For the past couple of months or so I've been interested in and then later volunteering for a group called Audible Anarchist. Audible Anarchist is a group of volunteers making audio book versions of texts thought to be useful for the development of Anarchism and education.
Intro video
"What is anarchism? Anarchism is a diverse and overlapping set of
political ideologies dedicated to creating a stateless society where all
individuals are free from arbitrary authority, hierarchy, and
oppression. Because our current society is based on hierarchy--the
ingrained beliefs that some people should have more power than
others--we believe we must destroy the systems of power that keep all
people oppressed.
Audible Anarchist is a collective of volunteers
from around the world dedicated to sharing anarchist ideas through
audio recordings of books and essays, through podcasts, and through
collaboration. Subscribe to our channel and discover the myriad
resources available to you. Uploads several times each week."
Currently the main project is reading Rudolf Rocker's Nationalism and Culture but readers are free to contribute a reading on any text they wish. Speaking of the group is always open to more volunteers, all you need is a means to record audio and access to the text you wish to read. Audio editing skills are a bonus but speaking from experience its not necessary as the group has some very experienced editors.
One strength of the current Anarchist community is that it has preserved many books, essays and speeches and still continues produce more to add to it. However material in other mediums is lacking, so audio books are a way of filling in some of the gap. I myself struggle to get into some books and even short essays and have found the readings on Audible Anarchist very helpful. Currently much of the work is being done on the Youtube channel but their is also a Dischord server and subreddit. There is also a website and plans to collaborate further with Librivox the worlds largest publisher of public domain audio books.
If you wish to volunteer or get in touch feel free to contact the group using the email
Earlier I uploaded a video about the life and murder of Giuseppe Pinelli and Italian Anarchist. While I thought the video was excellent at covering Giuseppe, I took issue with the later discussion about that period of Italian history. The guest downplayed and ridiculed the pretty well known strategy of tension and collaboration and infiltration of the Italian government and its policing arms, especially the intelligence services. Well it seems like the BBC agreed with me, because later they did another program on the murder of Roberto Calvi under Black Friar bridge. And in the process document his many, many connections to the conspiracy and interview two men instrumental in exposing it.
Murder and conspiracy among Italy's elite Roberto Calvi, head of Banco Ambrosiano, who was convicted of fraud but released on appeal shortly before his murder
At the time I thought the guest made the mistake of taking the strategy to its most extreme interpretation, that the government of Italy as a block including politicians and bureaucracy were united in a fiendish plan to use manufactured outrages like the Piazza Fontana bombing to pave the way for an openly Fascistic regime. Whereas the above video makes clear this was a plot motivated by one faction within and without the governmental system with some very powerful friends.
Also of interest, this appears to be one of the few times in history where a chapter of the Free Masons, Propaganda Du, or P2 where up to some very sketchy and murderous schemes. With that in mind and the obsessive fixation on the Masonic brothers in conspiracist circles its a little surprising this incident doesn't play more of a prominent role in that scene.
I encountered YouTube user and social commentator Sargon of Akkad about a year or so ago. He seemed like a rather obnoxious man who seemed to be deliberately playing up to the stereotype of a toxic intellectual. So I ignored him, though due to his popularity and infamy he kept popping up on my radar like in this video clip where he ends it saying he'll support Fascist terror.
Flicking through the comments and seeing his fans come out the woodwork reminded me of something else Sargon has been pretty heavily committed to in his internet career, the rehabilitation and promotion of the ideology of `classical liberalism`. Classical Liberalism, I'm just going to call it Liberalism from now on, promotes itself by appearing as a moderate and open and tolerant view point that is in strict opposition to all the various political extremists. The horseshoe fallacy is common talking point amongst this crowd.
So far as I'm aware this liberal revivalism unlike Neoliberalism doesn't appear to have grown into a full fledged political movement, so this may seem like tilting at windmills, but this is early days and I think given the prevalence of a certain smug frog its best to knock this thing on the head sooner rather than later. In my personal experience if you let a self professed Classical Liberal talk for long enough you'll eventually start hearing some pretty extreme and violent reactionary ideas. Sargon is pretty typical in that regard, but this more than just individual moral failings the whole project is rooting in some pretty vile stuff and is inherently reactionary.
This particular strand of liberalism likes to based itself on the Enlightenment period, specifically the early United States and United Kingdom, and the personalities they really like come from the 18th and early 19th century. But these societies were not wonderful bastions of reason and tolerance, they both were heavily involved in slavery, conquest and complete oppression of women. And a mans social worth and standing was dependent entirely on the size of their property holdings. Even in the democratic and republican USA property gave you unique entitlements like the right to vote or stand for office.
These weren't aberrations they coincided quite a lot with the views of many of this periods most prominent thinkers. For example John Stuart Mills On Liberty is a foundational text on Liberalism written in 1859 it largely codifies a lot of earlier liberal thinking. It outlines for example the limits of government authority, it also fully endorses colonial expansion and domination.
