ORGAfl OF THE \C HIST BLACK CROSS VOL 5 NO 5 1978 20P IRIS MILLS- RONAN BENNETT FIENDISH ANARCHIST , s CK HO OR rgan of the Anarchist Black Cross Published by Black Flag Group. STATE OF PLAY to 15th June 1978 GUY FAWKES POSTERS Subs. £4.00 per 12 issues (home). ' - ->' .; ^ g. Printing & We are selling them at 30p including Canada/Australia/N.Z. (airmail) £7.25, production 159.00 post and packing, from Mushroom, I U.S.A.J14.50. Postage 73.40 232. 40 Heathcote Street, Nottingham. (They'll Black Flag, Over The Water, Sanday, Sales & subs to be selling at about 25p over the counter). Orkney KW17 2BL. 15th June 78 Cheques and P.O.S should be made out to Printed by Anarchy Collective. from last a/c 94. 91 "The Teapot Club" (Ithat's right). Proceeds from All the money we derive from them, NEW Adress: 37A Grosvenor Avenue armed robberies 0. 00 London N5. Donations * 90. 56 185.47 will be diverted to "worthy" projects. Teleohone(when re-connected) 01-359-4794. Loss on last issue 46.93 (Bulk orders are at other rates yet to be (as before). Deficit outstanding 1477.02 worked out.) All other adresses are fictious1. 1523. 95 The Problems We're Facing. •Donations: Durham A. McQ. £2.50; Black Flag's "splendidly erratic" rate of Cumberland A.H. £1.50; US Picnic SRAF appearance has stepped up somewhat ($60)£31.50; Picnic Sacramento Italian Anarchists, ($50)£26.56; Hoy R.McG.£2.00 this year. This is only the fourth issue London R.M. £1.50; Birmingham Anarchists to appear since the New Year, (don't £ 1 5; London Printworkers meeting £10, think we just missed out sending your total £90.56. j -i^' copy). For a paper that aspires to be Not too bad an effort but wake up monthly, or at least bi-monthly, this is the back of the class please! Most of our bad. income isn't in anyway at the time of it then neither are some of our bills. Wi The reason is need to push this deficit down not put out an economic point of view, we cut our saucer of milk for it each night. It's the cash own throat when we invite people to for the Flags sold that would help us out of contribute to help for prisoners - when trouble. we think they're doing so, we never cut GUY •rtHMMMFAWKEm S off sending the paper (in fact we seldom Prisoners/ Resistance/ Mutual Aid Fund The only person do stop sending until we're finally In hand £26.02. Donations: Cosham (Hants) S.B.£4; Guam S.S. £7.48; Durham A. McQ to enter Parliament convinced there's no one at the address £1.50; Hoy R.McG. £5; = £17.98, total £44. to receive it - which is a habit we ought Disbursed: £10 prisoners; £28 'Apoyo Mutuo with honest intentions to get out of). Result is we don't get (Mutual Aid). enough subscriptions to keep us going; Always does quite well - especially our two regulars - bearing in mind the number the fact is if we got paid for every copy of people sending direct to addresses given that goes out or otherwise 'sold' we them (we can still do this, though there are ANARCHO-QUIZ would be making the paper pay for fewer in Spanish prisons). Don't forget our itself. Mutual Aid project for Spain as previously 1. Why, for over a century, was the outlined. Spanish right-wing called 'The Persians'? As it is we use it to subsidise our (Our fund has now reached a total of £100 Black Cross work which (especially by and we will report in our next issue on the 2. What have Mozart, Bach, Schubert and way of postage) costs, if you'll pardon first steps taken to implement our project). - to a lesser extent — Beethoven in the expression, a bomb! common, indicating the degree of appre- The result of coming out erratically ciation in which their patrons presumably is that we're inhibited from writing fuck, aggro, MiiJwall, fuck, aggro, Millwall held them? about various struggles, especially fuck, aggro, Millwall, fuck, aggro, Millwall. 3. What innovation did William of industrial, as they get totally outdated Orange bring to England which proved by the time the paper appears. But so popular that its attempted curtailment we don't get enough feedback by way of later almost caused rebellion? information about such struggles and 4. What major blow for freedom was we look to our readers to remedy this. struck, in the reign of Queen Anne, by We have no paid staff or paid contributors the totally forgotten Mrs. Foxby of (fortunately; on an NUJ basis it would Maidstone, Kent? need a dozen full-time editorial people to 5. Which contemporary Scotsman has bring out the paper we assemble in our influenced anarchism the most - though spare time - to say nothing of the always puzzled by being called one? production side). 