Remembering Chartist leaders found guilty of high treason in Newport Rising of 1839

The People’s Charter had been launched in the spring of 1838 to demand universal male suffrage and other egalitarian electoral reforms. - See more at: http://www.internationalsocialist.org.uk/index.php/2013/11/on-this-day-4111839-the-newport-rising/#sthash.1XaXbYTG.dpuf

The People’s Charter had been launched in the spring of 1838 to demand universal male suffrage and other egalitarian electoral reforms. - See more at: http://www.internationalsocialist.org.uk/index.php/2013/11/on-this-day-4111839-the-newport-rising/#sthash.1XaXbYTG.dpuf

The political movement of Chartism developed following the 1832 Reform Act due to the widespread disappointment at the provisions in the act.  In June 1836 the London’s Workingmen’s Association was formed and in 1838, the members launched a People’s Charter and National Petition which called for radical changes to the way in which Britain was governed.  Supporters of the movement were from then on known as Chartists.  

At the time only 19 percent of the adult male population of Britain could vote. The Chartists wanted the vote for all men (though not for women) and a fairer electoral system. They also called for annual elections, the payment of MPs, and the introduction of a secret ballot.Working conditions in many coalfields and ironworks in South Wales were harsh, and there was often conflict between workers and employers. Much of the working class population were living in poverty, but without a voice in politics, and they did  not feel they could change their situation, Given these circumstances, it was no surprise that Chartism developed quickly. In the summer of 1838 a Working Men's Association was formed in Newport, Monmouthshire to publicise the People's Charter.  

Within six months, the radical leader John Frost https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2017/05/john-frost-radical-chartist-leader.html  estimated that there were between 15,000 and 20,000 Chartists in the county of Monmouthshire. Chartism fought for democratic demands, but it was not solely a democratic movement, it was a revolutionary class struggle to change society. William Price, https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/william-price-441800-2311893.html a Pontypridd Chartist leader said: "Oppression, injustice and the grinding poverty which burdens our lives must be abolished for all time."  

 The People's Charter called for six reforms to make the political system more democratic, namely:

1. A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime.
2. The secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
   
3. No property qualification for Members of Parliament in order to allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice.
4. Payment of Members, enabling tradesmen, working men, or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their livelihood to attend to the interests of the nation.
5. Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones.
6. Annual Parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in each twelve-month period.

 
Tensions rose after the government turned down the mass petition for the Charter, presented to the House of Commons with over 1.25 million signatures.Leaders like John Frost and Henry Vincent called for 'physical force' to obtain the Charter, and to add further fuel to the indignation felt in May 1839  eloquent public speaker  Henry Vincent,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2018/05/henry-vincent-1051818-2912-1878-radical.html well known locally for his speaking tour of South Wales a year earlier, on 2 August all of 20 miles away in Monmouth was arrested for making inflammatory speeches. When he was tried on the 2nd August at Monmouth Assizes he was found guilty and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment. Vincent was denied writing materials and only allowed to read books on religion.

Chartists in Wales were furious and the decision was followed by several outbreaks of violence. John Frost called for a massive protest meeting to show the strength of feeling against the imprisonment of Henry Vincent. Frost's plan was to march on Newport where the Chartists planned to demand the release of Vincent.
On 4 November 1839,  some seven or eight thousand men from nearby iron and coal-mining villages assembled and  roused with much anger  marched into Newport ,and attempted to take control of the town. They marched to  Westgate Hotel, where they had heard that after several more arrests, local authorities were temporarily holding several chartists, began chanting "surrender our prisoners". However the authorities in Newport  had heard rumours that the Chartists were armed and planned to seize Newport. Stories also began to circulate that if the Chartists were successful in Newport, it would encourage others all over Britain to follow their example, so were waiting for them. Troops protecting the hotel were then given the order to begin firing into the crowd, killing at least 22 people, and another fifty being wounded and resulted  in  the uprising being bought to an abrupt end. Among the injured was a Chartist named John Lovell, who was shot in the thigh and badly wounded. It would be the last large scale uprising in the history of  mainland Britain.

