GEORDIES — WA MENTAL, is the first volume in the autobiographical trilogy (Stardust and Coaldust) of David John Douglass, a coalminer for 40 years. It tells the fascinating story of the radicalisation of a working-class Geordie ‘baby-boomer’ during the first twenty years of his life and provides a unique and valuable insight into the political and cultural movements of the 1960s.
Santiago Carrillo – or history falsified by Fernando Gómez Peláez
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With the death last year (18 September 2012) of Santiago Carrillo, the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) (1960-1982), we can expect a few biographies of the ‘father of Eurocommunism’ over the coming year or so. As a matter of record and in the interests of, as they say, ‘balance’, we have republished an extensive review — by ‘Frente Libertario’ editor, Fernando Gómez Peláez — of ‘Dialogue on Spain. Santiago Carrillo in interview with Regis Debray and Max Gallo’ (Lawrence & Wishart, London 1976). The review appeared, originally, in the Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review (No, 4, Sanday, Orkney, 1978). Further information on Santiago Carrillo’s role in the Spanish Civil War— and subsequently — is available here:
- La venganza mortífera sobre camaradas de partido:
http://blocs.tinet.cat/lt/blog/victor-garcia-g.-estanillo-el-brasileno/p
- Exiliados y maquis asesinados por el PCE:
http://angelmanuel-gonzalezfernandez.blogspot.com.es/2010/11/exiliados-y
- El protagonismo de Santiago Carrillo en la “Operación Reconquista de España”:
http://www.panzertruppen.org/heer/infanteria/armas/matadero.html
- La entrega de Julián Grimau a la policía:
http://www.elotropais.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=184&
- Desbancamiento de Fernando Claudín y Jorge Semprún en la lucha por el poder en el partido:
http://www.intereconomia.com/noticias-gaceta/opinion/cuando-carrillo-pur
- Desaparición gubernamental de sumarios judiliales que ponían en evidencia la política de Santiago Carrillo:
http://www.lasprovincias.es/valencia/20090215/valenciana/gobierno-hizo-d
Check also
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_Carrillo
http://www.izquierdareaccionaria.com/2011/05/por-fin-el-libro-sobre-carrillo/
Constructive reviews of Paul Preston’s new biography of Carrillo — El Zorro Rojo. La vida de Santiago Carrillo
EL PAIS ; LA VANGUARDIA ; EL CONFIDENCIAL
‘Click’ para bajar pdf …
¿Qué le ha sucedido al criterio editorial del TLS (Times Literary Supplement)? ¿Qué diantre llevó al editor a encargar como reseña de El holocausto español de Paul Preston la patochada condescendientemente insultante de un apologeta profranquista como Michael Seidman?
Aparte de quejarse sobre el “descrédito hacia el capital moral de los nacionales” de Preston, la objeción principal de Seidman parece ser el uso del término “holocausto” para describir la carnicería provocada por los “oficiales rebeldes, pronto ayudados por Hitler y Mussolini” (implicando que ninguno de sus regimenes habrían sido cómplices de sus planes para derrocar a la República). Esta objeción al vocablo holocausto es, o bien una pedantería académica, o bien un medido intento político por parte de Seidman de apropiarse de manera excluyente e incontestable del término para su aplicación exclusiva a las víctimas judías del antisemitismo nazi — a costa de los otros 5, 6, o 7 millones de víctimas de la máquinaria asesina nazi: antifascistas (judíos y gentiles), intelectuales, socialistas, anarquistas, comunistas, liberales, testigo de Jehová, gitanos, disminuidos psíquicos o físicos, etc… entre enero de 1933 y mayo de 1945.
TLS, September 7 2012
What has happened to editorial judgement at the TLS? What on earth led the editor to commission the patronisingly offensive twaddle from such a pro-Francoist apologist as Michael Seidman in his review of Paul Preston’s “The Spanish Holocaust”?