This isn't a man from an earlier time carrying some baggage either this is at the core of Mill's liberal framework of authority, if you're not advanced enough you should be ruled for your own good. He also was not being guilty of theoretical abstraction, Mill worked for the East India Company and assisted in the Despotic control of millions of "barbarians".
Another influential thinker often cited as one of the best thinkers of early liberalism is Thomas Jefferson the well known democracy advocate and American revolutionary. He not only drafted the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights the two pillars of liberal thought but he was so committed to them that he declared them `self evident`.
He was also a slave owner and even raped some of those slaves . He also opposed the free coloured population, he tried to declare free black people living in Virginia declared outlaws, and wanted to expel the children of white women and black men.[1] Like Mill he also took a dim view of "Barbarians" and endeavoured to pressure the tribes living in or near US territory to leave and move further west if they couldn't be "civilised". His favourite method was tricking the tribes into debt by selling to them on credit, then using that as leverage in negotiations. In exchange for debt cancellation the government would get land for cheap and parcel it off, this would weaken the ability of the tribe to pay off any future debts and establish a negative spiral eventually forcing the tribes to either leave US territory or assimilate into the towns.
Jefferson first instructed his agents to persuade Indians to adopt agriculture. That new way of life, the agents explained, would require less land than hunting. With no need for their vast forests, the Indians were encouraged to sell their uncultivated territories for 25 cents per acre, the profits of which Indian farmers could use to purchase agricultural tools and manufactured goods.
To stimulate Indian consumerism, Jefferson increased the number of government trading houses located near Native villages, arguing publicly that the establishments enabled Indians to share in the fruits of white "civilization." But it was a ploy. His real motive, he confided in 1803, was to lure Indians into spending themselves into debt, obligations that would be paid off through the sale of tribal lands.
The weapons in Jefferson's arsenal of dispossession were many and varied, and they worked to perfection. As the historian Colin Galloway has observed, Jefferson's strategy yielded some 30 treaties with approximately a dozen tribes, who ceded some 200,000 square miles of land in nine states.
The fact Jefferson owned slave is no secret of course, even his admirers acknowledge it, though they quickly make excuses. For example when his slave estate is brought up the quotation about the wolfs ear is often cited as an example of his sad reluctant compromise with that bloody institution. "but, as it is, we have
the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let
him go. justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the
other." But that is a very selective quote, the full letter that it comes from makes it clear that he advocates expanding slavery throughout the Union including the newly acquired territory of Missouri. Indeed he goes so far as to call abolition a form of treason and the death of the nation.
Monticello Apr. 22. 20.
I thank you, Dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as
to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri
question. it is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long
time ceased to read the newspapers or pay any attention to public
affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be
a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant.
but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened
and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell
of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is
a reprieve only, not a final sentence. a geographical line, coinciding
with a marked principle, moral and political, once concieved and
held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated;
and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can
say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who
would sacrifice more than I would, to relieve us from this heavy
reproach, in any practicable way. the cession of that kind
of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would
not cost me in a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation
and expatriation could be effected: and, gradually, and
with due sacrifices, I think it might be. but, as it is, we have
the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let
him go. justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the
other. of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves
from one state to another would not make a slave of a single human
being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over
a greater surface would make them individually happier and proportionally
facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing
the burthen on a greater number of co-adjutors. an abstinence
too from this act of power would remove the jealousy excited by
the undertaking of Congress, to regulate the condition of the
different descriptions of men composing a state. this certainly
is the exclusive right of every state, which nothing in the constitution
has taken from them and given to the general government. could
congress, for example say that the Non-freemen of Connecticut,
shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other
state?
I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless
sacrifice of themselves, by the generation of '76.
to acquire self government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it. if they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle more likely
to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before
they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves and of
treason against the hopes of the world.
to yourself as the faithful advocate of union I tender the
offering of my high esteem and respect. Th. Jefferson
This is all terrible but again it is not an aberration, these horrible views are part of the bedrock of Jeffersonian liberalism. He believed that for the democratic society he championed to work it must be primarily agricultural and based on a large body of small land owners. The Yeomen farming class[2] essentially. In order for this class to survive and prosper it needed several things, plenty of unoccupied land, hence the pushes to removal of the tribes to free up vast acres. It also explains in addition to naked racism and belief in pseudo science the drive to maintain and expand slavery and expel the free coloured population. If the slaves were freed many of them would become free farmers and so compete for land, and so would be a destabilising influence on the yeoman farmer society Jefferson wanted to cultivate.
And speaking of cultivation...
