Some photos in London

Antonis told us that this toothpaste was made by a friend of his who, when he was younger, was very much inspired by Kropotkin.



Plaques in Angel Alley for the 3 bearded wonders I'll be following.

The Kropotkin section in Freedom Bookshop - & elsewhere I was very pleasantly surprised to see a stack of my old bothy zines.


Outside Angel Alley, a man was reading Kropotkin's Mutual Aid. I thought that was a very neat start to my journey.


To get home, Laura used my old rail ticket that I had cunningly cleaned so you couldn't tell it had already been used.

Off to Paris

I'm leaving the country in a couple of hours, first to Paris where my main chosen sight to see, unless I visit where the 1890s bombs were chucked, will be the Vendome Column.

The Vendome Column - 44 metres high - is comprised of a stone core, encased in the bronze of 1250 cannons captured at the Battle of Austerliz (1805). It was designed by Denon, Gondouin, and Lepère and modeled in the style of Trajan's Column in Rome. It was constructed during 1806 - 1810.

Originally a statue of Napoléon a Caesar was placed on top. This was replaced by a likeness of Henri IV which was removed during the 100 Day (1815) when Napoléon returned from Elba and attempted to regain power. Afterwards Louis XVIII installed an enormous fleur-de-lys, but Louis-Philippe restored Napoléon in military uniform.

During the Commune in 1871, a group of Communards lead by Gustave Courbet the artist, tore down the column. Rather than pay for its re-erection, as he was ordered, Courbet died (1877) in exile in Switzerland. During 1873 - 1874, the column was reestablished at the center of Place Vendôme with a copy of the original statue on top.

Courbet was a devoted fan of Proudhon, and I liked reading his reasons for why he wanted to pull it down.

London, day 1

In London, last night we stayed with two ex-Newcastle friends.
Pictures will follow of the toothpaste made by a guy who loved reading Kropotkin when he was young, and of the man on the train reading Gerard Winstanley, the man in the cafe reading Mutual Aid, and the books in Freedom Bookshop by Peter Kropotkin. I was also surprised to see a little stack of my bothy zines in there too.

This picture will, when completed, make it into the zine I will make of the travels. For now though, I need to find a bed for the night.

books books books

I am carrying SO many books.
Almost all my weight is books.

It's 3 in the morning before I go to London, and I haven't got through the books I meant to just get notes from and then leave behind. So I'm carrying even MORE down, with the hope of leaving them in London once I'm done with them. But before that, here are some I am at least leaving behind, with much regret. I didn't even get Kropotkin's classics out of my book-built shelving unit, but at least they're online. It's the more obscure or new stuff I want to finish my notes for, but I won't... And two of the biggest, most-filled-with-sticky-notes are from the library ...

A couple of Swiss things

"Freedom to travel was one of the many new relaxations enjoyed by Russian citizens under Alexander II, and one result of thsi was the establishment of student colonies in foreign towns, including Heidelberg and Zurich. Soon spies of the Third Section (Russian secret police) were reporting back that these places had been turned into cesspits of Nihilism. The area around ZXurich Polytechnic became heavily infested with young Russians whose loud voices and carefree gesticulations - not to mention their extreme Socialist views and reputation for promiscuity - shocked the staid burghers of that ancient Swiss City."

from Ronald Hingley's 'Nihilists'

Bakunin: "In Switzerland, in spite of all the democratic revolutions that have taken place there, it is still always the class in comfortable circumstances, the bourgeoisie, that is to say, the class privileged by wealth, leisure, and education, which governs. The sovereignty of the people - a word which, anyway, we detest because in our eyes, all sovereignty is detestable - the government of the people by themselves is likewise a fiction. The people is sovereign in law, not in fact, for necessarily absorbed by their daily labour, which leave them no leisure, and if not completely ignorant, at least very inferior in education to the bourgeoisie, they are forced to place in the hands of the latter their supposed sovereignty. The sole advantage which they get out of it in Switzerland, as in the United States, is that ambitiuos minorities, the political class, cannot arrive at power otherwise than by paying court to the people, flattering their fleeting passions, which may sometimes be bad, and most often deceiving them.
[but]
It is true that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy, for at least in the republic there are moments when, though always exploited, the people are not oppressed, while in monarchies they are never anything else."

Also criticised "the parts of Switzerland where the Marxiam programme prevails, at Geneva, Zurich, Basel ... the International has descended to the point of being no longer anything more than a sort of electoral box for the profit of the Radical bougeois."
As opposed to hte programme of the International which states "The emancipation of the toilers can be the work only of the toilers themselves."

From K.J.Kenafick's edited Bakunin, 'Marxism Freedom & the State'

Kropotkin: "The egalitarian relations which I found in the Jura mountains; the independence of thought and expression which I saw developing in the workers and their unlimited devotion to the cause appealed strongly to my feelings; and when I came away from the mountains, after a week's stay with the watchmakers, my views upon socialism were settled; I was an anarchist."

1898, Luigi Luccheni kills Austria's Empress Elizabeth, in Geneva.

