3 25 420 https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/864861b6ebd0471b25a0c10578872317.jpg 8b44a5f3c7224dcb1219b8406078b3b2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Albert Meltzer as a child Description An account of the resource "My old mate, Albert (Meltzer) in his Boys' Brigade uniform in Tottenham c. 1931-32 (and the Latymer School blazer). Fondly remembered!" Stuart Christie, July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1931-32 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Albert Meltzer Anarchism London Tottenham https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/22007cc1c84083c8d7beb1ddb378ca30.jpg 9a4926e8cf02a84b6bb8b253f40f7c70 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Stuart Christie, Miguel García, and Albert Meltzer in London Description An account of the resource "123 Upper Tollington Park, Finsbury Park, London (early 1970s?): this seems to be the only photo of Albert Meltzer, Miguel Garcia and yours truly. I've an idea it was a police surveillance photo, clearly there were no David Baileys among them!" Stuart adds "As you say, Dave, you can’t actually see it’s Miguel. But believe me it is (you can also tell from his signature Alpargatas – ‘Carabanchel Nikes!’). It must have been among the police photographs in the AB trial depositions. There were books and books of them, mostly scenes of crime/forensic pics, but also a few surveillance photos among them" Stuart Christie, July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Late 1970s Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Albert Meltzer Anarchism London Miguel Garcia Stuart Christie Surveillance https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/09cd2d82da0e51588c05cd60f900292e.jpg 86ab4feec5d72fcf1d82dcc0eab208fe Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Albert Meltzer Tea Party Description An account of the resource "123 Tollington Park, London (late ‘60s?): one of Albert Meltzer’s memorable tea parties with many of his old friends, including: left Anne Blume’, the smiling lady on the left, the partner of Ted Kavanagh, publisher of Cuddons’ Cosmoplitan Review (and co-owner with Albert of the Wooden Shoe Bookshop). Apart from being a Dada aficionado, Anna also earned a crust for a time as a lady’s maid in a Soho brothel; Albert is directly behind her (you can just see his spectacles) and the lady laughing heartily to his left is Bronia McDonald who wrote and published mimeographed erotica for 10 shillings a page (this was, after all, the 1950s and early 1960s) another sideline was distributing vintage 8mm and 16mm ‘stag’ porn’. Bronia’s partner was Desmond (‘Des’) McDonald, a professional drama busker who entertained West End Theatre queues with his stentorian Shakespeare monologues and the good-humoured banter of a snake oil salesman. Mac and Bronia lived in St Stephen’s Gardens in Notting Hill and had been active in the local campaign against West London racketeer Peter Rachman. To Bronia’s left, standing with the ubiquitous fag in his hand, is Albert’s friend and fellow printworker, Joe Thomas, a lifelong trade union activist and committed supporter of the Anton Pannekoek inspired Movement for Workers’ Councils http://www.revolutionaryhistory.co.uk/.../obituaries/joe.htm Unfortunately I can’t for the life of me remember the names of the man and woman in the background …" Stuart Christie, July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Late 1960s/early 70s Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> 1960s Albert Meltzer Anarchism London https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/b3aeeaa788a7b1004bb2bc7860c8498d.jpg ea2d0b377fcb608c56a85fccd712318c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brenda Christie, Hungarian anarchist John Rety and Dave Coull Description An account of the resource "123 Tollington Park, London: I believe this was taken at the same soirée: Brenda Earl, John Rety <a class="oajrlxb2 g5ia77u1 qu0x051f esr5mh6w e9989ue4 r7d6kgcz rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 nc684nl6 p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of lzcic4wl gpro0wi8 py34i1dx" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/7347759/John-Rety.html?fbclid=IwAR1aqM0axHHsjKVSQwzJmdGLTxJgK5oBiwuKeZBV09rIpJOiGPWAprvuuUU" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/.../boo.../7347759/John-Rety.html</a> and his partner Susan Johns (unfortunately badly overexposed) and, in profile, a young Dave Coull <a class="oajrlxb2 g5ia77u1 qu0x051f esr5mh6w e9989ue4 r7d6kgcz rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 nc684nl6 p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of lzcic4wl gpro0wi8 py34i1dx" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-?fbclid=IwAR1ew86cR8mFdAq7G4O1xlsand_WZXbRUtR3jQ7d5IQEmQR0qkS70SrW0lE" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/.../culture-obituaries/books-</a> " Stuart Christie, July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Anarchism Brenda Christie Johny Rety https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/69fbdf1cd4e05d08cf3a3de9d854eb82.jpg e6a620d146a0ea307dd0fac9ba2f4838 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer Description An account of the resource "Lewisham, London (early 1980s). a cheery Albert (modelling his Sanday knitters jersey) and I on the balcony of his Lewisham high-rise. Just received it from a dear NYer friend and comrade — Hadn't seen this one before." Stuart Christie, July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Albert Meltzer Anarchism London Stuart Christie https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/b6110b11c3cbebfcb3d2959f9ef94363.jpg b65bd5eb92a01eff19f52c75bd83b620 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Spanish anarchist Federico ‘Fede’ Arcos and Albert Meltzer in front of the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument Description An account of the resource "Remembering <a href="https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/395-winter-2016-50th-anniversary/remembering-federico-arcos/">Federico ‘Fede’ Arcos</a> (l) (July 18, 1920-May 23, 2015 — with Albert Meltzer at the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument, The Forest Home Cemetery, Chicago, 1993). ‘Fede’ was one of the principal financial mainstays of Cienfuegos Press, Refract Publications and ChristieBooks from the early 1970s until his death last summer, and it was primarily through him we were able to publish José Peirats’s 3-volume history of the CNT in English. The last time we met was at Heathrow Airport a few years ago when he was en route to Barcelona, but we spoke regularly by telephone. Sorry not to have been closer during those last difficult months for him. A toast to ‘Fede’ — ¡presente! ¡Salud y Libertad!" Stuart Christie, July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Albert Meltzer Barcelona CNT Spanish anarchism https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/64b592e645493e0fc59dc1f14c6ef6ce.jpg a27d334476aecc9913e704f27c413b93 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Albert Meltzer, Salvador Gurucharri and his wife Luisa, Branwen Christie, Barcelona Description An account of the resource "RIP Salvador Gurucharri Ochoa (Barcelona 1936 — Gerona 14 May 2014): Albert Meltzer, 'Salva', his compañera Luisa and Branwen Christie (Barcelona 1985). 