Voltaire! The above is basically classical liberalism's slogan. If they ever do become a full fledged movement with rallies and marches that will be on most of the banners. Minor tangent, when I looked up where exactly Voltaire said this and the second result was Stormfront, I don't have a point here, just thought it was worth mentioning. Also it appears that he didn't and the quotation was attributed to him in a book written after his death by an English admirer but the association has stuck so I'll keep going.
Voltaire was of course very influential and still is to an extent, the problem is while his works have many merits, Candide is a favourite, both his personal life and his legacy aren't very good omens if this liberal revival takes off. Voltaire was not afraid to offend or risk punishment for what he believed in, though he didn't relish being sent back to the Bastille so often used pen names and moved around when the authorities had had enough of him. The problem is though that he had a very, very poor track record when it came to defending the rights of anyone else.
He was the close friend and confidant of Frederick the Great, and may have been his lover. Frederick's regime was built on conquest and serfdom[3] so he does not appear to have made much impact in Prussia. He also had little success with his other great admirer Catherine the Great. Again he found an enthusiastic fan at the head of an autocracy built on military conquests and serfdom. He had a lively correspondence with the "enlightened despot"[4]. Indeed before the French revolution Voltaire was the most important and popular thinker amongst the Russian nobility.
Now because of the two previous examples I want to make it clear that unlike Mill and Jefferson I don't think Voltaire actively promoted any of this, though his comments praising Catherine's war with the Turks for example are pushing. I'm mainly bringing up Voltaire because he's an enlightenment figure many classical liberals openly aspire to and his legacy shows just how insufficient his ideas are for addressing extreme injustice. 18th century Russia was a society where the nobility could in effect do what they pleased so long as they did not anger a more powerful member. And yet despite years of infatuation the Russian enlightenment never translated into effective social change. On the contrary after 1789 Catherine ditched the enlightenment and aggressively stamped out what little progress had been made.
Now back to the UK. Arguably the United Kingdom since its founding in 1707 was the nation where classical liberalism made the most inroads. Indeed the UK has had several liberal Prime Ministers, and by strange coincidence these premierships often occurred during some pretty dark and bloody periods of UK history. For example Prime Minister John Russell who essentially caused the Irish famine. Now he didn't go around spreading the blight, the blight actually appeared while his predecessor the Conservative PM Robert Peel.
But the majority of the deaths can be lead squarely at Russell's feet since he not only did not take measures to prevent or limit the damage of the famine, he ended what relief efforts Peel's government had made, (small scale public works, price guarantees of corn etc.). He was the Prime minister from 1846 to 1852 nearly the entirety of the famine, and he never changed course. His actions, or rather deliberate inaction lead to the displacement of 2-3million people and the deaths of 800,000 to 1,000,000 people depending on estimates. All of whom were British subjects due to the act of Union in 1800. And again as with Mill and Jefferson this wasn't some personal failing, it was the direct result of a firm belief in a cornerstone of classic liberalism, that of the market economy.
As far as Russell was concerned the real tragedy of the famine was that it lead the British government to intervene in the economy for them it was most important to get the market back on track. To quote Trevalyn a member of Russell's government who oversaw Ireland and its (lack of relief)
Our measures must proceed with as little disturbance as possible of the ordinary course of private trade, which must ever be the chief resource for the subsistence of the people, but, coûte que coûte (at any cost), the people must not, under any circumstances, be allowed to starve.
Which seems not too bad, but the commitment to not let people starve quickly proved hollow, under Trevalyn exports of Irish food stuffs continued regularly and when in 1847 he was confronted with news that the years potato harvest had been riddled with blight this was his response.
'The only way to prevent the people from becoming habitually dependent on government is to bring the operation to a close. The uncertainty about the new crop only makes it more necessary. Whatever may be done hereafter these things should be stopped now or we run the risk of paralysing all private enterprise and having this country on you for an indefinite number of years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer strongly supports this policy.'
And there you have it, liberal economics in a nutshell. Property and commerce before and above human costs. Whenever someone praises liberal economics and laissez-faire commerce this is what they mean.
Before I wrap up I'd like to hammer home this point with the example of the most successful liberal statesman in the UK, Gladstone. Gladstone was Prime minister four times, and Chancellor of the Exchequer another four times, so a man of influence and power. In opposition he developed a reputation for opposing the growth of the Empire. When he was in office though he made no move to withdraw British rule from any of its overseas territories. Indeed, he personal investments in several Imperial ventures. The case of Egypt is very revealing, in the 1880's tensions were growing there. Gladstone decided to intervene, the fact he had 37% of his stock invested in the country was probably just a coincidence.
Gladstone funnily enough justified Imperial aggression and domination in much the same way J.S. Mill did, for their own good, and it would end once the conquered "savages" reached an appropriate level of civilisation whatever that actually means.
The Liberal project old and new is one steeped in violence and hostile elitism. In that respect the modern "classical liberals" of today are not much different from their forefathers. The reputation political liberalism has of being an emancipatory movement for civil discourse and polite toleration is largely a product of misdirection and propaganda to cover up the atrocities and structural tyranny it presided over.
