Book Review: ‘Physical Resistance: Or, A Hundred Years of Anti-Fascism’ by Dave Hann

Last night 40 people came to the Library to the launch of  Physical Resistance: Or, A Hundred Years of Anti-Fascism by Dave Hann, with an introduction by Louise Purbrick.  Thanks to Louise for coming up from Brighton especially for the event, and to her and all those who contributed to making it an informed and impassioned evening. Physical Resistance is published by Zero Books – http://www.zero-books.net/books/physical-resistance

David Hargreaves, Library volunteer, reviews the book below.

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The difficulty in reviewing such a work lies in the fact that for many people their principal focus will be upon the degree to which the author has ‘correctly’ recognised the contributions of the various actors in the anti fascist struggles detailed. In writing the ‘collective history of anti-fascism’ the author inevitably highlights the sectarianism of such resistance; the changing alliances, the splits and the re–alignments, the never ending procession of acronyms.

But, this should not be the main focus of analysis. The emphasis should be upon the fact that this is an extremely able historical work containing some chapters of real quality. The use of oral history is very skilful in that the author allows people to speak and then provides well written contextual material. The skill of listening to people comes through in that it is clear that although the author knows enough of his subject to be able to have a discussion, an argument or even a row – he does not. He listens, records and respects the views of those who he interviews.

The strength of this approach is demonstrated by one of the best chapters in the book – ‘Hold Madrid for we are coming’, detailing the experience of comrades in the Spanish Civil War. Towards the end of that chapter an interviewee says of her grandfather,

‘He said what a waste it was because they were mostly people with great ideals and hopes for humanity and they were lying there dead. He never did come to terms with that part of it but he thought it was something he had to do.’

Those words link with a significant section of the Introduction written by Louise Purbrick who notes that physical force has been largely written out of working class history. Hann, she writes, ‘presents an alternative interpretation of political action that includes physical resistance as part of an everyday pattern of opposition.’

Such resistance is unambiguously male and in many respects the book chronicles male on male violence with the refrain that the Fascists were often surprised by the ‘hardness’ of the opposing forces. The role of women, on both sides, is subordinate. This is not a criticism of the work of the author but a reflection on the fact that physical resistance is a game for the ‘boys’. There is a clear line of argument that any non violent response to Fascism would play into the hands of the enemy. The fact that some manifestations of Fascism might have failed for other reasons is not explored in any detail. In the words of the Introduction, political opposition is ‘defined by acts of participation rather than any adherence to very precisely defined ideological standpoints.’ Broad, predominantly non violent participation in, for example, the Anti Nazi League played a major role in the decline of the electoral ambitions of the National Front.

The chapter on the Spanish Civil War is critical in that it serves to ensure that the struggle against Fascism both home and abroad is given equivalence. That challenges those on the Left who can appreciate and applaud those who fought Fascism in Spain but recoil at physical confrontation at home. The author does present a consistently well presented and well argued narrative and invites the reader to consider the defining question of the work: What would you do if Fascists were intimidating your neighbourhood, beating up ‘targets’ and (throughout most of the narrative) being actively protected by the forces of law?

The strength of the work lies in the quality of the scholarship; the first hand narratives and the relentless pursuing of the core question of physical resistance. The reward of reading it lies in the fact that once finished, it must be followed by further discussion about tactics on the Left. In this work there are so many Fascists and so many false Patriots vilifying so many different scapegoats over the years that it is clear that the struggle against them must continue. The work highlights the fact that many, especially in the Labour Party, are content to ignore this unpleasant fact. Physical Resistance is a chronicle of those who did not.

Note: The author of this work died in 2009 and Louise Purbrick has done an excellent job of preparing the book for publication.