6. Which American, though despised by Black Flag isn't directly affected by many as a cowardly informer upon his the problems of the Review which has a friends, is linked affectionately by people separate existence. Most of the work who know him only from his work with of ihe Flag, bar the typesetting, is done his faithful tribute to the heroic revolu- in London — most of the work of the tionary struggle in Mexico? Review is done in Orkney. "Big deal, now he can say National Front' (answers on page 2 3. VII ir With the success of State communism in chance aJ tne *****/ m^wum***-**** organisations formed to fight for inde- Russia and social-democracy elsewhere - Statist ideas vanish. Even more typical pendence in and from those industries a success which benefitted only the parties was that brief night of roses when the nave become incorporated in the State. concerned and in no way extended to Portuguese dictatorship fell; and a few On the other hand, as Universal Parent, their achievements - anarchism got pushed old anarchists came our with banners the State hands out, liberally or otherwise out of the international working class carefully stored away in attics since the as it chooses, such huge patronage, dis-. movement. It battled on between the 1920s .. and set off on a march to find penses "wlefare" (fiom university grants wars before its final suppression by them greeted and followed by hundreds to unemployment pay) that it is not Statism as an important factor in the class and even thousands. impossible to try to drop out of the rat struggle but always regarded as anachron- The odl battles between Marxism or race at the State's expense — or at least, istic. Marxist-Leninism on the one hand and to believe one has done so, and try to Anarchism on the other left Marxism ignore it as much as possible; or to live In Spain 1936 there was a brief inter- stronger than ever, sustained not only in as free lives as one can out of working lude — an Indian summer of libertarian the State communist countries with all hours. Such a form of liberalism - it is achievement in the form of workers' the violence of criminal Statism, but by widely felt - could survive even the control - before the forces of repression schools of philosophy churning out theses in socialist-capitalist state, even the totalitar- closed in. all countries of the world - if only to show ianism of today. By the time the Second World War that the alternative to capitalism or even Increasingly social attitudes are had ended, not only anarchism had been fascism was the domination of the anarchistic, or borrow heavily from classic pushed out of the organised working class Communist Party. At the same time the anarchist views; so much so that it has movement — so far as any question of forces against freedom are stronger than been possible for a quasi-anarchism to participation or control over their own ever. Criminal Statism dares to represent develop which says that it is enough to organisations was concerned, so had the anarchism as anti-social; to defend its decide how we spend our social time; that working class. The ternu^JEJpxocracy" use of nuclear terror by counter-allega- our private lives are what count, and so finally lost its meaning: one was expected tions about "criminal terrorism" - i ong as we have balanced and healthy to equate democracy with tolerance and if anyone could be as criminal < ttitudes towards sexual and personal be grateful that its government abstained terrorist as theyr relationships, towards children and from repression. Democracy began to imply The term "terrorist", like many other education, and a libertarian way of spend- a dictatorship that did not hit you on the words, has changed its meaning. Once it ing our leisure, it does not really matter head: if the State did not act like a meant anyone using individual terror as so much about changing the economic major criminal, if it moreoever allowed the only defence against mass terror by system or destroying the conception of its dictators to go through the farce of the rulers against the ruled and was an the State, and maybe (with a hint of sour being "chosen" electorally - and even to acceptable term. grapes) it would be a bit authoritarian to have their personnel altered at the whim anyone fighting a war by means not ,lo this anyway .... It may yet prove of the electorate - that was as much as, officially or legally recognised and (since that these views of quasi-anarchism which it was felt, we were entitled to expect to the criminal Statist it is inconceivable have become extremely popularised nowadyas.