Alan MacSimóin 1957-2018

Glasnevin Cemetery 13/12/2018

Alan MacSimóin with Mary Muldowney [Photo: Donal Higgins]

When a photo of Alan MacSimóin appeared on my phone screen on the morning of December 5^th, 2018 I wondered if, perhaps, Alan was on his way to Cork. Occasionally, he would ring earlyish in the day to say he would be in Cork around lunch time, if one of his jobs took him in our direction. Admittedly, it was less common in recent years but that’s what came to mind when I saw his photo. I thought, great, it would nice to see him and have a chat. However, as soon as I heard dear Mary Muldowney’s voice I realised that something serious might be wrong. I still didn’t fear the worst, it didn’t even occure to me, but I was wrong.

In the days since the news broke of his death there has been outpouring of affection for Alan online and elsewhere. Some beautiful, lovely and appropriate things have been said about him, that to some extent underline the impact that he had on our lives and the high esteem in which he was held by so many people around Dublin, in the wider political community and, of course, by his many, many comrades in the anarchist and socialist movements, here in Ireland and around the world.

Today, however, we are here to say goodbye to Alan. It seems fitting then to talk about his outstanding qualities which I believe will ensure that he lives on in our lives and memories long into the future.

A Dangerous Dreamer

It is not often said about Alan, but in fact I think it was central to who he was and to his life: Alan was a dreamer. He was a dreamer of the most dangerous and beautiful type because he believed in the ability and capacity of ordinary people to change this world for the better. He knew of and could speak about many instances when ordinary people, the working class, had done this, and it was that vision, dream if you like, that in a sense was the light along the road he took. 

To each according to their need, from each according to their ability. That is what he subscribed to. It is a phrase worth dwelling on for it holds within it the basis for a just and non-destructive existence on this planet. When Alan first got active in politics, which, has been pointed out elsewhere, was at a young age, he was coming into political life when optimism for change was growing and the potential of activism seemed high. He leaves us at a time when inequality has reached criminal proportions, when the future destruction of life on this planet has become a real possibility to all but the obtuse. The problems we see around us now, Alan would have laid rightly at the door of capitalism and I think he was right.

Anarchism or Marxism? [Talk in Cork, 2015]

But he saw an alternative and he spent much of his life working for this, helping in whatever way he could to popularise hope and to convince those around him that, in the words of the anarchist Proudhon, “The great are only great because we are on our knees, arise”.

Alan was an anarchist, and in that movement the Spanish anarchists have a special place. So, it is to them that I turn to put this to you more succinctly. Shortly before he was killed in the famous defence of Madrid, the same battle that was to give us the immortal words “No Pasaran”, words that now seem very relevant in our lives once again, the anarchist activist Buenaventura Durruti was asked for his views on the difficult matter of building a new society. Contrasting the destruction wrought by the Civil War with the high goals they were fighting for, Durruti said that more than anything else, ‘He had a new world in his heart’ and ‘that it was growing at that very minute’.  I believe this is entirely accurate of Alan too: he had a new world in his heart.

Practical

At the same time, Alan was an immensely practical man; some might say too practical. Many will have seen this side of him. While it is true to say that you cannot go anywhere without a dream of what the future should look like, Alan’s view was that you had to ground your politics in the practical. We have only to look at his own contribution over many decades to know that this was not just words with him. He opposed racism, fought sexism, fought for women’s liberation, opposed imperialism. However, he was perhaps nowhere as committed as with the struggle of his fellow and sister workers. He was a worker of course and throughout his life an active trade unionist. He was involved in countless solidarity and support events for other workers, those in unions and not in them. His contribution in this area is legendary and will never be forgotten. It is a contribution underlined by the honour bestowed on him today by SIPTU in providing Alan with a guard of honour on this his final journey.

But he was practical in a different sense too. When a number of us began meeting to consider the idea of setting up an anarchist organisation here in Ireland, it was Alan who insisted on the idea that we should plan the process, take our time and be clear about what we wanted. He was the one who rooted the movement in its early days in an appreciation of what being organised entailed.  I know when I first got involved with this project, I was enthusiastic but without any real sense about what to do about anything. In the early days Alan was central in setting a course that took us immediately in the right direction. I believe that this will be one of his lasting contributions to the movement that he played such an important role in.