___________________________________________
1: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/opinion/the-real-thomas-jefferson.html
2: The term Yeomen farmer in the United States didn't have any feudal connotations
3: Frederick II past an abolition of serfdom decree in 1763 after he had fallen out with Voltaire and the decree only extended to crown lands. It wouldn't be until the revolution of 1848 when Prussian peasants would finally be freed from all feudal obligations.
4: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jun/02/russia.books
"And I didn't realise I was helping their case then, and I was so, so vulnerable. I think they used that to their advantage." Steve Kelly
Steve Kelly is the brother of one of the 96 Liverpool FC fans crushed to death in 1989 in Hillsborough, this is his account of how the police treated the families of the victims and the impact of the cover up and media smears.
A bit different from the other entries in the series on political prisoners but its account of a massive police cover up and attempt to discredit and harass grieving family members for wanting to know the truth is very familiar.
Episode guide:
A heartbreaking story of a long campaign for justice in the UK. Steve's brother, Mike, was killed in the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster, when 96 people died in a crush at a football stadium. Fans like Mike were blamed for the deaths, but Steve and others knew that something was amiss. In Their Own Words is a podcast from Amnesty International, where people around the world tell their extraordinary stories of fighting for their rights.
I had some more thoughts on the Hillsborough disaster and this lead to a thread on twitter.
The Hillsborough stadium disaster and the police response are very instructive. Despite billions of pounds being spent on PR for the police, criticism and opposition to them is still fairly common provided it comes with a number of qualifiers. From my own experience, contempt and hostility toward individual coppers is widespread and when news or rumours of police corruption and or brutality surface it's not hard to convince someone that there is at least some truth to the allegations.
However, the distrust usually falls under the `few bad apples` scenario. Yes, those officers were corrupt and worse than the criminals they allegedly protect us all from, but they're the exception. Again from personal experience, the only time I've encountered people -who aren't already involved in political radicalism of some kind-willing to believe in widespread or even total corruption or abuse from the policeis in regard to a foreign police force in a nation that has a very poor reputation overall. Though there has been a bit of an exception with the police of the United States. The Black Lives Matter campaigns have really damaged the reputation of the American police internationally.
This is why I feel it's very important not to let Hillsborough fade from memory after the second inquest. This was a cover-up and harassment campaign organised by the entire South Yorkshire police force, from the officers at the scene on that day all the way to the top. They were supported in this endeavour to cover up the deaths of 96 people by the elected and parliamentary government and elements with the free press. It's an incontestable example of the power and attitude of the police as an institution and how even modern parliamentary democracy and independent media are not only not up to the task of keeping the police in check, but when push comes to shove will actively support even its worst excesses.
Alexandra Kollontai was a very influential (for a short period of time) Bolshevik. During the Russian revolutions her views on the role of women and concepts on relationships which are often described as a precursor to the free love experiments popularised in the 1960s. The title of this audio history was The Original Revolutionary Femininist, I've changed it because its historically misleading their were several very important and prominent revolutionary feminists that predate Kollontai such as Louise Michel.
Kollontai has some admirers not just in revolutionary feminism but in Left Communist circles as she was one of the founder members of the Bolshevik faction the Workers Opposition (WO), not to be confused with the Workers Group that was around at the same time. I don't really know why personally the only major point of difference between the WO and the Bolshevik party leadership was the role of Bolshevik party controlled unions in the economy. When it came to repressive measures by the Bolshevik party against other revolutionary organisations and tendencies Kollontai and most of the WO closed ranks with the party. They would eventually regret that when Stalin came to power and attacked them,
Kollontai survived and became an ambassador to the Scandinavian countries, while in that role she often campaigned to have communist dissidents who were refugees in Sweden and Norway expelled back to their home countries where they could be arrested and executed. For example the German Communist exile Hugo Urbhans.
But despite this frankly disgusting career her writings on gender roles and women and communism still stand up for the most part and she remains an authority on the subject.
This is part of a podcast series where political prisoners describe how they became victims of state repression and the conditions in the prisons they've been sent to.This one is by Albert Woodfox a Black Panther and prison organiser and details his struggles within the Louisiana State Penitentiary and the effects of solitary confinement.
A short history of the Angola prison chapter can be found here
Quote:
Albert Woodfox endured 44 years in solitary confinement - more than anyone else in the US. When he was imprisoned in Louisiana in the 1970s, racism was rife. Albert took a stand - and it cost him. Hear why Albert was punished over the odds and how he survived 44 years in isolation. In Their Own Words is a podcast from Amnesty International, where people around the world tell their extraordinary stories of fighting for their rights.
LGBTI people in Africa have become a pawn in cultural arguments. Their experiences and struggles are used both as ammunition for homophobic commentaries on the supposed damage that tolerance can lead to wider society. Or to cement racist narratives about savage natives.
