I came out to Barcelona as administrator of the second British Red Cross Unit. Two nurses and myself came on in advance to find a site for the hospital of the Unit somewhere on the Teruel front.

Unfortunately the Unit had been cancelled all except four ambulances which are now en route somewhere between Paris and Barcelona. Some of these ambulances are to go, I believe to the first Unit at Grañen. Till they arrive in any case, I am left with no-one to administrate and nothing to do, so a friend in the CNT-FAI has asked me to write my impressions for broadcast or the press.

My first and deepest impression is that of the natural nobility of the Catalan people. I got that impression as early as Port Bou, where we had to spend six hours waiting for the Barcelona train. A bright sun was shining which tempted me to bathe in the bay. After undressing I left my coat, with some 80 English pounds in the pocket, on the rocks close to a frequented path with a sense of its perfect safety. Half an hour in Cataluña and a few conversations in my faulty Spanish had made me feel I was among friends, who appreciated the effort of the British workers and intelligentsia to help their cause. I would not have dared to risk such a large sum of money unguarded at any English watering place. Here I felt it was guarded by the revolutionary solidarity of Cataluña and even of the international solidarity of the working class of which Cataluña is now the bulwark.

This impression of revolutionary honour and revolutionary order has been maintained by all I have seen and experienced during the week I have been in Barcelona. On one occasion after a trying morning rushing round after the necessary passes to go on to Valencia - that was before the cancellation of the unit and I wanted to go on to the front to find a place for our hospital as soon as possible - I inadvertently paid my taxi driver four pesetas more than his fare. He brought it back to me remarking "eso sobra". This happened as I was entering the door of the Regional Committee of the CNT-FAI, the headquarters of those terrible Anarchists of whose misdeeds we read so much in the Capitalist Press now. I am not going to enter into controversy, philosophic or political, I simply record my experiences, without fear or favour. It is a fact, that the Barcelona churches were burnt, and many of them, where roof and walls are still standing, are used to house medical or commissariat stores instead of, as previously, being used by the fascists as fortresses. I suspect their present function is nearer the purpose of a religion based by its founder on the love of God and the Neighbour. However that may be, the destruction of the churches has not destroyed love and honesty in Spain. If they are not based on the love of God, they are based on brotherliness, selflessness and self respect, which have to be experienced to be believed. Never, till I came to revolutionary Barcelona, had I seen waiters and even shoeblacks refuse a tip. Here the refusal of anything in excess of the exact bill or fee is as invariable as the courtesy with which it is done. This very courtesy makes one feel mean for having offered it, a benighted bourgeois, automatically continuing bourgeois habits and unable to grasp the self- respect of the workers now they are so largely in control. My first day taught me my lesson. I never offend now.

You will have heard no doubt about the Dublin Rising of 1916. That rising is now thought of as purely a national one, of which the aims went no further than the national independence of Ireland. It is conveniently forgotten that not only was the manifesto published by the "bourgeois" leaders conceived in a spirit of extreme liberal democracy, but, associated with the bourgeois leaders, was James Connolly, the international socialist, who some regarded as the greatest revolutionary fighter and organizer of his day. In command of the Irish Citizen Army, which I had drilled, he made common cause with the Republican separatists against the common Imperial enemy. It is said that he threatened to come out with the Citizen Army alone, if the bourgeois Republicans shirked the issue.

It was then the middle of the great war. the rising was ruthlessly suppressed by England and sixteen of the leaders were executed. Connolly himself, badly wounded in the Dublin Post Office which was shelled to ruins by a British gun-boat, was strapped in a chair and shot by a firing-squad before he recovered.

Here in Cataluña, the union of the working class and nation starts off under better auspices than were possible in Ireland. In Cataluña the internal socialist reconstruction goes hand in hand with the armed fight against Spanish and international fascism. You are in advance of us in Syndico-Anarchist and Socialist construction. You are advance of us in dealing with the clerico-fascist menace. Again and again in Ireland the revolutionary Republican movement comes a bit of the way towards Socialism, and scurries back in terror when the Roman catholic Church looses its artificial thunder of condemnation and excommunication.