Workers Solidarity

He had a magnificent grasp of what the world was like and wasn’t under any illusions. He more or less wrote the trade union paper for the organisation, the Workers Solidarity Movement and several others too. Which leads me on to another aspect of Alan and this was his intelligence, depth and wealth of knowledge. Which I might add he gave of willingly and which we spent freely. I have to say it was only occasionally in later years that I thought about the possibility of him not being there one day. Now that time has come.

I asked a number of people who knew Alan about what they thought about him and one of the responses that I frequently received was, ‘I learned a huge amount from him’ Or ‘he knew such a lot’.  I think this was another somewhat underappreciated side to him. Being a socialist or anarchist is about having the courage to stand up and fight for justice, but it is also about education. It is important to explain, teach and share your knowledge and he excelled at that. He fundamentally believed that changing the world involved convincing people that socialist and anarchist ideas were the ones to live your life by.

During one of his final working visits to Cork, so to speak, we invited him to talk about the engaging subject of anarchism and marxism. I was once again struck by how comfortable he was talking about what is a complex question. He was funny and immensely knowledgeable. He used the occasion to take a few swipes at those who were, he said, ‘blissfully ignorant of reality’. He was entertaining and it was easy to see that he enjoyed giving the talk too, sharing what he felt where the lessons of history in an open way.

Alan was always prepared to play his part. He was ready to stand on a picket line on a cold winter’s morning or to hand out leaflets to passers-by outside the GPO on a Saturday afternoon. But he complemented that practical activism with regular contributions on matters concerning strategy and tactics. If a campaign or struggle was not going to succeed, he was often one of the first to call time on the effort. Not because he no longer believed in the justice of the issue but rather because he preferred to put his resources into activities that could materially and politically advance the ideas that he believed in. He suffered defeats but he was a vital part of a number of very important victories. Two stand out and need to be noted: his involvement in the national anti-water tax campaign which succeeded in stopping austerity and, secondly, his involved with Repeal 8^th. He played an important role in both these victories as an activist and as an organiser.

Victories

In the early days we used to tease by saying things to him things like, ‘So Alan, what was it really like during the Paris Commune? Or did you know any of the sans culottes.’ And when he’d refuse to answer we’d move on and say to him. ‘Well if you won’t talk about the Paris Commune then at least tell us about the Russian Revolution.’ I guess this was a roundabout way of acknowledging his wisdom.

I would like to particularly thank Mary Muldowney, Alan’s sweetheart and soulmate, and Alan’s close family, all his children and loved ones, for minding Alan for us all over these years. Alan loved politics but politics can be a hard business and it has its ups and down. Alan loved his family and they meant everything to him. We are grateful for the love and support they gave him over many decades of activism.

To return then finally to what I said at the outset, Alan was a dreamer so let us keep his dream alive and continue the struggle for it. The spirit of revolt lives on and will always live on, comrades, family and friends. As will Alan’s memory. His contribution is assured, his place in our history is a given.

It is with the greatest sadness then that I say goodbye to my closest friend and comrade, a gentle revolutionary who gave an inestimable amount to our movement and to the cause of the oppressed.

Slán, goodbye, adios and adieu, Alan.

Kevin Doyle

13/12/18

Glasnevin Cemetery

Review of Living Anarchism – José Peirats and the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement

Living Anarchism – José Peirats and the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement by Chris Ealham [AK Press] Available here.

This review first published in Ideas and Action (Oct 2017).

On the cover of Living Anarchism, the publishers, AK Press, point out that the anarchist movement in Spain in the lead up to the revolution in 1936-37 was the ‘the largest anti-authoritarian movement’ ever created in the world. It numbered in the hundreds of thousands and resulted from a conscious and deliberate intervention by anarchists in the everyday world of work and community. Anarchists sought to build a new world in the shell of the old and they were surprisingly successful in significant ways. Living Anarchism is testimony to this. Not a history of Spanish anarchism as such, it is nonetheless a window into the life of that movement seen through the life of one its key activist, José Peirats.

So who was José Peirats? The son of labourers from Valencia province, he moved to Barcelona at a young age with his family in search of work and a future. Suffering illness and numerous privations, Peirats eventually found a home in one of the city’s vibrant rationalist schools. However his education was short-lived and at a young age he entered the workforce proper as a brick-maker. Gravitating to the anarcho-syndicalist union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), he became a key activist in the L’Hospitalet area of Barcelona. Peirats lived through it all: at the young age of 28 he was in Barcelona as the Spanish Revolution got underway. He witnessed the enormous achievements and hope that the revolution generated and he witnessed, in time, its demise and defeat. In exile at the age of 31 he spent a great deal of the remainder of life documenting the rise of Spain’s anarchist movement, going on the produce The CNT in the Spanish Revolution – an extensive, three volume history of the largest workers’ union in Spain at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In the last period of his life he said,

“I’ve done almost everything in the CNT: I’ve organised strikes, organised workers, spoken in assemblies, meetings, and given conferences, written articles, attended congresses, used pistols, and, some- times, explosives; I’ve been in jail and collected lawsuits, mainly for libelous press articles. I know what it means to be naked and take a beating in a police station. I was the only secretary of the CNT in exile to enter Spain clandestinely when they were still shooting people!”

