A Day Mournful and Overcast
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This pamphlet is reprinted, not just because it exposes some of the manipulations of the Stalinists and the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War, and not because anarchists in general are “obsessed with Spain” as some “communists” (who would rather the history of the Spanish Revolution was forgotten) would have it, but also because it comes direct from the struggle for a better world. Such personal accounts, written in the heat of the class war, are all too few. They bring the “Great Events” of history, like war and rev- olution, back to the reality of our daily experiences fighting against capitalism in all its forms. This history goes all too often unrecord- ed. The article records, from the point of view of an ex-prisoner, the hierarchies of the state institutions that keep us “in our places”, and how they are kept alive in our own lives, destroying people’s souls. But as the anonymous “uncontrollable” says, the power of love and comradeship and the belief in the struggle for a better life is the strongest force against hierarchy and oppression. The bosses system tries to isolate us from each other, break our spirits, keep us divided. Its up to us to make the links that will defeat the bosses, their class system and their prisons forever. FRONT COVER: Worker! Your entry into the Iron Column strengthens the revolution Zabalaza Books “Knowledge is the Key to be Free” Post: Postnet Suite 116, Private Bag X42, Braamfontein, 2017, Johannesburg, South Africa E-Mail: [email protected] Website: www.zabalaza.net/zababooks About the Iron Column M Page 16 workers’ centre in Vilanesa. The farmers responded with dignity to the Assault Guards’ brutality with arms equal to those which had attacked them, and the whole region of the river roused itself against those in uniform [i.e., the government troops]. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of the confederal ministers and committees, the conflict would have had grave repercussions in the region and along the fronts. The “Iron Column,” whose preoccupation with the problems of the rearguard we have examined in earlier chapters, threatened with a strong voice the public forces and the government. A Day Mournful and Overcast... 1936 - The ‘People in Arms’ won the revolution by an “uncontrollable” from the Iron Column. 1939 - The ‘People’s Army’ lost the war These texts were downloaded from the Struggle site www.struggle.ws About the Iron Column M Page 15 v. 1, p. 251 With respect to public order, the revolution has created [attitudes?] towards the direc- tors of each political group, security force, inspection and civil patrol, and the rear- guard. These spontaneous organs [of the revolution] are more than enough to main- tain the call to public order. However, the state has believed it prudent to not dis- solve any of these armed groups, not even the ill-fated civil guard, now called the “National Republican Guard.” With this body the government maintains, alongside “NOSOSTROS”, the daily newspaper of the Iron Column in the militias and the armed citizens, the Investigation & Surveillance Corps, the Valencia, printed this article in March 1937, on the eve of the Assault Guards, and the police. Among the militias of the rearguard there are, then, column’s militarisation. In 1961 it was resurrected by Burnett five rearguard brigades, four of which belong to the government, in spite of the need Bolloten in a chapter devoted to the column in his book, The of men and war materials at the front. The “Iron Column” declared violently against Grand Camouflage. About one third of the present text this tragic absurdity in the middle of October 1936. appeared there in translation. The remaining bulk of the article was dredged up only in 1979, in a complete bilingual edition published by “CHAMP LIBRE”. An Italian translation appeared v. 2, p. 25 2 years later. As far we know there was at least one version in English, which was reprinted in 1987 by ‘News From The 22nd of March [1937?], in full celebration of the victory at Brihuega, a general Everywhere’. This is the text we have used. Throughout the assembly of the “Iron Column,” whose anarchist orthodoxy is well know to us, was text references to “man” and “men” have been left as they were held in a Valencia theatre. The said assembly publicly resolved to militarise the “Iron in the 1937 original, although the Iron Column like many other Column,” “with the object,” they said, “of not withdrawing from the struggle that is workers militias in Spain at the time was made up of fighters of being held against fascism.” The same assembly arranged to place effective use of both sexes. The word ‘penitentiary’ has been altered to ‘prison’, funds in the hands