I come of an Ulster Protestant family. There is a saying in Ulster (the north-east province of Ireland) "Rome is a lamb in adversity, a snake in equality and a lion in prosperity". I am glad that in Cataluña you have made Rome into a lamb. In Ireland Rome is still a lion, or rather a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The priests inflame the mob and then pretend to deplore the mob-violence which they have instigated. Last Easter Sunday, I had myself to fight for three kilometres against the Catholic actionists, who attacked us on the streets as we were marching to honour the memory of the Republican dead who fell in Easter week 1916. The pious hooligans actually came inside the cemetery and tore up the grave rails to attack us.

In Ireland, as in Spain, it was the priests who started methods of fire and sword against the people. yet they complain bitterly when their own weapons are turned against themselves.

Comrades of Cataluña! In your hour of trial when you hold the barricades not only for yourselves but for us all, I greet you with the voice of revolutionary Ireland, smothered awhile but destined to regain its strength. I hold myself honoured to be among you, to serve if I can in whatever capacity I can be most useful.

J. R. White
CNT-AIT Boletin de Informacion. No. 15, November 11th 1936.

(donated to KSL by Federico Arcos) 

One need only leaf through the pages of our anti-bolshevik Soli to find it crammed with articles supporting the USSR and Stalin’s foreign policy, without the slightest hint of disagreement surfacing to lesson that impression.

We need only leaf through a dozen issues of Soli of late on the USSR’s stance in Geneva and Nyon

‘The world proletariat should back the USSR’s stance once and for all’, says one appeal on 9 September, whilst the editorial of the same edition declares that ‘all of the free men in the world should back the USSR’s demands’ and, to ram this view home, another appeal proclaims that there is ‘but one way to strengthen the USSR’s resolute position: which is worldwide worker action in concert with the soviet proletariat’. The next day we find Soli opining that ‘the proletariat awaits a sign from Russia’. By a coincidence that cannot but raise a smile, a headline on the same page says ‘Machiavelli, the inspiration of Italy and Germany...’, carelessly forgetting, of course, to add the USSR, that accomplished disciple of the Italian philosopher.

One day later, on 11 September, Soli announces that the CNT national committee is sending its representative to join the Commission (set up by The Friends of the USSR) to mark the 20th anniversary of the USSR.

A few days on, and it is ‘the Madrid CNT which is taking part in the tribute to the Soviet Union’. In Soli of 12 September, it is boasted that ‘Spain, barred from Nyon by European diplomats, is to take up her place again, thanks to the advocacy of the USSR’ and on 18 September Soli offers a portrait of ‘comrade’ (huh?) Ovseenko on the occasion of his appointment to the post of minister of Justice in the USSR.

But even as Soli and the CNT were furnishing ample evidence of their attachment to the USSR, its government and its representatives in Nyon and in Barcelona, neither is sparing in it sometimes vitriolic criticisms of the PSUC, which is the Communist Party of Catalonia, a branch of the Third International, wholly subject to the orders of that self-same government of the USSR. A paradox that highlights the tragedy of a situation whereby the CNT is compelled to play this double game: simultaneously backing Moscow whilst attacking its Spanish agent, the PSUC.

Willy-nilly, this poses the question: in which occasion are the CNT and Soli sincere, and which not? To be sure, the USSR does sell her war materiels to Republican Spain. We say ‘sell’, because it has been authenticated that not one kilo of weapons has been despatched by Stalin except against a money payment... or payment in kind. Let us reprint what L. V. has written on this point in Geneva’s Le Réveil:

"Our friends have invoked aid from Russia. There is no way that Moscow’s representatives may be attacked, because Moscow’s material support, in view of the shameful dereliction of the democratic capitalist states, and above all the cowardice on the part of the proletariat of those countries who are deceived by their leaders, is absolutely indispensable if any chance of beating the fascist troops was to be retained! But why not spell it out bluntly: Russia has sent us arms of such and such a quality and in such and such quantities. And in return, Spain has given her everything, and what is more, the Soviet leadership has imposed certain conditions and submitted certain demands in terms of domestic policy. Why then acknowledge soviet aid and not admit the quid pro quo imposed by Moscow and accepted by Valencia? The anarchist organisations have been played for suckers and have been the victims and accomplices of this unconscionable hypocrisy."