A few Paris sights

The Movement of the Free Spirit begain in 1200 among Paris intellectuals gathered around William Aurifex as a rebellion against the church. Openly contemptuous of monks (wearing a patched red cowl as a parody of a habit), they disrupted church services by engaging priests in debate. The central group was swiftly executed for heresy, but the movement spread to virtually every part of Europe.

Sans culottes flocked into the Champ de Mars in July 1791 to sign or set their mark on a petition calling for the King's abdication - they were violently dispersed by sabres and bullets.
[pic to insert here]
In spring 1793, after 4 years of civil war and rocketing food prices, they rose up and toppled the Government, coining the term 'anarchist' as they did so:
"We are the poor Sans-culottes, an association of artisans and peasants. We know who our friends are: those who have delivered us from the clergy, nobility, the feudal systems, tithes, the monarchy and all the ills which follow in its train, those whom the aristocrats have called the 'anarchists'."

Their example of mass direct action endured.

From Clifford Harper's 'Anarchy: A Graphic guide'

1848 revolution
"a struggle of class against class, a sort of Servile war" Tocqueville
"the first great battle ... between the two classes that split modern society" Marx

1871 was the first genuinely workers' revolution - first time urban workers created their own self-government.

From George Rude's Ideology and Popular Protest

After the Commune was destroyed, Louis Michel said at her trial:
"You are now the victors, but I tell you, in the end the social revolution will be stronger than you. I demand that you lawfully murder me as you have lawfully murdered others. The lead that pierced their breasts I want to pierce my breast also. If you are not cowards, kill me. Should you decided not to do it then I will preach hatred against your laws and your society as long as my life lasts. I cry out for revenge against the murderers and executioners of the commune."

From the terrorist period of the 1890s:

At the May Day demonstrations in Paris in 1891, nine people were killed at Fourmies, and at Clichy there was a riot in which 3 wounded anarchists were taken to Clichy police station wehre they were seriously assaulted by the police, and not even given facilities for bathing their wounds. At trial, presided over by M.Benoit, two were sentenced to 5 and 3 years imprisonment. All the talk was then of revenge.

On 11 March, Ravachol & 2 companions, he carrying two kilograms of dynamite, sharp pieces of metal and two revolvers in his pockets, wearing a top hat and tailcoat so as not to attract attention, took a tram to the hosue in the Boulevard Saint Germain where M.Benoit lived. Ravachol left his 2 companions to go up the steps, and bombed the place. He committed various other crimes also.

Later, at Montbrison prison, Ravachol spend the last 3 weeks of his life in peaceful serenity. He became a folk hero to many, not so much for his violent escapades (though revenge was a powerful urge for many), as for the courage and defiance with which he met his fate. On his way to the guillotine, he sang 'Pere Duchene'

Si tu veux etre heureux
nom de dieu!
Pends ton proprietaire,
Coup' les cures en deux
nom de dieu!
Foutes les eglis' par terre.
Sang-dieu!
Et l'bon dieu dans la merde
nom de dieu!
Et l'bon dieu dans la merde.

which translates:

If you want to be hapy
By God!
String up your landlord
Cur the sky-pilots in two
By God!
Knock down the churches
God's blood!
And fling the Good God on hte dungheap
By God!
And the Good God on the dungheap.

Popular songs commemorated Ravachol, two of which translate as:

My lads, it's very sad,
The moral of this story.
Here it is, in a few words.
It's that when one's an anarchist
One mustn't boast of one's daring deeds
To young cafe waiters.

And:

In the great city of Paris
There are some well-fed bourgeois
There are some starvelings too
With empty bellies
And these are very hungry
Long live the sound!
Long live the sound!
Of the explosion!

9th december 1893, Auguste Vaillant threw a bomb in the Palais Bourbon, the seat of the French parliament, while the Chamber of Deputies was in session.
Vaillant's execution took place in the square in front of La Roquette prison, on the morning of 6th February 1894. With barriers up, drizzle pouring, Vaillant declined to see a chaplain, saying "Religion is a useless and grotesque thing." He hummed an anarchist song and then said "The bourgeoisie whom I attempted to destroy is revenging itself. It is its right. The people who suffer will revenge itself in its turn." He walked to the scaffold with his head held high, and shouted out "Death to the bourgeoisie and long live anarchism!" before the guillotine.
At the graveyard, flowers were left. One mourning card read:

"As they have sprinkled the earth
At the hour of the rising sun
With the august and life-giving dew,
The sacred drops of your blood,
Beneath the leaves of this palm
Which outraged Right bestows on you,
You can sleep your calm slumber
O martyr ... you will be avenged."