the column. I have here the accounting: 100,000 pesetas ear- which is easier to spell. marked for the creation and support of rationalist schools; another 100,000 pesetas London Anarchist Black Cross, more to the CNT field hospitals; 100,000 pesetas more to support the defence in the 1993 international trials against anarchists; 200,000 pesetas for the purchase of supplies for the defenders of Madrid; and one million pesetas for anarchist propaganda: a) the creation of a publishing house, b) the creation of a library, c) aid to the international anarchist press. THIS PAMPHLET IS DEDICATED TO “UNCONTROLLABLES” EVERYWHERE. v. 2, p. 55 A decree of the minister of commerce, by which the government came to seize all foreign exports, also aiming to control foreign money, aroused the suspicions of the collectivists. As a result there were a series of frictions and also resistance with respect to the official arrangements. As it is severe in these cases, the government didn’t find any other recourse than to respond to the rebellious with the argument of public force [i.e., Republican forces]. Even the presence of this force produced nerv- ousness, which degenerated into a bloody fight. Even keeping in mind the alleged intervention of provocative elements, what is certain is that violent aggression was certainly produced on the side of the government forces who then occupied the About the Iron Column M Page 14 final. With all our men, with all our energy, with all our enthusiasm, we will fight until this vile fascism is squashed forever. We fight to achieve the SOCIAL REVOLU- TION. We are marching towards anarchism. For this, now and later, we will defend anything that tends towards living with more liberty, breaking the yokes that would oppress us, destroying the vestiges of the past. We say to all workers, revolutionaries, and anarchists: at the front and in the rear, wherever you are, fight against the enemies of your liberties, destroy fascism. And also stop, by the fruits of your endeavours, the return of a dictatorial regime that would be the continuation, with all its vices and defects, of all those things that we’ve been trying to make disappear. Now with arms and later with the tools of labour, learn to live without tyrants, and develop yourselves along the only road to liberty. Introduction This is the feeling of the “Iron Column” which we expose clearly and plainly. This text was written by a member of the Iron Column, a revolutionary militia active in the Spanish Civil War. It was written in response to the impending militari- Brothers [Companeros], death to fascism! sation of the militias by the Republican government. This meant their reorganisation along the lines of a regular army, with all the hierarchies of rank and decision-mak- Long live the social revolution! Viva la Anarquia! ing that this entailed. Militarisation was one of the key elements in the Stalinist con- solidation of power over the working class and against the revolution. They were able to achieve this because of the success of the Republicans’ anti-fascist ideolo- gy, which persuaded many workers to fight for the State in its democratic form against the potential ‘fascist’ State, and to abandon the struggle for revolution. Stalinist Russia wanted power in Spain in order to pursue its long-term foreign poli- cy objectives. Ultimately Stalin was more willing to concede a victory to fascism than to revolution. This can be seen throughout the attempts by Spanish workers, espe- cially in Catalonia, to seize control and collectivise land and industry, which the gov- ernment fiercely repressed, and in the events of Barcelona in May 1937, when gov- ernment troops attacked the armed workers militias in control of much of the city. The defeat of the Spanish revolution and the victory of Franco showed - as every uprising, revolution, and working class movement since has shown - that the state is our enemy, whatever political colours it wears. A Day Mournful and Overcast... I am an escaped convict from San Miguel de los Reyes, that sinister prison, which the monarchy set up in order to bury alive those who, because they weren’t cowards, would never submit to the infamous laws dictated by the powerful against the oppressed. I was taken there, like so many others, to wipe out an offence, name- ly for revolting against the humiliations to which an entire village had been subject- ed. In short for killing a political boss. I was young and still am young, because I entered the prison when I was twen- ty-three and was released, thanks to the anarchist comrades who opened the gates, when I was thirty-four. For eleven years I was subjected to the torment of not being A Day Mournful and Overcast... M Page 4 About the Iron Column M Page 13 a man, of being merely a thing, a number! 3.