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Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library THE FRIENDS OF DURRUTI 1937-1939 IN
SELF DEFENCE: I Demand an Explanation Unknown Anarchists No 4: Nicholas Lazarevitch Little Known Anarchists No 5: Dan Chatterton Unknown
Anarchists No 6: Ross Winn Remembering
Luigi Fabbri What is the Kate Sharpley Library THE FRIENDS OF DURRUTI 1937-1939
Jaime Balius - IN SELF DEFENCE: I Demand an Explanation I will not repay defamatory comment in kind. But what I cannot keep mum about is that a legend of marxism has been woven about my person and I should like the record put straight In Valencia's Fragua Social it has been claimed that I am a marxist This innuendo by Fragua Social has been taken up by other mouthpieces and it has been argued that our Group (Agrupacion) was a ragbag of marxists and the like. At a plenum of anarchist groups I had to bite my lips to stop myself from answering a comrade who was reminding folk that I came from a certain political sector. And I also resigned myself to hearing from the lips of another person present at the plenum that I was driven by spite. The same thing was said of me in Solidaridad Obrera some time ago. I paid no heed. Later, on the occasion of the appearance of a weekly run by E. Carbo upon which I helped out as a sub-editor, the same charge was leveled against me. And on a number of occasions I have had to endure the same description being used with regard to me. Let me ask the comrades who have resorted to this innuendo why they call me a marxist. Can it possibly be that I am a marxist because I am a steadfast enemy of the petit bourgeois political parties and of the whole rabble who have lined their own pockets while invoking the revolution and still are, even though torrents of blood are being shed on the fields of battle? Do they call me a marxist because I am against collaborationism and because I understand our position to be a source of strength only to our enemies? Am I called a marxist because I have been candid enough to write and bring to public attention what other comrades only dare say around the cafe table? Why hang this label on me? Is it because in May I took the line that the uprising should continue until the Generalidad was annihilated utterly? Or could it be on account of my view that blood should not be spilled to no purpose and that whenever sacrifice is asked of the working class, it ought to bring them benefit rather than cost them ground? I require an explanation. If I am deemed a comrade at all, let someone tell me why I have been described as a marxist. I make no mention of the term agent provocateur because on that score there is a firm undertaking that both sides will retract the language used about the other. In our last issue we of the Friends of Durruti retracted the term 'treachery', for the sake of revolutionary anarchist unity AND WE EXPECT THE COMMITTEES to retract the description 'agent provocateurs'. That is only fair. It grieves me that at the present time there is somebody who dares call me a Marxist when I could refute with unanswerable arguments those who hang such an unjustified label on me. As one who attends our union assemblies and specific gatherings, I might speak of the loss of class sensibility which I have observed on a number of occasions. I have heard it said that we should be making politics - in as many words, comrades - in an abstract sense, and virtually no one protested. And I, who have been aghast at countless such instances, am dubbed a marxist just because I feel, myself to be a one hundred percent revolutionary. It is a chore to rally to one's own defence. But it is only fair and reasonable that my pen which has always keenly defended the CNT and the FAI should one day serve to defend my honour and my very life. Let me renew a few incidents from my record. On returning from exile in France in the days of Primo de Rivera I fought the Generalidad at a time when I could easily have been feathering my nest, and I have been a defender of the CNT and the FAI ever since. In spite of my paralysis, I have done time in prison and been taken in manacles to Madrid for my fervent and steadfast championship of our organisations and for fighting those who once were friends of mine Is that not enough? I have always been looked at askance to some extent. I, comrades do not have my roots in the workshop nor in the factory. I come from a bourgeois family. I was a medical student. And in the dissecting rooms, the hospitals, jails and in exile I have managed to rise above my origins - until now I identified wholly with the proletariat. So where is this marxism of mine? Is it because my roots are not in the factory? What fault is it of mine that I was born under the sign of absolute honesty arid have never lined my pockets in any