'Salva' was a prime mover in the formation of the clandestine anarchist Defensa Interior (D.I.) in 1962, and was responsible for recruiting me to the organisation in 1964 ... Adios, compañero!" Stuart Christie, July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Albert Meltzer Barcelona Salvador Gurucharri Spanish anarchists https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/de617238f31841d1c7eeb082ba6653c8.jpg 239c7927827b33cf0f804f40d58fc8d2 https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/4284f118716e4c0fb5db7ad6b8e5874f.jpg 0ee9524a3277a8b29fd0a16943b4a740 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Albert Meltzer's Funeral, Lewisham Description An account of the resource "10.30 am, May 24, 1996: A day mournful and overcast — funeral procession of Albert Meltzer (along Lee High Road) from his home in Celestial Gardens to Lewisham Crematorium. The cortege was led by Bill Stack’s ‘Southern Ragga Jazz Band’. " Stuart Christie, July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 24 May, 1996 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org Albert Meltzer Anarchism London https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/8eb39ffbfabcababed18e2cde2f4656a.jpg 82e207c2541274378c80d2dd1d3ef33f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Albert Meltzer's Funeral, Lewisham Crematorium Description An account of the resource "12:00 pm, May 24, 1996: Lewisham Crematorium. Albert’s eulogy was delivered by Black Flag cartoonist and Sidney Street historian Philip Ruff, followed by stand-up comedian Noel James and Marlene Dietrich’s rendition of ‘See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have’ and ‘Buddy Can You Spare a Dime’ movingly sung by David Campbell. Last words were from myself. Albert’s instructions to me (as one of his executors) was that he wanted ‘...to die in dignity, but my passing celebrated with jollity’, and that he wanted a stand-up comedian telling amusing anecdotes (which he did), and the coffin to slide into the incinerator to the sound of Marlene Dietrich. ‘If the booze-up can begin right away, so much the better, and with a bit of luck the crematorium will never be gloomy again. Anyone mourning should be denounced as the representative of a credit card company and thrown out on their ear. Snowballs if in season (tomatoes if not) can be thrown at abyone uttering even worthy cliches like ‘the struggle goes on’ and should anyone of a religious mind offer pieces of abstract consolation they should be prepared to dodge pieces of concrete confirmation.’" Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 24 May, 1996 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Albert Meltzer Anarchism Black Flag https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/5ddef01845519e45b70a6e2e4f2d0eee.jpg e086bd1eb4a2b36713471b5cbf75a350 https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/68ac6c4f2db121d74b2e5b86a8c99766.jpg 20539576402985c0c2b8dc2f61fc20fa https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/fc7cb8638c9882f8c71c2bd32959a37f.jpg 674a5b05d473041a1fa3e360ecd0a979 https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/265f94d424df431354bdda5e8b6a6f8b.jpg 6548b90c5b331accb5dfb1334037ff5a https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/703dbee09bb1129fcaa9337d73e17b41.jpg 87922e6d5c5b37bd045b557e9b7aae47 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Negatives of Miguel García García, Tollington Park Description An account of the resource "I’ve just come across these long unseen negatives of my old friend Miguel García García (1908-1981) in the back garden of 123 Upper Tollington Park, c.1970-71. A CNT veteran of the Spanish Civil War and member of the anti-Francoist ‘Tallion’ urban guerrilla group, Miguel was arrested with 23 comrades in 1949, and sentenced to death in 1952 by a Francoist ‘Council of War’. The sentence was commuted to 30 years, but seven of his comrades were shot by firing squad at Barcelona’s Campo de la Bota; the others received long prison sentences. Miguel, whom I met and befriended in Madrid’s Carabanchel Prison in 1966 (as he describes in his prison memoir ‘Franco’s Prisoner’), was released in 1969 when he came to London to work as International Secretary of the Anarchist Black Cross. He and Albert Meltzer — with whom he shared a flat until he returned to Barcelona in the late 1970s were inseparable comrades and friends, travelling the length and breadth of Britain and Europe promoting the work of the Anarchist Black Cross. In fact it was one of Miguel’s ABC talks in London in 1970 that gave rise to the ‘Angry Brigade’. After Franco’s death, with the financial support of José Martín Artajo Miguel opened the renowned (in anarchist circles) bar ‘La Fragua’ in Barcelona’s calle Cadena, close to where CNT organiser Salvador Segui was murdered by government pistoleros in March 1923. In 1981 Miguel, suffering from advanced tuberculosis, returned to London for treatment. I’m sure he knew he was dying. One evening he rang me in Orkney where I was living and we had a particularly long and poignant conversation about old friends and common memories, which I thought strange at the time. Early next morning I had a phone call from the hospital to say he had passed away in the early hours of the morning. RIP, Miggers!" Stuart Christie, 29 July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970-71 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Black Flag Centro Iberico internationalism Miguel Garcia Spain https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/2ec5160d3497489755a42f25b2c26cf4.jpg 1acb7e77b22519d5a80e4864b170f2aa Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Miguel García García (1908-1981), Plaça Reial, Barri Gòtic, outside the local CNT offices Description An account of the resource "My first meeting with Miguel García García took place in the mid-1960s in the rotunda by the ‘primera’ galeria ( the administration wing) of Madrid’s Carabanchel Prison as he awaited ‘induction’. He was in transit to and from another penitentiary and was about to go into what was known as ‘periodo’ – a fortnight of sanitary isolation, ostensibly to prevent or limit the spread of disease. I was the practice nurse (practicante) for the 5th Gallery, a position that gave me the run of most of the prison and allowed me to liaise with comrades in different wings, especially with isolated transit prisoners or prisoners in solitary confinement. Miguel passed through Carabanchel on a number of occasions over the years, going backwards and forwards between penitentiaries and Yeserias, Spain’s central prison hospital in Madrid. Miguel and I struck up a close relationship, one that was to endure for a decade and a half until his death in December 1981. What particularly impressed me about him on our first meeting was his undoubted strength of character – forged by his experiences in the Resistance as an urban guerrilla and ‘falsificador‘ [forger], and in Franco’s prisons – and the extraordinary quality of his spoken English, a language he had acquired entirely from English-speaking prisoners. No other political prisoners I came across during my three years imprisonment in Franco’s jails had Miguel’s mastery of language, or his skills as a communicator. Our conversations centred on how to expose the repressive nature of the Francoist regime and raise the profile of Franco’s political prisoners in the international media, something I was in a position to do given my relatively privileged position as a foreign political prisoner and the access I had to the outside world through my by then extensive network of friendly functionaries in Carabanchel itself. In 1967, following receipt of a personal pardon from Franco, I was released from prison and, on my return to Great Britain, I became involved with the resuscitated Anarchist Black Cross, an anarchist prisoners’ aid organisation. The focus of our activities was international, but Franco’s prisoners were, naturally, because of my history and the continuing and intensifying repression in Spain, top of our agenda. The case of Miguel García García, one of the Anarchist Black Cross’s most prominent correspondents, was one that we regularly pursued with the international press and through diplomatic channels. Released in 1969, after serving twenty years of a thirty-year sentence (commuted from death), Miguel came to live with me in London. It took him a little time to acclimatise to the profound social and technological changes that had taken place in the world since his arrest as a young man in the Barcelona of 1949, changes that were even more profound in the ‘tolerant’ and ‘permissive’ London society of 1969. In fact, so great was the trauma that he literally was unable to speak for some months. The shock of his release had triggered a paralysis in some of the muscles in his throat, and, through Octavio Alberola then living under effective house arrest in Liege, we arranged for him to see a consultant in Belgium about his condition. The time with Octavio was well-spent and brought him up-to-date with what was happening within the European movement and the role of the International Revolutionary Solidarity Movement, which operated under the banner of the Grupo Primero de Mayo, a continuation of the clandestine anarchist Defensa Interior (DI), which had been tasked with the assassination of Franco. The First of May Group had recently emerged from the sabotaged (by Germinal Esgleas and Vicente Llansola) ruins of Defensa Interior (DI) as an international, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist revolutionary organisation, structured to carry out spectacular direct actions. It took its name from the first operation carried out on 1 May 1966 when members of the group kidnapped the ecclesiastic adviser to the Spanish Embassy to the Vatican, Monsignor Marcos Ussia. Soon the group began taking in a much broader area of attack targeting, in particular, the US and European governments for their complicity in the imperialist war in Vietnam. BACK IN London, mainly with the moral and financial support of comrade Albert Meltzer, my co-editor of Black Flag and the driving force behind the revived Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), Miguel entered into a dynamic new phase of his life as the International Secretary of the ABC and a pivotal figure in the libertarian resistance to the Franco regime. With Albert he embarked on lengthy speaking tours of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, West and East Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark and Italy, talking to a new generation of radicalised young Europeans about anarchism, international solidarity and, of course, the need to confront tyranny with practical cooperation and direct action. It could be said that the result of one of Miguel’s early talks – in a crowded meeting room at the offices of Freedom Press in London’s Whitechapel High Street in February 1970, shortly after his arrival in Britain – was to give rise to the so-called Angry Brigade, Britain’s first urban guerrilla group. Miguel’s voice was still weak so I had to do much of the talking for him, but as the evening wore on and the story of his adventures and deprivations at the hands of the Francoist authorities unfolded, that and the fact that his revolutionary spirit and determination remained clearly undiminished, it was clear he had made a deep emotional impression on the fifty or so young people in the audience. Here, in front of them, in person, was someone who had been in direct confrontation with a fascist state, who had been totally involved in resistance struggles, and who had paid a heavy penalty. Nor was it a purely historical struggle. Franco remained in power and a new internationally coordinated anarchist action group, the First of May Group, was carrying on that struggle. At Freedom Press that February night in 1970, the significance, the importance of the First of May Group, and the tradition it – and Miguel – sprang from, was not lost on the people crammed into the small room to hear Miguel García’s story. Among those present were some of the core activists later convicted in the historic ‘Angry Brigade’ trial: John Barker, Hilary Creek, Jim Greenfield and Anna Mendelson. Miguel’s flat in Upper Tollington Park, near North London’s Finsbury Park, soon drew visiting anarchists from all over the world. It also began to attract police attention once Miguel launched (with Albert’s help) the Centro Ibérico and International Libertarian Centre in London, a cosmopolitan venue that became a magnet for anarchists everywhere; it had been many years since there was such a thing as an international anarchist club in London, and its success was entirely due to Miguel’s powerful personality. In 1971 the Centro Ibérico moved to a large basement in Haverstock Hill to which came many extraordinary people, including survivors from innumerable political upheavals. Visitors included the Spanish militant and historian José Peirats and Emilienne Durruti, partner of Buenaventura Durruti. Another regular at the Centro Ibérico was ETA leader Pedro Ignacio Pérez Beotegui, also known as ‘Wilson’, who was involved in the planning of the December 1973 assassination of Franco’s protégé and deputy, prime Minister Carrero Blanco. The new Centro was entirely Miguel’s creation and he spent his whole time nurturing it, cutting himself off from any paid employment, even though he was well past what should have been retiring age anyway. Through Albert, however, he did extract a small pension from the British government. Phil Ruff, the Black Flag cartoonist who shared Miguel’s Upper Tollington Park flat after Albert moved to Lewisham, remembers accompanying Miguel on endless trips from Finsbury Park to Haverstock Hill, almost every night throughout the 1970s, to open up the Centro so that someone would be there if anyone dropped in. Often it was just Phil and Miguel looking at the paint peel off the walls and having a drink, but if someone did drop by Miguel would immediately make them welcome, cook up a paella, and start weaving his magic. He was without doubt a great