Indeed, this unconscionable hypocrisy is still carrying on day after day in Soli and externalised in the CNT’s policy of flirtation with the USSR makes them direct accomplices of the political by which so-called ‘republican Spain, and above all, Catalonia is currently beset. We ask yet again: Which of the CNT’s attitudes is the sincere one? The justified criticism of the PSUC or the equally unjustified admiration of the government of the USSR and its representatives abroad, Litvinov and Ovseenko? Or is the CNT sincere in both instances? Or insincere? Here? or there?

Whatever answer the CNT may devise to these questions, two facts remain: the Moscow government is wondrously exploiting the CNT’s silences in order to undermine its foundations, as the CNT is unwillingly turned into an accessory of the anti-revolutionary and capitalist-democratic policy which Moscow is unceasingly pursuing. The CNT, up to its neck in unthinking support of a government of assassins, support paid for in its blood in order to secure arms deliveries that are used in a war that is not at all antifascist, will some day be obliged to cease its attacks upon the Spanish Communists. Because there is no logic in supporting a government whilst being unwilling to back its political representatives.

Our Spanish comrades may well retort that their support is not for the USSR’s government, but for the Russian proletariat; that their participation in the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the USSR implies merely their appreciation if the October Revolution. Which would be dishonest. Not for many years now have we had any news of the Russian proletariat (it having no organ through which to express itself). Appreciation of the October Revolution, which we all have not ceased celebrating ever since 1917, does not at all require - indeed, the very opposite - collaboration with those who were the very ones who strangled that revolution.

This unconscionable hypocrisy must cease. Moscow is in the throes of selling to England at a knock-down price whatever is left of the Spanish Revolution of 19 July 1936.

Let us not be accomplices in this betrayal, through the moral support that Soli and the CNT afford to Stalinist politicians. The PSUC is merely carrying out its orders from Moscow. Our stance with regard to Moscow should be the same. They being equally stranglers of the Spanish Revolution, we should publicly condemn them both.

From Solidaridad (organ of the Uruguayan FORU), 2nd fortnight in December 1937. taken from Manuel Azaretto Las pendientes resbaladizas (Montivideo 1939)

 Maximoff on the Russian Counter-Revolution

Cynicism about the possibility of change, of creating a revolution in our everyday lives is common now and one of the biggest obstacles that anarchists have to fight. The State Communist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union destroyed the possibility of true freedom and liberty and we would do well to remind ourselves just how perceptive anarchist criticisms of this monolith were. Maximoff’s article is pungent and precise in its critique with his final paragraph sadly not yet realised. 63 years on and still a lot to do!

Counter-Revolution and the Soviet Union

Until recently it was held that the Great French Revolution of 1789-93 gave us a classical example of revolution and counter-revolution. Even now many are of the opinion that the period of the Jacobin rule was a revolutionary period, notwithstanding the series of counter- revolutionary measures adopted by the Convent, and that the fall of the Jacobins signified the beginning of the counter- revolution. Hence, it is inferred that there can be no counter-revolution as long as the party brought forward by the revolution is still in power. counter-revolution sets in, we are told, with the downfall of the party and the class leading the revolution, with the triumph of a more moderate party, with the liquidation of the revolutionary conquests. And the latter is generally associated with the downfall of the ruling party such as the overthrow of the Jacobin rule.

This outdated yardstick is still being applied to the evaluation of the trends and tendencies of Russian life. The state socialists, the "learned" liberal professors and just plain "educated" people, though sharply opposed to bolshevism, hold that a revolution is still taking place in Soviet Russia. Thinking by mere analogy with the French Revolution, they do not want to admit the idea that a revolutionary party can be transformed into a counter-revolutionary one. They believe that the so-called "excesses of the bolshevik policies" are due to the difficulties incidental in the building up of socialism, that in the long run they may slow down the tempo of the revolution but not stop it altogether. It is this fallacy that is being exposed so rapidly by the march of events in Soviet Russia that very soon only simple minded people will adhere to it.