DWH

Re-Making Guernica part three – communal sewing in Brighton

On 26 April, the anniversary of the aerial bombing of the town of Gernika in 1937 which led Picasso to paint his sombrely magnificent Guernica, we published a blog posting introducing the Re-Making Guernica project, the inspiration of a group of academics, artists and makers at the University of Brighton who invited activists to join them in creating an art of protest against fascism.  The Library played its part in their initial research about the painting coming to England. Now read on…

What is Guernica? Gernika is a place in northern Spain and Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso; it is a tapestry that hangs in the UN; a mug; a t- shirt. It is a rallying cry; a call to action to stand up against fascism; it is an anti-fascist banner. Guernica is many things: it has transcended its canvas and the walls of the gallery and it circulates far and wide, shifting shape as it goes. The frequency with which people are moved to recreate Guernica is testament to the ongoing power of Picasso’s image to move people into action.

A group of activists and artists are re-making Picasso’s Guernica as a banner. Re-making Picasso’s Guernica is a collective project involving people from Amnesty International, Brighton Anti-Fascists, Gatwick Visitors Group, Migrant English Project, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, University of Brighton and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

They say: ‘We have worked together to recreate Picasso’s famous shapes. We’d like to invite you to take part – come and sew! Jubilee Library, Jubilee Street, Brighton, 16 June & 23 June 2013, 12 – 4′.

For more information: remakingpicassosguernica.wordpress.com
If you’d like to stay in touch with the banner makers as the project develops, or host a sewing event or talk, email:
remakingpicassosguernica@riseup.net

Re-Making Guernica part two – ‘an unwavering commitment to resisting injustice unites us’

On 26 April, the anniversary of the aerial bombing of the town of Gernika in 1937 which led Picasso to paint his sombrely magnificent Guernica, we published a blog posting introducing the Re-Making Guernica project, the inspiration of a group of academics, artists and makers at the University of Brighton who invited activists to join them in creating an art of protest against fascism. Now read on…

What do you think an artist is?  An imbecile who has only his eyes if he’s a painter, or ears if he’s a musician, or a lyre at every level of his heart if he’s a poet, or even, if he’s a boxer, just his muscles?  On the contrary, he’s at the same time a political being, constantly alive to heartrending, fiery, or happy events, to which he responds in every way.  How would it be possible to feel no interest in other people and by virtue of an ivory indifference to detach yourself from the life which they copiously bring you?  No, painting is not done to decorate apartments.  It is an instrument of war for attack and defence against the enemy.

Pablo Picasso: From an interview with Simone Téry, 1945

The excitement, focus and engagement expressed by Picasso in his words above are at the heart of our project, Re-Making Guernica.

We all share a commitment to the uses of art in challenging perceptions, so that we can begin to see things in new ways, waking up lazy ways of seeing, making us aware of habits and of our tendency to stereotype, unpacking texts so as to reveal new meanings.

We also share a passionate interest in the uses of art in political struggle.  To name just a few examples, Jenny made many striking banners at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, enjoying the ways in which they carry a message and become a permanent expression of history.  Pete has curated exhibitions for socially didactic purposes.  Jill has spent her life working on projects which foreground women, whose artefacts and events have often been written out of history.  Megha’s art practice uses sound, painting and sculpture to explore Indian women’s migration post-1990s in the era of globalisation.  Louise worked on a project to preserve parts of Long Kesh prison and curated an exhibition of materials created as part of anti-Guantanamo campaign work.  Maude was at school in Paris in 1968 and worked alongside students who were making posters, using cartoons, words and graphic forms to rally support, interrogate assumptions and create unities.  All of us have taken part in political actions where the creation of a banner, or a placard, or items of clothing or badges have been part of that action, dramatically enacting or expressing it while also inviting engagement and dialogue.

An unwavering commitment to resisting injustice unites us; many of us have been active in the peace movement and anti-fascist actions for several decades.  Several of us volunteer for organisations which support refugees and asylum seekers who have no recourse to public funds, or who are enduring indefinite detention in UKBA Removal Centres, frequently with no other contact with the outside world  Others visit Palestine to support those who endure daily trauma and indignity and whose livelihoods have been brutally stripped away.  Some of us have felt keenly the ways in which as women we have a different experience of war: we produce sons; we most frequently experience rape as a weapon of war; we are victims of trafficking – and we campaign for organisations to bring about an end to this.

In a time of austerity, we might remember our mothers or grandmothers making do and mending.  However we also recall the ways that fascists grow in numbers at times when mainstream politicians seek to blame economic hardship and social dislocation – which are the results of the political system over which they preside – upon groups that already endure forms of political exclusion: refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.