Apart from complaining about Preston’s ‘discrediting the moral capital of the Nationalists’, Seidman’s principal objection appears to be the use of the term “Holocaust” to describe the carnage triggered by the “rebellious officers, whom Hitler and Mussolini quickly aided” (the implication being that neither regime had been complicit in the plans to topple the Republic). This objection to the word Holocaust is either academic pedantry or a zealous political attempt by Seidman to ‘own’ the term on behalf, exclusively and of course unbidden, of the Jewish victims of Nazi anti-semitism at the expense of the other 5, 6 or 7 million victims of the Nazi killing machine — anti-Nazis (Jewish and non-Jewish), intellectuals, socialists, anarchists, communists, liberals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies, the mentally ill, the disabled, etc., etc. — between January 1933 and May 1945.
Jun 032012
Farquhar McHarg (the ‘Big Man’ from Govan), Céret, Pyrénées-Orientales, 1959
Autobiography is essentially an act of confession. Some people can’t bring themselves to do it; others just can’t be stopped. Sometimes what comes out is so unbelievable it’s easy to mistake it for fiction. In the case of “The Chronicles of Farquhar McHarg”, you couldn’t make it up if you tried. Or could you?
Albert Meltzer introduced me to Farquhar in 1974, but the legend had already preceded him. I refrained from asking how much, if any, of it was true. What little I knew about his past seemed the sort of stuff you keep quiet about, if you want to avoid answering serious criminal charges, or stopping a bullet with your face. When Laureano Cerrada Santos was murdered in Paris two years later I expected Farquhar to be next; so did he. Farquhar furiously committed to paper his experiences of a lifetime of anarchist activism, to leave behind an explanation of things which powerful and dangerous people would much rather leave unexplained.
This is the testimony of a man drawn into clandestine struggle as a naive but idealistic teenager, who witnessed the “heroic” days, and the not so heroic days, of Spanish anarchism and survived long enough to tell the tale.
The 'odd couple': the perfidious Germinal Esgleas i Jaume and partner Federica Montseny i Mañé (see Pistoleros! Vol 3)
An interesting ‘Top Secret’ report on the Spanish Libertarian Movement (MLE) in exile in France by the Vichy police Special Branch (Police Judiciare General Inspectorate) dated 20 January 1942*. (Côte document – Archives du Gard 1W170). The ‘Germinal’ mentioned in the report is Germinal Esgleas i Jaume, partner of Federica Montseny, whose (joint) perfidious villainy is one of the key themes explored in Pistoleros! (Volume 3).
Vichy, 20 January 1942. TOP SECRET
Re: The Spanish Libertarian Movement (MLE) in France.
Some months ago, the police in Casablanca stumbled upon an anarchist propaganda centre in the Spanish refugee community in Morocco. The instructions for said foreign propaganda emanated from France where the movement appeared to be under the direction of persons called “Germinal” and “Marin”. Enquiries carried out by Superintendent Taupin of the Police Judiciare General Inspectorate resulted in the identification of the promoters of this Libertarian Movement who had set themselves up as a National Committee.
ISBN:978-84-9942-001-1/522 pages
Paul Sharkey has brought another important recent book on Spain to my attention. This one focuses on the blood price of the much-lauded and so-called ‘peaceful’ 8-year transition from Francoism to a ‘well-tied-up’ and Franco-endorsed monarchic democracy, a period in which upwards of 600 people were murdered for ‘reasons of state’. ‘La transición sangrienta’ (‘Bloody Transition. A violent history of the democratic process in Spain 1975-1983’) — by 58-year old journalist and lecturer Mariano Sánchez Soler — exposes the vicious policies implemented by the unchanging repressive organs of the rump of the Francoist state, desperate to avoid justice and to retain its power and privileges. The author traces the links between the Establishment’s ‘dirty war’ against ETA, GRAPO and other anti-State groups during the eight-year period that saw the regime revert to state-sponsored covert terrorism (GAL — Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación — Anti-terrorist Liberation Groups) backed up by special criminal legislation, and a systematic policy of brutal repression bearing the hallmarks of the immediate post-civil war period — all deployed to control the streets and political opposition to the disgraceful ‘Pact of Silence’ that gave immunity to some of the bloodiest criminals in European history since 1945. The victims of Francoist violence have suffered a double-death; they have been murdered, and their murders — and murderers — ignored!