For, what is a revolution? A revolution is the overthrow of the existing political and economic order based upon exploitation. It means the building up of a new order which raises to the highest level the welfare of the great masses of people, which gives the utmost extension of human rights and freedom, which substitutes for the master morality of the church and state one that is based upon freedom, equality and solidarity.

The Russian Revolution at its beginning was a revolution in that sense. In the year 1917-18 Russia was the freest country in the world. Freedom of speech, press, assembly, propaganda, freedom in the field of scientific research, education, individual self-assertion- there was unlimited freedom in almost every domain of life. Spontaneous activity and free initiative took the place of law; local self-government flourished in the form of Soviets, the state as represented by appointed officialdom was vanishing like smoke.

Economic slavery was toppling down: capitalism was being destroyed, being gradually replaced by the organisation of industry in the interests of consumers. Workers became active participants of the industrial process; economic life, represented by factory committees and similar organisations, was shaping itself along the line of free industrial federations, along the lines of a national commune of producers and consumers.

Such were the great undying conquests of that genuinely revolutionary period. But what is counter-revolution?

Is it just the attempt to bring the country back to the pre- revolutionary state, to restore the privileges of the old classes and parties? Such is the classical definition of counter-revolution, but it is not a full or precise definition since in Soviet Russia we have no revolution against revolution, no restoration of the power of former classes and parties. And nevertheless we have there a real counter- revolution.

In Soviet Russia all liberties have been wiped out. The defenders of freedom are being exiled, imprisoned and even executed. Local self- government has been done away with. The arbitrary rule of the "bureaucrat" is again restored to life. What of the passport system introduced by way of copying the old system of police rule and regimentation? What of the ban placed upon any sort of political activity digressing from "the general line" of the dictator, the dissolution of the Society of Old Bolsheviks, the imprisonment of outstanding members of the party for the slightest manifestation of independence of thought? Isn’t that counter-revolution in the real sense of the word?

In no other country is the death penalty applied as widely as in Soviet Russia: larceny, embezzlement, graft, thuggery - ordinary crimes are punished with medieval cruelty. Even children are not exempt from the application of the highest penalty. Isn’t that counter-revolution in its most naked form?

In Soviet Russia industrial democracy gave way to a hierarchy modelled on the type of capitalist organisations. A new privileged ruling class came to life- a bureaucracy which, not having property of its own, has the unchecked control of management in its hands.

All that is the very essence of counter-revolution, although it hardly fits the classical definition thereof. We have here a new feature: a revolutionary party crystallising into a bureaucratic class. While paying lip service to revolutionary slogans, the newly formed class gradually entrenches its class functions, its rule and privileges.

All that is not just a mere incident in the march of the revolution. Such distortions of the revolution, producing as they did in Soviet Russia a vicious form of counter-revolution, are not rooted in "historic necessity", but in the very concept of state socialism, and especially of dictatorial marxism. To uphold dictatorship is to be against revolution, against freedom, against human progress.

The process of disillusionment in respect to Soviet Russia, so much in evidence on the part of many an honest revolutionist, is but in its beginnings. Soon it will grow into a powerful tide directed toward new aims and objectives. Those will be the aims of libertarian communism, the aims of a new movement, reviving the hopes of the international proletariat and leading to a resolute struggle against dictatorships of all variety- red, black or brown - and for the fullest freedom based on economic equality.

G. Maximoff. Vanguard Vol. 11, No. 5 Oct.- Nov. 1935  

Virgilia d’Andrea is a reminder of the passion that anarchism could (and should!) inspire. It is the ideal, the source of hope and beauty. Like Luigi Galleani she writes in emotive and powerful language- a far cry from the formulaic and cold prose that can be found in some areas of our movement. Anarchism is about life, about individual realisation, about infinite possibility...

Virgilia d’Andrea was born on the 11th of February, 1890 in Sulmona- Abruzzi (Italy). At an early age she became an orphan and was taken to a Catholic college when she was six years old. She was to stay there until she got her teacher’s degree.

