tanned and weather-beaten face. To describe him as laid-back would be an understatement, he never hurried for anything, but always strolled with a slow, jaunty gait with his hands clasped behind his back. If he had to go anywhere, he would take a taxi — even to the end of the street! He wore a faded Harris Tweed jacket, a fisherman’s roll-neck oiled wool sweater and grey flannels. Being a skipper and deep-sea fisherman he was only ashore a few days every five weeks or so and he never bothered to keep up with fashion. For weddings and funerals he had a dark blue double-breasted blue serge suit which he thought was cavalier, and, strangely, a bow tie. Dad drank heavily, but was never maudlin and smoked like a chimney, rolling his own cigarettes. He could roll a cigarette with one hand down his trouser leg faster than tongue could tell. Presumably this was a skill acquired with one hand on the wheel or on a fishing net. Like Para Handy’s description of his friend ‘Hurricane Jack’: — ‘ ...The perfect ”chentleman” and the most experienced seaman of modern times, as the most fearless soul who ever wore oilskins, the handsomest man in Britain, so free with his money he would fling it at the birds, so generally accomplished it would be a treat to be left a month on a desert island with him, Lanky, weather beaten, smartly dressed in a blue serge suit.’ He could apparently be strangely moody, although I never witnessed this side of him, and quick to take offence at some real or imaginary slight. Like many Dad, Albert fishermen he didn’t have time for small talk. Christie (about 1935). God-fearing and superstitious, yet intelligent, he was solitary, laconic in speech, monosyllabic in fact, veering unpredictably between irritatingly long pregnant silences and slow rambling stories. When he did speak he could come up with some imaginative stories and anecdotes about life at sea and in fishing communities in the olden days. One story he recounted to me as a little boy stuck in my mind. Sailing up in the Barents Sea near the Arctic ice cap, he told me he once saw a tall-masted sailing ship, locked in the ice floes, drifting aimlessly through the Arctic seas with the stiffly frozen figure of a bearded man lashed to the wheel. On another occasion they had sailed into a northern Norwegian Fjord for shelter during a storm in the North Sea. This run for shelter coincided with the locals sighting and capturing a whale by frightening it and driving it onto the beach. These whale slaughters were inevitably accompanied by a week long party, which my father and his crew were invited to join, turning off the radio

Mum and Dad

transmitter. Meanwhile, the trawler owner in Aberdeen was going frantic thinking the boat had been sunk and all hands lost. Dad lost his skipper’s ticket for a time as a result of that episode. This incident reminds me of a story in Para Handy when, sailing down Loch Fyne in rough weather after a drunken ball in Furnace in the west of Scotland, the hapless captain discovers that one of the SS Vital Spark’s crew, ‘The Tar’, had gone missing: — ‘Weel, there’s a good man gone!’ said Para Handy. ‘Och! Poor Tar! It was yon last smasher of a sea. He’s over the side. Poor laad! Poor laad! Cot bless me, dyin’ without a word of Gaalic in his mooth! It’s a chudgement; not another drop of drink will I drink, except maybe beer. Or at New Year time…I would break my he’rt greetin’ for the poor laad that never did anybody any herm. Get oot the flag from below my bunk, give it a syne in the pail, and put it at half-mast, and we’ll go into Ardrishaig and send a telegram — it’ll be a sixpence. It’ll be a telegram with a sore he’rt, I’ll assure you. I do not know what I’ll say in it, Dougie. It will not do to break it too much to them; maybe we will send the two telegrams — that’ll be a shilling. We’ll say in the first wan— “Your son, Colin, left the boat today”: and in the next wan we will say — “He iss not coming back, he is drooned.”

Jacobites by name DAD WAS PROUD of the pro-Stuart tradition in the family and he often told me how our ancestor, Finlay Mor, had carried the Royal Colours of Scotland at the Battle of Pinkie against Edward VI’s army led by Protector Somerset in September 1547. Finlay Mor was killed by a cannon ball from an English ship as the Scottish army marched along the shore at Pinkie Cleugh, near Edinburgh. His body was buried in Inveresk churchyard where it is known as the ‘Lang Hielandman’s Grave’. Like many fishermen, Dad refused to learn to swim. His argument was that if he could swim, where would he swim to? — hundreds of miles out in the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans where the expected survival time in the water was just fifteen minutes in summer, and seven or eight minutes, at best, in winter. Dad often said he wanted to die by drowning, strongly believing it to be the best way to go. He claimed drowning people did a fast memory rewind through their entire lives. This wasn’t just some family or fishermen’s tradition going back hundreds of years; both he and his brother, my Uncle Tom, had experienced near-death drownings with flashbacks, having each been washed overboard at separate times. When Mum met Dad, at a dance in Kirkcolm, he was Assistant Lightkeeper at Corsewall Lighthouse. From Corsewall Point (the cross well, dedicated to Saint Columba) you can see to Ballantrae and the ancient sea-path of the Vikings who sailed their galleys round the Mull of Kintyre. The islands of Ailsa Craig, fifteen miles away, and Arran at a distance of thirty, dominate the skyline. My father had served as lightkeeper on both Ailsa Craig and Pladda,

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

just off the southern tip of Arran. On Ailsa Craig they supplemented their income by collecting gannet eggs which were bought by ‘Birds’ Custard’ as a key ingredient in their custard. I wonder how many people took the reference ‘Birds’ seriously? Dad had also been a lightkeeper on the infamously spooky Flannan Isle, fifteen miles west of the Isle of Lewis, out in the Atlantic. In December 1900, three lightkeepers had disappeared from the island and no trace of them was ever found. Their disappearance was discovered when a passing ship reported no light on Flannan Isle and the relief party discovered empty living quarters with an untouched meal on the table and an over-turned chair. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson immortalised the mystery in his poem Flannan Isle*, which my Dad recited to me in the little ‘quality time’ we had together. It was as though he had been one of the rescue party. For a long * Flannan Isle time I thought the poem was an over-the-top account of his ‘Yet, as we crowded through the door, own experience: We only saw a table spread Nothing so dramatic happened at Corsewall Lighthouse. For dinner, meat and cheese and bread; But, all untouched; and no one saw there: At least until my dad was drummed out of the service. As though, when they sat down to eat, Life on the lighthouse shore station was tranquil; Ere they could even taste, lightkeepers had land for growing vegetables and a rowing Alarm had come; and they in haste boat for fishing. Dad would smoke the herring he caught in Had risen and left the bread and meat: For at the table-head a chair a barrel with oak sawdust and chips with a red-hot iron bolt Lay tumbled on the floor… dropped in the centre. The surrounding grassy headland Like curs, a glance had brought to heel, provided plenty of rabbits and hares for the pot with fresh We listened, flinching there: And looked, and looked, on the untouched meal, milk, butter, cheese and eggs from the local farms. When off And the overtoppled chair. duty dad would paint, read, or whittle away at We seemed to stand for an endless while, Though still no word was said, woodcarvings and even bottle ships. men alive on Flannan Isle, The Christies were fisherfolk, ‘whitefishers’, who had Three Who thought, on three men dead.’ lived in Skateraw — one of the Kincardineshire ‘fishtouns’ Wilfred Wilson Gibson perched on the rocky headlands facing the ‘German’ Sea between Aberdeen and Stonehaven — for at least three hundred years. According to my father, when he was explaining to me late in life how his parents and grandparents lived, he suggested I read two books: Neil Gunn’s The Silver Darlings which he felt accurately depicted the unremittingly harsh lives of the fishing communities of the North East, and Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s trilogy, A Scots Quair, which painted a depressingly unsentimental portrait of life on the land and the tyranny of farmers in the Kincardineshire Mains. Worryingly, it occurred to me, that apart from the dangers and hardships they faced on land and at sea, having lived for almost three centuries in such a small interrelated community, the families must have had Byzantinely complicated and consanguineous relationships. The name Christie — originally pronounced Christ-y — is thought to be derived from the Greek, meaning “of the anointed”, and was a common surname in the north-east of Scotland, from Buchan to Montrose, in the Lowland and Highland countrysides of Angus, Perthshire, Forfar, Kincardine and

Mum and Dad

Skateraw: Kincardineshire ‘fishtoun’ and home of the Christies since at least the 1630s.

Aberdeenshire, as local kirkyard headstones and parish and census records show. Historically, the Christies were reputed to have originated from the upper reaches of the valley of the River Dee, west of Braemar, where Glen Christie, the Hill of Christie and two burns, Alt Cristie Beag and Alt Cristie Mor, can be found today. There were also Norwegian Christies, but who came first I don’t know. Why and when they moved to the coast is a mystery; perhaps it had to do with the devastating famines and periods of glacial cold which ravaged the north eastern highlands in the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries, causing the death and emigration of up to a fifth of the population. Perhaps they had a falling out with the landlords, the Earl of Mar or the Farquharsons— or maybe fishing was the only way of keeping body and soul together in a more or less bankrupt Scottish economy. Scotland was one of the poorest countries in western Europe in the 17th century, and the end of that century saw the disastrously conceived ‘Darien Project’. The ‘Darien Project’ was an attempt, in 1698, at Scottish empire building before the Union of the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707. It involved setting up a Scottish trading colony on the narrow Panamanian isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Those involved hoped to make their fortunes — and Scotland’s — by providing a quicker route between East and West by cutting out the dangerous and lengthy journey around Cape Horn. The venture was seen as a major threat to the English merchants of the time who, with the connivance of king William of Orange, did everything in their power to sabotage the project. They succeeded and the colony was finally abandoned on 18 June 1699 due to disease, death, inhospitable conditions, and disagreements. The few survivors of the 2,000-strong Patterson Expedition — as the ‘Darien Project’ was originally called — who escaped with their lives and health were forced to sail, initially, to New England as ‘King Billy’ had expressly forbidden any of his subjects to provide assistance to the group, having ‘betrayed the Royal trust placed in them’. In fact, the first recorded Christie to settle in North America was James Christie who landed in New Jersey in August 1699. Only 300 survivors eventually returned to Scotland. As I said, the Christies were traditionally, Jacobites — support for the Stuart cause going hand in hand with Papacy or Episcopacy — and had been ‘out’ in 1547 at the ‘Battle of Pinkie’ and again in 1715 and 1745, but I can only hope in my heart this had more to do with landlord pressure and that they were opposed to the houses of Lancaster, Orange and Hanover rather than being pro-Stuart.

Back To Sea DAD WAS NOW back in Aberdeen on the trawlers, having been dismissed from the Lighthouse Service for assaulting the head lightkeeper under mysterious circumstances.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

According to my mother, Dad had met the principal lightkeeper on his way to or from feeding the chickens, laid down the bowl of feed and started punching him. I never found out what the man had done to provoke this apparently out-of-character outburst from my normally taciturn father. Mum told me later that he had these occasional dark moods. Years later, an anarchist friend, a lightkeeper at Longhope on the Island of Hoy in the Orkneys, copied out the following report from the Station General Orders Book, kept at every lighthouse: — ‘General Order CCXLV: Whereas Albert Christie, Assistant Lightkeeper, Corsewall Lighthouse, made a savage and unprovoked attack on the Principal Lightkeeper on the evening of 1st November, 1945, the Commissioners have dismissed him from their service. By Order of the Board, J. Glencorse Wakelin, Secretary, Northern Lighthouse Board, 84 George Street, Edinburgh, 21st November 1945.’ In the pecking order of the semi-feudal Northern Lighthouse Board’s list of miscreants, my dad may have been one of the better keepers. General Order CCXXVII describes another keeper’s dismissal for having an affair with another keeper’s wife. ‘The Commissioners exceedingly regret this departure from the high standard of morality which prevails at Lighthouse Stations… They trust that such conduct will long remain unknown in their Service.’ Or how about General Order CCXLIV: some poor benighted soul ‘addressed communications to the Commissioners couched in insubordinate language.’ for which he was severely reprimanded and reduced ten places on the List of Seniority (pay and promotion). He was only saved from dismissal by virtue of General Order CCXL, which describes how the Keeper concerned had ‘displayed conspicuous gallantry in effecting, under the most difficult conditions, the rescue of two men who were clinging to a piece of wreckage in the sea.’ Such gratitude!

Kidnapped! WITH NO MONEY and no place to live my father remained in Aberdeen — or, more precisely, at sea — while mum and I lived with my grandparents in Partick. A year later, in November 1950, dad acquired his skipper’s certificate and they tried to find a place of their own in Torry — and even Skateraw — but fishing was poor and with nothing they could afford by 1952 they had simply drifted apart. There was no acrimony on either side as far as I was aware. The last time mum saw him for twenty years was during a visit to a friend’s house in Glasgow, with gran and grampa. The host, Jimmy Stewart the coalman, poured everyone a glass of sherry which my father, apparently

Corsewall Lighthouse, Rhinns of Galloway.

Mum and Dad

looked at with disgust, walked over to the sink, ostentatiously poured it down the plughole and without a word to anyone walked out the door. Everyone thought he had gone for a packet of fags, but he never came back. Many years later when they were at last reunited, we would joke about the last time my father went out for a packet of cigarettes and disappeared for twenty years. I was about six or seven years old when they went their separate ways, rather too young to know much about it. As the years went past, it seemed a long time to be gone on a fishing trip, let alone to queue for cigarettes. Before the final, legal, separation however, my dad tried to hang on to me with a last-ditch kidnap attempt. I had gone up to Aberdeen on my own at his request, aged about six or seven, having been put on the train from Glasgow by my mum under the care of the conductor, with a label safety-pinned to my lapel. Dad was still at sea when I arrived so I was met in Aberdeen by my Aunt Ida and stayed with her in Kincorth, a new housing scheme overlooking Aberdeen. I had been in Aberdeen for a few days and was playing in the nearby fields with my cousins when Aunt Ida shouted to me that my dad was back from sea to see me. I ran back to find a taxi with its engine running outside the house. Dad told me to collect my things and that I was going to live with my aunt Bella and uncle William. I didn’t know what was going on, but took it all Family portrait: in my stride. Dad, Mum and Aunt Bella and uncle William were in their late fifties or early sixties. They Stuart (c 1948). had a small general merchandise shop and were out all day from seven in the morning until six or seven at night. Dad went straight back to sea and I was left hanging around this shop all day or outside their house, as they wouldn’t give me a key. On the second day, after my aunt and uncle had left for the shop I decided I had had enough of this and, like David Balfour in Kidnapped, would make my own way back to Glasgow. I broke into the house through the bathroom window, stuffed my collection of Dandys and Beanos into a bag, collected my savings of seventeen shillings and sixpence, and made my way to the bus stop. Quite by chance, however, while waiting for the bus, who should I see coming up the road but my mum, who had been told of the kidnapping by aunt Ida and had caught the next train up from Glasgow. The next time I saw my dad was in a lawyer’s office in Bon Accord Street when I was asked with which of my parents I wanted to live. What a choice! — but there was no contest. My dad was at sea for weeks, months at a time to Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes or Norway, and I certainly didn’t want to spend the rest of my childhood with old aunts and uncles who’d had me foisted upon them by a desperate father.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Saltcoats And Ardrossan — 1954-55 DURING 1954 my Gran and Grampa retired to the adjoining Ayrshire seaside towns of Saltcoats and then Ardrossan, about 30 miles from Glasgow. I moved with them, while my mother stayed in Glasgow. Probably the reason why I was never competitive or interested in sport had to do with the fact I was brought up mainly by women. Dad, when my parents were together, wasn’t particularly interested in any form of sport, including football. I did not know it at the time, but mum had been having a relationship with a coal miner from the Lanarkshire pit town of Blantyre and had had a daughter by him in 1953. Grampa— a strict Catholic and disciplinarian— was never told he had a granddaughter for fear of how he might react. Saltcoats had acquired it name, unsurprisingly, from the fact that salt had been manufactured there in the remote past and the workers houses were known as Saut Cots. We lived on the south side of town, in a small twostorey tenement building whose back windows overlooked the Firth of Clyde and the railway line which ran parallel with the promenade and the huge sand dunes and links which separated the town from Irvine in the south. Whenever a storm blew up, I would pull on my wellies and sou’wester, cross the old iron pedestrian railway bridge beside our house, and wander up and down the empty promenade getting as close as I could to the enormous crashing pillars of creamy spray thrown up by the sea. We spent only a few months in Saltcoats before moving up the coast a mile or so to a grey, two-storey tenement in Young Street, one of the long straight roads off Glasgow Street in north Ardrossan, to what we thought would be my grandparent’s retirement home. Life in Ardrossan, on the outer reaches of the Firth of Clyde, was different. We kids had backcourts but we also had the sandy beach of North Bay and dunes which were ideal for playing cowboys and indians. We also had our own derelict, but still functioning railway engine turntable as one of our playgrounds. This could be turned by a wheel mechanism similar to my granny’s old mangle. If we felt adventurous we would head northwest to explore the Knockewart Hills where there was an ancient cairn on one hill and an ancient fort on the other, with a loch and woods between. But in spite of these new extended playgrounds, Ardrossan lacked the vibrancy and character of Glasgow, where it always felt as though anything could happen.

Taking My ‘Dowts’ To Jesus PERHAPS IT WAS boredom, or plain devilment, but it was in Ardrossan, on Halloween Night 1954, I started smoking — at 8 years of age. In those days Halloween involved ‘guising’, dressing up in some form of disguise, knocking

Mum, Gran and Grampa: Ardrossan, 1954.

The Light That Failed

on people’s doors and doing a little turn, like singing or reciting a poem, not the intimidating blackmail of today’s US import, ‘Trick or Treat’. By the end of a night’s entertaining the neighbourhood I had accumulated 12 shillings and six pence of which I spent one shilling and threepence on a paper packet of five Woodbines. The intricate artwork of the green and gold packet with its delicate tracery of wild honeysuckle fascinated me; particularly intriguing was the complex detail of the stylised tendrils and blooms. I lit up, took a long, slow draw, expanded my chest and held in the smoke, and blew it out slowly between narrowed lips. A few seconds later the world started to spin, my heart suddenly started beating faster and faster, my face drained and I broke out in a cold sweat and had to sit on the pavement, shivering and sweating. Recovering after an uncomfortable few minutes, I was determined to master the process so I lit up another and went home, walking jauntily through the door with my hands in my pocket and a fag hanging out of my mouth like a precocious diminutive Humphrey Bogart. Gran looked at me in sheer amazement as I wandered past then, as it sank in, reacted silently without a word with a skelp around the back of my head. I tried a humorous remark to lighten the situation. ‘But gran, it’s all right to smoke. It must be, because Jesus smokes.’ ‘Ya cheeky wee monkey! What are you talking about?’ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘didn’t the minister say we’ve to bring our dowts to Jesus?’ She whacked me again and confiscated the fags, but it was the slippery slope for me as far as smoking was concerned; it was another twenty years of Capstan Full Strength and French Boyars before I finally gave up altogether.

The Light That Failed GRAMPA DIED IN Ardrossan in January 1955, in his eightieth year. Like the old soldiers of the song, he faded away. Before he took to his bed at the end, he thanked my gran for all she had done for him and the family. I remember the night he died quite vividly. I had been put to bed early in the ‘hole in the wall’ in the kitchen, but I knew something was going on. I had dozed off, but something, possibly raised voices, made me wake up about 8.30 p.m. and I ran through to the front bedroom where I saw gran and mum struggling with grampa in his striped pyjamas. He was attempting to sit upright in the bed settee. Perhaps he was trying to get to the toilet; they say this happens with people who are dying. Grampa’s small face, pale yellow as vellum, had shrunk tight around his skull. He was lit from behind by a light attachment on the wall with three bulbs. He was staring straight ahead, as though hypnotised, eyes wide, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to speak, gasping weakly in an unrecognisable language — gibberish, interspersed with fragments of English — about a beautiful lady and a light he had seen. Those were his dying moments, his life was flickering out like a candle-end. He lay back and I was quickly ushered out of the room.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Weirdly, when I woke up the following morning the clock in the front room had stopped at ten minutes to nine, the exact time of his death, and it never worked again. I thought perhaps gran had stopped it as an old superstition, but she said she hadn’t touched it. Mum and gran did tell me that one of the three lightbulbs above his head blew at the moment of his death. At the same time, the flames in the coal fire which had been blazing away (and which normally never went out; one simply stoked the embers and put on more coal) visibly lost their glow and expired, leaving the room chilly The next and last time I saw grampa he was laid out in his coffin on the table in the gloomy and ‘blinded’ back room where he had died. I was brought in to say goodbye to him before they screwed down the lid.

Without Benefit Of Clergy GRAMPA HAD ASKED that his mortal remains lie overnight in the local Catholic chapel. But for this simple service the priest insisted on a fee of ten pounds, which gran didn’t have. She was hurt and indignant, but although his last request was unfulfilled, gran managed to raise enough money for some masses to be said for his soul, though she could not afford it and didn’t believe in it. Grampa’s remains were brought back to Glasgow where he was buried in St Kentigern’s Cemetery in Keppochhill Road, Springburn. However, because he was in a mixed marriage and was therefore ‘outside the Church’, no priest came to the graveside to administer the funeral service, in spite of a lifetime’s devotion to the Roman Catholic faith. The mean-spirited, ungracious, self-serving and blatantly commercial nature of this injustice and the hurt it caused my granny fed my resentment and preyed heavily on my mind. It reinforced my existing prejudices as to the mendacious nature of the Church of Rome and the arbitrary power of a spiteful priesthood.

Sectarian Politics — 1955 WHETHER IT WAS because some of the kids I mixed with in Ardrossan played in the local Orange flute band, coupled with the events surrounding Grampa’s death, but somehow or other this led to my initiation into sectarian politics when I was nine years old. For whatever reason, by July 1955 I found myself beating a drum to the stirring rhythm of The Sash My Father Wore, marching proudly behind the Union Jack in the Ardrossan Flute Band, a prospective member of the local Juvenile Loyal Orange Lodge. We were celebrating the defeat of the craven instruments of Rome at the Battle of Boyne Water in July 1690. Every working-class Presbyterian boy and girl knew how close the treacherous Stuart king had come to destroying our liberties and burning our bibles, and how the craven Governor Lundy had opened the gates of Londonderry to the enemy hordes, only to have the

Wee Sectarian

Apprentice Boys slam them shut again. Our wee Scottish hearts beat faster as we passed the chapel and thought how nearly James VII (five less for English readers) had come to delivering us into the embrace of the Harlot. The satanic glories and plans for domination of the Whore of Rome were hard for us to reconcile with Glasgow’s famous bedraggled crones like ‘Cigarette Annie’, who represented the awful picture of the only sort of harlot we thought we knew. ‘Cigarette Annie’ was a well-recognised old crone who looked, dressed and behaved like the dirty conniving witch in ‘Babes in the Wood’, and danced crazily to her own mouth-organ accompaniment on the streets of Glasgow, from Great Western Road to Argyle Street. ‘Cigarette Annie’s’ embrace might not be very tempting, but if she were compared with her Roman sister, it was hard to see how Redsocks (as Orangemen call the Pope) would ever destroy our glorious institutions. We all knew that had it not been for the struggles of our ancestors, our freedom would have been destroyed and we ourselves delivered to the Holy Office of the Inquisition by a faithless king. Fortunately, that danger was past. No British state would ever again deliver any of us bearing the sash our fathers wore to the dungeons, torture rooms or bonfires of Catholic Spain. Not for us the fate of the secret Jews of Spain and heretics from the 15th to the 19th centuries, many of whom spent their last breath telling the Dominican monk who held a crucifix before them as the flames and smoke engulfed them: ‘It’s only a piece of wood!’… If they did not show such defiance to the end they could be deemed to have repented and, accordingly, dispatched by the ‘humane’ garotte to save them from the flames…

Wee sectarian.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Arran — Days of Whin And Rose-hips

UM WAS NOW living in Blantyre with Tam ‘Broon’ and their daughter and my half-sister, Olivia, whom I didn’t meet or even know about until she was about three or four. I hadn’t been abandoned nor did I feel resentful, it was just another difficult, all-too-human domestic situation. And so, I went with my newly widowed granny to Lamlash on the Island of Arran. She had found a job there as live-in home help and companion to a ninety-six-year-old woman — born before the American Civil War — who had recently undergone a major operation to have one of her eyes removed. She was a frail but cheerful old soul: petite, with a complexion like old parchment, which contrasted starkly with the long black dress and black stockings she always wore. What fascinated me most, however, was the gaping waxy socket where her eye had been. The old lady’s son and daughter-in-law appeared to be relatively wealthy and lived at the far side of the village, in the more quietly affluent and picturesque clachan of Cordon at the Brodick end of the village, but they rarely visited or had much to do with her. All they did was pay granny’s wages and the bills. Lamlash Arran is the largest of the islands of Bute in the Firth of Clyde; 26 miles long, 12 miles broad and about 60 miles in circumference. The other islands of Bute are: great Cumbrae, Little Cumbrae, Holy Isle, Pladda and Inchmarnock. Arran lies at the entrance to the Firth of Clyde, some 14 miles from Ardrossan on the Ayrshire coast and on the edge of the Gulf Stream. To the north are the Kyles of Bute and Loch Fyne; to the south the Irish Sea and Antrim some 35 miles away. There are no towns on the island, only villages where people organised their own amusements such as dances, whist- and beetle-drives and a weekly travelling cinema show. From the ninth to the close of the 13th centuries the island was controlled by the Norwegian Vikings and only became part of Scotland, for the first time, under Alexander III, after the Battle of Largs in 1263. Robert the Bruce had used the island in the years 1306 and 1307 as his base to launch the Scottish wars of independence. It was from this shore that Robert the Bruce left Arran to return to the mainland and win his famous victories, culminating in Bannockburn, seven years later. Until recently almost the whole of Arran had been owned by the old Duchess of Montrose, daughter of the twelfth Duke of Hamilton, and was very much under her feudal control. The island had belonged to the Hamilton family since the middle of the 14th century when it was granted as part of a marriage dowry between King Robert III’s sister and Lord Hamilton . Catholics were unwelcome and were refused permission to build a chapel or organise open religious meetings. There was a story, perhaps apocryphal, that at one time there used to be a sign on Brodick Pier stating that Catholics were not welcome on the island. At least that was the story I heard. It was

Arran — Days of Whin and Rose-hips

Lamlash Bay: the sandy beach was the scene of ‘sausage sizzles’ organised by the Church of Scotland Seaside Missions (CSSM) in an attempt to bring God to Glasgow Fair holidaymakers.

perfectly safe, however, for wee Orangemen like me! Lamlash Bay provides a perfect anchorage in the Firth of Clyde and the whole Royal Navy Atlantic Fleet has sheltered there at one time or another. It is protected from behind by the sweep of the Clauchland Hills, and in front by the impressive stony bulk of the Holy Isle, rising to its summit of Mullack Mor, 1,030 feet above sea level. Lamlash is the second largest village on the island, with its houses spread thinly round the curving shore of the white sandy bay which stretches from Clauchlands Point in the North to Kings Cross Point on the Whiting Bay side. It was the spring of 1955 and for the next year or so we lived at 4 Murray Place in Lamlash. It was Eden on the Clyde. The house was located in a small row of stone-built two-storey cottages fronted by gardens with old-fashioned roses, fuchsias, harebells and pimpernels glowing under hawthorn hedges. At the Whiting Bay end there was a block of modern houses used by local keepers of the Northern Lighthouse Board. A dirt track ran through the back, separating us from strangely Swiss-like wooden chalets. These were summerhouses which were rented out to seasonal visitors. Murray Place lay on the outskirts of Lamlash, on the road to Whiting Bay, close to the Ross Road which traverses the island through Monamore Glen and Glen Scorrodale and runs alongside Sliddery Water to Lagg on the south side of the island. Ours was the only house in the row to have electricity; it had been installed to power the wonderful Stanna stair lift that took the old lady upstairs every night. All the neighbouring houses were lit with paraffin lamps and candles. Whenever gran had to go off to Glasgow for a few days, I would stay with our neighbours, the McAdams, and if I had a bath it was in a zinc bath which was handfilled by jugs of hot water in front of the range in the kitchen-dining room, with the whole family looking on. Across the field behind Murray Place ran the Benlister burn, which in summer become like a jungle river, ideal for exploring. Its leafy banks were overhung by moss-covered trees of rowan, birch and sycamore, their trunks enveloped by vines, dangling plants, sticky willows and exotic, tall, bambootype shoots which sprang up overnight. Sitting at the foot of a tree, we would gaze up through the mosaics of leaves at the great open sky, we listened to the squawking of the blackbirds, the penny whistle-like song of the skylarks and the gentle gurgling of the stream and the breeze through the dappled shade of the canopy. Hacking our way through this lush greenery, as if we were escaping from Japanese, Korean or Nazi prisoner of war camps, we would emerge at the foot of the Ross Hill which dominated Lamlash. We would then make our way upwards, clambering easily at first over the dry stone dykes, more slowly as the

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

incline became steeper and we had to tread more carefully through the coarse lobed ferns, bracken and yellow-flowered, prickly green gorse, watching out for lurking adders, which were plentiful in the area, until we finally dragged ourselves on all fours, totally exhausted, to the top of the 3000-foot hill. There, on warm summer days and evenings, we would read or lie on our backs, basking in the sun, each one of us alone in our own solitude, filled with his reveries, contemplating iceberg clouds drifting through the blue heavens and the occasional high and distant speck of a BOAC or TWA aeroplane flying to America or Canada; not speaking but wondering and dreaming among the heather and the bracken about what life held in store for us: ‘Oh, summer, scent heavy and humid When willows weep and blackbirds sing with joy Will not the gentle dragon venture forth? * Cargoes: ‘Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, There are white petalled daisies all ripe for him to eat Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, And surely on evenings of such delicacy With a cargo of ivory, That bastion of violence and vulgarity, St George, will be fast And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. asleep.’ (anon.) Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, From the steep towering peak of the Ross you could see Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, a glorious vista. To the west, through the Monamoor glen With a cargo of diamonds, towards the dell of Lagg where exotic flowers grow and Emeralds, amethysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. palm trees flourish, there were rifted peaks, deep quarries, Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, leaping torrents, rolling moorlands set here and there with Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, a lonely tarn, or lochan, and stags roaming slowly across With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, the landscape. Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.’ To the north, across the deeply wooded Clauchland John Masefield Hills behind Lamlash towards Brodick, there were rugged glens dominated by Goat Fell and its surrounding jagged granite ridges and peaks known as ‘The Sleeping Warrior’. To the south were the brooding waters of Lamlash Bay with its dramatic backdrop of the Holy Isle, and beyond to the Firth, the Ayrshire coast, the rocky sugar loaf isle of Ailsa Craig and the Rhinns of Galloway in the hazy blue grey southern horizon traversed with cargo boats, puffers, the small steam vessels which transported every conceivable kind of goods and chattels up and down the West Coast of Scotland to places inaccessible by road, the Belfast ferry and even great newly fitted liners doing their paces on the measured mile. The scene was conjured straight out of John Masefield’s Cargoes.*

Role Models IT WAS IN Arran that I made the transition from comics to books. I was lucky, in the sense that I grew up in circumstances still propitious to reading. This was a time before television, or computer games, or ‘Walkmen’. We were thrown on our own devices, with reading being the only alternative to boredom on wet evenings or weekends. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer were the first books I 71

Arran — Days of Whin and Rose-hips

William Brown: the suburban subversive.

remember reading from start to finish. I was charmed and absorbed by the villainies, horrors and ultimate happy resolution of the stories. The longsuffering gavroche-like character of Huckleberry Finn struck a sympathetic chord with me; I related to him more than to Tom Sawyer. Tom was privileged and slightly flaky in his instincts — more Hillhead than Partick — while Huck, with his mate Jim the escaping Negro slave, was a streetwise survivor, old before his time, resourceful in coping with crises and rarely shocked by anything, having long had to face the cruelty, racism and perversity of the American deep South, but never cynical. Other favourite books were Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae and Treasure Island. For sheer horror, nothing could match the flesh-creeping effect of his description of ‘Blind Pew’s’ stick tap-tapping nearer and nearer through the silent, frosty air towards the isolated inn where Jim and his mum sat holding their breaths, expecting to be murdered. Kidnapped was another. Although I wanted to be like Alan Breck Stewart, my first literary hero, I suspected I was more like David Balfour, feeling my way fearfully forward and hoping a flash of lightning would prevent me tumbling into the abyss — or dunny. But the most influential early role model was undoubtedly William Brown of Just William, whose author, Richmal Crompton, did wonders in stretching my vocabulary and syntax. Grampa had taught me to read a page of his large and fascinating Webster’s dictionary every day and to look up any words I didn’t know or was unsure about, such as ejaculating — which William was always doing. William Brown and his gang, although from clearly middle class English families in nice large houses in the Home Counties, were socially disaffected and out of step with their class. They were assertive, optimistic, adventurous, and irreverent, anti-authoritarian freethinking rebels who gloried in the rejection of the middle class values and expectations of their parents, relatives and most of their neighbours. Para Handy by Hugh Foulis, otherwise known as Neil Munro, was another constant companion. My best friend’s brother, ‘Tarry’ MacAdam, who lived next door to us in Murray Place, worked on the puffers. I discovered the book Para Handy lying in the cabin when his puffer docked at Lamlash pier once and we were helping to unload some cargo. I read it from cover to cover in one night. For those who haven’t heard of this Don Quixote of the Clyde, the short episodes recount the adventures of Captain Peter MacFarlane, whose by-name was the ‘Para Handy’ of the title and the dysfunctional but happy crew of his puffer the ‘SS Vital Spark’ as it steamed its way through countless droll adventures up and down the Clyde and in highland harbours in the early part of the 20th century.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Boyhood in Arran in the mid-1950s was idyllic. We were never bored for long. As Richmal Crompton’s hero said: ‘Anythin’ might turn up,’ said William. “Gosh! There mus’ be things turnin’ up all over the place. You’ve only got to find ‘em… I bet people like King Arthur an’ Boadicea an’ — an’ Dick Turpin an’ Robin Hood didn’t jus’ sit around waitin’ for things to turn up. They went out an’ found ‘em…’ Taking William’s advice, we went out and found things to do. In the summer the Church of Scotland Seaside Missions would visit our sub-tropical, wet and midgie-ridden paradise to organise sausage sizzles, campfires, picnics and other entertainments on the beach — paid for by us with sermons and hymn singing. We collected rosehips along the Whiting Bay road for Delrosa Rose Hip Syrup, who paid us something like sixpence a pail. Richmal Crompton captured the mood in her ‘William’ characters: — ‘ “What’ll we do this morning?” said Ginger. It was sunny. It was holiday time. They had each other and a dog. Boyhood could not wish for more. The whole world lay before them.’

‘Vigleikr Was Here….’ TO ESCAPE THE relentless onslaught from the clouds of West Coast midgies we would build rafts or hire a rowing-boat and row or paddle across Lamlash Bay to the Holy Isle, which almost fills the entrance to the bay. Halfway across the silent bay once, while rowing back at dusk to Lamlash from the Holy Isle, the water beside the boat suddenly started to spout. Then, like some great Polaris missile emerging unannounced from the deep, an enormous basking shark about 15 or 20 foot in length launched itself through a pillar of water into the darkening sky, spiralled and arced across our bows and disappeared, equally spectacularly and violently, back into the dark watery depths, leaving us drenched and in a state of shock, with the boat rocking violently in the wake of this Leviathan. The whole event could only have taken a matter of seconds, but the effect on us must have been similar to that experienced by Tam-O-Shanter that fateful night on his way back from the pub; we looked at each other blankly for a moment and, like characters out of some ‘Looney Tunes’ cartoon, grabbed the oars and rowed fast and frantically until we beached on the shore and scrambled breathlessly up the sand duned bank to tell anyone and everyone of our confrontation with the monster of the bay. As there were no priests on the island, however, nothing came of it. Another amusing (for us) shark-related incident occurred during the visit of some US warships to the bay. It was a gloriously hot August day and we were keeping cool by leaping off the pier into the water, as usual in the summer, when a number of US sailors on shore leave decided to join us. Everyone was having a laugh when, suddenly, I spotted two sharks fins breaking the surface and disappearing again. The water was crystal clear and as I looked closer, over

Arran — Days of Whin and Rose-hips

the end of the pier, I realised there was a whole school of about five or six of these massive creatures — some of them about twenty or more feet long — gracefully and playfully engaged in synchronised swimming between and around the stanchions of the pier. I called over one of the Americans standing nearby and pointed these wonderful creatures out to him. When he realised what these enormous shapes were that were circling beneath his shipmates and he screamed ‘Sharks!’ to the men swimming carefree and happy below to get out of the water. It was like an aquatic Keystone Cops scenario as they thrashed and splashed about, desperately pushing and shoving each other out of the way to make it up the pier ladder and to safety. None of them was eaten, or even attacked. The sharks obviously had more dignity than the sailors. Holy Isle took its name from St Molios, a disciple of St Columba, who was supposed to have made it his home, and on the west side of the island is the cave bearing his name where we built fires and played. Nearly 40 feet long and 13 feet at its widest part, the cave has a drain cut out of solid stone and a rough fireplace. Over the centuries passing vandals and pilgrims have hacked religious and profane graffiti into its walls, including some Viking runes. One, allegedly, is a message left by Vigleikr, Marshall to King Hakon, indicating the Norwegian Vikings had a spot of shore leave here before sailing for their rendezvous with destiny at the Battle of Largs in the 13th century. It probably said ‘ Vigleikr was here! What a barren dump!’ My name is also up there with Vigleikr’s. It was as a result of these expeditions to the Holy Isle The Holy Isle: that I had my first run in with the police. two views. Near the cave is a sandstone table about seven feet in diameter, known as the ‘Judgement Seat’ with four seats cut in the side where we would lay out our packed lunches and screwtop bottles of Cream Soda. Near the island’s makeshift jetty was a green wooden hut from which lemonade, ice cream and crisps were sold to visitors during the summer. Out of season it was boarded up and padlocked, but on one of our island raiding parties we broke into the hut and carried off bottles of lemonade and crisps to our cave for a feast. A week or so after this my gran gave me a shopping bag of empty screwtop lemonade bottles to collect the deposit money, threepence a bottle I think, and off I went with them to the village shop. As I strolled nonchalantly past the police station the big highland polisman came to the door and called me over by name — Christie — and asked what I had in the bag. Thinking nothing of it I said, lemonade bottles, at which point he went into extremely heavy mode and accused me of having pillaged the wee hut on the

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Holy Isle. Nothing I could say could convince him otherwise, but he could prove nothing and after about half an hour’s grilling he told me to get on my way. Menacingly, he added, that ‘Glesca keelies’ and ‘wee neds’ like me were not welcome and that he would be keeping his eye on me and if there were any more break-ins at the hut or anywhere else he’d have me off the island and into an approved school quicker than tongue could tell.

Sherpa McTensing BECAUSE LAMLASH HAD one of the best natural harbours in Europe, as well as mountains and glens, marines, paratroops and the navy often visited on multinational manoeuvres. In fact, the Parachute Regiment had been to Arran to shoot the cliff climbing scenes in the film The Red Berets. We weans would do our Sherpa McTensings bit and march with them into the glens and up into the Clauchland Hills overlooking Lamlash Bay and the Firth of Clyde, carrying bits of their heavy machine-guns, mortars and other equipment in return for our dinner and gold tins of War Office issue fruit gums. Our duties went even further, for we also acted as procurers for them with the local girls who were ‘lookin fur a lumber’. The banter was electric when they did meet: Sailor: ‘Baby, I'm going to give you something you've never had before.’ Lamlash girl, to friend: ‘ Haw, Magret. There's a guy here wi’ leprosy. ‘ When the military were in Lamlash, which was often, they used to set up camp in the farmer’s field at the foot of the Ross Road. This was close to Murray Place, so we spent a fair bit of our time in their company, hanging around the camp, doing odd jobs and, occasionally, driving out over the beach and across the bay in the amphibious DUKWS or driving the big army lorries around the field.

Container For The Thing Contained LAMLASH SCHOOL was the only secondary school on Arran and children attended from all the villages and farms. It was very modern, had only recently been built when we arrived in Lamlash, and boasted a large gymnasium. ‘Dolly’ Dundas was our English teacher, a small nervous, fussy, woman with brillo-pad hair pulled back and tied in a tight bun, who earned her sobriquet by rewarding compliant pupils, and buying the good behaviour of recalcitrant ones, with ‘dolly’ mixtures from a box in her cupboard. I had discovered James Thurber by this time, a writer of seamless, fluent, syntax and gentle humour. ‘Dolly’ was Miss Groby, the lady who taught Thurber English composition. The influence of teachers like Miss Groby and ‘Dolly’ Dundas has, sadly, died out, something Thurber thought would never happen: ‘It wasn’t what prose said that interested Miss Groby; it was the way prose said it. The shape of a sentence crucified on a blackboard (parsed, she called it) brought a

Arran — Days of Whin and Rose-hips

Lamlash High School.

light to her eye. She hunted for Topic Sentences and Transitional Sentences the way little girls hunt for white violets in springtime. What she loved most of all were Figures of Speech. You remember her. You must have had her, too. Her influence will never die out of the land. A small schoolgirl asked me the other day if I could give her an example of metonymy. (There are several kinds of metonymies, you must recall, but the one that will come to mind most easily, I think, is Container for the Thing Contained)… ‘Here lies Miss Groby, not dead, I think, but put away on a shelf with the other T Squares and rulers whose edges had lost their certainty. The fierce light that Miss Groby brought to English literature was the light of Identification. Perhaps, at the end, she could no longer retain the dates of the birth and death of one of the Lake poets. That would have sent her to the Principal of the school with her resignation. Or perhaps she could not remember, finally, exactly how many Cornishmen there were who had sworn that Trelawney should not die, or precisely how many springs there were left to Housman’s lad in which to go about the woodlands to see the cherry hung with snow… ‘It is hard for me to believe that Miss Groby ever saw any famous work of literature from far enough away to know what it meant. She was forever climbing up the margins of books and crawling between their lines, hunting for the little gold of phrase, making marks with a pencil. As Palamides hunted the Questing Beast, she hunted the figure of Speech. She hunted it through the clangourous halls of Shakespeare and through the green forests of Scott. ‘Night after night, for homework, Miss Groby set us to searching in “Ivanhoe” and “Julius Caesar” for metaphors, similes, metonymies, apostrophes, personifications, and all the rest. It got so that figures of speech jumped out of the page at you, obscuring the sense and pattern of the novel or play you were trying to read. “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” Take that, for instance. There is an unusual but perfect example of Container for the Thing Contained. If you read the funeral oration unwarily — that is to say, for its meaning — you might easily miss the C.F.T.T.C. Antony is, of course, not asking for their ears in the sense he wants them cut off and handed over; he is asking for the function of those ears, for their power to hear, for, in a word, the thing they contain. ‘At first I began to fear that all the characters in Shakespeare and Scott were crazy. They confused cause with effect, the sign for the thing signified, the thing held for the thing holding it. But after a while I began to suspect that it was myself who was crazy. I would find myself lying awake at night saying over and over. “The thinger for the thing contained.” In a great but probably misguided attempt to keep my mind on its hinges, I would stare at the ceiling and try to think of an example of the Thing Contained for the Container. It struck me as odd that Miss Groby had never thought of that inversion. I finally hit on one, which I still remember. If a woman were to grab up a bottle of Grade A and say to her husband, “Get away from me or I’ll hit you with the milk,” that would be a Thing Contained for the Container.’ © the estate of James Thurber (with thanks to Hamish Hamilton)

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

The Pictures THE ISLAND HAD no cinema. Instead, a small van toured the main villages, with a projector, and set up shop in the local community hall to show the latest films. In Lamlash this hall was located across the field behind the school. It was a fortnightly event we all looked forward to. One film I remember was Geordie, a 1955 film about a wee skinny Scots boy who didn’t eat his porridge but who grew up to become an Olympic hammerthrower — after successfully completing a ten-year Charles Atlas-type correspondence course in his upstairs bedroom. Inspirational! Films in the mid-1950s had an important effect on us. They influenced our view of the world as well as the way we spoke, dressed — and behaved. One film which deeply moved me was ‘I accuse’ with José Ferrer, based on Emile Zola’s moving account of the appalling injustices of the Dreyfus case; I was outraged. When The Colditz Story was shown, my friends and I came out afterwards, exhilarated by what we had just seen and, as usual, re-enacted the plot on our way home. There was no place from which we could break out so we decided to improvise and break into somewhere. The obvious place that suggested itself was the school — the nearest thing to a fortress prison on the island. We managed to break in through the skylight windows on the roof without much difficulty and for a long time afterwards we repeated the game, spending hours in the gym climbing the wall bars and swinging Tarzan-like from the climbing ropes. The only things we ever stole from the school were handfuls of dolly mixtures from ‘Dolly’ Dundas’s cupboard, the Thing Contained from the Container, as it were. We were never caught, although it was touch and go with the janitor sometimes and the police station across the road. We also played war games in and around the derelict dye mill at the foot of the Ross Road to Lagg, one of only two roads which crossed the island. The dark and damp location was eerie, particularly as a cantankerous thin-faced old woman we thought was a witch lived in a crumbling stone cottage in the woods nearby was always chasing us away with curses and broomsticks. Further up the Ross Road, off through the trees and the bracken to the left, there was a burn with a deep pool and a smooth rock which acted as a chute. During the summer a gang of us, boys and girls, would head for this spot and spend hours splashing about naked in this pool and sliding down our own stone slide, skinning our arses in the process. If we felt energetic we would follow the burn up into the hills trying to trace its source; if our energies flagged climbing the steep slopes we would compromise by building boulder and earthen dams, attempting to block its progress to the sea. Another ideologically important film was the 1953 Lutheran Church-

Arran — Days of Whin and Rose-hips

funded Martin Luther, with Niall MacGinnes in the title role. We had been making so much noise in the front row laughing and shouting at the cartoons which preceded it that we were warned repeatedly by the travelling film mogul to keep quiet. When our irreverent, raucous laughter and jumping up and down continued we were pounced upon by the ushers and frog-marched by the scruffs of our necks to an empty cloakroom where they locked us up for the newsreel. That was my first taste of imprisonment. Fortunately, they released me in time to see and note Luther’s defiant speech to the Diet of Worms in 1521 when he famously said to his accusers: ‘It is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I — I cannot do otherwise.’ This Protestant challenge to Catholicism that led men — suddenly given direct access to God — to redefine themselves in relation to a powerful church was powerful stuff to young minds anxious to understand how the world functioned. Luther’s idea that every man was a priest was important because the religious and ideological revolution he began lit the fires of individualism that in turn triggered a chain reaction of demands for freedom and social justice. The struggles against absolute monarchies which occurred between 1660 and the French Revolution of 1789 helped to develop political freedom and individual rights, undermining the powers of the nobility and encouraging the notion of equal subjects. The revolutions between 1790 and 1917 sought to convert subjects into citizens in a search for political, social and economic equality. One morning I woke up to find the old lady had died during the night. Gran had to lay her out and prepare her for the undertaker, tying her toes together, and wrapping her in her shroud. I unexpectedly came across gran stuffing cotton wool in her nostrils, like snowballs of breath, and was quite taken aback. Would I have to do this when my gran’s turn came? It was very worrying.

Son of the Manse WHEN THE OLD lady went so too did the job, so granny and I had to move on. We returned to Glasgow’s West End to live with the Revd Mr Lough, a middleaged bachelor Church of Scotland minister, at 354 Great Western Road, close to Kelvinbridge. Gran was his live-in housekeeper. While I had been a regular attender at church and Sunday school ever since I could remember, I was now, officially, a child of the manse. Gentle Mr. Lough was not at all the hellfire and brimstone preacher of Scottish Presbyterian tradition. His main interests after theology and mathematics appeared to be witchcraft and demonology, on which subjects he owned an immense library, which I dipped into whenever he went out. Despite my unhealthy fascination in these arcane matters he would never either discourage my interest or discuss them with me. My mother was then living in the Lanarkshire mining community of

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Blantyre, which is about seven miles from Glasgow, but because of the now stormy relationship with Tam ‘Broon’, I remained in the manse with my grandmother and completed my junior school education at Napiershall Street School in nearby Maryhill, the same school my mum had gone to thirty years earlier. This coincided with Suez, the Hungarian uprising, Teddy boys and the birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll. I was due to sit my ‘Qualies’, or Qualifying Exam, a general examination which decided whether or not one went on to a Junior Secondary or Senior Secondary school. It was the then equivalent of the Eleven Plus, and Mr. Lough took what appeared to me to be an inordinate amount of interest in my education. In fact that year, as an experiment, they decided there would be no Eleven Plus, our marks would be set on the basis of the previous year’s work. Even so, it exasperated me to the point of tears to have him stand over me while I did my maths homework and dish out advice on formula instead of giving me the answers. I particularly detested the arithmetical problems faced by A, B and C in their eternally problematic and competitive everyday lives — digging ditches, walking, filling ditches, pumping leaking cisterns and filling baths, to name but a few of their occupations. Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock described them thus: — ‘A is a full-blooded blustering fellow, of energetic temperament, hot-headed and strong-willed. It is he who proposes everything, challenges B to work, makes the bets, and bends the others to his will. He is a man of great physical strength and phenomenal endurance. He has been known to walk forty-eight hours at a stretch, and to pump ninety-six. His life is arduous and full of peril. A mistake in the working of a sum may keep him digging a fortnight without sleep. A repeating decimal in the answer might kill him. ‘B is a quiet, easy-going little fellow, afraid of A and bullied by him, but very Teddy boys gentle and brotherly to little C, the weakling. He is quite in A’s power, having lost (c. 1956) © Popperfoto all his money in bets. ‘Poor C is an undersized, frail man, with a plaintive face. Constant walking, digging, and pumping has broken his health and ruined his nervous system. His joyless life has driven him to drink and smoke more than is good for him, and his hand often shakes as he digs ditches. He has not the strength to work as the others can; in fact, as Hamlin Smith has said, ‘A can do more work in one hour than C in four’… ‘When C died from overwork, his funeral was plain and unostentatious. “A engaged two hearses. Both vehicles started at the same time, B driving the one which bore the sable parallelopiped containing the last remains of his ill-fated friend. A on the box of the empty hearse generously consented to a handicap of a hundred yards, but

Son of the Manse

arrived first at the cemetery by driving four times as fast as B. (Find the distance to the cemetery.) As the sarcophagus was lowered, the grave was surrounded by the broken figures of the first book of Euclid.’ from ‘Literary Lapses’ © the estate of Stephen Leacock (with thanks to The Bodley Head)

On occasion I became so ungratefully irritated by Mr Lough’s wellintentioned attempts to explain geometrical and trigonometric definitions, axioms, postulates and prepositions that I threw my Secondary School books and jotters across the room and stormed out in a temper, with much banging of doors. After these outbursts I would get a physical and verbal hammering from my granny, together with her admonition that I should learn to take advice from people who knew better than I did. Mr. Lough's kind but reproachful face over the dinner table seemed to say that if I were a good wee boy and listened to what he had to say then perhaps, if I could not quite make the Ministry, I might make a good elder some day. With his ruddy complexion — he had a face the colour of a strawberry ‘mivvy’ ice lolly — it looked as though his honest, sonsie, face literally beamed at the thought of so bright a future for his favourite pupil, and I became even more irritated with his gentle assertion of authority. Nobody could hate kindly Mr. Lough. But it was hard work bearing him.

Out Damn Spot! ON SUNDAYS GRAN and I, and sometimes Mum, would go to the house of her friend, ‘Aunt’ Nell Haggarty, in nearby Barrington Drive for Sunday dinner and to watch Sunday afternoon and evening television. A recent innovation was that TV broadcasts were now being allowed by the powers-that-be between six and seven in the evening, which was quite exciting in itself. Things were definitely changing for the better, even though programmes ended on the stroke of 11 o’clock with the painfully slow receding white spot. ‘Auntie’ Nell was not a real an aunt, but one by adoption. She was ‘rich’ and had her own road haulage company, so we always had roast chicken, a luxury then. She travelled regularly to the States on holiday and her house was full of Americana. She subscribed to The Saturday Evening Post, The Readers’ Digest and National Geographic and it was through their pages that I was seduced by American culture. Norman Rockwell’s snapshot American gothic style paintings on the SEP capturing minor dramatic scenes from American urban and rural life had all the fascinating detail of a Giles cartoon and I always wondered at the story behind each of his colourful cover illustrations. Inside, line drawings and photographs advertising cars, kitchens and so on, with smiling and well-dressed American families going about their well-ordered and comfortable daily lives filled me with awe. I saw most of my television at Aunt Nell’s. We didn’t have a set in the manse so I would stay over at her place if she was going out for the evening, to sit with her elderly sister, Meg. Meg shared our universe, but lived on a different planet ( dominated by Mrs Dale’s Diary, the first of the wireless soaps).

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Captain Of Murderers TELEVISION SEEMED TO be dominated by US imports: there were the wonderful machinations of the adroit Master Sergeant Ernest Bilko in ‘The Phil Silvers Show’, the scattiness of Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy, and the hilariously embarrassing silences of The Jack Benny Show. There were also the home-grown television programmes such as Dixon of Dock Green, What’s My Line?, Sunday Night at the London Palladium, Take Your Pick and Double Your Money with Michael Miles offering contestants a choice of cash — or a key to a booby prize or to a Magimix food blender. There were also powerful British-made plays and films on TV that left an indelible impression on me. One in particular was a ‘Play for Today’ production of Terence Rattigan’s 1947 play, The Winslow Boy, which traces the consequences of Arthur Winslow’s attempts to prove his son’s innocence, after the 14-year old is expelled from naval college, falsely accused of stealing a five shillings postal order. Rattigan himself called it ‘a drama of injustice, and of the little man’s dedication to setting things right’. It was a gripping courtroom drama, without the courtroom, but with all the tension of a struggle between right and wrong, law and injustice, the underdog against the high and mighty and the rights of the citizen against soulless authority. Leslie Howard’s film Pimpernel Smith also made a big impact. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of the bit part actors playing the role of an anarchist prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, was later to become a lifelong friend — Albert Meltzer. Howard, a convinced anti-Nazi, had insisted on using real anarchists as prisoners in one particular scene. Apart from being a cracking good yarn about resisting Nazism, the final dark and dramatic scene at the frontier railway station on the night before the invasion of Poland literally made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. In my book it ranks among the great timeless exchanges in cinematic history. The unseen Howard, now safely across the frontier, speaking through calmly exhaled cigarette smoke, the swirling fog and the shadows, says with an air of wonderful contempt to the sweaty, nervous and frustrated fat Gestapo chief from whom he has just escaped: – ‘You will never rule the world, because you are doomed. All of you who demoralised and corrupted a nation are doomed. Tonight you will take the first step along the road from which there is no turning back. You will have to go on and on, from one madness to another, leaving behind you a wilderness of misery, and still you will have to go on; because you will find no horizon and see no dawn; until at last you are lost and destroyed. You are doomed, captain of murderers!’

The Woggle Brigade LIKE MOST ADOLESCENTS of the time, I belonged to a voluntary association. In my case it was the Wolf Cubs, then the Scouts. Others belonged to The Boys Brigade and church groups.

Son of the Manse

Apart from Church parades, brash outdoor hedonism and cheap camping holidays at which we swam, sang and hiked in kilts, funny militaristic broadrimmed hats and staves, these bodies provided us with practical skills such as how to build trestle bridges, dig and clean out latrines, and tie every conceivably useful knot — except a hangman’s noose, which apparently was illegal. Cooking lumpy porridge over fires we kindled from rubbing sticks together was another skill. We were also instilled with a sense of Baden-Powell’s Edwardian paternalist morality from his book Scouting for Boys, pledging solemn vows and acquiring the instincts of obedience and deference to authority. I had been a ‘sixer’ in the First Glasgow Wolf Cubs (Hyndland division) and eventually the time came for me to make the ritual transition into the Boy Scout Troop. The introduction to nature and first aid we urban ‘numpties’ received at Scout camps was useful, and the personal ordeals which passed for games, and the paramilitary camaraderie, were enjoyable to begin with, but as I grew older I became aware and mistrustful of the homosexual inclinations and power agenda of some of the scoutmasters. One senior and elderly scoutmaster in particular insisted on choosing me whenever he had to demonstrate resuscitation after drowning. I was also increasingly uncomfortable with the weekly oath of loyalty to the Queen, the militaristic constrictions and the pronouncedly dictatorial structure of the Movement with its papal-like adulation of Lord Rowallan, the Chief Scout — as well as some none-too-subtle manifestations of class prejudice in a supposedly classless non-denominational movement. It was also increasingly out of kilter with what was happening in the rest of the world in July 1958. My discomfort came to a head during a camp at Aboyne in Aberdeenshire’s Dee Valley. The weather was wet and overcast with leaden skies and everyone was slightly down — except of course the scoutmasters. My pal at the time was a rough-and-ready working-class boy, not at all the sort of person you would expect to meet among the young toffs of Hyndland, where our troop was based. He was disliked by the senior troop leaders who constantly niggled him, singling him out for nasty jobs when our other work had been completed and we wanted to go off exploring on our own. We were chatting by a burn which ran alongside the campsite when someone pushed my friend in the burn as a ‘joke’. His response was to push his assailant in the river. Within minutes the camp was in an uproar. The result of this ‘rammy’ was that my friend and I were punished with fatigues. Having completed our tasks, we went off into the woods without asking permission. As we left the clearing, one of the troop leaders called us back, but we ignored him and continued on our way. When we returned about an hour later the atmosphere was tense and my

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

friend was still furious. Someone made a sarcastic comment to him and the next thing he was lashing out at the group who had been taunting him. Piling on top of him they tied him up with a rope and ran off. By the time I untied him he was in a murderous temper. He picked up an axe and ran off after his tormentors screaming blue murder. Luckily I managed to cool him down before he decapitated the cream of the rising generation of Glasgow’s Kelvinside gentry. The following morning my pal and I held an unofficial boulder-throwing competition. Inspired by the antics of the young protagonist in the film Geordie, the idea was to hurl the largest boulder as far as possible across the burn on to a ledge which overhung a narrow winding lane we believed to be unused. Unfortunately, we were wrong. I realised my mistake a few seconds after my boulder reached the apex of its trajectory and started on its downward journey. Round the corner came a large red limousine, a gleaming Austin Princess, which met the boulder as it fell. It bounced from the bonnet to the windscreen then on to the roof and finally bounced off the boot. The whole thing was over in seconds and as the car had not stopped I had hoped that the driver might have thought it had been a landslide. Early next day the same car drove back down the lane in the opposite direction and stopped at the spot where we had hit him. The driver got out and shouted across the burn to the scoutmaster. To give him his due, the troop leader, whom we hadn’t told about the previous day’s incident, lied profusely in my defence. The driver turned out to be the laird who owned the estate we were camping on. The troop leader apologised, saying that it was an accident and that I had gone straight to him immediately afterwards and explained what had happened, but he had assumed that I had missed the car as no one had complained at the time. The laird spluttered and said that the reason he had not stopped to complain was because he thought he was being ambushed by a gang of anarchists and had driven on in fear of his life. He looked sternly at the small boy who had been the cause of his terror, but I was nearly as frightened by the terrible word as he had been. If there was a twinkle in his eye I certainly failed to notice it. I went to the troop leader afterwards asking for an explanation of this word. Anarchists were wicked people who went about trying to remove kind, decent people like the laird who had let us camp on his land. They did not believe he should keep his own land even though his ancestors had fought for it. There were some humorous remarks later that evening among my circle of friends that maybe it would not be a bad idea if we were to fight him for it. But apparently only ancestors were allowed to do things like that. The irony was that the land was probably more mine than his, as my ancestors from Glen Christie further up the Dee Valley had most likely fought his ancestors’ battles for him. It also seemed to me that if the anarchists were against the laird and out to destroy our glorious constitution then they were equally as bad as the catholics, but this appeared not to be so. They were considered much worse as they did not believe in the law.

Son of the Manse

Catholics only wanted to worship God in their own way, but anarchists were against God, government and good manners. At least, this is how a high church episcopalian not imbued with Orange sympathies explained it to me, and from his manner I gathered that he considered my friend and me to be taking the first steps along the road to damnation! As for the Scouting Movement, Mowgli had finally lost his magic for me. By the end of that summer I hung up my lanyard and departed.

The Green Man ANARCHISTS CAME UP again in a Launder and Gilliat film, The Green Man, a comedy drama with the wonderfully benign Alastair Sim in the role of a professional assassin and his Scottish anarchist sidekick, played superbly by John Chandos. The day job of this inept pair was eliminating pompous politicians, businessmen and international statesmen, until they were brought to justice through the intervention of a young George Cole. Years later I struck up an unlikely friendship with John Chandos who had had a remarkable military career in Special Operations Executive (SOE), GHQ Phantom Regiment, the Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) and who earned a living after the war as a bit-part actor and writer. Drinking with John in the French House in Soho many years later, a wartime friend from his SOE days recognised him and greeted him effusively. They reminisced for a while, and then the friend reminded John of the time they had been in an SOE safe house and John had taken him round to the garage and thrown wide the doors to show him what they had just brought back from occupied France — the latest model Citroën! John, who played minor roles in many Central Office of Information (COI) propaganda and feature films in the 1940s and early 1950s, had also played one of the five Nazi U-boat men escaping through Canada to the US in another of Leslie Howard’s excellent anti-Nazi films, 49th Parallel. This film had stuck in my mind since I had seen it on the telly in the ‘50s because of its committed and thoughtful anti-fascist perspective, its memorable photography and the sympathetic portrayal of life and exemplary community spirit within a Dukhobor community in Canada.