12 February 1894, Emile Henry's bomb exploded at the Hotel Terminus, aimed at its bourgeois clientele.
His father had been a member of the Internationale, and as an officer of the National Guard during the siege of Paris, he was elected to the Commune to represent the 10th arrondissement on 26th March 1871. At first he pursued negotiation, but when this failed, he supported the Commune in order to save the Republic, whose very existence was menaced by the Versaillese troops. When they invaded Paris, he escaped the massacres to Spain (San Martin near Barcelona), where Emile was born. In poverty, the family settled at 3 Rue de Jouy in Paris, the father dying in 1882.
His brother was held in Clairvaux prison for propaganda of the deed.
Emile Henry's execution took place on 21 may 1894 in the Place de la Roquette (he'd been held in the Grande Roquette prison. Barriers for the small crowd, hundreds of soldiers and various newspaper men - a grand occasion!
His last words were "Courage, comrades! Long live anarchism!"

The assassination of the French President which followed in Lyons saw the perpetrator Caserio, once he checked his tears, repeat the same words after the sentence of execution was given. He was kept in the St.Paul prison, arms tied at night lest he commit suicide, and he read Don Quixote. Louis Michel, the veteran of the Paris Commune, wrote that "The blow struck at Carnot was a blow at the bourgeoisie of the whole world. It was not an assassination. It was an execution. Ravachol, Henry and Vaillant are avenged." Caserio's final words were 'Vive l'anarchie!'

From 'Four patients of Dr.Deibler', a fantastic book, by J.C.Longoni.

A few more notes on Lyons:

Its silk-weavers had a far longer tradition of militancy than craftsmen in Paris. The 18th century saw many violent conflicts between employers and employees. In 1786 they had fought for a minimum wage, and for the first time identified themselves as a 'class' exploited by their masters. Thus class consciousness first appeared here in time for the revolution of 1789. The workers lived in densely packed suburbs like La Croux Rousse and Parrache.
In November 1831 the weavers rose in rebellion, chanting the slogan 'Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant' (Live working or die fighting), overpowered the local garrison and took control of the city. Lacking organisation, they accepted a compromise and returned to their districts. They then organised in the Society of Mutual Duty and prepared for a general strike - Mutuellism was therefore banned by the Paris Government and its members arrested. This then led to further uprisings, spreading to Paris etc...

Blanqui was the first to use the term 'proletarire' in 1832.

From George Rude's 'Ideology and Popular Protest'.

The final word here from Jean Genet, who wrote it on the wall in Paris in 1968:
"C'est triste a dire, mais je ne pense que l'on puisse vaincre sans les drapeaux rouges et noires. Mais ils faut detrure - apres."
= Unfortunately I don't think we can win without the red and black flags. But they must be destroyed - afterwards.

A few London sights

Not knowing if Kropotkin's old house still stands, or any of the original anarchist clubs, there are at least these locations in London:

Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park for free speech fights - literally a fight on days like November 13 1887, Bloody Sunday when many South London workers were injured by police batons blocking their approach over the bridges. Other processions were blocked by police, but one North London contingent did make it to Trafalgar Square, to be attacked and wounded by police. One young worker, Alfred Linnel, was beaten to death. A great procession followed his coffin to the grave, with William Morris giving the funeral oration. A vast crowd stood bareheaded as Morris read the Death Chant:

"They will not learn; they have no ears to harken,
They turn their faces from the eye of fate,
Their gay-lit halls shut out the skies that darken,
But lo! this dead man knocking at the gate."

The refrain was often repeated in the years that followed:

"Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day."

And fight went on, and for a period the Square was won for free speech.

In Hyde Park, a mass meeting for 23 July 1866 was met with posters declaring the park closed from 5pm. The police refused entry to the park and the majority of the mass Reform League demo followed its leaders to Trafalgar Square, where after a few speeches the crowd went home.

But meanwhile, back at the park, tens of thousands had remained, massed at two places. At Bayswater road a throng hurled themselves at the massive iron rails, which were thrown down; at the same time, workers in Park Lane tore down the park railings and the two sections joined forces to fight the police.
The Foot guards were sent in, and the workers sought to fraternise, halting the troops near the gates. Then the horse guards trotted in, again the workers cheered, the cavalry trotted off again and the police were attacked again. More foot and cavalry guards were then sent in with orders to shoot if necessary. Many were wounded, but on that day it was the workers who won. As a Reform League paper reported:

"The people have triumphed, in so far as they have vindicated their right to speak, resolve and exhort in Hyde park. True, the gates were closed against them, and lo! in twentyh minutes after the Park all around was one vast, gaping gate. The ordinary gates were the only closed part of the fencing."

From Tom Brown's 'British Syndicalism; Pages of labour History', which also lists newcastle's Bigg market as our local area for free speech.

Kings Cross, where 'the Alarm' was printed for a while, by a small group who pooled their money to make it happen. They hired a premises behind a shop in Ossulston St, Euston Rd, which was then taken over by the 'freedom group'.

Charlotte Wilson left the Freedom paper when its editor put his own slant and censorship over the contents, but workers in the group got together and kept the paper going with John Turner as publisher.
The income from pamphlets, aided by Kropotkin's reputation, kept 'Freedom' going for years.

The London Freedom group hired a room at 144 High Holborn, from the Emily Davison Dining Club, and carried on meetings there for several years. They also held oepn-air meetings in Hyde Park.

From George Cores' 'Personal recollections of the anarchist past'