This period of her life may be of some interest to those who would like to know something of her psychological make-up. As far as I am concerned, without having many details of her life spent in the college, I can assume that in such an arid, superstitious atmosphere, lacking freedom and affection, her vivid intelligence could not be placated. Instead of adapting herself to the environment, she had been nurturing a rebellious spirit against the institution of a social order which condemned her and many others to grow up in such inhuman conditions. Even so, she was never overcome by desperation for she found a substitute for life in books and she developed a great passion for poetry, which was to remain with her to the end of her life.

As a teacher she met Armando Borghi and from then on she dedicated her life to anarchism. For her anarchism is not a dogma and neither is it a utopia. Or, to be specific, if there is an anarchist utopia, there is also an anarchist reality, and it is this anarchist reality that she is most concerned with communicating to us. A reality found in the aspirations of the human spirit, which is a constant struggle with the environment and convention for self determination and the realisation of freedom. She found it in the writings Homer, Aeschylus, in the mythological Prometheus who, as the son of Justice, lit the spark of thinking in man and put the great hope of liberation in his heart; and who, to assert himself, gave up the beatitude of divine life and rebelled against Jupiter. She found it in Euripides, Shakespeare, Cervantes, etc. a reality passing like a red thread through the works of many writers, painters, artists and litterati.

This reality was part of her life in her struggle against authoritarianism, and particularly against Fascism. Even after her opposition to fascism had forced her to leave Italy, she was not defeated, but continued the struggle in Germany, Holland and France, where she lived from 1923 to 1928. Then she went to America where, in 1932, on the 11th of May, she died in New York, aged forty-three.

Her literary output is slender; it consists of: "Tormento," a volume of poetry published in 1922 in Italy; "L’Ora di Marmaldo," a collection of prose published in France in 1928; and "Torce nella Notte," a collection of articles and treatises published in New York a few days before her death. There are also a lot of papers she gave, mainly in America, and a few unpublished articles, but as far as I know, none of her writings have been translated into English.

The following article is taken from the Italian anarchist paper, "Umanita Nova." This article I later found to be part of a paper given in New York on the 20th of March, 1932.

Anarchy signifies the destruction of misery, hate, superstition, and the abolition of oppression of man by man; that is to say, the abolition of government and the monopoly of property.

Human individuality is a profound and mysterious world which can enclose in itself all the vision of new horizons of various and different sentiments and affections; therefore the individual, this vital part of the vast universal harmony, must be able to give free outlet to his own inspirations, must have the chance to try every way he sees full of light and promise. He must be free to develop his activities, inclinations and capacities, his sometimes esoteric energies, which he feels palpitating in him, all of them mutable in space and time. He must feel himself as arbiter of his own destiny and direct the helm of his own existence towards the harbour which is the supreme dream of his life.

Governments, religions, fatherlands, morals, in their own interests, not only do not recognise any individual aspirations, but violate and sacrifice them. Governments oppress the individual. Religions hinder his rational faculties. Fatherlands push him to the cataclysm and vortex of war. Morals suffocate him with impositions and duties which are in direct contrast with his needs and natural inclinations. We are convinced that man will never be liberated if he is spiritually tied to the prejudices of gods, morals or any form of domination or subjugation. Therefore, our struggle is to free him from the clutches of these terrible intellectual and economic constraints. We rebel against the society which despotically claims the criminal right to dispose of its members.

Man must radically change the notions which have been nailed in his brain by the hammer of habit and centuries of slavery, such as: "Without bosses none would work," "Nothing flourishes without God," and "Social life is impossible without government."

Everything that is beautiful and great is achieved by the dangerous march of humanity, and always against God, masters and government.

The flame of thought, the magnificence of art, wonderful discoveries, the audacity of inventions belong to revolutionary periods, when humanity, tired of the chains of its restrictions, shatters them, and stops inebriated to breathe the breeze of the vaster and freer horizon.

To those who affirm that without government, legislation and repression, which are necessary for the law to be respected and transgressors punished, there will be disorder and delinquency, I am answering: Look around yourselves, cannot you see the frightful disorder in every domain of social life? Disorder that reigns in spite of the authority which governs and the law which represses? Cannot you see that the increase of regulations makes legislation more severe, the domain of repression extends, and immorality, humiliation, crimes and faults multiply? And the spectacle of injustices, which are so repugnant, is before us, torturing our soul and life.