Tartanic Verses BEING A VORACIOUS reader, English was my favourite subject, but I couldn’t warm to Shakespeare in the classroom. He simply had no resonance with us. This was probably due to a mixture of cultural alienation, the archaic language and the subject matter of the historical and political plays we studied — which dealt with the struggle for power, contention between elite families, the pursuit of unenlightened self-interest and the triumph of the strong over the weak, including the proto Leninist-Trotskyist Jack Cade — and the fact that I lacked the broader knowledge to comprehend their dramatic complexity and Shakespeare’s Machiavellian understanding of the human condition.

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Although I was always uncomfortable with Scottish * Richard II (Act 2, Scene 1) nationalism in all its kitsch Balmorality, John o’ Gaunt’s ‘This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, death-bed speech in Richard II (Act 2, Scene 1)* to me This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, was emblematic of the smug, complacent, self-satisfied This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself nature of Englishness, if such a thing ever existed — the Against infection and the hand of war, colonically absorbed imperialist culture of the victor: — This happy breed of men, this little world, I don’t suppose there’s much difference between This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, John of Gaunt’s sentiments and the more mawkish Or as a moat defensive to a house, ‘Here’s tae us, wha’s like us, damn few — an’ they’re a’ Against the envy of less happier lands, deid’ mantra of the couthy Scottish ‘poison dwarf’ in his This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.’ William Shakespeare cups — the sort of Scottishness which defines itself purely in relation to things English. Robert Burns, on the ** ‘Bruce’s Address to his army at other hand, whose poems we read and discussed in Bannockburn’ English classes and whose songs we sang in music ‘Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled, lessons, was a poet and songwriter concerned not with Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, power, but with the politics of freedom, tolerance, Welcome to your gory bed — Or to Victorie! individualism and the equality of man. Now’s the day, and now’s the hour; To me, Burns expressed, in its most succinct form, the See the front of battle lour; ideal and the essence of socialism — which had to do See approach proud Edward’s power — with justice, liberty and the overthrow of tyranny. For Chains and Slaverie! Wha will be a traitor knave? young working class Scottish schoolboys, in the mid- Wha can fill a coward’s grave? 1950s, nothing in Shakespeare could match Burns’ spine Wha sae base as be a slave? tingling inspiring call to liberty and resistance to Let him turn and flie! oppression in Bruce’s Address to his army at Wha for Scotland's king and law, Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Bannockburn.** Freeman stand, or Freeman fa’? Equally, who could grow up to be anything but a Let him follow me! class war socialist on reading Burns’ clarion call to By Oppression’s woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! egalitarianism in A Man’s A Man For A’ That*. No matter We will drain our dearest veins, how well camouflaged, the war and the welfare state But they shall be free! had done nothing to alter the fact that the whole system Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! existed to maintain the comfort of the few. Liberty’s in every blow! ‘Is there for honest Poverty Let us do — or die!’ Robert Burns That hings his head, an’ a’ that; The coward slave-we pass him by, We dare be poor for a’ that! For a’ that, an’ a’ that. Our toils obscure an’ a’ that, The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, The Man’s the gowd for a’ that. The hierarchical social systems, which sustained the hereditary monarchies, were more obvious in 1950s Britain, where titles, rank and station, the divisions between higher and lower classes, and priority and deference in social relations, were all-pervasive.

Wu’r No In Kansas Ony Mair...

Laurel and Hardy come to town (1956): Mum worked at Bambers and got me autographs of many of the stars who came to Glasgow.

E CAME OF age in the late 1950s with a fusion reaction of Scottish and US cultures. Apart from the obvious influence of the movies and TV, DC and EC comic books, the new-wave satirists — Stan Freberg, Mort Sahl, Ernie Kovacs, Lenny Bruce and Tom Lehrer — and, most importantly, music all played their parts. On TV it was The Lone Ranger, Champion the Wonder Horse, Wagon Train, The Cisco Kid, Carl Levis’s Discoveries, Crackerjack! and the unique Captain Pugwash, — all with only two minutes of advertising per hour on the commercial channel. Mum, in the meantime, was working for about £8.00 a week at Bambers, in Charing Cross Mansions in Sauchiehall Street, the theatrical costumiers and wigmakers and she was able to get me autographs of all the big film, variety and singing stars who came to Glasgow Until 1956 or thereabouts it seemed the world had operated in black and white, like most of the films and newsreels we saw. It was like the post-twister scene in The Wizard of Oz when the picture turns into full glorious Technicolor and Dorothy discovers she isn’t in Kansas any more. Sometime in late 1955 or 1956 we, the infants of the forties, became the unpredictable and uncontrollable phenomenon known as ‘teenagers’. Almost overnight we were transformed from being kids with Davy Crockett imitation raccoon-skin fur hats at 12s 6d and buckskin suits at £2. 9s 11d imitating Fess Parker as the Tennessee hunter, whistling and singing King of the Wild Frontier (possibly the first major Hollywood merchandising operation) into this new youthful phenomenon. At the beginning of 1955 we shared the same songs as our parents and grandparents — songs from the music halls or the wireless: Alma Cogan, Ruby Murray, Guy Mitchell or Eddie Calvert. By the end of 1955 the music of my generation changed; we now had a music of our own. The ‘old’ singers were being discarded, even Johnny Ray, in favour of trad jazz and skiffle groups such as The Vipers or Lonnie Donegan with his Rock Island Line and Nancy Whiskey with her haunting Freight Train. Black jazz, blues and bluegrass music had been our immediate musical inheritance. This coincided with the arrival of the radiogram, the portable duotone Dansette record player (with auto-changer), vinyl records — the 45 rpm extended play (EP) and 33rpm long playing (LP). All these things contributed to what could be described as a distinct youth culture with a broadly shared community of rebellious purpose. The more intense elements of the music and the dream fused, almost alchemically, to create something completely different. Within months this new music, a speeded-up confluence of the shit-kicking ‘poor white’ hillbilly or bluegrass music of Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Williams and the Western Bop of Bob

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Wills, the mellow jazz guitar of Chet Atkins, the black guitar blues of Josh White and others, all part of the post-war rhythm and blues scene, had metamorphosed into Rock ‘n’ Roll. Music exploded with the release of Sam Katzman’s film Rock Around the Clock featuring Bill Haley and the Comets and his even better film later that year, Don’t Knock the Rock. The latter focused more on Little Richard with his flash of eye make-up and the electrifying, unrestrained Long Tall Sally, Rip it Up and Tutti Frutti. ‘Teddy boys’ had emerged in the middle of 1955 to displace their fashion predecessors from the impoverished Thirties, the Glasgow ‘Neds’. ‘Neds’ had worn their hair long, centre-parted and slicked back with smelly liquid paraffin, with a half-smoked cigarette, a ‘dowt’, lodged behind the ear. Urban myth had it that a Ned immolated himself when a ‘dowt’ he had just ‘nicked’, i.e., put out for later use, and tucked behind his ear re-ignited, lighting him up like a giant Swan Vesta. The headgear was a ‘who dunnit?’ or ‘bunnet’, a flat cap worn at a jaunty angle. Neckwear consisted of a knotted white silk scarf tucked under a tightly buttoned jacket, in the breast pocket of which a ‘malky’, a ‘Malcolm Fraser’, or cut-throat razor was hidden. Out for a ‘rammy’, a gang fight, or to the ‘jiggin’, the ‘Neds’ would sport shabby tweed overcoats in the lining of which they hung hatchets, hammers and machetes, like dodgy street traders, to defend their honour, their territory and their ‘wummin’. Another identifying feature of the ‘Ned’ was the slouching gait that led with swaying shoulders and elbows at an aggressively sharp angle, slightly extending his own personal space and ensuring a clear passage through crowded streets and dance halls. ‘Teddy boys’, on the other hand, had style and colour. With their slickedback, Brylcreemed quiffs, long sideburns, brightly coloured drape jackets with velvet collars, drainpipe trousers and blue or black suede shoes with thick crepe soles, they were worryingly discordant to the established order of drab Dunn’sdressers. They looked like Mississippi river boat gamblers who had made their careers on the Partick-Govan Ferry. In fact, the Teddy boy style owed little to America; the whole ensemble was inspired by the civilian dress of Brigade of Guards officers, less the tightly rolled umbrella and bowler hat. The gaudy rigout retained the Guards’ long, tight-waisted frock-coat type jacket with a velvet collar ‘dandruff trap’. Western style trappings, such as ribbon or bootlace ties and colourful brocaded waistcoats, enhanced the look. The accompanying tight trousers stopped just above the crepe-soled suede shoes, sometimes decorated with loops of gold chain, to show luridly fluorescent green, red, yellow or blue socks. Teds hung around on windy street corners, looking menacing and, according to the Scottish Daily Express, discussing the best way to vandalise a

Rock Around The Clock: Bill Haley and the Comets were mobbed when they came to Glasgow in February 1957.

Wu’r No In Kansas Ony Mair...

cinema seat or to tie neck-wear, particularly the knot made popular by their role model and namesake, Teddy, the Duke of Windsor — or ‘Chookie Winzzur’. Their supposedly wild and unruly behaviour and disrespect for the authority of cinema and theatre managers was referred to with hysterical headlines in the newspapers as ‘juvenile delinquency’. But their aggression was, to a large extent, a myth. They were too worried about getting their prized suede shoes trodden on, or their lilac or cream-coloured drape jackets torn, dirty or bloodstained. Rock Around the Clock pumped adrenaline into our veins. Bill and his band were then touring the cinemas and theatres of Britain, playing to rowdy crowds of wildly enthusiastic youths jiving in the aisles. Discussing this phenomenon on the BBC’s Any Questions programme at the time, a pillar of the liberal establishment such as the then 56-year-old Sir Robert Boothby, consort of gangsters said, to much ‘hear, hearing of fellow middle-class panellists: ‘Jiving — What a thing to do! Not my idea of fun at all! The purpose in life of old fogies such as myself, is to stop young people from being silly. And they are being exceedingly silly. There are better things to do in life and much more fun to be had than jiving. And if they cause a lot of trouble and row in the cinema and upset people, I’d rather they went to Cairo and did their Teddy Boying around there. The sooner this ridiculous film is banned altogether the better. It’s causing a lot of trouble to a lot of people and giving no pleasure except to a few quite harmless but quite irresponsible lunatics.’ Jiving

Send Not To Ask For Whom The Riff Twangs… WE TUNED IN — when we could find the constantly fading stations — to Radio Luxembourg or American Forces Network hoping to hear the new records from Buddy Holly. The effects of hearing the opening riffs of Holly’s That’ll be the Day, Peggy Sue and Heartbeat for the first time were physiological as well as psychological. It was the same for most of my contemporaries. There was also the sudden emergence — mysterious almost, like Minerva springing with a vibrant, energetic, battle-cry, fully armed with a new music, from the head of Jupiter — of Elvis Presley, backed by his wonderful guitarist Scotty Moore, singing Hound Dog and Heartbreak Hotel on the black and silver RCA record label. The new sounds impacted with a sharp kinetic charge between my shoulder blades, shooting through my spine, radiating electro-chemical tingles of expectancy and excitement throughout my body and into my brain. Something new had happened. A maelstrom of heart-rate raising, finger-clicking, jive-inducing and

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

socially liberating music followed over the next three or four years: Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Platters, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Gene Vincent, and countless other groups and singers, some enduring, others ephemeral. Nobody every sang Blueberry Hill quite like the funky Fats Domino, with his unique boogie-blues piano style. It may sound hackneyed, but on hearing of Buddy Holly’s death in a plane crash outside Mason City, Iowa, on 3 February 1959 we experienced a tangible sense of loss and a feeling that something dynamic and colourful had gone out of our lives. It was really The Day The Music Died. The shock of Holly’s death had been both numbing and confusing. It was a sharp reminder of our own mortality in a way that no one outside our own immediate families — not even Hank Williams’ equally accidental death six years previously — had impacted on our predecessors. By the end of 1956 we also had had the British and French invasion of Suez, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, traumatic for the Communist Party as well as the Hungarian people, and The Girl Can’t Help It, in colour, with the laconic Tom Ewell and Jayne Mansfield, probably the best rock ‘n’ roll film ever made. The 6-5 Special and Oh, Boy! Rock ‘n’ roll TV programmes followed soon after; the rest is history. Late 1956 also saw emergence of the folk song movement, particularly through the US folk group ‘The Weavers’. We began to listen to the lyrics of singers such as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie who wrote their own moving songs around the burning political issues and injustices of the day. This international folk-song movement contributed in its own emotional way to our politicisation. We defined ourselves through style — our clothes, hair and music; it helped us interpret our society and provided a shared language and social glue for our generation. Before us there had been no ‘teenagers’; previous generations had belonged to that indeterminate age group which teetered uneasily between childhood and adulthood. Whole industries were now gearing up to provide us with our own clothes, music, literature, food, filter-tip cigarettes and advertising. The materially successful lifestyles and aspirations of the luckier US workers and their ‘affluent society’ had reached Harold Macmillan’s Britain and, as he told us, ‘most of our people have never had it so good’. The classwar was to be defeated in a consumerist onslaught of cars, television sets, washing machines and unit trusts. Films such as Stanley Kramer’s The Wild One (1953), Richard Brook’s The Blackboard Jungle (1955), which had introduced Bill Haley and the Comets, and Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without A Cause, presented our generation as social

Budapest, 1956: the Hungarian people resist the Soviet ‘People’s Army’.

Wu’r No In Kansas Ony Mair...

nihilists — aimless, non-historical, apolitical, and non-ideological rebels. What they didn’t understand was that we were not challenging traditional morality, just the reverse — we were reaffirming our sense of identity and reclaiming an abandoned morality. Wireless programmes had moved from Journey into Space to Spike Milligan’s anarchic humour of The Goon Show. New, sophisticated American comics began to appear in the newsagents such as Sick! which picked up on the politico-satirical humour of Lenny Bruce and the clever satirical songs of Harvard maths lecturer, Tom Lehrer. I went to one of Tom Lehrer’s concerts in Glasgow in 1959 and went backstage afterwards to ask him to autograph his LP, ‘An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer’. I remember being quite bemused to find him chatting intimately with two of the most glamorous and beautiful women I had seen in my life. For some reason I had expected to find a Diogenes, in a barrel, earnestly scouring the world for an honest man, instead of the charming sophisticate he obviously was. But it was the truly revelatory and indelible Mad magazine — another of these serendipitous influences which came along at a time when we were formulating our world views — that played the most enduring part.

Those Whom The Gods Would Destroy They First Sent Mad WHILE MAD had been appearing in the States since the early 1950s, it wasn’t published in the UK until 1959. It explored paradox, parody and provided sharp satires on the dominant culture and mores: consumerism, Madison Avenue admen and advertising, TV, Hollywood and double standards in public life — and other comic characters such as Superduperman. Interestingly, Mad’s parodies of great poetry and classic fiction, illustrated with ridiculously literal drawings by Jack Davies and Will Elder, probably did more to enthuse outsiders such as myself about English literature than most English teachers ever did. Mad emerged from the US ‘ Entertaining Comics’ (EC) stable in the wake of the Cold War criminalisation of the horror comic in 1954 by the McCarthyite right in the States and the Moral Re-Armament types in the UK. A reactionary witchhunting cabal, which included the Reader’s Digest and The Ladies’ Home Journal, pronounced anathema on the EC horror comic at the peak of the Cold War. Leading the campaign was a ‘liberal’ psychiatrist by the name of Frederic Wertham. Basically it was a PR hype to promote his book Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham’s thesis was that the comic was responsible for the rise of juvenile delinquency, serious crime, international communism, homosexuality, suicide — and the loss of literacy. William M Gaines, the EC publisher, was the only person to stand up and be counted in defence of the comic before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency: ‘…We use the best writers, the finest artists; we spare nothing to make each magazine, each story, each page, a work of art… Our American children are for the most part

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

normal children. They are bright children, but those who want to prohibit comic magazines seem to see dirty, sneaky, perverted monsters who use the comic as a blueprint for action. The truth is that delinquency is the product of the real environment in which the child lives and not of the fiction he reads…The problems are economic and social and they are complex. Our people need understanding; they need to have affection, decent homes, decent food.’ The Comics Code Authority set up as a result of this hearing was ruthless: no walking dead or torture was allowed to be depicted, and only ‘classic’ vampires, ghouls and werewolves were to be shown. Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions could not be presented in a way that created disrespect for established authority, and all ‘lurid, unsavoury and gruesome’ illustrations would be eliminated. Evil could only be used to illuminate a moral issue. Ironically, the unintended consequence of this reactionary hysteria was that EC comics put more resources behind the Mad team and it quickly became one of the most successful and subversive influences of the 1950s and early 1960s. Mad and the songs of Tom Lehrer were the supreme parodists of the elements of absurdity in the prevailing culture of consumer capitalism: advertising, sport, poetry, literature, TV, Hollywood and music. They were the iconoclastic pathfinders that prepared the way for the English satire boom of the early Sixties with the Establishment Club, Private Eye and the BBC TV National programme That Was The Week That Was. Service: the last unlucky few.

Goodnight, Sergeant Major IT WAS A relief when they announced the end of National Service in 1959. Whatever else happened, we wouldn’t be subjected to a military discipline designed to break our spirits: paint coal white, clean urinals with razor blades, garden with a dining fork, black-lead the inside of stoves before lighting them, be bawled at by Sergeant Majors, have our heads shaved or be sent off to fight nasty Colonel Nasser in Egypt, Archbishop Makarios and General Grivas’s EOKA in Limassol, Mau Mau terrorists in Kenya, Communists in Malaya or Aden — all powerful ominous images, music and words which had dominated the Pathé Newsreels for the past couple of years. We were aware of British and French troops fighting in Suez; the hanging of Ruth Ellis; the Russian blockade of Berlin; the Hungarian uprising; the shocking images of police dogs and policemen savaging black students at Little Rock High School; the arrest of defiant Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama; the bus boycott and the start of the civil rights movement in the USA; the triumphant entry of Castro into Havana; the Cold War, a demonised Soviet Union, and the constant ongoing fear of nuclear war.

Wu’r No In Kansas Ony Mair...

There was also a consciousness of dissent with the rise of CND, protest marches and controversial references in the press and by English teachers to plays such as John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, which appeared about the same time as Rebel Without A Cause. Apart from the occasional school trip, theatrical drama was reserved for the middle classes. Theatres we associated with the music hall, variety acts and comedians, not drama — but somehow we were aware of these plays. All these things were linked, and the sub-text was about discontent and suspicious hostility to the established order.

The Class of ‘59 MY NEXT SCHOOL, Woodside Senior Secondary School, took the second-best pupils from upper class Kelvinbridge, east of the River Kelvin — Glasgow’s other river — and from the working-class tenements south of Woodlands Road. The poshest went to Hillhead and Glasgow Academy. As I lived in Great Western Road itself, I fell into the second-best category. My class was considered to be the worst in the school and we were constantly in trouble. Hardly a week went by without almost the entire class being lined up for the belt, the Lochgelly tawse, a strip of blackened, hardened leather with one end sliced into three knotted thongs to inflict the maximum pain on both palm and wrist. Wednesday lunchtimes we would race along from Woodside School Woodside School to the nearby Locarno Ballroom in Sauchiehall Street for the mid-day ‘jiggin’ sessions with ‘Johnny Walker and the Wildcats’ and then back to school. The girls would roll up their grey pleated skirts at the waist to make them shorter and cover this ad-hoc fashion adjustment with a wide shiny plastic belt done up so tight they could hardly breathe. Shirt and blouse collars were turned up or school ties loosened down to the second shirt button; eyes were highlighted with miners’ black pencil and at least four coats of black mascara applied to the eyelashes; lips were coated with Max Factor pancake to give the required bloodless appearance. The final touch was to the hair which was French combed until the desired burst mattress look was achieved. The Locarno had great music, an enormous dance floor and wonderful acoustics. Glaswegians from the north and west went to the Locarno, the Albert Ballroom in Bath Street, where the Beatstalkers used to rehearse and play, or the F&F Ballroom in Partick. Those from the East End went to the Dennistoun Palais and the Barrowland Ballroom in the Gallowgate. The ‘jiggin’, where fine footwork was shown off and self-esteem destroyed beyond repair, was also “ra dancin’” where protocol had to be rigidly observed and the ‘patter’ aired. You couldn’t just go across the floor and ask a girl to jive with you. Etiquette

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

demanded a formal introduction first, with a querulous “Ye furrup?” or even “Ye dancin?’”. If the girl didn’t like you you’d be met with a rejoinder like “Naw, ma doacter sent me here tae convalesce.” Any outward display of nerves by an apparently snappy patter merchant, such as a nervous smoothing of the hair, would provoke an ego-shattering outburst of friendly female abuse. If the unfortunate would-be male dance partner had wavy hair he would be met with banter like: “Is yer herr like that naturally, or dae ye sleep on a sheet o’ corrugated iron?” Or, “Is your hair curly, or does it just follow the shape of yir heid?”. Barbers became ‘stylists’, providing us with additional choices from ‘the usual’: between the Tony Curtis quiff and the shorter, smoother laid-back look of the newly popular American singer, Perry Como. It was no longer a case of ‘D’yae want it trimmed roon the back?’ ‘Naw, dae it here in the shop. Ye’ve enough room here.’ The story was told of one youth who went in to a ‘stylists’ and asked for a ‘Perry Como’. As the flashing scissors and clippers looked as they were worryingly close to a number one cut, the client asked anxiously: ‘Huv you ever ackshully seen Perry Como on the telly?’ ‘Naw,’ admitted the barber, ‘but Ah seen him at the pictures the ither week.’ There was a dramatic silence, as he paused, making eye contact in the mirror, ‘That wis him in yon picture The King And I, wis it no?” The star was in fact the completely bald Yul Bryner. I was an early Glasgow fashion victim of Rock ‘n’ Roll consumerism. My preference was for a ‘friction’ — quiffed hair blowdried with a steel comb in a DA (Duck’s Arse) à la Tony Curtis by Fusco, Glasgow-Italian barber extraordinaire. Before Fusco came along style consisted of hair being carefully combed into a ‘shed’ , a parting, and plastered down with water or Brylcreem. Fusco’s shop was next door to the hairdressing salon in Cambridge Street, Miss Brogan’s, where my mum was now manageress, so I got my hair styled cheaply, sometimes for nothing. Across the road was Bob Fletcher’s shirt shop where I had my shirts handmade for 27s.6d. (£1.37) with a Maverick-style riverboat gambler black ribbon tie; tailored double-breasted 4-button suit with short bumfreezer jacket and thin Italian lapels, no-turn-up narrow trousers with 17inch bottoms handmade by the Co-op tailor and winklepicker shoes from A.L. Scott’s in Argyle Street, managed by my Auntie Eileen. The ensemble was topped with the inevitable white, three-quarter length shortie mac. Bob Fletcher’s shop in Cambridge Street was our Mecca and Bob the mod

The Wildcats, the Locarno (1959), with Jamie Barnes (singer) and leader Johnny Walker (right).

Wu’r No In Kansas Ony Mair...

muezzin. Having a shirt handmade by Bob meant social status, prestige, confidence and a sense of purpose. It was proxy access to the fantasy world of Hollywood. The two windows of his corner shop were an Aladdin’s cave of the latest fashion. Interspersed between his, to us, breathtakingly innovative designer shirts, double-cuffed with their high necks, button-down Italian rounded collars made from fabrics we had never seen before, were photos of Bob hobnobbing with film stars such as Rock Hudson, Frank Sinatra and John Wayne. Bob was possibly the first to discover the importance of designer labels among newly fashion-conscious youth. In winter we would smuggle snowballs into the classroom and, depending on the teacher’s standing with us, he would be targeted when he turned his back to write on the blackboard. Our geometry teacher in particular, Louis Newall, who used to introduce himself by signing himself in as ‘Mr G. Ometry’, was often a snowball victim. When a snowball hit the board he would pivot quickly around without a word and search our poker faces to try to identify the culprit. Unable to detect a glimmer of guilt from the innocent faces which beamed back at him, he would turn round to continue writing on the blackboard, then swivel suddenly hoping to find an arm raised and poised to strike. Turning back to the blackboard for the third time, wallop, another slushy snowball would hit him on the back of his neck and trickle down his white starched collar and gown. The crunch came one day when the snowball missed the teacher by a fraction of an inch and went on to crack the blackboard; it had a large stone inside it. Tom Buchen, an English teacher who used to take us to the Citizen’s Theatre to see Shakespeare productions, captured our hearts and minds when he told us about the fad at his school to swap the first letter of one’s Christian name with that of your surname; i.e, he would be Bom Tuchen. He then told us that his brother, Fergus, had a major problem with this at school. Another of our women teachers treated us as though we had a mental age of five. Whenever she wanted us to be quiet she would unlock her cupboard and distribute copies of The Dandy and The Beano confiscated over the years. This patronage marked her out for special treatment. Correcting our math papers one day, and progressing slowly backwards up the aisle, desk by desk, a blockbuster banger was surreptitiously laid behind her in the passageway. A gunpowder trail decanted from another firework to the blue touch paper was lit and the banger exploded directly underneath her skirt with the most enormous deafening retort. The poor woman rushed screaming to the door, locking it behind her, with us still inside, and fled along the corridor towards the headmaster’s study. Returning about ten minutes later she again locked the door behind her; nobody was to escape the wrath that was to follow. Standing with her back to the door she explained in a tremulous voice that she had just telephoned

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Gartnavel Mental Hospital to send the ‘men in white’ to come urgently with all the straightjackets they could muster and that we were to be certified insane and locked up in rubber cells. This news was greeted with a burst of guffaws, cheering and foot stamping which annoyed her all the more. Holding up her hands for silence, she bent down and put her ear to the keyhole as though someone were approaching along the corridor. Gravely, she announced that the men from the asylum had arrived. Now was the hour of our nemesis. Turning to us she asked if we were sorry for what we had done to her. Half a dozen voices protested querulously ‘Done whit, miss?’ At this she broke down and disappeared from the classroom followed by catcalls and jeers that she ‘wis aff her heid!’ and ‘awa wi' ra fairies!’' After that she refused to teach us. Another favoured treatment of unpopular teachers was humming during a lesson. The noise would increase in intensity until it reached such a pitch that anyone passing would have thought a high-voltage cable ran through the school. This never failed to drive the victims into a fury and on one or two occasions it led to a punch-up between teacher and pupils. Fire drill was another excuse for mayhem. When the fire bell went, we knew it was a practice, but instead of forming an orderly queue and filing downstairs to assemble in the playground in pre-arranged columns, it took on the nature of a Barlinnie Prison riot. Desks and chairs were hurled around, a heavy revolving blackboard was collectively manoeuvred out of the window as we pretended to panic. Then, with loud cries of fire! we shouted and screamed and pushed our way downstairs, straight through the open gates of the prison-type playground enclosed by high cast-iron railings with spear-headed spikes — and home. There had been outbreaks of violence in and out of school as a result of pupils wearing the scarves of their favourite football teams. It hadn’t been a major problem at Woodside, but the headmaster decided on a pre-emptive ban on the wearing of football scarves. The story made headlines in the Glasgow Citizen. The news was announced over the school Tannoy system: ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your work’, he said politely, followed by a long, authoritative pause. ‘I have decided that Woodside pupils will no longer be allowed to wear football scarves with school uniform... no matter what your team.’ This was followed by an even longer, pregnant, pause. ‘I am the the singular Third Lanark supporter in the school, but even I shall cease to wear my scarf.’ Woodside was certainly quite a daunting establishment for teachers — perhaps that is why the great Scottish character actor Duncan Macrae left to tread the boards professionally — but it was considered to be one of the better schools in Glasgow. It is now one of the better public houses in Glasgow.

The 1950s — It’s A Great Life, If You Don’t Weaken

The 1950s – ‘It’s A Great Life, If You Don’t Weaken.’ WITH ‘CONSENSUS’ and social harmony the order of the day, the political impetus of the immediate post-war period was to try to ignore the real social forces represented by ‘left’ and ‘right’ by demonising class and ideological issues as divisive and negative. The mainstream political parties sought to maximise their support with ‘moderate’ and ‘responsible’ policies which defended an artificially constructed ‘middle ground’ which offended no important interests. It epitomised what were perceived as the traditional British values of fair play, compromise and sound common sense. In fact, so much in tandem were the economic policies of the Labour Party under Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskell and the Conservative Party under R.A. Butler, with both sides committed to full employment, that a new word, ‘Butskellism’, entered the vocabulary to express the political equilibrium between the parliamentary ‘left’ and ‘right’. The predominant theory of the early 1950s was the belief that ‘consensus’ had made ideological and political issues about what constituted the ‘good society’ redundant. The politics of the ‘New Elizabethan’ era, which coincided roughly with the 13-year period of Tory Rule from 1951 to 1964, were redefined not as having to do with divisive and conflicting moral issues such as equality or justice but with ideologically ‘neutral’, practical and realisable issues such as the efficient and rational administration of everyday life. The political agenda of the ‘consensual’ society was no longer to be decided by the distorting passions of idealists or the dogmatic obsessions of ideologues, but by the objective perspectives of rational and enlightened economists, planners and managers. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the credibility of all traditional authority structures had been steadily eroded by a growing public awareness of the embarrassing gulf between public morality and the reality of political expediency. McCarthyite anti-communism and the sustained cold war propaganda of the 50s tended to have the opposite effect to that intended. Constant references to the immorality and inhumanity of Stalinism certainly raised public awareness of the excesses of Soviet communism, but it also had the unexpected consequence of raising public consciousness as to the shortcomings and contradictions within our own political set-up. The second half of the 1950s saw a flowering of critical and creative talent in Britain, with a younger generation of writers, producers, actors, directors and musicians all challenging the ideas and conventions that had dominated the British cultural scene in the immediate post-war ear. Symptoms of discontent with the quality of social, political and cultural life in the industrial societies of both east and west had been growing steadily and now began to manifest themselves openly. This discontent expressed itself in different ways — the rise of satire and the launch of Private Eye in 1962, new proletarian dramas such as Arnold Wesker’s

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Roots, The Kitchen, Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker, Sheila Delany’s A Taste Of Honey, and films such as John Braine’s Room At The Top or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, the latter two based on the raunchy novels of mid-1950s Nottingham working class life by Alan Sillitoe. In Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse succeeded in capturing the angst of British youth just as J.D. Salinger did for American youth in The Catcher in the Rye. Common underlying themes running through this new literature were disillusionment with elite decision-making and the loss of group loyalty and moral authority among the political systems of the traditional left or right. They also touched on honesty, integrity and ambition. The breakdown of ‘consensus’ has been ascribed to a variety of factors, but two primary causes suggest themselves. Firstly, the economy was becoming less and less capable of delivering the general prosperity which capitalism had long claimed was its main justification. It could be argued that the earliest cracks in the ‘consensus’ appeared in October 1951 with the return to power of a Conservative government which promised to abandon irksome post-war controls. A sense of hopelessness pervaded the Labour Party when its 1945 landslide majority slumped to a score or so in 1950, and then to a handful because of by-elections; by October 1951 some Labour MPs were attending divisions on stretchers. The Labour government had nationalised by not giving control and the workers simply abstained in increasing numbers. The elitist Labourites saw the mass abstentions as so many stabs in the back. I suppose it made a change from them stabbing other people — and each other — in the back. The tentative return to a laissez-faire economy did not have the desired effect: the subsequent rise in demand for consumer goods and increase in imports aggravated a balance of payments crisis which blocked the hoped-for expansion of the economy. Secondly, the promises made by vote-seeking politicians led to demands being made on government to resolve problems which were, in effect, insoluble. ‘There were two kinds of inflation’, observed the political economist Wayne Parsons, ‘political and economic. The latter, too much money chasing too few goods; the former, too many expectations chasing too few governmental capacities.’ The exaggerated claims and promises made by ‘consensus’ politicians in their never-ending competition for an ever higher percentage of the national vote, together with the rise of consumer capitalism with its tantalising promises of the good life as portrayed on the cinema and television screens and glossy magazines, led to public expectations which government and capitalism could not meet. This was coupled with the growing belief that politics was an exclusive arena in which individual views counted for nothing and which led to greater cynicism towards politicians and a further distancing of the public from the political process. An important characteristic of politics at the time was the shift away from relatively open political debate among autonomous pressure groups to semi-

The 1950s — It’s A Great Life, If You Don’t Weaken

secret decision-making by corporate elites. This led to what were perceived by those adversely affected by corporate and paternalistic decision-making as ‘abuses of power’. It was a fundamental contradiction in ‘consensual’ liberal democracy which began to make serious inroads into the legitimacy of the political process, undermining traditional political values and party loyalties. There was also the de facto corporatism of the trade unions which increasingly became incorporated into the state. In turn this triggered a search for extra-parliamentary forms of organisation, a pronounced move towards direct action and the adoption of directly democratic values. The intensifying onslaught on liberal democracy was eventually to force it to seek an alternative solution to its seemingly insoluble problems. On the right, discontent with increasing taxes and higher rate bills provoked a mobilisation of the property-owning classes who felt the financial burden of the Welfare State had fallen, unfairly, on their backs. They saw the burgeoning growth of state power as a negative development threatening to swamp their highly prized individual rights and liberties. A letter to The Times in 1961 captures this distrust of ‘consensus’ politics: ‘Who has not often felt the distaste with democratic politics which [Portuguese dictator] Salazar expressed when he said he ‘detested politics from the bottom of his heart; all those noisy and incoherent promises, the impossible demands, the hotchpotch of unfounded ideas and impractical plans…opportunism that cares neither for truth nor justice, the inglorious chase after unmerited fame, the unleashing of uncontrollable passions, the exploitation of the lowest instincts, the distortion of facts…all that feverish and sterile fuss?’ A major gear change occurred in public attitudes in 1956. Smooth-talking Anthony Eden’s final imperialist gesture — invading Suez to bend Egyptian leader President Nasser to Britain’s will — triggered angry demonstrations up and down the country. A demonstration in Trafalgar Square, addressed by the Labour Party’s charismatic Welshman, Aneurin Bevan, provoked a near riot. But the Labour Party couldn’t claim any moral high ground. Its credibility was badly shaken when it reneged on the spirit of Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution and openly declared its support for the capitalist status quo, particularly over the question of unilateral disarmament. Tension between socialist principles and the expediency of ‘consensus’ government had led to a continuing series of purges of Labour Party ‘uncontrollables’ who protested openly and volubly against the drift away from the principles of democratic control. Support for the Communist Party had evaporated in 1956 in the wake of the revelations of Stalinist excesses and the Soviet invasion and suppression of the Hungarian uprising. It precipitated an exodus of disillusioned intellectual and organisational talent from the Communist Party, many of whom went over to the emerging peace movement or the Labour Party. Paradoxically, the attempt by political elites to short-circuit the democratic

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

process led to an increased popular awareness of the importance of democratic principles and practice. Whereas previous generations of citizens had been deferential and content to leave things to the ‘professionals’, the experiences of the war and post-war planning had sown the seeds of a political consciousness which began to take root from the mid-50s onwards. Still fresh in the public conscience was the recent judgement of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal that individuals had a moral duty to resist injustice. There was also the threat sustained by pro-NATO Cold War propagandists over the decade 1946-1956 that nuclear war, the final confrontation from which there was no escape for humanity, was imminent. All these events combined to create an urgent feeling that things had to be done quickly and an awareness that it could only be achieved by new political alternatives. ‘Consensus’ politics aggravated the sense of ‘alienation’ which people felt in industrialised society. Not only were individuals alienated in the Marxist sense of being separated from the goods they produced as a result of the private ownership of industry(since the fruits of their collective labour became the property of the employers who owned the means of production — the fields, factories and depots), but their very lives were becoming regulated by the machines they operated — especially on the assembly line, where the speed of the ‘belt’ dictated the pace of work without any need for a bullying foreman or bonus incentives. The machines operated them. Politically, the bureaucratically controlled ‘consensual’ society had widened the gap between the individual and those whose decisions controlled the quality of life. An example of this was an insensitive housing policy which lacked any regard for the real needs of people forcibly uprooted from their inner city areas with their spirit of community, and forced to live on vast impersonal housing estates such as Castlemilk and Easterhouse in Glasgow. This led Glasgow school teacher songwriter Adam McNaughtan to write his Height Starvation Song — a play on the then current Horlicks advert about ‘Night Starvation’, but which quickly became known as the Jeelie Piece Song — about the disappearance of the old practice of throwing jam sandwiches out of the tenement windows, something difficult and even dangerous in the new multi-storey developments: ‘Oh ye canny fling pieces oot a twenty storey flat, Seven hundred hungry weans'll testify to that. If it's butter, cheese or jeely, if the breid is plain or pan” The odds against it reaching earth are ninety-nine tae wan.’

Blantyre — 1960

I’m All right, Jack!: Fred Kite (played by Peter Sellars) was the shop steward whose rosetinted vision of the Soviet Union was that of cornfields through the day and the ballet in the evening. © The Kobal Collection.

Y 1959 MR. LOUGH, the minister, had decided to give up his charge in Kelvinbridge and move to a new living in Lockerbie in the Scottish borders. Granny was forced to retire and move to Blantyre to live with mum at 108 Calder Street, an off-cream pebble-dashed four-in-a-block council house, with ‘Tam Broon’ (Tom Brown), a miner, and my half-sister, Olivia. It was an upstairs flat consisting of a small living room, a kitchen-cumscullery with a gas cooker, a press and adjoining coal bunker, a toilet and bathroom, two bedrooms and a back garden with a coal shed. Tam knew gran despised him, although she was always diplomatic — she had to be as we were all now living under his roof — but the tension was always tangible. For this reason, gran spent most of her time with her close Irish friends, Cissie and Paddy Long. The ground floor flat belonged to a retired Irish-Scots miner, Wullie McNulty, his wife and a 20-year-old son. They were Catholics, but we got on well and I would run Mrs McNulty’s messages for her whenever she asked me. Old Mr McNulty died a year or so after I arrived and I remember going down to pay my respects during the wake, the first and only wake I ever attended. It was slightly unnerving to see all these people at the ‘hooley’, drinking and singing in the midst of death. The open coffin was in the candle-lit back bedroom with the remains of a ham purvey on it, but what made the most impression on me was the fact that all the mirrors had been covered. I hadn’t heard of this practice before, but it was also common among the fishing families of the North East of Scotland as well — around Aberdeen and Kincardineshire. The belief is that if the spirit of the departed sees himself or herself reflected in the mirror they remain trapped forever as ghosts in this world. Tam had met my mother after she had separated from my dad. He was tall, broad-shouldered and good-looking, but according to my mum, it was the shape of the back of his neck that attracted her to him. His hair was thick and brown, slightly wavy, with brown eyes and a thin-lipped mouth. She claimed he was reputed to be the best-looking man in Blantyre at the time, but it didn’t take long for his dark side to emerge. He suffered from an inferiority complex, found it difficult to express himself other than with expletives and resented my mother, my gran and myself. He blossomed in the company of his drinking cronies with whom he talked incessantly about politics. Tam proved a good role model for a young boy: a near perfect example of how not to behave. He described himself as a ‘socialist fellow traveller’, which effectively meant he was neither one thing nor another. But his political views, culled from the strongly CP-influenced Co-op, which owned the Reynolds News, (the Sunday version of the CP’s Daily Worker) resembled those of the shop steward Fred Kite played by Peter Sellers in the film I’m all right, Jack! When the Soviet Union was mentioned Kite’s eyes lit up and he waxed lyrical about the

100

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

nobility of Russian labour working in the cornfields through the day and off to the ballet in the evening. . On the question of nuclear disarmament, however, Tam would always quote Nye Bevan’s appeal to the 1957 Labour Party Conference for the continued production of British H-bombs and not sending Britain’s Foreign Secretary ‘naked to the Conference table’. He was good-looking, avuncular and pipe-smoking like his hero Joe Stalin. He was fit, upright and square-shouldered when he walked, but his sallow, waxy complexion was due to the foul air he was forced to breathe for hours on end down the pit. To the outside world Tam was charming, personable, engaging and generous; it didn’t take long before I learned he was a posturing Vicar of Bray, and when he had a drink in him — which was every night — he was moody, violent, petty-minded, jealous, physically and mentally abusive and, worst of all, a bully. One Sunday afternoon, when I was sixteen, Tam came back from the Miners’ Welfare, drunk and aggressive and started having a go at my mother, my young sister and myself. Olivia was growing more and more distressed at his behaviour. He was clearly set on picking a fight with me over anything. Finally, after a bit of verbal banter between us he picked up my treasured Dansette portable record player, threw it on the floor then started kicking it. That was the last straw. I’d had enough of his bullying abuse so I picked up a poker, lunged at him, knocked him to the floor and then, sitting on top of him, started beating him with the poker. Although he was bigger and stronger than me, he was drunk, which gave me sufficient advantage. When he recovered what was left of his pride and dignity he kicked what remained of my Dansette down the stairs and ordered my mother and me out of the house. This was not altogether an unusual occurrence as we had been up and down the road between my gran’s new home and Calder Street more times than a bride’s nightie. Fortunately, around this time gran had met and married an elderly exminers’ union representative, Robert Scott, a perfect gentleman, well-read, welltravelled and dignified, in short everything Tam was not. It was a happy end to an unhappy period in my gran’s and mum’s lives.

Doon The Pit BLANTYRE, LIKE CIVILISATION, according to Chesterton, was founded on coal, but it had also been at one time the centre of a cotton industry. It was now a small declining pit town seven miles or so west of Glasgow, skirting the industrial perimeter of Lanarkshire with its belching chimneys, blast furnaces, canals and gasometers. Its focal points were the main shop, the Co-operative, two cinemas, two cafes, a dance hall — the Co-op hall — a Presbyterian Church and a Roman Catholic Chapel with their associated schools, and the Blantyre Miners’ Welfare, the hub, core and quintessence of the community.

101

Blantyre — 1960

Glasgow Road, Blantyre: the Broadway Cinema is the brick-built twinturreted building with safety rails on the pavement.

Although the landscape along the main Glasgow road was scarred with waste coal bings and slagheaps overgrown by sour grass, deserted workings, slag heaps and pitheads, between and beyond these the land was green with farms, market gardens and orchards. Nor was it far to the open countryside in the north towards East Kilbride, which was still a village then, or down past the row of houses where David Livingstone was born, Shuttle Row, to the steep tree-clad banks of the River Clyde. The view across the river at the 13th century Blantyre Priory, near Bothwell Castle, was considered one of the finest in Clydesdale and reminiscent of a castle on the Rhine. Miners worked seven and a half hour shifts — theoretically without a break — in water, dirt, dust and grime and in constant danger of an explosion or a cave-in. The morning shift started at six and worked till half-past one, which meant they had to be out of bed around four to get to the coalface on time. The night shift was from nine p.m., which meant they didn’t get back until six or seven in the morning. If Tam were on the night shift he would have his breakfast, go to bed until noon or 2 p.m., and then catch the bus to Hamilton golf course for a round of golf with his mate. There were no fixed meal times down the pit; the men snatched short breaks when they could to eat the food they brought with them, usually a sandwich of some sort and cold tea or water from a metal flask strapped to their belts. Chewing tobacco kept their mouths lubricated which meant they were constantly spitting, even indoors, a habit which irritated me enormously. On the whole, they may not have been healthy men, but they were were fit with little spare flesh; the constant bending, digging and shoveling saw to that. Miners enjoyed life and were well-read, and for the most part their company was stimulating. They were men who appreciated the joys and value of life and ideas. You could see the genuine appreciation on their faces as they listened to the songs of Enrico Caruso or Paul Robeson on the wireless or on the wind-up gramophones or record players in living rooms of the council houses and miners’ rows. It could be felt in their voices as they sang the The Red Flag, Old Man River or Joe Hill in the Miners’ Welfare or on their way home from the pit. It was at the Miners’ Welfare that I came across my first real anarchists, communists and socialists. I was not entirely surprised to learn they were not the demons I had been led to believe.

102

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Politicisation

HE IDEAS OF socialism were the predominant topics of conversation, as I remember. When I understood what it was about I became enthusiastic. But it struck me that the miners had an ambivalent attitude to the Labour Party. They would no sooner vote Tory than go to the moon, but there was a cynical edge to their voices when they spoke about the Labour Party. They gave it their nominal allegiance, but they did not trust it. Many spoke sympathetically of the Communist Party. But their sympathy was nostalgic. George Orwell described the prevailing ambivalent attitude to ‘socialism’ in his book The Road to Wigan Pier, written in 1936, immediately prior to going to fight in the Spanish Civil War: ‘We have reached the stage where the very word ‘Socialism’ calls up, on the one hand, a picture of aeroplanes, tractors and huge glittering * The John MacLean March factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of ‘Argyle Street and London Road’s the route that we’re vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars marchin’ (half gangster, half gramophone), of earnest ladies in The lads frae the Broomilaw are here – tae a man! sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, Hi, Neil, whaur’s your haudrums, ye big Heilan' teuchter? escaped Quakers, birth control fanatics and Labour Party Get yer pipes, mate, and march at the heid o’ the clan. backstairs crawlers. Socialism, at least in this island, does Hullo Pat Malone; sure I knew ye’d be here so: not smell any longer of revolution and the overthrow of The red and the green lad, we’ll wear side by side. tyrants; it smells of crankishness, machine worship and Gorbals is his the day, and Glesgie belongs tae him. the stupid cult of Russia.’ Ay, Great John MacLean’s comin’ hame tae the Clyde. The name and memory of John MacLean* was highly Great John MacLean’s comin’ hame tae the Clyde.’ respected. His was a name which for many had entered Written by Hamish Henderson for the memorial the pantheon, but the feeling was that men like him meeting in the St Andrew’s Hall in Glasgow in 1948, on weren’t around any more. They were clearly comparing the 25th anniversary of MacLean’s death. him with latter-day communists. MacLean had once been one of the best-loved men in Glasgow , a socialist who kept the faith and was rewarded by poverty and prison. Like many other Marxists of his generation, he came into conflict with Moscow. Lenin had recognised him as the authentic radical voice of the World War One-fuelled ‘Red Clyde’, and even made him Russian Consul, but MacLean refused to accept Russian domination of the labour movement in Glasgow, or anywhere else for that matter. Willie Gallagher, a renegade from syndicalism who stole John MacLean’s thunder to become a Communist M. P., spread the nasty lie that prison had driven John mad.

The Spanish Civil War THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, the bloody conflict fought between 1936 and 1939, instigated by the theocratic and fascist forces headed by General Francisco Franco in an attempt to destroy the five-year old Spanish Republic, is often described as the last purely idealistic cause of the twentieth century. For socialists, liberals and radicals of all persuasions it was the moral line in the sand; the time when idealists and heroically selfless men and women from around the world were moved to travel to Spain to contribute what they could towards halting the rising tide of global reaction.

103

Politicisation

Writing in the preface to the book l’Espagne Libre in 1946, the year of my birth, Albert Camus said of the Spanish struggle: ‘It is now nine years that men of my generation have had Spain within their hearts. Nine years that they have carried it with them like an evil wound. It was in Spain that men learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many men, the world over, regard the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.’ More than twenty years after Franco’s victory, the memories of the war, its unspeakable aftermath and the moral erosion of Spanish society as the regime tightened its grip were still able to reawaken anger about those who had made Francoism possible. It was unfinished business. The Spanish Revolution and Civil War, however, was also one that had been seriously manipulated and fatally distorted by the Communist Party through the much-publicised provision of Russian military materiél and the Soviet- and Comintern-controlled detachments of the Spanish Republican Army known as the International Brigades.

Stalin’s ‘Great Game’ FOR MOST RADICAL Scottish activists I came across in the 1950s, mainly miners, this was the political sore that would not heal: the memory of the murderous and treacherous role played in Spain by the Communist Party, the Soviet-led Comintern and its Commissars. These opportunist political officers cynically manipulated the heroism, idealism and integrity of thousands of ordinary volunteers of the International Brigades in Spain in order to divert the conflict from its original social revolutionary aims in pursuance of Stalinist foreign policy objectives. Tragically, most ordinary International Brigades volunteers were unaware of the strategic geopolitical ‘great game’; they were engaged in on behalf of Stalin. They were idealists led by cynics. Old Blantyre anarchists and communists would often go over the battles of the Ebro and Guadalajara, discussions which gradually become more heated, usually ending in a punch-up, when they got down to examining the Communist Party’s pro-Soviet policies in Spain, particularly after the ‘Events of May’ in Catalonia in 1937, in which the anti-Stalinist groups were attacked by Communist Party-led troops which led, in turn, to the collapse of the revolutionary process in Spain and the ultimate victory of Franco. Workers and intellectuals all over the world had been horrified by their own governments’ inaction in the face of fascist aggression and had gone off to fight for justice on their own initiative and not just through the Comintern-organised International Brigades. Ethel MacDonald, an anarchist from Motherwell, just a few miles up the road from Blantyre, was one of the countless people who made this individual

104

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

pilgrimage to Spain. In October 1936. she accompanied another Scottish woman, Jenny Patrick, a long-time anarchist activist who had been the secretary of the Glasgow anarchists during the industrial troubles of 1916. Ethel became a regular broadcaster on the English-language programmes of the Barcelona anarchist radio station. Their high profile led to both Ethel and Jenny being arrested and held without trial by the Stalinist secret police in the wake of the May 1937 events and the subsequent Stalinist coup against the government of the socialist Largo Caballero. But they were among the lucky ones who managed to survive — and escape back to Glasgow. Another young Scot who left Glasgow to Spain to fight against Franco was Jamie Foyers*, whose story was told in song by Ewan MacColl. The few older and more ideologically hardened members of the CP guarded against the intrusion of these ugly facts by invoking the * Young Jamie Foyers sacrifices of the volunteers of the International Brigade ‘He’s gane frae the shipyard that stands on the Clyde. and the primary importance of defeating Franco and His hammer is silent, his tools laid aside. fascism. They completely missed the point that without To the wide Ebro River young Foyers has gane. the selfless ideals and self-sacrifice unleashed by the To fecht by the side of the people of Spain. libertarian revolution in July 1936, the military would Chorus: Far distant, far distant, lies Foyers the brave have won in a matter of days — and with the suffocation No tombstone memorial shall hallow his grave of that hope of a better, more just and equitable world, His bones they are scattered on the rude soil of Spain the collapse of the popular morale and will to resist was For young Jamie Foyers in battle lies slain.’ inevitable. Ewan MacColl The anarchist position in Spain was summed up by the following editorial in the Spanish militia paper Acracia, [published in Lleida, 1937]: ‘We do not make war just for the sake of making war. Were our movement compelled to be encapsulated by one blunt adjective that adjective would not be “warlike”, but “revolutionary”… We aver that all wars are inauspicious. Were it our belief that we are making a war, we should be the first to desert. The fact is that war never erupts to the advantage of those who inflict and suffer its ravages. We are not fighting here to advance anyone’s private interests, though there will be no shortage of bigwigs who will seek to commandeer the fruits of our struggle and gamble on the ups and downs of our successes and our reverses, turning our rearguard into a stockjobbers’ lot. ‘Our fight is against privilege and not for the nation, a fight for liberty and not for the fatherland, a fight for anarchy and not for the Republic. We risk our lives for the collective good and not for a privileged caste. While one of us remains standing, the social revolution which is the driving force behind our liberation movement, will never want for defenders and combatants, whether they use the pen, fist, word or rifle. ‘We do not make war; war is always made for the purposes of someone else, and fought out between the brethren who are poor in spirit. We make revolution for the benefit of all human beings and against the cliques who are hangovers from parasitism and self-centredness. And as we are making revolution, not one square metre of reconquered ground must be subtracted from the process of transformation, despite the froglike croaking of those whose lack of spirit and mettle inclines them to dabble in the stagnant waters of politicking.’

105

Politicisation

Also, Soviet totalitarianism and the Communist Party had taken such a battering in the 50s with the Berlin uprising in 1953, the revelations following Stalin’s death and the invasion of Hungary in 1956, that it had almost as bad a name as the Tory party. Whatever the International Brigade may have done for Spain, it did considerably more for the image of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. I suppose it was these discussions and moving accounts of bravery that made the idea of involving myself in the Spanish struggle appear the right thing to do. The miners felt strongly about the defeat of the Spanish workers. They projected their solidarity into the past and glorified the International Brigades. Personally, I could not understand why the democracies permitted Franco to remain in power. Had they or their Soviet allies not overthrown the fascist governments of Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Japan? The anarchist miners’ view, however, was that the initial impulse to resist fascism had sprung from no other source than the Spanish workers themselves, with their anarchist ideas. But all of them felt strongly about the Spanish Civil War because of the clear-cut issues involved. People can tolerate the most unjust and horrendous oppression provided its origin is well shrouded in the past. General Franco’s victory was something they had read about in the daily press; those of the Duke of Hamilton, the owner of many of the Scottish coal mines before 1947, and Duke of Sutherland, the man responsible for the worst excesses of the Highland Clearances — among others — though understood by them, belonged to the history books.

Mr Kennedy Goes To Washington

The election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the presidency of the USA in 1960 marked the beginning of a US foreign policy in which the world was perceived primarily in terms of US military and commercial alliances and interests.

THE YEAR 1960 started off badly. In March, the South African police panicked during a turbulent Pan African Congress (PAC) ‘anti-pass law’ demonstration, shot scores of people dead and wounded many hundreds more. The fatal shots fired outside Sharpeville police station including expanding dum-dum bullets, received international condemnation, waking the world up to the full horrors of Verwoerd’s apartheid regime. One consequence was the expulsion of South Africa from the British Commonwealth; another was to force the two main African opposition groups, the African National Congress (ANC) and the PAC, to go underground. In November 1960 another important event took place in the US which captured the imagination of the world and set the seal on the new decade; John Fitzgerald Kennedy, scion of an East Coast Irish Yankee family of liberal Republicans, the kind of people who backed Lincoln and helped runaway slaves — who viewed the world solely in terms of US military and commercial alliances was elected thirty-fifth President of the United States. We did not know then how duplicitous he was, although we should have guessed. (Oddly enough, in September 1960, Sam Charters, the American country blues collector and writer, told my friend Mark Hendy at the Edinburgh Festival that Kennedy had bought the Democratic Party nomination.)

106

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Kennedy was, after all, a Catholic, the inheritor of enormous unearned wealth and influence. He had supported the witchfinder-general himself, Senator Joe McCarthy, and was the son of a bootlegger directly connected with organised crime, an anti-British, pro-Nazi sympathiser. Even New York’s Cardinal Francis Spellman described him as a ‘truly evil man’. We now know that the decisive influence in securing the Presidency for him was the mobilisation of the ItalianAmerican vote by the Mafia, thanks to intensive lobbying of the Cosa Nostra leadership by Kennedy Sr. I suppose Kennedy Jr’s popularity derived from the fact that he was both young and an outsider. He had, after all, triumphed over the prejudices of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant America, and spoke the language of the time. He presented himself as a man who would champion the cause of reform, the dispossessed and the influential minorities JFK’s inaugural address in January 1961 was pitched to reflect American foreign policy hopes and aspirations for the new decade. The ruling hierarchy was manufacturing the myth that the country was on a mission to do God’s work and deliver the world from evil. But there were sinister undertones which we didn’t pick up on at the time. Africa, Asia and Latin America were the prizes in the geopolitical poker game to be played out in the 60s between the Soviet and Maoist communists, and the North American yankees and the cowboy power elites. Kennedy’s increasing dependence on covert operations and proxy guerrilla warfare as a means of avoiding direct nuclear confrontation with the Soviets and the Chinese was to spell disaster for the peoples of the young emergent nations of Africa, Asia and South America struggling to discard the influence of the old colonial rulers and warlords: — ‘Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty. ‘To our sister republics south of the border, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free government in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbours know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.’ Far from casting off the ‘chains of poverty’, ensuring the ‘survival and success of liberty’and resolving global conflict, the U.S. enhanced and intensified the forces of barbarism. The actual consequences of American interventionism, as expounded by Kennedy, with its policy of bombing and intimidating recalcitrant Third World peoples into peace and prosperity by shoring up the regimes of barbaric and ruthless clan chieftans and warlords, was to condemn hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of colonialism to years of terrible violence and misery.

107

Politicisation

By the middle of 1960 tension had built up from Laos to Berlin. In West Berlin, in July, President Kennedy added to the sense of impending doom by pledging that America would go to war if necessary to uphold the freedom of the city. Amid mounting rumours that the East Berlin authorities were planning to seal off East Berlin, thousands fled to the western sector. In July alone an estimated 30,000 people fled from East to West, and on 13 August a barbed wire barrier was erected across Germany, to be replaced five days later by the permanent Berlin wall itself.

The One-Armed Dominie

Class of 19601961: Calder Street School, Blantyre, Class 3A1. (I am second from the left in the back row.)

MY NEW SCHOOL in Blantyre was Calder Street Secondary School and the person who made most impact on me there was the English teacher, George Bradford. He was a one-armed Socrates (I never found out how he lost his arm) who epitomised what a good teacher should be — interesting, stimulating, encouraging, non-judgmental and inspirational. He gave me a wide-ranging interest in history, culture and people and taught me the value of language. He was pivotal in stimulating my thirst for knowledge and helped me to understand some of the practical and moral complexities of the world in which I was coming of age. On one occasion he was briefing our class on an English exam we were to take the following day and reminded us that there would be no excuse for not showing up. Exceptions would only be made in the case of serious injury or illness, or a sudden death in the immediate family. A bit of light-hearted banter ensued and one smart-arse asked if ‘extreme sexual exhaustion’ would be acceptable as an excuse. When we had stopped sniggering, George smiled sympathetically at the boy and shook his head. ‘Not an excuse. You’ll just have to write with your other hand.’ George was obliged to take us for Religious Education (RE) at least once a week, which involved a short reading from the King James Bible and then a general discussion. Inevitably, however, he would end the reading and close the Bible with the words ‘And you can believe that if you like!’ Tangentially, the King James version of the Bible had been ‘re-translated’ on the orders of King James VI of Scotland (I of England) to enhance the notion of the ‘divine right of kings’; a concept which the monarch felt had been downplayed in the Geneva Bible which had preceded it. But it was the technical subjects teacher who was the catalyst for my developing ideas about socialism. He was in the Labour Party and had been a member of the Labour League of Youth, the forerunner of the Young Socialists. Our common outlook made me his ‘favourite’, particularly after I asked him to write out for me the words of ‘The Red Flag’. I was a bit confused about Chicago swelling the ‘surging throng’ until he told me of the American anarcho-syndicalist ‘Wobblies’, the Industrial Workers

108

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

of the World (IWW) and the story of the Chicago Martyrs, the six anarchists executed in 1889. He was also an amateur magician and would select me to demonstrate his tricks whenever we had a free period. In woodwork classes my classmates were always nudging me to suggest to him a magic show rather than turning lamp bases. The Communist Party and Karl Marx were names I had picked up on since coming to Blantyre, so I read what I could on the subject. The very last English essay I wrote in May 1961, before leaving school, was a biographical sketch of Karl Marx together with a synopsis of The Communist Manifesto, outlining Marx and Engels’ views of revolution as a consequence of the class struggle. The Communist Manifesto was the only one of his and Frederick Engels’ works that I could understand. I had tried to hack my way into Das Kapital but found it mind-numbingly boring; I simply couldn’t comprehend the dense complexities of his language, or the abstractions of his economic theory. The Communist Manifesto, however, even though it was written in 1848, was moral in tone and considerably more penetrating in its identification of the bourgeoisie as the real bad guys of history: — ‘The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his natural superiors, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash-payment. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. ‘The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, and the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers. ‘The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money-relation.’ I was doubtful about the priest being converted into a ‘paid wage-labourer’; in my view the bourgeoisie and the priesthood were bogeymen in the same conspiracy against the common good, but in my own mind the jigsaw of reactionary forces in society was fitting together to form a clearer picture. I am not certain whether or not my interest in history developed through literature, or vice versa. Reading about the experiences of old men was a good way of understanding the present. This enthusiasm for history went hand in hand with my fascination for libraries. There were no second-hand bookshops in Blantyre, only the local public library which stood opposite the school and where I began to spend more and more time.