                                                   the attack on Westgate Hotel
 
Following the Newport defeat, South Wales was placed under martial law and hundreds of Chartists arrested or forced into hiding.Within days  many of the alleged the ringleaders including Frost were arrested and in December"True Bills" for High Treason were found against 14 men and more than 40 counts for sedition, conspiracy, riot and burglary.

The 14 men committed for Trial were:

John Frost, age 54, a draper, Newport

Zephaniah Williams, age 44, an inn keeper, of Blaina

William Jones, age 30, a watchmaker & beer house keeper, of Pontypool

Charles Waters, age 26, a ship's carpenter, of Newport (formerly Chepstow)

John Lovell, age 41, a gardener, of Newport

Jenkin Morgan, age 40, a milkman, of Pillgwenlly

Richard Benfield, age 20, a miner, of Sirhowy

John Rees, age 40, a miner, of Tredegar

James Aust, age 25, a gardener, of Malpas (formerly of Caerleon)

Solomon Britton, age 23, a collier, of Garndiffaith

George Turner, age 37, a collier, of Blackwood

Edmund Edmunds, age 34, a mine agent, of Pontllanfraith

and, to be tried in their absence:

John Rees, (Jack 'the Fifer'), a stonemason, of Tredegar

David Jones, (Dai 'the Tinker'), of Tredegar

- but the two were never captured

The Trials commenced on 31st December 1839 - and all fourteen men faced the Death Penalty. 

 South Wales Chartist Song, 1839, to rally support for John Frost and other imprisoned leaders of the Newport Rising 1839. 

Uphold these bold Comrades who suffer for you,
Who nobly stand foremost, demanding your due,
Away with the timid, 'tis treason to fear—
To surrender or falter when danger is near.
For now that our leaders disdain to betray
'Tis base to desert them, or succour delay.

A Hundred years, a thousand years we're marching on the road 

The going isn't easy yet, we've got a heavy load 

The way is blind with blood and sweat & death sings in our ears 

But time is marching on our side, we will defeat the years.

We men of bone, of sunken shank, our only treasure death 

Women who carry at the breast heirs to the hungry earth 

Speak with one voice we march we rest and march again upon the years 

Sons of our sons are listening to hear the Chartist cheers 

Sons of our sons are listening to hear the Chartist cheers.

 John Frost's trial was heard first and this ended on the 8th January. Zephaniah Williams, on the 13th January and William Jones, on the 14th January. All three were found "guilty, with mercy".[This meant that although they were sentenced to death, the final decision to allow mercy was with Her Majesty and her Government] 

John Lovell, Charles Waters, Jenkin Morgan, Richard Benfield and John Rees - on the advice of their counsels, Messrs, Stone & Skinner, were urged to plead guilty in the hopes that the Crown prosecutors could prevail upon the Judges to set the death penalty aside in their cases and on the 15th January 1840, they appeared together in court and pleaded guilty. The remaining four Chartists in Monmouth gaol - James Aust, Solomon Britton, George Turner, Edmund Edmunds - were brought before the bar and to everyone's amazement, the Attorney General withdrew all charges against them and they were freed with a verbal admonishment.

On the 16th January 1840, John Frost, Zephaniah Williams and William Jones were sentenced by the Lord Chief Justice Sir Nicholas Tindal:

"After the most anxious and careful investigation of your respective cases, before juries of great intelligence and almost unexampled patience, you stand at the bar of this court to receive the last sentence of the law for the commission of a crime which, beyond all others, is the most pernicious in example, and the most injurious in its consequences, to the peace and happiness of human society - the crime of High Treason against your Sovereign. You can have no just ground of complaint that your several cases have not met with the most full consideration, both from the jury and from the court. But as the jury have, in each of those cases, pronounced you guilty of the crime with which you have been charges, I should be wanting in justice to them if I did not openly declare, that the verdicts which they have found meet with the entire concurrence of my learned brethren and myself.