way? In short, that I am not grasping like so many others are? The time has come to clarify my position. It is not good enough to say that the matter has already been agreed. The truth must shine through. As far as I am concerned, I call upon all the comrades who have used the press to hang this label upon me to spell out what makes me a marxist. Airing personal business does not come into this It is my very honour which is in question here. I require an explanation. El Amigo del Pueblo. No 4, dated 22 June 1936 (!1937) page 3 Unknown Anarchists No 4: Nicholas Lazarevitch Born in Belgium 17 August 1895 near Liege, Nicholas Lazarevitch was the son of Russian revolutionary émigrés. After working in a number of factories and mines in French-speaking Belgium he became an anarcho-syndicalist shortly before world war one. He worked in the mines of Germany's Ruhr in 1916, but in 1917 escaped to Holland. There he joined up with interned Russian POW's who had also escaped from Germany, and helped to set up a soviet to press for their repatriation to Russia. In February 1919 he returned to Russia with these internees, and joined the Red Army. He was sent to South Russia to make propaganda in the French army ranks. He was arrested, and only saved from execution by the Red Army's recapture of Odessa. At this point Lazarevitch was very close to the Bolsheviks "whom he believed to be only a political tendency very close to the anarchists but better organised". He fled the denikinist capture of Odessa and entered Rumania where he was interned. He then made his way illegally into Yugoslavia and thence to Italy where he was in contact with the anarchists, and took part in street fighting against the fascists. He returned to Russia in March 1921, where he worked as a part-time translator for the Comintern refusing to become a full-time official. He requested factory work and spent 1921-24 in various jobs in Russian factories. He was in touch with Boris Souvarine and Pierre Pascal. "In his view the solution to the conflict with the Party and the tame trade unions lay in the creation of workers' groups, the future nuclei of independent trade union organisations capable of standing up to the Party and any restoration of capitalism". Driven underground by these activities, Lazarevitch was arrested by the GPU in the autumn of 1924. He refused to recognise the court and was held without trial until 1926, spending his time reading and learning several languages. He was freed after a campaign mounted by Anarcho-syndicalists and La Revolution Proletarienne. He was expelled from the USSR in 1926, after which he settled in Paris and became a building worker. He helped to draft the Platform. In 1926 he also started to campaign, to publicise working class reality in the USSR to French workers. He organized about fifty meetings in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany, often clashing with local communists. The French authorities expelled him in 1928, after which he worked as a miner in Belgium, until he returned illegally to France, to work in construction. In 1931 Lazarevitch and Ida Mett (his wife) traveled around Spain. He was already a good friend of Ascaso and Durruti, whom he had known as exiles in Belgium. He resumed to Paris, and then Belgium, in 1932, but continued to monitor events in Spain for La Revolution Proletarienne. Back in Belgium, he was active in a series of anarcho-syndicalist led strikes, as well as an active supporter of anti-militarists. He campaigned on behalf of Victor Serge and Francesco Ghezzi in the USSR and on behalf of foreign anarchists expelled from Belgium. He was jailed for a year in 1935 for anti-militarist and trade union activity. In 1936 he re-entered France illegally to find work with the help of the Proof-readers Union. He was actively involved in gathering the documentation that was to form the basis of Ida Mett's "The Kronstadt Commune" published in 1938. Arrested in 1940 as an illegal alien he was interned in Vernet camp. He pretended to consent to repatriation to Belgium but escaped en route. He worked for a while as a farm labourer in Les Landes, before rejoining his wife and children in the Var department in 1942. He returned to Paris in 1946 to work as a proof-reader. In the 1950's Lazarevich published a review based on extract gleaned from official soviet publications. He taught Russian and used his student's contacts to try and gain information about the Russian situation. May 1968 saw him taking part in the open assemblies at the Sorbonne. He died in Paris on the 24th of December 1975. LITTLE KNOWN ANARCHISTS NO: 5 - DAN CHATTERTON Leaving out those great ones who have cut their niches in history, (the history of this country is rich in fore-runners of Anarchism) such as Godwin Shelley, and Owen, I propose to place on record some