CHARLIE BAIRD AND OTHERS ANARCHISM IN GLASCOW P RINCIPLES, PROPOSITIONS & D ISCUSSIONS FOR LAND & FREEDOM AN INTRODUCTORY WORD TO THE ANARCHIVE Anarchy is Order! I must Create a System or be enslav d by another Man s. I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create (William Blake) During the 19th century, anarchism has develloped as a result of a social current which aims for freedom and happiness. A number of factors since World War I have made this movement, and its ideas, dissapear little by little under the dust of history. After the classical anarchism of which the Spanish Revolution was one of the last representatives a new kind of resistance was founded in the sixties which claimed to be based (at least partly) on this anarchism. However this resistance is often limited to a few (and even then partly misunderstood) slogans such as Anarchy is order , Property is theft ,... Information about anarchism is often hard to come by, monopolised and intellectual; and therefore visibly disapearing. The anarchive or anarchist archive Anarchy is Order ( in short A.O) is an attempt to make the principles, propositions and discussions of this tradition available again for anyone it concerns. We believe that these texts are part of our own heritage. They don t belong to publishers, institutes or specialists. These texts thus have to be available for all anarchists an other people interested. That is one of the conditions to give anarchism a new impulse, to let the new 2 anarchism outgrow the slogans. This is what makes this project relevant for us: we must find our roots to be able to renew ourselves. We have to learn from the mistakes of our socialist past. History has shown that a large number of the anarchist ideas remain standing, even during the most recent social-economic developments. 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The anarchive offers these texts hoping that values like freedom, solidarity and direct action get a new meaning and will be lived again; so that the struggle continues against the ...demons of flesh and blood, that sway scepters down here; and the dirty microbes that send us dark diseases and wish to squash us like horseflies; and the will- o-the-wisp of the saddest ignorance. (L-P. Boon) 3 The rest depends as much on you as it depends on us. Don t mourn, Organise! Comments, questions, criticism, cooperation can be sent [email protected]. A complete list and updates are available on this address, new texts are always WELCOME!! 4 ANARCHISM IN GLASGOW CHARLIE BAIRD SNR, MOLLIE BAIRD, JOHN TAYLOR CALDWELL, BABS RAESIDE,JIMMY RAESIDE, 14/8/87 In August 1987 the Raesides, who had been living in Australia for many years, returned to Glasgow for a visit. This provided a rare opportunity to bring together some surviving members of anarchist groups in Glasgow during the 1940s for a public discussion on the history of that movement and the lesson which can be learned. Q: How did people come in contact with the movement and how did the movement strike them at the time? JR: Well, the clothes have changed a bit! And the venue the anarchist movement would have had to grow quite a bit to get a room like this. MB: Yes... The "Hangman's Rest": when there was a lull in the questions the rats used to come out!! JR: Or street corners... JTC: The movement started in Glasgow in a way that's buried in a certain amount of mystery because they haven't been able to research it properly, but after the Paris Commune a number of Frenchmen came to Britain and one of these settled in Glasgow and became the companion of a woman called MacDonald who lived in Crown St. She had anarchist views and they organised the first anarchism movement in Glasgow working from Crown St. and meeting in the space outside Glasgow Green which is called Jostling Sq or Jail Sq. People 5 gathered there every Sunday. Afterwards there was a lull until we have the Social Democratic Federation (Hyndman's crowd) building up a group in Glasgow; the next stage on the road to anarchism was when the disaffected formed the Socialist League under William Morris. They wanted to be anti-parliamentary but not anarchist. There was such an influx of anarchists in Glasgow and eventually in 1895 it broke up and the anarchist movement of Glasgow was formed. It had 50 members and met in a place in Holland St. It had a number of speakers: Willie MacDougal was one - and the movement developed from that. From 1900 it was able to invite Kropotkin and Voltairine deClerke to speak in Glasgow and was quite a force up to the start of the 1st World War when it broke up because of the persecutions it had to endure because of its anti-war position. MB: I knew that Guy (Aldred) had a group in little rooms in Clarenden St... JTC: Guy Aldred came to Glasgow in 1912... The anarchist movement in London had three elements: one was Stepniak, one was Kropotkin, the other was Bakunin. Stepniak had shot a policeman in St.Petersburg and fled to London - he belonged to the old Russian Narodniks, who believed in propaganda by deed, in shooting officials and they believed that the State has a social contract with the people and when it fails to fulfil that contract, the common people are in a state of nature and can declare war. That was the beginning of the theory of propaganda by deed in Russia. The other stream was Kropotkin who believed that we are dominated by the State and he gave a historical analysis of the State and that we should get back to a pre-state condition of a society run by communes. But the third person was Bakunin who from a philosophical point of view came through Hegel and he believed that we had to 6 destroy authority. Guy developed that point of view in the Freedom Press, but then felt that they were too theoretical, Sunday afternoon anarchists, so he and another founded a paper called the "Voice of Labour", to carry the fight into the factories. After 3 or 4 months Guy realised that it you do that it runs along trade-union and amelioration lines; what we need is education - so he formed the Communist Propaganda Groups - these were to educate, the other to agitate. Now the CPGs were anti- parliamentary. You have to remember the context: the Labour Partywas something new, it had been formed to represent trade unions and wasn't sure whether it was going to be a left or liberal party or be an industrial syndicalist organisation as identified with Tom Mann or Daniel