In the case of all ordinary breaches of the law, the mischief of the offence does, for the most part, terminate with the immediate injury sustained by the individual against whom it is levelled. The man who plunders the property, or lifts his hand against the life of his neighbour, does by his guilty act inflict, in that particular instance, and to that extent, a loss or injury on the sufferer or his surviving friends. But they who, by armed numbers, or by violence, or terror, endeavour to put down established institutions, and to introduce in their stead a new order of things, open wide the flood-gates of rapine and bloodshed, destroy all security of property and life, and do their utmost to involve a whole nation in anarchy and ruin.

It has been proved, in your case, that you combined together to lead from the hills, at the dead hour of night, into the town of Newport many thousands of men, armed, in many instances, with weapons of a dangerous description, in order that they might take possession of the town, and supersede the lawful authority of the Queen, as a preliminary step to a more general insurrection throughout the kingdom.

It is owing to the interposition of Providence alone that your wicked designs were frustrated. Your followers arrive by day-light, and after firing upon the civil power, and upon the Queen's troops, are, by the firmness of the magistrates, and the cool and determined bravery of a small body of soldiers, defeated and dispersed. What would have been the fate of the peaceful and unoffending inhabitants of that town, if success had attended your rebellious designs, it is impossible to say. The invasion of a foreign foe would, in all probability, have been less destructive to property and life.

It is for the crime of High Treason, committed under these circumstances, that you are now called upon yourselves to answer; and by the penalty which you are about to suffer, you hold out a warning to all your fellow-subjects, that the law of your country is strong enough to repress and to punish all attempts to alter the established order of things by insurrection and armed force; and that those who are found guilty of such treasonable attempts must expiate their crime by an ignominious death.

I therefore most earnestly exhort you to employ the little time that remains to you in preparing for the great change that awaits you, by sincere penitence and by fervent prayer. For although we do not fail to forward to the proper quarter that recommendation which the jury have intrusted to us, we cannot hold out to you any hope of mercy on this side of the grave.

And now, nothing more remains than the duty imposed upon the court - to all of us a most painful duty - to declare the last sentence of the law, which is that you, John Frost, and you, Zephaniah Williams, and you, William Jones, be taken hence to the place from whence you came, and be thence drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, and that each of you be there hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that afterwards the head of each of you shall be severed from his body, and the body of each, divided into four quarters, shall be disposed of as Her Majesty shall think fit, and may Almighty God have mercy upon your souls."

These three chartist leaders were the last men in Britain sentenced to be "hanged, drawn and quartered.
 

                                         
                                          Zepaniah Williams, John Frost, William Jones
 
 John Frost, Zephaniah Williams, William Jones - were returned to Monmouth Gaol to await public execution.  The Government had decided that an example should be made of three members of the lower middle classes for having misled thousands of workmen into taking insurrectionary action against Queen and State.

The severity of the sentences shocked many people and thanks to the vigorous lobbying and protests  in support of the convicted Chartists, it led to to their sentences being commuted to transportation for life.

When they actually received a total pardon in 1856. Jones stayed in Australia as a watchmaker and Williams stayed in Tasmania, where he subsequently made his fortune discovering coal. However, John Frost, who had worked as a school teacher in Tasmania, returned to Britain, where he received a triumphant welcome in Newport.

The Newport rising was a turning point for the Chartist movement. In response to the conditions, Chartists in Sheffield, the East End of London and Bradford planned their own risings. Samuel Holberry led an aborted rising in Sheffield on January 12th 1840; police action thwarted a major disturbance in the East End of London on January 14th, and on January 26th a few hundred Bradford Chartists staged a failed rising in the hope of precipitating a domino effect across the country. After this Chartism turned to a process of internal renewal and more systematic organisation, but the transported and imprisoned Newport Chartists were regarded as heroes and martyrs amongst workers. 

'Physical force Chartism' was no longer popular however, and an uprising of the size seen in Newport for the time being has never happened again. However the movement gained strength and popularity throughout Britain and although it failed its purpose at the time, five of the Six Points of the original Charter which the Chartists had campaigned for have since been conceded, only the demand for Annual Parliaments not so far being accepted. 

