Stuart Christie, founder of the Anarchist Black Cross and Cienfuegos Press and co-author of The floodgates of anarchy has died peacefully after a battle with lung cancer.
Born
in Glasgow and brought up in Blantyre, Christie credited his
grandmother for shaping his political outlook, giving him a clear moral
map and ethical code. His determination to follow his conscience led him
to anarchism: “Without freedom there would be no equality and without
equality no freedom, and without struggle there would be neither.” It
also led him from the campaign against nuclear weapons to joining the
struggle against the Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco
(1892-1975).
He moved to London and got in touch with the
clandestine Spanish anarchist organisation Defensa Interior (Interior
Defence). He was arrested in Madrid in 1964 carrying explosives to be
used in an assassination attempt on Franco. To cover the fact that there
was an informer inside the group, the police proclaimed they had agents
operating in Britain – and (falsely) that Christie had drawn attention
to himself by wearing a kilt.
The threat of the garotte and
his twenty year sentence drew international attention to the resistance
to the Franco regime. In prison Christie formed lasting friendships with
anarchist militants of his and earlier generations. He returned from
Spain in 1967, older and wiser, but equally determined to continue the
struggle and use his notoriety to aid the comrades he left behind.
In
London he met Brenda Earl who would become his political and emotional
life partner. He also met Albert Meltzer, and the two would refound the
Anarchist Black Cross to promote solidarity with anarchist prisoners in
Spain, and the resistance more broadly. Their book, The floodgates of anarchy
promoted a revolutionary anarchism at odds with the attitudes of some
who had come into anarchism from the sixties peace movement. At the
Carrara anarchist conference of 1968 Christie got in touch with a new
generation of anarchist militants who shared his ideas and approach to
action.
Christie’s political commitment and international
connections made him a target for the British Special Branch. He was
acquitted of conspiracy to cause explosions in the “Stoke Newington
Eight” trial of 1972, claiming the jury could understand why someone
would want to blow up Franco, and why that would make him a target for
“conservative-minded policemen”.
Free but apparently
unemployable, Christie launched Cienfuegos Press which would produce a
large number of anarchist books and the encyclopedic Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review.
Briefly Orkney became a centre of anarchist publishing before lack of
cashflow ended the project. Christie would continue publishing, and
investigating new ways of doing so including ebooks and the internet.
His https://christiebooks.co.uk contains numerous films on anarchism and
biographies of anarchists. He used facebook to create an archive of
anarchist history not available anywhere else as he recounted memories
and events from his own and other people’s lives.
Christie wrote The investigative researcher’s handbook (1983), sharing skills that he put to use in an exposé of fascist Italian terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie (1984). In 1996 he published the first version of his historical study We the anarchists : a study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), 1927-1937.
Short-run printing enabled him to produced three illustrated volumes of his life story (My granny made me an anarchist, General Franco made me a ‘terrorist’ and Edward Heath made me angry 2002-2004) which were condensed into a single volume as Granny made me an anarchist : General Franco, the angry brigade and me (2004). His final books were the three volumes of ¡Pistoleros! The Chronicles of Farquhar McHarg, his tales of a Glaswegian anarchist who joins the Spanish anarchist defence groups in the years 1918-1924.
Committed
to anarchism and publishing, Christie appeared at many bookfairs and
film festivals, but scorned any suggestion he had come to ‘lead’ anyone
anywhere.
Christie’s partner Brenda died in June 2019. He
slipped away peacefully, listening to “Pennies From Heaven” (Brenda’s
favourite song) in the company of his daughter Branwen.
Stuart Christie, 10 July 1946-15 August 2020
I was a friend on facebook where he posted frequently lots of inspiring stuff , so my deepest condolences go the family and friends of Stuart Christie. Sad news, May this lifelong committed anti-fascist and anarchist rest in power and his extraordinary life long be remembered.
A perfect society may not come tomorrow, the struggle could last forever, but at least we can thank people like Christie who had the courage and vision that provides the spur to struggle against things as they are, and for things that might be. Our progress towards a more meaningful world must begin with the will to resist every form of injustice.
Mahmoud Darwish who I've witten about previously https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2010/01/mahmoud-darwish-poet-of-resistance.html was a widely known and popular
Palestinian poet whose work I greatly admire.. He was born in Berweh, a village east of Acre,
Palestine, in 1942.
When the Israelis occupied his home in 1948, Darwish
began to experience many forms of oppression. He grew up as a refugee, his village was destroyed, and between 1961 and
1967 he was arrested by the Israelis five times, once for writing
"Identity Card," a poem which became a rallying cry for the Palestinian
movement. Early in life, Darwish
became politically active through his poetry and involvement in the
Israeli Communist Party, Rakah. He spent a period as the editor of
Rakah's newspaper, Al-Ittihad (Unity).
Darwish's political
advocacy brought him a great deal of negative Israeli attention, which
included harassment and house arrest. Finally, in 1971, after years of
hardship, Darwish left Israel and fled into exile in Beirut, Lebanon. By
this time, he had established and upheld an outstanding reputation as
one of the leading poets of the resistance.
Many of his poems have been
converted to music in order to fuel the Palestinian defiance.Considered Palestine's most eminent poet, Darwish published his first collection of poems, Leaves of Olives,
in 1964, when he was 22. Since then, Darwish has published
approximately thirty poetry and prose collections which have been
translated into more than twenty-two languages. Sadly there is no comprehensive
collection of his poetry in English, though there is a good selection of
poems from the 1980s and 1990s under the title Unfortunately, It Was Paradise (2013), as well as The Butterfly’s Burden,
which brings together three short volumes of poems from 1998-2003. (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), Stage of Siege (2002), The Adam of Two Edens (2001), Mural (2000), Bed of the Stranger (1999), Psalms (1995), Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (1994), and The Music of Human Flesh (1980).
Appropriately, then, to gain a broad view of Darwish’s output people
have to piece together scattered publications from several countries, in
books, journals, and newspapers. As Darwish says in “You’ll Be
Forgotten, As If You Never Were,” a late poem in The Butterfly’s Burden, “I am the king of echo. My only throne is the margin.”
Darwish was an editor for a Palestine Liberation Organization monthly
journal and the director of the group's research center. In 1987 he was
appointed to the PLO executive committee, and resigned in 1993 in
opposition to the Oslo Agreement. He served as the editor-in-chief and
founder of the literary review Al-Karmel, published out of the Sakakini Centre since 1997
About Darwish's work, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye
has said, "Mahmoud Darwish is the Essential Breath of the Palestinian
people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging, exquisitely tuned
singer of images that invoke, link, and shine a brilliant light into the
world's whole heart. What he speaks has been embraced by readers around
the world—his in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once
discovered."
His awards and honors include the Ibn Sina Prize, the
Lenin Peace Prize, the 1969 Lotus prize from the Union of Afro-Asian
Writers, France's Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal in 1997, the
2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation, the Moroccan
Wissam of intellectual merit handed to him by King Mohammad VI of
Morocco, and the USSR's Stalin Peace Prize.
He died twelve years ago in 2008, in Houston, Texas due to complications from heart surgery. but Darwish’s words continue today to play an important role in shaping the identity of diaspora Palestinians. His celebrated poms have always connected Palestinians to their homeland. But
for those living in the West they have become psalms of the tragic,
human dimensions of the Palestinian cause.