So I think its important to see what they themselves have to say on these matters. This a documentary about the struggles of Kenya's Intersex population and how attitudes towards them have changed over time. Its roughly positive and includes a formerly homophobic priest who having attended a sensitivity training course became an advocate for his community and mentor to a local intersex person.
In 1981 tensions over racist police officers abusing and harassing local black Liverpudlians exploded with a riot that for a few weeks managed to drive the police out of the area and force the government to respond and look into concessions. However, with the use of CS (Tear) gas for the first time in the UK and reinforcements enabled the police to take back control of the streets.
Racism in policing hasn't gone away and riots against police harassment would become more common in the 80's. And of course the response to police killings of coloured people has sparked the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and UK.
Transcription
[Program Producer Max Pierson]
Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC
World Service with me Max Pierson.
Next, we move forward in time and onto the streets of
Liverpool, in the English Northwest. In the 1980s the industrial and economic
changes introduced by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had led to considerable
social change and tension. In the Summer of 1981 those tensions boiled over.
During the riots that followed police used CS gas to control civil unrest for
the first time on the British mainland.
Claire Bose has been speaking to a man who took part in that
rioting.
Claire Bose:
Liverpool 8 or Toxteth as it came to be known in the media, a rundown part of
Liverpool with a mixed-race community, poor housing and few jobs. In July 1981
it turned into a battlefield.
[Journalist on the scene]
The Grove street area along Parliament street, there
actually police in a rank there with their riot shields.
Claire Bose:
The older residents of the area didn’t understand why.
Journalist:
Did you believe it would happen?
Older Resident:
No, no, no. I would understand if they had some kind of row with the police.
Claire Bose:
But the younger people knew, Jimi Jaqne was 17 when the
riots broke out and he and his friends were afraid of the police. When he was
just 12 and a keen student he’d been stopped by police on his way from school.
Jimi Jaqne:
And he asked me in a kind of gruff voice you know “where was
I going?” I explained to him that I was just coming home from school and I was
on my way. So anyway, he got out of the car and he walked towards me, and as
he’s walking towards me he accused me of being a liar.
He opened my bag, went through it and he told me that I had
to come to the police station.
Claire Bose:
But instead he drove Jimi to some wasteland and racially
abused him.
Jimi Jaqne:
He kept pointing out that kids like me needed to be removed
from the street before we got old enough to break the law. And then he kicked
me so that I fell over, and I fell over into a pool of water and then he picked
up the bag and emptied the contents into the same pool of water.
He got into the car laughing and then the two of them just
drove off.
Claire Bose:
Police at the time had the power to stop and search anyone
they thought looked suspicious. In early July 1981, a young black man was
arrested. There was a skirmish and three policemen were injured. The next day
the atmosphere in Toxteth was charged, and there was a big police presence.
By early evening a full-scale battle had begun.
Jimi Jaqne:
There were lines of police with shields, and there were all
these guys, there must have been about a 150 to 200 guys just, just, just, just
throwing bricks from one side, and, and charging with scaffolding, trying to
penetrate the line of shields. There were vehicles burning everywhere, there
were people going backwards and forwards. There were members of the press,
there were community leaders who I recognised, there was a couple of priests.
And these flames licking high from these burning vehicles,
and people literally trying to kill each other. I mean there were no holds
barred and I thought what the hell is going on?
And there were friends running backwards and forwards, the
only response I get from them was “come on! Get down to the front, get down to
the front, what are you doing standing here?”
I thought, nah I can’t do this you know, because in my mind
I’m not a violent kid you know I read books.
Claire Bose:
But then he spoke to a friend and asked him why he was
joining in.
Jimi Jaqne:
You know he just reminded me of all the grief that we’ve
been through, and he explained to me we’d just never ever get another
opportunity to show these guys. If you’re gonna make our lives hell, if we’re
gonna end up in jail for walking down our streets, then let’s go to jail for
the right reason. And, and that’s for sticking one on them first.
I didn’t relate to the solution but I understood the
sentiment because we feared every day. And I went to bed and I, I slept on
this, I ended up at some point convinced, I can’t not be with my friends going
through this. Britain was a completely different place back then to what it is
now, we had no one listening to us. It was up to us to take control of our
fate, we had to do something.
I was out on Sunday afternoon, and the two guys who’d been
out the night before they were geeing us up and saying “don’t worry, don’t be
nervous, everyone looks out for everyone and and don’t be scared”. We went out
and I remember I was really frightened I felt I was inviting all hells trouble.
Once I’d thrown my first few bricks, it all seemed to be
natural. You were amongst a lot of people who were all doing the same thing. At
the same time the police, you were up really close to them and they were full
of abuse, it was us against them and may the strongest survive.
