Albert Meltzer (1920–1996) was involved, actively, in class struggles since the age of 15; exceptional for his generation in having been a convinced anarchist from the start, without any family background in such activity. A lively, witty account of sixty years in anarchist activism, and a unique recounting of many struggles otherwise distorted or unrecorded, including the history of the contemporary development of anarchism in Britain and other countries where he was invo...

This is the revised edition of Anarchism: Arguments For and Against that Albert Meltzer was working on at the time of his death on May 7th, 1996. The book was important to Albert, and it was one whose arguments he returned to often in his other writings. Albert had become increasingly concerned about what he saw as the ghettoisation of anarchism. Separated from the working class base so necessary to achieve social revolution, anarchism could easily fall in...

A concise study of the origins and development of the revolutionary anarchist movement in Europe 1945-73, with particular reference to the First of May Group. This group — formed in 1966 by the post-war generation of (largely Spanish) anarchist militants who took up arms against Franco and American imperialism — has been one of the best known of the anarchist activist groups of the period under review. It represents a continuation of the work of Sabaté and the immediate post-war Spa...

Albert Meltzer's personal account and reminiscences of the anarchist movement and its personalities in London between 1935 and 1955. Originally published by Cienfuegos Press, Over the Water, Sanday, Orkney - 1976Albert Meltzer (1920-1996) was involved actively in class struggles from the age of 15; exceptionally for his generation in having been a convinced Anarchist from the start, without any family background in such activity. The Anarchists in London, 1935-1955. A Personal Memo...

A NEW WORLD IN OUR HEARTS, The Faces of Spanish Anarchism, Edited by Albert Meltzer. Contributors: Albert Meltzer; Frank Mintz; José Peirats; Gaston Leval; Andrew Giles Peters. Originally published 1978 by Cienfuegos Press, Sanday, Orkney. Over the course of 120 pages, through a series of interlinked essays, the contributors discuss the history of Spanish Anarchism, the Revolution in practice, the post-Revolution resistance and internal anarchist organization, and...

The republication of Albert Meltzer's The Origins of the Anarchist Movement in China is a major event. Outside of The Origins . . . Robert A. Scalapino and George T. Yu’s The Chinese Anarchist Movement (which does not go beyond the early 1920s, stopping short of the Shanghai Commune) and Olga Lang’s Pa Chin and His Writings: Chinese Youth Between the Two Revolutions most of what has been...

In this essay, Tolstoy maintains his theory of great men as the myths and tickets of history. History, he asserts, must give up the idea that great men rule us, and busy itself with the discovery of the idea of humanity. One looks for the overthrow of the French Empire not in this or that decision of Napoleon, but in the various factors down to the corporal who enlisted for the bounty once too often. What causes that great motion, the People, to brim over into an historic event? Nobody now...

The floodgates holding back anarchy are constantly under strain. The liberal would ease the pressure by diverting some of the water; the conservative would shore up the dykes, the totalitarian would construct a stronger dam.But is anarchy a destructive force? The absence of government may alarm the authoritarian, but is a liberated people really its own worst enemy—or is the true enemy of mankind, as the anarchists claim, the means by which he is governed? Without government the wo...

Captain Jack White (1879-1946). Any study of anarchism anywhere in Ireland would be amiss if it did not include mention of the first organiser of the Irish Citizen Army: republican, communist and then anarchist, Captain Jack White. Born at Whitehall, near Broughshane in County Antrim Jack White spent much of his childhood in England before joining the British Army and serving overseas. The details of Jack White’s early life are fairly well documented and highlight his rela...

Austrian sociologist and disillusioned former Comintern official Franz Borkenau visited Republican Spain between August and September 1936, and again in January-February 1937. The account of his first-hand experiences as an independent socialist observer in revolutionary Spain,‘T***he Spanish Cockpit***’, was published in the early summer of 1937, when it impressed and influenced the recently-returned POUM miliciano George Orwell who recommended it (in a letter dated 1 August 1937) as ‘an ...

In 1776, America was a hotbed of enlightenment and revolution. Thomas Paine not only spurred his fellow Americans to action but soon came to symbolize the spirit of the Revolution. His elegantly persuasive pieces spoke to the hearts and minds of those fighting for freedom. He was later outlawed in Britain, jailed in France, and finally labeled an atheist upon his return to America."No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style; in perspicuity of expression, happines...

The overthrow and execution of Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Imperial family is a cause célèbre of 20th century history. Andrew Cooks re-investigation of the story finally solves one of the greatest mysteries of world history. The author draws upon new forensic evidence and newly discovered British and Russian Secret Service records reveal the truth about the familys murder, the proposed British rescue of the Imperial family led by Major Stephen Alley, and the Secret Service mission ins...