Two bits of great news. Firstly we have been given a double CD of the interview, and the radio slots that local labour historian Ray Challinor did with Tom Brown during the early 1970’s. I must admit, after searching for info etc on Tom Brown for next to 30 years, that it was quite a moment to actually hear him speaking. The booming voice of the Tyneside shipyards, now 70 odd years old with a frail old voice, but not without his passion for the ‘struggle’. After contemplation, we have decided to give these to the Kate Sharpley Library for possible audio on-line release, so keep an eye out for that.

Secondly, friends of the archive, based within another local community grouping have give us the ability to ‘purchase’ our very own A3 scanner, which has opened immense possibilities now for this archive. We can bring you the entire series…

La « Ĝenerala striko » estas sen dube potenca luktarmilo al la manoj de la proletaro ; ĝi estas aŭ ĝi povas esti maniero kaj okazo ekfunkciigi radikalan socian revolucion. […] la ĝenerala striko povus esti efika rimedo de socia transformado, sed kondiĉe de kompreni kaj uzi ĝin alie ke la metiistoj de la ĝenerala sriko faris tion.

Al unua tempo de la movada socialisto, oni klare komprenis ke la reĝimo subteninta per la forto de la bajonetoj povis mortiĝi nur se oni almenis parton de la soldatojn al transformiĝi je defendantoj de la popolo kaj se oni batis per armita lukto la fortoj de la polico kaj tiuj de la soldatoj kiuj restis fidelaj al la disciplino. […] Pro tio oni konspiris, t.e. oni faris aktivan propagandon el la sodatoj, oni serĉis sin armi, oni preparis planojn de milita ago. Verdire, la rezultoj estis malgrasaj ĉar ni estis malmutaj…

Viktor Filinkov’s Speech in Court on 4 June 2019 While Recording a Voice Sample (The Court Could Not Interrupt the Defendant for Ten Minutes)

Viktor Filinkov: When I was tortured . . . Well, it was unexpected, of course. It was nothing like in the movies. There was no time to think or laugh like some superheroes do or anything like that: you’re just screaming in pain. You’re in a terrible state, in fact. I’ve never experienced anything like it.

Yes, I’d been shocked when touching an electrical socket or a telephone wire, and when licking a battery. But it’s a completely different sensation when you’ve been shocked with a stun gun. They were beating me at the same time, but I didn’t feel it at all, except for the blows to my head. When they hit me in the head, my vision went a little white. My eyes…

[Published in l’anarchie, n°13, July 6th 1905]

In his palace, hearing the news which reach him each day, the czar shivers in fear. Every hour brings its revolt, quite often childish, sometimes terrible… And from every corner of the vast empire hatreds arise, angers flare up.

Petersburg, Lodz, Warsaw, Kronstadt, Loben, Odessa, Riga, Kiel, Nijni-Novgord, Kischineff, Hapsal, etc., etc., the former doleful resignation is shaken; a wind of terror is blowing, disturbing the emperor, the nobility and the state employees in their blissful digestion.

Fatalistic peasants, workers made obedient by the knout have at last some quivers of anger. They are to be sent to Mandchuria. Thus, since they’re going to die anyway, they might as well get killed by shaking the tyranny which crushes them in gestures of madness.

Revolts, up until now, have been rather naive. A credulous people, grown children, walked with their hands up in supplication…

The Communist-Anarchist Group in Lisbon was one of the first revolutionary anarchist groups in Portugal. The group was likely formed under the inspiration of Eliseé Reclus, following a series of talks that he gave in Portugal in 1886. The Group’s Declaration of Principles, published at the beginning of 1887, shows the continuing influence of the ideas developed by anarchists involved in the International Workingmen’s Association, particularly after the anti-authoritarians reconstituted the International following Bakunin’s expulsion by the Marxists at the 1872 Hague Congress. The influence not only of Reclus, but also of people like Michael Bakunin and Carlo Cafiero, among others, can be seen in the text that follows, particularly in the emphasis on social revolution, the rejection of any participation in parliamentary politics, the rejection of the legally sanctioned patriarchal family, and the advocacy of communism and anarchy as necessary correlates of each other. A…

The left-wing political activist Fumiaki Hoshino passed away on 30 May at the age of 73.

Regarded by some as a political prisoner, Hoshino was recently revealed to have liver cancer and moved suddenly — and without advance notification to his family — from a prison in Tokushima where he was serving his sentence to a medical treatment centre in Akishima, Tokyo. There he underwent surgery, which initially appeared to go well, but his health then deteriorated and he did not recover.

He was imprisoned for the death of a police officer in the so-called Shibuya Riot Incident of November 1971, when a left-wing faction protested the terms of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan. Already a veteran anti-war activist from the campus struggle at Takasaki City University of Economics and against the construction of Narita Airport, Hoshino was leading a group of Chūkaku-ha (Central Core Faction) peers that became…