We all see the collaborative process of making as a powerful antidote to the destructive powers of war and violent political systems.  Sitting down together to listen to one another, giving one another space to be heard; sharing common experiences or perceptions; muddling through the process of sewing itself, which drives some of us mad and which some of us find deeply boring; feeling upon us the beady eyes and critical gazes of our mothers or grandmothers – all so much more adept and deft with needle and thread than most of us will ever be; deciding upon stitches and showing one another how to sew them; deciding upon fabrics; talking about pieces of cloth which we have saved from our families’ pasts; showing one another little needle cases made for our mother in our childhoods; noting the humble simplicity of the tools used for sewing – their universality and their power in clothing and sheltering the world throughout history.  All of these experiences have been creative and empowering for us.  They have also shown us that it doesn’t matter how rubbish at sewing we might individually feel we are: commitment to the process and to Picasso’s work and its messages, which we are re-making, are what count more than counting perfect stitches.

Maude Casey – Re-Making Guernica project

The ephemeral can get to the heart of the matter – why we like donations of political leaflets and campaign flyers

We’re always interested in receiving material from radical political campaigns people are involved in.  We don’t have much capacity here to be pro-active in going out and getting it, so it’s great when people think of us.  Leaflets, flyers and correspondence may seem ephemeral, but they can tell future researchers such a lot about how it really felt to be part of an activist campaign, or about the political feel of the time.  That sort of thing is what our readers always get excited about when they find it here!

Last week, for instance, volunteer Stuart brought us in the programme of the Chesterfield May Day gala he’d been to over the Bank Holiday – and a nice badge to go with it.  We’ve got a great collection of May Day programmes from 1920 onwards, and this is a welcome addition.  Cheers Stuart.

We’ve also been sifting through the papers and books of activist and WCML reader Keith Hodgson, which were kindly sent across to us from Liverpool by his partner Janice after the sadness of his death in February.

Keith packed a lot into his 50 years – he was part of the Liverpool Anarchist Groups of the 1980s and early 1990s, was a founder member of Liverpool Anti-Fascists, and was  involved in the Troops Out Movement and the Phoenix Support Group for Irish Republican prisoners amongst many other campaigns.

A couple of random snippets to show the flavour of the papers from Keith which we’re adding to our collection:

* an interesting exchange between Merseyside anarchists in a squatted building and a representative from the Labour council on the question of getting building insurance to legitimise their presence;

* an anarchist critique of the Provisional IRA, discussing historical associations with Franco and the Nazis;

* a range of Troops Out movement material,  including delegation papers and benefit concerts, correspondence and attempts to reach across the sectarian divide.

Thanks for thinking of us, Janice.

Hope and action – anti-apartheid campaigners join the myriad stories of activist lives here in the Library

We’re just cataloguing a donation from Eddie Adams – a Merlin Press book edited by Ken Keable, ‘London recruits: the secret war against apartheid’.  It tells the story of anti-apartheid activists in the UK in the ’60s and ’70s.

The foreword states: ‘They were drawn from different backgrounds and political formations on the left. What they shared was a readiness to risk life and limb in the struggle of another country. Working in self-contained cells that were unaware of each other, under the guidance of a small unit operating out of London, these dedicated women and men helped the liberation movement to rebuild its capacity inside South Africa at a time when repression had all but extinguished the embers of resistance’.

Interesting in itself, of course. But made into proper ‘history from below’ by the signatures on the title page, garnered by Eddie, of many of those activists -

As one of the attendees at Owen Jones’s Frow lecture last Saturday tweeted, ‘Hope + Action. I’m in’.  Cheers to Eddie and all the signatories.

 

Re-making Picasso’s Guernica: Art V Fascism – a Collaborative Project

Guest post from Maude Casey – Re-making Guernica project

We are a group of artists, academics and activists who have come together in Brighton in order to remake Picasso’s painting, Guernica, as an act of protest. As part of our process of making, we have begun to establish links with WCML, which will continue, in the form of posts on the WCML blog.