of the lesser known pioneers of the Anarchist movement. Of those of a proletarian origin, Dan Chatterton stands out as one who attracted most attention. In front of me as I write, is a cabinet photo of this tattle spare old man, who, in his day, was so well known in the parks, and every part of London where there were meetings of any section of the advanced movement. There he was, selling the current issues 'Freedom' and 'Commonweal', especially pushing the sale of his own tattle production 'Chatteron's Atheistic, Communistic, Scorcher'. (A full set is in the British Museum.) He usually created both sensation and amusement by rapidly announcing his paper as "an appeal to the half-starved, herring-gutted, poverty-stricken, parish-damned, inhabitants of this dis-united kingdom!" This paper appeared in pamphlet form, whenever possible, in various kinds of type, and on varying kinds of paper. Through it ran his 'Auto-biography of old Chat' which is a history of the struggles of his time, and his frequent challenges to the Bishops and priests to debate. Mrs Beatrice Webb (Lady Passmore), in her book 'The Story of My Apprenticeship", states that when she was rent-collecting under Mrs Olivia Hill in the Drury Lame district, Chatterton was one of her tenants. She says that he was reputed to have collected his type from printers' dustbins, which he set up on his kitchen table, and his wife sat on the formes, in order to get an impression; for he had no machine. Richard Whiting, in his once famous novel "No 5 John Street", makes Chatterton one of his leading characters, under the nom de plume of "Old 48", and says of his journal - 'This journal, if I may be pardoned the digression, has no circulation, yet it supports "48", as he supports it. It is bought as a curiosity at public meetings and usually by persons who have in view an inexpensive donation to the British Museum. Many who buy it make the transaction an excuse for offering the proprietor an alms. It has every note of singularity. It is printed on paper of a texture generally used for posters, and of the hue of anaemic blood. Its orthography is that of the first standard, its syntax aspires to the perfect freedom of the Anarchist ideal. Its is set up from a composite fount, suggestive of a printer's dustbin, and containing so undue a proportion of capitals that sometimes they have to take service out of their turn at the end of a word. "It might appear to have a large staff for no two of its articles are signed by the same name. "Brutus" writes the leader, "George Washington" supplies the reports of meetings; "'William Tell" supplies reminiscences of the Chartist rising and "Cromwell" acts as agent for advertisements. To the untutored, however, these are but so many incarnations of one commanding personality. When "48" has written the entire number, he sets it up, and carries it to a hand printing press which Gutenburg would have considered crude. When the press happens to be in a good humour, he obtains a copy by the ordinary method. When it does not, he is still at no loss, for he lays the formes on the table, and prints each sheet by pressure of the hand. Earlier difficulties of this sort were met by the co-operation of his wife, now deceased. This devoted woman sat on the formes, and obtained the desired results by the impact of a mass of corpulency estimated at fourteen stone. Her death is said to have been accelerated by a sudden demand for an entire edition of a hundred and seventy copies descriptive of a riot in Hyde Park. These earlier copies are valued by collectors for the extreme sharpness of the impression." John Henry Mackay, the German Anarchist poet, wrote a novel of the London Socialist movement of the '80's called "The Anarchists", in which there is a very good pen-picture of Chatterton. "Chatterton, always of the poor, was always for the poor, and never shirked the fight. Original, and strong in character, he fought all his life for his class. Individualistic in temperament he believed that it was only in Communism that he could find liberty. A militant Atheist, he was too logical to reject a government in the skies and accept one on earth. He fought the politician as he fought the priest, for, as he often said 'They were twin vultures hatched from the same rotten egg.'" Chatterton has passed on: he lives only in the few books mentioned above. The poverty-stricken old fighter brings to our mind the words of William Morris: "Named and nameless, all live in us; Mat Kavanagh, Freedom, February 1934 Unknown Anarchists No. 6: Ross Winn. By Emma Goldman The inexorable master, Death, has again visited the Anarchist ranks. This time its victim was Ross Winn, one of the most earnest and able American Anarchists. Never has the power of the Ideal been demonstrated with greater force than in the life and work of