The taking of power, the contact with it, support for it, on any pretext of flag, celebrity, homage to a mirage or principle, despite any appearance, despite repeated trite formulae, bring degeneration in every time and place, to men, to groups and parties. Far from being the stimuli of progress, they become the forces of conservatism. And soon, because the world marches despite them, they change into the causes of reaction. Power uses the worst in man and the worst among men; it elevates, rewards and exalts the vile and servile, and hates and punishes personal independence and dignity.

They ask us: When will the anarchists dominate? We will never dominate. Until the time (its remoteness depends on how far you are from us) of the realisation of a society based on free voluntary contracts, in which no one can impose his will on others because association will be free and concerned with growth and development rather than sacrifice of the individual, we will always be at our place, together with those who, like us, do not want to be oppressed, or to oppress, and who want to push forward those who are oppressed. We will remain out of any government and against all governments to indicate to men the way to their own liberation, when they will take in their own hands their own good and happiness.

They ask us again: Then won’t you always be defeated? No! It is only that we do not delude ourselves that to win we must take the place of the defeated dominator. Even if Anarchy cannot be realised today, tomorrow or after centuries, the essential thing for us is to march towards anarchy today, tomorrow and always. Any blow to the institution of private property or to government; any exposure of their lies; any human activity which can be taken from the control of authority, any effort to elevate people’s conscience by increasing the spirit of initiative and solidarity, is a step towards anarchy.

We need to discriminate between real progress toward sour ideal and not confuse this with hypocritical legal reforms, which, under the pretext of immediate betterment, distract people from the fight against authority and tend to paralyse their activities, giving hope that something can be achieved because of the goodness of masters and governments.

Red & Black No. 1, 1964.

M. Schirru was arrested on February 3rd, 1931 in a hotel room in Rome and taken to the police sub-station of Trevi. Here he was about to be searched for arms when, with flashing rapidity, he reached for his gun, fired at each of the three officers in the room and then at himself, in the head. Two of the officers were but slightly wounded, while the third and Schirru himself were found to be in a very serious condition. Schirru had to undergo an operation to be saved from immediate death.

Meanwhile, the police discovered that, in addition to the one in which he had been arrested, he was also renting another hotel room where two bombs loaded with powerful explosive were found and which, Schirru readily admitted, belonged to him. As soon as he was able to speak he declared that he had come to Rome purposely to kill Mussolini, and that the bombs were meant for this use. When his sudden arrest came to thwart his plan and deprive him of the liberty to execute it, he resolved to exact as great as possible a price for his life and liberty then ending his own life together with that of the police tools of Mussolini who were arresting him.

During his arrest, pending trial, he tried to communicate with his wife, who was living in New York with their two children, but failed. His wife on her side was trying to communicate with him, but to no avail. On March 27th, he wrote to his father, who was living in France: "This is my eighth letter to you, and no answer has come. I have written several times to Minnie also, and as I have had no reply from her I believe my letters are not forwarded... All I have received is the text of a telegram form Minnie saying she and the children are well and that she is doing her utmost to assist me."

In fact, Mrs. Schirru was trying to interest the U.S. Department of State on her husband’s behalf. She is an American citizen by birth, while Schirru was one by naturalisation and had been travelling in Europe with an American passport. Mrs Schirru obviously thought that she was entitled to the protection of her Government. But the State Department has no interest whatever for Americans of Anarchist beliefs and didn’t care about Schirru’s treatment at the hands of the Fascist bandits. In fact the State Department of the United states was heeding more the information it received from the Fascist Embassy in Washington than to Mrs. Schirru’s plea that her husband be assured at least of a "fair trial."

What passed in those days between the State Department and His Fascist Majesty’s Ambassador in Washington is, of course, unknown to me, but I cannot help recalling that the same attitude of complacency which the Italian Government had assumed a few years before when two Anarchists of Italian origin were slowly being done to death in Boston, was being repaid by the same attitude of complacency by the American Government, while Mussolini’s personal tribunal of assassins were preparing for Schirru’s murder.