Interview with Mariano Sánchez Soler
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Sunday Telegraph, 26 February 2012 (click to read)
What on earth are the criteria used by the Sunday Telegraph books editor to dredge up its reviewers? In a review of Paul Preston‘s ‘The Spanish Holocaust,’ Sunday’s (26/2/12) ’s ST magazine carried what is probably the most outrageously offensive and mealy-mouthed defence of Franco’s heritors since Brian Crozier’s 1967 hagiography ‘Franco’ (in which he defended the view that Guernica was destroyed not by the Germans but by the Basques themselves!). The reviewer is one Jeremy Treglown, Professor of English at Warwick University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a man whose work has hitherto focused on the lives of Roald Dahl, Henry Green Faber and the letters of John Wilmott, Earl of Rochester.
Basically, the thrust of his self-serving argument is that Francoist atrocities should not be investigated because it undermines political stability — a defence of impunity that was never raised at Nuremberg, Tokyo — or through to the more recent Baathist trials in Baghdad.
Words (almost) fail me. This guy’s got the gall to state: ‘Without the co-operation of former Francoists at all levels, the new system couldn’t have worked…’ Has it not occurred to this ivory-towered chancer that if they hadn’t cooperated they’d be either swinging from lampposts across Spain or seeking asylum in the Argentine of the Junta, Pinochet’s Chile, Stroessner’s Paraguay, Hugo Banzer’s Bolivia, or Geisel’s Brazil. The only places that would have them!
Treglown continues: ” . . . the new democracy distinguished itself . . . [by not being vindictive]. An obvious example is the fact that most of Franco’s descendants still live in Spain.’ Of course they still live in Spain – they still own the effen place, AND they control the legislature, the judiciary and most of the press!
Another weasely criticism Treglown makes of Paul Preston’s riveting new book is his use of the word ‘Holocaust’ in the title, which he appears to imply is sensationalist, exploitative and should be used exclusively in reference to the Nazi genocide of European Jewry, ignoring all the other victims of the Nazi killing machine: socialists of every kind, gays, gypsies, liberals, anti-fascists . . . One salient point EVERYONE should remember is that Franco killed more Spaniards than Hitler ever killed German Jews.
The academic from Warwick ends with another particularly cretinous comment: ‘In more immediate terms, a problem with the Spanish left’s current obsession, endorsed by this book, with the sins of the grandfathers is that in being used for party-political ends it also acts as a substitute for anything more constructive.’
Listen, Jeremy Treglown! the left’s so-called ‘obsession’ with the ‘sins of the grandfathers’ has bugger all to do with ‘party-political ends’. The movement for the recovery of historical memory is most definitely ANTI party-political; it has been precisely the party politicians of all hues — but particularly the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) — who, since Franco’s death and throughout the so-called ‘transition’ to the present day, have consistently deferred to the Church, the army, the press and the Francoist lobby, and have successfully sabotaged all attempts to rehabilitate the victims of Franco’s dictatorship. In my mind at least there is no doubt that the PSOE’s failure to win at the last elections wasn’t just down to the anti-social policies it was responsible for during the last parliament, but also its craven refusal to get on with the ‘complete rehabilitation of the victims of the Francoist dictatorship’, to quote the promise made by PSOE leader Rubalcaba in 2004 when he announced the setting-up of the Inter-Ministerial Commission for that very purpose.