this man, Ross Winn. For nothing short of a great Ideal, a burning, impelling, all absorbing ideal could make possible the task that our dead comrade so lovingly performed during a quarter of a century. Born in Texas forty-one years ago, of farmer parents, young Winn was expected to follow the path of his fathers. But the boy had other dreams, dreams extending far beyond his immediates. His were dreams of the world, of humanity, of the struggle for liberty. He was possessed by a passionate longing to learn the printing trade, and by that means to carry a message to mankind. His father, however, was opposed to such 'foolish notions', but Ross could not be daunted either at the age of sixteen nor during the rest of his life. He worked as a farm hand, picked cotton, and out of his meagre earnings he bought for himself a small hand press. It was at the time when plutocracy, drunk with power, was about to put to death the men whose ideas became the beacon light in the life of Ross Winn: the Chicago Anarchists. Verily, Spies was prophetic: 'The voices in the grave will speak louder than those you strangle today.' Voltairine de Cleyre and Ross Winn - two native children of America - heard the strangled voices and, and forthwith set themselves to keep alive the work for which our brave comrades had been put to death. Ross Winn immediately made himself conversant with the philosophy of Anarchism, which found in him a powerful, uncompromising and daring exponent. Soon after the death of our Chicago comrades he revived the Alarm, founded by Albert Parsons, and later published by Dyer D. Lum. Always harassed by poverty, this later caused his illness and untimely death; our comrade was often compelled to discontinue his publishing work. But never for very long. Thus we find him again at the helm in 1594, issuing a little paper called The Co-operative Commonwealth; then again in 1898, the Coming Era; in 1899, Winn's Freelance. Pressed by economic adverse conditions, Ross Winn this time was forced to suspend his publication, contributing, however, meanwhile for the Free Society published for many years before his family. But in 1901 Winn resumed his own paper, Winn's Firebrand, which he subsequently called the Advance, and later the Red Phalanx. Always his supreme passion was a paper, to arouse, inspire, and educate the people to a higher conception of human worth. So intense was that passion that we find him preparing copy on the very last day before his death, for the August issue of his paper. I met our comrade in Chicago in 1901, and was deeply impressed with his fervour and complete abandonment to the cause - so unlike most American revolutionists, who love their ease and comfort too well to risk them for their ideals. Ross Winn was of the John Brown, Albert Parsons, and Voltairine de Cleyre type. He lived and worked only for his ideal, and would have gone to the gallows with the same fortitude. But fate decreed that he should die a hundred deaths. Three years ago our comrade fell victim to the disease of the poor- tuberculosis. He had little faith in doctors and tried nature instead. Unfortunately one cannot live on nature alone, especially when one has a wife and child. And so Ross Winn had to return to civilisation. In Mount Juliet, Tenn., assisted by his devoted companion Gussie Winn, and cheered by their child Ross Jr., he eked out a miserable existence, and kept up his propaganda. Last year, however, his condition made work impossible. But he was too proud to ask assistance from his comrades even. It was though his wife that we learned of their terrible plight, immediately some money was raised which might have kept him in comfort for a while. But the only thing that meant comfort for Winn was the spreading of his beloved ideas And so he spent sixty dollars - a fortune to a little family- on a new printing outfit, and the Advance was again started. It was this that helped more than medicine or nature to prolong the life of our tireless comrade. And then the end came. In the early morning hours of August 8 the inexorable master, Death stilled the fervent, burning tears of Ross Winn. Only the faithful Gussie and their boy were with him. The good Christian neighbours had no use for the heretic. Poor fools! How could they fathom the beauty and love that permeated the man whom they feared in life and shunned in death! He is beyond them now, but not so his child, who next to his ideals he loved most, and whom he hoped to save from Christian kindness and patriotic beneficiency. Ross Winn is beyond it all, but we are still here, not only to continue his work with the same ardour and devotion as he, but also to bring his boy, even in a small measure, the comradeship and care of his father. At the death of Ross Winn, nine dollars was all that was left to his family. Their need is