Darwish wrote the following poem in 1988 during the first intifada and the
direct and uncompromising words caused a great stir in Israel. Israel’s
then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, quoted the poem in the Israeli
Knesset to “prove” that the PLO posed a threat to existence of the
Zionist state. In response, Darwish said that he found it “difficult to believe that the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East is threatened by a poem”.
Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words - Mahmoud Darwish
O those who pass between fleeting words
Carry your names, and be gone
Rid our time of your hours, and be gone
Steal what you will from the blueness of the sea and the sand of memory
Take what pictures you will, so that you understand
That which you never will:
How a stone from our land builds the ceiling of our sky.
O those who pass between fleeting words
From you the sword — from us the blood
From you steel and fire — from us our flesh
From you yet another tank — from us stones
From you tear gas — from us rain
Above us, as above you, are sky and air
So take your share of our blood — and be gone
Go to a dancing party — and be gone
As for us, we have to water the martyrs’ flowers
As for us, we have to live as we see fit.
O those who pass between fleeting words
As bitter dust, go where you wish, but
Do not pass between us like flying insects
For we have work to do in our land:
We have wheat to grow which we water with our bodies’ dew
We have that which does not please you here:
Stones or partridges
So take the past, if you wish, to the antiquities market
And return the skeleton to the hoopoe, if you wish,
On a clay platter
We have that which does not please you: we have the future
And we have things to do in our land.
O those who pass between fleeting words
Pile your illusions in a deserted pit, and be gone
Return the hand of time to the law of the golden calf
Or to the time of the revolver’s music!
For we have that which does not please you here, so be gone
And we have what you lack: a bleeding homeland of a bleeding people
A homeland fit for oblivion or memory
O those who pass between fleeting words
It is time for you to be gone
Live wherever you like, but do not live among us
It is time for you to be gone
Die wherever you like, but do not die among us
For we have work to do in our land
We have the past here
We have the first cry of life
We have the present, the present and the future
We have this world here, and the hereafter
So leave our country
Our land, our sea
Our wheat, our salt, our wounds
Everything, and leave
The memories of memory
O those who pass between fleeting words!
—Translation from the Jerusalem Post, April 2, 1988
75 years ago on 6th August 1945 am.the United States dropped an atomic
bomb called ' Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan which is estimated to
have killed 100,000 to 180,000 people out of a population of 350,000.
Then three days later, a second atomic bomb called "Fat Man" was
dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing between 50,000 and 100,000
people.
.Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely civilian towns, meaning there
wasn't a strong military reason to drop the atomic bombs over those
particular cities. No one was excluded from the horrors of the atomic
bomb, a "destroyer of worlds" burnt hotter than the sun. Some people
were vaporised upon impact, while others suffered burns and radiation
poisoning that would kill them days, weeks or even months later. Others
were crushed by debris, burned by unimaginable heat or suffocated by the
lack of oxygen. Many survivors suffered from leukemia and other cancers
like thyroid and lung cancer at higher rates than those not exposed to
the bombs. Mothers were more likely to lose their children during
pregnancy or shortly after birth. Children exposed to radiation were
more likely to have learning disabilities and impaired growth.
Those that did manage to survive would be traumatised for the rest of
their lives. Hibakusha is a term widely used in Japan, that refers to
the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it
translates as 'explosion effected Survivor of Light. These survivors
speak of the deep, unabating grief they felt in the days, months and
decades since the attack They have described the shame of being a
survivor , many were unable to marry, find jobs, or live any sort of
normal life. They have said that many Hibakusha never speak of the day,
instead choosing to suffer in silence. They told what it was like to be
suddenly alone in middle age, to lose their parents, spouses, children,
and livelihoods in a single instant. In memory of them, we should make
sure that the misery and devastation caused by nuclear weapons is never
forgotten.
Even if Japan was not fully innocent, the people of Japan did not
deserve to pay the price for their nations wrongdoing, and there was
absolutely no moral justification in obliterating these two cities and
killing its inhabitants in what was clearly a crime against humanity and
murder on an epic scale. Hiroshima and Nagasaki held no strategic
importance. Japan were an enemy on the brink of failure an members of
the country's top leadership were involved in peace negotiations. Many
believe that these two atrocities were a result of geopolitical
posturing at its most barbaric, announcing in a catastrophic display
of military capability, of inhumane intention showing America's
willingness to use doomsday weapons on civilian populations.The bombings
serving as warnings and the fist act of the Cold War against its
imperialist rival Russia. A message to the Russians of the power of
destruction and technological military capability that the US had
managed to develop.Three days later U.S president Harry Truman exulted ;
"This is the greatest thing in history! " and gloated that " we are now
prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely."
Then the photos began to emerge, haunting images of burned children with
their skin hanging off, of bodies charred and there was Sadaki Sasaki
and the 1,000 origami peace cranes she folded before her death at the age of 12
from leukemia ten years after the bomb was dropped on her hometown of
Hiroshima. The bombs dropped were of a indiscriminate and cruel
character beyond comparison with weapons and projectiles of the past.
Despite all this Truman never regretted his decision. .
Today as the world commemorates the lives that were lost and the
unacceptable devastation caused to people and planet, we still have so
much to learn from this picture of indescribable human suffering. Lets
not forget that in our our current dangerous times, many world leaders
remain recklessly committed to their nuclear arsenals. There are an
estimated 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world at the present time with
over 90% held by USA and Russia, but also by the UK, France, India,
Pakistan, Israel and lately North Korea. This is more than enough to
wipe out most of the human race and most other life.
For Hiroshima Day and on August
9 Nagasaki Day we must echo the call of the
Hibakusha, and press our leaders to take the actions necessary to
ensure these immoral, illegal weapons are never used again. The calls come amid progress on the criminalisation of nuclear
weapons by the United Nations, where three more countries have voted to
ratify the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The treaty needs 50 countries to ratify it, at which point it would
become international law — though the pact is binding only on those
countries which are party to it. By last month, 40 countries had signed, with Sudan, Fiji and Botswana being the most recent signatories.
Britain, the United States and other nuclear powers have refused to
sign and did not attend the 2017 session of the UN general assembly
which voted for the treaty.
The abolition calls also come against the background of intensifying
belligerence and military threats from United States President Donald
Trump.
Campaigners against nuclear weapons said the destruction of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, remain relevant today
in a world where nuclear bomb stockpiles cast the shadow of potential
global obliteration.
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament secretary Kate Hudson said: “We are
facing an increasingly dangerous military situation driven most
alarmingly by Trump’s policies.
“His withdrawal from key treaties, the possibility of the resumption of nuclear testing, all increase the risk of nuclear war.
“Of course, we understand the context for this: the US is a declining power economically and seeks to assert itself militarily.
“This has been the case for some time — noticeable under the Bush
administration, which sought to compel non-compliant states to bend to
the US will.
“Trump’s drive to war is far more dangerous. The US National Security
Strategy focuses on what it describes as strategic rivals or
competitors, notably China and Russia. Its goal is to be able to defeat
them militarily, to prepare for war on a massive scale.” She said that “so-called usable nuclear weapons” have been deployed. “Taking these two strategies together, it is clear that there is a
significant danger of a US war on China and that opposing this is a
fundamental task for the movement today,” she said.“This is a conflict where nuclear weapons will be used and we need to work with all our strength to prevent such a war.” She said the world today is “closer to tragedy” than it has ever been. “On this anniversary, we must recommit to working together, in unity, to ensure that those hands never reach midnight.”