A beautiful mural depicting four scenes from the Newport Rising, located in a pedestrian underpass in the city, was  shamefully destroyed in 2013 to make way for a shopping center.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/destruction-of-chartist-mural.html Despite this nearly two centuries after the drafting of the People’s Charter, long may the Chartists struggle and its leaders be remembered who helped give voice to the discontent of the time in their struggle for democracy. 

Beunaventarra Durruti laid to rest (14/7/1889 - 20/11/1936)

 

With forty years of  fighting, of exile, of jailings, of living underground, of strikes, and of insurrection, Beunaventura Durutti, the  legendary Spanish revolutionary and Anarchist lived many lives. Uncompromising, intransigent revolutionary, he travelled a long road from rebellious young worker to the man who refused all bureacratic positions, honours, awards, and who at death was mourned by millions of women and men. Durutti believed and lived his belief that revolution and freedom were inseperable. 

He was born the son of a railway worker on July 14^th 1896 in Leon, a city in central Spain. Aged 14 he leaves school to become a trainee mechanic in the railway yard. Like his father, he joins the socialist UGT union. He takes an active part in the strike of August 1917 when the government overturned an agreement between the union and the employers. This soon became a general strike throughout the area. The government brought in the army and within three days the strikers had been crushed. The troops behaved with extreme brutality, killing 70 and wounding 500 workers. 2,000 strikers were jailed. 

Durruti managed to escape to France, where he came into contact with exiled anarchists, whose influence led to him joining the anarchist CNT union upon his return in January 1919. He joins the fight against dictatorial employers in the Asturian mines and is arrested for the first time in March 1919; he escapes and over the next decade and a half he throws himself into activity for the CNT and for the anarchist movement. 

These years see him involved in several strikes and being forced into exile. Unwittingly the Spanish government ‘exported’ rebellion, as Durruti and his close friend Francisco Ascaso happily joined the struggle for freedom wherever they ended up, in both Europe and Latin America. 

The Spanish monarchy fell in 1931 and Durruti moved to Barcelona; accompanied by his French companion Emilienne, pregnant with their daughter Colette. He joined the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), a specifically anarchist organization, and together with other militants they form the ‘Nosotros’ group. These were members within the CNT of a radical tendency that harboured no illusions with respect to the recently proclaimed Republic, maintaining that the moment was ripe for continued progress towards a social revolution. 

With the electoral victory by the liberal/reformist Popular Front in February 1936, Left and Right were on a collision course, initiated very rapidly by Franco’s military rebellion on July 19^th 1936. The CNT and the FAI confronted the army with courage, organization and mass mobilizations. 

They triumphed in much of Spain despite the fascist superiority in weapons and resources. The anarchist contribution was decisive in resisting the fascists throughout the country and in Catalonia defeated the rebels singlehandedly, Durruti being one of the boldest fighters in this battle.

 Jose Buenaventura Durruti, always fought for the poor and downtrodden, and against the State, whether of the social democratic, fascist or marxist varieties When Spanish fascists attempted to overthrow  the  Republican government on July 19th 1936, Durruti and other comrades helped put down the uprising in Barclenoa. He became a member of  the Anti fascist Militia Committee and led the "Durruti" Column an almost  mythical  group of CNT militants to the  Zaragoza front. The Durruti column was able to liberate  much of Aragon. He  was an inspiration to many as a partisan of the Spanish people with an internationalist vision, who for him personally revolutionary thought and action went hand in hand. 

In 1936, after the liberation of Aragon from Franco's forces, Durruti was interviewed by Pierre van Paasen of the Toronto Star. In this interview he gives his views on Fascism, government and social revolution despite the fact that his remarks have only been reported in English - and were never actually written down by him in his native Spanish, well worth reading and can be found here https://libcom.org/history/buenaventura-durruti-interview-pierre-van-paasen 

 On 14th November Durutti arrived in Madrid at the height of the  civil war from Aragon,by air with 5,000 men( numbers vary according to different accounts). The column had to go by train as all the railway tracks had been bombed. He went  to the frontline on the 16th.