great and immediate. I therefore earnestly urge that a fund be raised at once to assist the faithful comrade and child of Ross Winn. Contributions can be sent direct to: Gussie Winn, Route 3 Mt. Juliet, Tenn., USA or to Mother Earth. It is only through the manifestation of solidarity that we can prove the living force of the ideas and ideals for which Ross Winn lived, worked and struggled. Emma Goldman, The Anarchist 27 September 1912 A clear-sighted and very astute intellectual, author of essays crucial to my libertarian understanding of the great political upheavals of the 20th century (the Russian revolution, the fascist seizure of power in Italy). A generous and tireless anarchist militant, he knew imprisonment and internment, physical assault at the hands of fascist thugs and was driven into exile he was we of the few professors to refuse to take the oath of loyalty to the Italian regime after 1922, a refusal that cost him a chair to which he had always brought honour. A dogged organiser for the movement, a friend and follower of Errico Malatesta (of whom he has left us a moving and comprehensive biography), a supporter of anarcho-communism and of the workers' movement, he attended the International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam in 1907. This was Luigi Fabbri, a comrades whose name is all too rarely invoked these days, and whose books and pamphlets (which are of such immediate relevance, even though their author died before the second World war broke out) are too little read. He was born on 23 December 1877 in Fabriano in the province of Ancona (Italy), one of the 'classic' stamping grounds of anarchism (along with the Romagna, the VaIdarno and the areas around Carrera and La Spezia), which was to be the epicentre of the famous 'red week' uprising in 1914. He spent his childhood and early youth farther south in the marches, in Montefiore dell'Ase (in the province of Ascoli Piceno), then went on to the Recanati highschool. In 1893 at the age of 15 he encountered anarchist teachings for the first time and instinctively embraced them; from that Four: on his militant activity would take place under the red and black colours of freedom and into it he poured all of this energies and intellect. Unlike Kropotkin, an anarchist academic who was also capable of scientific work unrelated to politics (such as his research into Ice Age geology and the geography of the Far East and Central Asia), for Fabbri academic and militant were one and the same. His thirst for knowledge and urge to investigate and subject everything to the probing light of a critical and alert intelligence was placed in the service of the libertarian ideal. This was a struggle that was unceasing even during his times in prison (he was first arrested in 1894 at the age of 16, charged with having printed and distributed anti-militarist matter: this was at the time of the disgraceful war in Africa launched by Francesco Crispi for reasons of prestige). In 1896 he enrolled with the law faculty of the university of Macerata. The following year he met Malatesta, becoming we of his best friends and most loyal collaborators. Malatesta was a member of the military draft of 1895, so he was 24 years Fabbri's senior. For Malatesta Fabbri felt a filial affection (if it means anything, the year of Fabbri's birth was the year of the Matese gang, the hapless attempted uprising by Malatesta, Carlo Cafiero and Andrea Costa in the San Lupo mountains). It was with Malatesta that he cut his teeth in his long career as a movement journalist and publicist; in fact he was placed in charge of the publication of L'Agitazione in Ancona, whilst his mentor was in prison. But in 1898 it was Fabbri's turn to be arrested. He was interned on offshore islands first on Ponza and then on Favignana. This was a common practice in King Umberto's freemason and clergy-ridden Italy; it followed the failure of the attempt to serum a penal colony on the desolate Dahlak islands in the Red Sea along the lines of French Guyana. In 1900, Fabbri was released. Even though the anti-anarchist crackdown was raging as furiously as ever (following the assassination of Umberto in Monza), his propaganda activity did not let up. In 1903, along with Pietro Gori, Fabbri launched the review Il Pensiero and a short time later started to contribute articles to the anarchist newspaper of the émigrés in Paterson, New Jersey, La Question Sociale. Il Pensiero continued to appear, albeit faced by thousands of problems, until December 1911. He shuttled between Rome, Bologna, Fabriano and his native region, carrying on with his activities as a teacher under close police surveillance but determined to spread his libertarian ideas wherever he went. He joined Malatesta in writing for Volonta in Ancona, In 1907 he was in Amsterdam along with Malatesta