Workers Solidarity Movement |  |
Make a search of all the history books you can obtain. You willfind little, if any, mention of Captain Jack White after 1914. It isas if the man who had proposed the formation of the Irish CitizenArmy had literally disappeared from the face of the earth when theDublin Lockout came to an end. In fact he lived on and remainedactive in the socialist movement until 1940. When James Connolly wassentenced to death it was White who rushed to South Wales and triedto bring the miners out on strike in protest. For that he servedthree months imprisonment. In England he worked for a time withSylvia Pankhurst's Workers Socialist Federation, and during theGeneral Strike of 1926 he wanted to organise a Citizen Army toprotect the picket lines as he had done in Dublin.
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War saw White enlist with theIrish International Brigadiers who went to fight fascism. A comradeof his from the 1930's, Albert Meltzer, described White's experience"He was thrilled with the collectivisation in Spain, and also withthe volunteer militias. He learned with amazement that this was thework of the Anarchists. In addition to his work with the Irishbrigade at the front, he showed Spanish volunteer militia how to usefirearms, and also trained women in the villages on the way toSaragossa in the use of small arms for defence. What, however, hecould not stomach was the fact that the Irish, like the rest of theInternational Brigade, were being increasingly manipulated by theCommunist Party. He had never accepted the CP; he had just not seenan alternative. Now he saw an alternative".
White offered his services to the CNT, giving up his InternationalBrigade membership. The CNT did not need foreign volunteers as theyhad enough support at that time but they did need arms. They neededpeople working for them outside Spain. He was asked to work for theCNT in London, to raise badly needed funds and solidarity. During histime in Spain he became a convinced Anarchist and shortly afterwardswrote a pamphlet simply entitled The Meaning of Anarchism.
That this is new information to the reader indicates how historycan be falsified or even have whole episodes completely written outof the history books. Much has been written to mark the 50thanniversary to the Spanish Civil War but the contribution of theAnarchists has been either totally ignored or reduced to a fewfootnotes which were often composed of blatant lies or generalisedslander referring to 'wreckers'. To set the record straight thispamphlet was produced. It is not a history of the Civil War, thatwould require many hundreds of pages to do justice to the subject. Itis an uncovering of the "hidden history" of the Anarchistparticipation in Spain's anti-fascist struggle.
It has not been written because of some academic interest butbecause Anarchism is still as relevant now as it was fifty years ago.We have seen the results of social democracy and it's Labour Parties,we have seen what the Stalinists have done in Russia, China, Albaniaand their satellites, we have seen how their left critics in theTrotskyist movement have been unable to come to grips with the realproblem. And that real problem is the authoritarian idea that theworld can be changed over the heads of the workers. It can, but itwon't be much better.
Only Anarchism with its concept 'of socialism based on individualfreedom and the power of workers' councils stands apart from allthis. That is why, despite four decades of repression, the CNTreappeared as a real union after the death of Franco. That is why agroup of Irish workers seeking a genuine socialism formed the WorkersSolidarity Movement in 1984. We believe that Anarchism is not justanother choice for those who want a better world, the history of allother `left' movements shows that Anarchism is a necessity.
1st published 1986
2nd edition 1993
e-mail addition 1994
HTML Markup 1995
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