Our project began in June 2012, in response to the fact that, during the previous year, we had witnessed the spread of a new fascism.  Virulently Islamophobic, it demonstrates a hatred for immigrant communities as well as for collective organisations, such as trades unions and the Occupy movement, both of which represent the rights of workers  and marginalised people.

In April 2012, communities in Brighton showed great unity in a street mobilisation against fascism. We wanted to continue to develop links between people and groups in Brighton through a collective art project, bringing together artists, activists and communities to share skills of making and experiences of countering racism and fascism through the Re-making of Picasso’s Guernica.

We envisaged the Re-making of Picasso’s Guernica as a large-scale textile piece, or series of textile pieces, that could be used as a banner to be carried or displayed as a wall hanging for a permanent or temporary location.  It is both a work of art and an act of protest.  Different groups are contributing, with support from practising artists, by creating reproductions of the powerful forms created by Picasso to represent the horrors of the aerial bombardment of this small Basque town, in broad daylight, on market day.

As the work of Re-making Picasso’s Guernica has been shared amongst the participants in the project, this collective endeavour is providing a forum for exchanging experiences and understanding of twenty-first century fascism. We shall begin to assemble the forms during a public sewing event at the Jubilee Library in Brighton during Refugee Week in June 2013.

Today is the anniversary of the aerial bombardment of the town of Gernika in Northern Spain on 26^th April 1937. On that horrific day, the seven thousand civilian inhabitants, were subjected to three waves of aerial bombardment by the Condor Legion, formed by Franco, Mussolini and Hitler to declare war on the Republican government of Spain, as well as to prepare techniques for their plans for world war.

Picasso learnt of the bombardment in a French newspaper report on 30^th April 1937; on 1^st May he began the creation of the piece he was to call Guernica, combining the name of the town of Gernika with the French word ‘guerre’ meaning ‘war’.  This awe-inspiring piece of work, which Picasso said belongs to the Spanish Republic, was used as a publicity tool for the Republican cause, and it toured the world raising awareness, prevented by Picasso from remaining in a gallery until the overthrow of Franco.  WCML have been most generous in helping us to trace elements of its journey to Manchester in 1939 and in providing us with material for our first talks and lecture.

Over the next few weeks we shall be updating you on the process of our Re-Making Guernica project, which has been exciting and inspirational.

Next up: who we are and why we decided to collaborate in order to Re-make Guernica.

 

Making words work – an attendee’s perspective on Saturday’s EP Thompson event

The day held at the People’s History Museum on 13 April to celebrate 50 years of The Making of the English Working Class took place in the context of the death of Mrs Thatcher earlier in the week. Many speakers felt that they could not ignore such an event and, indeed, added some anecdotal material. The real triumph of the day was not the disparagement or veneration of any individual (even E.P. Thompson himself) but the extent to which the importance of the word emerged.

Whilst this might initially not be obvious in the efforts of Christopher Eccleston and Maxine Peake to read aloud that which was not written to be read aloud, what actually happened was that actors with the skill and commitment to read scholarly prose illuminated exactly what that prose was about. The Making is about words, about hearing the words of those with high ideals who thought that their words would change society but were met with the response of starvation, imprisonment and, for some, the scaffold. By the end of the day the ‘poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott’ were successfully rescued ‘from the enormous condescension of history’.

The programme itself, put together with a wonderful sense of balance, celebrated the word in all manifestations. It was a testament to the power of the word that few people left early. When a less interesting contribution came along (and there were some) there existed the reassurance that what came next would be different.  The readings did not simply occupy the space between the personal stories and the academic readings they formed the glue: they gave the day cohesion.  They also reminded the audience that E.P. Thompson wrote with a profound respect for the intellect and the words of working people.  It is that respect which makes the book readable.

The People’s History Museum and the Working Class Movement Library clearly put substantial effort into the organisation of this day.  It even finished on time, which is an achievement in itself. But, more importantly, the programme was a reflection of the purpose of both establishments.  The galleries and the archives record the stories and struggles of working class people and the centrality of the book, the speech and the pamphlet is shown in their collections of images, voices and, above all, words.  E.P. Thompson rightly celebrated the self-taught and showed in The Making the extent to which those seen as ‘ignorant’ were capable of sustained and sophisticated argument.  If they could not read, then newspapers and pamphlets could be read aloud and argued about.  The celebration of words that took place to celebrate The Making is a reminder that there are still many stories to be uncovered and many campaigns to be run.  The legacy of this day, and of The Making of the English Working Class itself, is to get out there and make those words work.