communicator and would have made a wonderful hostage negotiator. Everybody left the Centro feeling they were Miguel’s best friend, and ready to slay dragons. He had a way of making you think that. He turned the basement into an internationally known place to go if you needed help in London; somewhere to find a welcome, food, a bed for the night, or a place to squat. He also brought people together from all over the world, becoming the birthplace for many affinity groups that were active in Central and South America, and Europe. In 1970-71 Albert was working in Fleet Street as a telephone reporter/copy-taker for The Daily Sketch, a right-wing British national tabloid newspaper, and after much discussion and argument – and believe me Miguel could be extremely argumentative and pugnacious – Albert finally convinced Miguel to write his memoirs. And so it was that the typescript of what was to become Franco’s Prisoner was hammered out between Miguel and Albert and typed up in a disused back room of one of Britain’s foremost Conservative populist newspapers – and paid for on the time of Associated Newspapers. The book, Franco’s Prisoner, was published in 1972 by the Rupert Hart-Davis publishing house, which had originally commissioned my book The Christie File, but reneged on the contract at the last moment because of the allegedly contentious nature of the material. As well as providing wide-ranging advice from abortion to legal aid to squatting, Miguel played a key role in many of the international defence campaigns run by the International Anarchist Black Cross at the time, including those of Julian Millan Hernandez and Salvador Puig Antich in Spain, and Noel and Marie Murray, two members of the Dublin Anarchist Group sentenced to death in Ireland for their alleged part in killing an off-duty Garda officer during a bank robbery in Dublin, in 1975. Salvador Puig Antich had been a regular visitor who accompanied Albert and Miguel on some of their speaking tours around Britain. Returning to France in August 1973 to take part in a conference of young activists to set up the anarchist defence group known as the MIL (Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación), Salvador Puig Antichwas involved a series of spectacular bank expropriations across Catalonia and Southern France. In September 1973, however, Puig Antich walked into a police ambush in Barcelona’s Calle Gerona in which he was wounded and a Francoist policeman was shot dead. Puig Antich, 25, was garrotted in Barcelona’s Modelo prison on 2 March 1974. After the military coup in Argentina on 24 March 1976, Miguel persuaded a lot of people to ‘lose’ their passports so that comrades fleeing to escape the Junta could adopt a temporary identity change. In June 1976 he installed a printing press in the basement at Upper Tollington Park, on which he printed a number of anarchist books in Spanish, including Anarquismo y Lucha de Clases (the Spanish translation of Floodgates of Anarchy, written by Albert Meltzer and myself) that he distributed in Spain. As well as printing identity documents, he also got together a group of young Spanish comrades in London to produce their own anarchist paper Colectivo Anarquista. In the late 1970s Miguel returned to his native Barcelona where, funded by the Spanish writer and former diplomat Jose Martin-Artajo, anarchistson of Franco’s foreign minister Alberto Martin-Artajo, he fulfilled one of his life’s ambitions – to open his own bar. La Fragua, a former forge at No 15 Carrer de la Cadena in Barcelona’s Raval District – not far from where pistoleros working for the Catalan employers’ organisation gunned down the noted CNT leader Salvador Segui and his friend Frances Comes in 1923 – opened for business in 1979. As with the Centro Ibérico, La Fragua became a Mecca for anarchists and libertarians from all over the world, and an important meeting place for the anarchist activist groups of the so-called ‘Apache sector’ centred around Luis Andres Edo in Barcelona. Miguel’s humanity was the most characteristic thing about him, that and his tenacity and ability to persevere and survive despite all odds. He was, without doubt, a pretty significant figure to the generation radicalised in the late 1960s and 1970s. Miguel had gone to prison fighting - and that was how he came out. He was untouched by the years of squabbling and in-fighting that characterised the life of the Spanish Libertarian Movement in exile. Miguel’s answer for any dire situation was always the same – ‘we must DO something!” His work with the Black Cross – providing practical aid to libertarian prisoners all over the world and making solidarity an effective springboard to militant action – influenced a new generation of anarchists not just in Spain but in many other parts of the world including Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and West Germany. I was living on the northern island of Sanday, in Orkney, for much of the time Miguel was in Barcelona, but we met whenever we could. In 1980, Brenda, my partner, went to work with him at La Fragua for six months, at his invitation, to help improve the bar’s menu. Miguel’s culinary skills, acquired in Franco’s prisons during times of great austerity, left much to be desired! It was on Sanday, one December evening in 1981, that I received an unexpected telephone call from Miguel who was back in London, in a nursing home, being treated for advanced TB. It was nice to hear from him and we chatted about this and that, but nothing in particular, and for that reason alone it was strange. Usually, when Miguel rang it was to arrange to do something or get something done. But on this occasion it was simply to talk, nothing else. He also spoke with Brenda, again about nothing in particular, and she promised to write him one of her long chatty letters the following day, which she did. Unfortunately, Miguel never received it. He died in the early hours of the following morning. Miguel García García’s life is a good pointer to what anarchism is in practice. Not a theory handed down by ‘men of ideas’, nor an ideological strategy, but the self-activity of ordinary people taking action in any way they can, in equality with others, to free up the social relationships that constitute our lives. Miguel García García may have lived a hard life, but it was a worthwhile life, and he was an inspiration to us all" Stuart Christie, 29 July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 1979 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Barcelona Black Flag Carabanchel Centro Iberico prison Social centre Spain Spanish anarchism Spanish Civil War Transition https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/8b6c575ef0370611adb6206c94fdb8c0.jpg 89e04aece1017978552bbc946ef44075 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource José Ignacio Martín-Artajo, anarchist and Spanish diplomat Description An account of the resource "<a href="https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/hdr94j">José Ignacio Martín-Artajo</a> —1973: Château de Lacoste (fortified home of the Marquis de Sade), Vaucluse. We were staying at a dilapidated 'But ‘n’ Ben’ close to the nearby medieval village