109

Politicisation

When I discovered that I could borrow any book I wanted (except certain ones, such as Havelock Ellis on sex, which was kept under lock and key in the back room for an unspecified class of person, of whom, obviously, I was not one). I was overwhelmed. I had never seen rooms and shelves filled with so many books; so much knowledge, so much wisdom, so many perspectives and possibilities. I had no idea where to begin. Finally I took out Ripley’s Believe It or Not which I devoured overnight and returned the next day to borrow something else. Blantyre was fortunate in having such a large lending library, with a reference room which to me was a window on the world. I got into the habit of going there whenever I could and reading whatever subject caught my imagination. My regular visits to the library meant I soon became friendly with two of the young librarians, who were in their late teens or early twenties and who shared my iconoclastic view of the world. Librarians became my role models — the new bohemians — and I wanted to be one. They were dynamic, well-read, radical and anti-authoritarian. Not the Kingsley Amis types, but the green corduroy and black roll-neck sweater and suede desert boot (known as ‘brothel creepers’ even by those who didn’t know what a brothel was) brigade. To spend all day surrounded by books seemed like the ideal way to spend your working life. I read everything that looked as though it might increase my understanding — indiscriminately. Emerging out of the cracks and fissures that were beginning to appear in the façade of the old order, were new ideas and attitudes which were giving a jolt to Establishment shibboleths. Among these were Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The Catcher — probably more than any other work of contemporary literature or theatre — was, I believe, the seminal adolescent youth book of the period. Although it had been first published in the States in 1951 — round about the same time as Mad Magazine and Jack Kerouac’s beatnik novel, On the Road — I didn’t come across it until sometime in 1959. The Catcher was a revelation to me, almost as though some telepathic distance-reader had cracked my psychic code. It was unlike other books I had read, which tended to have a thread of coherent wisdom and black and white certainty running through them. Instead, The Catcher in the Rye, focused on humanity’s frailties and unpredictability. The hero’s frustration was directed against a materialistic and profit-driven world inhabited by adults who appeared to lack any sense of vocation and who lived by a self-serving code of ethics to justify the exploitation and corruption of others for their own selfish ends. Holden served a whole generation as a role model. The more I read, the more I was aware how little I knew or understood. My librarian friends directed me to some impenetrable books such as Bertrand Russell on philosophy, but others proved inspirational, particularly the Essays

110

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

and Lectures of Colonel R.G. Ingersoll, the mid-19th century American agnostic and rationalist and the only atheist in the US to have a statue erected in his memory. Ingersoll I could not put down. The exhilarating lucidity of his arguments against the irrationality and inhumanity of institutionalised religion, the churches, and superstition, and his exaltation of the humanist qualities of Shakespeare, Voltaire and the nature of liberty immediately struck a chord with me: ‘ I tell you there is something splendid in the man that will not always mind. Why, if we had done as the kings told us five hundred years ago, we should all have been slaves. If we had done as the priest told us we should all have been idiots. If we had done as the doctors told us, we would all have been dead. We have been saved by disobedience. We have been saved by that splendid thing called independence, and I want to see more of it, I want to see children raised so they will have it.’ Ingersoll’s views on the Roman Catholic Church articulated just what I wanted to hear: ‘That Church is the only one that keeps up a constant communication with heaven through the instrumentality of a large number of decayed saints. That Church has an agent of God on earth, has a person who stands in the place of deity; and that Church is infallible. That Church has persecuted to the extent of her power — and always will. In Spain that Church stands erect, and is arrogant. In the United States that Church crawls; but the object in both countries is the same, and that is the destruction of intellectual liberty…. Thousands of volumes could not contain the crimes of the Catholic Church. They could not contain even the names of her victims. With sword and fire, with track and chain, with dungeons and whip, she endeavoured to convert the world. In weakness a beggar — in power a highwayman—alms dish or dagger—tramp or beggar.’ Mind you, he wasn’t too keen on the Presbyterians either, whose Calvinist creed he thought was the worst of all. It wasn’t quite the Church I recognised: ‘No Church has done more to fill the world with gloom than the Presbyterian. Its creed is frightful, hideous, and hellish. The Presbyterian God is the monster of monsters. He is an eternal executioner, jailer and turnkey. He will enjoy forever the shrieks of the lost — the wails of the damned. Hell is the festival of the Presbyterian God.’ Ingersoll imposed an order on the previously random nature of my reading habits and led me to Voltaire, whose exhortation Écrasez l’infame! ‘Eliminate infamy’, spoke volumes, as did Joseph McCabe’s anthology of his essays in the Selected Works of Voltaire, particularly his insights into superstition: — ‘Ever since men made it a sacred duty to dispute about what they cannot understand, and made virtue consist in the pronunciation of certain unintelligible words, which everyone attempted to explain, Christian countries have been a theatre of discord and carnage. ’You will tell me that this universal pestilence should be imputed to the fury of ambition rather than that of fanaticism. I answer that this is due to both. The thirst for domination has been so assuaged with the blood of fools. I do not aspire to heal

111

Politicisation

The arrest of a defiant Rosa Parks (top) in Montgomery, Alabama launched the US civil rights movement. Bottom: Little Rock High School student subject to racist taunts.

men of power of this furious passion to subject the minds of others; it is an incurable disease. Every man would like to see others hastening to serve him; and that he may be the better served, he will, if he can, make them believe that their duty and happiness are to be slaves. Find me a man with an income of a hundred thousand pounds a year, and with four or five hundred thousand subjects throughout Europe, who cost him nothing, beside his soldiers, and tell him that Christ, of whom he is the vicar and imitator, lived in poverty and humility. He will reply that the times have changed, and to prove it he will condemn you to perish in the flames. You will correct neither this man [the Pope] nor a Cardinal de Lorraine, the simultaneous possessor of seven bishoprics. What can one do, then? Appeal to the people, and, brutalised as they are, they listen and half open their eyes. They partly throw off the most humiliating yoke that has ever been borne. They rid themselves of some of their errors, and win back a part of their freedom, that appanage or essence of man of which they had been robbed. We cannot cure the powerful of ambition, but we can cure the people of superstition. We can, by speech and pen, make men more enlightened and better.’ Ingersoll also introduced me to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and The Rights of Man. Paine’s view of mutual aid and distrust of government mirrored and articulated my own feelings so well it was as though my confused thoughts and ideas had been funnelled through a filter on to a page: — ‘Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of men. It existed prior to government and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of the civilised community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The landowner, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government.’ These and other humanist writers reinforced my conviction that the Roman Catholic Church was one of the greatest enemies of humanity and I read every critique I could find of this institution. Most were biased pot-boilers published by The Protestant Truth Society, but a few gave me a taste for investigative journalism and how the Roman Catholic Church sustained a mutually beneficial relationship with the state and big business. One writer who impressed me particularly was Baron Avro Manhattan whose books I devoured voraciously.

112

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Manhattan had been jailed in Italy for refusing to serve in Mussolini’s army and later, during the war, had run an anti-fascist radio station called Radio Freedom, broadcasting to partisans. He wrote more than twenty books. But for me his The Vatican in World Politics, The Dollar and the Vatican and The Catholic Church Against the Twentieth Century were absolutely pivotal in my thinking about the nature of power politics, morality and natural justice. The ‘Big Idea’ was slowly taking shape in my mind. Another influential book I came across — one which gave me a shocking insight into the darker side of power politics, particularly in the USA, the selfappointed paladin of democracy and justice — was High Treason: The Plot Against the People by Albert E Kahn. First published in 1950, this book, read against the background of events in Montgomery, Alabama, and Little Rock, Arkansas, exposed the dual moral standards of the American elite and the intrinsically anti-democratic, conspiratorial, oligarchic and racist nature of the United States government and big business. It portrayed a cabal capable of any act in the pursuit of its objectives, and one that set itself above the law and all morality. It was, basically, the secret history of clandestine diplomacy, pro-Nazi, racist, rightwing, anti-labour, anti-liberal, fundamentalist protestant and Catholic intrigues in the USA between 1919 and 1950. This view of the oligarchic nature of even the most democratic of governments was not new. James Madison, one of the USA’s ‘Founding Fathers’, foresaw this in a contribution to the influential The Federalist. Madison stated that the ‘first’ problem is to ‘enable the government to control the governed,’ and then to ‘oblige it to control itself’. Caryl Chessman’s autobiographical account of his twelve years on death row was a strong influence on my views on capital punishment and the nature of US justice. He was executed in February 1960, shortly after I read the book, something I found quite distressing. Howard Fast, the American Communist Party writer’s account of the horrifying Peekskill riots in Eyewitness: Peekskill, USA, was another crampon in my particular wall of radicalism. In August 1949 Paul Robeson, the American negro singer, had been billed to appear at a concert close to the town of Peekskill, New York, in support of the Harlem Chapter of the Civil Rights Congress. During the four days preceding the concert the local paper had been ratcheting up its readers into a state of near hysteria over the ‘un-American’ and ‘pro-Communist’ nature of the event and its star performer. The concert was never held and Robeson couldn’t even approach the venue for racists blocking access to the site; blacks and other concert goers were beaten unmercifully — with not one policeman in sight. A second concert was organised for the following weekend and received massive support from 2,500 anti-fascists and anti-racists who formed a defensive line around the concert ground. Paul Robeson opened the concert at 2 o’clock with around 20,000 people crowded into the grounds to hear him sing. 113

Politicisation

When the concert ended, the police routed departing buses and cars along a steep winding road which passed through thick woods. Here there were hundreds of men waiting in ambush with piles of rocks, stones, bottles and bricks. A hail of missiles hit the vehicles making their way along the road. The police and State troopers either did nothing or participated in the rock throwing or beatings themselves. More than fifty buses and hundreds of private cars carried grim scars of the mob violence — shattered windows, dented and battered sides and hoods. Someone in one of the buses made a chilling recording of the attacks, which I heard in Josh Macrae’s basement in Balgrayhill Road, Springburn. In it you hear the frenzied hate of the crowds, the sound of stones smashing into glass and people, the wailing of women and the impassioned screams of children and the racist jeers and taunts of the red-necked ambushers. Fast also wrote the novel Spartacus that was turned into the inspirational film of the same name, with Kirk Douglas and Laurence Oliver. For weeks after seeing the film we’d re-enact the hillside scene after the final battle Lady Chatterley shouting ‘Am Spartacus’. ‘Naw yer no. ‘Am Spartacus’, ‘Naw yer no, ‘am cleared: D.H. Lawrence’s Spartacus!’… novel was cleared of obscenity charges on November 2, 1960.

Hank Janson Meets Lady Chatterley CENSORSHIP WAS ANOTHER irritant in the cold war between ‘them’ and ‘us’ in the 1950s. It all came to a head in 1960 with Penguin’s publication of the first paperback edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, provoking a major confrontation with the establishment. Lobbying by church groups had resulted in the introduction of modern censorship with the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. Magistrates were given the somewhat limited power of seizing and destroying work which existed ”for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth and of a nature calculated to shock the common feelings of decency in any well-regulated mind.” By 1868 the Lord Chief Justice had widened the interpretation of the test of obscenity as to whether or not it depraved and corrupted those whose minds were already open to such immoral influences. The saturation point came in the late 1950s with various nonsensical trials and judgements such as the banning of Boccaccio’s Decameron by Swindon magistrates while permitting the sale of such seedy US imports as Hank Janson’s Don’t Mourn Me Toots. The Old Bailey jury trial and subsequent acquittal of Lady Chatterley’s Lover felt as though another battle had been won in the war for ‘freedom’. Shortly after the trial, I was seen reading it on my way to Calder Street School by one of the nymphophobic spinster teachers. This was to provoke a

114

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

massive row in the school staffroom between the reactionary and liberalminded teachers. The latter was led by Mr Bradford, our English teacher who was believed by these pathetic hags to be a corrupter of youth and intent on undermining their moral authority. The teacher in question, a sour old bitch of a spinster who taught ‘religious education’, vented her spleen the next morning, in the RE class, by lecturing me. We had been having fairly animated discussions about censorship in Bradford’s English class the previous day so I immediately adopted a selfrighteous, truculent attitude and more or less told her she was a narrowminded reactionary. I went so far as to imply that this was a view shared by other teachers. This left her flabbergasted. Unfortunately, it also got Mr Bradford into trouble and led me to being hauled up before an embarrassed headmaster who quite simply didn’t know how to handle this new situation. Undaunted by the fuss I triggered a further heated discussion in the English class. Finally, I wrote a short essay addressing the rhetorical question ‘Why should I be a conformist?’ It reflects some of the anger and injured selfrighteousness I was feeling at the time: — ‘Why should I be in a rut and be ruled by the conventions of our society when I can be different from anyone else? Any day of the week you can see men and women going to their specific jobs; you can see they are no longer individuals. To be an individual in this country you’ve got to act, think and feel different from everybody else. To be an individualist means to be a non-conformist. ‘Why should I not be allowed to read any magazine or book some inhibited person told me not to read? Why should I not go to an ‘X’ picture? We are not fit to see it at fifteen and yet a few days later we may be sixteen and we can see it then! Are we supposed to learn about life just like that? There are also many men not fit enough to see them. ‘Is it any wonder there are beatniks and delinquents with this ‘rat race’ going on? Everybody is trying to outdo everyone else; if society keeps going on this way it will mean we’ll all be playing the harp when the mushroom clouds roll by (I was a Tom Lehrer fan). With all the neurotics, the depressed, hypochondriacs and other sickminded people surrounding us, you ask ‘Why should I be different?’ BUT IT WASN’T ALL philosophy and politics. I was introduced to the novels of B Traven: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Death Ship. Traven’s compelling libertarian arguments in the latter title in particular had a big impact on my thoughts on the arbitrary power the state wielded over our lives: ‘Why passports? Why immigration restrictions? Why not let human beings go where they wish to go, North Pole or South Pole, Russia or Turkey, the States of Bolivia? Human beings must be kept under control. They cannot fly like insects about the world into which they were born without being asked. Human beings must be brought under control, under passports, under finger print registrations. For what reason? Only to show the omnipotence of the State, and of the holy servant

115

Politicisation

of the State, the bureaucrat. Bureaucracy has come to stay. It has become the great and almighty ruler of the world. It has come to stay to whip human beings into discipline and make them numbers within the State. With foot printing of babies it has begun; the next stage will be the branding of registration numbers upon the back, properly filed, so that no mistake can be made as to the true nationality of the insect. A wall has made China what it is today. The walls all nations have built up since the war for democracy will have the same effect. Expanding markets and making large profits are a religion. It is the oldest religion perhaps, for it has the best trained priests, and it has the most beautiful churches; yes, sir.’

‘I Am Legend’ RICHARD MATHESON’S short horror story ‘I Am Legend’ was another important influence on my thinking. Written in 1954, at the height of the Cold War, it was an allegory about the problem of evil, about one man who found himself in extraordinary circumstances, a world in which the survivors of a plague had been turned into vampires. Robert Neville, the protagonist, was uniquely immune to the disease which made him the ‘outsider’ who had to be destroyed for society to function. Neville’s days were spent killing the undead, one vampire at a time, in order to save humanity for ‘good’ and ‘morality’. His nights were spent trying to protect himself from becoming ‘one of them’. Every night more and more of ‘them’ tried to win him over to their side, to see ‘common sense’ and ‘go with the bloodflow’. It was an unwinnable battle, but for Neville it was a straightforward choice of good against evil. The story raised all sorts of complex philosophical questions in my mind about the nature of evil, ethics, morality and tolerating the intolerable. The ‘vampirism’ of ‘I Am Legend’ was to me an allegory for the mind-numbing sickness of ‘common sense’ which corrupted our morality and asphyxiated the sympathetic consciousness and imagination linking us with the rest of humanity and coerced us into accepting the wrongs and inequities of an unjust world.

Orangeman are not the only fruits… BY NOW I had rejected the idea of God, but instead of guilt, the Catholic burden, I had acquired a very real sense honed by years of Presbyterian sermons, Sunday School New Testament parables and Old Testament retribution, that social justice had to be championed. I was outraged at the absolute power and unpunished crimes of the Roman Catholic Church and its agents. It was this sense of frustration in the face of such seemingly absolute corruption that moved me to join the Blantyre Junior Orange Lodge — much against the wishes of my mother and grandmother. Even so, I still regarded myself as a socialist and couldn’t at that stage see any contradiction between the two positions. I felt I was taking a stand against the Church of Rome rather than being anti-Catholic or pro-Orange and Unionist. My membership of the Orange Lodge was short-lived. After the second meeting it became clear to me just how ludicrous the whole charade was. I was

116

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

sworn in on bended knee in a darkened room with one hand on the Holy Bible (King James version, of course) a massive tome supported by a card table, when the table collapsed and me along with it, in tears, or rather a spasm of uncontrollable laughter at the unreality of the whole scenario. The grim, unsmiling faces of the Orangemen, with their tightly puckered mouths, surrounding me in the initiation circle indicated disapproval of my lack of gravitas and the ill-omened incident made it clear dark forces were at work. I attended one more Lodge meeting after that, but my heart simply wasn’t in it and I stopped going.

The Wilder Side Of Life A SUBSTANTIAL PART of teenage social life in Blantyre revolved around Vince’s chip shop in the Glasgow Road and Mickey’s Café near the Chapel. Vince, a second-generation Lanarkshire Italian, had a juke box around which we spent a good part of our time playing the latest records — Eddie Cochrane’s ‘Three Steps to Heaven’, Del Shannon, Roy Orbison, Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, Johnny Cash, Ian Menzies and the Clyde Valley Stompers. The Glasgow anthem, however, was Hank Locklin’s ‘Wild Side of Life’. For money I carried pails of coal on Saturday mornings for Vince’s fryers. I had to do this at home as well. Tam, being a miner, had a free ton of coal delivered every quarter, courtesy of the National Coal Board (NCB). This was dumped on the pavement outside our gate and I had to shift this to the coal shed in a pail. A milk and paper round also brought in extra pocket money. In the summer we went to ‘the berries’, berrypicking in the fruit growing district around Lanark, hawking our services around the orchards and farms for a shilling a pail of gooseberries. It was painful work, particularly when I discovered I was allergic to gooseberry spines and my hands turned green with pus! My pals in Blantyre were older than me and mostly Catholics except for a few Protestants and came with me Friday nights to the dancing at the ‘Trocadero’ in Hamilton or the Blantyre Co-operative Hall, dressed in our Blantyre-Roman suits, pointy-toed wincklepicker shoes and white Macs with a ‘cairry-oot’ of South African Lanliq or Buckfast fortified wines in the pocket, looking for a ‘lumber’, i.e., to ‘pull’ a girl. Girls out on the town tended to wear either flared, sleeveless dresses with crepe petticoats and a cardigan, or tight, short, pencil skirts with short blazer jackets, hair done up in a heavily lacquered beehive or elfin style, face pale with a dash of mauve, bright red lipstick and plenty of mascara, seamless stockings and high-heeled stiletto shoes — and to carry a handbag Occasionally, on Saturday nights we would get the train to Crossmyloof ice rink in Glasgow. That drew skaters from all over Glasgow and surrounding counties, and gang fights were not uncommon, but usually it was a case of tense hostile neutrality. Once a month or so there would be ‘go as you please’ or ‘open mike’ concerts at the Broadway cinema on Sunday nights, supported by invited bands, usually trad jazz, skiffle or rock ‘n’ roll.

117

Politicisation

A trad jazzband played at the Broadway one Sunday night and, as usual, asked the audience for requests. I walked down the aisle to hand in my request, which was for a trad version of Die Tannenbaum or, in my mind, ‘The Red Flag’. A few minutes later the MC announced to the packed auditorium that they had received a request for ‘Die Tannenbaum’, but as the band didn’t know it they were going to play ‘Marching Through Georgia’ instead. For those unaware of the sectarian nuances of West of Scotland musical culture, this was also the tune of a highly provocative Orange song: ‘Hello!, Hello! We Are the Billy Boys Hello!, Hello! The Bridgeton Billy Boys We’re up tae oor knees in Fenian blood Surrender or ye die Fur we are the Glasgow Billy Boys.’ No sooner had the band played the opening bars than the Protestant part of the theatre joyously erupted, stomping their feet and whooping raucously. At the same time, virtually every Catholic fundamentalist in the house — and there were hundreds of them — got out of their seats and filed round the hall, past my seat, each one of them shaking their fist at me. There was no way out and no way of explaining to the lynch mob outside it was all a terrible misunderstanding. They believed it was a piece of Orange provocation and I was behind it. Big Archie and Jimmy Beaton, my two big Catholic mates who had been sitting with me went to try and pacify the angry mob waiting outside for me. I felt I was an innocent victim and should try and front it out in the vain belief that truth and right would prevail, but as I walked through the vestibule to the street steps about six of them came charging at me, fists flailing, knocking me back inside the cinema. Fusco’s Tony Big Archie and Jimmy finally managed to calm things down and escorted me Curtis look, 1960: home, not badly hurt but aggrieved and more convinced than ever as to the ‘Full in the back nastiness, brutishness — and shortness — of most Catholics.

with a duck’s arse and the high pompadour in front.

MY EXPERIENCE with the Orange Lodge propelled me more quickly along the road to what I understood as socialism. My English teacher pushed me to continue my education at Hamilton Academy, but I chose to leave school as soon as possible, which I did, in June 1961, a month before my fifteenth birthday. These were dizzyingly exciting times and I wanted to be part of them. I was impatient with things as they were and wanted to experience life and earn money. I had worked as a messenger boy for a large dental laboratory delivering dentures while still at Woodside School in Glasgow, and I knew this was a skilled job I would enjoy. It was creative and satisfying, and the technicians were friendly, well-read and interesting people to talk to. I applied for an

118

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

apprenticeship and was indentured — not a pun — to the owner, Mr. Robert Burns Wilson. With a name like that there were no prizes for guessing ‘which foot he kicked with’! In the arcane code of the time, Protestants ‘kicked’ with the right, while Catholics ‘kicked’ with the left. How this identifier emerged I have no idea, though it may have something to do with Satan and all his little demons being associated with the ‘left-hand’ way.

1961: First of the Buckfast Wine AS AN APPRENTICE, I felt I was being exploited as a source of cheap labour. When a messenger boy didn’t turn up I would have to leave whatever I was doing and deliver the dentures. But I was soon in the plaster room learning how to cast impressions and make bite blocks. One of my fellow apprentices was on my wavelength, a bohemian called Dan Smith. Dan read the same books, liked the same music — trad jazz, skiffle, folk music and rock ‘n’ roll— and held frighteningly similar views to my own. Four years older than me and in the final year of his apprenticeship, Dan was a member of the Glasgow Young Socialists. He invited me to a meeting of the Springburn Young Socialists (YS), the youth section of the Labour Party, with his close mate, Bill Kane, an apprentice coachbuilder. On Sunday afternoons, if I was at Aunt Nell’s in Barrington Drive, Dan and Bill would call on me and we would go out for a walk with her dog, a Welsh terrier by the name of Taffy. Bill invariably wore a blue shortie raincoat and was always smartly dressed in an old-fashioned sort of way; Dan, on the other hand, was fairly shabby, while I was a button-down shirt type. We were young versions of Compo, Cleggie and Foggy Dewhurst in Last of the Summer Wine. Wandering through Kelvingrove Park towards Stobcross Street and the Clyde we would talk endlessly about politics, of jobs and apprenticeships and what to do next with one’s life, of sex and books and ideas. We usually ended up on the derelict Finnieston Quays, the now defunct gateway to Empire, kicking stones and cans into the cold mist covered brown water of the Clyde. One chilling sign of Empire on the quayside toilets confirmed our belief that things had to change — they were marked ‘Men’ and ‘Lascars’ (i.e. East Indian sailors). Although I was just fifteen, I passed for eighteen — either that or no one cared — and I was able to go into pubs for the first time. Dan and his friends drank in The ‘92, a spartan spit and sawdust pub in Cambridge Street, just a few doors down from the hairdressing salon where my mother worked and across

119

Hanging out in cafes and chip shops playing Del Shannon on the jukebox was as good as it got. © Popperfoto.

Politicisation

the road from Bob Fletcher’s shirt shop. I had to be careful going in and out in case someone spotted me. It was here I was first introduced to hashish, which we smoked quite openly in the pub. My first wage packet, which was about £2, I opened and spent more than half of it in the pub that first Friday night and came home drunk to Blantyre on the last bus. Gran was waiting for me as I crept into the lobby. She had a cup of tea in her hand and as I crept in and turned on the light she threw it at me, I ducked and the tea went all over the good wallpaper — which made her even madder. In those days it was a major crime to open your own wage packet. You brought it home and she opened it — and gave you an allowance, the amount of which she decided.

120

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Ban The Bomb!

HE BIGGEST ISSUE of the day. and one which did the most to politicise us, in much the same way as the Vietnam War politicised the following generation, was the always present fear of an intentional or accidental nuclear attack on Britain and the unthinkable and unforeseeable consequences for humanity. On 23 November 1957 a small group of activists from the Emergency Committee for Direct Action Against Nuclear War (formed earlier in the year to coordinate direct action protests against the May 1957 nuclear tests on Christmas Island in the Pacific) met with representatives from other antinuclear organisations to plan the first march from Trafalgar Square to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston for the Easter weekend of 1958. The name of the organisation was shortened to the Direct Action Committee (DAC) and Pat Arrowsmith, a social worker and activist in the National Committee for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons became its first organising secretary. Other members consisted of Quakers, Methodists, Lord Russell, Spike Milligan and the anarchist biologist Dr Alex Comfort. It was also the DAC that adopted the now famous black-over-white nuclear disarmament semaphore symbol. In February 1958 the DAC became absorbed into the newly launched anti-nuclear pressure group known as Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The CND, which — much to the concern of the Security Service (MI5 F Branch) and Scotland Yard’s Special Branch — quickly became a mass movement of popular protest embracing a broad front of progressive individuals, old pacifists, new anti-militarists, conscientious religious sorts, trade unions and groups such as the Peace Pledge Union and the War Resisters International. In effect, however, CND was a political lobby run by a small elite group of activists, mainly associated with the Fabians, the Labour Party and the Independent Labour Party. The Communist Party only came in later; they had no official presence on the first Aldermaston march and possibly not on the second or third, either, although no doubt many individual party members did take part in the early years. When the CP did appear openly in 1961, their focus was on recruiting members and protesting against the West’s nuclear arsenal, ignoring the Soviets’ which was, in their eyes, the ‘Workers’ Bomb’. Most rank and file CND members were solid, middle-class citizens, political moderates who believed

121

First Aldermaston march, 7 April 1958: Over 3,000 people took part in the first London to Aldermaston march to demonstrate outside the gates of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.

Ban The Bomb!

The Direct Action Committee (DAC), the forerunner of the Committee of 100, launched a campaign of non violent civil disobedience and direct action. Bertrand Russell is the elderly gentleman seated cross-legged.

totally in constitutional action, peaceful demonstrations and parliamentary pressure, and who simply wanted to get rid of the ‘Bomb’. Many, like Canon Collins, the effective leader of CND, sought to influence government and were convinced that the establishment would yield to a sufficient amount of constitutional persuasion and that if enough pressure could be applied the government would give way and ban the bomb. In practice, this meant that CND concentrated on mustering popular support by orthodox methods — marches, meetings and trying to win the Labour Party and the elite over to a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. Increasingly, however, the younger people like me who were being drawn into the movement didn’t believe in winning over the top people. To us, influencing people was preferable to influencing governments and the ‘Bomb’ itself was symptomatic of a corrupt and lifeendangering system. We felt obliged to protest, as had many of our elders, out of a sense of moral outrage at US planes carrying H-bombs patrolling over Britain, US missiles being based in the UK, increasing reliance on nuclear weapons as well as worries about the effects of nuclear testing. Tired of CND’s lobbying role and waiting for the political parties to take an initiative on the question of the atomic bomb, more committed campaigners from the DAC and rank and file CND members came together in October 22 1960 to form the Committee of 100, an ad hoc body set up to organise a series of mass, non-violent demonstrations against nuclear and biological weapons. Initially, the Direct Action Committee (DAC) became the pacemaker of the Committee, with nearly all the members and most of the sponsors of the DAC belonging to the Committee (its working group was onethird DAC people), but there was also steady influx from the old revolutionary left and from the new wave of libertarian socialists and anti-militarists. While the appeal for members originally went out over the names of Bertrand Russell and the Rev. Michael Scott, two of the better-known figures in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the totally non-violent Direct Action Committee, Michael Randle and an American student called Ralph Schoenman did most of the actual legwork. The new organisation was a coalition of those elements in CND and the DAC who were dissatisfied with the low level of success they were having and who felt the best way forward would be a combination of both organisations’ methods. The new tactics they employed ranged from Ghandian non-violent civil disobedience to direct action through unconventional actions and people pressure.

122

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Many of the activists were much influenced by Bart de Ligt, the Dutch anarchist and war resister and his book The Conquest of Violence, a call to destroy the war machine, but leave the people who ran it. In Scotland, the peace movement sprang into life with the arrival of the US Polaris-bearing submarines in the Holy Loch in the Firth of Clyde. The unilateral decision by the Macmillan government to locate the US Polaris fleet in the Holy Loch, a small inlet in the Clyde estuary near Dunoon, had a major politicising and radicalising effect throughout Scotland. It meant the Clyde was now Ground Zero, a first-strike target in the event of what appeared at the time to be a highly likely Soviet nuclear attack. Large numbers of politicised apprentices and young people in Scotland were soon drawn to the nuclear disarmament movement by this action. The tactics of direct action and civil disobedience also introduced us to a new style of radical, initiative-seizing, extra-parliamentary politics. The belief, popular at the time among some sociologists, playwrights and screenwriters, that our generation had no causes left to fight for, or that we were simply bored with the affluent society, was rubbish. We saw ourselves as new reinforcements in a long tradition of struggle. The campaign against the bomb offered us fresh leverage and modern tactics in a struggle which for so long had been bogged down by the reformist Labour Party, the counter-revolutionary Communist Party, and the opportunistic party-building antics of the Trotskyists.

‘The Glesca Eskimos’ Or Messing About On The River… RAPIDLY ESCALATING East-West tension throughout 1961 swelled the number of worried people who took part in the direct action protests against Polaris nuclear missiles being located on the Clyde. The demonstrations were impressively good-humoured with thousands of would-be beatniks, tweedy and kilted ladies and gents, ‘neds’ and ordinary folk descending boisterously from the gangways of Clyde steamers such as the SS Waverley onto Dunoon pier, and lining up for the march to the Holy Loch accompanied by a phalanx of ‘lone’ amateur pipers and strolling guitarists. Our arrival in Sandbank village on the western side of the Holy Loch must have been an epic scene. After much pushing, shoving and shouting we finally sat down and blocked the entrance to Ardnadam pier, thus arousing the apoplectic rage of Chief Inspector Runcie of the Clydebank ‘polis’.

123

The Glesca Eskimos, Ardnadam pier: the unilateral decision by the Macmillan government to locate the US Polaris fleet in the Holy Loch had a major politicising and radicalising effect throughout Scotland

Ban The Bomb!

While the demonstrators were toing and froing with the ‘polis o’ Argyll’ at Sandbank pier, Terry Chandler and the latter-day Cockleshell Heroes of the London Committee of 100 surreptitiously slipped out to sea in the homemade canoes they had brought up from London to try to land on the Polaris-carrying submarines based in the loch. It was one of the last great naval battles in British waters until the cod war with Iceland, but unfortunately they met their match with Captain Lanin of the USS Proteus, the mother ship, who turned the hoses on them and rammed them with naval speedboats. A later attempt in March 1961 proved more successful and the spectacle of the U.S. submarine Patrick Henry in the Holy Loch being boarded by three antiPolaris demonstrators with home-made canoes was something which really captured our imaginations. One of the protestors, London Committee of 100 member Mike Nolan, managed to climb up on * The Glasgow Eskimos top of the submarine’s seven-foot high after-fin ‘It’s up the Clyde comes Lanin—a super duper Yank, and stayed there, cold and wet, for almost an But doon a damn sight quicker when we coup him doon the stank, hour. Up tae the neck in sludge and sewage fairly stops yuir swank. The US naval commander, Captain Lanin, We are the Glesca Eskimos. saw them coming in their canoes and derided Chorus: Hullo! Hullo! We are the Eskimos. them as ‘only a bunch of Eskimos’ That name Hullo! Hullo! The Glesca Eskimos was immediately adopted by the demonstrators We’ll gaff that nyaff ca’d Lanin, as a badge of honour and passed into legend We’ll spear him whaur he blows. with the song, The Glesca Eskimos* written by We are the Glesca Eskimos. Morris Blythman, again to the tune of Marching It’s in an’ oot, an’ up an’ doon, an’ on an’ aff the piers, Through Georgia or the Glasgow Billy Boys. There’s councillors, collaborators, pimps and profiteers— Glasgow teacher and folksong writer Morris The hairies jouk the polis, and the polis jouk the queers, Blythman described the first major demo, at the We are the Glesca Eskimos. Holy Loch on May 20th 1961: There’s dredgers an’ there’s sludgie-boats tae keep the river clean, ‘By train and by bus, in rattle-trap lorries, by hitch Ye lift yuir haun' and pu’ the chain—Ye ken fine whit ah mean, of thumb, the motley anti-Polaris crew made for But why in the hell has the Holy Loch been left outside the scheme Dunoon and the Holy Loch at every available We are the Glesca Eskimos. opportunity. Also at every opportunity, the hard core was singing their protest on station platforms, on We’ve been in mony a rammy, lads, we’ve been in mony a tear, quaysides, on the march, from improvised platforms We’ve sortit oot this kind afore, we’ll sort them onywhere, to hastily assembled loudspeaker systems, from O, get yuir harpoons ready—he’s comin’ up for air floating craft of all shapes and sizes, they sang them We are the Glesca Eskimos.’ Morris Blythman sittin’ doon, stannin’ up, they sang them for the police, they sang them at the police, but most of all they sang them at the very baffled Americans.’ This was probably the biggest and most militant of all the demonstrations held in Scotland and, on reflection, probably the swan song of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War. It certainly had the authorities worried. Morris Blythman, better known by his pen-name ‘Thurso Berwick’, a teacher and radical songwriter, immortalised the protests in his Ding Dong Dollar songbook and eventually on the Folkways LP Ding Dong Dollar, which was

124

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

recorded in Josh’s Macrae’s basement at 105 Balgrayhill Road in Springburn. Morris was one of the key motivational figures in the politically influential folk song revival movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, and his republican, antimonarchist and anti-bomb songs were essential leitmotifs of the time. He did not view song writing as specialised or elitist. He believed folk songs could be written by anyone and that everyone had at least one good song in them. Morris’s own songs, many of which were often rewritten collectively in folk ‘workshops’, provided a cheery musical glue which bound us together, underlining our common purpose, and reinforced the air of high optimism of the time: his witty, poetic, catchy reportage provided us with distilled insights into the politics of the time and opened up the adrenaline and feel-good valves needed to challenge the might of the US Navy and the London government, not to mention the Glesca ‘polis’! Folk singers and song writers played a big part on those Dunooon marches: Josh Macrae, Bobby Campbell, Gordon McCulloch, Hamish Imlach, Nigel Denver, Jim McLean, Jackie O’Connor, Matt McGinn as well as Morris and Marion Blythman, were among the better-known names of the time. Josh Macrae was the best-known Glasgow folk singer of the day. Tall, droll and handsome — a latter-day Rabbie Burns. He had had some hit records and had real national star potential, but he was satisfied and happy with life teaching art at Adelphi Street School and had no desire to move to London. Also, while singing the blues may have had resonance in Chicago, St Louis and Kansas City, hard times in Glasgow or London for old, blind, crippled, dissatisfied, toothless, unlucky murderers at the end of their tragic lives was probably just clinical depression. Josh’s light-heartedly ironic Talking Army Blues did manage to reach number six in the 1959 Hit Parade, but his most famous record was the most decidedly un-blues-like Messing About on the River, written by Tony Hatch. Josh lived one house down from the Blythmans in Springburn. Josh was an important sociometric star in the Glaswegian politico-musical firmament; he knew everybody or, rather, everybody knew him, including my mate Dan Smith, which is how I came to be introduced into the periphery of that circle. We had some good parties in Josh’s basement — singing, smoking the occasional reefer and generally having a good time being young. It was Josh who was responsible for the popularity of Bob Dylan’s recently released Freewheeling album in Glasgow. Josh was also a great admirer of the songs of Josh White, the American blues artist, and had been singing with a group called ‘The Reivers’ before setting up the ad hoc singing group which came to be

125

Matt McGinn (left) and Josh Macrae (right): two of the most popular Glasgow folk singers of the early 1960s.

Ban The Bomb!

Sit down: of a total of more than 15,000 demonstrators, around 800 people were arrested during a sit-down demonstration at an anti-nuclear rally in London on 18 September, 1961. This was seen as the birth of the Committee of 100.

known as .The Glesca Eskimos’. The ‘Eskimos’ was never a commercial group: its sole raison d’ être was to promote Scottish republicanism and getting the US Polaris base out of the Clyde — singing the songs of Morris Blythman and Jim MacLean. A weekend of major demonstrations was organised by the Committee of 100 in mid-September 1961. The first part of the action was at the Holy Loch nuclear submarine base on Saturday 16 September while the second was to be held the following day in London. Immediately prior to this thirty-two of the leading C100 members, including Bertrand Russell and his wife Edith, had been arrested and preemptively jailed for a month. The demonstration was banned under the Public Order Act (introduced in the 1930s to combat fascism). In spite of this draconian action by the state, some 12,000 people took part in the demo, of whom 1,314 were arrested with ITV providing live coverage. The previous day, despite appalling weather at the Clyde US naval base, five hundred took part, of whom 350 were arrested. The emphasis began to shift away from the city centres to the bases themselves, which the Committee of 100 set itself the goal of immobilising. By the beginning of 1962 the centralised structure of the Committee of 100 began to be replaced by more libertarian ad hoc regional Committees, which took over the organisation of local actions. A sit-down demo in Parliament Square on 24 March 1962 was the last major demonstration to be held by the Committee in London. In fact, all of the most important Committee of 100 demos during this period were organised outside London. These committees were very loosely co-ordinated in London by a federal National Committee of 100 based in an office above the Peace News printer, Goodwin Press, in Fonthill Road, near Finsbury Park tube station. The question of violence, non-violence and direct action in general had been proving divisive within the London Committee. Another reason for this shift to a more informal structure was the recourse by the State to the more drastic conspiracy laws against the civil disobedience and direct action practised by the protesters who were challenging the government’s nuclear and foreign policy. On 20 February 1962, six members of the Committee of 100 — Pat Pottle, Michael Randle, Terry Chandler — the youngest, at 21 — Ian Dixon, Trevor Hatton (the Committee of 100 Treasurer) and Helen Allegranza — were tried at the Old Bailey (by Mr Justice Havers, father of the actor, Nigel Havers), on two counts of conspiracy under Section One of the Official Secrets Act. They had been arrested for their part in organising the demonstration at the Wethersfield RAF base in Sussex on 6 December 1961 and had been charged with conspiracy under Section 1 of the 1911 Official Secrets Act. (Other airfields targeted during the National Disobedience Day demos were RAF

126

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Rusilip and RAF Brize Norton.) This contained the ‘catch-all’ clause: ‘any purpose prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state’. It was the first time Section 1 had been used in a case not involving foreign spies and it was important inasmuch as for the first time it threw the onus on the defence to prove their innocence. Pat Pottle, who had been defending himself, asked Air Commodore Magill, a prosecution witness, if he would press the button knowing it was going to annihilate millions of people. The Air Commodore replied that he would. Another giveaway line came from the judge, Justice Havers. who, when asked who is the State, replied, sarcastically — or revealingly — ‘We are’! The lengths of the sentences were a measure of the seriousness with which the authorities viewed the new movement. Michael, Trevor and Ian received 18 months, Helen 12 months, Terry Chandler and Pat also received 18 months. Ironically, during their time inside, two of the six, Pat Pottle and Michael Randle met and befriended the imprisoned Soviet spy George Blake and later helped organise his eventual escape from prison on 22 October 1966.

We All Know Where Kennedy Was That Night In the Red Lion I WAS THE youngest of the group who drank in the ‘92’ bar, the others were late teens or early 20s, art students, trainee architects, and teachers — all very sophisticated and well-read. We frequented the art cinema, the Cosmo, in nearby Rose Street where they screened continental films such as Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries or Luis Buñuel’s 1961 anti-religious and anti-authoritarian satirical masterpiece Viridiana. From the ‘92 pub we moved to the Red Lion in Renfield Street, and in fact we were there when the news came through that Kennedy’s brains had gone ker-plat! The newly opened Bohemian coffee bar in Sauchiehall Street, just down from the Glasgow School of Art, was another regular haunt. I used to spend some time in the Art School with Hugh McGorgary, a friend from Blantyre who was studying there at the time. My Uncle Bill, an oldfashioned Freemason, saw me coming out of the Bohemian coffee bar one Sunday (where I’d gone to read the newly launched Sunday Times glossy colour supplement with its wonderful photographs) and was given a major telling off. As far as Uncle Bill was concerned, this particular coffee bar was Hell’s waiting room. Apart from drink and hash my circle of friends introduced me to the beat writers and poets: Alex Trocchi, a heroin addict and, with Ralph Rumney, one of the first Situationists in the UK, and Allan Ginsberg. The latter two taught me to appreciate John Betjeman and John Masefield, but writers like Jack Kerouac, JD Salinger and the evocative titles published by Olympia Press, with their classically pleasing plain olive-coloured book jackets were something else.

127

We were in the Red Lion, not on the Grassy Knoll.

Ban The Bomb!

Almost, imperceptibly my carefully coiffeured hair grew longer and curlier and my mohair suits and hand-made shirts made way for black denims, polo necks and Donkey jackets or white shortie Mac raincoats. I had turned into a beatnik. Like Dean Moriarty, Kerouac’s joyrider in On the Road, ‘We were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York’.

Square-dealing Men APART FROM THE coffee bar, Uncle Bill, my Aunt Eileen’s husband, had me marked down as a lost soul, ever since I introduced into our discussions on the subject of Freemasonry, not only the passwords to the three degrees of Freemasonry, but also those of the side-degrees — Royal Arch, Mark Masonry and the Thirty-Third Degree, known only, he believed, to the initiated. This arcane knowledge had been acquired as a result of the Reynolds News’s coverage of an exposé on Scottish Rite Freemasonry in a 1952 book, Darkness Visible, by The Rev. Walton Hannah. I had been drawn to the subject, initially, because of the membership of Robert Burns and other 18th century radicals and the belief that it had idealistic and even revolutionary aims, such as the brotherhood of man. Freemasonry had had a radical history on the Continent with Grand Orient Freemasonry (something quite distinct, politically and socially, from Freemasonry as practised in Britain) going back to the days of the French Encyclopaedists. In fact, a number of French and Spanish anarchists in the 1950s and 1960s were Grand Orient Freemasons, including Joaquín Delgado, one of the two young anarchists garotted in July 1963. What I had problems with, however, was squaring how these radical free spirits had anything in common with the tight-arsed, booted, suited and hatted respectable pillars of nice Scottish society. Grand Orient Freemasonry — as opposed to British or Scottish Rite Freemasonry — was probably the key organisation involved in the French Revolution of 1789. Its role was that of the spearhead of the lay intelligentsia. It became the most powerful body of middle class resistance against the power of the monarchy and the Church between 1789 and 1848, and contributed to universal suffrage and separation of Church and State. It was this role and the involvement of rationalists and radicals I admired which confused me. It took me a little while to figure out that these connections had nothing to do with freedom and justice, but did have to do with the rise to power of the middle classes in their struggle against feudalism.

128

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

‘Trots’ And The Labour Party

HE EXCITING, stimulating big ideas and possibilities I was introduced to at my first meeting of Springburn YS was to transform my world. The economy was slowing down, prices were rising, there was increasing industrial unrest and the old political order was collapsing, apparently unable to cope with the new dangerous and unsettling domestic and international problems now erupting across the globe with dizzying rapidity as evoked in W.B. Yeats The Second Coming.* In Springburn YS I found people with whom I felt I could empathise, share ideas and who could help me interpret the meaning of what was happening in the world. Stimulated by the camaraderie and banter and by the possibility of helping to change the world by eliminating infamy and injustice, I signed up for the Labour Party or, rather, the Springburn Young Socialists, *The Second Coming the youth section of the Springburn Constituency Labour ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre Party. The falcon cannot hear the falconer; The evenings I went to the meetings I spent the night Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; at my aunt Eileen and uncle Bill’s house in Keppochhill Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, Road, close to the Springburn Labour Party hall, a short The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere tramcar ride from St George’s Cross, near where I The ceremony of innocence is drowned; worked in West Princess Street. The best lack all conviction, while the worst The bloody suppression of the naval mutineers at Are full of passionate intensity. Kronstadt in 1921, the Spanish Civil War and the Stalinist trials in the 1930s, the repression in East Germany and Surely some revelation is at hand; the brutal putdown of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 Surely the Second Coming is at hand. had seriously discredited the Communist Party as a The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi" working class political instrument. The Labour Party appeared to be the only realistic Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert vehicle to implement the ideas of socialism. What had A shape with lion body and the head of a man won me and most of the other six million or so members A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, over to the Labour Party was, quite simply, Clause IV of Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. its Constitution: — ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits The darkness drops again; but now I know of their Industry and the most equitable distribution That twenty centuries of stony sleep thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, ownership of the means of production, distribution and And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’ W. B. Yeats administration and control of each industry or service. ‘ This proved to be a calculated piece of inspiring but meaningless rhetoric. The only remaining glowing ember in the Labour Party grate, proved to be a red milk bottle top — a trompe d’oeil to lure and entrap idealistic youth into the mire of electoral canvassing, party-building, officegrabbing and contending power agendas. The Parliamentary Labour Party under the leadership of right-wing controlfreak Hugh Gaitskell had even refused to press for a debate on the highly

129

‘Trots’ And The Labour Party

contentious issue of locating US Polaris bases in Scotland. I quickly learned that the politics of the Springburn Labour Party — which had controlled the seat since 1935 — had nothing to do with socialism, as I understood it. Like all the other Constituency Labour Parties, Springburn was a minor fiefdom fought over by a confusing hodgepodge of social democratic, Trotskyist, Catholic, masonic and orange factions, some proscribed, some ignored and others encouraged, each cajoling, bribing, intriguing or contending for control of obscure local and national executive committees — and few prepared to recognise the integrity, intelligence, honesty or value of those who did not share their agenda. There were, of course, Labour Party members, and even one or two notably well-intentioned MPs who did what they could to retain their integrity, but it was an unwinnable battle in the face of so many quid pro quos, compromises, double standards and plain downright dishonesty. As far as I could see, there were various different types of socialists: the would-be bourgeois or malicious exploiter of socialism on the make for power and privilege; the well-intentioned social democratic/liberal or rank-and-file party member with a genuine passion for justice, tempered by a depressing willingness to compromise; the doctrinaire state socialist, the metaphysicians who uphold the priority of science over life and who champion the idea of abstract theory over common humanity and the workers’ party acquiring state power as the only possible salvation of society. Then there was the libertarian or anarchist socialist, the proponent of selfmanagement and mutual aid and the enemy of bureaucracy, party and state power. The Trotskyists (who away from their own sectarian gatherings called themselves ‘Marxists’, rather as Jehovah’s witnesses on the doorstep call themselves ‘Bible students’) were ‘revolutionary state socialist’ who were strong on what they termed ‘entryism’. This was of two types. ‘Deep entryism’ into the Labour Party was so fully camouflaged that in the end it was impossible to distinguish the undercover agent from any social democrat, and he could well end up as a Cabinet Minister and/or in the House of Lords, having forgotten what he was there for. ‘Entryism’ plain and simple, on the other hand, was merely sending members in to get the others out. Meanwhile, the real string-pullers of the Labour Party, the extremists of the centre — the Freemasons, Orangemen and the organised Catholic cliques — manoeuvred and manipulated from the wings.

The Cliff-hangers-on A PERSONABLE BUT intimidating looking ex-seaman, Bob Gillespie nicknamed endearingly ‘Geggie’, chaired Springburn Young Socialist branch, which was ‘state-cap’.

130

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

This did not mean, confusingly, that they supported state-capitalism, but that they believed this was the state of affairs which existed in the Soviet Union and its satellites, the socialism of 1917 having been entirely extinguished. Springburn YS had come into the ‘sphere of influence’ of the Trotskyistderived ‘International Socialism Group’ (later to become the ‘Socialist Workers’ Party’, SWP), otherwise known as the ‘Cliffites’ or ‘Cliff Trots’, named after Tony Cliff (or Ygail Gluckstein). The IS group was probably the most dominant among all the factions manoeuvring for control of Glasgow’s 15 or 16 constituency parties. Apart from Cliff, other key IS theorists of the time were Michael Kidron, Cliff’s brother-inlaw and editor of the theoretical journal, International Socialism (originally Socialist Review); Alasdair MacIntyre, now an ex-Marxist, I believe, but at the time a philosophy teacher at Leeds University; and the doyen of old-time Glasgow radicals, Harry McShane. Paul Foot, then working on the Glasgow Daily Record, also became an enthusiastic convert to IS. The essence of the IS position, as far as I could make out, was that capitalism was stabilising itself and that by the 1970s, when Russia reached the point of military strength equal to that of the West, it could lead to a nuclear war which could only be averted by workers’ control of the state and industry. What enthused me was the idea of workers’ control as a means of enhancing the human condition; it didn’t take too long for it to sink in that they meant workers’ control under the leadership of the IS hierarchy. That I mimicked the jargon of ‘scientific socialism’ and Marxism and took it seriously still shames me; it was like Peter Pan asking the audience to clap their hands if they believed in fairies. These people understood only too well that Communist Russia had been a dictatorship ever since it had become a oneparty state, but they were prepared to make every Jesuitical excuse in the book for it. South of the Clyde, it was mainly the ‘Pabloite’ tendency and Gerry Healy’s Socialist Labour League (SLL) which competed for the political allegiance of the young, raw, energetic, eager and idealistic YS members — and for the leadership of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International, the Holy Grail of world Trotskyism. The ‘Pabloites’ took their name from Michael Pablo, whose real name was Michel Raptis, leader of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International and a minor functionary in the Algerian government of Ben Bella. The SLL, founded by the veteran Trot Healy as General Secretary in 1959, with Brian Behan, the charismatic building workers’ leader and ex-member of the executive committee of the CPGB, in the belief that the revolution was imminent, was an organisation of Marxists seeking to control or at least dominate the Labour Party and the trade union movement from within. Healy’s close associates in the SLL leadership included two rich Ceylonese brothers Mike and Tony Banda and Cliff Slaughter, another lecturer at Leeds University.

131

‘Trots’ And The Labour Party

The SLL could be described as a cult organisation divided between an elite leadership clique — with Healy as undisputed supremo — and members obliged to spend all their spare time on group activities. He would brook no discussion or criticism and allow no involvement in the policy making or organisation of the movement. Anyone who challenged him would be visited and taught the need for discipline by poker-wielding thugs. Gerry Healy’s SLL, having captured a sufficiently large chunk of the Young Socialists, students from the new red-brick universities, and, most importantly a large section of the acting profession, later established its own openly Trotskyist party, the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). Ken Weller of the post-Marxist ‘Solidarity’ group later told me that, at its peak, the actors’ branch of the WRP had 200 members. Many who joined were no more interested in understanding these subtle differences than the average Sunday School pupil was in understanding the difference between the ‘Wee Frees’ and the Episcopalians and why some pulled the communion table away from the wall and others pushed it back and called it an altar. Nevertheless they accepted the views of the denomination in which they had formed friendships. Many a young Trotskyist Jenny Geddes (the Edinburgh Presbyterian who threw her stool at the Dean of St Giles Cathedral when he attempted to read the Stuart-imposed liturgy, the device of English prelacy for the reform of Scottish Presbyterianism) would have been prepared to throw her stool at some speaker who threatened to speak adventuristic deviation or anything other than properly interpreted Marxism. Militancy was confused with the extent to which the contending groups were able to build up their own membership at the expense of their competitors. This might be ‘scientific socialism’ or it might not, but to me it became more and more apparent that socialism as I understood the term had nothing to do with parties or acquiring state power; it had to do with people, ethics, society and, most importantly, freedom! George Orwell identified the same characters in the 1930s in The Road to Wigan Pier: ‘One of the analogies between Communists and Roman Catholicism is that only the “educated” are completely orthodox. The most immediately striking thing about the English Roman Catholics – I don’t mean the real Roman Catholics, I mean the converts…et hoc genus — is their intense self-consciousness. Apparently they never think, certainly they never write, about anything but the fact that they are Roman Catholics; this single fact and the self-praise resulting from it form the entire stock in trade of the Catholic literary man. But the really interesting thing about these people is the way they have worked out the supposed implications of orthodoxy until the tiniest details of life are involved… what I am interested in here is the attitude of mind that can make even food and drink an occasion for religious intolerance. It is only the educated man, the literary man, who knows how to be a bigot. And, mutatis mutandis, it is the same with Communism. The creed is never

132

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

found in its pure form in a genuine proletarian. ‘It may be said, however, that even if the theoretical book-trained Socialist is not a working man himself, at least he is activated by a love of the working class. He is endeavouring to shed his bourgeois status and fight on the side of the proletariat — that, obviously, must be his motive. ‘But is it? Sometimes I look at a Socialist, the intellectual, tract writing type of socialist, with his pullover, his fuzzy hair and his Marxian quotation – and wonder what his motive really is. It is often difficult to believe that it is a love of anybody, especially of the working class from who he is the furthest removed. The underlying motive of many socialists, I believe, is simply a hypertrophied sense of order. The present state of affairs offends them not because it causes misery, still less because it makes freedom impossible, but because it is untidy; what they desire, basically, is to reduce the world to something resembling a chess board.’ I FELT, increasingly, that nothing that would satisfy our need for radical change could be done within the framework of either parties or the parliamentary system. And what was the point of fighting to destroy one dictatorship in order to replace it with another — Stalinist, Trotskyist, Marxist-Leninist or whatever? What did catch my imagination, however, were the shit-stirring, disruptive, action-oriented libertarian socialist or ‘anarcho-Marxist’ ideas of the Solidarity Group. Founded in 1960, ‘Solidarity’ or the ‘Socialism Re-affirmed’ group was made up of disenchanted veterans of the SLL and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB): Dr Chris Pallis, also known as ‘Martin Grainger’, a neurologist; Bob Potter, an Australian ex-Socialist Labour League (SLL), ex Young Communist League (YCL) and engineering union member Ken Weller, and Andy Anderson, who worked in the telecoms side of the Post Office. Although avowedly Marxist, they were anti-bureaucratic in structure, libertarian in outlook and close to the anarcho-syndicalist concept of workers’ control. Jim Fyffe was their man in the Springburn YS branch, and through him I began to read and promote their mimeographed publication, Solidarity and their action-oriented pamphlets. While the other factions were deeply involved in party building and internecine warfare for the hearts and minds of the Labour Party, Solidarity was out actually doing things such as in housing as well as publishing shocking, readable, exposés of conditions within industry and trying to build up a revolutionary consciousness which wasn’t Labour Party oriented. The Labour Party in Scotland was (and no doubt still is) notoriously corrupt and venal. They said you could tell when a Glasgow councillor wasn’t telling the truth: you could see his lips move. Another favourite was ‘How many Glasgow Councillors does it take to change a lightbulb? Twenty-one. One to actually change the bulb, but only after a party of twenty has been to Florida to

133

‘Trots’ And The Labour Party

investigate best practices currently in favour in US local government. Increasingly it seemed to me that party politicians and apparatchiks, always had an answer for everything, but the solution to nothing. It wasn’t that politicians were necessarily inveterate liars; simply that lying, dissimulation, temporising, opportunism and economy with the truth were inevitable consequences of the system. Glasgow’s City Chambers and the Houses of Parliament were places where backs were to be stabbed and principles betrayed, every day and in every way. My ambivalent attitude towards the Labour Party, the Trade Unions and the International Socialists finally collapsed during the selection process for the local Executive Committee — a collision of the power elites jostling for political advantage. To me these internal elections provided exemplary proof that there were certain types of people who took an almost epicurean pleasure in the exercise of power and that parliamentary and local politics were intrinsically clandestine and conspiratorial. Not that there was an illuminist cabal manipulating events to suit its ends; it was the formalised practice of an entire social stratum from the Springburn Local Labour Party to the eclectic Bilderburg Group of global politicians and businessmen. ‘Conspiracy’, to quote US historian Carl Ogelsby, ‘is the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means.’ The more left wing (whatever that means in the Labour Party) of the two contending candidates was Protestant. To ensure his election the well-oiled proOrange Labour Party faction gave us a list of Protestants on the selection committee and told to go round knocking on their doors to ensure they turned out to prevent the ‘papists’ getting in. To emphasise the point we were each given a Rangers scarf to wear. On the other side there was ‘Catholic Action’ (CA), which had the active support of the majority of Catholic members of the Labour Party. The Labour Party in Glasgow was, in fact, the party of the immigrant Irish Catholics and had been since the collapse of the Liberal Party prior to the First World War. Labour, after all, seemed to promise this particularly underprivileged community the best chance of social justice and self-betterment; it also offered them greater integration into the wider political, social and economic community. Catholic Action’s aim was to nominate Catholics for positions of power within the local Labour Party — but never under the CA label — in order to secure Catholic interests on every available political body. An activist group within CA was the Knights of Saint Columba (KSC), a secret society with aims diametrically opposed to those of the Orange Order. At the time there was an inner core of militants who influenced KSC activities, the ‘Sodality Cells’, more properly known as the National Federation of Sodalities of Our Lady (Prima Primaria), a lay organisation whose purposes were ‘to promote the spiritual life, apostolic work and the defence of the Church’. It was, actually, under the control of the Jesuits.

134

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

The history of the Scottish churches’ opposition to artificial methods of contraception provides one telling insight into the power the clergy and sectarian laity wielded over the political processes of Labour in Glasgow and the west of Scotland. Within the Scottish labour movement, which depended to a large extent on the Catholic community for members and votes, there was widespread priest-led resistance to the dissemination of information on birth control. But this hostility to birth control was not exclusively Roman Catholic. In 1918 the Church of Scotland had also called for the ‘rigorous repression’ of the sale of anti-contraception devices. Astonishingly, however, the Roman Catholics, for their part, had managed to obtain a commitment from the ostensibly more radical Independent Labour Party (ILP) to oppose birth control altogether. Even the great working-class hero Jimmy Maxton MP had ignored medical advice and come out against contraception being generally available. In 1927 a majority of Labour councillors had voted against the magazine Birth Control News being made available in Glasgow City’s libraries! I had not moved from the Orange Lodge to revolutionary socialism to play these sectarian games. To me socialism was not about supporting the Labour Party in the political use of religion, pandering to sectarian prejudices, manipulating members and voters or organising whist drives. Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution was obviously a fantasy, a non-starter. I wanted out. I was an eager socialist who believed passionately in the freedom of the individual. I loathed the parliamentary game and the capitalist system, but I was not prepared to accept the leadership of either the Marxist intellectual or the dictatorship of any party. I agreed with the Solidarity Group in many ways, but I wanted decisive action — not just to understand and occasionally disrupt the capitalist system, but to fight against it through a commitment to social revolution through direct action. This is how I began to move directly towards anarchism.

The Day Gaitskell ’Lost the Heid’’ — Sunday 6 May 1962 THE SCOURGING OF the YS as a laboratory of radical ideas coincided with the halcyon days of the Committee of 100. For me the old political order imploded in the wake of the 1962 May Day demonstration in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park. This event, on Sunday 6 May 1962, marked for me and a number of my contemporaries, the end of any residual deference or reverence for MPs and the Labour Party. The theme of the Glasgow march was ‘No To Polaris’, and the Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell, a supporter of the US bases on the Clyde, came to address the Glasgow labour movement on this platform. It was provocation by the National Executive of the Labour Party on a huge scale.

135

‘You’re all peanuts!: outraged Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell shouted at anti-nuclear demonstrators at Queen’s Park, Glasgow, Sunday 6 May 1962, He told us to go ‘back to Moscow and demonstrate in front of Russian tanks’. I am standing directly behind the woman circled in the Daily Record photograph.

‘Trots’ And The Labour Party

This was the man who for the past three years had been making vitriolic attacks on CND, ‘pacifists’, unilateralists and ‘fellow travellers’, coming to nuclear ground zero in the heartland of ‘Red Clydeside’ to lecture them on the ‘benefits’ of the US nuclear bases. Gaitskell might have been clever, but he was not astute and certainly lacked political judgement right to the end. Folk singer Gordon McCulloch — who together with Bobby Campbell and Hamish Imlach, formed the short-lived but popular Emmettones folk group — unwittingly set in train the hostile banter which triggered the whole shindig. Josh Macrae had been at the ‘wee goldies’ all morning and was well out of it by the time he came on to the stage to entertain us with anti-Polaris songs. After Josh had done his bit, Gaitskell was escorted onto the stage by some Labour Party dignitary who announced how proud he was to present to us the leader of the Labour Party. Gordon, who was sitting directly behind me, with * Peanuts Bobby, shouted, ‘Confront, you mean!’ The roar of ‘Ye a’ ken how Gaitskell got shelled at Queen's Park approval to Gordon’s interjection and hooting catcalls Roasted and salted as well shook Gaitskell: he paused for effect, surveyed the He cried the folk peanuts but a'body kens crowd of hostile Glaswegians, and then leaned forward The only nut there was himsel to deliver his memorable punch line. ‘You’re nothing. For he said that Polaris should stay in the loch You’re just peanuts!’ he shouted hysterically at a crowd An Scotland should bow tae the yanks, of thousands. This judgement became immortalised in An' back Adenauer and the hail NATO shower, one of Morris Blythman’s many songs, called Boomerang, Wi' sodgers, bazookas and tanks.’ and sung to the tune of Bless ’em all. The Long and the Morris Blythman Short and the Tall. * Gaitskell went berserk. He ranted and raved that we were all secret members of the Communist Party, tools of Russia, and that we should go back to Moscow and demonstrate under the Russian tanks. A Hamden-like roar of derision greeted his words and the jeers went on and on, rolling up the green slopes of Queen’s Park. Pandemonium broke loose as hundreds, including myself and friends, feeling that this was the right moment to make our protest felt, rushed to pull him off the platform. God knows what would have happened if we’d managed to get to Gaitskell, but the police and stewards had an inkling that something was in the wind. While milling around below the stage shouting abuse at the leader, suddenly my arms were pinioned behind my back and a large Highland ‘polisman’ unceremoniously ejected me in a headlock. Unfortunately, an identifiable picture of me made the centre spread of the Daily Record the next day and I was hauled over the coals by my boss, Mr Wilson. ‘His’ apprentices, he informed me in his most baronial manner when I was called into his office the next day, were not to get involved in politics or it would endanger the articles of indenture I had signed. He was marking my cards, effectively, that any more trouble and I would be out. The press coverage that followed described the incident as a Communist plot and the Labour Party immediately called for an inquiry into the incident, and sent Mrs. Bessie Braddock up from Liverpool to conduct the preliminary investigation. Mrs.