And when the first petrol bombs started being thrown, that
really sorted out the men from the boys so to speak. It was really horrible to
see men on fire, and it was really difficult seeing people in that sort of
trouble.
Claire Bose:
And potentially the possibility of really, really hurting
someone, possibly to the point of death.
Jimi Jaqne:
Its true, there were times when I had to think about that,
you know I was, I was involved in everything, I, I, the only thing I didn’t do
was manufacture or throw Molotov cocktails. There were times when I was
daredevil enough to go up to the front line with a piece of scaffolding and start
smashing on a shield and if it got through the shield and it hit someone in the
same way, where it would hit them it was no consequence to me, it was of no
concern to me, I’d blinkered myself to it. I got involved.
[Archive Press Report]
It wasn’t until first light this morning that the full
extent of the damage became known. Along upper Parliament street where some of
the worst rioting occurred it looked like the morning after a Second World War
Blitz. Houses still smouldering, shops, offices burnt out.
Claire Bose:
The next night as the riots intensified the police decided
to use CS gas, Tear gas, for the first time on the British mainland.
Jimi Jaqne:
It was around 2 o’clock in the morning, they fired the first
CS cannister. It landed on the corner of Catherine street, a lot of smoke
started to pour from it and it caught me, and I had to run off to a house
around the corner where I knew the family and I washed my face out, my eyes. It
only the next day seeing the news that I realised the significance of it all.
Claire Bose:
The Chief Constable of the local police force Kenneth Oxford
explained why he’d taken this drastic step.
Kenneth Oxford:
It was a situation where I’d almost reached a point of
overrunning or no return, call it what you will. I mean, these people had to be
stopped and it was a last-ditch measure.
Claire Bose:
There was one more night of rioting before it ended. Soon
afterwards the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited the area and spoke with
some of the rioters to try to understand what had happened. It seemed like
change might be on the way.
Jimi Jaqne:
The noises that the community leaders were making, they were
trying to make it clear to anybody who’d listen that you know that this was a
police relations matter. It had nothing to do with unemployment really, it had
nothing to do with bad housing or poor education really. Those things had been
going on since God’s creation but you didn’t have riots every day.
And so, we felt as though this might pay off you know, that
things might change.But the problem
then was that over the next three weeks eventually police became more confident
about coming back onto the streets.
Claire Bose:
At the end of July riots broke out again, this time the
police were more prepared, they began to break up the crowds using police
vehicles. When a man was run over and killed the riots ended. Over 450
policemen were injured and 500 people arrested.
Jimi Jaqne:
It was for the most part a really frightening experience, it
involved acts of behaviour on both sides the likes of which I had never seen
before or been a part of before. But I felt as though, like most of us felt
that there was so much at stake it was unavoidable.
Claire Bose:
There was an inquiry into this and other riots that broke
out across the UK that year, the report criticised the police and government
and called for more community policing. Jimi Jaqne graduated from university
and is now a community activist and teaching assistant, he still lives in
Toxteth.
Max Pierson:
Claire Bose. Well
that type of rioting which took place on the streets of Liverpool in 1981 is
pretty rare in Britain, but there are certain themes which crop up from time to
time and result in similar tensions. They revolve around poverty, housing,
policing and occasionally summer heat. I’m joined now by Professor Richard
Phillips of Sheffield University whose carried out research into the Toxteth
riots.
Just for a sense of the general context of what happened,
the relationship between the public and the police, we heard of Jimi Jaqne’s
appalling experience being roughed up by a police officer, how common was that?
Richard Phillips:
Much more common than you’d like to think, I mean the older
person speaking in that interview was surprised by it, and I would have been
surprised by it myself from where I was in this country. But me and my
colleagues in Liverpool spoke to a number of people who’d been involved in
those disturbances. They also spoke of being battered by the police, of being
taken down to the police station and held without charge.
Max Pierson:
So how would you assess the blend of causes if you like,
were these anti-police riots or was there also the poverty, the deprivation,
the housing that fed into them?
Richard Phillips:
The easy answer to that is that it was poverty and it was
housing and that was the answer that was most graspable by the government so
what Mrs Thatcher did at the time was to appoint Michael Heseltine the
Environment Secretary to go to Liverpool and to investigate and to visit
places, she went herself as was mentioned in that report as well.
But if you talk to people who were directly involved in the
disturbances those things were very much secondary. The thing that really upset
people that really provoked people to riot was the way that they and their
friends had been treated by the police. The Liverpool born Black community had
been in the city for four generations. They’ve been there since the 1880s in
one form or another, a mixed-race community. So, they’re very, very much
Liverpool very much British, the only difference between this community and
other people was there race.
Max Pierson:
What was the result of the Heseltine inquiry into what
happened and the attitude towards inner-city areas similar to Toxteth in other
parts of Britain?