of Saint Saturnin-lès-Apt". Stuart Christie, 29 July 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Anarchism Spain https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/2c497f35a86d758046be54197338c104.jpg 355e7b73c909d1049ec72e814a7d2180 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource José Ignacio Martín-Artajo, Ron Johnson and Brenda Earl (Roussillon, Provence) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> Exile France Spanish anarchists https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/338233dda14be1475f936f473fd0f792.jpg 5b3984b5af6ec76cf5c5f439739a31f7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource José Ignacio Martín Artajo, Campo Santa Margherita, Venice, Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource September 1984 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All material uploaded on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a href="mailto:stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org">stuartchristiearchive@maydayrooms.org</a> 1980s Post-Franco Spanish anarchism https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/fb63d7fe5158d55ce2fbad4654f83fbe.jpg 5986deff4f65205a9f34a724c730dfaf Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Postcards from Spain Subject The topic of the resource Spanish anti-Francoist resistance Description An account of the resource A collection of ephemera, pamphlets, photos and personal correspondence on the anarchist and anti-Francoist resistance in Spain. This collection includes letters written by Stuart from the Spanish prison of Alcalá de Henares in 1967 and received by his friend, Ross Flett. Stuart was transferred from Carabanchel prison to Alcalá following an aborted escape plan with his co-conspirator, cellmate and CNT member Luís Andrés Edo. These letters include references to his campaign for release, letter smuggling, the First of May Group and the machine gunning of Grosvenor Square. Persons mentioned: Luís Andrés Edo, Juan Busquets, Alain Pecunia, Groups and publications: Syndicalist Workers' Federation, Freedom, Anarchy, the International Times. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Ross Flett Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 06/04/1967-09/09/1967 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Scanned document Language A language of the resource English Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Stuart Christie in Carabanchel, 1966 Description An account of the resource 1966, Central Rotunda, Prisión Provincial de Madrid (1940-1998), Carabanchel Alto, Madrid. Stuart Christie: 'Carabanchel, 1966 (in the central rotunda) with three Londoners (who shall remain nameless and faultless) and an Argentinean bank robber (centre)' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Photograph Carabanchel prison https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/1dfdacad75f458469f52bf2ef6dce482.jpg e3682fdfcdeb77787e23bb92571c41f0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Postcards from Spain Subject The topic of the resource Spanish anti-Francoist resistance Description An account of the resource A collection of ephemera, pamphlets, photos and personal correspondence on the anarchist and anti-Francoist resistance in Spain. This collection includes letters written by Stuart from the Spanish prison of Alcalá de Henares in 1967 and received by his friend, Ross Flett. Stuart was transferred from Carabanchel prison to Alcalá following an aborted escape plan with his co-conspirator, cellmate and CNT member Luís Andrés Edo. These letters include references to his campaign for release, letter smuggling, the First of May Group and the machine gunning of Grosvenor Square. Persons mentioned: Luís Andrés Edo, Juan Busquets, Alain Pecunia, Groups and publications: Syndicalist Workers' Federation, Freedom, Anarchy, the International Times. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Ross Flett Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 06/04/1967-09/09/1967 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Scanned document Language A language of the resource English Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Stuart Christie in the Yeserías prison hospital, Madrid (1965) Description An account of the resource Stuart Christie: 'A priest came to see me before my operation. This worried me in case he’d come to perform the last rites (and me a 'Proddy'), but it was simply a friendly visit to his 'flock'. I just hoped that if ...I did make it through the operation I would still have a nose. The operation reminded me of my tonsillectomy on a Glasgow kitchen table at the age of 5. I was ushered into what looked like a gynaecological chair, while the nursing staff, all prisoners, strapped my wrists, chest and legs. The seat was then cranked back until my head was at 45 degrees to the floor and my feet pointing at the ceiling. A masked surgeon looking like Laurence Olivier playing the Nazi dentist in Marathon Man suddenly loomed over me wielding two stainless steel corkscrews that he proceeded to manoeuvre up my nostrils and crank open as though he was opening a bottle of claret. With a flourish, a large chrome syringe appeared in his hand, which he jabbed into the soft palate of my mouth like a matador in for the faena. As the freezing Novocain trickled down my gullet I could still feel everything, particularly pain. A stainless steel chisel then appeared in his hand, which he promptly poked into my nostril. Suddenly, what looked like an ice pick appeared in other hand of this latter-day Ramón Mercader. He swung back and then began battering his way into my brain cavity. Wincing under the relentless hammer blows I began to feel some sympathy for Leon Trotsky. Was this man clearing my sinuses or was he planning to trepan me to open up my ‘Third Eye’?' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965 Madrid prison Spain https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/a6114a1c2b89dcfbed920c1088cf1c78.jpg c5412cf579da659e0a60b9f86a4faea7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Postcards from Spain Subject The topic of the resource Spanish anti-Francoist resistance Description An account of the resource A collection of ephemera, pamphlets, photos and personal correspondence on the anarchist and anti-Francoist resistance in Spain. This collection includes letters written by Stuart from the Spanish prison of Alcalá de Henares in 1967 and received by his friend, Ross Flett. Stuart was transferred from Carabanchel prison to Alcalá following an aborted escape plan with his co-conspirator, cellmate and CNT member Luís Andrés Edo. These letters include references to his campaign for release, letter smuggling, the First of May Group and the machine gunning of Grosvenor Square. Persons mentioned: Luís Andrés Edo, Juan Busquets, Alain Pecunia, Groups and publications: Syndicalist Workers' Federation, Freedom, Anarchy, the International Times. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Ross Flett Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 06/04/1967-09/09/1967 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Scanned document Language A language of the resource English Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Joan Busquets i Vergés in the Yeserías Prison Hospital, Madrid (1965) Description An account of the resource Stuart Christie: 'One good thing that came out of my time in Yeserías was a lifelong friendship with Juan Busquets Verges (pictured above in his hospital bed in Yeserías). Busquets had fought originally with the Pyrenean rural action group of Marcelino Massana Bancells, ‘Pancho’, but then joined forces with the urban guerrilla group of José ‘Pepe’ Sabaté, the eldest of the three legendary Sabaté brothers. Manuel Sabaté, the youngest of the brothers, had been arrested with the twenty-one year old Busquets in a police ambush in October 1949. Busquets was one of the fortunate few to have their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment. A few years before we met he had been involved in an escape attempt from the prison of San Miguel de los Reyes with another anarchist, the writer and historian Juan Gómez Casas and a gypsy who had had it on his toes as soon as he was over the wall — without waiting to help the others — leaving Busquets a hanging target on the wall. Busquets dropped thirty feet to the ground, breaking his leg in the process. He crawled to a ditch where he remained in agony, slipping in and out of consciousness until the guards found him the next morning. They battered him mercilessly around the face and hands with their rifle butts until he was senseless, breaking his nose and the bones of his hands as well as his leg, then kept him in solitary confinement without medical treatment for two months.' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965 Anarchist Catalan Escape Fuga Madrid Spain https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/81028057c978e670b0f1278fa7f68634.jpg be4838221862e662550d0aa624979d28 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Postcards from Spain Subject The topic of the resource Spanish anti-Francoist resistance Description An account of the resource A collection of ephemera, pamphlets, photos and personal correspondence on the anarchist and anti-Francoist resistance in Spain. This collection includes letters written by Stuart from the Spanish prison of Alcalá de Henares in 1967 and received by his friend, Ross Flett. Stuart was transferred from Carabanchel prison to Alcalá following an aborted escape plan with his co-conspirator, cellmate and CNT member Luís Andrés Edo. These letters include references to his campaign for release, letter smuggling, the First of May Group and the machine gunning of Grosvenor Square. Persons mentioned: Luís Andrés Edo, Juan Busquets, Alain Pecunia, Groups and publications: Syndicalist Workers' Federation, Freedom, Anarchy, the International Times. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Ross Flett Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 06/04/1967-09/09/1967 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Scanned document Language A language of the resource English Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Stuart Christie and fellow British prisoner, Jimmy Wagner, Talleres Penitenciarios de Alcalá de Henares (1967) Description An account of the resource Stuart Christie (July 1967): 'Jimmy Wagner* and me in the patio of the printshop where, among other publications, I was a printer on the weekly Francoist propaganda sheet ‘Redención’. The print-run, if I remember correctly, was about 10,000 copies, a bit down on its peak of 37,000 in 1943. Published continuously since 1 April 1939 (the date of Franco’s victory), ‘Redención’ was written and edited by a motley collection of ultra-Catholic integrists, followers of ‘Our Lady of Fatima, determined to spread the social reign of Christ the King and roll civilisation back by 400 years or more. Prisoners were obliged to purchase the newspaper, like medieval indulgences, in order to make a public display of repentance and to ensure they benefitted from the occasional general partial pardons (‘indultos’) and qualified for provisional liberty on serving two-thirds of their sentence. Jimmy worked upstairs in the bookbinding workshop, a trade I wanted to learn, but the DG of Prisons insisted I was destined to be a printer, silly billy! Jimmy re-bound most of my contraband anarchist library in half-leather bindings, some with red and black buckram, gold-leaf titling, gilt-edging, marbled end-papers complete with silk head- and tailbands, and placemarkers. Works of great beauty they were; only a few of them left now, sadly. * Jimmy (James Bell Wagner) — a Dostoyevsky aficionado — was serving 30 years for murdering a moneylender in Barcelona in 1962.' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1967 Madrid Press Printing Solidarity Spain https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/bfd77593245f9b80c9756b983edd6f58.jpg 42399c63d59a1bc48e112556bb61ef1b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Stuart Christie and José Vicente Ortuño (1980) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1980 Anarchism Post-Franco Spain Transition https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/53cb684df943ef03f1e84f19c26772ee.jpg 93d63dca817f236e2fdad569c6552b03 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource José Vicente Ortuño, 'Over The Water', Sanday (1979) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979 Cienfuegos Orkney Print Spain https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/8d1e83872b280a4cbea4b2d9b553527c.jpg d2f98b588f7db691a77961e2b80a2935 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Spanish anarchist Germinal García Campo in front of an old CNT 'safehouse', Rue de Lancry, Paris (1997) Description An account of the resource Stuart Christie (2011): 'The entrance to Germinal’s apartment building in the 10th arrondissement. This Paris safehouse was used by fugitives and anti-Francoist guerrillas of the CNT’s Defence Commission such as José Lluis Facerias, ‘Face’, (killed in a guardia civil ambush in 1957) and Francisco Sabaté Llopart (‘el Quico’ ambushed in January 1960 by the guardia civil – from which he escaped, hijacking a train in the process – only to be gunned down in a San Celoni street by a Falangist sometent, a standing fascist posse comitatus). It was here that Lucio Urtubia, the bank robber who almost brought down Citibank with his forged travellers’ cheques in 1977, met Sabaté for the first time. In the 1960s 12 Rue de Lancry was used as a safehouse by the anarchist Defensa Interior (D.I.), a clandestine section of the MLE/CNT-in-exile (Spanish Libertarian Movement) which, from 1962 until 1964, organised a number of international actions and three assassination attempts on the dictator. Subsequently the D.I.’s role was taken over by the ‘First of May’ affinity group At the end of the Spanish Civil War, 13-year old Germinal was interned in Argeles-sur-Mer concentration camp where he was cared for by an unknown English woman, to whom he was ever grateful. Stowing away on a Danish freighter, the Kitty Skov, from the port of Barcelona, he escaped to the United States, where he remained for a time in New York, passing himself off as a French citizen, returning later to France to became active in the anti-Francoist struggle. Shunning the limelight, but always active in the background, Germinal was secretary of the Paris Local Federation of the MLE; as an employee of Aerolíneas Argentinas he travelled freely and frequently, maintaining close links with the international Spanish anarchist diaspora, especially in Central and South America. In 1960, prior to the state visit to France of Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev, President De Gaulle’s security services knocked on his door early one morning and ordered him to pack a bag as he was leaving the country.