136

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Braddock had been an MP for some eighteen years, and having been a member of the Communist Party in her youth, was regarded as particularly suitable for ferreting out secret members of that party. Bessie found it hard to find suitable candidates to blame in the Glasgow YS branches. There were no Communists, no Irish Republicans, and no foreigners; there were not even any English apart from Paul Foot who was working in Glasgow at the time. I was living in Blantyre, and yet belonged to the Springburn branch; no doubt sinister reasons were read into this fact. No good could come of this state of affairs. I was one of those on whom she pronounced anathema and soon after I received word that I had to depart Springburn and join my local branch in Hamilton, which I did for a short time. The last word on Queen’s Park, 1962, should lie in * Ta-ta tae Gaitskell another Morris Blythman song, sung to the tune of The Ould ‘Now Mr. Hugh Gaitskell’s a queer kind of man, Orange Flute. * Aye lookin’ aroon him for things he can ban:

Young Guard an’ Keep Left, C.N.D., the hail lot;

Hamilton Young Socialists

An’ behind every bush he sees lurkin’ a Trot

THE HAMILTON YOUNG SOCIALISTS was somewhat Chorus: Too-roo-loo, too-roo-lay ‘right of centre’. That is, a number of the members were It’s ta-ta tae Gaitskell an’ Kennedy tae. in Labour Party with a view to a career path in local or ‘He cam up tae Glesca on a bricht simmer’s day national politics or the trades union movement. I was just out for a good time and pushing forward An’ the crowds they aa gaithered tae her whit he’d say. the boundaries of socialism. Although we shared similar The platform party looked cheery an’ braw, tastes in music, there not many there, as far as I could An’ the big banner said: Tak Polaris awa make out, who were remotely interested in pushing for ‘Now we’d aa been tellt Gaitskell’s a gey clever bloke radical change beyond what the Labour Party’s National But anti-Polaris fair gied him the boke, For he’d promised the Tories an’ Jack Kennedy Executive decided at its annual conference. The centre of bohemian social life in Hamilton was Tae stop the folk takin’ Polaris away. Chez Suzette’s, a coffee bar at Hamilton Cross run by a ‘He started tae speak but they shouted him down, cheery Scots-Italian entrepreneur called Bill Cardwell For they didnae hae ony respect for the clown. who had his finger on the pulse of what young people His very first question, it gied them their cue: wanted. Downstairs in the cellar bar he created a Who’ll lead for the Tories? —they aa shouted: You! friendly, genuinely Soho-style cosmopolitan atmosphere ‘Oh, the music grew hotter aroon' the band-stand thick with jazz, the smoke of Gauloises and the smell of An’ got orchestrated an’ spread thru the land. roasted coffee. An’ folk will remember that bonnie May-day, We were organising a YS dance-cum-concert and When the Clyde started takin’ Polaris away.’ wanted either the Temperance Seven or the Chris Barber Morris Blythman Jazz band and we soon found ourselves negotiating with Andy Daisley, an entrepreneurial wee man who was probably single-handedly responsible for the Dixieland jazz and folk revival then taking place in Scotland. Andy was a man of amazing energy, ingenuity and enterprise who, with few or no resources, had formed his own agency and had brought Louis Armstrong to Glasgow, booking him to play in Ibrox Stadium. He loved jazz

137

‘Trots’ And The Labour Party

and blues and often used the nearby Hamilton Town Hall as one of his venues. Andy would keep us entranced with stories of Josh White, Big Bill Broonzy, Cisco Houston, Rambling Jack Elliot, Howling Wolf, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and other legends of the American blues scene. However, not even good jazz and blues could keep me in Hamilton and Glasgow became the main social and political focus in my life.

A Modern Folk Tale: A historic ‘stushie’ at The Marland ANDREW MOYSES’S FOLK Centre up a close in Montrose Street was one of our regular Saturday night haunts. It couldn’t get a drinks licence so the nearby Marland Bar in George Street, just up from Glasgow Cross, became one of our drinking spots, mainly because it was one of the few pubs in Glasgow which tolerated singing in the back room. Because of the propensity of drunken Glaswegians to end up singing aggressively sectarian songs that would inevitably provoke fights, singing in pubs was strictly illegal. Any publican allowing singing in his premises, unchecked, was likely to lose his licence. One night a crowd of about eight or nine of us descended on the Marland: Ronnie Alexander, Veronica Docherty, Ross Flett, Alex Howie, Hamish Imlach, Matt McGinn, Andy McGowan, Pete Ross, myself and one or two others. Hamish was well known in folk circles, as was Matt McGinn, a singer, songwriter and philosopher, a close friend of Robert Lynn’s, having grown up with him in Ross Street. Matt’s only instrument was his right leg with which he kept time by stamping on the floor. To begin with it was a general singalong, but increasingly people turned to Matt with “Gie’s wan o’ yer songs, Matt”. This preference for Matt’s unaccompanied light-hearted patter-songs appeared to get increasingly up Hamish Imlach’s nose. A shouting match developed which quickly escalated out of all proportion. Hamish had been acting aggressively towards Matt after the latter had muttered something about him under his breath and was asked to leave by Christie McMenanin, the landlord. Matt then took over the singing until closing time, at the back of 10.00 p.m. As we were milling around on the pavement outside the pub, the twenty-odd stone Hamish appeared out of the shadows and came lumbering across the road, howling abuse and steaming fixedly towards Matt. Fortunately there were enough of us there to separate them, but in the fracas Pete Ross smacked Hamish in the mouth, knocking him back against the wall. Hamish wandered off in a daze while we escorted Matt to the bus stop to send him home to Rutherglen. The rest of us went back to the CND offices above the George Bar in North Frederick Street with a ‘cairry-oot’ to continue the party. About forty minutes later, I was on the table in a darkened back room fumbling with the bra straps of one of the girls, when the door burst open and framed in the doorway was the massive silhouetted hulk of Hamish, mob-

138

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

handed, shouting ‘Where is the wee bastard?’ Pete Ross, his intended victim — whom none of us really knew; he had somehow attached himself to us in the Red Lion pub — heard the ruction and shot out of the front room, down the hall, nimbly ducking past the enraged and cumbersome Hamish who quickly followed him down the lane with his heavies. They eventually caught up with Pete in nearby George Square and gave him such a battering that he was in hospital with broken ribs and God knows what else for over a fortnight. The moral of the story was never to interrupt Hamish Imlach when he’d had a bevvy and wanted to sing.

139

Ten Days That Shook The World

Cuban missile crisis: Kennedy’s response to Soviet missile bases on Cuba, itself a response to US missiles based in Turkey, was a high-card poker game with humanity as the stake.

HE EARLY 1960s had seen a steady increase in the intensity and scope of the cold war. The nuclear clock appeared to be ticking faster and faster. Commander Crabb, a naval intelligence officer had been decapitated investigating the underwater parts of a Soviet ship during a visit by Nikita Khrushchev to Britain in 1956; an American pilot, Gary Powers, flying a U-2 spy plane had been shot down over Russia in May 1960; Russia had detonated the largest nuclear explosion yet, a massive 56 megatons in October 1961; American and Russian tanks were pointing their guns at each other at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin and Buddhist monks were setting fire to themselves in Saigon in protest against the repressive US supported government of Diem. The chilling realisation of just how close we were to a catastrophic nuclear holocaust was rammed home dramatically later that year in the unimaginablyscary fortnight leading up to 28 October 1962. The brinkmanship of John F. Kennedy and the quarantine the US imposed on Cuba had led to the Cuban missile crisis, with Washington threatening Armageddon if Moscow did not withdraw the nuclear missiles sent by Moscow, ostensibly to protect Fidel Castro’s island revolution, but in fact a response to US nuclear missiles placed close to the Soviet border in Turkey. This high-card poker game being played with our lives could, we felt, quite easily have led to our total annihilation. It is difficult today to convey the sense of powerlessness, fear and near hysteria which spread everywhere as that week drew to its close with the two nuclear powers in a Caribbean stand-off. Perhaps more than anything else, it was the events of that fortnight in October that made me finally decide it was self-delusional and fundamentally wrong, both morally and ethically, to stand on the sidelines of world affairs, like some unaffected and uninvolved bystander at a location where a gruesome accident was expected to happen. Norman Mailer articulated the mood of the time when he wrote ‘The world stood like a playing card on edge’ during the Cuban missile crisis while the superpowers ‘played poker with humanity.” No one was exempt. All over Europe and America, people packed their cars and headed for the hills or to the sea to watch what might be the last sunset on earth. Veteran peace campaigners Pat Arrowsmith and Wendy Butlin went to Ireland. Young lovers openly talked about dying in each other’s arms. Many chose not to wait for the bombs to start falling and took their own lives. It was the closest the world came to the cold war endgame of ‘mutually assured destruction’.

140

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Aberdonian folk-singer and songwriter Ian Campbell also caught the mood of the moment in his song The Sun Is Burning,* performed by the Ian Campbell Group:

Common purpose THE APPARENT IMMINENCE of global war gave coherence to our sense of common purpose and common priorities. The issues involved were so vital to our mutual well-being and the survival of mankind, that I decided that the struggle in which we were involved was one of life and death. The State, the oligarchic institutional means by which society is governed, controlled and ultimately repressed, was clearly the enemy; if we did not destroy it first, it would destroy us. Films of the time such as On the Beach based on * The Sun Is Burning Neville Shute’s chilling novel of the same name, and ‘The sun is burning in the sky Dr Strangelove heightened the sense of subliminal Strands of cloud are gently drifting by panic and tension. Seven Days in May had been turned In the park the dreamy bees are droning in the flowers into a film noir about an all-too-possible right-wing among the trees military coup mounted in Washington with the And the sun burns in the sky express intent of overturning a treaty limiting nuclear Now the sun is in the west armaments. Little kids lie down to take their rest Given the behaviour of the lunatic air force chief, And the couples in the park are holding hands and General Curtis LeMay, who later stood for election waiting for the dark with the openly racist governor of Alabama, George And the sun is in the west Wallace, this was by no means an impossible scenario. LeMay apparently told the President the ‘big red dog is Now the sun is sinking low digging in our back yard and we are perfectly right to Children playing know it’s time to go shoot him’. He also told Kennedy that his handling of High above a spot appears a little blossom blooms and the Cuban crisis in the early stages was ‘almost as bad then drops near as the appeasement at Munich’. And when Kennedy And the sun is sinking low and Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, reached a Now the sun has come to earth settlement, LeMay denounced it as ‘the greatest defeat Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death Death comes in a blinding flash of hellish heat, and in our history. We should invade today’. LeMay was far from being a lone nutcase: the leaves a smear of ash Americans’ obsession with a ‘preventive war’, fuelled When the sun has come to earth. by the Soviet Union’s success in exploding its first Now the sun has disappeared atom bomb in 1949 and by McCarthyism, permeated All is darkness, anger pain and fear civilian as well as military thinking. The Director of Twisted sightless wrecks of men go groping on their British naval intelligence, Vice Admiral Eric Longley- knees and cry in pain Cook, a regular visitor to the US defence department, And the sun has disappeared.’ the Pentagon, in the latter 1950s reported that the US Ian Campbell military were convinced that ‘all-out war against the Soviet Union was not only inevitable but imminent’. One US general was reported to have remarked that the West could not afford to wait until Europe or America was devastated by a nuclear

141

Ten Days That Shook The World

holocaust. He added: ‘We can afford, however, to create a wilderness in Russia without serious repercussions on western civilisation. We have a moral obligation to stop Russia’s aggression by force, if necessary, rather than face the consequences of delay.’*

Union Militancy MY INVOLVEMENT IN radical politics and demonstrations led to growing friction at work between the boss, R B Wilson, and myself. Someone kept feeding him stories about my involvement in anti-bomb demonstrations and that I was engaging the technicians in sometimes heated political discussions in the laboratory. I was also active in the union and was the works’ representative of the Union of Shop Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) at the monthly Glasgow Trades Council meetings. * Man in Black The fact that it was left to me, a sixteen-year old A CURIOUS FOOTNOTE to the Cuban missile crisis came years later, in 1994, when I met and became friendly with apprentice, to represent my USDAW branch indicates someone whom I can only describe as the original ‘Man the level of militancy there was in the workshop, but the in black’. Trades Council was a fascinating arena of political It was at a Caspian oil conference in Baku, in debate and it was here I came across people like Harry Azerbaijan. He had a small exhibition stand at which he was exhibiting an optical-digital scanning device he had McShane, a legend of ‘Red Clydeside’, the former invented which could identify car number plates. It was Secretary of the Scottish Communist Party, who had really a sophisticated toy, but it gave him a legitimate crossed swords with Guy Aldred in the thirties and was reason to be there. He was a charming guy and we ate now a prestigious ‘name’ on the International Socialism together a few times at the Gulustan Restaurant, overlooking Baku and the Caspian. Group’s roll of honour. He told me that he had been Senior Communications I was never quite sure what his actual relationship Officer on the US flagship co-ordinating events during was with them. He was, after all, a disciple of Raya the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba in April 1961. In fact it was he who had received the historic message direct Dunayevskaya, an ex-secretary of Trotsky who from the White House that the president would not renounced Trotskyism (though she never renounced authorise US naval and air power to support the Cuban Leninism, just said Lenin had lost his way, been contra troops trapped on the beach. He had also played the same role during the stand-off overwhelmed by events) to found ‘Marxist humanism’. against the Russian navy 90 miles off Cuba during the I felt, that the Trades Council was, ultimately, a missile crisis in October of the following year. I remember powerless and ineffectual talking shop which served thinking to myself how this guy could have changed the only to provide a forum for contending factions of entire course of human affairs if he had made a mistake or done a Nelson and turned a blind eye as it were to didactic materialists and a seed bed of recruits for the those history-changing radio messages. ‘mass-movement’ builders. Since then he told me he had spent a lot of time in the It was very different from the old Clyde Workers’ Soviet Union, including having been inside each and every one of its nuclear power stations. Fascinated Committee (chaired at the time by an antithough I was, I never found out, or asked, how he got parliamentarian and pre-Communist Willie Gallagher) away with this. The thought did cross my mind that he of 1919 which put the wind up Lloyd George to such an might also have been on the ‘grassy knoll’ in Dealey extent that he ordered tanks to George Square, armoured Plaza in November 1963, but I didn’t pursue that either. cars to strategic corners and naval guns on the Clyde to be trained on workers’ districts. But I did note that the old anarchists who attended the Glasgow Trades Council never sought office or to dominate in anyway; they appeared to see their role similar to that of the Chorus in Greek Drama — their role was to act as the working class conscience.

142

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Important though union activities were in the day-to-day relationships in the workshop, I concluded this was another political mirage; that the leadership of the unions had been co-opted into the State’s authority system and policymaking processes. This had been effected through the informal wage and price restraint agreement between the union leadership, government and business in 1948. In return for the unions formally abandoning their rhetorical commitment to class struggle, the overthrow of capitalism and the vision of a socialist society in favour of social harmony or class collaboration within the parameters of capitalism, the ruling groups admitted the most ‘responsible’ (i.e., conservative) union leaders into the authority structure. They, in turn, were able to present their accession to power as a ‘victory’ for their moderate policies and their firm control over their members. Implicit in this new-found class harmony was the belief that the State had been restructured as a genuinely humane organ of power. If conflict and tension could only be accommodated and contained, the elites argued, the State could now be operated in the interests of ‘the people’.

143

The Glasgow Committee of 100

The Glasgow Committee Of 100

ARLY IN 1962, at the age of 16, I began to attend meetings of the Glasgow Committee of 100 (C100) at the Dundas Street offices of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). The Scottish Committee of 100, like its English namesake, was an ad hoc body with only one official, a co-ordinating secretary, but no formal membership. The secretary was George Williamson, a recently graduated student architect from Hamilton and ‘Solidarity’ supporter. Activists were drawn from all age groups, walks of life and political and religious persuasions — all of us horrified by the potential for the mass destruction, carnage and slaughter of our and future generations by unaccountable politicians in the self-interested pursuit of power politics. The Glasgow Committee of 100 consisted of supporters who were committed in a wider political sphere and those * Scottish Committee of 100 concerned on a purely ethical, or moral, anti-bomb basis. Other Committee of 100 stalwarts included Isobel A number of us, particularly the younger ones, were Lindsay and Tom McAlpine, both middle class Hamiltonians who later became members of the Scottish gradually becoming definable as anarchists, or Nationalist Party (SNP). Others that I can recall included: libertarian socialists, committed to class struggle Alan Parker, Walter Weir, Andy Munro and Norman activism outside the framework of parties and the McLeod. From places other than Glasgow there were: Ian Sutherland, Ian Mitchell, Liz Smith (Aberdeen); Bill politics of organisation building. We saw the ‘bomb’ as a Beveridge (Dunfermline), Bill Jamieson (Edinburgh) and symptom, one more weapon among the vast array the Robert Hainsworth (Galashiels). (Edinburgh); Eddie and state possessed in its well-stocked armoury, rather than Raph Gillette (Kilmarnock) and ‘Big Morag’ Gilmartin and Danny Kyle (Paisley). Also: Roddy Cameron; Susan some autonomous threat which could be eliminated Maxwell; Grace McMenemy; Jacqui Marbey; Hugh through narrowly focused popular pressure. The McLelland, Terry Capaldi, Alf Trevett, Roger Baker, Ewan problem derived from the state itself: governments were Petrie and Sandy Small. Doug Brewood (Snr) and his son, the real enemies of society. also Doug (Jr), from England, were also regular visitors to the Dundas Street offices. Doug Junior, now deceased, Older Committee of 100 activists included the played a part in the Spies for Peace saga. Clem Alford charismatic Walter Morrison, an ex-Royal Scots Fusilier (Knightswood), I think, was the only Young Communist soldier who had been on internal security duties in India League person who retained his Party membership. Clem went off to India and became an accomplished sitar during the Ghandi demonstrations. player. Walter didn’t last long in the army after one particular briefing prior to a large demonstration at which they were told they would face women and children. When told by their officer they would be expected to fire on the women and children if they refused to turn back, Walter stood up and said he would shoot any soldier who turned their gun on a woman and a child, and he would then personally shoot the officer who gave the order to fire. Understandably, the officer ordered his arrest and he was dragged out to an armoured car to be taken to military prison.* Here I first came into contact with the people who were to provide the youthful core of the revived Glasgow Anarchist Federation: Committee of 100 supporters who included Zoë (Isobel) Boyd, a folk-singer from Cambuslang with the voice of an angel and the gamin looks of Audrey Hepburn, whom everyone fancied; Zoë’s friend, another lovely singer and guitarist, Irene Mazzia; David Betteridge; Ken Sutherland; Ross Flett; Andy McGowan; Dave

144

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Coull from Montrose (and who was in the RAF at the time), Alex Howie and Ronnie Alexander, who was also the Secretary of the recently formed Glasgow Anarchist Federation. In September 1962 we got wind of dates and times of a major NATO Civil Defence exercise, Fallex 62, to be held at the Edinburgh Regional Seat of Government (RSG) on Corstorphine Hill, on the outskirts of the town. Three of us, from the loosely organised group of anarchists and libertarians which later became known as the ‘Scots Against War’, managed to get inside the base and take photographs as well as the registration numbers of the cars parked in the forecourt. However, as we were leaving we were spotted on the roof by the security guards and chased. Full security measures were in operation at the time and within a matter of minutes the entire wooded hillside was being combed for us. I hid the miniature camera I had acquired during a short hitchhiking trip to Paris earlier that year under a stone. Having managed to shake off the guards, we walked as though out for a stroll, the hill being common land, and returned to saunter past the gates of the RSG. Two police cars suddenly came up the track with sirens going full blast and screeched to a halt in front of us. A uniformed inspector got out and asked us our names and what we were doing in the area. We refused to answer any of his questions, which showed we were clearly shit-stirrers, so he ‘asked’ us to accompany him to Edinburgh Police HQ, a request which we didn’t appear to have much choice about. We were held for a matter of hours, just long enough for our masters in the RSG to complete their manoeuvre and clear out before we could return. After a long questions session, mainly about why we had decided on that particular day for our call, we were released without charges, though only after consultation with London! I returned the following week to retrieve the camera and film together with the list of car numbers we had been able to scribble down, but the film was fogged and unusable.

The Bitter Winter of 1962: ‘Beyond Counting Arses’ BY THE END of 1962, the National Committee of 100 was struggling to survive. The imprisonment for 12 or 18 months of its most active leaders in February 1962 for organising the Wethersfield and other demonstrations on 9 December 1961 had weakened it considerably. Another factor in its diminishing influence was the fact it had been unable to respond adequately to the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962; its policy of non-alignment and civil disobedience were clearly useless faced with the harsh reality of such an apocalyptic threat. The ‘faces’ of the Committee disappeared, culminating in November 1962 with the resignation of Bertrand Russell, after the London Committee

145

On the march: George Square, Glasgow, May Day 1964. SC with white ‘shortie’ on left of picture.

The Glasgow Committee of 100

dissociated itself from his pro-Cuban position. Early the following year, on 21 January 1963, Helen Allegranza, the Secretary of the National Committee and one of the six leaders tried the previous year, committed suicide. It had also been the worst winter since 1947. Something had happened. We were no longer under the comfortable illusion that the governments of the world would ‘ban the bomb’, and we had grown contemptuous of those who would have us believe that one only had to ask them to do it through the parliamentary process by rousing their sense of justice, and they would comply. We knew, unlike the Marxists who pretended to believe it, that the state was the enemy. In response to this malaise within the nuclear disarmament movement, a few libertarian activists within the Committee of 100 published an eight-page discussion document called ‘Beyond counting arses’. It proposed the adoption of a new approach, more oriented towards direct action, including sabotaging the state by flaunting the Official Secrets Act and exposing the clandestine activities of the state. It concluded: ‘we do not believe in passive martyrdom. We are not in this movement to opt out of a burden on our consciences, but to fight for what we believe in.’ The authors of ‘Beyond Counting Arses‘ were not exactly the same group as the ‘Spies for Peace’ inasmuch as two of the signatories of BCA had not been involved in the Spies, while other non-signatories of BCA, such as Nicolas Walter, had been involved in the Spies for Peace.

Spring 1963: Spies for Peace THE SPIES FOR PEACE episode exploded on an unsuspecting press and British government just before the annual march from Aldermaston to London at Easter 1963. Earlier that year some Committee of 100 members managed to obtain classified documents relating to a secret government shelter. RSG 6 near Warren Row village, just outside Reading, close to Windsor Castle and conveniently only a mile or two off the route of the march. The documents were passed to the members of the London Committee who decided the best way to handle the information was to set up a separate group. Regional Seats of Government (RSGs) were fourteen top-secret installations where the local gauleiters or Regional Commissioners with absolute power over millions of people proposed to sit out the devastation of a nuclear holocaust which the common folk would have to endure; in the event of revolution or serious social unrest they would become the nerve centres of repression. The six men and two women who formed the core of this ad hoc Londonbased group (whose main political affiliations were with libertarian socialists from the Solidarity group and with the anarchists) adopted the name Spies for Peace. They decided to publish a duplicated six page foolscap stapled leaflet called Danger! Official Secret RSG-6 for distribution prior to the Aldermaston march

146

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

which began on Good Friday. Using the Solidarity duplicator in the Independent Labour Party (ILP) rooms in King’s Cross, they printed around 3,000 copies and posted them to sympathisers and activists by the Wednesday. My parcel of twelve copies of RSG-6 arrived on the Thursday prior to the march, but I was in no way prepared for the impact it was to have, locally or nationwide. I circulated a copy around the dental laboratory where I worked, to get a discussion going among the technicians. Their response was indifference tinged with a tingle of excitement at seeing something which was making front-page headlines in all the national papers. For the most part they agreed with the idea of information like this being available to the general public, exposing as it did the hypocrisy of war preparations directed against rather than towards the welfare of ordinary people. However, one old and previously affable ex-army NCO who worked in the lab went berserk and physically attacked me with a bowl of plaster of Paris, accusing me of being a traitor rendering assistance to the enemy. I was more like the ghost of Christmas past, dripping as I was with rapidly hardening plaster. Apart from exposing the secret plans of the authorities for the imposition of an undemocratic political system which would operate during and after a nuclear war or political breakdown, the importance of the Spies for Peace affair was that it exposed for the first time the nature of the secret state and established the precedent for whistleblowing. The Macmillan government took it seriously enough to call for a briefing from MI5 as to the ‘Spies’ ’ identities. The political tone of the movement was captured by Jim Petter, a renegade scion of the diesel engine family — an ILPer, AEU shop steward, granddad and lifelong cyclist — who wrote this immortal passage in the Solidarity and Anarchy pamphlets on the Regional Seats of Government called Resistance Shall Grow: ‘You can be Tory or Labour, Communist or Empire Loyalist, Christian or Atheist, genius or moron, tear-arse or layabout, capitalist or worker, prostitute or Duchess of Argyle, pimp, bastard, or bugger-boy, copper’s nark or pacifist fruit-juicer, it doesn’t matter who or what. Your future can be equally radioactive and you are all to be equally dead. The only survivors will be a few Top Bureaucrats, with, of course one month’s supply of uncontaminated food and water at their disposal. We need a Kafka to write a novel about the last days in the Bunker for Bureaucrats.’

Scots Against War AT THE NEXT major Holy Loch demonstration on 25 May 1963, a month after the Spies for Peace scandal, the anarchists and Solidarity supporters within the Glasgow Committee of 100 distributed a fairly provocative document called ‘How to Disrupt, Obstruct and Subvert the Warfare State’. Signed ‘Scots Against War’, its aim was to stimulate radical direct action against the state and, generally, stir things up within the Scottish nuclear disarmament movement. It appeared to have the desired effect. Not only did the leaflet promote

147

The Glasgow Committee of 100

subversion, it also attacked the Communist Party, the Peace Committee, the Scottish Trades Union Council (STUC) and the bureaucracy which controlled the CND. The leaflet was, in fact, a Scottish version of the ‘Beyond Counting Arses’. The Sunday tabloids and broadsheets went to town that weekend. The People, Sunday Mirror, the Glasgow Evening Citizen, the Sunday Times and the Scotsman denounced the leaflet as sedition and ‘the most blatant defiance of authority ever made by the nuclear disarmament movement and amounted to open revolt:’ ‘“Stop obeying! Be disobedient! We call on you to resist the warfare state.” It urged Ban the Bombers to sabotage the Polaris subs in Britain, to search for official secrets and publish them and to get soldiers to foment anti-war cells in the army. The leaflet continued: “The work on the Polaris base at Faslane must be blocked, by the trade unionists refusing to work and by outsiders obstructing any attempt to build these projects.“‘ Anxious to dissociate themselves from such anti-state activity, the Communist Party and the CND leadership stated: ‘We would not incite people to such subversive activities’. The same Sunday the press reports appeared, 26 May, five Scottish Committee of 100 members — Archie Smith, Walter Weir, Walter Morrison, Norman McLeod and George Williamson — were arrested at the Ministry of Defence’s Proof and Experimental Establishment near Kirkintilloch, on the outskirts of Glasgow. All had copies of the leaflet on them and all were charged under the Official Secrets Act. The charges were later dropped by the Crown, as were similar charges against two others who had been arrested following a break-in at the same establishment three weeks earlier. Scots Against War was an important dividing point in the history of the antinuclear movement. In the space of just over three years it had shifted from being an orderly, predictably police-friendly, peace movement controlled by an unholy alliance of middle-class liberals, trade union leaders, churchmen and the Labour and Communist parties into an anti-state movement led by anarchists and libertarian and non-aligned socialists. The Trotskyists of the time were totally outside the loop and played no part in the process. Their obsession was to control the Labour Party and the Trade Union movement by boring from within — and bore they did! Frustration and disillusionment with party politics and politicians grew as nuclear, geopolitical and domestic political tensions rose to a crescendo during the Macmillan-Kennedy years. After the Brize Norton, Ruislip and Wethersfield demonstrations of December 1961, and the Parliament Square demo of March 1962, it became clear that mass resistance on the scale required was not feasible. More importantly, after the Cuban missile crisis it was clear that demonstrations exercised no influence at all on the string-pullers of both East and West. At the same time, the US war in Vietnam was escalating inexorably. Everything that happened seemed to underline the fact that the vital decisions as to war and

148

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

peace were taken, as always, by governments, without the slightest reference as to what the people felt or wanted. As the parties lost influence to an increasingly radical and uncontrollable young rank-and-file, the tactics changed: first to Ghandian, non-violent civil disobedience with sit-downs and passive resistance; then, and following the sudden, chilling, awareness of our helplessness and individual impotence during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 and that week’s ominous countdown to Armageddon, to confrontation, subversion and sabotage of what was seen as the ‘warfare state’. Demonstrations — which were no longer just against the bomb, but against racism, apartheid and America’s war in Vietnam — stopped being predictable, well-ordered, respectable events, where the marchers deferred to the marshals, the police and party cadres. On Easter Saturday, 28 March 1964, a young woman supporter of the C100 dramatically burnt herself to death in a park in Ruislip, Middlesex. Our sense of foreboding worsened in June 1964 when the US Republican candidate for the presidency, Senator Barry Goldwater, a major general in the US Air Force Reserve, proposed that ‘baby’ nuclear bombs be dropped in South Vietnam. The unilateralist movement clearly hadn’t a cat in hell’s chance of success. People were not going to support a movement that had no tangible prospect of success. Especially if they thought they would go to jail and be fined. By Easter 1964 it had become clear that support for the C100’s strategy of overwhelming the courts through civil disobedience was non-operative. This was the ‘iceberg’ theory; that the direct actionists of the C100 were simply the visible tip of an ‘iceberg’, representing hundreds of thousands of others, who were inhibited from breaking the law and felt unable to take such drastic action themselves by virtue of their personal domestic and economic circumstances. Within two years the Scottish Committee of 100 had ceased to exist, its militants having migrated elsewhere to wind up the authorities under other names. The nuclear disarmament campaign fell back into the hands of the Labour and Communist parties, where it lost its impetus and became, for the vast majority of the population, another dead issue. A Scots Against War pamphlet we published in early 1964 — Is Sabotage the Answer?— reflected the mood of the moment and provoked a lot of discussion both inside and outside the movement. The idea was to create a new initiative, something a bit more inspiring than blowing up balloons and releasing them from the Holy Loch. We argued that symbolic non-violent civil disobedience and direct action had been tried and had reached the point where the law of diminishing returns made demonstrations more damaging to us than to the state. Many people had gone to prison, but had made no appreciable difference to the state’s ability and determination to wage war. On the other hand, the

149

The Glasgow Committee of 100

sabotage of ‘things’ was something we could do to resist the warfare state and interfere with its bloody power games at what we felt, at the time, was a desperately dangerous situation. In the words of a SAW pamphlet ‘Is Sabotage the Answer?’: ‘There are those who may want to do something not truly non-violent, but effective nonetheless. This could be termed as property sabotage. This type of action covers a vast number of activities from striking to stealing and spying. Striking, as we all know, can hold up work on Polaris and all war preparations — making it costly. This month a number of connectors mysteriously disappeared from a top-secret project in Lanarkshire. This held up the job considerably, proving the worth of this simple act, which was easily carried out.’ The pamphlet went on to suggest other forms of sabotage, such as putting sugar in concrete mixers, using death watch beetles and fungi on floors and roofs and draughtsmen and architects making calculated mistakes on drawing boards. Between 1963 and 1966, hardly a week went by without some Army Recruiting Office being broken into and wrecked, and mysterious fires occurring at army, naval and civil defence centres all over the country, including the site huts at Faslane and the top secret military command centre at Troywood, near St Andrews. The entrance to this labyrinthine 100-foot-deep bunker with two cinemas, restaurant, operations room and so on, was disguised as an innocent farmhouse. The Holy Loch pier itself was burned down in July 1964. The authorities played down most of the incidents. Those who were arrested were usually fined small amounts, not imprisoned. The name used to claim responsibility for many of these incidents was, again — Scots Against War. The Scots Against War never existed as a regular group of individuals; it was a sheriffless posse comitatus, a name invented by ad hoc affinity groups to give some continuity and unity of purpose to the anti-nuclear movement. The national leadership of the Scottish Committee of 100 didn’t mince their words in their condemnation of the Scots Against War and re-affirmed their nonviolent position in the debate over violence, sabotage, direct action and subversion. The following is the Scottish regional report to the National Committee of 100 in Birmingham in 1964: ‘We recently have had quite a bit of trouble, between Stuart Christie, ‘Scots Against War’ (SAW) and saboteurs, etc. It may interest the National Committee to know that the SAW movement has already folded. Firstly, the Committee’s constant stand against sabotage weakened them. Next, the secret police put the fear of death into the so-called saboteurs: by following them; by catching them and giving them a thorough grilling and making it clear them that they knew all about their so-called secrets. The result has been that all those commenting on sabotage have now been more or less frightened to death. I think we have heard the last of these for a while.’ The reference to SAW members having had the fear of death put into them

150

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

referred to an exaggerated incident which happened to Walter Morrison at the Holy Loch. Walter had been setting up a tent on the foreshore (it being illegal to set up a tent on the land), when he was called over by someone waving from a large American car on the roadside. Walter got into the rear of the car where there were three men who addressed him as Walter and making it clear they knew all about him. Two of them were from the Ministry of Defence’s ‘Psychological Warfare Group’, based at Dundee, while the third man was an American of uncertain military or security provenance. The reason they gave for calling Walter over for a chat was, they said, to tell him they didn’t mind the friendly jousts with the C100, but that the Scots Against War was a whole new ball game and they were out to get them. One of the men pointed out into the Loch and told Walter that he was involved in a dangerous business and it would be so easy for people like him to disappear, never to be found. Walter was a hard man, as I said, he had been in the army and had seen and done things he was ashamed of, but this chilling threat was something quite new to him. But SAW was not intimidated and was far from giving up. It initiated the May Day demonstration against George Brown in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park, a re-run of the 1962 confrontation with Gaitskell, from which the C100 withdrew. In March 1965 a SAW group broke into Faslane, uprooted numerous levels for the new road, damaged a lorry and severed the compressor hose for the rocket silo. The group was active in the north east as well, in both Aberdeen and Dundee. In fact there was even a plan to rob the payroll of the Sunday Post, publishers of ‘Oor Wullie’, D.C. Thomson and a notoriously reactionary and antitrade union employer. SAW continued to publish a steady flow of material, including one for the Easter 1965 march with a detailed explanation of their tactics and strategy: psychological warfare against the authorities, the creation of localised guerrilla groups of saboteurs and, finally, to roll-back the absorption of the anti-war movement into conventional Labour and Communist party politics. The ‘Free Speech’ campaign we organised in 1963 was probably the biggest fly-posting and slogan-daubing exercise ever seen in Scotland. The embarrassing misspellings of that night could be seen for at least ten years after! We left the Dundas Street premises in small groups of two and three to cover different parts of the city with cans of paint, paste and posters, and moved in towards the centre, covering every prominent government building and wall we could find. I went with George Williamson and Walter Morrison to the area around Glasgow University and moved down Great Western Road, painting and fly posting as we went until we were finally arrested and carried off in the paddy wagon to Maryhill police station. All the paint that was left at the end of that night ended up on the front of the US Consulate. Another event organised by the Scottish Committee of 100 in July 1963 was a two-month march from Glasgow to London via Dunfermline on the Firth of Forth, carrying a 24-foot long cardboard model of a Polaris rocket, which had

151

The Glasgow Committee of 100

George Williamson, Scottish Committee of 100 Secretary.

been made in Josh Macrae’s basement. It was an anti-nuclear re-run of the Jarrow March of the 1930s. As a Glasgow police inspector observed dryly to George Williamson, the Committee of 100 Secretary and the organiser of the march, ‘Ah canny help but note that this march tae London is heading due north. Is therr somethin’ ahm missin’ here?’ Of the 35 people who started out, I believe only 5 completed the march all the way on foot, in early September. One of those was Bill Beveridge, but I can’t remember who the others were. George Williamson usually went ahead by bus (to organise accommodation and refreshments at the next stop; a feature of the trip, which was celebrated in a commemorative song at the time). ‘On the Glasgow march to London There were 24 of us Twenty-three were marching And George was on the bus.’ Personally, I didn’t make it beyond Falkirk, the first night’s stop, as I had to be back at work on the Monday. Our arrival in the town had been heralded by the press, and among those waiting to meet us were the local female ‘beatniks’, with beehive hairdos, stiletto heels, pencil skirts and black PVC shortie coats. We were the Dharma Bums come to visit — the new crusaders — and they intended to show us a good time as we finally settled down with our ‘cairry oots’ in darkened corners of the local Labour Party hall, our accommodation for the night. And they did.

The Factory For Peace — Summer 1963 AT WORK, the final confrontation for me came when my boss told me to remove a ‘Ban the Bomb’ badge and the broken rifle emblem of the War Resisters’ International — and to stop preaching ‘red propaganda’ to my fellow apprentices during work. Four years earlier, in 1959, there had been a strike of Glasgow apprentices, something unheard of in industrial relations until that time, and there may have been an element of trepidation that it could happen again. Ironically, a fair number of the Glasgow apprentices strike committee, which included Sir Alex Ferguson, Gus (now Lord) Macdonald and Billy Connolly, are now either lords or millionaires, or both. I had been vaguely planning to go to night school and take up my education where I'd left off; instead, I took a job as a sheet metal worker with the newly opened Factory for Peace, the brainchild of Glasgow Committee of 100 member, Tom McAlpine. Tom, an engineer by profession, had the idea of setting up an engineering company whose products would serve only the cause of peace.

152

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

The factory, based in a disused Coop sausage factory in Scotland Street in Glasgow's south side, made electric night storage heaters. The idea was to run it as a workers' co-operative, but within a few weeks it became clear the management and I had different views on the meaning of workers’ control and industrial democracy. Commendable as the idea was in theory, the Factory for Peace effectively sapped the C100 of time, energy, and militancy and tended to draw activists into a more conventional line of politics. As the factory grew, so too did its need for respectability. Although, for me, the job was short-lived and poorly paid, it did provide me with a first insight into the oligarchic dynamic which comes into play, even among the most ostensibly well-intentioned and democratic bodies. My wages were £2.10s for three days’ work; the idea being that on alternate days we would sign on at the labour exchange, thus giving us a bit more money. According to the Factory’s Constitution, the manager was supposed to be elected by a workers' meeting. I was among the first workers at the Factory, but I never found out who elected Tom. He, in turn, chose the foreman and then two part-time labourers were brought in, another lad and myself. Things worked well for a week and then when production had to be stepped up, the manager asked the other lad, a fifth-year-engineering apprentice, into his office. I was then called in and asked if I would be willing to work full time, for a wage to be decided. I didn't know what the other lad had been offered and, as I had no knowledge of engineering, I felt £7 would be enough. Later I discovered that Tom had offered him £10, but when our patrician manager discovered I would work for less, he reduced his offer to £8. The lad told Tom he was quite happy with things as they were and that he wouldn't work for less than £10 a week. He was, after all an almost fully time-served engineering apprentice and was entitled to more. This Schweikian attitude irritated Tom and at the works’ council the following Friday he proposed the lad be given a week's notice. Two other young lads had started that week, but they voted with us and Tom’s proposal was rejected. Angrily he told the meeting he would raise the matter the following week and, if it were rejected again, he would take it to a ‘higher authority’, the trustees on the controlling council. The trustees — whoever they were they didn’t work in the factory — would clearly rubber-stamp any decision Tom made. As we were about to begin the following week's meeting, Tom shamefacedly informed us that the constitution only allowed those workers who had been employed for at least three months to vote and none of us would be allowed to vote. I pointed out that the factory had only opened two weeks earlier so no one could vote, but this was as caresses to a brass monkey. I lasted another fortnight, but Tom did admit to me before I left that the factory was not really under workers' control — as if we hadn't noticed — and never would be unless we, the workers, took it over ourselves, something which certainly held no appeal for me. As far as he was concerned, it was simply a

153

The Glasgow Committee of 100

social experiment in management relations. To me it was a useful fast-track lesson in how not to run a workers’ cooperative. A tragic footnote to this story is that a number of those who stayed on at the Factory for Peace developed asbestosis and suffered considerably in later life through the make-do attitudes encouraged by manipulated idealism and makeshift conditions that were unlikely, even at the time, to have been tolerated in any normal commercial or industrial operation.

Summer 1963 — Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow IN BLANTYRE, meanwhile, I had become notorious not because of my political activities or involvement in demonstrations, but because of my long hair. This was unknown on the Clydeside then, though it was starting to catch on with rock groups in England. We were going to shake staid Glasgow to the core. The music was changing too. The Beatles, very blues-influenced at first, were emerging at first with initial waxings including Chuck Berry cover versions and later great sounds unlike anything that had gone before: She Loves You and I Wanna Hold Your Hand. As my friends and I walked along Sauchiehall Street and Argyle Street in our black beatnik uniforms of oilskin jackets, polo neck sweaters, jeans and calf length cowboy boots, we were followed by catcalls, whistles and crude suggestions from people who wondered what things were coming to when you could not tell the lasses from the lads. It felt as though up until then the only difference men had noticed between themselves and women was the way they did their hair. Even staunch Roman Catholics, who spent long hours pondering pictures of a longhaired Saviour, thought we must be lunatics to wear our hair so long. But time brings its own irony; later it was the people with short hair who were jeered at and asked if they had just come out of Barlinnie Prison. The press, with nothing better to write about at the time, felt my hair was a newsworthy feature. So far from giving an effeminate impression, as it would have done a few years earlier, the long hair strengthened my reputation as a tearaway. People thought it was either nice or I was ‘showing off’, the worst possible crime in tenement jurisprudence. The barbers and the press felt it signified a malignant, restless energy and lack of solid virtues. I was sure to come to a bad end.

154

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Glasgow’s Anarchists

TORE UP my Labour Party card and hitched my wagon to the star of anarchism one Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1963 outside Glasgow’s Mitchell Library. The event took place during an exhilarating and illuminating discussion I was having with Bobby Lynn and Ronnie Alexander, the secretary of the newly recreated Glasgow Federation of Anarchists. Ronnie, a laconic, bespectacled twenty-something guitar-playing folksinger, had acquired local and national notoriety with press coverage of his run-in with the management of the Mitchell Library for wearing an unconventional corduroy jacket to work after he had been told not to by the head librarian. I was also soon to be out of a job. Ronnie had been converted to anarchism by Gus McDonald, who 30 years or more later became Lord Gus in the Labour government of Tony Blair. Ronnie had been to an anti-Polaris rally in the old St Andrew’s Hall where the Young Socialists (YS) had a stall and he signed up with them. Coming from outside Glasgow (Auchinsterry, a canal village in deepest rural Dunbartonshire), Ronnie had been allocated to Woodside YS which met in St Clair Street, off Maryhill Road. The first Thursday night meeting he attended included a debate ‘Can real socialism work’ led by comrade Gus and Harry Selby from the Kingston YS. Harry Selby, incidentally, was a leading light in the Left Revolutionary Fraction and was Labour MP for Govan for a few years, without ever managing to reveal his deep-entryist Trotskyite credentials in Westminster. Gus was a good public speaker and very radical. Rumour had it that not only was he a Marxist, but also had read Das Kapital in its entirety. The two men illustrated how socialism could work by the example of the role played by the anarchist workers of the CNT/FAI in Catalonia and Aragón and how, for a short time, the Spanish anarchists had made real socialism work before Stalin smashed it. Intrigued by this revelation from comrade Gus, Ronnie went back to work in the Mitchell Library, dug out everything he could on anarchism, then went along to the Strickland Press where he met the indefatigable and charismatic Guy Aldred and his lieutenant, Caldy — John Taylor Caldwell. They told Ronnie about Bobby Lynn and gave him his address in Bain Street in the Calton. Ronnie went to meet him with his friend, Craig Roberton (now Glasgow City Treasurer and an ex member of the Left Revolutionary Fraction) where they met Bobby’s mum, an intimidating lady, who reluctantly directed them to 4 Ross Street where they finally met Bobby and began a lifelong friendship.

The ‘Wee Man Frae the Calton’ Robert Lynn from the Calton in Glasgow’s East End was an enigmatic figure whose looks belied his personality. He was a cherubic-faced, rosy-cheeked, curly-haired, small and dapper, generous and non-judgemental man with piercing and slightly hooded blue eyes.

155

Glasgow’s Anarchists

The ‘wee man frae the Calton’: Robert Lynn, the mainstay and driving force of the Glasgow Anarchist Group since the late 1940s.

Bobby was in his late thirties when I first met him. He had been involved in the Glasgow anarchist group throughout the 1950s and had been its backbone since the departure of older activists who had kept an anarchist presence in Glasgow in the face of massive hostility from the Labour and Communist Parties throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s: resilient activists such as Frank Leach, Jimmy Raeside, Eddie Shaw, Willie McDougall, John T Caldwell, and Guy Aldred of the Strickland Press. Caldwell and Aldred had been particularly active in helping comrades get to Spain to work for the CNT in Barcelona and Madrid. They were also heavily involved in publishing the Barcelona Bulletin, which exposed the Stalinist repression in May 1937 of the Catalan anarchists . Educated at Glasgow’s St Mungo’s Academy, Robert had left school, like me, at fourteen years of age to take up an engineering apprenticeship in Yarrow’s shipyards, where he became swept up in the maelstrom of political activity of the war years. During the Second World War, the influential shop stewards’ committees were dominated by the Communist Party, but their policy of subordinating the workers’ interests to those of Stalin’s foreign policy drew a heavy criticism from anarchists, Trotskyists and nonCP socialists alike. The experience had a profound effect on Robert and it was then that he began to nurture the ideas of Bakunin, the industrial ideas of syndicalism — and the individualist ideas advanced by the German anarchist Max Stirner (1806-1856) in his The Ego and His Own (The Conscious Egoist, first published in Germany in 1845). Stirner had been an early critic of state socialism (the idea that the state, through the redistribution of power, property and wealth, could express the collective will of the people and resolve society’s problems). This, in the anarchist view, would simply perpetuate the divisions and injustices that had riven society in the past, thus provoking the hostility of authoritarian contemporaries like Marx and Engels. Stirner cautioned against treating freedom as an abstract end in itself. Freedom, for him, was simply the means to an end; the real end being control over one’s own actions within an atmosphere of personal autonomy. The Ego and His Own is a powerful critique of what Stirner called ‘fixed ideas’, be they religious, rational, nationalist or ideological. For Stirner, all ‘ideas’ were simply that — ‘ideas’; concepts which, through our adhering to them, imprison and contain humanity. Essentially, he argued that ‘ideologies’ make hypocrites of us by allowing us to deny our real selves in the name of these ‘fixed ideas’. In opposition to statism, both capitalist and communist, Stirner appeared to suggest a ‘union of egoists’, a sort of anarchist federalism as a way of reconstituting a self-disciplined society around individual freedom. But like most

156

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

other anarchists he was opposed to providing blueprints for society. That was precisely what they were fighting against. Peter Kropotkin defined it thus:— ‘It is impossible to legislate for the future. All we can do is to guess, vaguely, its essential tendencies and clear the road for it.’ Robert was one of the survivors from a generation of syndicalists which interpreted this ‘union of egoists’ literally as a workers’ union, a way of organising freely within industry. Their coming together was simply the recognition that the individual cooperates freely with others because it is in his interest to do so. In the post-war years Robert became an irritant to both employers and communist-led union officials and was soon blacklisted. Unable to get work, he joined the Merchant Navy as an engineer and spent some years travelling the world, during which time he read everything he could lay his hands on. When he returned from sea, Robert worked for a time at Howden’s engineering plant in Glasgow’s South Side where he promoted his libertarian and syndicalist ideas. He was a regular speaker at the weekly workers’ forums in Renfrew Street, Glasgow, where anarchists, Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), Scottish Nationalists and Trotskyists regularly debated ideas… sometimes physically. Here, in an open air arena, ordinary working-class men and women absorbed and discussed passionately the ideas of Feuerbach, Clara Zetken, Bakunin, Kropotkin and many, many others. Robert Lynn revelled in the forums, which he called the University of Life. They certainly had their moments. I remember one exemplary SPGB graduate speaking mounting the platform, drawing a ten-shilling note from his pocket and holding it dangling from his thumb and forefinger for a quarter of an hour or so while delivering a devastatingly witty attack on money. The audience of thirty or so were spellbound. There was not a single heckler, until he set fire to it. From what I remember, my first conversation with Bobby went something like the following; his was a line he used often in debates at the open workers’ forums in Renfrew Street and elsewhere. ‘But what about stealing?’ says I. ‘Nobody would steal’, says Robert, ‘because it would be a society of abundance. What would be the sense in stealing in such a society? Let’s take as an example man’s most precious material thing. What would you say these were?’ ‘Air’ says I, ‘and water’. ‘Exactly’, says Robert, ‘and these are in abundance. Now how would you like to steal some air and some water and go around the Gallowgate trying to sell it? Now if we can create a society where everything else is in abundance and we can do that with modern technology, stealing would vanish.’ Who could argue with that? The elegance and trickiness of Robert’s dialectic typified his approach. It was Jesuitical, but his ‘patter’ and his cheery character was the trigger that won me over to anarchism. Robert also explained democracy to me. The anarchist or libertarian view held democracy to be an intrinsically liberating and fulfilling humanitarian

157

Glasgow’s Anarchists

ideal. The capitalist, on the other hand, saw democracy as an end in itself. It was a political instrument controlled through the party system of government by a few powerful leaders and a number of accommodating scoundrels and fawning stooges. Through the device of political parties, of both left and right, the ‘popular will’ could be efficiently and legitimately converted into a means of social control over individuals and property — on the assumption it was an expression of the wishes of the majority. Capitalist parliamentary democracy was one in which the citizen played a strictly passive and negative role, and whose prime motivation for participating in the political process was protective self-interest. The principle of settling matters by an appeal to the vote was simply the appeal to brute force by other means — an appeal to might as opposed as an appeal to right. The statement ‘We have a majority,’ meant nothing more than, ‘We can fight you.’ But might apart from right settled nothing. As the German people discovered after 1933, wrong principles would not work, however great the majority by which they were endorsed. The libertarian view of democracy, explained Robert, hinged on the individual participation of each and every citizen in the decision-making process. The bottom line in social and political relationships, he emphasised, was not the corrupting nature of power and arbitrary authority, but the human proclivity to obedience and deference. It wasn’t simply what Robert said, but the wonderful idea implicit in this view of how things should be: anarchism was a ‘way of life’ rather than a view of the future. It was not a theory, a philosophy, a ‘programme for life’, nor yet a description of how individuals and society should be, but a whole new way of looking at the world, values, principles, moralities, belief systems, ideologies and social relationships. It was a glimpse of perfection; something against which I could measure myself. I was exhilarated: this was the most elegant solution I had heard so far, something which was not merely logical and all-encompassing of life, but noble and worthwhile as well. It was an idea whose time had come. It was the moment when Parsifal first saw the castle of the Holy Grail. Even so, many puzzling, fascinating and important questions relating to the reality of the ‘perfectibility’ of man, the nature of power and deference, selfinterest or ‘common sense’, cynicism, irrational and anti-social behaviour remained unanswered. Appealing to man’s natural goodness may not be good realpolitik, but it was the best possible ethical yardstick against which one could measure one’s own personal standards of integrity and behaviour. Bobby had opened up a vista of a dazzling new world of powerful almost religious ideas as to how we should live and behave, but it was one I had to explore and try to understand on my own. The answers to the more philosophical and ‘common sense’ questions would have to wait. I was impatient and didn’t need any more convincing after

158

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

all the intellectual chicanery, humbug and doublespeak I’d heard and seen among the Marxist sophists and parasites who condoned and excused Leninist and Trotskyist atrocities and pursued paid and unpaid official positions in the Labour Party and the trade unions. I knew instinctively this was one of the cogs of history, the ‘big’ idea for which I’d been looking. Its essence was captured in the declaration drafted by Michael Bakunin and signed by forty-seven anarchists during their trial after the failure of the Lyons uprising in 1870: ‘We wish, in a word, equality — equality in fact as corollary, or, rather, as a primordial condition of liberty. From each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is what we wish sincerely and energetically.’ My first visit to Ross Street gave me an insight into the ‘dark side’ of Glasgow, one which I had previously known nothing about. It was dark and raining when I got off the tramcar at Glasgow Cross and as I hurried up the empty street under the railway bridge towards the Barrows, I suddenly found myself squeezed between two sinisterlooking, razor-scarred, Glasgow hard men who appeared from nowhere and pushed me towards a close mouth. ‘Wherr ur you goin’ ’, said one. ‘Tae see a friend’, said I. ‘ ’Zat right’, said he. ‘Whaurr’s zis freen live?’ said the other. ‘Ross Street’, says I, trying not to sound fearful. ‘Whit’s his name, then, pal?’ said the first one. ‘Robert Lynn’, said I, and with the mention of Robert’s name the mood changed as though the sun had come out from behind a dark cloud. The second one said, sternly: ‘A wee boy like you shouldna be walkin’ the streets o’ the Calton on yer own’ and with that they escorted me right to the door of 7 Ross Street, chatting away as if they had known me all their lives. The Glasgow Anarchist Group met in this derelict ground floor single-end at 7 Ross Street, off the Gallowgate, next to the Glasgow Barrows. The room doubled as a ‘shebeen’, an illegal-drinking house where people came to drink or buy cheap South African fortified wines such as Lanliq. The scene, when I entered the room, through a dark lobby, was dramatic. The room, lit by a naked lightbulb, was bare except for a long table around which were seated the unlikeliest looking collection of people I had seen in my life. It was Callan; meets G.K.Chesterton’s Man Who Was Thursday; it was Alphonse Bertillon’s private photo album. Old ‘Red Clydesiders’, William Clarke Quantrill’s Confederate Army guerrilla raiders and ‘The Hole in the Wall Gang’ had come to life in a single end in Glasgow’s Calton.

159

Peter Manuel: the last murderer hanged in Scotland.

Glasgow’s Anarchists

At the head of the long table sat Robert, who made me feel immediately welcome with a smile, a wave, a brief introduction to those seated at the table, a mug of sweet brown fortified wine and a chair. The ominous hush that had descended on the room when I made my entrance immediately lifted and the lively debate picked up where it had left off. Some of the men in this room were quite awesome, massively built and heavily scarred about their faces and appeared to me unusually aggressive with each other. One in particular, Scout O’Neill, had hands like a Belfast ham. If guns were to be bought in Glasgow, it would be here. In fact, Peter Manuel, the last man to be hanged in Scotland, in July 1958, was convicted because Scout had turned Queen’s Evidence when he discovered Manuel was a suspect in a series of seven murders in and around Glasgow between 1954 and 1958. Scout had sold him a gun, a Webley revolver, supposedly for a robbery he said he was planning. The heated and sometimes bellicose discussions were constantly disrupted by wee wifies coming in with empty jugs to buy wine. After the meetings we would usually go across the road to the Saracen’s Head, Robert’s local, one of the oldest and, at the time, one of the most notorious pubs in Glasgow. Robert had lived in Ross Street all his life. He and his wife Jean had a ‘single end’ (a room and a kitchen) upstairs from the shebeen. Like his French Stirnerite companions of ‘the idea’ — such as Jules Bonnot of the Bande A Bonnot, an anarchist group of bank expropriators in 1910 (who were the first organised robbers to use motor cars), and Marius Jacob whose 40-strong anarchist group burgled their way through the stately homes of France a few years earlier — Robert’s interpretation of anarchism gave meaning and legitimacy to the often questionable activities of some Hogarthian local characters. Many of these were regular participants in the Ross Street meetings and these were the faces around the table on that first night. There was nothing doctrinaire about these meetings; everyone spoke as they found, some of it bordering on twhat would be described todat as ‘nonpolitically correct’, I thought, but all of them had the heart of the matter in them — socialism, in its truest sense. The younger, newer Glasgow anarchists, in spite of Robert Lynn’s Stirnerite sympathies, were solidly anarchosyndicalist and we regularly sold Direct Action, the paper of the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation on the street corners of Glasgow. Robert’s favourite leisure pastime was organising ‘bus runs’ and he and Jean would put these on regularly for us and the couthy folk of the Calton. The ‘bus runs’ were a ‘rerr terr’ (Glaswegian for ‘top form’) and we all had a great time with our ‘cairy-oots’ and ‘sannies’. Occasionally we would stop at a café or restaurant for lunch and Scout O’Neill’s party trick, when the plate of steak pie, peas and potatoes arrived at

160

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

the table, was to put his massive hands over the dinner plate and thus completely cover it. Scout always led the singing; in fact he acquired his sobriquet because he was constantly singing the Dave Willis song with the refrain I’m a scout, scout, scout. * On one occasion we went on a bus run to Burntisland on the Firth of Forth, near Rosyth naval dockyard, and we had a visiting French anarchist with us, a lad of about 21 who also happened to be a deserter from the French Navy. The bar, in the British Legion hall, was full of ugly-looking Glasgow anarchists and Royal Navy sailors, plus some from a French naval vessel in port, but the atmosphere was friendly — until after a few ‘bevies’ a French sailor chatting to our French comrade called him a ‘coward’. Our man immediately threw a punch at the sailor and in a moment the place was in an uproar with chairs thrown at the bar, *I’m A Scout tables upturned and people swinging fists, glasses ‘When I was young my mother told me always to be good and bottles at each other. I felt as though I had been And do the best I could for everyone. transported to the set of a John Wayne movie. So I’ve taken her advice I’ve joined the gallant scouts The French Navy came off worse that night. I I joined because I felt just in the mood. imagine they thought they’d docked in Marseilles by My duty is to do a good deed almost every day mistake! We made a hasty retreat to where the bus And as I go along the road you’ll always hear me say was parked, taking time to set fire to the Union Jack For I’m a scout, scout, scout, and you’ll always hear me shout on the flagpole outside the bar, and all the time you Curlew! paloo, paloo, it’s my patrol could hear Scout singing ‘For I’m a scout, scout, I scout about, about, about, just to try and find things out scout….’ I’m as good as a bloodhound wi’ my hat and pole.’

Reading Matters THE BOOKS I was introduced to at this time included Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, also Modern Science and Anarchism, which described his model of how an anarchist society might work: ‘The anarchists conceive a society in which all the mutual relations of its members are regulated, not by laws, not by authorities, whether self-imposed or elected, but by mutual agreements between the members of that society, and by a sum of social customs and habits — not petrified by law, routine, or superstition, but continually developing and continually readjusted, in accordance with the evergrowing requirements of a free life, stimulated by the progress of science, invention, and the steady growth of higher ideals. No ruling authorities, then. No government of man by man; no crystallisation and immobility, but a continual evolution — such as we see in Nature.’ Ironically, George Woodcock’s book Anarchism, which appeared in 1963 and which wrote off the anarchist movement, as opposed to the idea, helped fuel the interest in anarchism inasmuch as it was published by Penguin, with national distribution, and provided a useful overview of the movement’s history and its different strands of thought. By the time the book reached the shops, the anarchist movement in Britain and Europe was probably stronger than at any time in its history.

161

Glasgow’s Anarchists

Books on anarchism* other than those published by Freedom Press were few and far between. One important book, Voline’s The Unknown Revolution, explored social revolution by the Russian people as opposed to the seizure of political power by the Bolsheviks. Voline documented in great detail the creative efforts of workers, peasants and intellectuals to launch a free society based on local initiative and autonomy before it was finally destroyed by followers of Lenin. It also recounted the exploits of the neglected Nestor Makhno, the anarchist partisan leader, one of the most heroic figures of the Russian Revolution and Civil war. Makhno’s movement in the Ukraine represented, along with Spain in 1936 to 1937, one of the few occasions in history where anarchists controlled a large territory for an extended period of time. For more than a year he was a greater power on the steppe than either Trotsky or Denikin, the commander of the White forces. A born military leader, like Spartacus, Makhno fought simultaneously on several fronts, opposing Whites as well as Reds, Austrian invaders and Ukrainian nationalists — not to speak of the countless bands of irregulars who crossed and re-crossed the steppe in search of plunder and booty. According to the Bolsheviks’ admirerVictor Serge, he was a ‘strategist of unsurpassed ability,’ whose peasant army ‘possessed a truly epic capacity for organisation and battle’. * Anarchism – A Definition AT THIS JUNCTURE it would probably be helpful to give a summary of the idea which won me over so completely at such a young age. Anarchism encompasses such a broad view of the world that it cannot easily be distilled into a formal definition. Mikhail Bakunin, a man of action whose writings and example over a century ago did most to transform anarchism from an abstract critique of political power into a theory of practical social action, defined its fundamental tenet thus: — ‘In a word, we reject all privileged, licensed, official, and legal legislation and authority, even though it arise from universal suffrage, convinced that it could only turn to the benefit of a dominant and exploiting minority, and against the interests of the vast enslaved majority.’ Anarchism is a movement for human freedom. It is concrete, democratic and egalitarian. It is rooted in normality as opposed to eccentricity. It has existed and developed since the seventeenth century, with a philosophy and a defined outlook that have evolved and grown with time and circumstance. Anarchism began — and remains — a direct challenge by the underprivileged to their oppression and exploitation. It opposes both the insidious growth of state power and the pernicious ethos of possessive individualism, which, together or separately, ultimately serve only the interests of the few at the expense of the rest. Anarchism is both a theory and practice of life. Philosophically, it aims for the maximum accord between the individual, society and nature. Practically, it aims for us to organise and live our lives in such a way as to make politicians, governments, states and their officials superfluous. In an anarchist society, mutually respectful sovereign individuals would be organised in non-coercive relationships within naturally defined communities in which the means of production and distribution are held in common. Anarchists are not dreamers obsessed with abstract principles and theoretical constructs. Events are ruled by chance and people's actions depend on long-held habits and on psychological and emotional factors that are often antisocial and usually unpredictable. Anarchists are well aware that a perfect society cannot be won tomorrow. Indeed, the struggle lasts forever! However, it (continued on next page)

162

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

The Summer Of 1963 IN GLASGOW, as in other major British towns, the summer of 1963 was busy with demonstrations. One focus of our attention was the Cuban consulate over the current wave of repression against the Cuban anarchists who were challenging the seizure of power by the Cuban Communist Party under the leadership of Fidel Castro and his viperish brother, RaĂşl. Hundreds of Cuban anarchists had played an important part in the urban and guerrilla struggle against Batista in the Escambray and Eastern mountains and endured persecution, torture, death and exile for their part in protest campaigns (including armed campaigns) targeting the dictatorship. The attempted Bay of Pigs invasion at the Playa Giron on 17 April 1961 had given Fidel Castro the final excuse he needed to liquidate the domestic opposition, which included the anarchists, many of whom were being arrested, imprisoned and tortured. In fact, the anti-anarchist purges had begun as early as January 1959, shortly after the flight of Batista.