As for Treglown’s jaw-droppingly elitist parthian shot, ‘It may be time for the left to forget about remembering’ — a sentiment whole-heartedly endorsed by Judge Baltasar Garzón’s right-wing political and judicial enemies who have succeeded in having him barred from the bench for 11 years. I can’t believe anyone with pretensions to integrity, scholarly objectivity or academic rigour, especially someone who presumes to review such an important historical study as Paul Preston’s ‘The Spanish Holocaust’, could have written that …
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
San Celoni Cemetery, 5 January 2012
Francesc Sabaté Llopart (Hospitalet de Llobregat, 30 March 1915 – San Celoni, 5 January 1960), better known as Quico Sabaté or El Quico, was (along with José Lluis Facerias) probably the best known of the Catalan-based anti-Francoist urban guerrillas.
‘What is referred to as the “Spanish republicans’ defeat” is crucial to any understanding of the life of Quico Sabaté who crossed the border with his brigade on 10 February 1939. They were the last organised troops to quit Catalonia. At that point QS did not consider himself defeated, and promised himself that he would resume a struggle that had been being momentarily interrupted. As far as QS was concerned, the war was not over — and Franco thought so too: Franco’s was – as Antonio Téllez put it – “a tyrannical rule during which thousands of Spaniards enjoyed some hypothetical freedom of choice only in the manner of their dying”.
’1939 was not, as far as QS was concerned, the beginning of an irreversible exile, because he could not conceive of life for him and his family other than in his homeland (my father rejected our becoming French citizens, an option offered by the French authorities to the French-born offspring of Spaniards.) His only thoughts were of action in his chosen theatre of operations, i.e. Spain, because QS felt closely connected with the Spaniards in Spain proper.
Dec 152011
Francisco Ponzán Vidal, The Anarchist Pimpernel (b. Oviedo, 1911- d. Buzet sur Tarn, 17 August 1944)
Around 6:30 pm on 17 August 1944 a number of trucks carrying some 50 prisoners left Saint-Michel prison in Toulouse heading northwest along the Albi road. Half an hour or so later, people living on the outskirts of the village of Buzet-sur-Tarn (Haute Garonne) saw a caravan of German military vehicles with an accompanying Gestapo touring car turn off the road and drive up a track into a wood. Shortly afterwards they heard shouts and the sounds of automatic gunfire and rifle shots coming from the woods. The shooting continued for 45 minutes. Some time later the vehicles emerged and returned in the direction of Toulouse. Two days later, informed by local residents, the authorities from Buzet-sur-Tarn visited the woods where they discovered the site of a chilling massacre. Beneath a still smouldering funeral pyre — and the debris of two burned-out barns, of which only smoke-blackened side walls bearing the pockmarks of bullets remained standing — they found what the carbonized remains of the 50 prisoners, all members of the Resistance. Among the blackened corpses was that of Francisco Ponzán Vidal, a lifelong Spanish anarchist and CNT union militant, one of countless unsung heroes of the Spanish Civil War and the anti-Francoist and anti-Nazi/Vichy resistance.
Founder and organiser of the escape and evasion lines used by the ‘Pat O’Leary’ and ‘Sabot’ networks, the French security services (Travaux Ruraux), and local French Resistance organisations, from 1940 to 1943, Francisco Ponzán Vidal’s group, consisting mainly of Spanish anarchist exiles, saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands of resistance fighters, evadees and escaped prisoners of war. Between January 1942 and April 1943 (when he was arrested by the Vichy milice), Ponzán’s records, consisting of two notebooks, list the names, dates and some photographs of 311 Allied evaders who successfully escaped to Spain and Gibraltar through his network. The names in the books include those of Lt. Airey Neave (the later MI9 officer and Thatcherite Tory MP), and RAF sergeant John Prendergast (later Sir John, colonial police chief — Kenya, Cyprus and Aden — and head of the Royal Hong Kong Police Special Branch). Among other successful evaders Ponzán’s anarchist network helped to make it back to Britain included Bill Sparks (my wife’s cousin’s brother) and major ‘Blondie’ Hasler, the sole survivors of ‘Operation Frankton’, the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ Royal Marine commando raid on German ships in Bordeaux harbour.