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said of the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki bombings: “We must never forget these atrocities, and we must
never give up on the mission to rid our world of nuclear weapons.”
Stop the War Campaign convenor Lindsey German said: “For my
generation, Hiroshima meant that there could never be another major war
without the destruction of all humanity.
“We still see this terrible barbarism everywhere today. The major
states are nuclear armed and there is the ever-present threat of
conflict, now growing between the US and China in particular.
“Today, August 6, we should redouble our efforts to oppose war and all nuclear weapons.”
CND Cymru chairwoman Jill Evans said: “People in Wales and
internationally are marking this anniversary by joining the many events
online.
“We cannot hold our planned event at the National Eisteddfod, but we
can still raise our voices to call on governments to act. I urge
everyone to take some time this week to listen to the powerful testimony
of nuclear survivors.”
Also in memory of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing Shabaka Hutchings will share a new composition on the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, via Stop the War Coalition this August. Alongside the live stream concert, Stop the War will also be
profiling anti-war jazz records, starting with John Coltrane’s
performance of ‘Peace on Earth’ from his Concert in Japan album.
Stop the War Coalition will stream Hutchings’ new composition live
across their social media platforms on Thursday 6th August from at
7.00pm GMT.
Head here for more info.
Hiroshima; An Acrostic Poem
Horror was dropped on August 6, 1945
Incinerating thousands of innocents
Reason evaporated after deadly poison shed
One bomb released left devastaion
Senseless slaughter, the scorched sin of humanity
Haunting vapors of pitiful sorrow
Insanity blossoming with black rain
Murderous atoms shattered spirits
American weapon of evil, B-29 Enola Gay
On the 3rd of August1916 Sir Roger Casement was hanged for high treason for his part in trying to smuggle German weapons to Ireland for the Easter Rising of 1916. He was the last knight of the realm to befall such a fate in the United Kingdom.
Roger Casement was born on the 1at of September 1864 in Sandycove, Co. Dublin, the son of Captain Roger Casement of the British Army and Anne Jephson from Mallow Co. Cork1. Roger’s father and his family were natives of Co. Antrim and were of Ulster Protestant stock. Roger was raised as a Protestant by his father. When he was five years old however his mother secretly baptised him and his siblings (Charlie, Tom and Agnes) into the Catholic faith while on holidays in Aberystoyth, Wales. Like his country, Casement was a
study in contradictions, he has variously been called “a microcosm of Ireland:”
Dubliner, Ulsterman, Catholic, Protestant, poet, and patriot.
Orphaned at a young age, he he was raised by his uncle, John Casement, in Co. Antrim.He was a child of promising intellect who wrote poetry and immersed
himself in Celtic myths. Unwilling to accept the charity of relatives,
Casement left school at 15 to work for a shipping company in Liverpool.
He had always dreamed of far-off places and now the handsome,
hardworking clerk was soon promoted to be the British Consul, serving in
West Africa.
Word of the brilliant Casement had reached the British Foreign
Office. So, too, had word of the atrocities in King Leopold II’s private
fiefdom, the Belgian Congo. Leopold, a staunch imperialist was
perpetuating genocide there, eventually killing 10 million natives. He
became, thanks to Congo resources, the richest man in Europe. The
Foreign Office sent Casement into the Congo to investigate, photograph,
and bear witness.He took the testimony of Africans who told stories that were simply shocking , tales of , murder, whippings, maiming and rapes. The
collection of ivory and rubber was not done by farming but by a forced
terror system. The local people were given quotas to bring in rubber
from the forest. If they failed to meet them they were tortured or their
families held at ransom and abused. They were not bought, like slaves,
but simply seized in a systematic and barbaric way.
Casement published his report in 1904 and then campaigned with others
for change via the Congo Reform Association. By 1908 the Congo Free
State was replaced by the Belgian Congo and the personal rule of King
Leopold II ended. The hellish conditions in the Congo provide the background to Joseph
Conrad’s 1899 novel Heart of Darkness. Conrad and Casement met in the
Congo, sharing a flat for a few weeks, with Conrad declaring that
Casement was one of the few decent white men he met in the Congo. Casement’s courage, compassion and determination were put to further use
when he was asked by the British government to travel to Putanamayo in
Peru to report on the human price of the rubber trade in the Amazon,
where once again human rights and so many lives were being sacrificed
heedlessly for private profit and greed. The Peruvian Amazon Company was
a London-registered enterprise with three British directors, John
Russell Gubbins, a friend of Peruvian President Augusto Leguía; Herbert
Reed, a banker; and Sir John Lister-Kaye, an aristocrat. This forced the
British government to order an investigation into the ruthless search
for rubber, enslavement of indigenous people and terrible atrocities
that came close to wiping them out in a sustained act of ethnocide. Over
100,000 innocent people are thought to have been killed.
All that he witnessed would forever change his
life too. Exploitation and greed, he realized, were business as usual
for empires, including the world’s largest, the British Empire. His
dormant Irish nationalism awoke; he shed his Anglo skin and found the
Irishman underneath. Having sparked the world’s first human rights campaigns, Casement was
awarded one of Great Britain’s highest citations, the Order of St.
Michael and St. George. But after identifying with the oppressed rather than the oppressor. that same year Roger Casement joined the
Gaelic League and signed, for the first time, his name as Ruairí Mac
Easmainn. The British Empire had forever lost her international hero.. Casement's increasingly radical views ,and an interest in Irish history, and a deepening
critique of European Imperialism, that drew him ever more firmly into
the nationalist fold. In 1913 he resigned from the Foreign Office and he became deeply involved with the Irish
Volunteers, and by the time war broke out in 1914, Casement was in America plotting
with prominent Irish-Americans to secure German support for the Irish
cause.
During World War I, operating on the principle, “The enemy of my
enemy is my friend,” Casement and Devoy met with a German diplomat. They
promised Ireland would remain neutral if Germany helped the coming
Easter Rising by supplying guns and expertise. In Germany, Casement
tried to secure arms and persuade Irish P.O.W.s to form an Irish
Brigade. After two years, both initiatives were disappointments. There
was no brigade – Irish soldiers wouldn’t dishonor their oath to the King
– and Germany could only deliver some 20,000 guns, a fraction of the
weaponry needed. Worse, British Intelligence was intercepting his
messages.
The Easter Rising was imminent. Believing that there were not
sufficient arms for the rebellion, Casement slipped out of Germany by
submarine to warn the leaders. He placed the armaments on a separate
boat, the Aud, flying under a Norwegian flag, which he planned to meet
on the Irish shoreline.
First to arrive was the Aud, but it was ambushed by the waiting British navy and taken to Cork.
Unaware of the plight of the gun-runner, Casement had moved from the
submarine to a dinghy. But this capsized, leaving him to swim onto Banna
Strand in County Kerry.
It was 3:00 a.m., Good Friday, 1916. Once on land, Casement, ill,
drenched, and exhausted, found there was no one to meet him. Still, he
rejoiced:
“I was for one brief spell happy and smiling once more… all round
were primroses and wild violets and the singing of the skylarks in the
air and I was back in Ireland again.”
His happiness was short-lived. Ge was arrested and when the Easter rising began and the Proclamation of the Irish Republic
was read, Casement was in the Tower of London charged with high treason.. .
His trial at the Old Bailey lasted four days and on 29 June was found guilty, stripped of his knighthood and sentenced to death by hanging .