deLeon in America. There was a careerist element and Guy fought against payment of members, and this took on the form of an anti-parliamentary faction. Guy was invited to speak in Glasgow in 1912 by a splendid organisation called the Clarion Scouts. It had all kinds of things to interest young people - camera clubs, bicycle clubs, etc. Youngsters used to get on their bikes and cycle through the villages and they had a secret sign when they passed each other (one said "hoops", the other said "spurs"). They formed their first organisation in Glasgow in 1898, I think, and would help any left-wing organisation - they helped the ILP, they helped the anarchists - they were not sectarian. They invited Guy Aldred to speak in the Pavilion Theatre in 1912. There were no microphones in those days and the theatre was filled, but he was such a success that he came back again and again, and in the end made Glasgow his native city and formed his own Communist Propaganda Group. He was running "The Spur" which had a good circulation and was well known in the movement. When the war came Guy went off to jail but 7 his paper was carried on by Rose Witcop, his free-love companion. When he came back after the war, his CPG had folded, because he was really the centrepiece of it. The Glasgow Anarchists (those who'd formed a group at the time of William Morris) were carrying on: Willie MacDougall was one of them - he'd been jailed too, taken down to Dartmoor. He simply escaped from Dartmoor - he jumped on a bike and cycled home and nobody stopped him. (Only a few years ago, at 86, he was still carrying on his propaganda) Then came the Russian revolution, which split the group in a dozen ways introduced a new concept - vanguard communism. There came a conflict between the anti- and pro- parliamentarian communists. Guy was quite in favour of the Russian revolution when it took place and spoke favourably of Lenin, even although he knew him to be a statist. He thought that, under the conditions in Russia, Lenin was doing all he could do, until he discovered that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were persecuting the anarchists in Russia and when the 2nd Congress of the Communist International took place and Lenin declared distinctly that anti- parliamentarians were not to be allowed in the Communist International. He denounced left-wingism in Britain; he said it was infantile, you must capture that organisation which has the attention of the working class, the Labour Party, so the Communist Party was founded in 1921 with a programe of capturing the Labour Party and trying to capture parliament. Opposing that, Guy reconstituted his Propaganda Groups but in time called it the ANTI-PARLIAMENTARIAN Propaganda Groups; he had a paper called The Spur. The new group wanted its own paper, and called it the Red Commune, which had a program of anti-parliamentism. Guy said , Let's take a leaf out of the book of the Sinn 8 Feiners, who made use of the ballot box in 1918 by standing for every seat they could capture. Guy said "There's what to do, let the workers say, 'We are the disinherited'; let us use their ballot boxes and let us pledge ourselves not to go into parliament but stay in Scotland until there's enough of us to form a quorum. This was his anti-parliamentism. Some of the anarchists in his group and some belonging to the remnants of the William Morris groups opposed this, so the Anti- Parliamentary Communist Federation was formed with some antagonism. It existed until 1932 when it was taken over by a different faction and faded. Then came the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Then from nowhere erupted the anarchists who had deserted anti-parliamentism as too dogmatic and too theoretical. They came to the fore again and, under Frank Leech and one or two others, formed the new Anarchist Federation. Guy at this time had changed his group to the United Socialist Movement, because when the Labour Party fell apart in 1931 and formed the National Government, Guy said "We don't have to be anti-parliamentary; history has proven it" and said to his anti-parliamentary comrades, who had their headquarters in Great Western Rd.in Bakunin House: "You're crushing socialism to reach anti-parliamentarism - let's try to get united and assume parliament is dead". The ILP and the left had left the Labour Party because of the National Government and (this is coming into my own area) Fenner Brockway said "Let us form a united movement and use parliament only as a sounding-board for the workers' demands". Guy said: "Let's forget past antagonisms and join with the ILP, the Trotskyists" (the American Left Opposition groups). So at this point, the Spanish Civil War, Guy had the USM; there was still a APCF under Willie MacDougall; but when the anarchists came on the scene 9 again the anti-pantys (as they called them) and the anarchists joined to fight the Spanish Revolution. They adopted Emma Goldmann as a hero, and Guy was opposed to that, because Emma Goldmann was at that time promoting culture and literature in America and was doing this with various literati and had forgotten about her anarchism and was now coming back. He opposed that and this caused a great deal of antagonism in the streets of Glasgow - they were tearing each other's hair out, metaphorically. Frank Leech continued his group until he died and then on the scene came Eddie Shaw, Jimmy Raeside, I think a man called McGatvey was there too... JR: Johnny Garvey? MB: Aye, but he was much later though JTC: Was he later? I met him some time ago and was speaking about the past. JR: Charlie (Baird) was in the movement before I was... JTC: Well, I've brought the movement up from the beginning of the century until the time when Charlie and Jimmy were in it. Now they can tell you about it then. I remained in the United Socialist Movement, agitating for some form of unity. Before Guy died we'd long realised we weren't getting it, that we in the movement were only being Guy's supporters, because he was an enormous platform figure and well-known orator, and we in the USM were finally simply his stewards and supporters. (I may say that Guy did a lot of work helping conscientious objectors during the war; he helped Eddie Shaw, the two Dicks.) CB: That was an excellent history of the origins of the anarchist movement. To go on from then: Anarchism continued in the form of the old Glasgow Anarchist 10