DW Hargreaves, WCML volunteer and attendee at the conference

[WCML would like to thank Craig Horner from the People's History Museum for the huge amount of energy he put in to make this event such a success]

Invisible Histories update

We’re at an exciting point in the Invisible Histories project (I say that, but pretty much every day on the project is exciting and fun!). We’ve completed twenty interviews with people who used to work at our three former workplaces:

• Agecroft Colliery
• Ward & Goldstone’s factory
• Richard Haworth’s mill

While we’re still happy to have more people come in and be recorded, we’re also moving into a new stage of the project. Some of the wonderful volunteer team are listening through all the interviews, selecting the extracts that appeal to them, whether as a good piece of social history or description of workplace conditions, or where there are special memories of workplace friends or practical jokes at work. Some of our volunteers have braved the basics of audio editing, discovering that it’s not actually scary (and not really much more complicated than copying and pasting in Word!).

We’ll soon begin choosing which interviews we are going to fully or partly transcribe too, so plenty of work for the team to get their teeth into.

Meanwhile, we’re beginning our collaboration with Buile Hill Visual Arts College (www.builehillschool.co.uk) which will see a group of Year 9 students work with a creative practitioner, a musician and us to create a podcast inspired by Ewan McColl’s 1950s Radio Ballads (www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/radioballads/original). The students will be using the interviews, and especially the selected extracts, as original historical source material to help them understand the work and social situation in Salford and how it’s changed, as well as creating music and song to link themed extracts together. The students will also be helping the volunteers and me with what goes in the end-of-project exhibition.

We’re currently advertising for the freelancers to support this part of the project. Follow these links to find out more (and pass them on to anyone you think will be interested):

Creative Practitioner – https://www.dropbox.com/s/5efq6fa8jrzszgf/freelance-creative-practitioner.docx

Musician - https://www.dropbox.com/s/vojjzou6bevr53e/freelance-musician.docx

Neil Dymond-Green, Project Learning Coordinator, Invisible Histories Project

A lovely donation of lovely union membership cards

Yesterday we received a parcel of union membership cards for a Mr Leonard Roe who joined the London Society of Compositors in August 1912, and left the National Graphical Association in 1969 presumably on his retirement.

There are cards for 1912-1955 for the London Society of Compositors, cards for 1956-1966 for the London Typographical Society and cards for 1967-1969 for the National Graphical Association – 57 years worth in all.

As you would expect from a typographical/graphical trade union the cards are quite distinctive, although the National Graphical Association cards are a bit plain – as you can see below.

We particularly liked the art deco ones from the 1930s.

A big thank you goes to Michael Wood who donated the cards to us.

From AASA Viewpoint to Zip – a journey through one library’s periodical collection

Another day, another major project completed! I have just finished my ‘journey’ through our short run periodicals.

As you may know the library gets donations of materials from all sorts of places and people and amongst those donations are a variety of magazines and journals. In general we don’t get a full set, but only a few copies of each title – and these are our short run periodicals.

And I have just finished cataloguing them – all 3000 of them. Prior to this they were tucked away in filing cabinets, with only an incomplete spreadsheet to let us know what we had. Now they are in boxes with relevant subjects or organisations.

One result of this is that we have discovered we have 3 boxes of Anarchist periodicals, and 7 boxes of periodicals about Socialism. We have also added substantially to our collections of Irish and Labour Party periodicals.

I have catalogued items from trade unions, political parties, pressure groups, community groups as well as general political and social issue magazines, most deadly serious, but some are funny, such as The Cunningham Amendment, published by the East Pennine Anarcrisps – but if you want to see how funny it is you’ll have to come and visit us – or search our catalogue at to find out more (and yes, it is held together with elastic bands and lolly sticks).

Jane
Librarian