Richard Phillips:
Heseltine was focused on Merseyside, he came up with all
sorts of plans for environmental improvements, for detoxification, for
investment. He launched the Merseyside Development Corporation which came up
with economic solutions, but the real inquiry into these issues wasn’t really
conducted by Michael Heseltine it was conducted by Lord Scarman.
Scarman really focused on race, he acknowledged that white
people were involved as well but he said that there was a lot of angry young
men, and most them he said were black. And he acknowledged that there was
discrimination in policing, he acknowledged there was disadvantage in black
communities. He didn’t accept the charge that there was institutional racism,
that was a charge that wasn’t accepted in relation to the police until 1999.
But Lord Scarman went quite a long way and he came up with a
lot of recommendations including employing more black minority ethnic community
members in the police, monitoring racial abuse, the sorts of things we heard
about from Jimi. Scarman wrote that report and came back to look at whether
that had made any difference a couple of years later, he wrote a postscript to
it and he concluded that in some ways it had.
Max Pierson:
So, what’s Toxteth like now, compared with 35 years ago?
Richard Phillips:
There’s a lot less unemployment than there was then. The
City has had something of an economic revival. But one thing that you’ll notice
if you go to Liverpool 8 is that there’s quite a lot still of dereliction. There’s
a lot of houses, streets which are being demolished or waiting to be
demolished.
Max Pierson:
Professor Richard Phillips from Sheffield University, and
his book on the subject co-written with Diane Frost is entitled Liverpool 81.
The CIA is notorious for its operations in Latin America. Its hard to argue that any other organisation has done more to attack and restrict democracy around the world. Their operations to topple the Presidency of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was the first of many operations carried out that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans, and even managed to get several US citizens killed too.
The ideological justification for the death squads and mercenaries that terrorised the continent was of course the claim that Communism would take control of the region. Of course this wasn't true, Communists of various ideologies were always in the minority even in Cuba the rebels who overthrew Batista were a coalition of very different political groups, if anything US hostility to the new regime gave the small Communist faction the opportunity to grow and become dominant.
Many of the governments targeted for coups and destabilisation were punished solely for wanting to carry out limited social and economic reforms. Some of the governments weren't even left wing but moderate right wing Christian Democratic administrations. Arbenz was not a communist, his crime was cutting into the profits of United Fruit and pursuing an independent policy. The wars fought in Latin America in the 20th century were always about protecting profits and influence.
Transcript
Program Producer Max Pierson:
We’re going to begin in Guatemala and the coup that signalled
that Uncle Sam was determined to play tough in the face of any perceived threat
from Leftist governments in America’s backyard. The period between 1944 and
1954 was known in Guatemala as the ten years of spring. Free elections had been
held and resulted in a left-leaning government under President Jacobo Arbenz, which
had introduced reforms designed to share the country’s wealth more evenly.
Some in Washington saw that as a “Red threat” creeping
communism. So in 1954 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engineered a change
in government in Guatemala, it was the first CIA backed coup in Latin America.
Michael Lanchin has been speaking to the son of Jacobo Arbenz who was forced to
flee into exile along with his father.
[Archival Radio Announcer with an English accent]
Carrying anti-communist banners jubilant soldiers celebrate
victory following their two-week revolt in Guatemala. Colonel Carlos Armas the
rebel leader is embraced by some of his supporters who helped him overthrow the
Red regime in Guatemala.
Michael Lanchin:
It’s the summer of 1954 and the victorious coup leaders are
gathering in Guatemala City after their successful overthrow of the country’s
leftist President. A group of Guatemalan army officers, trained and financed by
the CIA are now in power.
[Another Archival Radio Announcer with an English accent]
Arriving from Guatemala City is Colonel Elfego Monzón, head
of the temporary Junta. He has high hopes of becoming President of Guatemala,
but so has Colonel Armas. Then when the few Red outlaws who still menace the
city have been quelled, free elections will again be held in Guatemala.
Michael Lanchin:
It’s the end of ten years of civilian rule in the Central
American country. And President Jocobo Arbenz and his family are forced to flee.
Juan Jocobo:
When we went into exile, he was extremely bitter about what
had happened. For the betrayal he suffered, his struggle was for the good of
the people of Guatemala. He had great ideals, he was left feeling very, very
bitter.
Michael Lanchin:
Juan Jocobo was the only son of President Arbenz, he was just
five years old when his father was elected in 1950.
Juan Jocobo:
It was quite hard for me as a child because both my parents
were involved in politics from when I was born. So, I rarely saw them, I didn’t
really understand why until later on. We lived in a large estate which my
father had bought with his own money. I remember that it had a huge garden, I
had a nanny, and a bodyguard who also became my tutor. When I was three or four,
I didn’t go to kindergarten, because I later found out there had been some kidnapping
threats. For my own security I grew up pretty much alone at home because my
older sisters all went to school, it was a difficult childhood.