Living Anarchism is broken into ten sections (if one includes the excellent summation) which can broadly be divided into two parts – the period leading up to the revolution and period after the revolution’s defeat. If the first section of the book is then a celebration of what anarchism was capable of building when its activists put their minds to it, then the second section is, in contrast, the tragedy of defeat at the hands of fascism and what that came to mean.

Exile

Exiled to South America and later France, Peirats struggled like many of his comrades to make sense of the defeat that had befallen the anarchist movement in Spain. Defeat is never easy and the tragedy was compounded by exile and isolation. A movement of Spanish anarchists abroad came into being but it was riven with division and acrimony. Peirats, more than most, understood the dilemma: the past could not be ignored and yet the movement, if it was to survive and rebuild, needed to move on too. It was a delicate and difficult line to walk along.

Peirats was clearly a product of the university of the class struggle and his early years and reputation as a resolute union activist in the cauldron of Barcelona was something that he never departed from. However, another side to the activist was his strong interest in the practice and spirit of anti-authoritarianism. A significant part of his life – perhaps deriving from his own early exposure to the rationalist/ free school movement in Barcelona – involved a commitment to the ‘athenaeum’: essentially self-organised community centres envisaged as ‘a focal point of social ferment’ for the locality around it. These centres hosted a library, debates, music recitals, evening classes and threatre productions. Before and during the revolution, as well as afterwards in exile, it was this activity surrounding the ‘athenaeum’ that Peirats returned to and was involved with again and again.

Although the person who emerges from his book appears exceptional in many respects, Peirats would have been the first to dispute this, it seems. Describing himself at one point as a ‘worker ant’ he believed himself to be very much a part and a product of the CNT. Clearly he was a talented activist, writer and organiser, but there emerges from this biography a man whose dedication to revolutionary change was absolute. By no means without faults – and this is explored in Living Anarchism – Peirats nevertheless had an abiding grasp of the importance and value of anarchist ideas. Given that he had witnessed the highest point of achievement and an avalanche of low points in its aftermath, he remained largely upbeat, understating near the end, ‘I did what I could despite many obstacles’.

Durruti

In terms of Spanish anarchism we hear a great deal about people like Durruti but activists like Jose Peirats, it seems to me, were a lot closer to the soul of Spanish anarchism. For Peirats anarchism was about democracy, education and the class struggle. In contrast Durruti was far more liable to be off taking a pot shot at some bishop or other – a headline grabbing activity but not necessarily as productive as it sounds or looks.

In 2010, the historian Chris Ealham produced what is undoubtedly one of the best social and political histories of anarchism, namely Anarchism and the City – the story of the rise of anarchism in the Catalonia port city of Barcelona. Now with this account of Peirat’s life he had done us a further service. He admits at the outset that ‘there are many aspects of Peirats life that he finds admirable’ and while this must certainly colour this work, it does not distract from what is a clear and concise account of an anarchist activist’s lived life in revolution and defeat.

Matters have moved on hugely since the revolution in Spain in 1936-37 and Peirats as much as anyone saw this in full measure by the time his life came to an end in 1989. However there is a great deal to learn from this book. The Spanish anarchists combined a practice of militant class struggle with a broad visionary belief in human desire and emancipation. Whatever about claims, dreams and aspirations, in the end it takes people to make politics happen: Peirats was clearly one of those who excelled at this task.

A book to read and treasure.

 

1976: The Fight for Useful Work at Lucas Aerospace

In the 1970s workers at the Lucas Aerospace Company in Britain set out to defeat the bosses plans to axe jobs. They produced their own alternative “Corporate Plan” for the company’s future. In doing so they attacked some of the underlying priorities of capitalism. Their proposals were radical, arguing for an end to the wasteful production of military goods and for people’s needs to be put before the owners’ profits.

First published in Workers Solidarity (WSM, Ireland) – here.  Republished at Libcom with comments here.