After his sentencing he would deliver one of the greatest political statements of all time that would resonate long after his death.. He
stated, logically – and ironically, since he had a cultured British
accent – that he couldn’t commit treason against England since he wasn’t
an Englishman to begin with. Then he railed against the colonial
system, “
His admirers and friends launched a campaign for clemency, arguing that
he had acted out of conscience and in the interests of his country –
Ireland. Those admirers included George Bernard Shaw, Conan Doyle,
Bishops and politicians. The campaign looked as if it might succeed
until the British government discovered
and published salacious extracts ftom his diary, that
outlined his sexual exploits, in order to discredit him with the British
and Irish public. The Republican movement was a deeply socially
conservative body instilled with Catholic morality, if anything even
more homophobic than the British. It was horrified by the accusations,
denying them as true but reacting by downplaying Casement’s role as a
great Irish martyr. Members of Casement’s
family, Irish Republicans and others have claimed in the past that the
Casement diaries are forgeries, but most historians to day believe them
to be genuine. Whether they are genuine or forgeries, there is no
doubting the effect the extracts had on public opinion in 1916: But for Casement judging by his diary, the acceptance of
homosexuality was an aspect of African society and
unlike other empire-builders in the field, he saw the African not as a
body to exploit but as an equal to love..
After receiving the last rites of the Catholic Church, Roger Casement
was executed on August 3, 1916, at Pentonville Prison at 9 a.m the sixteenth and final leader of the
Rising to be executed. Standing in the gallows Casement was
asked by the governor if he had any final words. He did,' Bury me in Ireland'.' John Ellis, his executioner, called him "the bravest man it ever fell to my unhappy lot to execute".He was the last knight of the realm to befall such a fate in the United Kingdom.
Even after his execution his corpse was violated, his anus “examined” to
provide further proof of his “perversity.” His body was buried on the
prison grounds, and the Irish government and his family spent decades
demanding the right to return his body to Ireland. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s government
denied that wish and released the remains only on condition that they
could not be brought into Northern Ireland, as “the government feared
that a reburial there could provoke Catholic celebrations and Protestant
reactions.”
His death would inspire W.B. Yeats to write, “The Ghost of Roger Casement” – in which the poet
sees Casement’s spirit coming across the sea, knocking on the door,
still wanting to come home:
The Ghost of Roger Casement - W.B. Yeats
O WHAT has made that sudden noise?
What on the threshold stands?
It never crossed the sea because
John Bull and the sea are friends;
But this is not the old sea
Nor this the old seashore.
What gave that roar of mockery,
That roar in the sea's roar?
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
John Bull has stood for Parliament,
A dog must have his day,
The country thinks no end of him,
For he knows how to say,
At a beanfeast or a banquet,
That all must hang their trust
Upon the British Empire,
Upon the Church of Christ.
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
John Bull has gone to India
And all must pay him heed,
For histories are there to prove
That none of another breed
Has had a like inheritance,
Or sucked such milk as he,
And there's no luck about a house
If it lack honesty.
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
I poked about a village church
And found his family tomb
And copied out what I could read
In that religious gloom;
Found many a famous man there;
But fame and virtue rot.
Draw round, beloved and bitter men,
Draw round and raise a shout;
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
Casement was late to enter the pantheon of 1916 martyrs,
marginalized, no doubt, by his sexuality. Finally, in 1965, an Irish
military escort removed his remains from the prison graveyard in London
and accompanied them to Ireland for a state funeral. Hundreds of
thousands came to pay him tribute including the very conservative
President de Valera, a veteran of the Easter Rising, who delivered his
eulogy. He lies today in the Heroes section of Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery
where his name, Ruairí Mac Easmainn is carved on a gravestone reading,
in Gaelic, “He died for Ireland.”
As we remember the other brave men and women who fought for Irish independence
against colonial oppression, we must remember and honor this remarkable
man who risked his own life, health and wellbeing to tell the world the
true story of their enslavement, who died in the defense of the Irish
people, isolated, alone and reviled by so many because of his sexuality. Now at least recognised as an Irish patriot and father of the human rights movement. The lesson of his life remains a vital one: when the status quo is injustice, the right thing to be is a rebel. We should continue .to honor the memory of a great man whose life was cut short by a cruel,
dishonest and vindictive state, and whose own life was dedicated to
others and the fine virtues of true, indivisible, human rights.
Walking the daily shuffle
Thinking of those gone before,
To the river with heavy shoes
Carried by sadness, with chorus of blues,
Life's jagged jigsaw's diverting reflection
The kindness of friendship's grip ceasing,
Beautiful dreams, the days kept erasing
Leaving behind scars, the weight of addiction,
Impenetrable minds, injecting poison
Desperate breaths dying to be free,
Not caring about actions, in need of sleep
Releasing pain from heart, taking a final drop,
As world imploded, and wings soar no more
From alters of cruelty sank into the abyss,
Nothing left to waste, oblivion scattering
Escaping babylon, mental exhaustion,
Out of site now, releasing a trail of tears
The borders of intensity,.no longer possessing,
Carried to the vaults of eternity
As shoals of fish flash through the sea.
This is a video of my local Welsh language pop legends Ail Symudiad (Second Movement) performing their track Twristiaid yn y dre (Tourists in the town). I think their fantastic, they have such a unique fresh sound, and have released so many great records over the years. The first record I actually got by them was a single called Geiriau (words) which came out in 1981, and I've been fortunate to catch them play a number of times over the years, where they always manage to draw a loyal faithful crowd.
They were formed in Cardigan, West Wales in 1978. They were initially inspired by the punk movement that was sweeping the UK at the time. The band cites the Jam, The Undertones, the Buzzcocks, Y Trwynhau Coch and the Clash as primary influences.
The founding members of Ail Symudiad were brothers Richard Jones, guitar, vocals; Wyn Jones bass, backing vocals and Gareth Lewis, drums. Though the personnel of the band has changed many times since its inception Richard and Wyn have remained the constant steady members since 1978, and the band is still going strong. Over forty years that's quite an achievement for any band.
They are also a good reason to learn the Welsh language and have helped support an array of other Welsh language bands over the years through their own record label Fflach records, such is their valuable contribution to Welsh culture.
Here are links to their facebook page. and record label check them out.
Peter Green the influential and legendary lead guitarist, singer and original founder of Fleetwood Mac has passed away today (25 July). He was 73.
His family’s solicitors Swan Turton announced the news in a statement:
“It is with great sadness that the family of Peter Green announce his
death this weekend, peacefully in his sleep. A further statement will be
provided in the coming days.”
The news on Saturday comes just two days day after Fleetwood Mac announced a forthcoming massive box set reissue
of their first seven studio albums, some of which featured Green on
guitar prior to the arrival of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in
1975.
Born Peter Greenbaum, in Bethnal Green, East London in 1946, to a Jewish working class family, , he was a sensitive
child in whom music had always inspired powerful emotions. He would
burst into tears when he heard the theme from Disney's Bambi because he
couldn't bear to remember the suffering of the baby deer. He was
sensitive in other ways too. As a Jewish kid in London's tough East End,
he was constantly teased and taunted, and the scars remained into
adulthood. From an early age, he became enthusiastic about US blues musicians like BB King and Muddy Waters. At the age of eleven he first learned the guitar after acquiring a cheap Spanish guitar from his brother. At
the age of 15, the teenager started playing guitar professionally and
five years later got the chance to be the lead guitarist for the
instrumental band Peter B's Looners,where he met drummer Mick Fleetwood.