Tragically Durruti on the 19th November  1936, he was shot dead  by a sniper, receiving a bullet to his chest, as he rallied his militia  to continue their resistance after days of fighting without respite. he died the following day, at the age of 40.  His death was a tragedy for all free thinkers, in the fight against fascist tyranny. His death was also a turning point in the Spanish Revolution and one of the events that lead to the defeat of the revolution. 

When his body was returned to Barcelona  over 500,000  people took to the streets on this day November 22 1936  to follow his funeral procession, the  biggest funeral in Spanish history, a tribute to the place he played in peoples hearts, his coffin draped with the familiar diagonal red and black flag. A hero to the Spanish working class ,and today  Durruti remains a lasting icon of anarchism, both in Spain and around the world, a man who.was determined to leave this world a better place than when he entered it. With the rise again of the far right, no better  time than to remember this inspirational man who died fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

Rare footage of Beunaventura Durutti's funeral.

This book is his definite biography :

https://libcom.org/library/durruti-spanish-revolution

 Further reading:-

Daniel Guerin - No Gods, no masters; 2006

Durruti - The people Armed - Abel Paz

   "  We  have always  loved in slums and holes in the wall. We will  know how to accommodate ourselves for  time. For you must not forget we can also build. It is we who built the palaces and cities here in Spain and America and everywhere. We the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the  least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is  not the slightest  doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing every minute."-  Beunaventarra Durruti

Spain, Aragon , 1936

Linton Kwesi Johnson - New Crass Massahkah

On 18 January 1981, a fire at a house party in New Cross, South-East London, led to the deaths of 13 young Black people including Yvonne Ruddock, who was celebrating her 16th birthday. One of the survivors later took their own life.

Police declared the fire to be an accident, but to this day many suspect it was a racist arson attack. The authorities failed to seriously investigate these claims, despite the fact that racially abusive letters had been sent to the homeowner, and an incendiary device found outside the house. The police treated the families of the dead like suspects, rather than victims, and the Daily Mail falsely suggested several Black people had been arrested in connection with the fire. 

In the days that followed there was little coverage of the terrible loss of young life in the newspapers.,The cold silence of the white establishment conveyed a brutally simple message that the loss of young black lives was simply unimportant. As Johnny Osbourne sang pointedly ’13 Dead (and Nothing Said)’. 

In the aftermath, the community felt a devastating sense of loss. Sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, friends, classmates – all taken away long before their time. 

But what compounded the pain was the sense that the community had and was continuing to be ignored. It is customary for Prime Ministers and the Crown to acknowledge a mass loss of life by the way of sending a message of condolence. Yet Margaret Thatcher, after nearly two years in office at that time, failed to reach out to the community. 

Thatcher fostered a hostile environment for the black and minority ethnic community, and was widely considered to be courting supporters of the far-right National Front group through the use of anti-immigrant rhetoric. This was taken further by her minister Jill Knight, who appeared to condone direct action against parties with sound systems, a staple of the Black British culture at the time. 

The suspicions of foul play were well founded – New Cross was known to many as the race hate capital of Britain.Many other Black  homes in the area had been attacked by supporters of the fascist National Front, and a Black community centre was burnt down. Almost exactly a decade earlier, white racists had petrol bombed a Black people’s party in Lewisham, injuring 22 people.

Ever since the ‘Windrush generation’ had been brought to the country to help rebuild Britain’s post-war economy, they were met with hostility and violence. The police regularly raided Black meeting places such as the Mangrove Restauarant, as well as the annual Notting Hill Carnival. The same year as the New Cross fire also saw the passing of the British Nationality Act, the last of a series of immigration laws explicitly targeting people of colour; tearing apart countless families in the process. 

The Prime Minister’s silence propelled the wave of black activism that had  been sparked by the fire, as protestors rallied to the words 'thirteen dead and nothing said' and ‘Here to Stay, Here to Fight’.