[Music]
Michael Lanchin:
Guatemala had a largely feudal system since colonial times
where the majority indigenous Mayan population lived in poverty, while wealthy
landowners took charge of governing with the support of the United States. But in
the mid 1940’s the US-backed Dictator was overthrown in a popular revolt. And the
country’s first free elections were held.
Jacobo Arbenz a progressive former army Colonel became Guatemala’s
second democratically elected leader. Once in office Arbenz pushed ahead with a
reformist agenda; at the forefront were radical land reforms granting peasants
access to vast swathes of arable land. The move infuriated Guatemala’s largest
foreign investor, the United Fruit’s company one of America’s most powerful
corporations. And it set alarm bells ringing in Washington where President
Dwight Eisenhower had pledged a worldwide fight against the spread of Communism.
In August of 1953 President Eisenhower gave his approval for
an operation codenamed PBSuccess, authorising the Central Intelligence Agency
the CIA to begin organising and arming an opposition to President Arbenz.
Juan Jacobo:
I first realised that the situation was serious when they
told us we had to leave Casa Presidencial the Presidential Palace because of
the threat of bombing from aircraft. I remember being told “get your stuff
ready, the toys you want to take with you”. We went to a house in Zone 10 of
the city, it had a big garden, at times we had to hide under the beds. It was
an anxious time.
Michael Lanchin:
The first group of anti-government rebels -former Guatemalan
soldiers- had crossed the border from CIA bases in neighbouring Nicaragua and
Honduras in mid-June of 1954. Newsreel from that time cast them as plucky
freedom fighters.
[Another Archival Radio Announcer with an American accent]
Guatemalan insurgents stand guard at a Honduras airstrip
while newspapermen press near a lone plane seeking passage over the rocky
wooded hills to the border town of Esquipulas, capital of the Free Guatemalan
Government.
Michael Lanchin:
The Guatemalan army though still loyal to President Arbenz
feared that an all-out American invasion would soon follow. By late June the
Guatemalan top brass had lost their nerve and senior officers urged President
Arbenz to go.
On the night of June 27th 1954 an emotional and
exhausted President Arbenz announced his decision in a radio message.
[Extract from Arbenz Radio Speech Announcing his
Resignation]
Our enemies have used the pretext that we are communists,
though the reality is very different.
Michael Lanchin:
The next day the deposed President, his family and dozens of
his closest associates took refuge in the Mexican Embassy in Guatemala City.
Juan Jocobo:
People were sleeping in the corridors, in the stairways, both
floors of the embassy were full of people. I remember us having to go to the
rooftop to play, my parents didn’t like us going up there because there weren’t
any railings. Sometimes when we went to look out of the windows – which we
weren’t allowed to- I remember seeing demonstrations out on the streets, people
with banners against Arbenz.
Michael Lanchin:
So, you were with your parents inside the Embassy for about
three months, did you see much of your father during that time?
Juan Jocobo:
I saw very little of him, he was always locked away,
smoking, drinking coffee and in meetings with all his associates who were hiding
in the Embassy with us.
[Music]
Michael Lanchin:
The family were eventually granted safe passage out of the
country. First to Mexico then to France, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and then
to the Soviet Union where Juan Jocobo still not even ten years old was sent to
a boarding school.
Juan Jocobo:
One of the things that really affected me was that it got to
a point where I didn’t really understand what was happening. I didn’t want to
ask my parents, they looked so anxious. It was starting to affect my schooling,
to the point that my mother had to teach me to read and write in Spanish. After
that I began learning Czech, then I had to start learning Russian, at boarding
school in Russia I used to look out of the windows when it snowed.
Everybody else spoke Russian, nobody spoke Spanish, I felt
isolated and lonely, cut off from my family and my country.
Michael Lanchin:
In 1956 the family moved to the relative stability of Uruguay.
Later they went to live in Cuba on the invitation of Fidel Castro. Juan Jocobo
says that his father never really recovered his spirits and he died a broken
man in Mexico in 1971 aged just 57. But there is one more tragic detail to this
story which Juan Jocobo only mentioned at the very end of our conversation.
Juan Jocobo:
The pressures from being in exile was so great that my eldest
sister killed herself when she was just 25. My other sister killed herself in 2004,
it was all terribly difficult for the family. We’d been separated from all our
childhood friends, our relatives, because of the circumstances of our
situation. We lost everything that you normally have growing up, stability,
school, family around you.
When I look back now and try to make some sense of it, all
that we’ve suffered I’ve often thought about it in quiet moments and wondered
why, why, why?
Michael Lanchin:
Juan Jocobo Arbenz later returned to his native Guatemala
and in 2003 he ran unsuccessfully for the Presidency. He’s now 69 and he lives
in Costa Rica.
Max Pierson:
Michael Lanchin was speaking to Juan Jocobo Arbenz whose
life and the lives of so many others was turned upside down by that CIA backed
coup in Guatemala in 1954.