By the time he was 20, Green had already made a name for himself in
the British blues scene. His big break came when he was given the chance
to stand in for Eric Clapton in John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers. .Green went on to record The Hard Road with The Bluesbreakers,
adding two of his own compositions to the album. He left soon after to
form what would become Fleetwood Mac. Already regarded as one of the
best Blues guitarists on the scene, Green’s skills as a songwriter
were also fast developing,having penned hits such as Albatross, The Green Manalishi and Black Magic Woman now quite rightly regarded as classics.
Sadly, being a sensitive soul it was
partly this, combined with a rapid rise to fame and the lifestyle that came with it that
led to Green’s deterioration. Much has been written about this, and in particular about Green’s decline in mental health and his erratic behaviour.
To ignore the details of this would be wrong. Green’s struggle with
mental health has come to define his life as well as much of the music
he and Fleetwood Mac created.
With newfound stardom came excess. Green began experimenting a lot
with psychedelic drugs. On a tour in California, Green became acquainted with Augustus Owsley III. notorious supplier of LSD to the Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey and it was not long after that his mental health also began to deteriorate. In some of his last appearances with the band, he wore a monk’s robe and
a crucifix.
He became increasingly uncomfortable with his material wealth and vowed
to give all of his money away, urging his bandmates to do the same. He
was starting to exhibit some of the erratic behaviour that would
manifest itself in a much more extreme way in the following years.
If Green was already mentally unstable, then it was the events of
Fleetwood Mac’s European tour in 1970 that really tipped him over the edge. On touching down in Munich, Green was targeted by members of what
road manager Dennis Keane described as a ‘cult’. An extremely glamorous
couple appeared at the airport and greeted Green like an old friend.
They followed him around for the rest of the day, and went to watch
Fleetwood Mac play that night.
After the gig, the mysterious couple took Green and fellow guitarist
Danny Kirwan to a huge mansion in the woods, which they had turned into a
hippy commune. Green and Kirwan took LSD and began jamming with members
of the commune in the basement of the house.
When Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Jeremy Spencer later arrived,
they were met by a worried looking Keane, who warned them that Green was
tripping out badly and the place had a ‘horrible vibe’. The band called
their hotel and swiftly left.
Although Green had already started to show signs of mental illness,
this particular incident was one from which he never fully recovered. Green left Fleetwood Mac after a final performance in 1970. Shortly after leaving the band, Peter Green released his first solo album, The End of the Game, it marked a significant
departure from anything he produced before or since."That was my LSD album," admitted Green "I was trying to reach things
that I couldn't before but I had experienced through LSD and
mescaline." It was also to be
his last creation for some years, as his mental health continued to
decline from his LSD use.
Just a couple of years later, following an outburst in which
Green smashed an entire cabinet of crockery at his brother’s house, he
was interned at a psychiatric hospital, and was eventually diagnosed as
schizophrenic .and spent time in
hospitals undergoing electro-convulsive therapy during the mid-70s at St Thomas's Hospital in South London. This drastic treatment
frightened him, but it stabilised his behaviour by reducing him to a
level of docility in which he appeared to be almost in a trance
Sadly, he would go on to suffer through years of psychotic outbursts. At
one point he grew his nails and hair long and wild and roamed around
Richmond Park in London, howling and barking like a dog. The
most serious incident saw him smuggle a shotgun into the UK from Canada,
threatening to shoot his accountant. Acording
to legend, Green wanted him to stop sending him his royalty cheques for
Fleetwood Mac's early work, worth around £30,000 a year.
Thankfully, as treatment for schizophrenia advanced and Green’s
own lifestyle settled down, so did his erratic behaviour. In the
1990s he went on to form the Peter Green Splinter Group. They recorded
10 albums during their time together, including Hot Food Powder and The Robert Johnson Songbook. The albums feature cover versions of every song Robert Johnson is known to have recorded.
It is quite amazing that after more than a decade of serious mental
health problems, Green was able to produce two albums, both of which are
eminently listenable.Green
married Jane Samuels in January 1978; the couple divorced in 1979. They
have a daughter, Rosebud Samuels-Greenbaum (born 1978).
While his career may have been cut short, his impact and legacy
has been lasting.‘Without Peter Green there would be no Fleetwood Mac. Beyond that and in his own right, Peter Green produced music that
continues to inspire and delight listeners. It is for this that we
should remember him. He is without question one of the best and most
underrated blues guitarists of all time.He released seven solo albums altogether, the final of which was A Case for the Blues (with Katmandu) in 1984.
Green was among eight members of Fleetwood Mac,- along with Fleetwood, Stevie
Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie, Christine McVie, Danny Kirwan and
Jeremy Spencer - who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of
Fame in 1998.
Rolling Stone ranked Green at number 58 in its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", and in 1996, Green was voted the third-best guitarist of all time in Mojo magazine.
In February before the coronavirus shut down large scale gatherings ,Mick Fleetwood organised a gig in celebration of Green, with artists including Fleetwood,
Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons and guitarists Jonny
Lang and Andy Fairweather Low performing at the London Palladium. Mick Fleetwood said of the gig at the time: “Peter was my greatest
mentor and it gives me such joy to pay tribute to his incredible talent.
I am honoured to be sharing the stage with some of the many artists
Peter has inspired over the years and who share my great respect for
this remarkable musician.”
Because of his unigue talents he was loved by friends and admirers in equal measure and musicians have been quick to pay tribute upon news of his death.
Whitesnake
frontman David Coverdale called him "a breathtaking singer, guitarist
& composer". Guitarist Bernie Marsden wrote that he was probably
"one of millions" he [Green] touched.
Peter Frampton, a contemporary of Green's, tweeted: "Most sadly have lost one of the most tasteful guitar players ever."
Black
Sabbath's Geezer Butler described Green as "one of the greats", while
Mumford and Sons guitarist Winston Marshall thanked Green "for the
music", describing him as a "#GOAT" (greatest of all time).
Film
director Edgar Wright tweeted: "RIP Fleetwood Mac co founder and
original lead singer Peter Green", linking to a performance of one of
their hits, Oh Well.
Actor David Morrissey praised Peter Green's "fantastic soulful voice", saying he "loved his playing and his singing so much".
Goodbye Peter Green, tragic genius and one of the greatest guitarists the world has known. Rest easy. Long may his legacy endure. I extend my thoughts to the loved ones of Peter Green at this sad time. Below I present some of the best fom the inimitable Peter Green.
Man of the World - Fleetworld Mac
Green Manalishi - Fleetwood Mac
Black Magic Woman - Fleetwood Mac
Oh Well - Fleetwood Mac
Peter Green - Fool No More
Peter Green and the Splinter Group - The Supernatural
John Newton, slave trader turned abolitionist and author of the hymn Amazing Graze was born on 24th July 1725 in Wapping, England. His father was a master mariner. His mother. a pious Dissenter, taught him to read Scripture and memorize
Reformed catechisms and hymns. Together they attended an Independent
(Congregational) church in London, at a time when barely 1 percent of
that city's population went to churches associated with that
Puritan-derived group. At age 7, however, Newton's mother died of tuberculosis, and he fell under the less religious and more distant care of his sea-captain father.
