Obituaries of Albert Meltzer described him as a "torchbearer of international anarchism". But what makes an anarchist torchbearer? His international links across years of activism are clear from his autobiography, *I couldn't paint golden angels. He worked with comrades from India, China, Sweden, Spain, Australia, the USA. Beyond that he fought, in theory and in practice, for anarchism to be a living movement.


*Politics - it doesn't always do what it says on the tin

Albert was often accused of "sectarianism" because he opposed the idea of an open-door policy for anarchism. He didn't think that everybody claiming to be anarchist should just be taken at their word. He was never prepared to let bad definitions drive out good without an argument. He defended the anarchist heritage of resistance against a reworked liberalism that idealised "perpetual protest".

In the relatively free years of the 1960s, some argued that revolutionary change was old hat and that we should be content with "living as freely as possible" in the here and now. Albert was sarcastic about people whose emphasis on anarchism as an abstract idea allowed authoritarian scum like Thatcher to pose as libertarians.

He also opposed what he called the "package-deal" left, sadly still in evidence today. This is where a political "line", used to march paper sellers to the top of the hill and the next and the next after that, takes the place of principles or the idea of human liberation.



*A class act

As a trade union activist and working class militant, Albert was a firm believer in class struggle anarchism, not as a ghetto within a ghetto, but as the best bet for defending our current freedom and achieving long-term change.

His faith in the potential of the working class was unshaken by the shocking revelation that some of them weren't angels. His twofold response was that, having no need to exploit another class, the working class had the greatest libertarian potential and that, more humorously, the only place angels would have to be involved in workers' control was in heaven.

One of Albert's aims in his many books and hundreds of articles was to encourage what he called a "Monday militancy", where people struggled for freedom in every area of their lives instead of just chanting about it at the weekend.

A passage from *The floodgates of anarchy (co-written with Stuart Christie while the Franco dictatorship was still in power in Spain) shows that he was open-minded about the need for a flexibility of tactics.

"We must accept reforms in the spirit in which they are offered", he wrote, "and if, in order to get a political prisoner released after twenty years in jail, we were asked to appear in our shirts like the burghers of Calais, and march around a cathedral carrying a penitential candle, this would be an act of solidarity no less than attacking a Spanish bank or kidnapping an ambassador.

"What would be the grossest superstition - and this is the analogy with reformism - is to believe that simply by appearing in sackcloth and ashes and traipsing around the cathedral, the dictator could be persuaded to release the prisoners.

"Letters to members of parliament, discussion of civil rights and the abstract rights of man, petitions to the United Nations, public statements for which one must angle for 'names", the collecting of thousands of ordinary signatures... all these are secular, democratic versions of the sackcloth and ashes, required by the despot. We may need to engage in them, we may benefit from them, but we do not have to be fooled by them".




*The Anarchist Black Cross - anarchy in action

Spanish anarchists were the staunchest opponents of Franco's fascist regime, yet in or out of jail they received the least international support. This was to change with the imprisonment of Stuart Christie, jailed in 1964 for his part in a plot to assassinate Franco. The spotlight illuminated not only him, but the fact of anarchist resistance and the fate of other anarchist prisoners.

Albert helped efforts behind the scenes to bring about Stuart's release. In 1967, when he did finally get out, he joined Albert in launching the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) to show solidarity with those he'd left behind. This took the form of practical help for prisoners, such as food and medicine, and helped force the Spanish state to apply its own parole rules. Just as importantly, it introduced activists elsewhere to a revolutionary tradition very different from the murderous and authoritarian Russian one.

Giving the chance for people to provide direct solidarity, the ABC achieved more than many paper organisations and its example still shows the value of practical anarchist activism.



*Keep the Black Flag flying here

The ABC Bulletin soon became *Black Flag. At times weekly, at times "excitingly irregular", the paper has now pushed the idea and practice of revolutionary anarchism for 30 years. In the early 1980s, it reinvigorated yet another generation of anarchist politics in Britain.

By connecting with the young, working class anarchists who were coming from the punk scene, it helped spread new energy and attitude. These were the people who went on to spread anarchist ideas more widely than they'd been for years, during the miners' and other strikes, and in the fight against the Poll Tax.



*Albert's legacy

Anarchists of today, if they ever wonder what one person can do, could learn a lot from the life of Albert Meltzer. He left many legacies to the anarchist movement, from a frank and justified scepticism of the value of academic "experts" on anarchism and media expos*es of it, to a supply of scathing anecdotes about most political ideologies.

Many of the projects he was involved in carry on. *Black Flag is still promoting anarchist resistance, and the Kate Sharpley Library continues to uncover the grassroots history of the movement - where its strength has always lain. A publishing house, the Meltzer Press, was set up in tribute to him after his death. It has since produced some important historical works, including the first English translation of *Jose Peirats's classic account, *The CNT in the Spanish Revolution.





A political appreciation like this must inevitably leave out much that could be said, especially of a life as full as Albert's. He truly was an anarchist torchbearer, and not only to radicals. Special Branch called him "the doyen of the British anarchist movement". To many who worked or communicated with him, he carried other sparkles of humour and comradeship.

He'd no time for the cult of "great men" or "great women", working in isolation of the movements that made them what they were, so perhaps the best tribute is to say that he was part of a long line of comrades who devoted their lives to spreading the idea of anarchism and to proving the worth of its principles in the fight for human freedom.


John Patten