to attend the International Anarchist Congress which was to have such importance for the evolution of the anarchist movement. Being caught up in the 'red week' he was obliged to quit Italy and took refuge for a while in Switzerland, returning to Italy to throw himself body and soul into anti-militarist and pro-neutrality propaganda in 1914-1915. These were difficult times: the whole of Italy was convulsed by pro-intervention euphoria and uncertainty and confusion infected even the left. Socialists like Cesare Battista, anarchists like Peter Kropotkin argued that the war was a necessity. This eventually stretched the and snapped the weakening vestiges of the International. Luigi Fabbri, charged with defeatism, was arrested again; upon his release he carried on with his work as a teacher during the war years under the closet police surveillance (in Corticella in Bologna province). His anti-war propaganda carried on but he had to take certain precautions in order to remain at large. Aside from Volonta, he contributed to Umanita Nova which had been launched in 1920 as a daily. But his contributions to Umanita Nova led to his being arrested again in the years after the Great war, tried and convicted again; he also suffered his first fascist attack. Yet these were his most fertile years as a writer. Back in 1905 he had published his Letters to a Woman on Anarchy, followed in 1912 by The School and the Revolution, in 1913 by Giordano Bruno and in 1914 by Letters to a Socialist and The Aware Generation. But between 1921 and 1922 he sent to the presses his most important books (aside from a later life of Malatesta), Preventive Counter-revolution; and Dictatorship and Revolution - works generated by a probing, perceptive intelligence set out in the clearest of styles and closely argued, consistent in their reasoning and non conformist m their approach and conclusions. [KSL hope to print the latter some time in the future] Some of what he wrote is startlingly relevant even now, like this extract from the 1906 pamphlet Workers' Organisation and Anarchy... "This vicious circle has led reformist socialists to devise the curious theory that in their strikes the workers should worry about the interests of the employers and the conditions of their industry. . Thus are the workers on strike wrong-footed and the capitalist taken as being right, all in the name of a brand new interpretation of socialism. It has been overlooked, however, that it is the workers who always have right on their side, always, always, even when they declare an ill-timed strike that harms themselves. True, they are not doing the right thing in launching a dispute in unfavorable circumstances, when their defeat is a certainty; but the damage they are doing is to their own interests and not because the boss is in the right or because the industrialists are right rather than the wage earners. For as long as the worker works a single hour for the benefit of an employer, for as long as the boss makes a penny out of a working man's labours, that working man will always have right on his side - the sacrosanct right which is the very basis of socialism and of anarchism… " In Dictatorship and Revolution (1921), an analysis of the Russian revolution and its authoritarian distortion by the Bolsheviks, he always deals with the relationship between libertarian socialism and Marxism. "Socialists always say that the 'dictatorship' will be a passing thing, an imperfect transitional stage, something akin to a painful necessity. We have demonstrated what errors and dangers lurk within that belief; even granting (which I do not) that dictatorship may truly be necessary, it would still be a mistake to offer it as an ideal target to aim for and turn it into a flag to afford precedence over the flag of freedom. In my event we ought to agree that one of the essential preconditions of such a dictatorship's being provisional and passing and not consolidating itself and leading on to a stable, lasting future dictatorship, is that it must terminate at the earliest opportunity, and that outside and against the law there should be a watchful and energetic opposition from revolutionaries, a living flame of freedom a strong faction preventing it from solidifying and combating it until it is successfully destroyed, just as soon as its raison d'etre has evaporated... assuming that it may have only the one! It will be anarchism’s natural vocation part of its very essence and tradition, to represent that ultra-revolutionary opposition within the revolution, that flame of freedom..." But his most incisive, most effective, intellectually most inspiring essay is, in our judgement, Preventive Counter-revolution (1922). It was written in the heat of the moment whilst fascist goons were gaining the upper hand over the revolutionary disturbances in the