Their Man in Havana THE SOVIETS had discovered early on that Fidel Castro was a person sufficiently adroit, politically, to claim the credit for the success of the revolution â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a success that actually belonged to the spectrum of social forces which had confronted Batista. The bourgeois-rancher image of the young Castro ensured that Cubans never suspected what Fidel himself was to declare Anarchism: a definition (continued from previous page) is the vision that provides the spur to struggle against things as they are, and for things that might be. Whatever the immediate prospects of achieving a free society, and however remote the ideal, if we value our common humanity then we must never cease to strive to realise our vision. To settle for anything less means we are little more than beasts of burden at the service of the privileged few, without much to gain from life other than a lighter load, better feed and a cosier berth. Ultimately, only struggle determines outcome, and progress towards a more meaningful community must begin with the will to resist every form of injustice. In general terms, this means challenging all exploitation and defying the legitimacy of all coercive authority. If anarchists have one article of unshakable faith, it is that, once the habit of deferring to politicians or ideologues is lost, and that of resistance to domination and exploitation acquired, then ordinary people have a capacity to organise every aspect of their lives in their own interests, anywhere and at any time, both freely and fairly. Anarchists do not stand aside from popular struggle, nor do they attempt to dominate it. They seek to contribute to it practically whatever they can, and also to assist within it the highest possible levels both of individual self-development and of group solidarity. It is possible to recognise anarchist ideas concerning voluntary relationships, egalitarian participation in decision-making processes, mutual aid and a related critique of all forms of domination in philosophical, social and revolutionary movements in all times and places. Elsewhere, the less formal practices and struggles of the more indomitable among the propertyless and disadvantaged victims of the authority system have found articulation in the writings of those who on brief acquaintance would appear to be mere millenarian dreamers. Far from being abstract speculations conjured out of thin air, such works have, like all social theories, been derived from sensitive observation. They reflect the fundamental and uncontainable conviction nourished by a conscious minority throughout history that social power held over people is a usurpation of natural rights: power originates in the people, and they alone have, together, the right to wield it.

163

The Summer of ‘63

in 1961, that he had been a convinced (albeit unripe) Marxist ever since the start of the armed struggle. All his actions and political statements from that time were designed to create confusion about his real ideological beliefs. Many had fallen into the trap of taking Castro for a libertarian, including the propaganda chief of the Partido Socialista Popular (the Cuban Stalinist party) Luis Más Martín, who tried to use Raúl to bring influence to bear on Fidel. As late as 1959 Luis Más Martín expressed the view that Fidel was an anarchist whose hatred of the United States would force him into the arms of the (Communist) Party, especially if the Americans ‘Carried on acting so silly’. The likelihood is that Soviet strategists preferred to keep intelligence on their plans for Cuba compartmentalised between the new right hand (the KGB) and the Stalinist old left in place in the island since the 1920s. Which would explain why Mas Martin and other PSP leaders were ignorant of Soviet plans for the Cuban revolution. The first revolutionary government appeared liberal. President Manuel Urrutia, appointed by Fidel Castro, had, as a magistrate, defended Fidel Castro’s right to rebel against the Batista dictatorship, but had at the same time declared his own opposition to Soviet imperialism, a line that he shared with many other militants of the 26 July Movement and other revolutionary organisations. They believed in Fidel all right, but had no faith in Raúl Castro or in Ernesto Ché Guevara, both self-confessed Soviet supporters. It soon became clear that the new provisional government had no real power and within months President Urrutia was forced to resign as a result of an intrigue that he himself dubbed the ‘17 July coup d’état’. Communist infiltration of the leadership of the Cuban anarchists Among the anti-Batista fighters there were many Revolutionary movement was denounced by anarchists such as Boris Santa Coloma (killed in the Commandante Huber Matos, the Camagüey military attack on the Moncada barracks), Miguel Rivas leader. (disappeared), Aquiles Iglesias and Barbeito Álvarez (banished) as well as Isidro Moscú, Roberto Bretau, Camilo Cienfuegos, the widely respected guerrilla Manuel Gerona, Rafaél Cerra, Modesto Barbieta, Maria veteran and charismatic military commander with Pinar González, Dr Pablo Madan, Plácido Méndez, strong libertarian and anarchist connections, had been Eulogio Reloba (and his sons), Abelardo Iglesias and Mario García (plus their eldest sons). These were all jailed asked by Fidel Castro to go into the Sierra de Escambray and sometimes tortured nearly to death as was the case to plead with Comandante Huber Matos, the guerrilla with Isidro Moscú. Anarchists were involved in all of the leader, to return from the Sierra where he had gone in guerrilla campaigns. protest at Castro’s conversion to Marxism Leninism. Gilberto Liman and Luis Linsuain had been involved Cienfuegos succeeded in talking Comandante Matos with the guerrillas in Oriente while one of the leading lights of the Escambray guerrillas was Plácido Méndez. In into returning to Havana, but as soon as he arrived the capital itself, the premises of the Havana Libertarian Matos was arrested on the orders of Raúl and Fidel Association was used regularly for underground meetings Castro who charged him with treason and demanded he of both the 26 July Movement and the Revolutionary Directory. be shot. This treachery led to a violent argument

January 1959: the ‘barbudos’ enter Havana as Batista flees. Castro stands behind Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos who later died in mysterious circumstances after a row with the Castros.

164

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

between Raúl Castro and Comandante Cienfuegos, who physically attacked Raúl. Fidel’s malicious brother never forgot the ignominy. It was in the middle of the Huber Matos trial that Camilo Cienfuegos perished in what the regime described as a ‘plane crash’. According to the official Cuban account, Cienfuegos’s small Piper aircraft was shot down by mistake by a Cuban air force plane over the bahia de la Gloria in the north of Camaguey province. The pilot responsible was never court-martialled nor was there ever any investigation into the untimely death of this hero of the revolution. However, a different version of events surrounding Cienfuegos’s death was offered by Captain Roberto Cárdenas, commander of the Camagüey Air Base at the time of the crash. Cárdenas, an anti-Communist, had been a personal friend of Cienfuegos and had fought the Batista tyranny with him in ‘Column 14’, in which he had been head of intelligence: ‘In fact what happened was that Camilo was killed by Fidel, no less, in the Presidential Palace at roughly 9.30 on the night of 27 October, the date of the rally calling for Huber Matos to be shot. Pepita Riera was in the Presidential Palace during the rally at which the masses were being whipped up into demanding that Huber Matos be shot. ‘Fidel, Raúl and Almeida addressed the crowds that night, but Camilo refused to speak on their platform. Later he upbraided Raúl and told him that their behaviour in inciting the masses to demand the shooting of Commandante Matos, who had in fact done nothing wrong, had been disgraceful. ‘An angry Raúl replied, insulting Camilo, who told him that if he carried on like that he was going to kill him right there. There was another witness whose name cannot be revealed just yet but who was present at the sequel to this argument. According to him, the voices grew louder until, suddenly, a shot rang out, followed by another shot. This witness then heard Raúl cry out: ‘You’ve killed him!’ This happened in one of the rooms in the Presidential Palace where they were meeting. ‘There are also accounts of Fidel requiring medical attention later that night, having suffered a nervous breakdown and becoming hysterical.’ As an officer of the Rebel Air Force and an experienced pilot, Captain Cárdenas felt there were inconsistencies in the search for Cienfuegos’s plane and organised a parallel one. He apparently stumbled across the aircraft on a farm known as La Larga located 25 miles southeast of Camagüey, hidden under silage and with its marking blanked out. Two potential rivals to the Castro brothers and obstacles to the sovietisation of Cuba had been eliminated in rapid succession. Soon afterwards, the third rival, Ché, walked away from his revolution and his new homeland in Cuba and set off for his death in Bolivia. THAT SUMMER OF 1963 also saw demonstrations against the Greek Consulate in Glasgow over the July visit of the king and queen of Greece. This was the memorable occasion when the British Royal family, who had been

165

The Summer of ‘63

Robert (on the right) and Jean Lynn with friend on a ‘bus run’.

accompanying the Greek Queen on a royal procession around London, had been booed in the streets for the first time in centuries. This demo (which led to the arrest of 43 people, including Holy Loch canoeist Terry Chandler who was sentenced the following January to nine months’ imprisonment) exposed the activities of the infamous Detective Sergeant Harold ‘Tanky’ Challenor, an ex-SAS trooper and a CID officer with a reputation as a loony and a bully in London’s West End, who had planted a brick in the pocket of the anarchist cartoonist Donald Rooum. Donald had been arrested during a demonstration outside Claridge’s Hotel in London, where the Greek royals were staying. Challenor reportedly struck him a violent blow on the ear and arrested him, saying: ‘I’ve got a desperate one here.’ Challenor hit him again in West End Central police station in Saville Row and said ‘Boo the Queen, would you’ then hit him three more times. The bully-boy sergeant then produced a piece of brick saying ‘There you are me old darling. Carrying an offensive weapon can get you two years’. Fortunately Donald had his wits about him and refused police bail to ensure he was held in custody overnight so that he would be able to go direct from the police station to an independent forensic expert next day. When his jacket was examined, there was no trace of brick dust on it or in any of his pockets. ‘Tanky’ Challenor had planted his last piece of evidence on those he saw as ‘the deserving guilty’. He suffered a mental breakdown and never stood trial. Even so, it was difficult for Donald Rooum to prove his innocence. Robey, the magistrate at Marlborough Street, clung to his belief that the police were always right and convicted others on the same charge, even after Donald proved his innocence. In Glasgow Robert Lynn organised a ‘bus run’ up to Perth and Kinross in November as part of an anti-by-election campaign to stop Alec DouglasHome, the ex-earl who sought to be MP for Perth and Kinross and then leader of the Tories and Prime Minister. In fact, we ended up supporting the Private Eye candidate Willie Rushton. The experience was educational; it was the first time I saw with my own eyes the feudal power exerted by a hereditary few — the aristocracy, gentry and wealthy bourgeoisie. I actually saw grown men, tenant sheep farmers, mostly, tug their forelocks in the presence of the ex-14th Earl of Home, the soon-to-be Prime Minister.

The Glasgow Federation of Anarchists THE OFFICE the Glasgow Committee of 100 shared with the Independent

166

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Labour Party, up a close at 48 Dundas Street, had been a magnet for young people of similar persuasion to myself. It was these people, dissident and disenchanted members of the Young Socialists and the Young Communist League who brought new blood and a new focus into the Glasgow Anarchist Group. By this time many of my pals in the Glasgow Committee of 100 had come to accept an anarchist or near-anarchist position. We were mostly young, and found that the old working-class anarchist movement that had flourished on the Clyde for years was now very much an ageing one. Its supporters were workers who had been worn down prematurely after a lifetime of struggle against not only the capitalist system, but also by the constant machinations of the Labour and Communist parties. Refreshingly, they were neither bitter nor frustrated at the lack of impact they made among the workers, but this had to do with the fact that they saw their role as educational — awakening people as to the nature of freedom, not party- or mass-movement-building. They certainly drew large crowds to the open forums in Renfrew Street on a Saturday morning. For all of them, however, the one thing which had caused them to hope that freedom might really be a possibility in their time was the experience of the 1936 revolution in Spain In the late 1930s in Glasgowit was thought possible that anarchism might become a reality. People like ‘Big Frank’ Leech, a tireless speaker and organiser, had addressed huge crowds of workers on the revolutionary struggle of the Spanish anarchists. Many Glasgow and Lanarkshire workers still remembered him. He had brought people like the veteran American militant Emma Goldman to Glasgow. Emma made the issues involved in the Spanish struggle clear to all who heard her. To find those hopes evaporated with the crushing of the revolution in late 1937 in the pursuit of a mythical anti-fascist unity — a device of the bourgeois republicans and Comintern agents whose sole purpose was to crush the revolution and halt the workers’ socialisation of the land and factories of Spain under workers’ control to the detriment of the Spanish middle classes, industrialists and Stalinist foreign policy — must have been a dispiriting blow to a lot of the older anarchists. We admired those militants who had survived with hope and without cynicism into the fifties and sixties, but their energies had long since been absorbed by their trade union militancy. There was no dispute about the need for such militancy, but we felt that in the current political and cultural atmosphere, the struggle we were then involved in was the one which could lead to a situation which we could escalate to breaking point if pushed hard enough — and we were the boys to do it. It felt as though anything was possible. We were young minds with limitless boundaries, imagination and a wide political horizon.

167

British Anarchist Milieu in the 60s

The British Anarchist Milieu In The 60s BY THE SUMMER of 1963 the national press had started to pick up on the growing influence of anarchists and anarchist ideas within the anti-war and peace movement. One of the newspapers’ tactics in their coverage of the nuclear disarmament movement was to work up fear of insecurity in the respectable middle classes, portraying the movement as divided between moderate and undesirable elements, with the latter driving out the former, particularly in relation to the Committee of 100. In July 1963, prior to the Greek royal visit on 9-12 July, the Sunday Telegraph pointed out that the Metropolitan Police Special Branch feared that ‘anarchist extremists, acting independently of any organisation, will become violent’ during the Greek royal visit. The Sunday Telegraph quoted Michael Harwood, then secretary of the London Committee of 100, as saying there was ‘a danger of violence from unruly elements’. The paper went on: ‘The Anarchist movement in Britain is non-violent, but it is known that there is a minority of dissenters. At present, a controversy on the use of force is being carried out in the correspondence columns of the anarchist journal “Freedom”.’ This was followed in a Sunday Times Focus feature on Canon Collins, leader of the CND, who was quoted as saying: ‘As an anarchist fringe has recently been very prominent in the movement, the task [of keeping the right kind of balance in CND] is all the more difficult. Inevitably this means that we sacrifice a good deal of support from what you might call the more normal public.’ Professor Ritchie Calder, vice chairman of CND, added that he did not approve of widening the movement’s terms of reference beyond the nuclear issue: ‘Anarchist elements have always been latent — now they are coming out. You’ve got to remember this generation has strontium in its bones and sputniks in its eyes; older people can’t understand.’ Calder continued saying he was convinced that most of the trouble in Scotland had been caused by a lunatic fringe of anarchists, and not the communists who have sometimes got the blame: ‘People do anything under the CND label, but here the anarchists are the biggest danger for those of us who want CND to be a protest of decency.’ The Sunday Times piece concluded: ‘Nuclear disarmers of all shades of opinion agree on one thing — frustration, and hence hasty and extreme action often results from increasing attempts by authority to restrict their protests. Canon Collins, speaking with great passion, should have the last word. “I think the authorities are mad, quite mad to bottle up this kind of frustration and you can quote me on that. It will only get worse. There’s always a risk that in the face of provocation people will despair of democracy.“’

168

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

ON A NATIONAL level in 1963-1964 there were probably about 500 or 600 anarchists actively involved in group activities in cities like London, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, and Bristol and in a number of universities. The anarcho-syndicalists were organised in the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation (SWF), a membership-based movement with regular meetings and national and international contacts. It was part of the First International, the International Working Men’s Association (AIT) based in Toulouse which was headed mainly by Spanish CNT comrades and the ‘intercontinental secretariat’ of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist labour union. Because of this there was a close affinity and regular contacts with the CNT in exile. In the late 1950s the SWF held meetings in a shabby printshop off the Harrow Road, later moving to the Pindar of Wakefield pub in Grays Inn Road. The group’s organisational highpoint had been in July 1961 when it organised a meeting at Denison House with the Spanish National Confederation of Labour (CNT), the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL), the London Anarchist Group and the Jewish Freie Arbeiter Stimme to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the workers crushing of the military uprising in Spain. More than 300 people had attended the gathering. Its monthly newspaper Direct Action (DA) was printed on an ancient handfed press with an enormous cast iron flywheel jokingly referred to as the press used by Kropotkin to print the first numbers of Freedom. The SWF had been formed in 1946 after a split in the nascent end-of-war Anarchist Federation of Britain in 1944. The split had resulted from the disagreements between, on the one hand, the anarcho-syndicalists around Tom Brown, an engineering shop steward, rank-and-file militant and community activist who had been on the editorial board of War Commentary throughout the war years and, on the other, Vernon Richards and George Woodcock. The dispute concerned the re-launch and control of the newspaper Freedom from the ashes of the wartime publication War Commentary. The feeling among the anarcho-syndicalists was that they had been victims of a shameless coup by the pacifists and intellectuals who were out to sideline the class-struggle oriented anarchists and shift Freedom towards a more literary, artistic and academic focus. It also provided the new self-appointed editorial board with a user-friendly publishing vehicle with which to pursue their own career paths and bohemian social affectations. When the Anarchist Federation of Britain changed its name to the SWF, following its affiliation to the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA), Tom became one of the principal driving forces in the SWF. Other, later, activists included Direct Action editor Ken Hawkes, a sports journalist on both the Reynolds News and the Sunday Citizen, (and later a producer of ‘The World’s Strongest Man’ events on TV) his wife, Brian and Margaret Hart, Mark Hendy and his companion Lynn Hutt, Irish Mike Callinan, who was a regular Hyde Park speaker and SWF Secretary, Bill Christopher, a Fleet Street print worker.

169

British Anarchist Milieu in the 60s

The Spaniard who most regularly attended SWF meetings was the one-eyed José (Joe) Mafe and his English companion, May Wrighton. Joe, I believe, had been a CNT ‘jailer’ during the Revolution. Pete Turner, a carpenter and joiner was another regular attender although he was never a member. Other occasional cosmopolitan transients passed through from Africa, Asia and North and South America, including a one-legged Bulgarian comrade. There was also an American who claimed to be a veteran Wobbly (member of the North American Industrial Workers of the World, IWW), Ralph Rosenbaum. National membership of the SWF in 1964 was probably in the region of around 50 regular sub-paying members. The group which centred on Freedom Press and Freedom Bookshop with its Dickensian premises in Angel Alley, off Whitechapel High Street, a property owned by Vernon Richards, was considered elitist inasmuch as it was not answerable to any movement or anyone other than its eccentric, cantankerous, arrogant and manipulative publisher, Vernon Richards. As mentioned earlier, the weekly paper metamorphosed through a process of breathtaking legerdemain from War Commentary into Freedom, which had suspended publication in 1932. Richards was the son of Emilio Recchioni, an Italian anarchist shopkeeper who owned the well-known ‘King Bomba’ delicatessen in Soho and had been friendly with the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta. The Daily Telegraph had named Recchioni as the financial backer of a 1926 assassination attempt on Mussolini and caused ‘King Bomba’ to be investigated by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch. Recchioni sued the Telegraph and won a large sum in damages which, legend has it, was used in further attempts on Mussolini. Unlike his friend and comrade Camillo Berneri, Vernon Richards did not go to Spain to fight in the Civil War. Instead he married his friend’s daughter, the charismatic and beautiful anarchist writer, Marie-Louise Berneri, and went to London University to study engineering. From 1936 to 1939 he edited an English-language newspaper, Spain and the World, financed by the CNT-FAI, which was published throughout the Spanish Civil War. After the collapse of the Spanish revolution, he changed its name to Revolt! then, when World War II broke out he changed this name to War Commentary. He also applied to be registered as a conscientious objector, but this was rejected — not that it mattered all that much as he was in a reserved occupation working for the railways. Released from a nine month prison sentence in 1946 for conspiring to ‘contravene Defence Regulation 39A’ by inciting soldiers to disaffection, Richards changed the name of the paper again to Freedom. Vero Richards ‘owned’ Freedom and its printer, Express Printers. He had put his name forward in 1942 as the registered proprietor of Express Printers in a move designed to sidestep the possibilit of a banning order on War Commentary and the confiscation of its presses. He used this legalism to become the de facto owner of Freedom and its printer, Express Printers.

170

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Richards ran ‘King Bomba’ after the war and then sold it in the early 50s after his mother died. For the remainder of that decade and the early 60s Richards had his own travel agency, actively promoting tourism both to Spain and Russia. This was at a time when the international labour and anarchist movement was engaged in trying to organise boycotts of Franco’s Spain and Stalinist and Khruschovian Russia. His defence was that the links formed by tourism were ‘liberatory’, but he would have said that anyway. In 1968 he acquired the lease of the building at 84b Whitechapel High Street, in Angel Alley, in Aldgate, East London, which housed the printshop, bookshop, library, storeroom and meeting rooms. He also controlled the purse strings of the holding company, The Freedom Group, which focused solely on publishing the weekly anarchist newspaper Freedom, the journal Anarchy (edited by Colin Ward, an architect whose reputed claim to fame was designing Milton Keynes), pamphlets and books. Freedom itself was edited by a group arbitrarily co-opted by Vernon Richards. In 1964 its circulation was reported to be around 3-4,000. In my view, the role of Freedom since WWII has proven seriously divisive within the British anarchist movement. Funds to support these ventures were raised mainly through Richards’ sociometric network of generous old Italian comrades, mainly in the United States. There were a few other anarchist groups such as the Freie Arbeiter Stimme (Free Voice of Labour). These militants were the last remnants of the hundredyear old Jewish anarchist movement in London which still hung on by a thread at that time in the East End of London, but everything they did, socials, publications, and so on was in Yiddish, the common archaic low-German language of East European and Russian Jews. This proved a major obstacle to close relations, and contact with the Spanish and English-speaking movement was sporadic to say the least. There were also Stirnerite individualists; anarcho-communists, who believed that the community was society’s centre, not the individual; pacifist anarchists; anarcho-Marxists, people who tried to fuse libertarian Marxist with anarchist theories, mainly from the Solidarity Group and the Independent Labour Party, and, also Catholic anarchists. Briefly, for those to whom this is arcane jargon, the anarcho-syndicalist concept of a federal society is based not on geographical communities, but on factories, workshops and industries. The syndicate — the self-organised labour force at the place of work — provides both the instrument to seize control of the means of production — farms, factories, shipyards and so on — in an expropriatory general strike and run them to provide for human need; this would be the economic basis of the new society. Wage labour would be abolished and production in each workplace managed by an elected committee subject always to immediate recall and responsible to the general workplace assembly, the syndicate; the syndicates

171

British Anarchist Milieu in the 60s

would link up in federations, factories joining with factories, industries with industries in a coordinated network driven from the base so that the workers retain responsibility and control. Basically, it would be the full participation of all within a free, communistic society with strict accountability of committee delegates to the rank and file. It was a system which had developed naturally and worked successfully in revolutionary Spain between July 1936 and November 1937 when its exemplary flame was, to all intents and purposes, suffocated by Stalinist and Social Democratic forces in the name of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;anti-fascist unityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

172

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Spain And Franco

EVOLUTIONARY SPAIN between July 1936 and November 1937, particularly in Catalonia and Aragón, provided, for us, the most shining model as to how an anarchist society could and did work in practice. The anarchist theory of revolution holds that human society is divided, not as the Marxists contend, purely by a class struggle between property owners and the dispossessed, but also by a struggle between governors and subjects, between freedom and authority. Its guiding principle — based on the experience of centuries that on every occasion when the people have entrusted their fate to authority, that authority has ended up enslaving them — is the belief that ‘liberty’ and ‘justice’ cannot be upheld through state power or any authority principle, even by the most apparently enlightened and radical political leadership, including that of the CNT and the FAI. Unfortunately, after a year, faced with the machinations of the Spanish Communist Party and the Soviet Union, as well as the military, diplomatic and political realities of the Spanish Civil War, the leadership of the anarchosyndicalist CNT abandoned the fundamental planks of their anarchist principles and accepted the centralisation of power through the Central Antifascist Militias Committee. This effectively prevented the factory and barrio (neighbourhood) organisations and agricultural collectives, set up to form the basic units of the new society and counteract the fascist rising, from consolidating and developing as organs of the popular will.

1963: Franco — The Surviving Axis Dictator WHY HAD THE Franco regime, the last of the Axis powers, been able to survive domestically for twenty-five years? Apart from bullfights and fiestas, the answer could only be that the consent of the Spanish people was now grounded upon general acceptance — acquiescence — rather than simply out of fear. The mass of Spaniards had been lulled into believing that Franco was a wise, just and benevolent ruler. Consent had been engineered largely through propaganda generated by the regime’s specialised intellectual apologists, the ultra-conservative Roman Catholic technocrats of Opus Dei who provided the regime with a specious ideology based on medieval Catholic faith, fascist governance, an authoritarian model of the family, anti-freemasonry and zealous anti-communism. In reality, Franco was possibly more anti-Masonic than he was anti-communist. (Despite this, he had his own personal masonic ‘temple’ and a private collection of masonic knick-knacks.) This can be seen in the precedence of masonry in the 1940 ‘Law for the Suppression of Freemasonry and Communism’.

173

Axis to grind: Hitler greets Franco on his arrival at Hendaye on the FrenchSpanish border, 23 October 1940.

Spain And Franco

The victors: ecclesiastical, political and military leaders of the Francoist rebellion outside the Basilica of Santiago de Compostela, 25 July 1937. (Left to right): Monseñor Antonio Gracía, Archbishop of Tui (Galicia); José María Peman; Monseñor Rafael Balauri, Archbishop of Santiago; General Antonio Aranda Matá; General Davila; Monseñor Eijo y Garay, Archbishop of Madrid-Alcalá.

Franco described all foreign pressure for democratic change as ‘the masonic offensive’ and firmly believed that the UN and the EC were engaged with communism in a conspiracy to destroy Spain. In his mind freemasonry was the instrument by which the British had destroyed the Spanish empire. The reverence accorded to Franco by the Church presented him as the captain of the besieged Numantine fortress, the new El Cid Campeador, the great crusader, and the Sentinel of the West all rolled into one, inducing admiration and imputing to him and his regime the status of near divinity. Supporters of the regime could be classified as knaves, dupes, and the plain indolent: the knaves were those who saw in the regime an instrument which they could use for their own self-aggrandisement. The dupes were those who genuinely believed it was for the best while the indolent knew what was happening but chose not to make waves or sacrifice their private interests. Bread and gold, as well as circuses, played their parts in the sustenance of the Franco regime. The most important prop was the hierarchy of subordinate allies — Franco’s loyal band of retainers, praetorians, prelates and bureaucrats. The key to the regime’s ability to dominate had little to do with charitable handouts, but with the complicity of those people who made a handsome and permanent living out of the proceeds of Francoism. Their stake in despotism did not depend on illusion, self-delusion habit or mystery — it was all too great and all too real. A powerful hierarchy of patronage had evolved from the fruits of plunder of 1939. The dozen or so key advisers and principal beneficiaries of Franco’s favours had been granted large swathes of land, important properties, the government of provinces, the control of ministries and monopolies, directorgeneralships, etc., in return for a commitment to serve as instruments of policy. These people executed orders unquestioningly at the appropriate time and, in turn, maintained below them further concatenating networks of dependants who profited under them and were dependent on them for promotion and advancement — and so on. In this way the oppressive hierarchical pyramid permeated down through the ranks of Spanish society until hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — were bound to Franco by this cord. By the early 1960s there were possibly as many people to whom Francoism seemed advantageous as those to whom liberty seemed desirable. Throughout history, whenever a dictator emerges, all the social detritus of the nation, all those corrupted by haunting ambition or extraordinary avarice, gather round and support him in return for a share in the booty and to set themselves up as petty chiefs under the tyrant. In this way, the hierarchy of privilege descended from the top to the middling and small beneficiaries, finally down to the mass of the Spanish people who believed they could gain from the receipt of petty favours.

174

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

The problem facing the anarchists and, more widely, the other antiFrancoists, was how to induce the international community to face up to the moral illegitimacy of the regime and get the people of Spain to withdraw their consent — something which had been cemented by fear, habit, privilege and propaganda over the previous 25 years. Calls for civil disobedience and mass resistance as a method of overthrowing Francoist tyranny had been out of the question until the early 1960s. Fortunately, not all Spaniards were deluded or sunk in total apathy and submission. Throughout Franco’s tenure there were always percipient minorities who were unable to prevent themselves from attempting to shake off oppression. Like the poor, such people are always with us and because of the danger such politically conscious people represented, Franco’s regime did everything in its power to suppress education and control communication to prevent likeminded people coming together. By late 1958, Spain faced a profound economic crisis. The country was close to bankruptcy and was forced to call in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), much against the will of Franco, who feared they might demand political reforms — or even his resignation. The stabilisation plan, imposed by the IMF in March 1959 to cut domestic consumption, involved the massive devaluation of the peseta, a reduction in public spending and a wage freeze which, in turn, led to bankruptcies, sackings and a countrywide shortage of basic consumer goods. Fortunately for Franco, the stabilisation plan proved successful and by the early 1960s the economy had begun to recover; tourism, emigration — with workers sending back their earnings — ‘external aid’ and an implacable repression had allowed the regime to minimise its domestic risks, making Spain an obvious target for foreign investment. An unforeseen consequence of this was the uncontrollable spread and accumulation of political awareness and raised expectations among the Spanish public. This not only generated a refusal of consent among the masses, it also aided its course by driving a wedge within an important section of the increasingly disaffected and privileged Spanish middle classes. There was an increase in open trade union activity and militancy. In the past, the threat of sackings, redundancy and repression had limited the protest movement and the number of strikes, but now trade unions and the domestic anti-Francoist movement began to assert themselves more and more openly. In 1962 there had been the well publicised ‘silent demonstration’ of women at the Puerta del Sol in central Madrid in solidarity with the strikers. It showed that 25 years of bitter and bloody fascist repression had not broken the spirit of

175

Ramón Serrano Suñer (left), chief architect of the Francoist state, in discussion with Franco and Mussolini.

Spain And Franco

the Spanish people. It signalled the revival of working-class resistance to the Franco regime. Arrests of anti-Franco dissidents by the secret police, the Brigada Político Social (BPS), rose by 80 per cent in 1962 to almost 2,500. By the summer of 1963, Spain was in political and industrial turmoil. Not since the Barcelona tramworkers’ strike in the early 1950s had industrial action triggered off such a chain reaction of protest and sympathy strikes throughout the country. The BPS’s annual report noted ‘the resurgence of the anti-Spanish campaign... at home and abroad. A campaign designed to overthrow the regime’. The wave of strikes which marred Franco’s ’25 Years of Peace’ celebrations in the spring of 1964 in Asturias, Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa spread quickly to other regions and was repressed savagely under harshly repressive laws by the Brigada Político Social, the Spanish secret police which had been set up and trained by the Gestapo in 1941. In 1936, popular resistance to the right wing coup in Spain and the subsequent struggle for a new society had moved a whole generation of idealistic men and women to risk their lives in Spain to fight in a selfless cause. They had come from all over the world — many from Scotland — to join the anarchist and other non-Marxist popular militias as well as the Stalinist-led International Brigades. I knew some of these men personally and was deeply moved by what they had done. Now, in 1964, it looked as though the Dark Ages were back with a vengeance and the whole scenario was about to be re-enacted in the face of apathy and disinterest by the western democracies.

Rogue Male THE UNHINDERED continued existence of Francoist Spain became the predominant obsession in my life. I was not naturally an intensely serious youth, but on reflection I may just have been a teeny bit insufferable on the subject. On one occasion, in the autumn of 1963 I think it was, I went out to Hamilton to look for George Williamson for some reason. George wasn’t at home; he had gone off to the Locarno dance hall that night in search of executive and cultural relief from the organisational and emotional demands made on him by the Glasgow Committee of 100. George’s mum, Annie, a rather douce and proper West of Scotland lady who did not entirely approve of George’s activities, invited me in for a cup of tea and a chat. Apparently I made such an impression on her — one so young going on so seriously about Spain and Franco — she said ‘Dae ye no’ think ye’d be better aff at the dancin’, son?’ George told me later that after the news broke of my arrest in Spain she gave a deep sigh and said: ‘Ah wish tae Gawd that wee boy hud taken ma advice and gawn tae the dancin’ an’ fun’ a nice wee girl instead!’ I felt really strongly that it was wrong to remain silent or inactive in the face of the savage treatment being dealt out by the Guardia Civil and the Spanish Special Branch, the Brigada Político Social to these miners and their families.

176

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Nothing less than involving myself totally in the armed struggle against Franco and his supporters would do to assuage my Presbyterian conscience and sense of obligation to do the ‘right’ thing, even if it was only making them uneasy or embarrassed. (See Background p178) As the philosopher Jeremy Bentham observed in his study On Government, sometimes violence is the only way the oppressed ‘can obtain a particle of relief’. I may not have qualified as one of Bentham’s ‘oppressed’, but I felt I had to do something positive to show my solidarity with the Spanish people.

Just Cause, Just War IN GLASGOW the anarchists organised regular demonstrations against the arrest and torture of Spanish labour militants to the office of the Spanish Vice-Consul, which more often than not ended with our occupying the building. During one such occupation, I made the mistake of signing my real name on a petition denouncing Francoism. I learned later how bad that was. I may not have been wise or competent in what I did, but I did not have the benefit of hindsight and it would July 1836: Miliciana on Barcelona’s Ramblas have been grossly hypocritical of me to choose the easy option of ‘Woke one bright morning — not so long ago — heard the sound of shooting demonstrations, picketing and leafleting from the street below: and not try to destroy Francoism once Went to the window and saw the barricade of paving stones the workmen had and for all. I could not stand aloof. I made — not so long ago. wanted to be a participant in life — not Met a man that morning — not so long ago — handed me a leaflet, on the a bystander. street below. Lean and hard-faced workingman with close-cropped head — held I knew the risks I was running personally — even though I didn’t know me for a moment, then the workman said: the odds were quite so heavily stacked Read it, read it, read it and learn what we fight for, why the churches burn. against me — but I must confess, I did Down on the Ramblas she passed me on her way, weapon cradled in her arm — not fully consider the question of it was but yesterday. Not just for wages now, not for bread alone — we’re unforeseen consequences — the fighting for a whole new world, a whole new world, she said. possibility of innocent victims or, in the event of my failure, the unleashing of an On barricades all over town — not so long ago — they knew the time had even more horrific repression on the come to answer with a simple Yes or No. people of Spain. To have done so would They too were storming heaven — do you think they fought in vain; have sown the seeds of doubt and that because they lost a battle they would never rise again; inaction. I had to rely on the integrity of that the man with the leaflets, the woman with a gun, did not have a daughter, my comrades. After all, they were not did not have a son?” ruthless, random and indiscriminate Hugo Dewar

177

Spain And Franco

July 19, 1936: a CNT-FAI barricade in Barcelona.

killers like the Israeli Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Stern Gang, the Mau Mau, the IRA, EOKA. and so on. The Spanish anarchists had so far been discriminating and symbolic, and no one had been killed or even seriously injured by their actions. Whether or not my decision to go to Spain can be put down to naivety or the arrogance of youth looking for opportuntities to establish certainty in an uncertain world, I felt a moral obligation to do something on behalf of past, present and future victims of Francoism. To me it was a just war and a just cause. My authority was my conscience and the ghosts of the victims of international fascism since 1936.

178

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

London — 1964

HAD HITCH-HIKED backwards and forwards to London on various occasions to attend meetings and also to Bristol in early April 1964 take part in the re-formation of the Anarchist Federation of Britain to help promote activity and propaganda over a wider field. The initiative for the AFB had come from the Bristol Anarchist Group, particularly Digger Walsh and Ian Vine. Digger was an Australian, a librarian and one of nature’s organisers; he also claimed to have been a policeman at one time and retained that personality. Ian Vine, another of the main players in the Bristol group, was an apprentice at Bristol Aviation, later to become British Aerospace. About 80 delegates from local groups throughout Britain met in Bristol over the weekend of 11 and 12 April 1964 to constitute the Anarchist Federation of Britain (AFB). The conference, which lasted one and a half days, was chaired alternately by Malcolm Keith and Arthur Uloth. No formal membership was required for joining the AFB; only agreement on a vague general policy document outlining basic anarchist principles. It was agreed that the Federation should confine itself solely to the co-ordination of information between anarchist groups and individuals and for disseminating anarchist propaganda and promoting activity. In fact, the AFB never really existed as an organisation. Apart from the above-mentioned national anti-election campaign, the conference’s only real decision was to appoint a six-member secretariat to act as an information-clearing house and convene the occasional national and international conference. One tongue-in-cheek campaign the AFB did get off the ground was the ‘Don’t Vote!’ one in the run-up to the 1964 general election. The idea was to get people thinking about self-management and more critically about the Westminster system of government and the nature of the mythical majority vote. After all, majorities had been known to endorse wrong principles in the past. Goethe certainly understood the nature of power, in Germany at least: ‘Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trudge after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds! Goethe (Letters) Our slogan was ‘Vote for Guy Fawkes! The only man who went to parliament with honest intentions,’ a campaign which met with considerable hostility from the ever-faithful old-fashioned Labour Party stalwarts who came out with the inevitable chestnut about the vote being a precious thing which earlier generations had fought and died for. What washed over them completely was the fact that the party system, local, national and parliamentary, was moving increasingly towards centralised cabinet government, presidential almost. The new non-elected advisory and administrative bodies, the quangos had enormous powers. There was also the

179

The Iron Law of Oligarchy

inter-party horse-trading which went on, the self-serving compromises and the constitutional limitations on what Members of Parliament could do and say. To us, all of these things had debased the currency of the words ‘democracy’ and ‘socialism’. The only reason for voting, we felt, was tactical and strategic; it had nothing to do with implementing ideas of radical social change. No matter who one voted for, the seductive and corrupting nature of power with its oligarchic dynamic was such that ‘they’, the politicians, always got in. The complex of tendencies which oppose the realisation of democracy, known as ‘The Iron Law of Oligarchy’, was described succinctly by political scientist Robert Michels in his classic 1915 book Political Parties. A Sociological Study: ‘It is organisation which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electors, of the mandatories over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegates. Who says organisation says oligarchy.’ Michels included anarchist and bottom-up structures in his critique as well. The Bristol meeting was historic inasmuch as it brought together for the first and, probably, the last time, all the key anarchist players in the post-war period (with the exception of Albert Meltzer): the Freedom Press Group, some of the Direct Action (SWF) editors and anarchist activists from the length and breadth of the country. It was an interesting collection of unusual people, some of whom I was to be linked with for years to come, including the ubiquitous Hungarian bohemian John Rety and the Scots Canadian Adam Nicholson, with whom I skippered in Bristol. Interest in anarchist ideas among young people continued to gather momentum and there was a steady influx of idealistic and enthusiastic teenagers and twenty-somethings into the anarchist movement. There was, however, some tension, between the new left, anti-bomb, militant liberal-conscience elements, the students of the new red-brick universities, and young working class activists disenchanted with the machinations and corrupt manoeuvrings of the Labour Party. I was impatient to move on. To give the students their due, it is probably harder to move from theory to practice than the other way round. Like me, they had little more than the freshness of their youth to guide them towards ‘what to do’, but they were also up against massive conditioning from the moment of conception that had been designed to turn them into clones of their respectable parents and take up positions of privilege within an established career structure. And young workers, in an area of classic, historical struggle, where the theories of social-democracy and Leninism had failed, also had little more than the logic of circumstance to guide them. But they — and me — were all looking towards the same goal, ‘the harmony of nature, the individual and society’ through libertarian means... What the British movement couldn’t offer me here (for geographical reasons, apart from any others!) was action against Franco.

180

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Albert Meltzer ONE NAME CAME UP a number of times — that of Albert Meltzer. Then in his forties, Albert had been in the anarchist movement since the age of fifteen. He was one of the few activists in the movement who had taken part in the old working class anarchism. He also knew active anarchists in many countries, not only in Europe, but also in the Far East, with whom he kept in close touch. Some years previously he had been blacklisted at his job and had opened a second-hand bookshop. Since many people felt he could hardly charge for the books they took, and then assumed, when he did not, that he must be making a fortune, the bookshop was not a commercial success, and Albert was keeping his distance from it and the writs that seemed likely at the time. I remember being told about Albert’s problems by one suspiciously hearty comrade, the cartoonist Arthur Moyse, who worked on the buses and spent his spare time reviewing art shows. Moyse used to sit around amicably chatting to all and sundry, usually managing to chase off all Albert’s paying customers. He thought the shop’s debts were an enormous joke, and felt it was part of a gigantic conspiracy to nobble the state. He told everyone either that Albert was making millions out of selling secondhand books or that he was engaged in a labyrinthine long firm fraud. I did meet Albert, fleetingly, at an SWF social at the Pindar of Wakefield, a pub opposite his bookshop in 283 Gray’s Inn Road, near King’s Cross — where incidentally, I was also introduced to Sidney Carter, the composer of the words of Lord of the Dance, by John Rety.

The Harts of the matter I MOVED TO London on a more permanent basis around late May or early June 1964. It was the W11 area of London described evocatively in Colin Macinnes’s Absolute Beginners and City of Spades: — ‘…there are one or two sections that are positively posh: not fashionable, mind you, but quite graded, with their big back gardens and that absolute silence which in London is the top sign of a respectable location. You walk about in these bits, adjusting your tie and looking down to see if your shoes are shining, when — wham! Suddenly you’re back in the slum again — honest, it’s really startling, like where the river joins on to the shore, two quite different creations of dame nature, cheek by thing.’ Macinnes, the novelist, offbeat journalist and social commentator, had become an anarchist ‘sympathiser’ by the late 1950s and early 1960s, mixing with the Freedom Press and Anarchy magazine groups, and had attended the wintertime Anarchist Balls which were held at Fulham Town Hall at the time. In 1962 he published an article on ‘The Anarchists’ in Queen magazine:

181

‘Pimpernel Smith’: Leslie Howard used anarchists as extras in his Nazi prison camp scenes (Albert Meltzer is second from right).

‘The Anarchists’

‘Despite the frenzied efforts of politicians of all hues to persuade, bully and frighten us into their parties — or at least acquiesce in their activities — I believe the vast majority of the human race detests, mistrusts and despises the purely political animal — where it is safe for them to do so. Yet I also believe, with the anarchists, that the instinct to unite with others — at any rate, at some point and for some objects — is equally widespread among mankind. ‘The anarchists are the only non-political — indeed, anti-political — party in existence. They’re not even, in fact, a party — you can’t join, take out a card, pay a subscription (though donations would be welcome), and anything you do or don’t do is because you want to. The only way you can “become” an anarchist is to wake up one morning and find you are one. ‘From what I have read of anarchist lives, and observed of those I know, they have also the peculiarity among political groups of behaving, in their private lives, according to their philosophical doctrine. They don’t love the masses from afar (which has always seemed to me a way of hating and fearing them) — in fact, they’re not interested in ‘the masses’, but in creating a mass movement based on self-persuaded, not converted, individuals; and if they do like particular persons, then they will work with them and for them. Temperamentally, they are informed, versatile and resourceful, indulgent of human weakness, but set high standards for themselves. Like all political groups they have sectarians and extremists, but fewer than other parties, because they nod kindly to these wayward brethren, and then get on with the business.’ IN FACT LONDON was really only a staging post. I had plans to move to France, to find a job and a flat in Perpignan and become more heavily involved in the anti-Francoist resistance. For the first few weeks I worked as a barrow boy on a haberdashery stand in the nearby Shepherds’ Bush market then, drawing on my experience at the Factory for Peace, as a sheet metal worker for six shillings an hour at Acme Engineering, near the Arsenal football ground in North London. I ‘skippered’ with two comrades, Brian Hart and his companion, Margaret Haines, in their ground floor room at 57 Ladbroke Road, one of the nice Regency terraces off Notting Hill Gate, on the corner of Victoria Gardens, close to the Mercury Theatre. Both were real locomotives in the Notting Hill Anarchist Group and the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation (SWF) who shook, motivated and moved everybody they met. Margaret worked at the International Telephone Exchange, Continental Service. and was waiting to be accepted for training as an airline stewardess with British European Airways (BEA). Brian was a generous, warm-hearted and ebullient ex-seaman with a piratical red beard and gold earring who had recently started work with the GLC in the London sewers. Whenever the question came up at anarchist meetings as to who would do

182

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

the dirty work when the anarchist society came about, everyone would chant ‘Brian Hart!’. Also, whenever anyone mentioned the withering away of the Marxist State in Russia, Brian would quote the anarchist Jack Robinson that only thing that ever withered away in Russia ‘was Stalin’s left arm’. Brian and one or two others in the SWF had also been involved in the clandestine activities of the FIJL in Spain.

Ben Birnberg, lawyer extraordinaire DURING THIS TIME Adam Nicolson, whom I had befriended at the Bristol Anarchist Group Conference, came to London and skippered at Brian and Margaret’s with me. The SWF and the Spanish CNT in exile had been coordinating an antitourism campaign against Franco’s Spain and one Saturday evening Adam and a friend, who shall be nameless, went to the West End to scout out the lie of the land around the main Iberia Airways office in Bond Street. It was late at night and the roads were empty when Adam and his friend spotted some roadworks directly outside the Iberia offices, with a manhole cover lying on the road, waiting to be returned to its hole. Spontaneously, the two comrades picked up the Benedict manhole cover between them and ran in unison, building Birnberg: the pre- up a swinging momentum as they advanced towards the emiment radical enormous plate glass window of Iberia Airlines. lawyer of the The crash of breaking glass brought a stream of 1960s-1990s. policemen pouring out of nearby West End Central police station towards the scene of the incident. Adam and his Glaswegian friend, who was wearing loose-fitting cowboy boots, ran through the side streets off Bond Street to escape the hue and cry, but were spotted by a young policeman who pursued them relentlessly. One of the Glaswegian’s boots came flying off his foot with the long steps he was taking. These boots were his favourite footwear, and expensive, so he turned and ran back to pick it up to find Adam hiding between two cars. Adam whispered that his friend should run on and he would meet him in the pub later. Later never came. Adam was arrested, charged and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for the night’s work. But the young lawyer I located later that night to represent Adam was Benedict Birnberg, a man of tremendous integrity and principle who turned out to be probably the key civil rights

183

The Artist and the Poet

lawyer in the UK throughout the following four decades. Ben’s memoirs, if ever they are written and published, would be one of the great social documents of the late twentieth century. Our paths were to converge on quite a few occasions until Ben’s retirement in 1999.

The artist and the poet THE HOUSE AT number 57 Ladbroke Road, on the corner of Victoria Gardens, in which the Harts had their ground-floor flat was owned by a Mr and Mrs Wall. They occupied the upper floors. He was a senior editor on the Catholic newspaper, The Tablet, and his convent-educated 21-year old daughter, Bernardine, had been an expert witness for the defence on the literary merit of Lady Chatterley’s Lover at the Old Bailey trial in 1961. Bernardine had been called by the defence to give evidence that as a nice Convent- and Cambridge-educated Catholic girl and contributing editor to the literary magazine, The Twentieth Century, she had not been corrupted by reading about the activities of Mellor and Lady Chat and had been aware of all the relevant four-letter words before she read the book — and she could vouch for the dignity of the relationship between the gamekeeper and the toff. The literary standing of our liberal Catholic landlords meant there were many callers for them and when the Walls were not at home the Harts or I would invite them into the flat for a coffee and a chat until they returned. A few of these were intrigued sufficiently to become involved in the movement. One of these claimed to be a Polish–British Argentinian. He was a wonderful yarn spinner who enthralled us with gripping accounts of his life with the gauchos on the Argentinian pampas of Patagonia. He was a cosmopolitan, bohemian intellectual, who claimed to have taken his puppets on mule or horseback to the noble savages in the jungles and mountains in the hope that they would purge the countryside of the plutocrats and their fascist (Peronist) gangster chums. This artist, writer, puppeteer, filmmaker, etc. was always on the lookout for a patron who would indulge his genius. When he discovered we were anarchists he told us he too was an ‘aan-archist’ — as he pronounced it in his inimitable beguilingly sinister central European accent which combined the bleat of ‘Larry the Lamb’ in the BBC Home Service Children’s Hour ‘Toy Town’ with the curt tones of William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw Haw’! He regaled us with more extraordinarily exciting tales, which he could see we responded to quite ingenuously. It was only much later, whiling away the hours in a Spanish jail reading old copies of the Reader’s Digest, that I came across the same stories. What a coincidence! But one story I didn’t read in the RD concerned the homosexual relationship between Peron and the US heavyweight boxer Archie Moore.

Who the fuck is Eddie Linden? ANOTHER VISITOR TO the Walls household was Eddie Linden, a twenty-

184

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

something Catholic poet from Bothwell — just across the Clyde from Blantyre. Eddie was one of the founders of Catholic CND and had recently launched a poetry magazine called Aquarius with backing from the liberal-left Catholic intelligentsia, hence the Walls connection. I was wary of Eddie who came on to me strongly from the word go. He obviously thought that because I was young and almost good-looking, I might have shared his homosexual proclivities. Eddie was taken with the fact we came from similar West of Scotland working class backgrounds and he asked me back to his flat in Primrose Hill to tape some of his poems and short autobiographical stories — he ‘liked my accent and wanted to discuss anarchism’. I don’t think he had ever met an anarchist before, having mixed previously only with Communists and Catholics. What a line! ‘Come back to my place and record my poems for me!’ I couldn’t make up my mind whether or not this guy was a confused and creepy wee predatory degenerate or a genuine seeker after truth. I was suspicious of — and bemused by — the script he gave me to tape record, which he claimed was autobiographical and was written in the first person singular. My suspicions proved well founded as it turned out; he later tried to pass off these tapes as some sort of personal testament. Our discussions must have had some impact as Eddie — who was obviously given to conversion — later described himself as a Catholic anarchist. He later published the book under the title Who Is Eddie Linden?

The mouse that bored I FELL INTO BRIAN AND MARGARET’S bad books and had to leave when a white mouse I was sheltering escaped from its cardboard box and took up residence in the cup of her best bra in her underwear drawer. The fact that an increasing number of other members of the Glasgow Anarchist Federation were kipping on their floor as well might also have precipitated my move. Anyway, I ended up in nearby Ladbroke Grove on the settee of another friend, Mark Hendy. Mark, a Cambridge graduate, and someone who was to be a lifelong friend and confidant, was working as a copy editor for a London publisher and he also helped sub-edit and print Direct Action at a damp printshop in Cross Street, Islington. He shared with two other men, one of them Wynford Hicks, a charmingly languid but earnest red-haired aspiring journalist, recently graduated

185

The Mouse That Bored

from Oxford where he had been active in the local Committee of 100. Under Mark’s tutelage I made my first foray into print (as opposed to Gestetner-produced leaflets) with an article for Direct Action, the newspaper of the SWF, writing about my experiences working for the Factory for Peace. Wynford’s contribution had mostly to do with mending my split infinitives. Another of our projects at the time was winding up the Security Service, MI5. When we had nothing better to do we would hang around Leconsfield House, Mayfair, taking car and motorbike registration numbers in Curzon Street and surrounding streets, photographing everyone going in and out of the then MI5 headquarters. We were usually spotted fairly quickly and had to have it on our toes to escape the MOD police who provided security on the building. Apart from this being a bit of a lark, we were planning to publish a pamphlet on MI5, with a list of names, addresses and satellite offices. Basically, it was ‘get-our-own-back time’; to do to them what they were doing to us. An anarchist friend who worked at the Vehicle Registration Office in Swansea provided details on the owners of the vehicles. The project was subsumed by other events that summer and the pamphlet never appeared. Our social life revolved around meetings and pubs. The old popular social centres for anarchists such as The Malatesta Club had closed and people had stopped going to the New Partisan Club coffee bar in Soho, off Dean Street. Through the week we drank in The Prince Albert, on the corner of Ladbroke Road at Notting Hill Gate, and whenever there was an SWF meeting we would drink in the Gray’s Inn Road pub where the meetings were held — the Lucas Arms. Saturdays we’d move between Jimmy the Greek’s restaurant and the French House in Soho, Henekey’s on the Portobello Road and The Sun in Splendour. Occasionally we would go to the pictures. Our local picture houses were The Odeon Notting Hill Gate, and The Electric Cinema at the shabby end of The author: Speaker’s Corner, Portobello Road. The latter had a tiny foyer, an ornate square auditorium with a shallow Hyde Park, 1964. curving ceiling; its small square screen framed by a classical broken pediment and crowned with a golden globe. It resembled a more temporal version of the nissen hut that the Italian prisoners of war transformed into a Mediterranean chapel on South Ronaldsay, Orkney.

Speaker’s Corner ON SUNDAYS WE congregated around Speaker’s Corner at Hyde Park selling Direct Action with the slogan ‘No Bombs, Bosses or Bureaucrats’ and provide an enthusiastic audience for the regular anarchist or syndicalist speakers such as Mike Callinan, Philip Sansom or Rita Milton. This was always a successful hunting ground and

186

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

among the people we recruited here to the anarchist movement were Desmond or ‘Mac’ MacDonald and his bohemian companion Bronia McDonald. Desmond was a professional drama busker who entertained theatre queues with stentorian Shakespeare monologues and the good-humoured banter of a snake-oil salesman. Bronia wrote and produced mimeographed erotica — that’s putting it nicely — for a Soho publisher at ten shillings a page. Mac and Bronia lived in St Stephen’s Gardens, Notting Hill, and had been active in the local campaign against West London racketeer Peter Rachman. Rachman was a slum landlord who provided newly arrived Caribbean workers with cheap, unhealthy housing in the most downmarket areas of Notting Hill, while charging extortionate rents. His property business, City Centre Properties Ltd, bought houses from the Church of England Commissioners and then used either thugs or the courts to evict the protected tenants before selling on the houses. His girlfriend was Mandy Rice-Davies, a friend of Christine Keeler. Rachman’s enforcer was an intimidating black guy, a bully and manipulative psychopath called Michael de Freitas who became Michael Abdul Malik and then, later, reinvented himself as the Black Power leader Michael X (eventually hanged in Jamaica for murder).

The west London wackos NOTTING HILL GATE in the early 1960s was not only a seedbed of radical libertarian and bohemian culture. The Gate and Ladbroke Grove were also focal points of white racist and neo-Nazi ‘culture’. While racial tension had simmered down from the boiling point it had reached in September 1958, it was still the epicentre of British nazism, conspiracy theorists and flagging right-wing groups and parties, including the League of Empire Loyalists, the Union Movement, the British National Party, the Racial Preservation Society and the Greater Britain Movement, was a seedy, run-down tenement called Arnold Leese House at 46-48 Princedale Road, in nearby Holland Park. The ‘Britons’ and ‘Augustine’ publishing houses, publishers of the book Darkness Visible, were also based here. Arnold Leese, a former vet, an anti-Semite and admirer of Hitler, had helped form the Imperial Fascist League in 1928, whose members regularly baited Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists, formed in 1932. Released from prison in 1944 on grounds of ill-health, Leese became the principle star in the 1940s British fascist firmament, attracting to him all the leading national socialist players of the 1950s and 1960s, including, in particular, Cambridge graduate and schoolteacher Colin Jordan. When Leese died in 1956 his widow, Mary, gave Jordan the free use of her husband’s large property in Princedale Road.

187

Notting Hill riots, 1959: petrol bombs and milk bottles were thrown at black immigrants.

The West London Wackos

When she died, the property was left to Jordan who turned it into the base for his ‘White Defence League’ (WDL), the instigators of so much racial confrontation in Notting Hill in the late 1950s. In 1960 the WDL merged with the National Labour Party to form the Hitlerite British National Party and then the National Socialist Movement which Jordan founded with John Tyndall on what would have been Hitler’s 73rd birthday, 20 April 1962. The paranoid wackos of this seedy West London tenement had one thing in common — the conviction that Jews, freemasons, homosexuals, gypsies, Jesuits, anarchists and Communist Party members were all agents of subversion under the control of a ruthless global elite directing world events to their advantage. Who the beneficiaries of the master plan were, or its objective — other than the enslavement and deracination of the White Anglo-Saxon race and the subversion of its culture — I never figured out. The root of the theory appears to be that the Jews, having spurned God’s gift of Jesus, and hence having rejected the Kingdom of Heaven, are seeking to establish their own temporal kingdom over the peoples of the world and do this hrough the medium of freemasonry – illuminism — a universal conspiracy against the church, the established order and its mores. Their authoritarian view of the world, indeed of the universe, is tempered by an underlying belief in a guiding principle of order. Whether this order be the will of God, racial destiny or dialectical materialism, it is seen as a progressive, historical, ordering of events towards a final goal — world domination, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Final Struggle, or whatever. Authoritarian creeds throughout history have viewed the world in their own Notting Hill terms and this has usually involved the belief that their opponents were part of race riots, 1959. a cosmic conspiracy against them. From these theories — in which the world is conceived as a struggle between two opposing principles of order — have been born the twin modern authoritarian creeds — Marxist and fascist, left and right. Both look to Darwin as their Abraham, the fons et origio of their ideal of inevitable progress towards human perfection. In fact, what darwin saw as perfect was the world of the liberal bourgeoisie — reviled by Marxists and fascist alike. No epithets truly express the nature of the systems. What they have in common is the ingrained belief in their correctness and an equally ingrained belief that world conspiracy exists solely to eliminate or absorb them, like some form of politico-social-cultural vampirism. Their very faith in their own infallibility renders impossible the admission that they are themselves to blame for the system’s failures. They know that their ideology is perfect in itself and it follows that any failures or setbacks must originate outside.

188

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

In his book The Poverty of Historicism, the Anglo-Austrian philosopher Karl Popper lucidly exposed the absurdity of the idea of any individual or group of people being able to manipulate or engineer events and stitch up history, seamlessly or otherwise, to their own advantage or desired end, arguing that it is impossible to know today what can only be known tomorrow: — ‘The course of human history is strongly influenced by the growth of human knowledge. We cannot predict, by rational or scientific methods, the future growth of our scientific knowledge. We cannot, therefore, predict the future course of human history. This means that we must reject the possibility of a “theoretical history”; that is to say, of a historical social science that would correspond to ”theoretical physics”. There can be no scientific theory of historical development serving as a basis for historical prediction.’