* Escorted to a military airfield on the outskirts of Paris along with other Spanish and French anarchists, they were put on board a French air force plane and flown to Corsica for the duration of Khruschev’s visit where the French government put them up in first class hotels, paid all their expenses and salaries — and apologised to their employers for the inconvenience caused by their temporary deportation. * In 1976, following the death of Franco and the accession of his annointed successor, Juan Carlos, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing’s government sent ex-Falangist prime minister Adolfo Suárez a formal invitation for a state visit to France. Prior to the Spanish king’s arrival, French Interior Minister Michel Poniatowski repeated the 1960 expulsion and ordered the arrest and temporary deportation of the most prominent, mainly Spanish, anti-fascist activists. The Basques he dispatched to the Île de Ré, and the anarchists, around 20 perhaps, including Octavio Alberola and Ariane Gransac, Lucio Urtubia, Vicente Martí, José Morato, Juan Busquets, Alicia Mur, Gonzalo Sánchez and Carlos Andreu, to the luxurious three star Le Grand Large Goulphar Hotel on Belle-Île-en-Mer, an island off the Britanny coast, where they were guarded for five days by 130 CRS and officers of the Renseignements généraux. Gabriel Auer made a feature-dopcumentary about this farce — ‘Vacance royales’ —in 1980' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Anti-fascism CNT Defensa Interior Exile First of May Group Germinal Garcia MLE Paris Spanish anarchism Spanish Civil War https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/820f67d1f6fe581b74e778225f8cd557.jpg 53db66dced144a0774110d01d9cf88c7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Branwen Christie, Lucio Urtubia, Stuart Christie (2009) Description An account of the resource 'A biography of anarchist <a href="https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucio_Urtubia">Lucio Urtubia</a> by Stuart Christie (2011):The life of Lucio Urtubia Jiménez (1931 - ), an anarchist from Navarre in northern Spain, is the stuff of legend. As an activist in 1950s Paris he counted André Breton and Albert Camus among his friends, worked with the legendary anarchist urban guerrilla Francisco Sabate (El Quico) in attempting to bring down Franco’s fascist regime, and carried out numerous bank robberies to fund the struggle to free Spain. But it was in 1977, after having his earlier scheme to destabilise the US economy by forging US dollars rejected by Che Guevara, he put his most infamous plan into action, successfully forging and circulating 20 million dollars of Citibank travellers cheques with the goal of funding urban guerrilla groups in Europe and Latin America, and bringing the bank to its knees in the process. In between he was involved in the kidnapping of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie from his hideout in Bolivia, aided the escape of Black Panthers from the US and not surprisingly was targeted by the CIA. Lucio defends his life’s work thus: ‘we are bricklayers, painters, electricians - we do not need the state for anything. The banks are the real crooks. They exploit you, take your money and cause all the wars.” Lucio, therefore, had no moral scruples about forging Citybank travellers’ cheques. His motivation was not personal gain, but to dent confidence in this powerful financial institution. Lucio is — and has been — many things to different people, of which I can give three good examples: The first is the opinion of the noted Spanish theatre director, Albert Boadella, the founder of the Els Jonglars theatrical group whose escape from Spain in the late 1970s was organised by Lucio. Boadella famously described him as ‘A Quijote who tilted, not at windmills, but at real giants.. The second is that of Chief Superintendent Paul Barril of the French police nationale who described Lucio as a criminal mastermind pulling the strings of an international criminal organisation of anarchists, like some latter-day Montecristo — a Moriarty of global terrorism with access to infinite funds from the international anarchist war chest and dedicated to promoting and funding terrorism and agitation against the established order around the world… A third opinion is that the examining magistrate in the last and biggest of the criminal cases against Lucio – Louis Joinet – who scandalised police comissaire Barril by praising Lucio saying he represented everything the magistrate would have loved to have been – Joinot, incidentally became the first Advocate General with the French Court of cassation – and has had Lucio round to dinner twice, first in Matignon, which is the French equivalent of 10 Downing Street, and more recently at the Elysee, the French equivalent of Buckingham palace.. None of these opinions accurately capture the man, certainly not commissaire Barril’s, which is bollocks — he was clearly grossly exaggerating Lucio’s role as the most dangerous criminal he has ever met in order to enhance his own professional standing. As for Boadella’s comparison of Lucio and Don Quijote, Quijote was a fruitcake and a loner who refused to recognise that the golden age of his dreams had passed — and failed. Lucio, however, is not crazy, nor is he a loner and has always been able to tailor his actions to whatever the technological level of society required — and he was successful, for a time anyway. Joinet’s opinion of Lucio is, I would say, probably closest to recognising the essence of Lucio inasmuch as in him he sees a man of generous spirit who values freedom and justice above all else, even above his own life.' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Anti-imperialism Bank robbery Che Guevara Defensa Interior Illegalism internationalism Lucio Urtubia Spain https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/0bd0c373aea93024be24435b7cb2dafe.jpg 8aaae09224ae90361190d1288177e5df Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Les Prince, Stefi Browner, and Stuart Christie, Camden Town Hall (1978) Description An account of the resource Anarchist Bookfair, Cienfuegos Press Bookstall.. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 Anarchist Bookfair Cienfuegos Press CNT-AIT London https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/2ea55cabb4d1ba8c518a61ff3bca25f7.jpg 7af161d96dab1d4d1c82671ddd63e3a8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource French anarchist Alain Pecunia, (1998) Description An account of the resource Stuart Christie (2011): 'noir novelist, comrade and fellow prisoner in Carabanchel (1963-1965): Alain, the son of a French senior naval officer and well-connected Gaullist, was recruited into the anarchist movement in the spring of 1961 — at the age of 15 — by Francisco (‘Paco’) Ruiz Abarca at an anti-OAS (Organisation armée secrète) meeting. In much the same way as I was involved in the anti-nuclear movement in Britain, Alain had been involved in anti-OAS activities with the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN). Initially, a member of the youth section of the French Communist party, the Young Communists, he then discovered anarchism through Le Monde Libertaire, the newspaper of the French Anarchist Federation (FAF). Unimpressed by the anarchists of the FAF — many of whom were sandal-wearing pacifists, individualists, naturists, vegetarians, and very much under the influence of Grand Orient Freemasonry who viewed class-struggle as bolshevist — Alain teamed up with the more action-oriented Union of Anarcho-Communists (UGAC). This organisation, under the influence of Paul Desnais, a doctor, Paul Zorkine, a former Montenegrin guerrilla living in exile in France, and an Algerian anarchist by the name of Milou, was the first libertarian organisation to work with the Algerian Armée de Liberatión Nationale (ALN), the armed wing of the FLN. In September 1961 they had set up an intelligence gathering network to identify OAS activists, where they met and, if possible, their arms dumps. In 1962 Alain spent the school holidays of June and July in Spain with three other young French anarchists liaising with a Barcelona-based FIJL group and had gone in again in March and again, finally, in April 1963, when he was arrested and charged — along with two other young Frenchmen — with ‘Banditry and Terrorism’. Alain was the first among the three young French prisoners in his ‘expediente’ to be released. Since his arrest there had been a lot of high-level diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing between Franco’s Foreign Ministry under Fernando María Castiella and the French Foreign Ministry at the Quai d’Orsay in Paris. Pecunia’s father carried considerable clout in Gaullist circles and, according to Alain, Franco had insisted on a personal phone call from de Gaulle on the matter. Others involved in the negotiations for his release included what sounded like the character list of a Dennis Wheatley novel: the Duc d’Aumale, various French and Italian fascists trying to negotiate an exchange of OAS prisoners, and even Otto Skorzeny, whom Alain subsequently claimed intervened at the request of a former French member of the Abwehr (the German World War Two counter-intelligence service), a German collaborator. Stories also circulated about secret financial clauses in ongoing financial accords between France and Spain. The French Foreign Ministry official responsible for the Southern Europe desk at the Quai d’Orsay, a certain M. J. de Folin, told Alain later that his freedom had cost the French government two Mirage jet fighters. Pecunia was released on 17 August 1965, exactly two years to the day after the executions of Delgado and Granado. He had served twenty-eight months in prison. I waved him off as he passed through the Fifth Gallery, A few months after his release Alain was seriously injured in mysterious circumstances in a road accident and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since. He is now a highly successful thriller writer( noir, polar and political)' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 1998 Alain Pecunia Algeria Anti-fascism Armed resistance Armed struggle CNT Defensa Interior Juventudes Libertarias MLE prison https://stuartchristie.maydayrooms.org/files/original/3c0740d474038685d6b87ad47317d5a2.jpg 5f61c0bdd40211f3b6d9e66c4981d5f2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photographs Description An account of the resource Photographs of Stuart's friends, comrades, and acquaintances over the years. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Octavio Alberola Surinach, Ariane Gransac, Franco Leggio, etc., Campo Santa Margherita, Venice, September 1984 Description An account of the resource Stuart Christie (2011): 'IN 1962 Octavio was invited by the Defence Commission of the MLE (Spanish Libertarian Movement — the CNT-FAI-FIJL-Mujeres Libres) to come to Europe to become full-time ‘coordinator’ of ‘Defensa Interior’ (Interior Defence), the recently established clandestine planning organisation responsible for anti-Francoist actions inside and outside Spain (intended to radicalise the anti-Francoist opposition and to demonstrate to the world that resistance to the Franco regime still existed) — and for the attempts on the life of General Franco (with the objective of bringing about immediate political change in Spain). DEFENSA INTERIOR ceased to exist as an official body of the Spanish Libertarian Movement (MLE) in October 1963. The disbandment followed the garroting in Madrid (August 1963) of two young anarchists Francisco Granado and Joaquin Delgado, and an order by the French Ministry of the Interior published in the Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise of 20 October 1963 — a month after the arrest of 21 FIJL activists in France, which made the FIJL an illegal organisation throughout French territory. The outlawing of the FIJL had been a quid pro quo between the Gaullist and Francoist security services: in return for French government action against the Spanish anarchist activists in France, Spain cracked down on ‘pied-noir’ OAS Commando Delta operations to assassinate De Gaulle, which were planned and run from Madrid and Valencia (Petit-Clamart and Georges Watin’s plan to shoot De Gaulle at the Ecole Militaire) The DI’s activists, however, were not so ready to abandon the struggle against the Franco regime and it was at this point that the First of May Group emerged as an independent international anarchist action grouping to carry out out a number of spectacular coordinated direct actions on a Europe-wide scale. It later played an important part in the activist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. On May 1 1965, five days after the kidnapping of a Francoist diplomat in London on 25 April, Octavio’s father, José Alberola, was found dead in his apartment in Mexico City. He had been tortured and murdered by proxy killers of the ‘Brigada Blanca’, (four of whom were seen leaving the flat), a Mexican police death squad working on behalf of Franco’s Gestapo-trained secret police, the Brigada Politico Social (BPS). Also in the photograph is Ariane Gransac Sadori, Octavio’s partner and co-author of their book ‘Spanish Anarchism and Revolutionary Action in Spain, 1961-1974’ (Ruedo Ibérico publishers, Paris), ‘Moni’ Tellez (partner of anarchist historian Antonio Tellez), and the Sicilian anarchist publisher, activist — and ‘First of May Group’ member — the late Franco Leggio.' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart Christie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Antonio Tellez Defensa Interior FIJL First of May Group Juventudes Libertarias Octavio Alberola Post-Franco Ruedo Ibérico Spain