His father remarried after his mother's death,
but John did not enjoy a good relationship with his stepmother. In 1733 Newton was sent to a boarding-school at Stratford, and at the age of eleven he went to sea with his father, after losing his first job, in a merchant's office, because of "unsettled
behavior and impatience of restraint"—a pattern that would persist for
years. He spent his later teen years at sea before he was press-ganged
aboard the H.M.S. Harwich in 1744. Newton rebelled against the
discipline of the Royal Navy and deserted. He was caught, put in irons,
and flogged. He eventually convinced his superiors to discharge him to a
slaver ship bound for West Africa. Espousing freethinking principles, he remained arrogant
and insubordinate, and he lived with moral abandon: "I sinned with a
high hand," he later wrote, "and I made it my study to tempt and seduce
others."
Eventually he reached the coast of Sierra Leone where he became the servant of an abusiveslave trader. In 1748, he was rescued by a sea captain and returned to England.
He became a slave ship master himself, working with slave traders to transport people, treating them as cargo. Newton later explained: "The slaves, in general, are bought, and
paid for. Sometimes, when goods are lent, or trusted on shore, the
trader voluntarily leaves a free person, perhaps his own son, as a
hostage, or pawn, for the payment; and, in case or default, the hostage
is carried off, and sold; which, however hard upon him, being in
consequence of a free stipulation, cannot be deemed unfair. There have
been instances of unprincipled captains, who, at the close of what they
supposed their last voyage, and when they had no intention of revisiting
the coast, have detained, and carried away, free people with them; and
left the next ship, that should come from the same port, to risk the
consequences. But these actions, I hope, and believe, are not common."
Newton argued that it was important to have as many slaves as possible on board the slave-ship:
"With our ships, the great object is, to be full. When the ship is
there, it is thought desirable, she should take as many as possible. The
cargo of a vessel of a hundred tons, or little more, is calculated to
purchase from two hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty slaves.
Their lodging-rooms below the deck, which are three (for the men, the
boys, and the women) besides a place for the sick, are sometimes more
than five feet high, and sometimes less; and this height is divided
towards the middle, for the slaves lie in two rows, one above the other,
on each side of the ship, close to each other, like books upon a shelf.
I have known them so close, that the shelf would not, easily, contain
one more. Let it be observed, that the poor creatures, thus cramped for
want of room, are likewise in irons, for the most part both hands and
feet, and two together, which makes it difficult for them to turn or
move, to attempt either to rise or to lie down, without hurting
themselves, or each other."
Newton admitted that conditions on board ship were appalling: "The
heat and the smell of these rooms, when the weather will not admit of
the slaves being brought upon deck, and of having their rooms cleaned
every day, would be, almost, insupportable, to a person not accustomed
to them. If the slaves and their rooms can be constantly aired, and they
are not detained too long on board, perhaps there are not many die; but
the contrary is often their lot. They are kept down, by the weather, to
breathe a hot and corrupted air, sometimes for a week: this, added to
the galling of their irons, and the despondency which seizes their
spirits, when thus confined, soon becomes fatal."
On one occasion Newton kept a record of how many slaves died on a journey from Africa to South Carolin:
"The ship, in which I was mate, left the coast with two hundred and
eighteen slaves on board; and though we were not much affected by
epidemical disorders, I find, by my journal of that voyage (now before
me) that we buried sixty-two on our passage to South Carolina, exclusive
of those which died before we left the coast, of which I have no
account. I believe, upon an average between the more healthy, and the
more sickly voyages, and including all contingencies, One fourth of the
whole purchase may be allotted to the article of mortality. That is, if
the English ships purchase sixty thousand slaves annually, upon the
whole extent of the coast, the annual loss of lives cannot be much less
than fifteen thousand."
Newton also took slaves to Antigua.
He later recalled a conversation with a man who purchased slaves from
Newton: "He said, that calculations had been made, with all possible
exactness, to determine which was the preferable, that is, the most
saving method of managing slaves". He went onto say that they needed to
decided: "Whether, to appoint them moderate work, plenty of provision,
and such treatment, as might enable them to protract their lives to old
age? Or, by rigorously straining their strength to the utmost, with
little relaxation, hard fare, and hard usage, to wear them out before
they became useless, and unable to do service; and then, to buy new
ones, to fill up their places?" Newton added: "He farther said, that
these skillful calculators had determined in favor of the latter mode,
as much the cheaper; and that he could mention several estates, in the
island of Antigua, on which, it was seldom known, that a slave had lived
above nine years."
It was during a storm on 21st March 1748, when Newton thought his ship full of
slaves may sink, that he prayed to God for deliverance. While this was
the beginning of his desire to embrace Christianity, it was later, on
another slave ship that he became deeply ill and prayed again for God’s
intervention. This experience is what he touted as the moment when he
began to realize the horror of his trade. But despite this he
continued to work on ships taking slaves from the Guinea coast and the West Indies (1748–9) and he became master
of slave-trading ships, The Duke of Argyle (1750–51) and The African
(1752–54). His biographer Bruce Hidsmarth argued "Newton has sometimes been accused of hypocrisy for holding
strong religious convictions at the same time as being active in the
slave trade, praying above deck while his human cargo was in abject
misery below deck."
Newton married Mary Catlett on 12th February 1750 and in 1754 suffered a convulsive fit and was forced to leave the
maritime trade. Later that year he attended religious meetings
addressed by George Whitefield and John Wesley. In August 1755 Newton took up a civil service post as tide surveyor at Liverpool. He also became a leading evangelical laymen in the region. This included hosting large religious meetings in his own home.
Newton was considered a Methodist and was unsuccessful in several applications for orders in the Church of England. He sent the first draft of his autobiography to William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth. With his support Newton received deacon's orders, on 29th April 1764, from the Bishop of Lincoln. Newton became curate-in-charge of Olney in Buckinghamshire.
Newton had become friends with the poet, William Cowper and in 1771 they began to collaborate formally on a project to publish a volume of their collected hymns. Olney Hymns was published in 1779. Newton's most famous contribution Amazing Grace is included."
The irony of Newton’s lyrics is that part of history is that the song
was adopted as a spiritual sung by black African slaves to engender
strength, hope and encouragement. It was performed by Liwana Porter during George
Floyd's memorial service in Minneapolis and is probably one of the best
known hymns across a variety of Protestant denominations. The song was originally known as "Faith's Review and Expectation."
In 2015, President Barack Obama, a man with no
previous history of public singing, sang the hymn at a memorial service
for the nine African Americans killed by a white supremacist shooter
inside one of the nation's oldest black churches, Mother Emanuel African
Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The moment
seemed to resonate with a wide variety of Americans.
In Newton’s age, slavery was an economic reality, as it has been at many
times in human history, including today. There is always a profit to be
made from human servitude. Newton knew both sides of the economic
divide. Having endured slavery, he apparently for some years had no
qualms about profiting from it. He knew what it was to be a wretch in
two senses: first, to lose physical agency, and then to fail to assume
moral agency. But he changed.
In January 1780 Newton accepted the offer from John Thornton of the benefice of St Mary Wolchurch in Lombard Street, where he wholeheartedly supported the work of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, formed in 1787. He became close friends with William Wilberforce and became involved in his campaign against the slave trade.
Wilberforce, a Member of Parliament, was the nephew of one of
Newton's London friends. Inspired by the former slave trader, and
paralleling Newton's own conversion, Wilberforce began to question his
role in life. Although Newton, then a lowly Olney curate, was convinced
that Wilberforce was just another wealthy politician, he persuaded him
to crusade for change and use his station in life and his powerful
friends (including Prime Minister Pitt) to seek reform. One of the chief
topics for such advocacy was abolition. In fact, Wilberforce wrote in
his journal on October 28, 1787, that one of the two goals that had been
set before him was "the suppression of the Slave Trade."
