Who's an anarchist?
There’s a second-hand-book/junk shop in Hastings Old Town where I often stop by for a chat. Usually this is with the guy who stands in for the proprietor. About a month ago a customer came in who was dressed somewhat smarter than the usual clientele. Nothing strange about that. But the guy minding the shop turns to this customer and says, ‘Hello Stuart…’ and then explains to me that way back in the 1960s in Franco’s Spain, Stuart was imprisoned for attempting to deliver explosives intended for the assassination of Franco, the dictator: “Banditry and Terrorism – a charge that came under military jurisdiction and automatically incurred the death penalty by the garrotte.” Stuart was 18, and the subsequent outcry caused the sentence to be reduced to 20-years - though he ended up serving just 3.
We talked for a few minutes, then Stuart left. Apparently, in 2004 he had published his autobiographical: ‘Granny Made Me an Anarchist’. In it he explains - as well as much else - details of his exploits in Spain and the ensuing ordeal. Soon after publication, some interesting articles and reviews appeared in the Guardian concerning anarchy. Being a sympathiser, although an idle and inactive one, I was intrigued. For instance, from The Guardian, April 2005 (on publication of a Scribner edition of Stuart’s book):
WITH A KNAPSACK FULL OF BOMBS
Can violence ever be justified? Peter Marshall finds the answers in studies of anarchism by Colin Ward, David Goodway and Stuart Christie
Saturday April 9, 2005
The Guardian
Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction
by Colin Ward
199pp, Oxford, £6.99
Talking Anarchy
by Colin Ward and David Goodway
149pp, Five Leaves, £6.99
Granny Made Me an Anarchist: General Franco, the Angry Brigade and Me
by Stuart Christie
423pp, Scribner, £10.99
Anarchy is chaos, anarchy is terror, anarchy is nihilism. This is the widely held view that these lively and thought-provoking books should help to dispel. In fact, far from being nihilistic, anarchism has a rich body of constructive ideas and values that have attracted writers and thinkers as diverse as Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Wilde, Tolstoy, Goldman, Read and Gandhi.
It is true that Bakunin argued in the 19th century that it is necessary to destroy in order to build, and that a few desperados calling themselves anarchists were involved in a spate of assassinations and bombings at the turn of the 20th century, but their outrages were fleabites compared with those perpetrated by monarchists, nationalists and, above all, state-sponsored terrorists. As anarchists have long pointed out, it is the state that is the principal cause of violence in the world.
In Greek, anarchy means "without a ruler". It is clearly in the interests of those in power to argue that without their rule chaos will prevail. Yet for most of their history humans have lived cooperative and peaceful lives without the interference of rulers, generals and politicians. As Godwin long ago observed, the alleged justification for government is to prevent insecurity, but in reality it has only perpetuated inequality and led to countless horrors of violence. By contrast, civil society is invariably a blessing.