The ’62 Group THE SWASTIKA-EMBLAZONED Arnold Leese House in Princedale Road was always under attack, mainly from the ‘62 Group — an obsessive, hard-core, secretive Zionist offshoot of the multi-racial anti-fascist Yellow Star Movement which in turn had been formed by Jewish veterans of the anti-Mosleyite and CPled ‘43 Group — so the ground-floor bookshop had steel shutters and its windows were screened with thick wire mesh. There was one famous occasion when the ’62 Group — allegedly led by Harry Bidney, manager of the Limbo Club in Soho — precipitated a major rammy at Caxton Hall when they heard Colin Jordan, then national organiser of the National Socialist Movement, was to hold a meeting there. Another leading member of the ‘62 Group, ‘B L’, told SWF activist Mike Callinan that he would, ‘if necessary’ daub swastikas on synagogues just to keep the Jews on their toes — and their group in business. The anti-fascists had an excellent communications system as many of their members and sympathisers were London cabbies and whenever one of their number identified a possible meeting in progress they would turn up shortly afterwards, mob-handed in cabs, and ambush them. Extreme right-wing activists and racists were increasingly making their presence felt throughout Europe in the early 1960s. The man who was to become the most notorious of these over the next three decades, Stefano Delle Chiaie, a 24-year old former member of the overtly Nazi and anti-Semitic Italian Ordine Nuevo and founder of the small neo-fascist group Avanguardia Nazionale (AN), came to London in 1962 to discuss the setting up of a fascist ‘Black International’ with, among others, Colin Jordan. What Jordan and few others did not know was that Delle Chiaie had been an informer for the Italian Interior Ministry since 1960 (he also worked for the Italian Foreign Military Intelligence Service, SIFAR, from at least late 1963, possibly earlier.) In the early 1960s, at a high point in the Cold War, some of the more reactionary elements in the Italian industrial and state apparatus recognised the advantages of using Delle Chiaie’s ‘plausibly deniable’ fascist gangs to undertake covert

189

The Strategy of Tension

British Nazis are shouted down by anti-fascists at Trafalgar Square.

operations against the increasing activism of the radical left. The Italian right — and their American backers — had been badly frightened by the growing success of the Italian Communist Party, who had gained 25 per cent of the vote in the 1963 elections. This, coupled with the ‘opening to the left’ of the Italian government under the Christian-Democratic premiership of Aldo Moro, was a threat to the powerful vested interest groups of the day — not least to US oil interests in the Middle East. There was a perceived danger that the US Seventh Fleet would be thrown out of Naples, its last base in the Mediterranean. Their fears were such that they had even prepared a military coup, Plan Solo, under the leadership of General Giovanni De Lorenzo, commander of the paramilitary Carabinieri and head of the Italian secret services. Plan Solo was apparently to have concluded with the assassination of Moro and the passing of executive power to the right wing Christian Democrat, Cesare Merzagora. Delle Chiaie was probably the most significant player the post-WWII neofascist movement has produced and his name is inextricably linked with just about every major right-wing conspiracy, scandal and terrorist outrage in Italy, Europe and Latin America since 1960. All these conspiracies in Italy revolved around the so-called ‘strategy of tension’ which aimed to infiltrate and discredit the left in general and the anarchist movement in particular by an indiscriminate bombing campaign in public places such as the Piazza Fontana in 1969 and the Bologna railway station in 1980. The lives of many innocent people were lost and ruined as a result of this strategy. The theory was that by inducing a climate of fear, panic and chaos, what the left and democracy lost in credibility, the state would gain in unquestioned authority and power. The neo-fascists in Britain were not quite as sophisticated and Machiavellian as their Italian and French colleagues. They had a much more thuggish and short-term view of their role in the great scheme of things. More importantly, for all their faults, neither the Metropolitan Police Special Branch nor the British security or intelligence services had quite such a large number of reactionary personnel or the same geopolitical agenda as the Italians and their CIA sponsors. In fact, with one or two notable exceptions such as George Kennedy Young, MI6’s number two, Peter Wright and elements in the mediamanipulating ‘Special Political Action’ section of SIS, most members of the British security and intelligence apparatus were committed anti-fascists who had fought the Nazis in World War Two, unlike many of their Italian counterparts who been unrepentant fascists under Mussolini — and remained so in the post-war Christian-Democrat era. In July 1962, a gang of 200 fascists had roamed the streets of Dudley,

190

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Worcestershire, attacking blacks and Asians. Sir Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement had also organised a number of rallies which had ended in incidents with anti-fascist demonstrators. Colin Jordan’s infamous Nazi Trafalgar Square meeting in the late summer of 1962, which ended in a riot, was, however, stage-managed to a large extent by the Nazis themselves. The loudspeakers Jordan and Tyndall used were connected up to a tape-recorder on which were recorded sounds of general pandemonium, including chants of ‘Raus, Raus, Raus!’ This became clear on several occasions when the wires were cut by the anti-Nazis, and the chanting and the hubbub abruptly stopped. Far from crowds of Jews storming the plinth, as reported by the newspapers at the time, it was a police officer who stopped Jordan’s speech. The tiny Nazi contingent was rushed after they had climbed off the plinth and their banner torn up. (Somewhat coincidentally, Jordan, who served six months in 1963 for offences under the 1936 Public Order Act for training skinhead stormtroopers became friendly — inasmuch as prison relationships can be called ‘friendly’ — with some Committee of 100 members when they were in the same prison in 1963 and began to correspond with them as soon as he was released.)

Informers and agents provocateurs THE OBSESSIVENESS OF some 62 Group members meant they were willing to pay any price, including engaging in a Faustian quid pro quo with Special Branch officers, exchanging information on non-Jewish radicals in return for information on fascists. (It should be remembered, that anti-fascists are not necessarily radical or even ‘progressive’ or liberal. They can be as authoritarian and brutal as those they seek to destroy— as can be seen in the Spanish Republican government’s handling of anarchists or the Jewish State’s handling of the Palestinians.) Closer to home was the case of the editor of the anti-fascist magazine, Searchlight, Gerry Gable, a former Young Communist League (YCL) member, who was exposed in the New Statesman in February 1980 as a long-time informer for the Security Service, MI5 and the Metropolitian Police Special Branch Gable’s information was used to deport whistleblowing CIA agent Philip Agee and American Time Out staff journalist Mark Hosenball in November 1976, and in preparing the case against the three defendants in the ‘ABC’ Official Secrets case (so called after the surnames of the three defendants, Aubrey, Berry and Campbell.) Gable also once boasted how, when going to break-up a Mosley meeting he had thrown a metal milk-crate at Sir Os’s car and the uniformed police who were there in large numbers made no attempt to stop him or arrest him. Imagine where anyone else would have ended up had they done the same. The incident was admiringly retold by Francis Wheen in The Guardian in one of his Wednesday columns — not realising the implications, apparently (i.e. why the filth made no move on Gable — because he was one of theirs). My friend

191

The Special Branch

Mark Hendy wrote to Wheen pointing this out, and mentioning Agee and Hosenball, but he didn’t reply.

The Metropolitan Police Special Branch & Security Service (MI5) ALL THIS EXTRAPARLIAMENTARY activity in the early sixties (and the contemporaneous Radcliffe Enquiry into the efficiency of the security services) contributed to the reorganisation of the 220-strong Metropolitan Police Special Branch under Deputy Commander E. W Jones. The role of this ‘political’ branch of the Metropolitan Police with regard to home-grown internal ‘subversives’ and troublemakers such as ourselves, involved liaising with both the Home Office and the real secret police, MI5 (who dealt with subversion and disaffection) who ran ‘informers’, agents and provocateurs inside ‘subversive’ organisations. One of these agents was discovered at Colville Houses, Notting Hill, where a few Committee of 100 activists lived and socialised. It was round about the time of the RAF Wethersfield demonstration. A chap by the name of Darren, I think, produced some loose change from his pocket for something and among the coins was an RAF Regiment button. When asked to explain it he blushed suspiciously and couldn’t, then promptly vanished downstairs never to return. The non-hierarchical and decentralised organisational structure of the extraparliamentary left, together with the small numbers of people with telephones, created major problems for both MI5 and the Special Branch, making it difficult to monitor what was going on. Most of the state’s information was gleaned from the national and movement press. From these sources it could collect the names of political activists; more details could be obtained from petitions to government. Branch officers also used photographers and journalists as sources; telephone tapping and mail opening. To test this theory and wind up the authorities, John Brailey, the convenor of the W2 district (the London Committee of 100 was organised in postal districts, with a convenor for each district) organised a round robin of phone calls to members saying they should be at the US Embassy on one particular night at 6 pm. Four Committee people turned up to find around a hundred police protecting the Embassy entrance. Sometimes police documents were left in opened mail after it had been resealed. This may have been a deliberate Special Branch ploy in an attempt to intimidate and frighten off the recipients, but it was more likely to have been an incompetent blunder. In other wind-ups, letters mentioned small enclosures such as hairs, though none had been actually sent; the police on finding them missing, obviously panicked and imagined they had carelessly discarded them in the opening process, so to cover their tracks duly provided substitutes. Special Branch officers also attended all demonstrations and public meetings they considered of interest. It wasn’t difficult to spot them; they were either smartly dressed with ties and raincoats or else were the scruffiest ‘student types’.

192

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

The Secret Policeman’s Call JUNE 1964 SAW the end of Nelson Mandela’s trial in South Africa. His powerful speech in which he set out his beliefs in equality triggered emotional demonstrations around the world: ‘I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But my lord, if it needs to be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.’ It was outside South Africa House, among the crowds at a demonstration at Trafalgar Square against the sentencing of Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu— the occasion of my first arrest — that I came into contact with the Branch’s anarchist- libertarian fringe specialist, Detective Sergeant Roy Cremer. This pale-faced, cadaverous, inscrutable, cerebrallooking and somewhat anonymous sophisticate engaged me in a Samuel Beckett-type dialogue on the merits of anarchism over Marxism, non-violence and persuasion over violence. A chess master trained in monastic dissimulation, he knew how to disguise an interrogation as a chat and his thought processes were as relentless and silent as the mainspring in a watch. He used every cultivation trick in the secret policeman’s book and was well informed on the personalities, the ideas and tensions that were gathering momentum on the libertarian periphery of the political stage. Cremer was reassuring, flattering and appeared to be sympathetic to anarchism. I suspect, in an intellectual way, he was. He was certainly liberal-minded, anti-racist and hostile to apartheid and the racist South African government of Dr Hendrik Verwoerd. Initially I saw our relationship in terms of me as Jean Valjean and with him as the sinisterly urbane Inspector Javert in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, but that would not be fair on Roy’s professionalism or indeed his integrity. Unlike Javert, who pursued Valjean because he was determined to return him to prison despite his being a reformed character and a reputable pillar of society (which I was not), Roy was never obsessive enough to jump into the Thames at the end of his career; instead he joined MI5, the security service, as a ‘positive vetter’. One of the main planks of anarchism is the removal of coercion and violence from human relations. But common sense also tells us that we have a duty of defence, not only against attack but also against those institutions which use physical force to keep people in a state of servitude. Violence is justifiable and moral when used in one’s own defence and that of others — and anarchists argue that this eventuality should be prepared for if we wish to resist. But, it also must be recognised that violent tactics can easily

193

Special Branch: Detective Sergeant Roy Cremer, Scotland Yard’s ‘anarchist’ specialist.

Give Flowers to the Rebels Failed

transform selfless idealism into a brutal, self-serving and self-perpetuating process which fatally undermines and destroys any possibility of the intended beneficial outcome. The pursuit of moral and ethical objectives by violent means can be a very fine line to walk. While I was pondering my fate and that of the universe inside the police Black Maria on this anti-apartheid demonstration, the Glasgow cavalry turned up in the form of my ‘comrades-in-black’ of the Scotia Nostra who had spotted me being manhandled away by the police, and had charged the van, broken open the door and bundled me away to safety and freedom through the crowds

Give Flowers To The Rebels Failed NOTTING HILL GATE was also my point of contact with the exiled Spanish anarchists of the Movimiento Libertario Español (MLE), an umbrella name for the CNT, FAI and FIJL. Until recently, the MLE in London had been in a bad way, due to long years of exile in an alien environment, the fact that the Franco dictatorship was stronger than ever — with little prospect of change. It had been vegetating, both in terms of action as well as in thinking and propaganda, devoting itself almost exclusively to ritual acts such as paying membership dues or attending antiFrancoist rallies in exile. But a breeze of optimism was blowing away the cobwebs of nostalgia and exile. Like the crew of a ship floating rudderless and powerless across uncharted seas, their hopes had been fed for years on signs and portents. The change began in 1959 with the overthrow of the Batista regime by groups which included rural and urban anarchist and libertarian guerrilla groups, such as that led by Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos. Cuba provided an exemplary spur to the Spanish exiles’ hopes of doing the same with Franco. Particularly inspired by the Cuban example were the grownup children of the exiles in the determinedly activist Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth, the FIJL. These increasingly optimistic and restless exiles with whom we associated at jointly run social events or on demonstrations included Agustín Roa, who had been an apprentice printer in Barcelona and a member of the local FIJL committee. After being shifted around concentration camps in France and Algeria, Djelfa, and service in the British Army Pioneer Corps, Roa ended up in London. In the 1950s and 1960s he had been one of the main activists in a committee of Spanish ex-servicemen, which had a CNT majority but was also open to other tendencies such as the socialists and the UGT socialist labour union. Another was Juan Salgado, who had formed part of the CNT intelligence service in Madrid and had been a member of the first Defence Junta. Sucesso Portales, an influential matriarchal figure among the London exiles, had been one of the driving forces within the Mujeres Libres organisation. Mujeres Libres (‘Free Women’) had grown out of a group of women activists

194

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

in local anarchist groups and quickly became one of the most important Spanish organisations in the Spanish Revolution. As Sucesso said in a TV interview: ‘Whenever a local chapter was set up, the first thing it did was to organise a school. These focused on educating thousands of working class women, teaching them to read, to respect themselves and pull themselves from servility and submissiveness in the workplace and at home. Sex education classes were provided for the women and pamphlets on the subject sent to the front for the benefit of the men as well as the women. The men, including CNT militants, thought they had all the rights. Before we came along you would have been lucky to see three women at a CNT assembly. We were keen to educate women to assert their rights — with regard to their homes, their children, their husbands and their own lives The ‘free love’ talked about dismissively by the Church was simply a couple agreeing to live together, out of affection, without need for papers contracts, or the blessings of the priests. It meant a woman could have companionship without going through the Church, without having to baptise the children. Mujeres Libres taught women to drive trams and buses, work in the factories and workshops, filling the positions left vacant by the men who had gone to the front.’ Sucesso’s companion was Acrácio Ruíz, a veteran of the Andalusian CNT and the FAI who had been an active militant from a very young age. At the outbreak of the military uprising in July 1936 he had been living in Madrid under a false identity. He became a delegate and political commissar in Cipriano Mera’s column. Acrácio, when I met him in 1963, was a CNT representative on the Directorate of Defensa Interior, the clandestine planning group responsible for organising attempts on the life of Franco. Other CNT exiles included Delso de Miguel, José Cabanas, and Pablo Polgare. Polgare was a Hungarian comrade who went to Spain in the summer of 1936 and spent most of the war in the Peninsular Committee of the FAI. Together with Agustín Souchy they had written one of the first important accounts of the revolutionary January 1939: collectives. THERE WAS A SAD nobility about the more elderly Spanish exiles. I suppose it was what Federíco García Lorca described as duende — the enigmatic pathos which can be felt, but not explained. For a short time they had lived through an intense period of brotherhood, disinterested selflessness, self-sacrifice and solidarity. For many the few months of the Revolution were the happiest of their lives. Hunted down in Spain, France and North Africa, they had come to Britain to

195

Franco’s victims cross the Pyrenees into exile.

The Spanish Exiles

A New World In Our Hearts IN SEPTEMBER 1936, after the liberation of the Aragón countryside (not Zaragoza) from Franco’s forces, Pierre van Paasen of the Toronto Star interviewed Buenaventura Durruti, the famous anarchist militant and military leader. In this interview he gave his views on fascism, government and social revolution capturing the essence of what was happening in Spain: ‘“For us”, said Durruti, “it is a matter of crushing fascism once and for all. Yes; and in spite of the government”. “No government in the world fights fascism to the death. When the bourgeoisie sees power slipping from its grasp, it has recourse to fascism to maintain itself. The Liberal Government of Spain could have rendered the fascist elements powerless long ago. Instead it compromised and dallied. Even now at this moment, there are men in this government who want to go easy on the rebels.” And here Durruti laughed. “You can never tell, you know, the present government might yet need these rebellious forces to crush the workers’ movement . . . “We know what we want. To us it means nothing that there is a Soviet Union somewhere in the world, for the sake of whose peace and tranquillity Stalin sacrificed the workers of Germany and China to fascist barbarians. We want revolution here in Spain, right now, not maybe after the next European war. We are giving Hitler and Mussolini far more worry with our revolution than the whole Red Army of Russia. We are setting an example to the German and Italian working class on how to deal with Fascism.” “I do not expect any help for a libertarian revolution from any government in the world . . . We expect no help, not even from our own government, in the last analysis.” “But“, interjected van Paasen, “You will be sitting on a pile of ruins.” Durruti answered: “We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, we can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.“

nurse their dreams and wait for their day; and hand on the torch of faith and hope. It had been something worth struggling for; although the revolution lasted only a year before the Stalinists and republicans snuffed it out, it had proved to them that their goal, their dream, was realisable. Concha Liaño, another co-founder of Mujeres Libres said: ‘Sometimes I wonder if it was worth all the pain, all the sacrifices, all the suffering, but then I think, really, we taught the world a lesson. Insofar as we were able, we set an example of the possibility of living without government, because there was no government, yet the collectives were working and everything was working. Everything was operating by mutual accord.’ AFTER SUCCESSFULLY fighting off the military and the fascists and having tasted, between July 1936 and August 1937, what freedom really was, many had been reduced to going through the motions of militancy after years of exile within an indifferent host nation in an unfamiliar culture and a depressing climate. Many had failed to master the language or integrate with the struggles of their fellow workers in their host country. A bureaucracy intent only on preserving its status as an ‘opposition in exile’, rather than organising internal resistance and rebellion, also helped divorce them from their militant past. Perhaps the torpor had already set in in Spain after the failure of the Revolution in 1937. The ‘division’ in the Spanish movement between the end of the Second World War and the 1960s was ultimately between the ‘pure’ and the ‘organisational’ anarchists and was absolutely chronic. There had been a desperate struggle in the early 1930s to defeat the reformist manoeuvres of ‘treintismo’, the tendency named after the 30 prominent CNT militants who had signed a manifesto urging the Spanish movement to make the defence of wages and working conditions the first priority in the face of the gathering crisis of world capitalism, rather than the immediate abolition of capitalism itself. That the manifesto was an abandonment of anarchism in all but name soon became clear when its signatories and their allies and followers — in a majority in some important sections of the CNT — refused to support the subsequent revolutionary uprisings of those militants who had remained true to their beliefs and, instead, later bestowed on the heroic efforts of men

196

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

and women who had given everything, sometimes including their lives, in these attempts, the scornful epithets of ‘anarcho-bolshevism’ and ‘Jacobinism’. The situation was repeated later in the isolation of activist groups such as the ‘Friends of Durruti, the Francisco Ponzán network, and the Sabaté, Facerías, and the other urban guerrilla groups. The younger second generation of Spanish exiles was a different matter. The Notting Hill Anarchist Group, for instance, maintained particularly close links with activists of the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL), many of whom lived in west London in the Ladbroke Grove and Kensal Green areas.

Recruited IN NOTTING HILL, Brian Hart, the comrade in whose flat I was staying in Notting Hill, had introduced me to two FIJL activists at the founding conference of the Anarchist Federation of Britain in Bristol in 1964. They were the brothers Bernardo and Salvador ‘Salva’ Gurruchari, who were closely involved with the organisation’s clandestine planning group, the Defensa Interior (D.I.). Brian had gone on at least one clandestine mission to Spain with Francisco Ruíz Abarca on behalf of the FIJL. Salvador, a librarian, had been educated and brought up in London with his brother. He had only recently returned to London following his release from Fresnes prison in Paris that February, a release forced on the French authorities after a hunger strike and a massive popular campaign led by well-known French intellectuals and artists. He had originally been arrested at the request of the Spanish Security Services for having been a key member of the now illegal FIJL. Salva was also one of the prime movers of the D.I. When I suggested to Salva that I would like to play a direct part in the resistance movement they were not as suspicious as they normally would have been and put my offer to the Defence Commission in Paris. I should point out at this juncture that I was not the only British anarchist to work with Defensa Interior inside and outside Spain: I knew of two others who had gone to Spain as explosives couriers. After my arrest, others too were involved, but I was the only one unfortunate enough to be caught in flagrante. Salva and Bernardo told me that an operation was being prepared and I would be contacted when the final preparations had been made. All I had to do now was to be ready to travel on twenty-four hours notice. I returned to Blantyre to collect a few belongings and informed my mum that I was going on a long hitchhiking holiday through Europe to pick grapes and that I would keep in touch with her. During this visit the local paper, the Hamilton Advertiser, interviewed me because my hair was still a point of curiosity. They asked about my plans for the future and I told them I intended hitching through Europe, taking great care to avoid any mention of Spain. I also made sure my mother knew nothing more than that. As I waved her goodbye from the doorway at Calder Street I wondered if she suspected there was more to my hitchhiking holiday than I had let on.

197

Why Me? Why Then?

Why me? Why Then?

HY DID I, unaggressive and easy-going, decide to go to Spain to engage in a violent campaign against the Franco regime? It was, as Longfellow wrote, complex: — ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ Put simply, I was young, an ‘immortal’ — El Zorro, Superman, Audie Murphy and The Bowery Boys rolled into one — and it seemed the right and proper thing to do. I felt that if I could help by keeping the regime subject to embarrassing international attention or making the Francoist elite even slightly uneasy then perhaps some political, strategic or tactical advantage could be obtained. Remember Franco’s legalised atrocities had, since his victory in 1939, killed more Spanish people than Hitler ever killed German Jews. And here he was, in 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964 — at it again, each subsequent year apparently worse than the previous one. In 1961, the Francoist secret police, the BPS, had made 1,335 arrests of political dissidents; in 1962 this rose to 2,438, an eighty per cent increase. The BPS internal Information Bulletin of 2 January 1963 noted that the year (1962) ‘undoubtedly signalled one of the years of greatest resurgence of the anti-Spanish campaign, through the various opposition parties and trade unions at home and abroad, designed to overthrow the regime.’ Until the late 1950s, Spain was a country to which the rest of the world had turned a conveniently blind eye. Not only had Franco’s barbarities gone unpunished, but the strategic importance of Spain and his hubristic posturing as ‘Sentinel of the West’ in the increasingly tense Cold War atmosphere of the time was actually giving him a mantle of political legitimacy — and the moral high ground, at least among the political right. The turnaround had begun in 1959. On the domestic front, on 1 April 1959, a self-satisfied Franco had presented to a massed adulatory assembly of the Spanish great and the good his grandiose and macabre folly at the Valle de los Caidos, the towering monument to the deaths he had instigated as a result of the Civil War. More importantly, on the international front, President Eisenhower’s triumphalist visit to an emotional General Franco in December 1959 provided the regime with the major international public relations coup it needed to show it had ‘tholed its assize’ and was no longer a pariah state. By 1964 the Francoist regime was celebrating ‘twenty five years of peace’ (or ‘paz! paz! paz!’ as the Spaniards said, mimicking the sound of gunfire) with a series of major cultural, sporting and industrial exhibitions and appeared on the verge of acceptance into the international community. Edward Heath, the then president of the UK Board of Trade, made an official visit to Spain to open a British industrial fair in Barcelona and was received enthusiastically by Franco on April 2. The following month French Foreign Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville bolstered this position even more with a three-day official visit, underlining the importance attached by both

198

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

governments to political collaboration and stimulating mutual economic expansion. In June The European Community (EC) opened talks with Franco’s government to discuss its application for membership of the EC. This development was of vital importance to Spain since a substantial part of its trade was with the Common Market countries. Tourists were also beginning to flow in, some 14 million alone in 1964, compared with the 11 million of the previous year, all of them helping to fill the coffers of the Francoist treasury. The D.I.’s objectives were not military, but social, moral and psychological. The anarchists did not seek dominion over people or to terrorise ordinary citizens, but to isolate and precipitate the downfall of a tyrannical regime by weakening its economic base, the tourist trade, and undermining its political and diplomatic legitimacy by highlighting Francoist human rights’ abuses through spectacular, dramatic and well-directed propaganda actions. These violent actions, which targeted Francoist property and institutions, as opposed to people — with the exception of Franco himself — were actions of the last resort, a response to Franco’s overthrow of democracy in July 1936 and the continuing, unpunished brutality of the regime he had imposed and presided over. Killing Franco appeared to be the only available agency of change. The old adage that states, including democratic ones, don’t have enemies, only interests, was never clearer: international diplomacy, demonstrations, boycotts, economic, moral and cultural pressure had all failed to make any impact over the years or prevent the then current rising spiral of vicious repression or the recent judicial murders of the communist commissar Julián Grimau for alleged war crimes, and the two young anarchists Delgado and Granados for a bombing of which they were innocent. I may not have been wise or effective in what I did, but I did not then have the benefit of hindsight. I wouldn’t argue that mine was an unequivocally altruistic act. My motives were mixed with a desire for excitement and adventure; but I felt that if I was going to do something adventurous it might as well be for something socially beneficial, as opposed to self-indulgence. My conscious choice about the manner of my involvement in the antiFrancoist resistance was as a fighter — as opposed to being a helper of Franco’s victims. To do otherwise would have felt like running away, psychologically and intellectually. I would have felt hypocritical choosing the easy and safe — but useless and ineffective — options of demonstrations, picketing and leafleting and not challenging Franco head on, as it were. Feeling as strongly as I did about his regime, I could not claim exemption from the struggle and stand aside from the moral imperative of challenging that which I strongly felt to be wrong? Seeing someone injured and doing nothing to help is to act negatively; as granny said, ‘we are not bystanders to life’. ‘No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a Promontory were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or thine own were; any man’s

199

1964 — Weltanschaung

death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Devotions - 17, John Donne, 1573-1631 I suppose, if asked for an opinion at the time, many would have described my actions as feckless, headstrong or quixotic. I thought I knew the risks I was running personally — even though I didn’t know the odds were quite so heavily stacked against me — but I must confess, I did not fully consider the question of unforeseen consequences — the possibility of innocent victims or the unleashing of an even more horrific repression on the people of Spain. I felt I had a moral obligation to intervene on behalf of past, present and future victims of Francoism, the last of the Axis regimes. To me it was a just war and a just cause. My authority was my conscience and the ghosts of the victims of Francoism since 1936.

1964 – Weltanschauung BY 1964 THINGS had changed markedly. There was no sense that anything constructive could be achieved by playing the game. In the past, people found their sense of purpose in religion, in nationalism, and in ideology. But neither the church, nor state, nor party now commanded the loyalties of the young. Dissatisfaction with the corruption, materialism and immorality of liberal democracy and its subservience to big business had become widespread, particularly among the young. The public scandal surrounding the Profumo affair, his lies to Parliament and its aftermath had lost the upper classes any claim they might have had to the moral high ground. Joseph Losey’s film of Robin Maugham’s book The Servant was released just as the Profumo case was being exposed: it seemed to mirror the current collapse of ‘decency’ in a morass of sex and lies. Discontent with the cant and hypocrisy of ‘consensus’ politicians — who had turned anti-communism into a religion, yet were unwilling to confront the moral contradictions of liberal democracy — began to express itself more forcefully in the development of an ‘adversarial culture’. Increasingly we focused our energies on challenging government and state authority, and exposing the institutions of state. The noisy peace and race integrationist marches and demonstrations were not simply negative expressions of social alienation, they were affirmations of a newly re-discovered morality in political life, a need to find an alternative model of how to organise the politics of a highly industrialised society with values based on ideals of participatory democracy, solidarity and mutual aid. They provided the synthesis for a new community-oriented counter-culture to challenge the heavy hand of ‘consensual corporatism’. ‘Consensus’ politics were now out of phase with the mood of the people. Tired of both Conservatives and Labour politicians, voters were increasingly using the political system to satisfy their own personal requirements as opposed

200

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

to voting according to the more traditional ideological or class patterns of previous generations. The electorate may have been uncertain as to what they did want, but they were becoming increasingly certain about what they did not want. With the election of Harold Wilson on October 16th (after my arrest in Spain) with a narrow majority it became axiomatic in political science circles that in parliamentary elections people voted against a party rather for another. ExMajor General Richard Clutterbuck believed that people were now voting from fear: ‘People who fear a Conservative government fear industrial confrontation and a society disrupted by unrest. People who fear a Labour government fear bureaucracy and economic collapse.’ The creation of the new ‘redbrick’ (post Oxbridge/St. Andrews) universities which sprang up in the late fifties and early sixties in an attempt to extend membership of the middle class — Brunel, Sussex, York, East Anglia, Essex, Lancaster, Warwick and Kent —also laid down a seedbed of problems for the government. The University of Sussex at Brighton with its focus on social studies was the most popular of the redbricks. By 1964, three years after its first undergraduates had arrived, The Economist could say: ‘To have a child at the University of Sussex is beyond question the most absolutely OK thing in Britain now’. After three years it had over a thousand students and by 1968 it was to have almost 3,000. Nanterre University in Paris also opened in 1964. This explosion in higher education was to create, from 1967 onwards, a generation of discontented ‘over-educated’ college students from mainly working class backgrounds — the ‘generation of ‘68’ — with a declining respect for authority and imbued with democratic, egalitarian and individualistic expectations which the political system could never hope to meet. The same process was also at work on the industrial front where the authority of the trade union leadership was also being challenged by a rebellious rank and file. As the Donovan Commission noted, wildcat strikes called by militants beyond the control of the trade union leadership became commonplace. The strategy of government was to either incorporate into the authority system or criminalise or marginalise those ‘uncontrollable’ individuals and groups who were no longer deferring to their traditional leaders. The lack of confidence in the institutions and processes of government was clearly exceeded by the lack of enthusiasm for any alternative set of existing institutions. The political and trade union leaders had ceased to fulfil the function for which they had been elected. In fact, people at the base of society were beginning to question the usefulness of leaders whose logic processes invariably underwent a massive shift on election to parliament or co-option on to a

201

Exits And Entrances

government planning body. Instead, they began to resolve their own problems through collective processes which bypassed the traditional political system altogether. To all intents and purposes this was my worldview of politics, human life and everything in July 1964

Exits And Entrances A FEW DAYS BEFORE I left for Paris, I was inveigled into appearing on what later turned out to be, for me, an almost disastrous chat show called ‘Let Me Speak’, on the recently launched BBC2 channel. This programme was chaired by Malcolm Muggeridge and slotted into the religious hour on Sundays. Muggeridge had recently hit the headlines as a result of a negative comment on the Royal family, which in turn had led to hostile tabloid press stories and physical attacks on him and his wife by League of Empire Loyalist members. To make matters worse, he had also declared himself sympathetic to the anarchists. Most of those appearing on the chat show were people who had come to anarchism from a moral or ethical perspective, as opposed to what I thought of as a class-based perspective. Indeed, some denied that anarchism had anything to do with class struggle. To me their position was a negative one: non-violent, non-voting, (though some did compromise on this), non-governmental perhaps. They did not envision the abolition of the state; they sought merely to challenge and draw attention to the inequities within the system like some latter day Diogenes or a one-man Greek chorus. Among them was Martin Small, a charming Catholic anarchist whose inspiration was St. Thomas Aquinas’s ideas on the ‘good’ society. I cannot remember how it started, but I remember an earlier discussion with Martin when I said something to the effect that violence should be met with violence. Martin appeared to be taken aback by this, and replied that he had never heard such a thing from an anarchist before! I suppose this says a lot about the state of the movement at the time. I didn’t feel keen to continue the discussion, as I felt we were poles apart, and I expect he felt the same. Nearly forty years on, I feel that we were much closer than either of us suspected. Martin Small died of leukaemia not too long afterwards. Martin’s blend of Aquinas’s Christianity and anarchism was very attractive to Muggeridge although he did not think the mixture possible, and neither did I. Perhaps it depends how you define sin. My own position is that humanity is caught in an endless cycle of social and personal imperfection, which constantly reproduce each other as oppression and dysfunction; it can be broken or at least slowed only by resistance both active and passive. Some Christians equate sin with oppression and dysfunction, but I think this is a last-ditch defence of superstition... Vincent Johnson — a member of the Trotskyist/Catholic Militant Labour Party faction in Liverpool before joining the SWF— and I were billed as the

202

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

‘revolutionary anarchists’ on the programme. Muggeridge asked me if I was sincere in my revolutionary aims. Clasping his hands in prayer-like fashion he asked, would I, for instance, given the opportunity, assassinate Franco? It was an unlucky shot in the dark, for that was exactly what I proposed to do. What could I say but yes? Fortunately, my contribution to the programme was cut following the news of my arrest by the intervention of Sir Hugh Greene, the then DG of the BBC and Muggeridge himself. An unlikely friendship had been forged and for years afterwards Muggeridge and I exchanged Christmas cards. He even offered to stand bail for me seven years later in the ‘Angry Brigade’ trial at the Old Bailey. Wynford Hicks and Ian Vine from Bristol were also part of the anarchist panel. Immediately the recording of the broadcast was over I returned to Mark’s flat to pack my rucksack. To Mark Hendy, John Rety and my other friends I said I was going to pick grapes and would probably meet them at the big anarchist summer camp near Toulouse, during August. Among my belongings was a Christie tartan kilt. There was no chauvinism intended. On previous occasions I had discovered that hitchhiking on the Continent was a lot easier for kilted Scots, for whom the French entertain a certain admiration. This was possibly because the Scots made war on most of their kings and put so many of them to death — or maybe it had something to do with the lack of underpants. As I saw it, the best side to the Stuarts was the regicide; the only benefit the Scots ever derived from their kings was when they sold Charles I to the English. Unfortunately, my Christie ancestors had fought for Charles I under the Duke of Monmouth so we lost out on that one as well! . It was 31 July 1964, just three weeks after my eighteenth birthday on 10 July 1964. I went home to pack my Bergen, folding my kilt ostentatiously on top, and made the final preparations for my trip to Paris —— and my rendezvous with destiny in Madrid. That same week the Beatles’ ‘Hard Day’s Night’ was Top of the Pops, sharpsuited scooter-riding Mods were battling it out on the south coast with leatherclad bikers and thousands of young working-class students with high expectations were preparing for their new lives on the redbrick university campuses. Me? I was off to Spain; like George Orwell in 1936, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. It was a new apprenticeship. I was about to set in train the traumatic events that would shift my hitherto carefree adolescent arse into serious adult gear.

203

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Background — Aims and Principles

Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias

he Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth, the FIJL, was (and is) the national anarchist youth organisation formed in the 1930s out of the regional Libertarian Youth organisations. Its objectives are contained in the Statement of Principles published on the FIJL membership card: ‘Under the designation Iberian Libertarian Youth Federation (Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias — FIJL), a body is hereby constituted that is to pursue the following objectives: To bring together young people of both sexes, regardless of race or colour, who have social consciences and a desire for an improvement that may render Man free, socially and individually, and the social and economic equal of his or her fellow human beings. To these ends, that Association (Agrupación) will fight against property, the authority principle, the State, politics and religion. Against property, on the grounds that it is a man-made injustice that a man should have possession of wealth produced by other men, or of the land, which belongs to Humankind alone and is an asset of Society, as sacred to it as life to the individual. On the grounds that it is rooted in violent, criminal theft by the strongest from the weakest, giving rise to the odious existence of parasites within the human hive, their sole mission being to live off the toil of others through exploitation and impoverishment of the rest. On the grounds that it conjures capitalism into existence and that the latter introduces the law of wages which condemns man to ongoing economic slavery and places him at the mercy of the vagaries and consequences of its unbalanced economics. On the grounds that it lies at the root of prostitution, the most squalid and degrading trespass that Society makes upon the human conscience, by condemning woman to make a commodity item of the purest and most delicately sensitive elements that the critical and ethical sentiments of human beings prize: her maternal feelings and womanly love. Against the authority principle, on the grounds that it implies erosion of the human personality in subordinating some men to the will of others, arousing in the latter instincts that predispose them to callousness and indifference towards the pain of their fellows and which help to subordinate the individual by violence to the interests of property. Against the State, on the grounds that it hinders the free and normal development of peoples’ ethical, philosophical and scientific endeavours, and on the grounds that it is the essential foundation underpinning the authority principle and champions property through its armed forces, Police and Courts. Because it maintains an Army and Navy, the destructive purpose of which is inhumane as it pits people against people, trampling upon the quintessentially human feelings of sociability and solidarity, so as to become a means whereby stronger peoples may lord it over the weaker. Against politics, on the grounds that it presupposes annihilation of personality through the surrender of one’s own will to an outside will, misrepresents collective interests by means of a phoney parliamentary majority

204

Background — The Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias

and is the arrangement whereby the interests of property and laws regarding the care and protection of the State are legitimised. Against all religions, because they are an affront to free human thought, injecting into it a moral hierarchy that predisposes it to unresisting acceptance of all tyranny and warps social relations by means of terror and fanaticism, flying in the face of reason and scientific progress. THIS ASSOCIATION’S efforts will be directed towards the implantation of libertarian beliefs in the young, with an eye to preparing them individually to fight against all forms of authority, in the trade union as well as in the ideological context, in order to bring about a libertarian social setting wherein the functions and activities of the individual in production may not be subject to any economic tyranny, but, rather, determined by professional competency, with economic equality being guaranteed through free cooperation and mutual aid, and, in terms of relations, by elective affinities, governed by solidarity and love alone; planting in the minds of the People at large and especially in the minds of its component members the conviction that until such time as economic equality is a reality, true equality between men will not be feasible and that equality is not going to be possible for as long as property and the State exist, and that, therefore, property should be held in common so that endeavours may be crowned by the greatest possible success, with no hurdle between individual and Community other than the need to marshal efforts in order to sustain industrial output, and in the maintenance of relations between Community and Community for exchange and transportation purposes, and, in material matters, than the affinity between individuals and solidarity between Communes. In order to bring about these goals, active propaganda will be carried out by means of talks, lectures, rallies, newspapers, pamphlets and whatsoever means may be open to us.

Young People The Iberian Libertarian Youth Federation is the personification of the Peninsula’s rebellious youth. The mission of young people through their Associations is to equip him or herself ideologically so that they are in a position to commit themselves enthusiastically to revolutionary action. Make your contribution to our unalloyed anarchist endeavour.’

205

Background — The Post-War Guerrilla Struggle Against Franco

Background —

The Post-War Guerrilla Struggle Against Franco

‘Behold a Pale Horse’: Fred Zinneman’s film based on the last days of Spanish anarchist guerrilla, Francisco Sabaté.

The grave of ‘Quico’ Sabaté, reburied in 1985.

ittle has been written about the scale of the armed struggle against Franco following the civil war. Guerrilla resistance in Spain had continued from 1939 until the early 1960s. In 1955 Franco’s friend, Civil Guard Lieutenant General Camilo Alonso Vega — who as Captain General of the Civil Guard (and Minister of Interior in 1964) was in charge of the anti-guerrilla campaign for 12 years — wrote: that ‘banditry’ was of ‘great significance’ in Spain, in that it ‘disrupted communications, demoralised folk, wrecked our economy, shattered our unity and discredited us in the eyes of the outside world’. Anarcho-syndicalists of the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) and the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL) operating in groups of urban and rural guerrillas (grupos especificos) had been the backbone of the resistance to Franco. There are no reliable figures for casualties sustained by the guerrillas or inflicted upon the security forces and Army, but some were released in 1957. According to these, between 1943 and 1952 the Civil Guard had sustained 628 casualties, including 258 deaths while some 5,548 ‘bandits’ were killed in 2000 skirmishes — ‘many of which amounted to full-scale battles’, but made little impact on Spain’s domestic politics other than the psychological one of keeping alive the flames of resistance. The main areas of guerrilla activity after World War Two had been in Andalusia — around Ronda and the Bética and Penibética mountain ranges; from the Cuenca highlands as far as the French border with Huesca province, including much of the province of Teruel; in the Central area around the Sierra de Guadarrama and the Sierra de Gredos, encompassing the provinces of Madrid, Segovia and Avíla, the hills around Toledo and the Sierra Morena through Badajoz province as far as Huelva in the west and Albacete in the east; in the north it covered the Picos de Europa range down as far as the Asturias. In Navarre the official figures are of 35 guerrillas dead and upwards of 200 arrested, but undoubtedly the numbers were higher. (Reseña general del problema del bandolerismo en España despues de la guerra de liberación, Eulalio Lemia Pérez (head of Guardia Civil special operations, Madrid, 1957.) An important weapon in the Francoist security offensive against the guerrillas had been the introduction in 1947 of well-trained SAS-style ‘counter-gangs’ who dressed and armed themselves as insurgents and even carried out savage killings of innocent peasants which they ascribed to the guerrillas with the intention of depriving them of popular support and sympathy. The Spanish Communist Party (PCE) abandoned guerrilla activity at Stalin’s instigation in 1948 and by 1949 the armed guerrilla movement had ceased to be a

206

Background — The Post-war Guerrilla Struggle Against Franco

serious military threat to Francoism. Additionally, the escalating tensions of the Cold War, the 1952 US military and economic assistance treaty with Franco and the entry of Spain into the United Nations meant there was no longer much chance of the guerrillas creating a unified force capable of destabilising the Franco regime, nor of lighting the fuse of popular insurrection in the urban centres. The rural guerrilla struggle petered out dramatically after 1952, but a few die-hards refused to give up the struggle. On 8 August 1961, a 14-strong guerrilla band in Navarre, commanded by the former communist, Valentín González, El Campesino, had a brush with the Civil Guard in Irati, in an operation allegedly funded by the French intelligence services as a thinly-veiled warning to Franco about the consequences of backing the OAS. In Cantabria, the last two guerrillas, Juan Fernández Ayala and Francisco Bedoya Gutiérriez were killed in 1957 and in Catalonia, the last anarchist guerrilla to operate in the Pyrenees, Ramón Vila Capdevila or Caraquemada (‘Burnt-Face’) died in a Civil Francisco Sabate Llopart (‘el Quico’), Guard ambush after blowing up electricity pylons in photographed in front of Barcelona’s Triumphal Arch in the mid 1950s. Manresa, in August 1963. Urban guerrilla action groups such as those run by José Lluis Facerías operated until August 1957, when he was shot down in a Barcelona street and the most famous anarchist urban guerrilla of them all, Francisco Sabaté Llopart, ‘el Quico’ — the one whose life allegedly inspired Fred Zinneman’s film Behold a Pale Horse — was killed in January 1960.

The last photograph of Jose Lluis Facerias.

1945, the Liberation: There’s still Franco!

207

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Background —

The Hijacking Of The ‘Santa Maria’

Surrounded on all sides by the US Sixth Fleet, the DRIL finally agreed to negotiate with the Americans. Rear-Admiral Allen Smith, second-incommand of the US Atlantic Fleet, came on board the Santa Liberdade with a number of his officers and two CIA men on Sunday 29th January to negotiate on behalf of Admiral Robert L. Dennison, the commander-inchief of the US Atlantic Fleet.

THE ‘WINDS OF CHANGE’ heralded by Prime Minister Harold MacMillan were global ones. His speech also referred to Africa and — considering the Portuguese dictatorship’s massive dependence on Angola and Mozambique — no doubt made Salazar distinctly uneasy. It also gave heart to the anti-colonialist movement worldwide, In Venezuela, the dictator Marco Pérez Jímenez, faced with growing popular opposition, stuffed his suitcase with dollars one day in 1958 and fled to the US. On January 1, the following year, armed guerrillas marched into Havana overthrowing another US cacique, Fulgencio Batista. These events gave a major boost to the expectations of radicals and liberals everywhere. Young people throughout Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula now began to believe that the idea of toppling the tyrants looked achievable and that the time had finally come to rise up in arms against Franco and Salazar. New opposition groups began to emerge inside Spain itself such as the libertarian Movimiento Popular de Resistencia (MPR) and the socialist-oriented Frente de Liberación Popular (FLP). In March 1960, two bombs exploded in Madrid, one in the Ayuntamiento, the City Hall, and the other in the hands of the man carrying it, 27-year old Ramón Pérez Jurado, killing him immediately. A further three unexploded devices were found when the police raided the flat of another member of the team, Antonio Abad Donoso. Donoso was arrested, tried by summary consejo de guerra and garrotted in Carabanchel Prison that same month for his part in the Madrid bombing campaign. The victims, Jurado and Donoso, were members of a previously unknown organisation calling itself the Directorio Revolucionario Ibérico de Liberación (Iberian Revolutionary Directorate of Liberation) or DRIL for short. THE DRIL DEFINED ITSELF as a ‘democratic organisation of anti-fascist men and women of differing political ideologies and religious beliefs seeking to overthrow the Iberian tyrannies’. It was an anti-fascist umbrella movement, a ‘flag of convenience’ which sought to rally anti-Francoists and anti-Salazarists from across a broad religious and political spectrum. In fact, the Portuguese members were mainly supporters of General Delgado and its Spanish supporters were mainly drawn from among the exiled Spanish anarchists in Venezuela. After the deaths of Jurado and Donoso, the DRIL set about planning Operación Dulcinea, the hijacking of the Portuguese liner the SS Santa Maria. The objective of this stunning operation was to mobilise world public opinion and opposition forces within Spain and Portugal (which apart from a handful of isolated urban and rural guerrillas had been virtually inoperative since the end of World War Two) against the two Iberian dictators. Once the vessel had been seized its new commanders planned to go to the

208

Background — The Hijacking of the Santa Maria

island of Fernando Pó (Bioko Island) in Spanish Guinea and on to São Tomé e Principe, Portuguese colonies, in order to launch an insurgency which would begin the process of liberating the Portuguese colonies of Equatorial Guinea and Angola. The leaders of the operation had been living in exile in Venezuela. The overall director of the DRIL was an imaginative and charismatic Galician libertarian intellectual, José ‘Pepe’ Veló Mosquera, assisted by a Spanish republican naval captain, José Fernándo Fernández Vázquez, who operated throughout the operation under the nom de Captain Enrique Galvão guerre of commandante ‘Sotomayor’. The Portuguese members of the commando were led by former Infantry (left) and Santa Maria’s captain, Captain Henrique Galvão, an anti-Salazar activist who had fled Portugal in 1959 Mario Simões after being sentenced to eight years for an attempted coup d’état. Maia. But it was Veló who was the organisational brains * Operation Dulcina and inspiration behind the DRIL and the whole After the deaths of Jurado and Donoso, the DRIL set operation. ‘Sotomayor’ was the naval coordinator and about planning Operación Dulcinea, the hijacking of the Galvão the public face of the operation, given the vessel Portuguese liner the Santa Maria. The objective of this was Portuguese. Galvão in fact was not a member of operation was to mobilise world public opinion against DRIL, but had been taken on by Veló at the request of the the two Iberian dictators, Franco and Salazar. Once the Portuguese opposition leader, General Humberto vessel had been seized they planned to go to the island Delgado whose Junta Nacional Independente de of Fernando Pó (Bioko island) in Spanish Guinea and on Libertação (JNIL), the ‘Independent National Liberation to São Tomé and Principe, Portuguese colonies, to launch Council’, had challenged Salazar for the presidency of an insurgency which would begin the process of Portugal. Delgado was then living in exile in Brazil after liberating Equatorial Guinea and Angola. The overall denouncing electoral fraud in the 1958 elections. director of the DRIL was the imaginative and charismatic Veló recruited a team of twenty-four men from Galician libertarian intellectual, José ‘Pepe’ Veló among the hundreds of Spanish and Portuguese exiles in Mosquera, a Spanish republican naval captain, José Venezuela. It had been from among this pool of exiles, all Fernándo Fernández Vázquez, who operated throughout anxious for action against Iberian tyranny, that the DRIL the operation under the nom de guerre of commandante ‘Sotomayor’. The twelve Portuguese participants were led had emerged. For security reasons, the only information the team by Captain Henrique Galvão, an anti-Salazar activist who members were given was that they were to join the Santa had fled Portugal after being sentenced to eight years for Maria as regular passengers at the port of La Guaira in an attempted coup d’état. The twelve Spaniards, Caracas. The weapons, a sub-machine gun, two old rifles including Veló’s and Fernández’s sons, all anarchists and some hand guns, were allegedly smuggled aboard in recruited from the CNT and FIJL: Rafaél Rojo Ruíz, Fermín a coffin bound for Galicia. Galvão himself came aboard Suárez, José Pérez, Ríco, Basilio, Porriño, Yanes, Maso, Federico de Fernández (‘Sotomayor’s son) and Victor Veló in Curaçao. Only the three leaders knew about the hijacking plan; (José Veló’s son). The vessel was renamed the Santa the activists themselves believed they were going to the Liberdade and the yellow, black and white flag of the DRIL, with its five-pointed star, symbolising the Spanish colonies of Rio Muni and Fernando Pó to fight brotherhood of the peoples of the world, was hoisted, Francoism. They were, but they didn’t know they were replacing the hated and despised Salazarist flag. taking the boat with them. Also, neither the Spaniards

209

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

nor the Portuguese knew of each others’ existence until they met in Veló’s cabin for the distribution of weapons immediately prior to the hijacking itself. The liner was seized by surprise at 1.45 a.m., after a short but bloody gunfight on the bridge, on the morning of 21-22 January. The seizure took place in international waters, fourteen hours out of Curaçao on her three-day voyage to Port Everglades on the Florida coast. The bridge had been seized by the Spanish team with three attacking from one side and three from the other side. The officers on watch on the bridge resisted and opened fire on their attackers and a major gunfight ensued during which two of the crew were seriously wounded. (One of these, the second mate, João José Do Nascimento Costa, later died while his assistant, José Peres de Sousa was seriously wounded.) The Portuguese team captured the captain, Mario Simões Maia, and the ship’s officers who were asleep in their cabins. The vessel was renamed the Santa Liberdade and the yellow, black and white flag of the DRIL, with its fivepointed star, symbolising the brotherhood of the peoples of the world, was hoisted, replacing the hated and despised Salazarist flag. Everything went smoothly and the ship silently changed course, out of the Caribbean, towards the open Atlantic and the west coast of Africa. On board were 350 crew and 586 passengers of whom 233 were Spaniards, 179 Portuguese, 87 Venezuelans, 35 Americans, four Cubans, three Brazilians, one Italian and one Panamanian. The high-risk operation had proved a success, but still no one outside the liner knew of the drama that had taken place. The DRIL’s plans had to be changed when the ship’s doctor requested that José Peres de Sousa, the seriously wounded crew member, be put ashore for urgent emergency medical treatment. If he didn’t receive emergency surgical intervention quickly the young cadet would die. After a heated argument between Galvão — who refused, intitially, to have the injured man put ashore for emergency treatment — and Veló, who argued that the DRIL would be judged by its failure to act humanely, and what had been inspired by the highest ethical motives would be judged as an act of piracy. Veló and ‘Sotomayor’ won the day and the wounded cadet and half a dozen of his colleagues were put ashore on the nearby island of St Lucia in the British West Indies with $2,500 to cover medical expenses. The news of the audacious capture of Portugal’s prestige liner by radical political activists captured the world’s headlines on 24 January, 1961, overshadowing the inauguration ceremony of J.F. Kennedy, who had taken over the US presidency a few days earlier. Initially, the news reports were confused with stories about ‘rebels’ and ‘pirates’ having seized the liner, but their motivation and intentions remained a mystery. First the BBC then the world’s news agencies began running the story that seventy Portuguese rebels led by Henrique Galvão, the former Portuguese army captain, had seized the Santa Maria. The ship’s radio had been taken over by ‘Pedro’, one of the Spanish team with telegraph experience, and the DRIL began to issue regular bulletins

210

Background — The Hijacking of the Santa Maria

explaining the political motives behind the operation. To ‘Pedro’s’ intense irritation as an anarchist, Galvão broadcast a statement from the liner declaring Humberto Delgado ‘president-elect of the Portuguese Republic’, having been fraudulently denied his office by the Salazar dictatorship. In Brazil, Humberto Delgado himself was quick to make capital out of the situation.He issued the following telegram to the British and US embassies: ‘The Santa Maria incident is not a mutiny nor an act of piracy, but rather the seizure by Portuguese citizens of a Portuguese vessel for Portuguese political motives. I request that your government not meddle in this affair.’ Initially the plan had been to put the passengers ashore in a neutral port and press on to either Ghana or Guinea, but the news that the British navy, the Portuguese warship Pedro Escobar and the Spanish cruiser Canaria had set out in pursuit of them meant that this plan had to be abandoned. Then, on 28 January, a squadron of US aircraft and five US Navy vessels of the US Sixth Fleet appeared, including two destroyers, USS Gearing and USS Domato, and the nuclear submarine Seawolf. ‘Sotomayor’, the acting captain, told the Americans who were trying to block their course that they would not be stopped by anyone and that if they continued to obstruct them they would all end up at the bottom of the sea and the responsibility for the deaths would be on the Americans. Only at this point did it emerge that this was not just a Portuguese operation: Spaniards were involved as well. The liner’s second mate, José Dos Reis, one of the injured put ashore at Santa Lucia, revealed that most of Captain Galvão’s men were Spaniards and ‘appear not to be under Galvão’s command’, but rather under the control of the enigmatic ‘Professor Bello’, a reference to ‘Pepe’ Veló. The embarrassing fact that Spaniards were involved was hushed up by the Franco government who wanted to maintain the impression that this was purely an anti-Salazarist operation. To ensure the DRIL’s motives could not be impugned by charges of piracy or theft, Velo insisted that the ship’s captain, Mario Simões, and its bursar, Alfredo Madrugo Barcía, open all the safes on board and draw up an inventory of the funds held in them. They refused. However, ‘Pedro’, the Spanish radio operator had trained as a locksmith and he succeeded in opening the safes, revealing a hoard of US dollars and assorted South American currencies. Surrounded by the US Sixth Fleet, the DRIL finally agreed to negotiate with the Americans. Rear-Admiral Allen Smith, second-in-command of the Atlantic Fleet, came on board the Santa Liberdade with a number of his officers and two CIA men on Sunday 29th January to negotiate on behalf of Admiral Robert L. Dennison, the commander-in-chief of the US Atlantic Fleet. Smith was received with full military honours and the Tannoy broadcast the US and Portuguese national anthems as well as the Galician anthem and the Spanish Republican Himno de Riego. It should be said that this annoyed the Spanish anarchists among the team, but their respect for Veló and ‘Sotomayor’ was such that they didn’t push the matter.

211

Background — The Hijacking of the Santa Maria

By this time most of the world’s press was on the side of the DRIL. As the New York Times put it, the US’s main responsibility was purely and simply to ensure the lives and safe disembarcation of the passengers. ‘It is not for us to protect dictators from their discontented subjects’. So upset was the Salazar regime at the hostile tone of the US press and its treatment of Galvão as a revolutionary rather than a common criminal that it threatened to throw the US military off its bases in the Azores. As a result of these talks a few passengers were allowed to leave with the Americans in return for water and fuel. The main hand-over of passengers was to take place in the Brazilian port of Recife. Veló and ‘Sotomayor’ were initially in favour of scuttling the ship once the passengers were off, but Galvão was against this plan. However, the proximity of the Portuguese fleet and the Canarias meant that the only practicable solution was to surrender the liner to the Brazilian authorities and take up the offer of political asylum made on 1 February by the recently appointed Brazilian president, Janio Quadros, who had taken office the previous day: ‘At one o’clock today, I was apprised of the telegram sent me from on board the Santa Maria. Remembering our meeting in Caracas, let me reaffirm to you my loyalty to our unalterable democratic conditions. The Brazilian government and people are watching with deep emotion the fate of the hundreds of passengers under your care and responsibility and you may rest assured that in the exercise of my constitutional powers you will be afforded right of asylum in my homeland insofar as existing laws and treaties permit.’ The DRIL accepted this offer. On 2 February the Santa Liberdade entered the port of Recife to put her passengers ashore. The reception waiting for them resembled carnival time with enthusiastic crowds of thousands and thousands of people dancing and cheering them on the dockside. Many of the commando members could not disguise their frustration at how things had turned out. They wanted to fight, not party. Sensitive to this discontent, Pepe Veló called a meeting of the members of the commando before surrendering the ship. He said: ‘We have achieved something very important. We have reminded the world of the existence of the Iberian dictatorships. For twelve days the Santa Liberdade has been front page news in every country in the world and held the attention of the governments of the big powers. The behaviour of the DRIL in the course of this operation has shown that this was no act of piracy and in so doing has won the sympathy of millions. Franco and Salazar are reeling from this blow, but let us not forget that they have yet to be brought down.” The following day, 3 February 1961, the 24 DRIL members handed the liner over to the Brazilian navy and were ferried by naval tug and then by army bus to a police barracks in Recife where they were welcomed as political refugees. That night they attended a dinner laid on for them by the vice-president of Brazil. After twelve intense days that had caught the imagination of the world, the great adventure was over

212

Background — The Hijacking of the Santa Maria

Consequences EVEN ALTHOUGH IT failed to achieve its primary objective of acting as a trigger to an anti-colonial struggle in Spain’s and Portugal’s African colonies, the daring DRIL operation did have positive unforeseen consequences. On the day on which the Santa Maria was surrendered, 3 February 1961, the first armed clashes of the anti-colonial struggle occurred in Luanda, the capital of the Portuguese colony of Angola. By their actions the DRIL showed that it was possible to fight back against dictatorship. The global coverage of the operation did an enormous amount to rouse the antifascist consciences of people around the world and of many antiFrancoist and anti-Salazarist opponents, in exile as well as at home. I recall quite vividly, as a fourteen-year old, watching the Pathé newsreels in the cinema and wanting to cheer the hijackers. The DRIL approach launched a new form of action. They pioneered the hijacking of ships and planes for political motives. Specifically, seven months later, on 10 November 1961, the Casablanca-to-Lisbon TAP flight was hijacked by six passengers who then used the plane to drop manifestoes and leaflets over the Portuguese capital before turning back to Tangiers, where they were arrested by the Moroccan authorities. Waiting for them at the airport was Captain Galvão, dressed in the same uniform they had devised for the hijacking of the Santa Maria; black beret and trousers and khaki shorts. It was the first plane hijacking in world history. The leading lights of Operación Dulcinea carried on with the struggle against injustice and dictatorship until the end of their days, but most never saw their dreams realised. Only Commandant Sotomayor outlived General Franco. Pepe Veló died in São Paulo on 31 January 1972. Henrique Galvão died in exile in Brazil in 1973, a year before the ‘Portuguese’ ‘Revolution of the Carnations’. And General Humberto Delgado was to be done to death in Extremadura, near the Portuguese border, in February 1965 in an ambush set up by agents of the PIDE, the Portuguese secret police. There were still a few of the DRIL team around in 2001, including Pedro, the radio operator, but they prefer to maintain the impregnable silence they have kept for forty years. Importantly, for many Spaniards, the DRIL action highlighted the passivity of the exiled Spanish anarchist movement and exposed the labyrinthine bureaucratic machinations which had obsessed the various CNT leaderships since the end of the Second World War for what they were, pointless and selfserving excuses for inactivity.

213

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

— Defensa Interior Background

Delegates to the 1961 Intercontinental Congress discuss the question of CNT reunification. Jose Peirats addresses the congress (top) watched by Cipriano Mera Sanz (back right).

HE SPANISH LIBERTARIAN Movement in Exile (MLE) — which, as previously noted, consisted of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) and the Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL) — finally began— in in January 1960 — to resolve its internal factional differences. It was hoped this would be a new beginning to a new and more hopeful decade. The first congress of the MLE was held in Limoges (France) in September 1961, and it was here, on 2 September, that the decision was taken to create a specifically clandestine planning and action organisation. A secret addendum to Point 8 of the agenda approved the setting up of a body called the Sección Defensa Interior. For its part, the CNT and the wider Spanish movement in exile undertook to raise funds of ten million pesetas with which to finance the DI’s operations. One of the main objectives of the D.I. was to organise and carry out attempts on the life of General Franco. By now even the most optimistic of compromise seekers had given up hopes of any possibility of a diplomatic or democratic solution to the Spanish ‘problem’. The earlier exemplary actions by the DRIL and the accompanying upsurge in optimism from a new generation of uncompromised young militants in the late 1950s and early 1960 had led to the divided Spanish Libertarian Movement in exile burying its differences, temporarily at least, at the Limoges congress. This congress appointed a clandestine arm known as the ‘Defence Commission’ which consisted of the general secretaries of the Spanish libertarian movement’s three branches, the CNT, FAI and FIJL: Roque Santamaría Cortiguera; Angel Carballeira; Marcelino Boticario Sierra (FIJL) and the Secretary of the FAI Liaison Commission. These men appointed the seven people responsible for the DI, the actions of which were claimed on behalf of the Consejo Ibérico de Liberación (CIL), the Iberian Liberation Council. The first planning session of the D.I. took place in March 1962 Its members were mainly CNT and FAI appointees: Germinal Esgleas, Vicente Llansola, Cipriano Mera, Acracio Ruíz, Juan Jímeno, Juan García Oliver; Octavio Alberola was the only FIJL representative. Esgleas was responsible for propaganda, Llansola was initially given the job of organising the attempts on Franco, Alberola was appointed coordinator of the action groups and García Oliver who, apart from helping to draw up the D.I.’s campaign strategy, used his considerable influence and prestige to raise financial support from a range of anti-fascist and trade unions, particularly from the Swedish anarcho-syndicalist labour union, the SAC. Delegates from the D.I. were dispatched to Portugal in May 1962 to establish

214

Background — Defensa Interior

contact with the Portuguese anarchist resistance and to Morocco to organise the setting up a clandestine radio transmitter near Tangiers. March 1962 also saw the beginning of a D.I. bombing campaign (under the ‘acronym of convenience’ the Consejo Ibérico de Liberación, CIL) targeting government agencies, institutions and property in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Manresa, Rome, the Valle de los Caidos and Franco’s summer residence in San Sebastián (the latter involved contacts with the nascent ETA). The CIL, in fact, never existed as an organisation. It was simply a set of initials used in D.I. operations against the Franco and Salazar dictatorships.

Funding and weapons FUNDING FOR THE FIRST year’s operations of the D.I. came from the Defence Commission (on behalf of the CNT, FAI and FIJL) which agreed to hand over 10 million FFrancs. In fact, due to scheming and sabotage by the Esgleist/Montseny faction of the CNT’s Toulouse leadership, only 100,000 French Francs of this was ever received by the D.I. The D.I.’s arms came from the substantial weapons deposits the Spanish anarchists had maintained after the Liberation. They firmly believed that the Allies would press on to topple Franco. The Spanish exiles had, after all provided a very substantial part of the so-called ‘French’ Resistance during World War Two; the plastique, detonators and timing devices came from sympathisers in the Algerian FLN.

Strategy and objectives THE D.I.’s STRATEGY was to generate a specific, purposive, response, not through hurt, but by providing the example of resistance through the propaganda of the deed. Its short-term objectives were: to remind the world, unremittingly, that Franco’s brutal and repressive dictatorship had not only survived World War Two but was now flourishing through tourism and US financial and diplomatic support; to provide solidarity for those continuining the struggle within Spain; to polarise public opinion and focus attention on the plight of the steadily increasing number of political prisoners in Franco’s jails; to interrupt the conduct of Francoist commercial and diplomatic life; undermine its financial basis by stemming the influx of tourists who were allowing the regime to survive and thrive (tourism had brought $400m in revenue into Spain in 1961 alone, thereby pulling the country back from the verge of economic collapse); to take the struggle against Franco into the international sphere by showing the world that Franco did not enjoy unchallenged power and that there was resistance to the regime within and beyond Spain’s borders. The means to be used were propaganda, sabotage and bombs. The D.I. had the difficult task of creating this feeling of uncertainty and fear among would-be tourists without killing or injuring innocent people, ‘collateral damage’, as military spokesmen and their civilian apologists euphemistically describe the state’s unintended victims.