Newton joined in the fight for the abolition of slavery by publishing
the essay "Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade." in 1787. He admitted that this was "a confession, which... comes too
late....It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me,
that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now
shudders." Newton explained why he had become involved in the campaign against
the slave trade: "The nature and effects of that unhappy and disgraceful
branch of commerce, which has long been maintained on the Coast of
Africa, with the sole, and professed design of purchasing our
fellow-creatures, in order to supply our West-India islands and the
American colonies, when they were ours, with slaves; is now generally
understood. So much light has been thrown upon the subject, by many able
pens; and so many respectable persons have already engaged to use their
utmost influence, for the suppression of a traffic, which contradicts
the feelings of humanity; that it is hoped, this stain of our National
character will soon be wiped out."
Because Christians
still felt that slavery was justified in the Bible, Newton and
Wilberforce wisely avoided building their protests on a religious
platform. Instead, they condemned the practice as an inhumane treatment
of their fellow men and women. Newton, speaking strongly from his own
experiences, also proposed that the captors were in turn brutalized by
their callous treatment of others and cited offences including torture,
rape, and murder. Newton's friend, William Cowper, joined their
fight by writing pro-abolition poems and ballads.
In 1789 Wilberforce introduced a "Bill for the Abolition of Slavery"
in Parliament. The bill faced opposition in both Houses, but the forces
against enactment became weaker each time it came up for a vote. The
bill finally was passed by the House of Commons in 1804 and by the House
of Lords in 1807 after which King George III declared it law.
John Newton died on 21st December 1807 aged 82 a few months after the Act abolishing the slave trade throughout the British Empire had been passed. It did not bring slavery itself to an end, as this was
only outlawed completely in British territory with the Slavery Abolition
Act of 1833. However, the 1807 Act was an incredibly important step in
that direction, that encouraged abolitionists around the world. Newton was buried by the side of his wife in St Mary Woolchurch on 31st December; both bodies were reinterred at Olney in 1893.
As far as I am aware, there isn’t a statue to Newton in any significant
place. If there were then, although I applaud the sentiment behind the
pulling down of Edward Colston’s statue, I would be much more startled
to see the same thing happen to Newton’s statue if it existed. The Black Lives Matter campaign has been focussing on educating people about
systemic racism and on changing hearts and minds.
After the senseless death of George Floyd and others has awakened an anger and a widespread undeniable feeling of injustice, a
feeling that people from black and minority ethnic groups do face
discrimination and we cannot ignore. As a result it is possible to wholeheartedly support the Black Lives Matter movement
and campaign to stamp out racism but also to acknowledge that we can’t just wipe things out without learning and we also need historical
examples of people that can and do change. In Newton’s age, slavery was an economic reality, as it has been at many
times in human history, including today. There is always a profit to be
made from human servitude. But Newton, a man who had enslaved others, at least changed into a man fighting against the very thing he had been been so much part of. This is why I believe it is important to remember him.
The world swiftly rearranges
Moving faster than a runaway train,
As the draw bridges shut down
And children grow older faster,
We all stand at the crossroads
Watching each pivotal step,
Kindling hope, igniting rainbows
The pipes of pan serenading,
Beyond the whips and chains that bind
Eternity in mothering bridges,
Delivering confirmation, validation
Following contracts of good and evil,
Gravity of mercy shared
Dynamics of existence,
Between hours of prepared purpose
Shrouds of twisted navigation continue,
As cherry blossom powder the earth
Greed of old, keeps infecting,
We must keep searching for answers
Make magic out of days,
From blue armchairs in sad suburbs
Without inhibition, keep on believing,
Keep on easing minds, bending the rules
Releasing knots, making wishes come true,
Like the old black and white movies
Old wild world keeps on spinning,
Specks of rain softly soothing
Interrupting dragons fangs,
Take to the river at full moon
In the force of currents, believe in change,
Upon the stair cases of ink
Paint flowers, get drunk on imagination.
Today marks the anniversary of
the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, a moment in time that has come
to represent the defining struggle
of the age: a clash between not just between the opposing political
ideologies of socialism and fascism, but between civilization and
barbarism, good and evil.
The fascists launched a coup against the democratically elected Popular
Front Government in Madrid on the night of 17th July 1936 inspired mostly
by General Franco. A central goal of the rebels was the destruction of
left-wing organisations. Franco’s fellow officer, General Queipo de
Llano, instructed his subordinates on how to treat the ‘Bolshevik’
activist with this chilling sentence: ‘I authorise you to kill him like a
dog and you will be free of all responsibility." The Nationalist rebels' initial efforts to instigate military revolts
throughout Spain only partially succeeded. In rural areas with a strong
right-wing political presence, Franco's confederates generally won out.
They quickly seized political power and instituted martial law. In other
areas, particularly cities with strong leftist political traditions,
the revolts met with stiff opposition and were often quelled. Some
Spanish officers remained loyal to the Republic and refused to join the
uprising.
Within days of the uprising, both the Republic and the Nationalists
called for foreign military aid. Initially, France pledged to support
the Spanish Republic, but soon reneged on its offer to pursue an
official policy of non-intervention in the civil war. Great Britain
immediately rejected the Republic's call for support.
Faced with potential defeat, Franco called upon Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy for aid. Thanks to their military assistance, he was able
to airlift troops from Spanish Morocco across to the mainland to
continue his assault on Madrid. Throughout the three years of the
conflict, Hitler and Mussolini provided the Spanish Nationalist Army
with crucial military support.
Some 5,000 German air force personnel served in the Condor Legion,
which provided air support for coordinated ground attacks against
Republican positions and carried out aerial bombings on Republican
cities. The most notorious of these attacks came on April 26, 1937, when
German and Italian aircraft leveled the Basque town of Gernike
(Guernica in Spanish) in a three-hour campaign that killed 200 civilians
or more. Fascist Italy supplied some 75,000 troops in addition to its
pilots and planes. Spain became a military laboratory to test the latest
weaponry under battlefield conditions.
The Spanish conflict quickly generated worldwide fears that it could
explode into a full-fledged European war. In August 1936, more than two
dozen nations, including France, Great Britain, Italy, Nazi Germany, and
the Soviet Union, signed a Non-Intervention Agreement on Spain. The
latter three signatories openly violated the policy. Italy and Germany
continued to supply Franco's forces, while the Soviet Union provided
military advisors, tanks, aircraft, and other war materiel to the
Republic
But the people rose, millions of people around the world felt passionately that rapidly
advancing fascism must be halted in Spain; and more than 35,000 volunteers from dozens of other countries went to help
defend the Spanish Republic, forces of red and
black fought back united against fascism. In the countryside, peasants took control
of the land, redistributing
large estates and, in many places, collectivizing the land and setting
up communes and a civil war was was waged, the workers immediately set up barricades and within hours the rising
had been defeated. Arms were seized and given to workers who were
dispatched to other areas to prevent risings. Madrid was also saved
because of the heroism and initiative of the workers. Hearing of what
had happened in Barcelona they had stormed the main army base in the
city. Workers' militias
were established. Workplaces were taken over and for ten months after July 1936, the people held power. Taking over
the factories and the running of the whole of society. They organised
workers’ committees in enterprises and streets. They believed that they
had power and fought to defend and extend it.