The New Cross community demanded answers and, in light of perceived inaction by the police, hundreds attended a meeting a week after the fire. There was a strong feeling that the fire had been an attack, started by a petrol bomb.

Out of the ashes of this terrible tragedy came an unprecedented political mobilisation led by the families, the New Cross Massacre Action Committee and the wider black community.  

It resulted in the historic ‘Black People’s Day of Action’ on Monday 2 March, 1981, where 15,000 people from all over the country filed by 439 New Cross Road bound for the Houses of Parliament and Fleet Street in peaceful protest, but their march was disrupted by harsh police tactics and faced relentless attacks from the right-wing media.

Tension between the community and the police remained high, particularly amongst young people who felt they were being unfairly targeted by the police.In April that year, an incident involving a stabbed youth sparked a riot in Brixton that lasted a weekend and brought the issue of race relations to the top of the agenda.

To date, no-one has ever been charged with starting the New Cross fire. The police bungled the investigation  and no one was arrested or prosecuted  which summed up the racist indifference of the state to black communities  and sickeningly  racist  abuse was sent to victims families. The racism behind the tragedy politicised a generation, and continues to shape modern Britain.

 Thinking back now perhaps the most appropriate way to remember those lives cut short so cruelly is to renew a commitment and vigilance to challenging contemporary racism in all its forms. 

 Linton Kwesi Johnson’s ‘New Crass Massahkah ’ conveyed in dub poetry perhaps the most enduring and powerful form of historical witness. 

New Crass Massahkah -   by Linton Kwesi Johnson

first di comin
an di goin
in an out af di pawty

di dubbin
an di rubbin
and di rackin to di riddim

di dancin
and di scankin
an di pawty really swingin

den di crash
an di bang
an di flames staat fit rang

di heat
an di smoke
an di people staat fi choke

di screamin
and di cryin
and di diein in di fyah.

Jose Buenaventura Durruti ( 14/7/1896 - 20/10/36) - A New World in our Hearts

"  We  have always  loved in slums and holes in the wall. We will  know how to accommodate ourselves for  time. For you must not forget we can also build. It is we who built the palaces and cities here in Spain and America and everywhere. We the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the  least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is  not the slightest  doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing every minute."

Spain, Aragon , 1936

With forty years of  fighting, of exile, of jailings, of living underground, of strikes, and of insurrection, Beunaventura Durutti, the  legendary Spanish revolutionary and Anarchist lived many lives. Uncompromising, intransigent revolutionary, he travelled a long road from rebellious young worker to the man who refused all bureacratic positions, honours, awards, and who at death was mourned by millions of women and men. Durutti believed and lived his belief that revolution and freedom were inseperable. 

He was born the son of a railway worker on July 14^th 1896 in Leon, a city in central Spain. Aged 14 he leaves school to become a trainee mechanic in the railway yard. Like his father, he joins the socialist UGT union. He takes an active part in the strike of August 1917 when the government overturned an agreement between the union and the employers. This soon became a general strike throughout the area. The government brought in the army and within three days the strikers had been crushed. The troops behaved with extreme brutality, killing 70 and wounding 500 workers. 2,000 strikers were jailed. 

Durruti managed to escape to France, where he came into contact with exiled anarchists, whose influence led to him joining the anarchist CNT union upon his return in January 1919. He joins the fight against dictatorial employers in the Asturian mines and is arrested for the first time in March 1919; he escapes and over the next decade and a half he throws himself into activity for the CNT and for the anarchist movement. 

These years see him involved in several strikes and being forced into exile. Unwittingly the Spanish government ‘exported’ rebellion, as Durruti and his close friend Francisco Ascaso happily joined the struggle for freedom wherever they ended up, in both Europe and Latin America. 

The Spanish monarchy fell in 1931 and Durruti moved to Barcelona; accompanied by his French companion Emilienne, pregnant with their daughter Colette. He joined the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), a specifically anarchist organization, and together with other militants they form the ‘Nosotros’ group. These were members within the CNT of a radical tendency that harboured no illusions with respect to the recently proclaimed Republic, maintaining that the moment was ripe for continued progress towards a social revolution. 