215

Strategy and Objectives

The hoped-for long-term objective, taking into account the specific historical and cultural context of the time — with the overthrow of Latin American dictators Batista and Trujillo and the rising industrial and student militancy within Spain itself, which could have interpreted as a pre-insurgenct mood — was the overthrow of the regime. Parallel with these was the ultimate objective — kill Franco, the root cause of 28 years of murder, misery and oppression in Spain, in the belief that beneficial political change would follow. Few international newspapers, if any, mentioned Franco or Francoism in the early 1960s, except when there occurred an event like the Santa Maria hijacking or the contentious execution of a political prisoner. Franco’s old enemy — international communism — was now the West’s enemy. The Cold War was making Francoism politically acceptable while tourism was making the regime stable, rich and popular. Contradictory as it may sound, the idea was to make terrorism without terror; to commit symbolic actions (‘propaganda by the deed’) which would force the international press to talk about the reactionary and brutal nature of the regime. In effect, the only way to do this was by symbolic bomb attacks directed against Spain’s tourist offices. From 1961 onwards Spanish embassies, banks and tourist offices throughout Europe began to be the target of small, symbolic, bomb attacks. These small explosions usually took place late at night or early in the morning. The bombs were not powerful and were never encased in metal or contained any fragments which could cause injury. They were usually cigarette packets or small plastic containers which depended on blast for effect. Iberia airlines was also targeted, but the explosive charges placed on board did not have detonators. The object was to disrupt and delay flights to and from Spain, not cause deaths or injuries. But it had been necessary to use real explosives otherwise the threats would never have been taken seriously by the security services. Less symbolic actions such as blowing up bridges, sinking boats or blowing up aeroplanes had been considered, initially. The technology was basically the same and the risk similar. The problem was that such actions were barbaric and unanarchistic inasmuch as they endangered the lives of innocent bystanders. These were actions carried out by states, secret services, fascists, religious zealots and nationalists and stalinists! — not by anarchists. The over-riding objective was to raise the public’s awareness of the Franco regime without injuring or killing innocent victims. The D.I.’s strategy was to try to create the spark in Spain which would ignite a process parallel to that which brought down Batista in Cuba. The basic premise — illustrated by the series of Asturian miners’ strikes which began in March 1962 — was that the Spanish people were losing their fear of the Franco regime. The next stage of the campaign was to take the struggle into Spain itself. To demonstrate to the people of Spain that there was an active, internal domestic opposition and that it was possible to stand up to the regime. Those involved

216

Background — Defensa Interior

during this period included not only young Spanish anarchists, but also a number of French, Italian and even a few British anarchists from the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation (SWF). As with the Cuban model, if this stage proved successful and the pulse of European and Spanish public opinion appeared to indicate support for an escalation of the armed struggle, the next step was urban guerrilla warfare targeting the known torturers of the Brigada Político Social, Guardia Civil, the military government and the deeply compromised Falangists and financial supporters of the regime. The climate of uncertainty, instability, the collapse of the tourist market and moral legitimacy would lead, it was hoped, to the fourth and final stage: widespread strikes, mass demonstrations, the withdrawal of international investment, all of which would bring about the final downfall of the fascist regime. With the exception of the San Sebastian explosion (which was an assassination attempt on Franco) all the other attacks — in which small cigarette packet size explosive devices were used — were intended as symbolic gestures and timed with the intention of not injuring or killing ordinary citizens. In fact, none of the actions carried out by the D.I. — nor any of its offshoots or successor groups — such as the First of May Group — caused any deaths, innocent or otherwise. AS INDICATED EARLIER, the D.I’s. parallel task was to plan and implement attempts on the life of General Franco, the archstone of the system. Franco had no appointed successor and the right — the Army, Church, the Falange, the Carlists and the Opus Dei were divided. If Franco could be removed, it was hoped new, progressive forces would be introduced onto the political stage. Octavio Alberola’s role was to train the armed clandestine action groups and, subsequently, after Llansola left, to plan and organise the attempts on Franco’s life. Octavio, who had only recently arrived in France from Mexico, effectively became responsible for all clandestine D.I. activities.

Octavio Alberola — ‘Juan el largo’ OCTAVIO ALBEROLA — or ‘Juan el largo’ or ‘el Mexicano’ as he was more commonly referred to was the charismatic prime mover in the D.I. and Franco’s Public Enemy Number One. Born in Alayor, Menorca, Octavio Alberola had crossed the snow-covered Pyrenees into exile, in France with his mother and sister as a ten-year-old in January 1939. It was one small family group among hundreds of thousands. He was reunited later that year with his father, José Alberola, a well-known and respected member of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI), and the whole family sailed from Bordeaux to Mexico aboard the Ipanema, along with hundreds of other Spanish Republican refugees.

217

Octavio Alberola

Octavio Alberola, Franco’s ‘public enemy Number One’: top, Paris, 1960s; bottom (right), Mexico, 1959.

By the following year, aged 11, he had become a militant in the Juventudes Libertarias and later became equally active in the CNT in exile. But within five or six years the young teenager had began to make himself unpopular among the Spanish exiles in his adopted homeland by focusing on Mexican issues as well as anti-Francoist ones. In 1947, along with a number of young Spaniards and Mexicans, he helped form the Juventudes Libertarias Mexicanas that launched itself onto Mexican political scene with a manifesto denouncing the corruption and poverty rampant in Mexican society. In spite of its claims to be ‘democratic’ and anti-Francoist, the Mexican government brooked no internal opposition and Alberola and three of his closest friends, including Floreal Ocaña (‘Florico’) and Floreál Rojas (the son of Domingo Rojas, one of the main protagonists of the Mexican anarchist group who published Tierra y Libertad), were quickly arrested and held in secret government prisons for a month to teach them a lesson. The hostile response of the exile movement surprised Alberola. They reproached him for involving them in domestic Mexican politics and compromising the quid pro quo. These criticisms would have been understandable to Alberola had they come from Communists and Republicans, but coming from anarchosyndicalists it was unforgivable. Alberola graduated from Mexico City university where he had read engineering — and where he had become more deeply involved in anti-dictatorial student agitation. He served his political apprenticeship between 1955 and 1961 working closely with many of the LatinAmerican exile groups who had used Mexico as a networking centre and base to plan and coordinate insurrectionary movements against the dictatorial and sub-fascist US-supported regimes in their native countries. He was one of the founders of the AntiDictatorship Youth Front, a loose confederation of radical Venezuelan, Dominican Republic, Peruvian and Cuban exile groups. By 1956 the anti-Batista group, the 26th July Movement had become the main focus of Alberola’s activity, and he was working closely with Fidel Castro, Ché Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos. But with the collapse of the Batista regime in 1959 and the first signs of reviving opposition within his native country, Alberola’s attention began to focus once again on Spain. It was clear to him that only bold and dramatic events would bring the Franco regime into the spotlight of critical world opinion. Throughout the 1950s, the conspiratorial silence of the Hispanic and international press concerning the USA’s new, pliable, anti-communist ally,

218

Background — Defensa Interior

Franco, had been broken only when it was forced into reporting dramatic and violent events such as those carried out by the few surviving anarchist action groups. These usually ended tragically for the ever-diminishing band of surviving activists, such as the killing of the anarchist urban guerrilla José Lluis Facerías in an ambush in Barcelona in 1957. Alberola Jr and his father had been vocal and constant critics of the quietist and passive position adopted by the Spanish anarchist movement in exile both in France and in Mexico. The exiled movement had been rent with factional divisions since World War Two. To a large extent this was a generational thing, but not exclusively. On the whole, the younger ones tended towards idealism, action and revolutionary zeal while many of the older ones who had lived through the Revolution and Civil War and had seen the collapse of their hopes and dreams were more cautious, and given to debate and polemic rather than action. Since the end of World War Two they had maintained a quietist, collaborationist posture with liberals, socialists, republicans and communists in the belief that ultimately the Western democracies would find a diplomatic and political solution and force Franco to go. This solution was, in fact, the Common Market, although Franco died before Spain entered it. The Alberolas and other militants had more understanding of the situation and no such faith in the ability or political will of the Western democracies to get rid of Franco in an acceptable time frame. They could not afford to wait for the Molets, Spaaks and Brandts. They understood that el Caudillo was now an important ally in the Western bloc and argued that without a serious initiative from the non-governmental anti-Francoist movement there would be no collapse of the regime, no successful general strike and no triumphal return to Spain of a provisional republican or socialist government. The only way forward, in the younger Alberola’s view, was to follow the Cuban model of revolution — a campaign of robust direct action followed by urban and rural guerrilla warfare, mass demonstrations and a general strike. Alberola returned to Europe for the first time in 1957 with his companion, Irene. Using the name and identity documents of Ricardo Vaca Vilchis they toured Europe as correspondents of the Mexican daily, Zocalo. Their first stop was France where he met and interviewed the old guard of the Intercontinental Secretariat (SI), the body responsible for liaising between the CNT and the urban and rural anarchist action groups, the guerrilla; the SI consisted of: Germinal Esgleas Jaume, Federíca Montseny Mañe, Florentino Estallo Villacampa and Valerio Mas Casas. They asked him to make contact with comrades in Spain — Sebastian ‘Progreso’ Martínez del Hoyo in Valencia — and Portugal — Germinal de Sousa. These were old activists with whom Toulouse had long since lost contact. Following his exploratory trip around the Iberian Peninsula, Alberola spent time in France and London discussing plans and exchanging ideas on how to renew and re-invigorate the anti-Francoist struggle. In France he struck up a

219

Alberola — Cuba

friendship with the later garrotted FIJL activist from Grenoble, Joaquín Delgado Martínez. It was Delgado who had introduced him to the legendary urban guerrilla Francisco Sabaté Llopart and José Pascual Palácios of the Intercontinental Secretariat. These men belonged to the gradually diminishing numbers of CNT activists who, while formally exiled, refused to accept or reconcile themselves to that condition, even temporarily. Nor would they allow themselves to be compromised by the psychological, bureaucratic and political demands, requirements and sacrifices imposed by exile. Delgado suggested to Alberola that he should stop off in London on his way back to Mexico to meet two other exiled Spanish anarchists — Acrácio Ruíz and Salvador Gurruchari. These three men, with Cipriano Mera Sanz and José Pascual Palácios, were to play an important part in the formation of the Defensa Interior. FIJL delegates to the VIII Intercontinental MLE-CNT conference in Toulouse, June 1957. Back row: Antonio Cañete; unidentified Argentinian; Salvador Gurruchari; unidentified delegate from Caen. Front row: Joaquín Delgado Martínez; Crescencio Rodríguez (Clermont Ferrand); Floreál Navarro and Andrés Borras.

Cuba

By the time Alberola returned to Mexico in early February 1958 political events in Latin America had begun to accelerate, particularly in. Alberola’s involvement with the Castro-led anti-Batista Movimiento de 26 de Julio was close and intense and he was regularly to be seen co-chairing public meetings and conferences with Fidel Castro’s younger sister. Alberola also collaborated closely on more direct actions with Comandante de La Rosa, the principal 26 de Julio agent in Mexico. From early 1959 onwards Alberola had also played a leading part in the Movimiento Espanol 59 (ME59), an organisation set up in the wake of Castro’s triumphal entry into Havana to do to Franco what the barbudos or bearded rural guerrillas of the 26 de Julio had done to the dictator Fulgencio Batista (i.e. replace him). ME59 finally faded out by the end of 1959 when the Cuban Communist Party recognised Castroite hegemony and enthusiastically co-opted it as their own. The Partido Comunista Cubana (PCC), founded in 1925 by Julio Antonio Mella (later assassinated in Mexico in 1929) had — in line with Stalin’s foreign policy that communist parties should align themselves with nationalist, reformist or populist regimes — allied itself with Fulgencio Batista’s first government in 1938. In fact the PCC had two ministers in Batista’s first government, Joaquín one of whom was Carlos Rafaél Rodríguez. Rafaél Rodríguez was the one Communist leader who had been with Castro Delgado Martínez.

220

Background — Defensa Interior

right from the start in the Sierra Maestra. The remainder of the leadership of the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP), as the Cuban Communist Party had been renamed since the end of World War Two, remained aloof from the armed struggle and consistently criticised and denounced Castro as an adventurer. Anyone who supported the 26 de Julio guerrilla movement was denounced as either an agent or stooge of the CIA. That hostility towards or plausible denial of? the guerrillas continued until shortly before the fall of Batista in 1959. The political, economic, ideological and above all repressive apparatus of the state were quickly taken over by communist cadres. Anyone who cares to visit the museum of the Interior Ministry at the junction of Fifth and Fourteenth Avenues in Miramar, Havana will discover from the biographical details under the portraits of the earliest ‘martyrs’ of G-2 that the bulk of the members of the ‘Security’ service belonged to the PSP. They had played no role at all in the struggle against the Batista regime. Rafaél Rodríguez — who was to become the number three in the Cuban power hierarchy, the power behind the throne, and the PSP — had become Castro’s key to absolute power. Originally, in his Manifiesto de la Sierra of 12 June 1957, Castro had promised free and open elections under the liberal presidency of Manuel Urrútia, but that was never to be as he allied himself and Cuba more and more closely to the Soviet Union. By 1961, like most anarchists, Octavio had seen how events in Cuba were developing and how Castro was engaged in a struggle for total political control. Another major disappointment was that the PSP ensured that Castro also reneged on his earlier promises made to the Spanish exiles of support in the armed struggle against Franco. Distancing himself from Castro, Octavio denounced the covert, powerful role played by the Cuban Communist Party through the PSP and moved to France in August 1961 to commit himself to the anti-Francoist struggle using the revolutionary methods which had been successful in ousting Batista from Cuba.

Resolving differences IN MEXICO, Alberola and his friend Floreál Rojas had been meeting regularly with Juan García Oliver — then living in Guadalajara — on the question of reanimating the armed struggle against Franco. García Oliver was a former colleague of Buenaventura Durruti and Francisco Ascaso in the near mythical ‘Nosotros’ anarchist group in Spain in the early 1930s. Oliver was also one of the architects of the anarchist strategy of ‘revolutionary gymnastics’, armed risings coupled with general strikes and demonstrations in rural and industrial backwaters of Spain, culminating in a revolutionary situation and the declaration of ‘libertarian communism’. García Oliver told Alberola that he had been in touch with Juan Pintado, the newly appointed coordinating secretary of the SI, with a view to organising a series of anti-Francoist operations. The explosives, detonators and timing devices would be provided by CNT exiles living in Venezuela. Spanish and

221

Organisation de l’Armée Sécrète

Venezuelan anarchists had been involved in actions against the Venezuelan military dictator, Marco Pérez Jímenez. Through the networking opportunities provided by prison in Caracas they had become close friends with leaders of the Venezuela trade union, the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV) and Acción Democratica, the main Venezuelan opposition party. The CTV leaders had promised financial support, arms and explosives for the antiFrancoist struggle. By the end of 1960 the CNT in Mexico had appointed Octavio Alberola as ‘Defence Coordinator’ for the American Continent. In this capacity he arranged for García Oliver to travel to Caracas to finalise details with Juan Pintado for an attempt on Franco’s life. The attentat was planned to take place in San Sebastian during Franco’s summer vacation the following year and was to have been effected by a high-powered explosive device detonated remotely. Both Alberola and Floreal Ocaña volunteered for the operation, but the matter was left with the Venezuelan CNT and the SI for final approval. Early in 1961 the SI informed Alberola that the operation against Franco had to be put on hold until after the Second Intercontinental Congress of the CNT to be held in Limoges on 26 August 1961, where CNT reunification was at last to be discussed. There was also a problem in obtaining the remote-control device required for the attentat. Alberola, however, was to attend the Limoges Congress as a delegate, at his own expense. In fact, Defensa Interior could not have been set up at a worse time. France’s protracted and brutal colonial war in Algeria was in its seventh year.

Organisation de l’Armée Sécrète EVEN AS THE Spanish anarchist exiles were planning to kill the Spanish head of state, the French Organisation de l’Armée Sécrète, a collection of reactionaries and colonial fundamentalists strongly influenced by the ultra-right-wing Catholic and anti-Communist organisation, Cité Catholique — which was particularly well represented among the officers of the 5th Bureau of the General Staff (Psychological Warfare) in Algeria — were plotting to kill the French head of State, General Charles de Gaulle. The OAS’s first attempt on de Gaulle’s life had taken place in July 1961 when they tried to blow up his car on the Pont-sur-Seine. Another more ambitious atttempt followed two months later on 8 September 1961 — just six days after the formation of D.I. — when an OAS Commando Delta ambushed de Gaulle’s car. Only the skills of his driver prevented its success. Under pressure from the French, Franco’s security services rounded up most of the main OAS activists who had sought political asylum in Spain and dispersed them to assigned residence in remote parts of the country. The most dangerous were sent out into the Atlantic to the small island of Palma, the most distant of the Canary Islands. For its part, the French government responded with an order banning the printing and distribution of all anti-Francoist publications published in Spanish

222

Background — Defensa Interior

and the prohibition of all CNT congresses, public gatherings and demonstrations in southern France for six months. The Organisation de l’Armée Sécrète had first surfaced in Spain in May 1961— less than a month after the failed military mutiny in the Algerian barracks. An umbrella terrorist organisation for all supporters of Algerie Française, its supporters were mainly professional soldiers, serving army officers, Foreign Legionnaires and settlers, ex-army veterans of the wars in IndoChina, Korea, the 1958 Algerian Settlers Uprising and the 1960 ‘Week of the Barricades’ led by Jo Ortíz in Algiers, which had the passive complicity of the French Army. Algerie Française had more than passive support within the state apparatus in France itself. Around the same time as we were engaging in jocular banter with the ‘polis of Argyle’ over US nuclear bases in the Holy Loch, in Paris thousands of Algerians were being arrested, beaten, tortured and many murdered on the orders of the Parisian Prefect of Police, Maurice Papon, an unrepentant fascist, a former Vichy police official, Nazi collaborator and Algerie Française sympathiser. Papon did to the Algerians what he had done to the Jews twenty years earlier. In Paris on 4 October 1961, in an attempt to thwart a pro-Front de Liberatión Nationale (FLN) demonstration against a discriminatory 8.30 p.m. curfew on Muslims, 11,000 Algerians were arrested, of whom up to two hundred were murdered in cold blood: lynched, shot while ‘trying to escape’ or drowned by having their hands bound behind their backs and thrown from the bridges into the River Seine. Scores of Algerians were murdered in the courtyard of the central police headquarters in full view of senior police officers. These butcheries were carried out not by the CRS, the brutal but disciplined riot police, but by the ordinary Parisian police, right wing pieds noir sympathisers and the Harkis, a French Muslim Gestapo, made up of peasant pro-French North Africans, many of whom had been recruited directly from the jails of France and given ‘complete liberty of action in dismantling the FLN networks in Paris’. Papon was eventually tried and convicted in 1998 by the French courts, not for these more recent actions, which went unpunished, but for crimes against humanity during the German occupation of France. The OAS received financial and infrastructural support not only from French right wingers but also from other European mercenary and neo-fascist organisations, including Otto Skorzeny’s Nazi friendship network, the ‘Circle of Friends’, which controlled the laundered funds of the III Reich and operated from Madrid as a ‘plausibly deniable’ front for the Spanish Security Service, the Dirección General de Seguridad (DGS). Many of these people re-emerged later as the main players in the terrorist ‘Strategy of Tension’ campaigns that were to destabilise much of Africa, Asia, Latin America, Greece and Italy throughout the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s. They were responsible for the murders of ‘anti-American’ politicians and

223

Organisation de l’Armée Sécrète

anti-colonial militants and the manipulation of popular feeling against the prevailing anti-authoritarian and anti-US mood through terrorist actions committed by provocateurs. These actions were geared to implicate marginal anarchist, marxist and nationalist groups in cold-blooded murder and terrorism. The kidnapping and murder of Moroccan opposition leader Ben Barka and the Piazza Fontanta bombing which led to the defenestration of the anarchist railway worker Giuseppe Pinelli from Milan police headquarters in December 1969 and the 1980 Bologna Railway Station massacre were just a few of the countless outrages of the time. The objective was to create a continuous and mounting climate of fear among the population during the years of the so-called ‘opening to the left’ which would in turn justify the introduction of unmerciful draconian powers under a revived neo-fascist and Christian Democrat government. It would also ensure that the US Navy retained its base in Naples; the only remaining naval base the Americans had in the Mediterranean. The plots against de Gaulle were coordinated from Spain, where the last of the OAS putschists had sought asylum in April 1962, after the failure of their rebellion in Algiers, and where they had established paramilitary training camps. Other OAS activists fled to Portugal and Italy, but the conspiratorial centre was in Spain, particularly around Alicante. Algerie Française may have been no more, but the OAS, under the operational command of Colonel Antoine Argoud, an expert in psychological warfare, could now recruit its Commando Delta killers from among 60,000 loyal exiled pieds noirs and mutinous ex-legionnaires. They also had access to substantial financial backing from wealthy and resentful North African French businessmen as well as the landowners who had once controlled the commerce of Algeria. By the summer of 1962 the now-exiled OAS had established clandestine networks in the main cities of Metropolitan France and by July had been formally organised throughout Spain, Portugal and Italy. But it was mainly from Spain where they had the support of the Falange Española and other extreme right wing and anti-communist groups that the OAS planned its widespread and indiscriminate terrorist campaign throughout Metropolitan France, mainly against Gaullists and those they thought of as leftist publishers, journalists and intellectuals — anyone who dared denounce the violence, abuse of justice and institutionalised use of torture by the army, which was becoming an everyday fact of French life. It was in Spain, too, that the pieds noirs picked up the fascist ideology of José Antonio Prímo de Rivera, the founder of the Falange Española. Their dream was of a fascist Frenchdominated Algeria. The attacks and intimidation persisted until the Algerian war was brought to an end with the signing of the Evian Accords on 18 March 1962. The situation of the victims was not helped by the fact that the institutionally chauvinist and

224

Background — Defensa Interior

racist French police were largely sympathetic to the cultural and geopolitical aims of the OAS. The thinking behind the OAS campaign of indiscriminate terror was ‘the strategy of tension’. They wanted to stir up public opinion and create a climate of unease and insecurity aggravated by counter demonstrations and protests which could be blamed on Communists. The OAS Cold Warrior leadership hoped they would be seen as the only body capable of resisting the influence of international communism and the French CP-controlled trade union, the CGT, in France. In that way they believed they would be able to force de Gaulle to go. The Gaullist government had countered with its barbouzes, a slang reference to the imaginary false beards sported by the undercover operatives of the Service d’Action Civique (SAC), a Gaullist organisation which recruited unrepentant fascists, ‘patriotic’ gangsters, rogue policemen, professional thugs and amoral hard cases of the Parisian and Marseilles underworld, many of them Corsicans. By the time Algeria obtained its independence on 3 July 1962, the OAS had identified and killed 110 barbouzes with 400 OAS members dead — as were an unknown number of Algerians, radicals, anti-colonialists and innocent bystanders. The SAC had first appeared in 1958, the year in which de Gaulle assumed power by a coup d’état. The Rassemblement du Peuple Française (RPF) became the official Gaullist party and the SAC became its security force, the Service d’Ordre du RPF, protecting its politicians and providing security at meetings. SAC activities were directed from their headquarters in north-east Paris, near the Porte des Lilas, by Gaullist eminence gris Jacques Foccart, the shadowy bald character responsible for all de Gaulle’s ‘African affairs’, and Lucien Bitterlin. The SAC ostensibly worked under the control of the French Security Service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) and the Middle East desk of the French Intelligence Service — Renseignement Cinque (R5), of the Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionage (SDECE), headed until 1962 by General Grossin and from then until 1965 by his replacement General Paul Jacquier. (Jacquier was sacked following the kidnapping in Paris and subsequent murder of Moroccan opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka.) In reality the SAC was a law unto itself and their operatives quickly became the instruments for all the dirtiest of Gaullist operations: murder, blackmail, bribery, industrial espionage, intimidation and torture. By the end of the first year of its existence, 1958, the SAC had been sucked into the battle against the Algerian nationalist movement, the FLN, for which it needed to recruit more and more gangsters to do its dirtiest jobs. By 1961-1962, after de Gaulle gave autonomy to nearly all France’s African possessions in 1961-1962, he had created many new enemies, most of whom operated under the umbrella of the OAS, which later became the main target for SAC agents. After the exiled OAS terrorist offensive on Metropolitan France in the winter

225

1962 ‚ The Campaign Begins

of 1961 and the attempt on the life of de Gaulle of 8 September that same year, the SAC launched a massive recruiting drive among the French and Corsican underworld for ‘plausibly deniable’ proxy operatives who were prepared to infiltrate the OAS and willing to kidnap, torture or murder its members. At its peak, the SAC comprised a core of 120 directors immediately responsible to Foccart, plus 20,000 agents, three-quarters of whom were estimated to have been criminals, many of them in heroin smuggling and organised crime. Like the British ‘Black and Tans’ in Ireland in the 1920s, SAC operatives were sadistic, ill-trained and undisciplined — unlike the undercover police forming Michel Hacq’s ‘Mission C’, with whom they worked on occasion. Ironically, ten years later, in 1972-1973, when French President Georges Pompidou purged the SAC of 7,000 undesirables, many fled to Spain and joined forces with the rump of their former arch enemies, the OAS, under the umbrella of the neo-fascist parallel security–intelligence–mercenary organisation, the Paladin Group, headed by SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny — the kidnapper of Mussolini — and, in the background, General Eduardo Blanco of the Spanish DGS.

1962 — The Campaign Begins DEFENSA INTERIOR began planning its Anti-Francoist actions in late May and from June 1962 onwards, it embarked on a co-ordinated bombing campaign against Francoist targets throughout Spain and Italy. In June in Madrid and Barcelona, low-powered bombs exploded in the offices of the Papal Nuncio, the Opus Dei and the Falange Española. In Rome another, targeting Papal support for Franco, exploded in St Peter’s on July 14th at the foot of the statue of Pope Clement XII. In Valencia, the following day, another detonated on the balcony of the city hall where Franco had delivered a speech only a few days earlier. Five days later another bomb went off in Barcelona. A leaflet found close by in Barcelona? said: ‘We are following your every move’. Another bomb went off on 12 August, near el Escorial, at the mausoleum for the dead of the Civil War at the basilica de la Santa Cruz in the Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen). This macabre edifice, topped with a 150 metre-high cross 40 metres wide, had been built with the blood and the lives of Franco’s political prisoners. The next attempt on Franco’s life took place seven days after the Valle de los Caidos bombing on 19 August. Surveillance of Franco’s holiday residences had indicated that the Aldapeta hill on the road to the Ayete Palace, el Caudillo’s summer residence in San Sebastian, was probably the ideal site for the first attempt on the dictator’s life. Julí Hermosilla, an anarchist living in Bayonne in the French Basque country, had been sent by Octavio Alberola to San Sebastian to collect and collate intelligence on Franco’s movements. Her companion, the veteran Basque

226

Background — Defensa Interior

anarchist, Ángel Aransaez, became more deeply involved in the plot because of his concerns regarding the preparations for smuggling the plastic explosive across the border from France. Ángel, who had been decorated for his services with the Free French Forces (Resistance) against the Nazis, asked the recently formed Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Basque armed separatist organisation, for their help in smuggling the explosives across the frontier and into San Sebastian. ETA, coincidentally formed on 1 January 1959, the very day Fidel Castro entered Havana, had a more secure route across the border than that used by the CNT. ETA’s leadership was indebted to the Basque anarchists for providing them with their first arms and explosives. Julén Madariága, one of the founders of ETA, arranged the transfer of the explosives, using an unsuspecting Guardia Civil sergeant to carry the suitcase across. The explosives and weapons came mainly from arms câches established by Spanish anarchist resistance networks during the German occupation of France. Much of the newer materiél, electric detonators and remote control devices, however, was supplied by comrades involved with the Algerian ‘home rule’ movement, the FLN. After the collapse of the Spanish Republican army in 1939, thousands of Spanish anti-Francoists had taken refuge in North Africa and many were active in the post-war anti-colonialist movements throughout the Maghreb, including the Algerian FLN. The French anarchists who planted the bomb crossed the border as tourists and placed the remote control device in an orchard, about 100 metres from the palace, close to the road. They then settled into position on nearby Mount Gudameni to await the arrival of Franco who, unfortunately, failed to show. Equally unfortunate was the fact that the battery in the radio-receiver had only a seven-day lifespan. Leaving the explosives in situ would have endangered innocent passers-by so it was decided to detonate them anyway. The explosion, which rocked the Ayete Palace at noon on 19 August, broke more than seventy windows but injured no one. Franco, whose barraka or good luck never ran out, arrived the following day to comfort his wife, Doña Carmen Polo de Franco, who had been badly upset by the bomb attack. Neither the Brigada Político Social nor the Guardia Civil ever identified those responsible for the bomb and it was put down to ETA. Bombs exploded at the same time, in Madrid, in the premises of the Francoist papers Ya and Pueblo and in the Barcelona offices of La Vanguardia and ABC. There were also more small explosions in Rome, where Pope John XXIII was preparing for the ecumenical council, and at Cardinal Spellman’s residence in New York. The Francoist secret police, the BPS, had a suspiciously high arrest rate and quickly identifed and arrested many FIJL members for the bombings.* The death sentence demanded for Jorge Cunill Valls for the Valle de los Caidos explosion triggered a spectacularly successful propaganda action in Italy

227

The Elias Kidnapping

on 28 September 1962 when Italian anarchists of the ‘International Federation of Libertarian Youth (IFLY)’ kidnapped the honorary Spanish Vice Consul in Milan, Sr Isu Elías. They had done this in an attempt to prevent the execution of the young Spanish anarchist and to draw attention to his case. The original target had been the Spanish Consul, the Count of Altea, but he had been on holiday when the council of war took place and the sentences passed. Elías had been telephoned, supposedly by the deputy * Arrests mayor of Milan, Sr. Meda, inviting him to dine at a very On September 21 ten FIJL members appeared before a chic restaurant. ‘Sr Meda’ told Isu Elías that he would summary court-martial and received sentences ranging collect him at the consular offices between twelve and from four to twenty years’ imprisonment: Ramón one. The vice-consul rang his family to tell them he Ormazabal; Grégorio Rodríguez, Agustín Ibarrola; Maria Francisca Dapena; Gonzalo José Villate; Vidál de Nicolas, would not be home for lunch. He then received a further Antonio Jiménez Pericas, Andrés Perez Salazar; José call from ‘Sr Meda’ saying that he had some urgent work Maria Ibarrola and Enrique Mujica. to finish and that he would send his chauffeur to pick In Barcelona that same day, a council of war him up. sentenced Jorge Cunill Valls to thirty years imprisonment, The car, driven by a young Italian anarchist, Alberto Marcelino Jiménez Cubas to twenty-five years and Tomiolo, arrived at twelve-thirty with another two Antonio Mur Peirón to eighteen years imprisonment. members of the group, Tassis and Pedron, in the back Arrested on charges of ‘banditry and terrorism’, they had seat. At reception they said they had come to collect Sr. been accused of causing an explosion in Franco’s Elías, who came down to meet them. As he got into the intended final resting place — the Valle de los Caidos. back seat the other two jumped in beside him, with The Captain General of Catalonia refused to approve pistols, and the car drove off without arousing anyone's Cunill’s sentence and demanded it be changed to one of suspicions. death. Elías’s captors told him they had nothing against him A little over two weeks later a Madrid summary court martial sentenced FIJL member, Julio Moreno Viedma. On personally and he should not worry because he would be 17 October, the Madrid military court met again to judge released in a few days, unharmed. They told him he was Zaragozan FIJL members José Ronco Pecina, Eliséo being kidnapped to draw attention to the case of Jorge Antonio Bayó Poblador and Rafael Ruíz Boreo on charges Cunill Vals, then under sentence of death in a Spanish of publishing the clandestine FIJL newspaper Juventud prison. Libre. Three days later, on 20 October, a further council of Elías was driven to a cabin rented by the group in Val war took place in Madrid. Francisco Sanchez Ruáno, Ganna where he was allowed to wash. He later told the Ricardo Metola Amat, Helios Salas Martín, Alejandro authorities that at no time had he been afraid during his Matéo Calvo, Antonio Astigarraga de la Puerta, Francisca detention, and believed his captors were kind and Román Aguilera, Nicolás León Estella, José Martínez sympathetic people. In fact, later, when the case was Rodríguez, Rafaél Asenjo Barranco, Lucio de la Nava being tried against the four anarchists of the IFLY, his Hernández and Eugénio Cordero Regís were all accused depositions served the defence more than the of fomenting disturbances, bombings and conspiring to prosecution. seize an Iberia Airlines aeroplane in mid-flight. Ruano was sentenced to 25 years for his alleged part Elías was released, unharmed, after four days on 2 in this campaign which he subsequently claimed had October. Six of his captors were arrested shortly been organised by the Francoist agent provocateur afterwards and, despite pleading guilty to the charge of within the D.I., Jacínto Ángel Guerrero Lucas. In fact, the kidnapping, walked free from the court in Varese, after bombs in the Valle de los Caidos had been placed by only two months on remand, such was the hostility to the Antonio Martín, a Spaniard and Paul Desnais, a French Franco regime. doctor. The effect of this on Cunill’s case was immediate and

228

Background — Defensa Interior

his death sentence was commuted to one of thirty years’ imprisonment. (Cunill later abandoned his anarchism and joined the Communist Party while in prison.)

Tension rises THE HARASSMENT OF the Franco regime inside and outside Spain ran in parallel with the growing industrial agitation within the country of the ‘Trade Union Alliance’ (CNT; UGT (General Workers’ Union; socialist) and STV (Basque Workers’ Union). This new wave of militants strove to radicalise the ranks of the opposition to Franco and to demonstrate to the world that the resistance still existed. The idea was that public opinion in the world should be stimulated to induce other countries to bring pressure to bear on the Franco regime. It also exposed the hypocrisy of the ‘liberalisation’ of the Spanish government, and the duplicitous diplomatic and moral role of the Roman Catholic Church. On 22 August 1962, three days after the explosion at the Ayete palace, the bullets from a 13-man OAS Commando Delta led by Lieutenant-Colonel JeanMarie Bastien-Thiery of the French Air Force passed within inches of the French head of state as his presidential convoy drove down the Avenue de la Liberation in Petit-Clamart, near Paris. Only one of the identified conspirators — hit man Georges Watin — managed to escape, to Spain. The others were sentenced to various lengthy terms of imprisonment. Bastien-Thiery was shot by firing squad on 11 March 1963. In February 1963, while the trial against Bastien-Thiery and the twenty-one others arrested in the Petit-Clamart plot was taking place, the French equivalent of MI5, the DST, uncovered another OAS-planned attempt on de Gaulle’s life. Watin planned to shoot the president from an adjoining rooftop as he delivered a speech to cadets at the Ecole Militaire on the Champ de Mars. This OAS operation had been planned in Spain and, on 10 February 1963, the Brigada Político-Social, under strong diplomatic pressure from the French, found themselves obliged to arrest and detain the main conspirators. This assassination plot was the last straw for the French ‘authorities’ who, with their country close to civil war, decided closer collaboration between their security and intelligence services would be to their mutual advantage. Both countries held trump cards when it came to bringing pressure to bear on each other and neutralising, in their respective countries, the two opposition groups which posed the principal threats — the OAS in Spain and the FIJL in France. Between December 1962 and July 1963 regular meetings had been taking place between the Spanish Minister of the Interior General Camilo Alonso Vega, the French Interior Minister, Roger Frey and the Chief of Staff of the French army, General Ailleret, to cement the so-called Paris-Madrid Axis and clamp down on the activities of the OAS operating from Spain and Defensa Interior in France.

229

1963 — Operation ‘Springtime’

However, the French-based D.I.’s symbolic attacks on Francoist targets and the Spanish-based OAS’s ruthless and indiscriminate terrorist attacks on French civilians quickly exacerbated diplomatic tension between France and Spain. An informal collaborative quid pro-quo between the ‘freemasonry’ of French and Spanish security ‘experts’ led to a clamp down on the OAS in Spain and FIJL activists in France. Strong political and psychological pressure was also brought to bear on the comfortably placed, highly compromisable and bureaucratic leadership of the exiled MLE committees in France to deny the FIJL organisational support and economic aid. The de facto disassociation of the MLE from the activities of the D.I. signalled that the ‘Toulouse-based official’ movement had finally abandoned its support for armed resistance against Franco and Llansola made no attempt to set in motion any plans to kill Franco. In early 1963 — faced with open hostility from the FAI and CNT’s official and public representatives in Toulouse (particularly Montseny and Esgleas) who did everything in their power to obstruct and subvert the clandestine and — to them — ‘compromising’ activities of the D.I. — García Oliver decided to return to Mexico where he felt he could be more effective in implementing the D.I.’s remit and supporting his activist comrades in France. D.I. operations were now left mainly in the hands of Cipriano Mera and Octavio Alberola.

1963 — Operation ‘Springtime’ THE REMAINING ACTIVISTS launched a fresh anti-tourism campaign in 1963, ‘Operación Primavera’, specifically targeting European airports and travel offices. But the August 1963 executions of Delgado and Granados (betrayed by the police agent Guerrero Lucas), together with the arrest in September of 21 of the leading FIJL activists and the victory of the conservative wing of the CNT and the FAI at the congress in Toulouse that October finally decided the Toulouse leadership to withdraw their support for the D.I. as an official body of the MLE.

Ill-starred THE D.I. WAS ill starred. Although few of the exiles, if any, were aware of this at the time, its key mistake was to mingle, directly, the clandestine struggle inside Spain with the bureaucracy of a legally recognised organisation in exile, since the latter in reality did not want to become involved in anything that would upset their relatively secure and favoured status within France. The exile movement was also being closely monitored by the security services, not only of the host country — France — but also by the secret police of its declared enemy (who, according to contemporary Spanish secret police documents, were fully aware of the setting up of the D.I.). The other big drawback was the fact that each and every one of the exiles, as political refugees, were liable to all sorts of pressures, both economic and social and, therefore, susceptible to blackmail.

230

Background — Defensa Interior

It is not known if any agents and informers working for the French and Franco’s security services managed to penetrate the FIJL and D.I. at a high level, as they claimed. According to General Eduardo Blanco, head of the Brigada Político-Social in the 1960s and then, from the 1970s through to the 1990s, head of the Dirección General de Seguridad, DGS, the authorities had so effectively infiltrated their agents into positions of responsibility within the movement that they had ‘advance knowledge of every single decision and exfiltration into Spain made by the exiled activists throughout this period’. However, a closer look at the actions undertaken by the D.I. and its successor, the Grupo Primero de Mayo, between the San Sebastian attempt on Franco in 1962 and the kidnapping of the Spanish banker Baltazár Suarez in 1974, indicates that only those involving two known informers or agents, Inocencio Martínez and Jacínto Guerrero Lucas, were compromised. There were other arrests, of course, but these appear to have been due either to bad luck or imprudence on the part of the anarchists involved. In an interview with RTE, Spanish Television, in the late 1990s, former BPS Inspector Enrique Bretanos also claimed much of their information came from anarchist circles, but that may reflect the police desire to be seen to be in control; Blanco said in the same programme that much of their information came from the French police, but being a secret policeman, he would say that anyway. Much later I discovered that for years the French security services had been running a 24-hour surveillance operation from a window in the yard which led to the CNT offices at 24 Rue Saint Marthe, in Belleville, Paris. The arrests continued throughout 1963 and 1964. A young French woman teacher, Yvette Marthe Henriette Parent, had been arrested in Spain with a Spanish anarchist woman, Francesca Román Aguílera. Both received long prison sentences, as did three young French students arrested in April: twenty-three year old art student Guy Batoux, seventeen-year old Alain Pecunia and twentyyear old Bernard Ferri. Pecunia was the only anarchist among the three; Ferri and Batoux were both socialists and anti-fascists recruited by the FIJL because of their commitment to the anti-Francoist struggle.

Alain Pecunia PECUNIA, THE SON of a senior French naval officer and well-connected Gaullist, had been recruited into the FIJL at an anti-OAS meeting when still fifteen years old in the spring of 1961 by Francisco (Paco) Ruíz Abarca. In much the same way as I had been deeply involved in the anti-nuclear movement in Britain, Alain had been involved in anti-OAS activities with the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN). Initially, he had been a member of the youth section of the French Communist party, the Young Communists, but then he discovered anarchism through Le Monde Libertaire, the newspaper of the French Anarchist Federation (FAF). Unimpressed by the anarchists of the FAF — many of whom were sandalwearing pacifists, individualists, naturists, vegetarians (he didn’t say anything

231

Alain Pecunia

about cyclists or homosexuals) very much under the influence of Grand Orient Freemasonry and who viewed class-struggle as bolshevist — Alain teamed up with the more action-oriented Union of Anarcho-Communists (UGAC). This organisation, under the influence of Paul Desnais, a doctor, Julian Zorkin, a former Montenegrin guerrilla living in exile in France, and an Algerian anarchist by the name of Milou, was the first libertarian organisation to work with the Algerian Armée de Liberatión Nationale. In September 1961 they had set up an intelligence gathering network to identify OAS activists, their regular meeting places and, if possible, their arms dumps. In 1962 Pecunia had spent June and July in Spain with three other young French anarchists liaising with a Barcelona-based FIJL group, just over a month before the Valle de los Caidos bombings. Among Pecunia’s friends was the son of a ‘well-connected’ French physician, a Doctor Chevalier, apparently a Grand Master in the Grand Orient, and equally apparently an ex-Resistance leader of the ‘first hour’. Whatever he may or may not have been, Dr Chevalier was certainly a murky figure who, according to Octavio Alberola, ‘promised much and delivered nothing’, apart from providing the latter with a safe house for two nights. Pecunia told me many years later that there had been collusion at this time between the FIJL and elements of the French secret services, but this is dismissed by Alberola as simply not true and that Pecunia’s recollections and interpretation of events thirty years earlier were probably clouded following a serious road accident. Pecunia claims that Abarca told him that the FIJL’s anti-Francoist activities had been given the green light by the French secret services for six months. It is possible that Dr Chevalier, Pecunia’s comrade’s father, may have been the original source of this information. The doctor certainly liked to give the impression of being well connected, informed and having his finger on the pulse of events. The reality is more likely to be that if the French security services did not act against the FIJL at this time, it was probably because they were turning a blind eye to the organisation’s activities as a result of the spectacular OAS outrages in Metroplitan France that summer — outrages which were being orchestrated from Spain by the OAS leadership, newly ensconced in Alicante, following the failure of their putsch in April 1962.

The Informer — Jacínto Guerrero Lucas WHEN PECUNIA AND his friends returned to Perpignan from Spain at the end of July 1962 they heard a story which worried them. In June 1962, Octavio Alberola and the twenty-five year old Jacínto Ángel Guerrero Lucas, known as el Peque, had met with an Italian anarchist on the edge of the beach at Canet, near Perpignan. The object of the meeting was to demonstrate to the Italian, who was about to go into Spain on an action mission, the timing mechanism of an explosive device. Guerrero, at the time, was the

232

Background — Defensa Interior

official representative of the FIJL of the Interior, and head of Information and Propaganda and External Liaison with the FIJL groups outside Spain. A FIJL National Congress inside Spain had allegedly elected him to this post in 1961. In spite of Guerrero’s later claims to have been the D.I.’s head of clandestine operations the fact is he had no position whatsoever within the D.I. His sole function was to liaise with Alberola regarding the FIJL groups inside Spain he claimed to represent. This relationship lasted only from April to early July 1962, the first months of the D.I.’s existence. Alberola and Guerrero had been on the beach to meet an Italian comrade on his way into Spain on a mission and had left their car by the side of the road, about a hundred metres away. They heard the sound of breaking glass and looked up to see two men on a motor cycle pulling Guerrero’s document case from the back window of the car and driving off. This was extremely serious. Guerrero’s case contained all his organisational correspondence and documentation as well as the contact details of all the FIJL groups in Spain and France. Guerrero claimed his passport had been in the case and therefore couldn’t report the matter; neither was it convenient for the Italian to get involved so it was left to Alberola, who had a false ID, to report the matter to the local police, presenting himself as a commercial traveller and the missing contents as business documents, but without leaving an address. On their return to Toulouse, Alberola reported the matter to Roque Santamaría and Marcelino Boticario Sierra of the MLE’s Defence Commission who advised Guerrero to remain in France and apply for political asylum. Although no one suspected Guerrero at the time, Alberola, for reasons of security, cut off all contact with him and the role of interior liaison was taken over by Boticario. A month later, Commissioner Tataró, the senior officer of the Renseignements Generaux, the police intelligence body officially responsible for controlling the CNT in exile, turned up at their offices in the Rue Belfort in Toulouse to inform Santamaría that the case had been ‘recovered’ — complete with all its documents and correspondence. According to Pecunia (many years later) news of this incident worried his three friends who decided to withdraw from the organisation on the grounds of its lack of security, but Pecunia remained fully committed. He also claimed that The informer Abarca, not a particularly charming guy at the best of times, wanted to have (1960s): Jacínto them shot for desertion, but wiser and more libertarian counsels prevailed. Guerrero Lucas.

233

The Informer

But Abarca did tell Pecunia that if he was ever arrested he should give the police the names of his former comrades who had left. Pecunia also believed that there was a good possibility that he and his friends had been identified by Franco’s Brigada Político-Social in October 1962, four months after the theft of Guerrero’s document case. Following the drumhead court martial of Jorge Cunill Vals and his group a small notice had appeared in Le Monde that the Barcelona-based anarchists had been aided by four young French anarchists who had brought in the explosives from France. The probability is that Cunill’s arrest and that of the other arrests at the time were directly linked with the information passed to them by Guerrero Lucas. The following Spring, the D.I. planned a new anti-tourist campaign — Operación Primavera — at the end of March and early April to coincide with the Easter holidays. Because of the doubts raised by the Le Monde story, Alberola opposed Pecunia’s going back into Spain, but his objection was poopooed by Abarca who downplayed the risks as exaggerated. Interestingly, Pecunia claims that Dr Chevalier, who claimed to be aware of the mission, also advised Pecunia against going into Spain. Pecunia, however, had the final say and to him there was no question about the matter. Pecunia had gone into Spain in March and again, finally, in April 1963 where he had planted a bomb on the Palma de Majorca ferry, Ciudad de Ibiza. Guy Batoux, who had entered Spain separately and who was unknown to Alain, was to plant a small bomb outside the US Embassy in Madrid but fell ill and collapsed on the street shortly after arriving in Madrid. The police found the explosives in his luggage when they searched it. Bernard, also unknown to Alain, had placed a similar small explosive device on the window sill of the offices of Iberia Airways in Valencia. The Spanish authorities claimed the three French youths had been trained at a ‘terrorist’ school in Toulouse. At their court martial in August 1963, Alain Pecunia received two consecutive prison terms of twelve years and one day, Bernard Ferri thirty years and Guy Battoux a sentence of fifteen years. On 3 and 4 March a number of small explosive devices exploded inside the holds of aeroplanes of Spanish airlines Avianco and Iberia while on the runways at Barcelona and Madrid airports. At the same time, anonymous phone calls were made to London, Geneva, Frankfurt and Paris airports that bombs had been placed on all flights leaving for Spain — actions which were all claimed by the Iberian Liberation Council (CIL). Electricity pylons were blown up and trains between Spain and France were constantly being brought to a halt. Vicente Martí, a FIJL militant based in Avignon, who was closely involved in these campaigns, described their activities: ‘As with everything we did, our priority at all times was that there should be no innocent victims. We acquired small limpet mines that we attached to the tracks and which exploded when the train passed over them, forcing the driver to reduce his speed. Signals on the line were changed to red, ensuring further delays. We travelled

234

Background — Defensa Interior

by moped, with a rabbit stew in a saucepan in our pannier. Under the stew was everything we needed to bring the railway to a standstill. We also sabotaged tourist coaches in car parks.’ Smuggling anarchist newspapers, publications and weapons into Spain was another important activity in which Martí was involved: ‘The anarchist press — newspapers and publications — had to be smuggled into Spain. We could not afford to pay a smuggler to do this for us so we had to do it ourselves, taking material across the border as tourists in vehicles with suitable hiding places. ‘I used to modify machine gun parts in the factory where I worked. That involved, say, fitting a pistol grip to a machine gun or modifying it to make it less bulky, allowing it to be concealed under a coat. We also made silencers when required and there was an electronic device which triggered a tape-recorder every time there was a police broadcast. This meant we only had to spend a few hours monitoring broadcasts. We had lots of other things as well as these.’ DEFENSA INTERIOR ceased to exist as an official body of the Spanish Libertarian Movement (MLE) in October 1963. The disbandment followed an order by the French Ministry of the Interior published in the Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise of 20 October 1963 — a month after the arrest of 21 FIJL activists in France, which made the FIJL an illegal organisation throughout French territory. It also coincided with the Third Congress of CNT Local Federations in Toulouse and the appointment of reformist office holders of the Montseny faction. Even so, the D.I. remained nominally in existence for a further three years until the Montpelier Congress of July-August 1965 when it was formally wound up. But the young anarchists were not so ready to abandon the struggle against the Franco regime and it was at this point that what was to become the First of May Group emerged as a totally independent international anarchist action group.

235

The Execution of Delgado and Granados

Background —

The Execution of Delgado and Granados

IN MADRID, ON 31 July 1963, two young Spanish anarchists, Francisco Granados Gata (27) and Joaquín Delgado Martínez (29) the latter with French nationality, had been arrested and charged under the Banditry and Terrorism laws as the authors of two bomb attacks in the Spanish capital on 29th July. One bomb had exploded at its intended time, late at night when no one was around, in the headquarters of the Falangist (fascist) trade union organisation. The other exploded early, due to a fault with the electric detonator, in the public passport section of Franco’s security headquarters, the Dirección General de Seguridad (DGS), in the Ministerio de Gobernación building in the Puerta del Sol, in the centre of Madrid. Thirty-two people who were in the department at the time sustained injuries, only one of which required medical attention for burns to an arm and a leg; Witness To An Execution fortunately no one was killed. The DGS was controlled at GEORGE BORROW, the 19th century traveller and author, that time by Carlos Arias Navarro, one of Franco’s most witnessed a public garrotting in 1836, a chilling event which he described in his account of his travels in Spain, The Bible in vicious and powerful henchmen, and he wanted revenge Spain. Executions had not changed much in the subsequent Delgado and Granados were identified and arrested 128 years: ‘Criminals in Spain are not hanged as they are in within two days and tried and convicted by a summary England, or guillotined as in France, but strangled upon a wooden stage. They sit down on a kind of chair with a post court-martial on 11 August on the basis of a confession behind, to which is affixed an iron collar with a screw; this iron extracted under police torture. Their indictment and trial collar is made to clasp the neck of the prisoner, and on a certain was full of procedural irregularities, including the fact signal it is drawn tighter and tighter by means of the screw, until life becomes extinct. After we had waited amongst the their court-appointed ‘defender’ was not a licensed assembled multitude a considerable time, the first of the culprits ‘advocate’. appeared; he was mounted on an ass without saddle or stirrups, Both men were executed by garrote-vil in an his legs being allowed to dangle nearly to the ground. He was dressed in yellow, sulphur- coloured robes with a high-peaked underground chamber of Carabanchel Prison in Madrid, conical red hat on his head, which was shaven. Between his six days later at 5.00 am on Saturday 17 August. They hands he held a parchment, on which was written something — went to their deaths innocent of the bombings for which I believe the confession of faith. Two priests led the animal by the bridle; two others walked on either side, chanting litanies, they were executed amongst which I distinguished the words of heavenly peace and Interviewed in 1970 by the writer Daniel Sueiro, their tranquillity, for the culprit had been reconciled to the church, executioners, Vicente López Copete and Antonio López had confessed and received absolution, and had been promised admission to heaven. He did not exhibit the least symptom of Guerra, described the scene that fateful morning in fear, but dismounted from the animal and was led, not Carabanchel prison: supported, up the scaffold, where he was placed on the chair ‘They arrived with their eyes covered. When their masks were and the fatal collar put round his neck. One of the priests then in a loud voice commenced saying the Belief, and the culprit removed in the chapel adjoining the execution chamber, one sat repeated the words after him. On a sudden, the executioner, down and said nothing. The other refused to sit when he saw who stood behind, commenced turning the screw, which was of the garrotte-vil through the open door and turned to the priest prodigious force, and the wretched man was almost instantly a corpse; but as the screw went round, the priest began to shout, to protest his innocence. I told him to sit and I would make sure “pax et misericordia et tranquillitas”, and still as he shouted, his he didn’t suffer. But as they had been caught with the voice became louder and louder till the lofty walls of Madrid explosives there was no possibility of escape.’ rang with it. Then, stooping down, he placed his mouth close to the culprit’s ear, still shouting, just as if he would pursue the Writing in Le Monde a few days later, on 22 August, spirit through its course to eternity, cheering it on its way.’ the French journalist Robert Escarpit wrote:

236

The Manzanares Plot

‘Francisco Granados Gatá and Joaquín Delgado Martínez have given their lives for something. But, as always, the executioners have killed for nothing.’ But Escarpit was wrong. He forgot Voltaire’s dictum ‘pour encourager les autres’ and George Orwell’s ‘No! Do it to Julia… he loved Big Brother’. Both had it right on the reasons for state savagery. The bombings had in fact been carried out by another two anarchists: Antonio Martín and Sergio Hernández, both of whom have lived since then with the guilt of the injuries they inflicted on innocent people — and for the judicial murders of their two comrades. It is possible that Franco, the conspiracy buff obsessed with international Freemasonry, cold-bloodedly sent the men to their deaths because of Joaquín Delgado’s membership of the Grand Orient and that body’s plea for clemency on behalf of the condemned men. Another contributory factor was the fact that Delgado had been a long-time FIJL activist and close associate of the guerrilla el Quico, Francisco Sabaté Llopart. To make matters worse, he was one of those responsible for the formation of the D.I. and bringing Alberola over from Mexico.

The Manzanares Plot THE BACKGROUND TO the judicial murder of the two anarchists was a further attempt on the life of Franco planned for the middle of 1963, this time at a bridge over the Manzanares river, the Puente de los Frances, in Madrid. Again the explosives were to have been buried by the roadside and detonated by remote control by a two person team on an adjoining grassy knoll overlooking the route used by the Generalissimo as he travelled from the Pardo Palace to the Oriente Palace to be presented with the credentials of new foreign ambassadors. This ceremony was one of the few items on Franco’s schedule that was known in advance and Octavio believed this would give the necessary time to prepare the attentat. Francisco Granados Gatá drove to Madrid on 14 May 1963 in a grey Peugeot 203 which had been modified by Vicente Martí in Avignon. Hidden in the door panels and in the engine compartment were guns, ammunition and the detonators and remote firing mechanism for the device. In Madrid the contents were transferred to the workshop of a locksmith comrade in the Usera district of Madrid. Granados, married with children and living in exile in Paris, was dying of leukaemia. He had volunteered for the mission, knowing he did not have long to live anyway. Martí sent him a telegram the following day, 15 May, giving him the go-ahead to collect a suitcase of explosives from another comrade at a rendezvous in the Plaza de Castilla.

237

Delgado and Granados — The Rendezvous

Francisco Granados Gata, 23, with companion and baby daughter.

By early July it became clear that Franco had no no new ambassadors to be presented so Alberola decided to postpone the attempt on his life and withdraw the attack team from Madrid. It was at this point that José Palácios Pascual, the secretary of the Paris region FIJL groups — who had been Co-ordinating Secretary of the Defence Commission between 1949 and 1952, the man responsible for liaison with the anarchist guerrilla groups — and Cipriano Mera Sanz (the latter a member of the D.I.), informed Octavio Alberola that there was another group with good intelligence on Franco’s route from the Pardo palace to La Coruna. This group, they claimed, was in a position to carry out the atempt on Franco before the end of July — if the timers, detonators and explosives were passed on to them. Although he dealt with him warily, Octavio felt that this was an opportunity he could not let go to waste. Mera and Pascual then arranged for Octavio to meet the ‘chief’ of the group who turned out to be none other than Jacínto Ángel Guerrero Lucas. Alberola still did not suspect Guerrero of being an agent and was finally convinced to agree to a rendezvous in Madrid between a member of Guerrero’s group and Granados, who was holding the matériel. Guerrero’s envoy, Robert Ariño, was late in setting off — a delay Guerrero was aware of beforehand, but failed to tell anyone else about — and when the agreed rendezvous at the Goya statue beside the Prado Museum was missed, clearly the handover of the explosives could not be made. He assured Alberola that if he could arrange a further rendezvous, there would still be time to arrange the assassination attempt. Given the urgency involved, Mera and Alberola had no option but to turn to Delgado, the smartly dressed son of a veteran of the Durruti Column, one of Guerrero’s friends — and a fellow Freemason. Delgado, who had the contact details for both parties, arranged to leave immediately for Madrid to arrange the meeting. But a few hours prior to Delgado’s departure, Alberola discovered that Franco had already left Madrid to begin his summer holidays. That being the case, it was decided Delgado’s mission would be simply to tell Guerrero’s team to return to France and to inform Granados to leave the explosives somewhere safe before returning to France as well. Delgado reached Madrid on the Sunday, 28 July and immediately made contact with Guerrero’s man, Ariño, but it was only on Monday, the 29th, that he was able to track down Granados at his lodgings — after which they both vanished. According to Delgado’s statement to the Brigada Político-Social, they waited

238

Background — The Execution of Delgado and Granados

for Granados’s car to be repaired before returning to France together. While they were waiting they went for a beer and then, as the weather was so hot, for a swim at a nearby public baths. They then went back to collect the car but the rear axle snapped as they drove off, leaving them stranded in Madrid, and with no cash to pay for the car’s repairs. All they could do was send a telegram to Martí in Avignon asking him to arrange to get funds to them. This done, they decided to spend the evening at the Lux cinema. What the two men did not know was that the D.I. had another two-man team in Madrid that Monday, Sergio Hernández and Antonio Martín Bellido. These men, with their own cage-rattling agenda, were completely unaware of the existence of the other group preparing for the planned, but now aborted, attack on Franco. Hernández and Bellido had planted the bombs in the passport section of the Dirección General de Seguridad (DGS), in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and at the HQ of the Falangist labour front in the Paseo de Gracia. The DGS building had been targeted as it was the most important and obvious symbol of Francoist torture and repression. The DGS bomb, consisting of 200 grammes of plastic explosive, had been set to explode at midnight, but unfortunately the timing device, an ‘acid pencil’ left over from the French Resistance period, exploded prematurely at 5.40 pm, 20 minutes after it had been set, causing the injuries already mentioned. The device placed in the Falangist building exploded at its appointed time — 11 pm. By the time they returned to their lodgings at around 2.30 pm, Delgado and Granados still had not heard of the bombings. What happened the following day, Tuesday, is unclear, but according to the BPS a Guardia Civil officer arrested them on Wednesday 31st July at 4pm. The Guardia claimed they had been acting suspiciously, accosting tourists in the Plaza de Oriente. In fact, they were not picked up by accident as the head of the BPS, Eduardo Blanco, later admitted: ‘They were followed, of course. They were expected.’ The BPS soon discovered all the evidence they needed: the cache of explosives and weapons deposited by Granados in a comrade’s carpentry workshop, including twenty kilos of plastic explosive, a submachine gun, bullets and a radio transmitter for detonating explosions at a distance. Under torture — as their police photographs show — they confessed that their intention had been to assassinate Franco. They also ‘admitted’ responsibility for the explosions of the 29th, and everything else the BPS put to them.

239

Arrest and Torture

In spite of their innocence of the two bombings, everything was against them: they were anarchists, members of the FIJL and they were found to be in possession of arms and explosives similar to that used in the two explosions. This unfortunate coincidence was enough for the police: their mission, albeit aborted, and incriminating matériel had been intended for an entirely different purpose, the assassination of Franco. The speed of their summary court martial and hurried execution ten days later in the middle of August, when the capitals of Europe were empty and the beaches full, took everyone by surprise and did not allow the time necessary to mount a proper international defence campaign. An important factor militating against them was that the anarchist movement lacked the global infrastructure and political leverage that had been brought to bear during the ultimately unsuccessful global campaign to save the life of Communist Party member Julián Grimau. Grimau had been executed by firing squad only four months previously, on 20 April. The hasty trial and execution of Delgado and Granados was also slightly overshadowed by the dramatic shooting a few days General Security Directorate (DGS), earlier in the Pyrenees of the last anarchist rural Puerta del Sol, Madrid. guerrilla, Ramón Vila Capdevila, Caraquemada. In Paris, the CNT and FIJL discussed the possibility of holding an international press conference with Sergio Hernández and Antonio Martín, the real authors of the DGS bombing, but this idea was rejected on the basis that it would not necessarily save the lives of Delgado and Granados, but it would mean the unnecessary sacrifice of two more comrades. Both Hernández and Martín had made it safely back to France within a few days of the bombings, Hernández crossing the border by car via Hendaye with false papers, while Martín had remained in hiding in Madrid for a few days, before returning to France. On 27August 1963, a week after the execution of Delgado and Granados and Joaquín Delgado Martínez. in the run-up to the important Toulouse CNT Congress, the French police arrested five Spanish anarchist activists in Toulouse: Salvador Gurruchari, José Catalá, Juan Quesada, Josep Morato, and Esteve Gonzálbo. These arrests followed the visit to France of an official eight-man Spanish secret police team led by the head of the BPS in Barcelona, Eduardo Polo. Initially, the five had been held on charges of illegal fly-posting, but this was just a cover. A little over ten days later, on Wednesday 11 September, the French General National Security Directorate — acting on intelligence furnished by Renseignements Generaux and on a request from the Spanish authorities who provided detailed dossiers from the Delgado/Granados investigation and information from journalist agents, informers and agents provocateurs — made surprise swoops on the homes of some fifty anarchists throughout France.* Francisco ‘Coincidentally’, around the same time, the Francoist secret police Granados Gata.