factories and the fields. The post-war elections had inflated out of all proportion the strength of the leftwing parties, the striking workforce was poised to bring the system grinding to a halt and the trams were running with red flags on display. It was time to act, before the reaction could orchestrate any countervailing measures. Fabbri wrote: "But the revolution did not come and was not made. There were only popular rallies, lots of rallies; and alongside these demonstrations, countless choreographed marches and parades ... Moreover, this euphoria lasted too long, at almost two years; and the others, the ones who felt everyday that they were under threat of being toppled from their thrones and stripped of their privileges began to wake up to the situation and appreciate their own strength and the weakness of their enemies." And they had armed the fascists to mount a counter-revolution to pre-empt the revolution; what we might describe as a preventative counter-revolution which fastened upon society even though the revolution never happened. This was Fabbri's interpretation of the fascist phenomenon, which came into existence as the armed wing of the landlords and capitalists and as a substantially novel force, the subsequent evolution of which defies explanation unless we recognise a frightening series of errors, shortcomings, ingeniousness and weakness on the part of the left. At the same time as he was publishing his books he was writing articles for old and new libertarian publications (like Pensiero e Volonta, Fede Libero Accordo, etc.), and Luigi Fabbri was carrying on with his own activities as a militant. In 1919 he was among the promoters of the first hard and fast essay at organising, the launching of the Union of Italian Anarchist Communists, and, the following year, of the Italian Anarchist Union (UAI). In 1923 he suffered his second beating at the hands of fascists. In 1926 he declined to swear an oath of loyalty to the regime and lost his position and fled abroad. This was the beginning of a series of painful moves, throughout which he carried on writing for the world's anarchist press and launching new publications. In 1927 he was m Switzerland, only to move quickly thereafter to Paris where he launched the journal Lotta Umana. Expelled from democratic France he fled to Belgium only to be expelled from Belgium too. It looked as if there was no way for him to carry on the struggle in Europe; but he refused to give up; and in 1929, at the age of 52, he embarked with youthful courage upon a new life in South America. He set up home in Uruguay, in Montevideo, where he soon launched Studi Social, although he continued to send items to the libertarian press in Spain, France and the United States and penned his Malatesta: His Life and Thought (published m Buenos Aires in 1945). He died prematurely in the thick of the struggle on 24 June 1935. The previous December an incident at the oasis of Wal Wal in Ethiopia had provided the spark for a fascist attack on Ethiopia and the start of a spiral of war-mongering which would carry the Mussolini Dictatorship through events in Spain to the catastrophe of Hitler's war. A catastrophe which Fabbri had been awaiting faithfully, hopefully for many a long year, but which he was denied the chance to see. Francesco Lamendola, (Unamita Nova, (6-11-1988) We are always glad to receive feedback about the Bulletin, so if this one doesn't have enough pictures for your taste, then send us some: though I think the quality of the articles should keep your minds occupied. What is the Kate Sharpley Library? The KSL was named in honour of Kate Sharpley, a First World War anarchist and anti-war activist - one of the countless 'unknown members of our movement so ignored by ‘official historians' of anarchism. We are dedicated to countering the distortion and lies that passes for the history of Anarchism, and give the anarchist movement a true view of it's origins The Library, the largest collection of Anarchist material in England, is made up of donations from comrades of books, pamphlets, newspapers and other materials. We always welcome donations, in any language. We are in the process of cataloguing the English language materials We have a record second to none for republishing lost aspects of Anarchist history. Details of our pamphlets are available if you send us a self-addressed envelope. Subscriptions are also available to our bulletin. The publications of the Kate Sharpley Library are available from: KSL (send a stamped addressed envelope for a list) They are also available through: We would be particularly pleased to hear from any comrades interested in helping to research the life of Jack White. Despite his role in the formation of the Irish Citizen Army and the Spanish Civil War, there is very little information about him. |