With the electoral victory by the liberal/reformist Popular Front in February 1936, Left and Right were on a collision course, initiated very rapidly by Franco’s military rebellion on July 19^th 1936. The CNT and the FAI confronted the army with courage, organization and mass mobilizations. 

They triumphed in much of Spain despite the fascist superiority in weapons and resources. The anarchist contribution was decisive in resisting the fascists throughout the country and in Catalonia defeated the rebels singlehandedly, Durruti being one of the boldest fighters in this battle.

 Jose Buenaventura Durruti, always fought for the poor and downtrodden, and against the State, whether of the social democratic, fascist or marxist varieties When Spanish fascists attempted to overthrow  the  Republican government on July 19th 1936, Durruti and other comrades helped put down the uprising in Barclenoa. He became a member of  the Anti fascist Militia Committee and led the "Durruti" Column an almost  mythical  group of CNT militants to the  Zaragoza front. The Durruti column was able to liberate  much of Aragon. He  was an inspiration to many as a partisan of the Spanish people with an internationalist vision, who for him personally revolutionary thought and action went hand in hand. 

In 1936, after the liberation of Aragon from Franco's forces, Durruti was interviewed by Pierre van Paasen of the Toronto Star. In this interview he gives his views on Fascism, government and social revolution despite the fact that his remarks have only been reported in English - and were never actually written down by him in his native Spanish, well worth reading and can be found here https://libcom.org/history/buenaventura-durruti-interview-pierre-van-paasen 

 On 14th November Durutti arrived in Madrid at the height of the  civil war from Aragon,by air with 5,000 men( numbers vary according to different accounts). The column had to go by train as all the railway tracks had been bombed. He went  to the frontline on the 16th.

Tragically Durruti on the 19th November  1936, he was shot  by a sniper, receiving a bullet to his chest, as he rallied his militia  to continue their resistance after days of fighting without respite. he died the following day, at the age of 40.  His death was a tragedy for all free thinkers, in the fight against fascist tyranny. His death was also a turning point in the Spanish Revolution and one of the events that lead to the defeat of the revolution. 

When his body was returned to Barcelona  over 500,000  people took to the streets on November 22 1936  to follow his funeral procession, the  biggest funeral in Spanish history, a tribute to the place he played in peoples hearts, his coffin draped with the familiar diagonal red and black flag. A hero to the Spanish working class ,and today  Durruti remains a lasting icon of anarchism, both in Spain and around the world, a man who.was determined to leave this world a better place than when he entered it. With the rise again of the far right, no better  time than to remember this inspirational man who died fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.Many years later "we carry a new world, here in our hearts."

                        

Durruti's grave at Montjuïc Cemetery, Barcelona

Further reading:-

Daniel Guerin - No Gods, no masters; 2006

Durruti - The people Armed - Abel Paz

Durruti in the Spanish Revolution - Abel Paz 

Spanish Civil War  (1936-37) (Buenaventura Durruti)

The film above shows the period of revolution that gave in Spain in the years of civil war, and  highlights the hero killed by the bourgeoisie (Buenaventura Durruti).

Living Utopia - The Anarchists and the Spanish  Revolution

 
 Living Utopia is a unique documentary that blends the historical account of the origins and development of the Spanish anarchist movement, focussing on the 1936 war. A reflection on the philosophical underpinnings of such a movement and their practical application. As both an informative and inspiring piece of research it is considered a jewel amongst historians and rebel hearts.
This documentary-film by Juan Gamero consists of 30 interviews with survivors of the 1936-1939 Spanish Revolution, and is one of the best documentaries dealing with the theme. The testimony of the anarchist militants are very moving indeed, and are showing the constructive work of the social revolution in Spain. This "Anarchy in Action" meant: on the land around 7 million peasants form collectives, in the city 3000 workplaces collectivised, 150 000 join the anarchist militias to fight fascism, as well as cultural activities and the movement of the Mujeres Libres to free the women from patriarchy.

Spanish with english subtitles