The trial took place on May 28th, late in the afternoon. Cristini - a young fascist cut-throat raised to the highest ranks in the hierarchy as a reward for his bloody propensities - presided. No jury. No defence. No lawyers and no witnesses are admitted before Mussolini’s Special Tribunal - so called - unless approved by the Tribunal itself which is military in its formation and composed of the most trusted tools of the dictator.

Schirru conducted himself with great dignity during his trial - which, under the circumstances could hardly be called a trail. He repeated his former declaration of intention to kill Mussolini and gave his reasons. His lawyer - officially named by the Tribunal - gave a semblance of a defence, and in no time the Tribunal sentenced the "culprit" to be shot in the back.

Schirru received the sentence with fortitude and calmness: Not a word, not a movement.

At 2:30 o’clock, the next morning, he was awakened from his sleep and told that his execution would take place at sunrise. He asked permission to write his last words to his dear ones; declined the assistance of the priest and then was taken to the Braschi fortress, on the outskirts of Rome, where he was executed - only eight and a half hours after sentence had been passed - by a firing squad of twenty-four fascist militiamen.

Schirru’s execution was plain murder, even according to the fascist law. He had not killed anybody. He had simply had the intention to kill Mussolini, but he had never been at firing distance from Mussolini. Furthermore that intention was evidenced exclusively by his own declaration, and the shooting which followed his arrest at the Trevi police station did not carry the death penalty, as capital punishment existed in Italy at that time only for the murder of the king, the crown prince and Mussolini.

Thus Schirru was assassinated for his intentions as proved by his admission.

He faced death heroically. he well knew that, by asserting his intention of ridding Italy of its tyrant, he was throwing himself in the hands of the tyrant’s executioners. Nevertheless he did not hesitate. As he himself says in his Testament, which was published in Italian after his death, life had come to have for him only one purpose: the devotion of it to fighting for the liberation of the Italian people form the mediaeval tyranny that degrades it - and the instant he found himself a prisoner, unable to realise his long coveted design, he could no longer dedicate his deeds by his words and sacrifice.

To this unsurpassed devotion to the cause of liberty, the Italian workers look as to a source of courage and hope for the future.

MAN! Vol. 1, Nos 5-6 (May-June 1933)

"I was a little bit surprised to see the article on Clément Duval in the last issue of your Bulletin. It is inspired from a relatively old Italian article which itself improvised around the Italian translation of the Mémoires. Since then I published in French most of Duval’s original text, having received it from the late Max Sartin who himself inherited it from Galleani, and I checked the sources and the information. I guess the true story is even better than the novelised one... A few comments on your article:

• Duval was never jailed on Devil’s Island, only "traitors" (like Captain Dreyfus) were sent there; the life on the other islands (Royale, Saint- Joseph) was hard enough.

• The portrait had nothing to do with Duval, either young or old.

• His life was not turned into the bestseller Papillon. Papillon (Henri Charrière) spent several years as a convict in French Guyana, but in his memoirs he steals several anecdotes from other prisoners, from the legends, etc. But he describes himself as a faithful help for the authorities, the exact contrary of Duval who refused to work for the wardens and never spoke a word.

• The revolt on the island of Saint-Joseph happened in 1894, not 1895, and Duval did not directly take part in its preparation. He writes the names of his comrades and of the victims as he had heard them, unfortunately they are almost all misspelled. Honour the martyrs: Garnier, Boasi, Simon (aka Biscuit), Léauthier, Lebeau, Mazarguil, Thiervoz, Chevenet, Meyrueis and Marpaux."

We apologise to all our readers for our mistakes, and would like to thank CIRA for pointing them out. If anyone comes across either French or Italian versions of Duval’s memoirs, we would be glad to receive a copy.  

Two substantial donations have arrived from AK Press and Huddersfield ABC. Many thanks - and a reminder that all donations are welcome and can be collected.

Our next pamphlet will be ‘Ned Kelly’s Ghost- the Tottenham IWW and the Tottenham tragedy’ by John Patten.

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