But in a series of tragic events were sadly defeated aided by the
British government who
had agreed to a policy of 'non-intervention' along with the help of
fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
The town of Guernica situated 30 kilometers east of Bilbao, in the Basque province of
Vizcaya. Guernica was considered to be the spiritual capital of the
Basque people and had a population of about 7,000 people. On 26th April
1937, Guernica was bombed by the Germab Condor Legion..
As it was a market day the town was crowded. The town was first struck
by explosive bombs and then by incendiaries. As people fled from their
homes they were machine-gunned by fighter planes. The three hour raid
completely destroyed the town. It is estimated that 1,685 people were
killed and 900 injured in the attack.
Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)
General Franco denied that he had nothing to do with the raid and claimed that the town had been dynamited and then burnt by Anarchist Brigades.
Franco issued a statement after the bombing: "We wish to tell the
world, loudly and clearly, a little about the burning of Guernica. It
was destroyed by fire and gasoline. The red hordes in the criminal
service of Aguirre burnt it to ruins. The fire took place yesterday and
Aguirre, since he is a common criminal, has uttered the infamous lie of
attributing this atrocity to our noble and heroic air force."
The Spanish church backed this story and its professor of theology
in Rome went so far as to declare that "the truth is there is not a
single German in Spain. Franco only needs Spanish soldiers which are
second to none in the world." After the war a telegram sent from
Franco's headquarters was discovered and revealed that he had asked the German Condor legion to carry out the attack on Guernica. It is believed that the attack was
an attempt to demoralize the Basque people. Germany had agreed as they
wanted to carry out "a major experiment in the effects of aerial
terrorism."An earlier post on this tragic event can be found here https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/04/79-years-ago-bombing-of-guernica.html
By April 1939, all of Spain was under
fascist control and
Franco declared a victory .Solidifying his power with a brutal
dictatorship by oppressing and systematically killing any political
opposition.Over half a million people were killed in
the war, and in the next few years many tens of thousands more were
executed, not forgetting all those who died from
malnutrition, starvation, and war-engendered disease. General Franco's
military regime remained in power
until his death in 1975 depriving Spain of
freedom for several decades afterwards, and former Republicans were subjected to various forms of discrimination and punishment. Victory
for the Francoist side brought economic and political isolation for
Spain until the 1950s and the denial of basic rights until the late
1970s. Only in recent years have relatives of the executed started to
learn where their loved ones are buried.
The fighting and persecution resulted in several million Spaniards being
displaced. Many fled areas of violence for safe refuge elsewhere. Only a
few countries, such as Mexico and the Dominican Republic, opened their
doors to Spanish refugees. Nearly 4,000 Basque children arrived in the UK in 1937, fleeing from the terrors
of the Spanish Civil War. Over 200 were
accommodated at colonies in Caerleon, Swansea, Brechfa and Old Colwyn,
and they were warmly welcomed by Welsh people who considered that
Welsh miners and the Basques were fighting the same enemy - fascism.
When the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939,
with Franco's victory, some 500,000 Spanish Republicans escaped to
France, where many were placed in internment camps in the south, such as Gurs,
St. Cyprien, and Les Milles. Following the German defeat of France in
spring 1940, Nazi authorities conscripted Spanish Republicans for forced
labor and deported more than 30,000 to Germany, where about half of
them ended up in concentration camps/ Some 7,000 of these became prisoners in Mathausen; more than half of them died in the camp.
About 300 people volunteered from Wales against the tyranny of fascism,
with 35 of whom not returning home .When the Welsh volunteers returned home they were greeted in their
communities as heroes, but many felt betrayed by the British government
and were at first unwilling to share their experiences.However, as time went on, plaques were erected, memoirs and biographies
were written and historians began to carefully curate the individual stories of idealism and bravery
The important historical truth is
the international flavour of those who volunteered to fight in this
brutal war.A total of 59,380 volunteers from fifty-five countries served during the Spanish Civil War joining.the International Brigade, to fight selflessly side by side for the ideas of liberty and social justice, solidarity and mutual aid .Rallying to the republican cause.The International Brigade, were so called because their members (initially) came from so many different countries. The International Brigaders were recruited, organized, and
directed by the Cominterm (Communist International), with headquarters in Paris.
A large number of the mostly young recruits were Communists before they
became involved in the conflict; more joined the party during the
course of the war. This included the following: French (10,000), German (5,000), Polish
(5,000), Italian (3,350), American (2,800), British (2,000), Yugoslavian
(1,500), Czech (1,500), Canadian (1,000), Hungarian (1,000) and
Scandinavian (1,000). Battalions established included the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, British Battalion, Connolly Column and the George Washington Battalion among others.
A great idealistic cause of the first half of the twentieth
century, that has been of great interest to me over the years. Two local
people from my neck of the woods went to serve Arthur Morris and a
Percy Jones. More information here http://irelandscw.com/docs-WelshMorris
, I have yet though to see a monument erected to them.
For many it was not just a war to defeat the fascists it was the
beginning of a new society. A revolution in fact,
unfortunately revolutions do not succeed when the people are divided.
There are many lessons to be learnt from this struggle, a struggle that
continues to do this day.
Lets not forget all those who were killed serving with the International
Brigades who nobly fought bravely in a spirit of solidarity, and
political and moral awareness to try and save us from fascism's threat
that still sadly lingers and haunts us today.The dark shadow cast by
the Spanish Civil war, still matters, and the wound inflicted on Spain
still within living memory for many has yet to close. We
must continue to resist oppressive forces, with our shout of no
pasaran.
The poet and political activist John Corford was just 21 years old when
he died in Spain in August 1936, I will leave you with these two poems
by him written in the teeth of death. Poem
Heart of the heartless world,
Dear heart, the thought of you
Is the pain at my side,
The shadow that chills my view.
The wind rises in the evening,
Reminds that autumn is near.
I am afraid to lose you,
I am afraid of my fear.
On the last mile to Huesca,
The last fence for our pride,
Think so kindly, dear, that I
Sense you at my side.
And if bad luck should lay my strength
Into the shallow grave,
Remember all the good you can;
Don’t forget my love.
A letter from Aragon
This is a quiet sector of a quiet front.
We buried Ruiz in a new pine coffin,
But the shroud was too small and his washed feet stuck out.
The stink of his corpse came through the clean pine boards
And some of the bearers wrapped handkerchiefs round their faces.
Death was not dignified.
We hacked a ragged grave in the unfriendly earth
And fired a ragged volley over the grave.
You could tell from our listlessness, no one much missed him.
This is a quiet sector of a quiet front.
There is no poison gas and no H. E.
But when they shelled the other end of the village
And the streets were choked with dust
Women came screaming out of the crumbling houses,
Clutched under one arm the naked rump of an infant.
I thought: how ugly fear is.
This is a quiet sector of a quiet front.
Our nerves are steady; we all sleep soundly.
In the clean hospital bed, my eyes were so heavy
Sleep easily blotted out one ugly picture,
A wounded militiaman moaning on a stretcher,
Now out of danger, but still crying for water,
Strong against death, but unprepared for such pain.
This on a quiet front.
But when I shook hands to leave, an Anarchist worker
Said: 'Tell the workers of England
This was a war not of our own making
We did not seek it.
But if ever the Fascists again rule Barcelona
It will be as a heap of ruins with us workers beneath it.'