240

Background — The Execution of Delgado and Granados

‘discovered’ a clandestine OAS printing press in Spain that was being used to print Algerie Française propaganda and forged French Treasury notes. This in turn led to the arrest of Jean Bichon, Lajos Marton and other OAS and National Council of Resistence men (CNR) in France and Spain The charge of ‘association with malefactors’ was a legal device used extensively at the end of the nineteenth century to curb anarchist activity at a time when some of them had resorted to individual acts of ‘propaganda by deed’. (Violent actions directed against brutal employers, agents of state terror and ruthless politicians as a popular means of redressing social imbalance by bringing to exemplary ‘justice’ those perceived to be above the law.) One of those arrested by the French Renseignement Generaux (RG) — Roberto Ariño Sahun, Guerrero’s envoy — had been named by the BPS in the indictment against Delgado and Granados as one of * As well as Salvador Gurruchari and the others already those involved in the bomb attack on the DGS on 29 July under arrest in Toulouse, the police charged 17 others 1963. Needless to say, Ariño was not aware of Guerrero’s with ‘association with malefactors’: Roberto Ariño Sahun secret agenda to sabotage the plot against Franco. (28); Águstin Sánchez Fuster (27), secretary-treasurer of Arrested at his apartment in the Rue Charcot, Ariño the Paris FIJL; Nardo Imbernon (26), secretary general of was interrogated for two days by the French Special the regional and local federations of the FIJL and Branch (RG) at the headquarters of the 3rd Territorial assistant secretary of the CNT; José Pálacios Pascual Brigade in the Place du Marche-Saint Honoré about his (48), who was a 100 per cent disabled with TB; Martín alleged role in the Madrid bombing. Armandárez (24); Bartolomé Flores (25); Vícente Martí Ariño admitted having been in Madrid between the Verdu (37); Floreál Navarro; and Cipriano Mera Sanz 20th and 28th, but he had been back in Paris by the 29th, (66). the day the bombs exploded. The French courts In Toulouse the French police arrested Antonio Molina dismissed the case against him on 27 October, but he was Abril (26), a member of the National Committee of the not released from Fresnes until December 5th, 1963, by FIJL; Enrique Ferrer Otin (27); Victor Ferrer Otin (29); which time he had lost his job with Olivetti. Antonio Ros Monero (26), Enrique Guinard Fabreguat It was not until the anarchists declared a hunger (24); and José Sos Yagüe. In Isere they arrested José Ríos strike on 19 February 1964 that the French authorities, Cerdán and, from Avignon, Augurio Municha Larraona. under enormous public pressure, finally released them. But the arrests and the political message they sent out to the wider movement, particularly within the CNT in exile, effectively broke the political and organisational will of the FIJL as an integral part of the exile movement. The arrest of the two young anarchists was almost certainly due to information provided by Jacínto Ángel Guerrero Lucas. According to a TV interview in the late 1990s with General Eduardo Blanco, then head of the Brigada Político-Social, their arrest was not simply a coincidence; they had been identified and were being followed by the BPS. Without Guerrero’s intervention Delgado would have had no reason to be in Madrid and Granados would have returned to Ales prior to that fateful Monday. But in 1963, according to Alberola, the general feeling was that Guerrero was simply a bit of a maverick, but trustworthy. There were some anarchists, like Julí and Ángel Aransaez who suspected him at the time of being a police agent, a bullshitter, or an unscrupulous

241

The Informer Exposed

opportunist, but no one felt confident enough to accuse him outright of being a police informer. Guerrero Lucas disappeared from the FIJL milieu after the execution of Delgado and Granados and the round-up of the FIJL activists by the French police. However, a few months later his name started appearing as a contributor to the CNT newspaper, edited by former anarchist minister Federica Montseny. The man who had come out of Spain roundly denouncing the CNT ‘do-nothings’ of Toulouse was now firmly in their camp at the highest level. Possibly this move to the ‘other side’ was forced on him by the French secret police, the Renseignements Generaux, who knew he had been ‘burned’ as a FIJL infiltrator and saw this as a second-best option with regard to having a well-connected information source among the exiles.

Exposed

Jacinto Ángel Guerrero Lucas: (top) sharing a platform with CNT Secretary Federica Montseny in the early 1970s; (bottom) October 1996.

ONLY IN MARCH 1988 did Guerrero’s true role emerge when he was exposed as an agent of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior and security adviser to Rafael Vera, interior minister in the ‘Socialist’ government of Felipe González. The exposure was made by Raimundo Delbosch, Paris correspondent of the right-wing Spanish journal El Alcazar, in an article on Freemasonry. Delbosch wrote that this mysterious adviser to the Gonzalez government — ‘ex-anarchist’, Francoist police informer and a 33º Freemason (an exclusive and largely military-, police- and intelligence-oriented branch of Freemasonry), was the eminence gris of the Spanish state’s counter-terrorist Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL), groups responsible for running ‘special’ covert operations against ETA. The GAL was in fact a cover for the Spanish government’s death squads, one of Spanish Socialist Party’s (PSOE) ‘strategic short cuts’ in the fight against the Basque separatist organisation. According to a former member of the French security services, Jean Marc Dufourg, Guerrero had been collaborating with the French police, to his knowledge, since the 1970s and had been an extremely close friend in Paris and fellow freemason in the same lodge of French Socialist party member Charles Pasqua. When the French Socialist Party came to power in 1979, Pasqua, Guerrero’s friend, had been appointed Minister of the Interior. Guerrero, by this time also a member of the PSOE, the Spanish Socialist Party, made it known to senior PSOE minister Alfonso Guerra, Rafaél Vera and Luis Roldán that because of his ‘credibility’ in revolutionary and ETA circles and his close and long-standing links with Pasqua and senior French police officers

242

Background — The Execution of Delgado and Granados

such as Joel Catalá, Christian Montoux, Regis Abribat and Alain Etcheto he was the ideal person to liaise between the Spanish and French interior ministries in their anti-ETA campaign. Dufourg claimed that it was Guerrero who personally selected the files and photographs of the Basque exiles to be murdered by the killers of Spain’s parallel police force, the GAL. General Eduardo Blanco, head of Franco’s state security service from 1965 to 1974 and Martínez Torres, Director General of Franco’s Intelligence Service have subsequently both confirmed that Guerrero worked for them.

Re-appraisal THE EXECUTIONS of Delgado and Granados in Madrid coupled with the criminalisation of the FIJL in France, under pressure from the Spanish authorities, forced a re-think of the assassination and bombing strategy among the leadership of the CNT. The Third Congress of CNT Local Federations held in Toulouse in October 1963 appointed new office-holders who were susceptible to threat and pressure from the French authorities and whose priority was to maintain the legal status of the CNT in France. This sounded the death knell for the D.I. which was effectively being buried while I was on my way to Spain the following year. The fight was not over, though, and the core elements of the youth organisation, the FIJL, continued where the D.I. had left off under the aegis of another body. The French authorities had foreseen this eventuality, however, and banned the FIJL from operating in France. It was, effectively, the armed wing of the FIJL. The group was internationalist in character, recruiting activists in the UK, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland and its activities were marked at all times by a scrupulous respect for human life: its declared policy was one of solidarity with all peoples subject to oppression and aggression.

Behold a Pale Horse... THE REVITALISING OF the anti-Francoist struggle gave a new impulse to the Spanish anarchist movement, which once again began to be talked about openly, albeit negatively, in the Spanish press. Likewise, internationally, the newly reinvigorated anarchist movement began to play an important part in the revolutionary struggle because of the collaboration of anarchist activists from other parts of Europe. This, in turn, pushed the other anti-fascist movements into a more militant and radical position, because of the intense agitation in Spain itself and the fresh mobilisation of opinion outside. It was no coincidence that the violent actions organised by the action groups against the regime in 1962 were carried out against a backdrop of growing industrial and social unrest.

243

‘Behold A Pale Hores’

Trouble had erupted late in 1961 during Spain’s sensitive negotiations for entry into the Common Market when the Civil Guard opened fire on striking rail workers in Beasain, between Pamplona and Bilbao in the Basque country. A state of emergency was declared in the northern provinces in May 1962 and the Francoist security forces took upon themselves ‘special powers’ to deal with the situation. By 1964, industrial actions and strikes had spread from the Basque country and the Asturias to almost every part of the peninsula. In the Oviedo region of northern Spain alone more than 40,000 coal miners and metallurgical workers went on strike. A letter signed by 102 Spanish intellectuals, protesting about the arrests and maltreatment of the strikers, said that according to eye-witness reports, miners in Sama de Langreo had been tortured, castrated and one of them killed by a Guardia Civil captain and sergeant. There had also been worldwide protests against the regime following the April 1963 execution by firing squad of the Stalinist commissar Julián Grimau García. Grimau had been arrested in Madrid on 7 November 1962 and, horribly beaten and tortured, thrown out of the window of the Dirección General de Seguridad into the narrow Calle de San Ricardo by his Brigada Político-Social (BPS) interrogators attempting to cover up his injuries. The BPS officers directly involved in Grimau’s arrest and interrogation were Chief Inspector (Regional Brigade) Jacínto Martín Hernández, Commissioner Designate Saturnino Yagüe González and Inspector Rafaél Moroto Cabrera. They claimed he sustained his injuries while trying to escape by jumping out of the window. (I, too, was later pinioned and dangled out of the very same open window by two of the same interrogators, who threatened me with a similar end. Grimau was just one of more than 100 anti-Francoists tried by court martial in the spring of 1963.)

244

Background — Freemasonry

Background —

Freemasonry FREEMASONRY is the largest semi-secret organisation of the western middle classes, with over six million members worldwide sharing a vision of a unified world order and bound together through a series of interlocking masonic alliances. Among the most influential institutions is the United Grand Lodge of England, the mother lodge of craft freemasonry, with its headquarters at Freemasons Hall in Great Queen Street near Covent Garden. Here the wealthy and influential members of the British Establishment meet in conditions of ritual secrecy, ostensibly to listen to lectures on masonic history and to discuss charitable and. other masonic business. In practice, the masonic brotherhood constitutes a clandestine network for the defence of the status quo and established privilege, a mutual-aid society for the British middle classes. Of course just as a mutual-aid society for gaolers will be different in aims and functions from a mutual-aid society for prisoners — one providing clubs and the other hacksaws — so the mutual-aid society of a privileged power elite will be different from the mutual-aid societies which provide assistance among those whose continued social deprivation is the essential condition for the preservation of the privileges of the few. Since the benefits of privilege as opposed to its outward trappings are necessarily largely hidden, so the efforts, the necessarily combined efforts, of those who would defend their privilege are also hidden; that is to say, they are more than discreet, being secret and even conspiratorial. In Britain, Freemasonry first emerged among the middle classes and the artisans with the British intellectual, artistic and architectural renaissance of the late 16th and the early 17th centuries. Essentially, it consists of three degrees or grades: entered apprentice, fellow craft mason and master mason. The central theme of all masonic ritual is the building of Solomon’s temple and the soap opera incidents surrounding its construction, such as the murder of the principal architect Hiram Abiff and the continuing search for the secret of the stolen keystone. The sinister daftness of it all illustrates the essential madness and badness of power elites as well as providing a diversionary spectacle for the curious outsider. In addition to the three craft degrees of freemasonry, which are open to all males who profess a belief in an Almighty Being — including Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Roman Catholics, etc. — there are additional side or higher degrees such as the Knights Templar (no relation to the original Middle East task force) and the Ancient and Accepted (Scottish) Rite 33°, who despite the adjective Scottish, and are exclusively White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. These side degrees are higher only in the numerical sense, ostensibly, as the Grand Lodge of England practises freemasonry only within the three craft degrees and do not admit the existence of any superior masonic authority. The side degrees are conferred by patronage only on a specially approved and strictly limited number of candidates totalling at most a few hundred brothers, all drawn exclusively from the intimate friendship circles of the British ruling class. The top three degrees of 33° freemasonry are themselves

245

Background — Freemasonry

conferred only after a unanimous vote of approval by the Supreme Council 33° of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of freemasonry, which itself is recruited, incestuously, from among the grand officers or past grand officers of the Grand Lodge of England. For those with time, money, friends and influence the masonic world is their oyster and they can join as many lodges as they can afford and will have them. Nor are the restrictions imposed by the credit rating of the less-privileged brethren the only drawbacks to masonic advancement. Fortunately, Uncle Bill was not an aspiring, upwardly mobile freemason who had joined with an eye to discussing the price of beer with the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Kent, Lord Cornwallis and other distinguished members of the craft. He would have been in for a disappointment as there are lodges and lodges. Like George Orwell’s animals, some brethren are more equal than others. As with the now notorious secret or ‘covered’ lodges P1 and P2 in Italy, the latter of which had a coded membership of 2,400 brothers although only 953 names were disclosed, there are a number of the 1679 lodges in London and the 5,865 provincial lodges whose purpose is to bring together into single discreet bodies brothers who hold high public or private office and who wish to remain at a suitable distance from the hoi polloi of freemasonry. Thus, there are lodges whose members are recruited exclusively and selectively from among the ranks of particular power elites: mayors and Lord Mayors of London, the Bank of England, chartered accountants, architects, the legal profession, the merchant navy, the armed services, the Metropolitan Police, broadcasting. There is even a Council of Public School Lodges. Freemasonry is all things to all men. Freemasons argue that the craft consists of enlightened and disinterested persons who cherish humanitarian and charitable goals and who combine cooperatively to realise mutual aspirations. In reality freemasonry cannot but provide a conduit for the bribery, corruption and subornation that are endemic in any system of privilege. The secrecy and exclusiveness of the craft creates an unbridgeable gap between the masonic view of the world and those outside the brotherhood, who, in effect, do not exist for freemasons except inasmuch as they aid or hinder their political or career ambitions. Count Windischgratz, an astute observer of human nature and the activities of secret societies, wrote in 1788: — ‘They are likely to encourage habits of mind and behaviour destructive of attention to the ordinary moral and social duties. The danger of degeneration from the high ideals of a secret brotherhood will always be present because of the difficulties of reconciling the secret obligations to the society with the outside world. Claims to use the opportunities of secret organisations for the preparation of the regeneration of the world are always to be regarded as dubious, given men’s ordinary weaknesses.’ The claim by freemasons that the craft provides brotherhood is equally fictitious. The exclusiveness of the inner circles of the higher degrees and the

246

Background — Freemasonry

hierarchical structure of the Grand Lodge itself based on patronage, rank, precedence and wealth have more in common with the Mafia or the Jesuits than with a universal brotherhood. While freemasons do constitute a powerful pressure group, because of their positions in society, it would be misleading to see them as the conspiracy obsessives do — an omnipotent cabal controlling the course of human affairs. Freemasons, like the Roman Catholic Catenian Association, MI6, the CIA, the KGB, the Bilderburgers or any other exclusive group, have as much idea as anyone else as to what is going on in the world. Knowledge is constantly changing, so we cannot know today what we can only know tomorrow. What freemasonry does provide is a well-organised and efficient syndicate capable of defending and extending the influence and interests of those who already wield power. Certainly, no evidence exists of criminal manipulation of the craft by freemasons. Finding tangible proof of criminal conspiracy among any cohesive and tenacious combination or friendship circle is like hunting for something solid in a sea of tapioca pudding. The one solid conclusion I did reach was that freemasons constituted an important political, social and business pressure group and had the potential, at least, to exert a powerful influence at national and international as well as local level. The relationship between the members of the Establishment is symbiotic and mutually supportive, and the craft provides a parallel power structure linking financial, administrative, military and other power elites whose vision of a healthy world order depends on strong masonic alliances among ‘rightthinking’ men.

247

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Index 26th July Movement 218, 220, 221 5th Bureau of the General Staff (Psychological Warfare) 222 ‘62 Group, 189, 191 Abad Donoso, Antonio 208 Abarca, Francisco Ruíz (‘Paco’), 231Abbeyleix, County Laoise, 44-5 Abbott and Costello, 26 ABC 227 ABC trial, 191 Aberdeen, fishing community, 25 Abingdon Baptist Hall, Glasgow, 31 Abribat, Regis, 243 Acción Democratica 222 Achill Islands, 39 African National Congress (ANC), 106 Agee, Philip, 191 Agnew family, 53-5 Aguilera, Francisca Román, 228 Ailleret, General, 230 Alberola, Octavio 212, 214, 217, 227, 230, 232 Alberola, José 217, 219 Aldermaston, Weapons Research Establishment, 121 Aldouran Glen, 54 Aldred, Guy, 142, 155-6 Alexander III, Scotand, 69 Alexander, Ronnie, 138, 145, 155 Alonso Vega, General Camilo 206, 229 Allegranza, Helen, 126; suicide, 146 American Forces Broadcasting, 49, 88 anarchism: anarcho-syndicalism, 168-71; definition, 161-2; first heard of, 83; global infrastructure lack, 229; negative, 239; physical force debate, 194; principles, 180, 244-5; Scottish movement, 232; sectarianism, 168-70, 208; treintismo, 198 Anarchist Federation of Britain, 180, 234; splits, 168 anarchists: Britain, 170; Cuban, 162-3; freemason, 128, 226-7, 241-5; Southall, 97; Venezuela, 211; veteran Glaswegian, 142 Ancient Order of Hibernians, 39 Anderson, Andy, 133 'Angry Brigade' trial, 203 Anti-Dictatorship Youth Front, 218 anti-election politics, 180-1 anti-semitism, 38, 42-3 Antonio Mella, Julio, 220 apprentices, 119 Aransaez, Ángel 227, 241 Ardrossan, 11, 65-6, 69; Flute Band, 67 Argoud, Colonel Antoine 224 Arias Navarro, Carlos 236 Ariño Sahun, Roberto, 238, 241 Armandárez, Martín 241 Armée de Liberatión Nationale (Algerian) 232 Armistice Day, 21 Armstrong, Louis, 137 Arrowsmith, Pat, 121 Ascaso, Francisco 221 Asenjo Barranco, Rafaél 228 Astigarraga de la Puerta, Antonio, 228 Asturian miners’ strikes, 216 Atkins, Chet, 87

Atlee, Clement, 3 authoritarian creeds, similarity, 189 Ayala, Juan Fernández, 178 Ayete Palace (attempt on Franco's life) 227 Baden-Powell, 82 Bakunin, Mikhail, 156-8 balance of payments crisis, UK, 97 Balir, Tony, 155 Ball, Lucille, 81 Balliol, John, 52 Banda, Mike, 131 Banda, Tony, 131 Bannockburn, battle of, 69 barbouzes, 225 Barcía, Alfredo Madrugo, 202 Barga, Italy, 13 Barka, Mehdi Ben, 224-225 Barke, James, 52 Barnes, Jaimie, 93 Barr’s Irn-Bru, 19 Bastien-Thiery, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie 229 Bastista, Fulgencio, downfall, 162, 199, 208, 218 Batoux, Guy, 231 ‘Battle of Pinkie’, 60, 62 Battle of the Ox Mountains, 44-5 Baxter, Stanley, 22 Bay of Pigs invasion, 162 Bayó Poblador, Eliséo Antonio 228 BBC, schools broadcasts, 35 Beatles, 154, 203 beatniks, 127 Beaton, Jimmy, 118 Bedoya Gutiérriez, Francisco 207 Behan, Brian, 131 Ben Bella, 131 Bentham, Jeremy, 177 Bergman, Ingmar, 127 Berlin, 1953 uprising, 106; Wall construction, 108 Berneri, Camillo, 169 Berneri, Marie-Louise, 169 Berry, Chuck, 154 Betjeman, John, 127 Betteridge, David, 144 Bevan, Aneurin, 98, 101 Beveridge Report, 3 Beveridge, Bill, 152 ‘beyond counting arses’ (BCA), 146 Bible, King James version, 108 Bichon, Jean 241 Bidney, Harry, 190 Bikini Atoll, 6 Bilderburg Group, 134 Birnberg, Benedict, 183 Bitterlin, Lucien 225 ‘Black and Tans’, 40, 44, 226 ‘Black Douglas’, the, 54 Blake, George, 127 Blanco, General Eduardo 226, 231, 241, 243 Blantyre, 65, 79, 101, 120; Calder Street School, 108;

248

Index lending library, 110; Miners’ Welfare, 102 Blythman, Marion, 124 Blythman, Morris (‘Thurso Berwick’), 124-5, 136-7 Boccaccio, Decameron, 114 Boer War, Spion Kop, 48 Bogart, Humphrey, 27 Bonnie Prince Charlie, 7 Bonnot, Jules, 159 Borrow, George, 236 Boticario Sierra. Marcelino 214, 233 Boy Scouts, 81-2, 84 Boyd, Zöe (Isobel), 144 Boyne, Battle of the, 67 Braddock, Bessie, 136 Bradford, George, 108, 115 Brailey, John, 193 Brazil, 200-4 Bretanos, Inspector Enrique 231 Brigada Político-Social (BPS), 1, 176, 217, 227, 229, 234, 238, 244 Bristol Anarchist Group, 180 Brize Norton, RAF base, 126 Brodie, ‘Houston’, 15 Brodie, Jenny, 15 Brooks, Richard, 89 Broonzy, Big Bill, 137 Brown, George, 151 Brown, Olivia, 100-1 Brown, Tom (Tam Broon), 79, 100-2, 168 Bruce, Lenny, 86, 90 Brus, Robert de, 52 Buchen, Tom, 94 Bunuel, Luis, 127 Burns, Robert, 85, 125, 127 Bute, islands of, 69 Butler, R.A., 96 ‘Butskellism’, 96 Cárdenas, Roberto, 164 Caballero, Largo, 105 Cabanas, Jose, 195 Cade, Jack, 84 Cairney, John, 27 Calder, Ritchie, 167 Caldwell, John Taylor, 155-6 Callinan, Mike, 168, 186 Calvert, Eddie, 86 Calvinism, secular, 52 ‘Camp Coffee’, 12 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 92, 121-2, 136, 138, 147-8 Campbell clan, 35 Campbell, Bobby, 125, 136 Campbell, Ian, 141 Cañete, Antonio 220 Capdevila, Ramón Vila 207, 240 Carabanchel prison, garrote-vil executions, 199, 236 Carballeira, Angel 214 Carballo Blanco, Fernando, 1 Carbeth Muir, 24 Cardwell, Bill, 137 Carter, Sidney, 182 Caruso, Enrico, 102

249

Cash, Johnny, 117 Castle, Roy, 22 Castro, Fidel, 91, 140, 162-4, 218 Castro, Raúl, 162, 164 Catalá, Joel, 243 Catalá, José, 240 catechisms, 41 Catherine of Aragón, 7 Catholic Action, 134 Catholic Church, 17, 67, 78, 111-12, 116, 135; Ireland, 38; Spain, 218 Catholics, 10, 23, 40, 42, 83-4, 118, 132, 154 Catholics: Irish priests, 41; technocrats, 176; Ulster, 39 Celtic Football Club, 17 Central Antifascist Militias Committee, 173 Central Office of Information, 84 CGT 225 Challenor, Detective Sergeant Harold, 165 Chandler, Jeff, 27 Chandler, Terry, 124, 127, 165 Chandos, John, 84 Charters, Sam, 106 Chessman, Caryl, 113 Chesterton, G.K., 101 Chevalier, Dr 232, 234 Chiaie, Stefano Delle, 190-1 Chicago Martyrs 1889, 109 Christian Brothers, 41 Christie clan, 203; immediate family, 25; name origins, 61 Christie, Albert, 58-61, 64 Christie, James, 62 Christopher, Bill, 168 Church of England Commissioners, 186 Church of Scotland, 78, 135; General Assembly, 38; Seaside Missions, 70, 73; Sunday School, 28 Churchill, Winston, 3, 48 CIA, 191, 221 Cienfuegos, Camilo, 163, 195, 218; death, 164 cigarettes, Woodbine, 66 ‘Circle of Friends’, 223 Cité Catholique, 222 Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, 27, 94 Ciudad de Ibiza, 234 Clean Air Act 1955, 15 Cliff, Tony (Ygail Glückstein), 131 close ‘mooths’, 10 Clutterbuck, Richard, 201 Clyde river, 8, 17-18, 70, 102; Ferry, 28; Finniston Quays, 119; Firth of, 65; ports, 24; shipyards discrimination, 39 Clyde Valley Stompers, 117 Clyde Workers’ Committee, 142 Co-operative Society, 100-1 Co-option, 201 coal industry, 101-2; National Coal Board, 117 Cochrane, Eddie, 117 Cogan, Alma, 86 Cold War, 90, 99, 116, 140, 178; Franco acceptability, 205, 235; propaganda, 96; victims, 107 Cole, George, 84 Collins, Canon, 121, 167 Collins, Michael, 44-5 Colquhoun clan, 36 Comandante de La Rosa, 220

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist Comfort, Dr. Alex, 121 comics, 32, 34, 86; horror, 35; stereotypes, 33 Committee of 100, 122, 124-5, 149, 191 Communist Manifesto, The, 109 Communist Party, 103-4, 109, 121, 123, 129, 137, 147-8; Cuban, 210; France; 214; Italy, 190; Scottish, 142; Spain, 173, 178, 229; support collapse, 98; USA, 113 Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), 173, 177, 195, 205; Barcelona, 156; /FAI Catalonia; in exile, 168, 185; Intercontinental Secretariat, 209, 211; leaderships, 204; Mexico exiles, 207; Paris office sureveillance, 220; Toulouse Congress 229 Conde de Altea, 228 Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), 222 Connolly, Billy, 7, 42, 152 Connolly, James, 40 Consejo Ibérico de Liberación (CIL), 214, 215, 234 ‘consensus’ politics, 3, 97-9, 237 conspiracy theory, 189 consumer capitalism, 97 contraception, Scottish Labour opposition, 135 Cordero Regís, Eugénio, 228 Cornwell, John, 42 Corsewell Point, lighthouse, 58, 60-1 Cosmo cinema, Glasgow, 127 Costa, João José Do Nascimento, 201 cotton industry, 101 Coull, Dave, 145 Couve de Murville, Maurice, 198 Covenanters, 52, 54; bravery, 32 Crabb, Commander, 140 Cremer, DS Roy, 193 cricket, 16 Croatia, fascists, 43 Crompton, Richmal, 72-3 CRS, 223 Cuba: anti-anarchist purge, 162-3; Batista regime overthrow, 195, 199, 206, 210; missile crisis, 140, 145, 148-9; model of revolution, 219 Cunill Valls, Jorge, 228,234 Daisley, Andy, 137 Dalí, Salvador, 27, 29 dancing, church attitude, 29 Dapena, Maria Francisca, 228 ‘Darien Project’, 62 Davies, Jack, 90 Davis, Agnes McCulloch (gran), 51, 55, 120 Davis, Henry, 53 Davison, Ian, 9 decision-making, elitist, 97-8 Defensa Interior (Seccion) (D.I.) 214-226 Delany, Sheila, 97 Delbosch, Raimundo, 242 Delgado Martínez, Joaquín, 128, 220, 236-243 Delgado, General Umberto, 208, 211, 213 democracy, ‘wan potato’ method, 16 Denikin, General, 161 Dennison, Rear Admiral Robert L., 199, 211 Denver, Nigel, 125 Derrig, Tom, 44 Derwent, Lavinia, 34 Desnais, Paul, 228, 232

250

Dewar, Hugo, 177 diaspora, Irish, 45 Dickens, Charles, 4-5 Direct Action (SWF), 168, 181; Committee, 122-3; newspaper, 185-6 Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC), 121 Directorio Revolucionario Ibérico de Liberación (DRIL), 199, 208, 213 Dirección General de Seguridad (DGS), 223, 236 Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) 225 Dixieland jazz, 137 Dixon, Ian, 126 Docherty, Veronica, 138 Domino, Fats, 89 Donegan, Lonnie, 86 Donne, John, 200 Donovan Commission, 201 Dos Reis, José 211 Douglas, Kirk, 114 Douglas-Home, Alec, 165 Dreyfus Case, 77 DST, 229 duende, 195 Dufourg, Jean Marc, 242 Dumbarton Road, Glasgow, 8, 18, 20-1, 57; cinemas, 26, 27 Dunayevskaya, Raya, 142 Dundas, ‘Dolly’, 75 ‘dunnies’, 17 Dunoon protests, 124 Durrell, Laurence, 27 Durruti, Buenaventura, 196, 221, 245 Dylan, Bob, 125 Easter Rising, Dublin 1916, 40 Ebro, battle of, 104 Echevería, Gabriel Luís, 2 Eden, Anthony, 98 Edwards, Jonathan, 29 El Alcazar, 242 Elder, Will, 90 Electric Cinema, Portobello Road, 186 Elías, Isu, 228 Eliot, ‘Rambling’ Jack, 138 elites/elitism, 97-9; American, 113; leftist, 134; political, 121 Ellis, Havelock, 110 Ellis, Ruth, 91 Emergency Committee for Direct Action Against Nuclear War, 121 Emmettones folk group, 136 Engels, Friedrich, 109, 156 England, civil war, 8 Entertaining Comics (EC), 34-5, 86, 90-1 Erse language (Irish Gaelic), 52 Escarpit, Robert, 236 Esgleas Jaume, Germinal, 214 Estállo Villacampa, Florentíno, 219 Etecheto, Alain, 243 Euskadi Ta Akatasuna (ETA), 215, 227, 242 Evangelism, American, 31 ‘Events of May’, Catalonia 1937, 104 Everest, conquest of, 25 Evian Accords, 224

Index Fyffe, Will, 22

Ewell, Tom, 89 excommunication, 41 Facerías, José Lluis (‘Face’), 178, 219 Factory for Peace, 152-3, 185; asbestosis, 154 Falange Española, 224, 226 Fallex 62 NATO exercise, 145 Faslane, attacks on, 150-1 Fast, Howard, 113 Fatima, cult of, 43 Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Liberterias (FIJL), 2, 168, 177, 185, 195, 198, 205, 207, 209, 217, 219-21, 224, 226, 228-32; anarchist principles, 243-5 Feldstein, Al, 34 French Anarchist Federation (FAF), 220 Ferguson, Sir Alex, 152 Fernández Ayala, Juan, 207 Fernández Vázquez, José Fernándo, 209 Fernández, Federico de, 209 Ferrer José, 77 Ferrer Otin, Enrique, 241 Ferrer Otin, Victor, 241 Ferri, Bernard, 231 Fianna Eireann, 44 Fields, Gracie, 48 FIJL (Aims and Principles), 204 First of May Group, 217, 231 First World War, 47 ‘first-foot’, 49-50 Flannan Isle, lighthouse, 61 Flett, Ross, 138, 144 FLN (Front de Liberation Nationale), 225, 227, 231 Flores, Bartolomé, 241 Foccart, Jacques, 225, 226 fogs, ’pea-soupers’, 14-15 folk song revival movement, 124 Foot, Paul, 131, 137 football scarves, 95 Foulis, Hugh (Neil Munro), 72 Foyers, Jamie, 105 France, Spanish exile movement, 219 Franco de Bahamonde, Francisco, 1, 43, 103, 105-6, 175, 177-8, 206, 208, 218, 225; assassination attempts, 205, 216-17, 226, 239; Cold War acceptability, 235; patronage hierarchy, 174; survival, 173 Franco, Doña Carmen Polo de, 227 Frederika, Greek queen, demonstrations against, 164-5, 167 Freeberg, Stan, 86 Freedom Press, 169, 181 Freemasonry, 39, 128, 173-4, 247; Scottish Rite, 127; Grand Orient, 128 Freie Arbeiter Stimme, Jewish anarchist newspaper and group, 168, 170 Freitas, Michael de (Michael X), 186 French Anarchist Federation (FAF), 231 French Revolution, 78, 128 Frente de Liberación Popular (FLP), 208 Frey, Roger, 229 Front de Liberatión Nationale (FLN), 223 Fulham Town Hall, Anarchist Balls, 182 Fulton, Rikki, 22 funerals, 21 Fyffe, Jim, 133

251

G-2 (Cuban Security Police), 221 Gable, Gerry, 191 Gaines, William C., 90 Gaitskell, Hugh, 96, 129, 135-7 Gallagher, Willie, 103, 142 Galloway, Rhinns of, 52-5, 58, 71 Galvão, Captain Enrique, 209 García Oliver, Juan, 214, 221, 230 Garland, Judy, 26 garrote-vil, execution method, 1, 199, 225 Gaulle, Charles de, 222 Geddes, Jenny, 132 Germinal de Sousa, 219 Gibbon, Lewis Grassic, 61 Gillespie, Bob, 130 Ginsberg, Allan, 127 Glasgow: Anarchist Federation, 145, 155, 165; Anarchist Group, 158; apprentices strike, 152; audiences, 22; Celtic FC, 40; cinemas, 18, 26, 127; Committee of 100, 147, 166, 176; Crossmyloof ice rink, 117; Fair, 24; food, 20; Fusco the barber, 93; housing policy, 99; Italians, 13; Mitchell Library, 155; music halls, 10; patois, 36; redevelopment, 19, 99; Renfrew Street workers forum, 157, 166; School of Art, 127; Sick Children's Hospital, 17; Spanish Vice-Consulate, 178; the Barrows, 15, 158; Trades Council, 142; tram rides, 23; US Consulate, 151; West End, 7; Woodside School, 118 Glen Christie, 83 Glencoe massacre, 35 ‘Glesca Eskimos’, 123-5 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 180 Goldman, Emma, 166 Goldwater, Barry, 149 Gonzálbo, Esteve, 240 González, Félipe, 242 González, Valentín (‘el campesino’), 207 González, Yagüe, 233 González-Arnau Díaz, Ramón, 2 Goodwin Press, 126 Gordon, Harry, 22 Gourock, 24 Govan, Glasgow, 4, 28, 39 Car Ferry, 27; MPs, 155 government, centralised, 180 Graham, Billy, crusade, 31 Graham, John, 54 Grainger, Stewart, 27 Granados Gatá, Francisco, 236-237 Grand Orient Freemasonry, 232,237 Greene, Sir Hugh, 203 Grimau García, Julián 240, 244 Grivas, Giorgos, 91 grocers, 19 Grupo Primero de Mayo (1st May Group), 220, 224, 232 Grossin, General, 225 Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL), 242 Guadalajara, battle of, 104 Guerra, Alfonso, 242 Guerrero Lucas, Jacínto Ángel 228, 231-232, 238, 241-243 Guerrilla resistance 206; (abandonment by PCE) 206; guerrillas (Andalusia) 206; guerrillas (casualties) 206 Guevara, Ernesto Ché, 163-4, 218 Guinard Fabreguat, Enrique, 241

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist Gunn, Neil, 61 Gurruchari, Bernardo, 197, 234 Gurruchari, Salvador, 197, 220, 240 Guthrie, Woody, 89

Ibarrola, José Maria, 228 Iberia Airlines: attacks on, 185, 223 Iberian Libertarian Council (CIL), 223 Imbernon, Nardo, 241 Imlach, Hamish, 125, 136, 138-9 immigramts, 38 Independent Labour Party (ILP), 135, 144, 146, 170 India, 48 individualism, 78 Ingersoll, R.C., 111-12 Intercontinental Secretariat (SI), 219 International Federation of Libertarian Youth (IFLY), 228 International Working Men’s Association (AIT), 168 International Brigades, Spain, 104-5, 176 International Monetary Fund, 175 International Socialism Group/Socialist Workers Party, 131, 142 International, The, 5 Ireland, civil war, 44, 45 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 40; West Mayo Brigade, 44 Irving, Elizabeth, 53, 56 Italy, military coup plan, 191

Hacq, Michel, 226 Haggarty, Nell, 80 Haines, Margaret, 169, 185-186 haircuts, 93 Hakon, Viking king, 74 Haley, Bill, 87 Halloween, 65 Hamilton family, 69; Duke of, 106 Hamilton Town Hall, venue, 137 Hampstead Heath, 12 Hannah, Rev. Walton, 128 Hardy, Oliver, 26, 86 Harkis (French Muslim police), 223 Harland and Wolff, 39 Hart, Brian, 169, 185-6, 233 Harwood, Michael, 168 Hatch, Tony, 125 Hatton, Trevor, 126 Havers, Justice, 126-127 Jacob, ‘Marius’, 159 Havers, Nigel, 126 Jacobites, 7, 62 Hawkes, Ken, 168 Jacquier, General Paul, 225 Hayley, Bill, 88-9 Janson, Hank, 114 Healy, Gerry, 131-2 Jews, 42-3 Heath, Edward, 198 Jiménez Cubas, Marcelino, 228 Heller, Joseph, 110 Jiménez Pericas, Antonio, 228 Henderson, Hamish, 103 Jímeno, Juan, 214 Hendy, Mark, 106, 169, 185, 191, 203 jiving, 92-3 Henry VIII, 7, 60 John Brown, shipyards, 39 Hermosilla, Julí, 226 ‘Johnny Walker and the Wildcats’, 92-3 Hernández, Lucio de la Nava, 228 Johnson, Vincent, 202 Hernández, Sergio, 237, 239 Jones, Commander E.W., 193 Hibernian FC, 40 Jordan, Colin, 188-191 Hicks, Wynford, 185, 203 Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise, 235 hierarchies, social system, 85 Joss, Willy, 35 Highland Clearances, 106 juke-boxes, Wurlitzers, 13 ‘Highland Host’, soldiers, 54 Junta Nacional Independente de Libertação (JNIL), 209 Highland Light Infantry(HLI), 46-7, 57 Just William books, 72-3 Hillhead, Glasgow, 8 ‘juvenile delinquency’, 34, 88 Hiroshima, 6 Juzgado Militar Especial Nacional Hitler, Adolf, 42-3, 173 de Actividades Extremistas, 2 Hogmanay, 49-50 Kahn, Albert E., 113 Holly, Buddy, 88-9 Kaliszewski, Ian, 187 Holy Isle, 73-5 Kane, Bill, 119 Holy Loch, Polaris submarine base, 124-5, 149-50, 212; Katzman, Sam, 87 protests, 122-3, 147 Keeler, Christine, 187 Hosenball, Mark, 191 Keith, Malcolm, 180 housing policy, Glasgow, 99 Kelsall, Moultrie A., 35-6 Houston, ‘Cisco’, 138 Kelvin river, 18 Howard, Leslie, 81, 84 Kelvingrove, 8; Art Gallery, 27, 29 Howie, Alex, 138, 145 Kennedy, John F., 106, 108, 127, 140-1, 201; Third World Hoy island, Orkneys, 63 realpolitik, 107 Hucklberry Finn, character, 71-2 Kerouac, Jack, 110, 127-128 Hudson, Rock, 94 Keynes, J.M., budgetary techniques, 3 Hungary, 1956 uprising, 79, 89, 91, 98, 106, 129 Khyber Pass, 47 Hutt, Lynn, 169 Kidron, Michael, 131 Hyndland, Glasgow, 8-9, 21, 82 Kildare Mutiny, 45 ‘Killing Times, The’, 32 Ibarrola, Agustín, 228 King David I, Scotland, 52

252

Index King, Pam, 97 López Copete, Vicente, 236 King-Hall, Stephen, 48 López Guerra, Antonio, 236 Kirkintilloch: Irish deaths, 39; Ministry of Defence Lorca, Federíco García, 200 establishment, 148 Lorenzo, Giovanni De, 191 Kirkpatrick, Mary Margaret, 56 Losey, Joseph, 200 Knights of Saint Columba, 39, 134 Lough, Revd Mr John, 78-80, 100 Knox, John, 7-8 Lourdes, 23 Kovacs, Ernie, 86 Lovecraft, Howard Phillips, 17 Kramer, Stanley, 89 Loy, Myrna, 26 Kronstadt, mutiny suppression, 129 Loyal Orange Order, 39 Kropotkin, Peter, 157, 160, 168 Luther, Martin, 77-8 Kruschev, Nikita, 140-1 Lymon, Frankie and the Teenagers, 89 Kurtzman, Harvey, 34 Lynn, Jean, 159, 165, Robert ‘Bobby’, 138, 155-9, 165 La Vanguardia, 227 Labour League of Youth, 108 Labour Party, 103; Clause IV, 129; nuclear weapons policy, 101; purges, 98; religious sectarianism, 134; Scotland, 133 Lady Chatterly trial, 114, 187 Lamlash, Island of Arran, 69-72, 75 Lanin, Captain USN, 124-125 Largs, Battle of, 69, 74 Launder and Gilliat, filmakers, 84 Laurel, Stan, 26, 86 Lawrence, D.H., 114 Lawrence, T.E., 5 Le Monde, 234, 236 Le Monde Libertaire, 231 Leach, Frank, 156 Leacock, Stephen, 79 League of Empire Loyalists, 202 League of the Cross, 39 Leclerc, General, 18 Leech, ‘Big Frank’, 166 ‘leeries’(lamplighters), 11 Leese, Arnold, 187-188 Leese, Mary, 187 Left Revolutionary Faction, 155 Lehrer, Tom, 86, 90-1 LeMay, Curtis, 141 Lenin, Vladimir, 103 León Estella, Nicolás, 228 Lewis, Jerry, 26-7 Lewis, Jerry Lee, 89 Liaño, Concha, 195 libraries, importance of, 110 Lighthouse Service, 62-3 Ligt, Bart de, 123 Limoges Congress (MLE), 214, 222 Linden, Eddie, 184-185 Little Richard, 87, 89 Little Rock High School, 91 Livingstone, David, 28, 102 Llansola, Vicente, 214, 217, 230 Lloyd George, David, 142 Locarno Ballroom, Glasgow, 92-3 Loch, James, 4 Lochnaw Castle, 53-5 Locklin, Hank, 117 Logan, Jimmy, 22 Long, Cissie and Paddy, 100 Longfellow, 198 Longley-Cook, Eric, 141

253

Mac Eoin, General, 45 MacColl, Ewan, 105 MacDonald clan, 35 MacDonald, Bronia, 187 MacDonald, Desmond ‘Mac’, 187 MacDonald, Ethel, 104-5 MacDonald, Lord ‘Gus’, 152, 155 MacGinnes, Niall, 77 MacGregor clan, 36 MacGregor, Alastair, 36 Machiavelli, 31 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 131 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie, 13 MacLean John, 103 Macmillan, Harold, 89, 122, 208 MacRae, Duncan, 22, 95 MacRae Josh, 114, 124-5, 136, 151 MacShane, Harry, 131, 142 Mad magazine, 90-1. 110 Madison, James, 113 Madariága, Julén, 227 Madrid, First Permanant Military Court, 1 Madrugo Barcía, Alfredo, 211 Máfe, José, 169 Magill, Air Commodore, 127 Maia, Mario Simões, 200-2 Maidie, 22 Mailer, Norman, 140 Makarios, Archbishop, 91 Makhno, Nestor, 161 Malatesta, Errico, 169 Malik, Michael Abdul (‘Michael X’), 187 Malta, elections, 41 Mandela, Nelson: sentencing, 193; trial, 194 Manifiesto de la Sierra, 221 mangles, 14 Manhattan, Baron Avro, 113 Mansfield, Jayne, 89 Manuel, Peter, 158-9 Martí Verdu, Vicente, 234, 237, 241 Martín Bellido, Antonio 228, 237, 239 Martín Hernández, Jacínto, 233 Martín, Jesús Montes, 2 Martín, Luís Mas, 163 Martínez, Inocencio, 220 Martínez del Hoyo, Sebastian ‘Progreso’, 219 Martínez Rodríguez, José, 228 Martínez, Inocencio, 231 Marton, Lajos, 241

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist Marx, Karl, 109, 156 Mas Casas, Valerio, 219 Matéo Calvo, Alejandro, 228 Mary I, 7 Maryhill, Glasgow, 9 Mas Casa Valerio, 209 Masefield, John, 71, 127 Masters, John, 47 Matheson, Richard, 116 Matos, Huber, 163-4 Mau Mau, 91 Maugham, Robin, 237 ‘Maurice’, 215 Maxton, Jimmy, 135 Mazzia, Irene, 144 McAlpine, Tom, 152-3 McCabe, Joseph, 111 McCarthy, Joe, 107; McCarthyism, 141 McCormack, Bill, 56 McCormack, Rosemary, 56 McCulloch, Gordon, 125, 136 McDougall, Willie, 156 McGinn, Matt, 42, 125, 138 McGorgary, Hugh, 127 McGowan, Andy, 23, 37, 41, 138, 144 McKay of Uganda, 28 McLachlan, Margaret, 32 McLean, Jim, 123, 126 McLean, Lex, 22 McLeod, Norman, 148 McMenanin, Christie, 138 McNaughton, Adam, 99 McNulty, ‘Wullie’, 100 Mella, Juan Antonio, 210 Meltzer, Albert, 81, 181-2 Menzies, Ian, 117 Mera Sanz, Cipriano, 195, 214, 220, 230, 238 Merzagora, Cesare, 191 Metola Amat, Ricardo, 228 Metropolitan Police, Special Branch, 167, 193, 121 Mexico, revolutionary activity, 208 Michels, Robert, 181 Miguel, Delso de, 195 Miles, Michael, 81 ‘Milou’, 232 Milligan, Spike, 90, 121 Milling, John C., 44 Milroy, Jack, 22 Milton, Rita, 186 Mission C, 226 Mitchell, Guy, 86 Mitchum, Robert, 27 ‘mixed’ marriages, 41, 44 Molina Abril, Antonio, 241 Montoux, Christian, 243 Montseny Mañe, Federíca 215, 219, 230, 242 Moore, Scotty, 88 Mor, Finlay, 60 Moral Re-Armament, 90 Morato, Josep, 240 Morecombe, Eric, 22 Morgan, Tommy, 22 Moriarty, Dean. 128

Moro, Aldo, 191 Moroto Cabrera, Rafaél, 244 Morrison, Walter, 144, 148, 150, 151 Mosley, Oswald, 187, 191 Movimiento Espanol 59 (ME59), 220 Movimento Libertario Español (MLE), 195, 205, 211, 224; Defence Commission, 222 Movimiento Popular de Resistencia (MPR), 208 Moyse, Arthur, 182 Moyse’s, Andrew, folk centre, 138 Muggeridge, Malcolm, 202-203 Mujeres libres, 194-195 Mujica, Enrique, 228 Municha Larraona, Augurio, 241 Mur Peirón, Antonio, 228 Murphy, Audie, 26-7 Murray, Chic, 22 Murray, Ruby, 86 Mussolini, Benito, 42, 113, 169 Nagasaki, 6 Nanterre University, 238 Nascimento Costa, João José Do, 210 Nasser, Gamal Abd Al, 91, 98 National Committee of 100, 126, 145-6 National Council of Resistence (CNR), 241 National Service, end of, 91 nationalism, Scottish, 85 Navarro, Floreál, 241 ‘neds’, 87 Newall, Louis, 94 newspapers, British, 148 New Statesman, 191 New York Times, 212 Nicholson, Adam, 181 Nolan, Mike, 123 North British Locomotive Engineering Works, Springburn, 56 ‘Nosotros’, 221 Notting Hill, London, 185, 185-6, 195; racist groups, 188-90 Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 99 O’Connor, Jackie, 125 O’Malley, Edward, 44 O’Neill, Scout, 159-60 Ocaña, Floreal, 218, 222 Ogelsby, Carl, 134 Olivier, Laurence, 114 Olympia Press, 127 ‘Operación Dulcinea’, 208, 213 ‘Operación Primavera’, 230, 234 Opus Dei, 173, 176, 226 Orange Lodges, 118, 135; Blantyre Junior, 116 Orbison, Roy, 117 Organisation de l’Armée Sécrète, 178, 222, 223; Commando Delta’, 222, 224 Ormazabal, Ramón 228 Ortíz, Jo, 223 Orwell, George, 4, 103, 132, 203 Osborne, John, 92 Paasen, Pierre van, 196 Pablo, Michael (Michel Raptis), ‘Pabolite tendency’, 131

254

Index package holidays, religious, 23 ‘Paddy’s Market’, Glasgow, 15 Paine, Thomas, 111-12 Palácios, José Pascual, 220, 238 Paladin Group, 226 Palance, Jack, 27 Palestine, 23 Pallis, Dr Chris, 133 Pan African Congress (PAC), 106 pantomimes, 21 Papon, Maurice, 223 Para Handy, 59, 72 Parachute Regiment, 75 Parent, Yvette Marthe Henriette, 231 Paris, massacre of Algerians, 213 Parker, Fess, 26 Parks, Rosa, 91, 112 Parsons, Wayne, 97 Partick, Glasgow, 4, 8, 10, 18, 28, 32, 39, 48, 52; Cross underground station, 20 Partick Thistle FC, 42 Partido Comunista Cubana (PCC), 220 Partido Socialista Popular (PSP), 221 Pasqua, Charles, 242 Pater, Walter, 51 Pathans, 47 Patrick, Jenny, 105 Patterson Expedition, 62 Peres de Sousa, José, 210 Pérez Jímenez, Marco, 208, 222 Pérez, José, 209 Pérez Jurado, Ramón, 208 Perez Salazar, Andrés, 228 Peace News offices, 126 Peace Pledge Union, 121 Pecunia, Alain, 231-232 Peeksill riots, 113 ‘peever’ game (hopscotch), 16 Peirats, José, 211 Perry Como, hairstyle, 93 Petter, Jim, 147 Piazza Fontana bombing, 191, 224 PIDE (Portuguese Secret Police), 204 Pindar of Wakefield, pub, 182, 187 Pinelli, Giuseppi, 224 Pintado, Juan, 221 Pinter, Harold, 97 Pope Clement XII 226 Pope Pius XII, (Pacelli), 42-3 Planelles, Lieutenant-Colonel Balbás, 2 Platters, The, 89 Polgare, Pablo, 195 Polo, Eduardo, 240 Pompidou, Georges, 226 Ponzan Vidal, Francisco, 197 Poole, Brian and the Tremeloes, 117 Popper, Karl, 190 popular militias, Spain, 176 Portales, Sucesso, 194-195 Potter, Bob, 133 Pottle, Pat, 126-127 Powers, Gary, 140 Presbyterians, 40, 111; conscience, 177; democratic tendency,

8; Scottish, 29, 31-2; social justice, 116; Ulster, 38-9; West of Scotland, 16 Presley, Elvis, 88 Primo de Rivera, José Antonio, 224 ‘Professor Bello’, 211 Profumo affair, 200 Protestantism, 23, 78, Scotland, 7 Protestant Truth Society, 112 Pueblo, 227 Puerta del Sol, silent demonstrations, 175 Quadros, Janio, 212 Queens Park, Glasgow: demonstrations, 135, 137, 151 Quesada, Juan, 240 Rachman, Peter, 187 Radio Luxembourg, 49, 88 radio programmes, 21, 48-9 Raeside, Jimmy, 156 Randle, Michael, 122, 126 Rassemblement du Peuple Française (RPF), 225 Rattigan, Terence, 81 Ray, Johnny, 86 Ray, Nicholas, 89 Recchioni, Emilio, 169 Recruiting Offices, attacks on, 150 ‘Red Clydeside’, 103, 142 redbrick universities, 201, 203 Reis, José Dos, 202 Renseignement Cinque (R5), 225 Renseignements Generaux (RG), 233, 241-242 respect, 21 Rety, John, 181-2 Richards, Vernon, 168-70 Ring, John, 44-6, 66-7 Ring, Michael Joseph ‘Joe’, 44 Ríos Cerdán, José, 241 Roa, Agustín, 194 Robert the Bruce, 69-70 Roberton, Craig, 155 Robeson, Paul, 102, 113-14 Robinson, Jack, 185 Robison, Carson, 49 Rockwell, Norman, 80 Rodgers, Jimmy, 86 Rodríguez, Carlos Rafaél, 220-221 Rodríguez, Grégorio, 228 Rogers, Jimmy, 49 Rojas, Domingo, 218 Rojas, Floreál, 218,221 Rojo Ruíz, Rafaél, 209 Roldán, Luis, 242 Román Aguilera, Francesca, 231 Ronco Pecina, José, 228 Rooney, Mickey, 10 Rooum, Donald, 165 Rosenberg, Ralph, 169 Ros Monero, Antonio, 241 Ross, Pete, 138 Rowallan, Lord, 82 RSGs (Regional Seats of Government), 146-7; Edinburgh, 145 Ruislip, RAF airbase, 126

255

My Granny Made Me An Anarchist Ruíz, Acrácio, 195, 214, 220 Ruíz Boreo, Rafael, 228 Rumney, Ralph, 127 Rushton, Willie, 165 Russell, Bertrand, 110, 121, 126, 145 Russell, Edith, 126 Russia, October Revolution, 43

Smith, Archie, 148 Smith, Dan, 119, 125 Smith, Rear-Admiral Allen, 211 Socialist Labour League/Workers Revolutionary Party, 131-3 Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), 157 Solidarity group, 133, 135, 144, 146, 170 Somerset, Protector, 60 Sos Yagüe, José, 241 Sabaté Llopart, Francisco (el Quico), 178, 207, 220, 237 Souchy, Agustín, 195 Sahl, Mort, 86 Sousa, Germinal de, 209 Saint Vincent de Paul Society, 39 Sousa José Peres de, 201 Salas Martín, Helios, 228 South Africa House demonstration 1964, 193 Salazar, Dr, 208 South Africa, wars, 48 Salgado, Juan, 195 Southall Anarchist Group, 97 Salinger, J.D., 97, 110, 127 Soviet Union, sentimentalised, 101 Saltcoats, 65 Spain: Asturias miners strike 1962, 206; Civil War, 103, 106, Sánchez Fuster, Águstin, 241 129, 198; EC membership talks, 236; Francoist leaders, 174; Sanchez Ruáno, Francisco, 228 guerrilla actions, 177, 198, 217, 223; strike wave 1964, 176, 233 Sansom, Philip, 187 Spanish Revolution, 104, 166, 173, 196-7, Stalinist coup, 105 Santamaría Cortiguera, Roque, 214, 233 Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, 187 Sartre, Jean Paul, 6 Special Branch, 192 satire, sixties boom, 91, 96 Spellman, Cardinal Francis, 107, 227 Schoenman, Ralph, 122 ‘Spies for Peace’, 146-7 school, delinquency, 95 SS Santa Maria, hijacking (‘operation Dulcinea’), 208-213 Scotia Nostra, 5, 195 Stalin, Joseph, 101; foreign policy aims, 104, 210; Stalinism, 96 ‘Scots Against War’, 148-50; intimidation attempts, 151 Stevenson, Robert, 58 Scott, Rev. Michael, 122 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 72 Scott, Robert 101 Stewart, Jimmy, 16, 27, 63 Scottish Committee of 100, 148, 150-1; membership, 144 Stirner, Max, 156, 159 Scottish Trades Union Council, 147 stoicism, Calvinist, 32 Searchlight, 191 ‘strategy of tension’ campaigns, 223,225; Italy, 191 sectarianism: anarchist, 168-70, 208; leftist, 131-2; Strickland Press, 155-6 religious, 36-43, 67-9; religious-political, 134 strikebreakers, 38 Security Service (MI5), 121, 147, 185, 191 Stuart, House of, 32, 52 Seeger, Pete, 89 STV (Basque Workers’ Union), 229 Selby, Harry, 155 Suarez, Baltazar, 231 Sellar, Patrick, 4 Sueiro, Daniel, 236 Sellers, Peter, 100-1 Suárez, Fermín, 209 Serge, Victor, 161 Suez invasion, 79, 89, 98 Sergeant, John Singer, 55 Suñer, Ramón Serrano, 175 Service d’Action Civique (SAC), 214, 225 Sunday Traders' Defence Association, 13 Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre- ‘Superintendants’, Presbyterian, 7 Espionage (SDECE), 225 Supreme Council 33° of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Service d’Ordre du RPF, 225 Freemasonry 246 sex, 29 Sutherland clearances, 4 Shakespeare, William, 84-5, 94, 111 Sutherland, Duke of, 106 Shannon, Del, 117, 119 Sutherland, Ken, 144 Sharpeville massacre, 106 sweets, rationing end, 19 shaving, 46 Syndicalist Workers’ Federation (SWF), 168, 182-3, 215 Shaw, Eddie, 156 Shute, Neville, 141 ‘tally’s’, 13-14 Sillitoe, Alan, 97 Tataró, Commissioner, 233 Silvers, Phil, 81 Te Temere Decree, Vatican, 44 Sim, Alastair, 84 ‘teddy boys’, 87 Simões Maia, Captain Mario, 209, 210 ‘teenagers’ 89; Blantyre, 117 Sinatra, Frank, 94 television, 25, 81 Siochfhradha, Padraig O, 45 terrorism, 216 Sisulu, Walter, sentencing, 193 Testificat system, Presbyterian, 28 Skateraw, Kincardineshire, 25, 61-3 The Bible in Spain, 236 Skorzeny, SS Colonel Otto, 223, 226 ‘The Manzanares Plot’, 237 Slaughter, Cliff, 131 Third Congress of CNT Local Federations, 235, 243 Slessor, Mary Third Lanark FC, 95 Small, Martin, 202 Thomson, D.C., 151

256

Index Thurber, James, 75 Tierra y Libertad, 218 Time Out, 191 Tomiolo, Alberto, 228 ‘tonsillectomy’, 12 Torres, Martínez, 243 Torry village, Aberdeen, 58, 63 tourism boom, Spain, 205, 223, 236 traditional jazz, 118 tramcars (‘shooglies’), 18 Traven, B., 115 Trocchi, Alex, 127 Trossachs, the, 24 Trotsky, Leon, 161 Trotskyists, 123, 148, 155; ‘entryism’, 130 ‘Tupper, Alf’, 33-4 Turkey, US nuclear missiles, 140 Turner, Pete, 169 Twain, Mark, 71 Tyndall, John, 189, 191 Uloth, Arthur, 180 Ulster Irish, 38 UGT (General Workers’ Union), 229 Union of Anarcho-Communists (UGAC), 232 Union of Shop Distributive and Allied Workers, 142 University of Sussex, 201 United States of America (USA): civil rights movement, 112; culture, 86; Franco support, 17; Navy, 124, 214; Scottish Polaris bases, 130, 136; Sixth Fleet, 202 University of Sussex, 201 Urrútia, Manuel, 163, 221 Vaca Vilchis (Alberola’s nom de guerre), 219 Vázquez, José Fernándo Fernández Sotomayor), 199-200, 203 variety shows, 21 Vega, Camilo Alonso, 177 Veló Mosquera, José (‘Pepe’), 209-213 Veló, Victor, 209 Venezuela, 199; anarchists, 211 Vera, Rafaél, 242 Verwoerd, Hendrik, 106, 193 Vidál de Nicolas, 228 Viedma, Julio Moreno, 228 Vietnam, US war in, 121, 140, 148-149 Vigleikr, 74 Vila Capdevila, Ramón, 178, 229 Villate, Gonzalo José, 228 Vincent, Gene, 89 Vine, Ian, 180, 203 violence, question of, 126 Voline, 161 Voltaire, 237

(Comandante

Wall, Bernadine, 184 Wallace, George, 141 Walsh, ‘Digger’, 180 Walter, Nicolas, 146 War Resisters International, 121 Ward, Colin, 170 Waterhouse, Keith, 97 Watin, Georges, 229 Wayne, John, 27, 94 Weavers, The, 89 Weir, Walter, 148 welfare state, UK, 3 Weller, Ken, 132-3 Wertham, Frederic, 90 Wesker, Arnold, 96 Wethersfield, RAF base protest, 126, 145 Wheen, Francis, 191 Whiskey, Nancy, 86 White, Josh, 87, 125, 137 Whiteinch, Glasgow, 8, 39; Rosevale Cinema, 18 Wigton martyrs, 32 wildcat strikes, 201 William of Orange, 36 Williams, Hank, 49, 86, 89 Williamson, George, 144, 148, 151-2, 176 Willis, Dave, 22, 160 Wills, Bob, 49, 87 Wilson, Harold, 201 Wilson, Margaret, 32 Wilson, Robert Burns, 119, 136, 142 Windischgratz, Count, 246 Wise, Ernie, 22 witch trials, 24 ‘Wobblies’ (Industrial Workers of the World), 108, 169 Wolf Cubs, 81-2 Women’s Land Army, 58 Woodcock, George, 160, 168 Woodside Senior Secondary School, Glasgow, 92, 95 Wright, Peter (MI6), 191 Wrighton, May, 169 Ya 227 Yagüe González, Saturnino, 244 Yeats, W.B., 129 Yellow Star Movement, 190 Young Communist League, 144, 166, 191 Young. George Kennedy (MI6 number two), 191 Young Socialists, 155, 166; Glasgow branches, 119, 137; Springburn, 129, 133 Zeitken, Clara, 157 Zinneman, Fred, 178, 207 Zocalo, 219 Zola, Emile, 77 Zorkin, Julián, 232

wake, funeral, 100

257