My Eighty-One Years Of Anarchy - May Picqueray

MY EIGHTY-ONE YEARS OF ANARCHY– 

MAY PICQUERAY

Obscure anarchists, aren't they the best? There's nothing wrong, of course, with the anarchist grandees such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, and Proudhon etc but they are in a way but the very tip of the spear and it's the more obscure ones that give strength to the whole length of that spear, without which the tip would be pretty useless. The obscure anarchists are like a metal horseshoe hidden inside a boxing glove ensuring the delivered blow is a knock-out one.

A case in point is May Picqueray. Born in France in 1898, even as a child Picqueray always felt she was the rebel of the family though it wasn't until the age of twenty when she moved to Paris and met a Serbian medical student who introduced her to anarchist ideas that she became active in actual Anarchist organisations. Two years later she ended up sending a parcel bomb to the US Embassy in France as part of a campaign on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Whilst this act achieved its desired aim as in catapulting the Sacco and Vanzetti case onto the front pages of the French newspapers, it was in the end to no avail and the two men were sent to the electric chair only to be redeemed decades later after their innocence was proven. From there on, however, there was no stopping her.

My Eighty-One Years Of Anarchy is May Picqueray's memoir and whilst it shows that her life has not always been an easy one it shows at the same time that it's been a life worth living. A finer attitude to life, in fact, is hard to imagine. Picqueray was a natural born anarchist so in that sense her fate was sealed from the start. There was simply no avoiding it and subsequently was no avoiding or turning away from injustice when she saw it.

Her story is a sprawling one, taking in many global, historical events. In 1922, for example, she travelled to Moscow as part of the Metalworkers Federation to attend a Trade Union congress there. After witnessing first hand the desperate poverty and hunger out in the streets she mounted a table at the sumptuous banquet laid on for the delegates and loudly denounced the whole affair. How dare these workers' delegates gorge themselves and stuff their faces when Russian workers were perishing of hunger, she cried.

At another grand meal, this time in the Kremlin, Trotsky himself was there and out of the blue asked Picqueray to sing them all a song 'just like in France'. She responded by singing a French anarchist song. On later meeting Trotsky face to face, she refused to shake his hand.

'Unwilling to shake my hand, comrade May. Why would that be?' Trotsky asked her.

'I am an anarchist,' she replied 'and we are divided by Makhno and Krondstadt.'

'I too am an anarchist,' Trotsky claimed 'but the Russian people are an ignorant people. It is necessary to evolve and, for that to happen, we must go through a transitional phase.'

'Which would last how long?' she responded.

'As long as it takes.' Trotsky replied.

Without doubt, it was a curious and fascinating exchange.

Two years later back in France, Picqueray ended up harbouring Nestor Makhno and his family after having fled Russia following the decimation of his troops by the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine. Around the same time she also got to know Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, ending up at one point typing up the manuscripts for Goldman's autobiography.

Come the Second World War, Picqueray concentrated her activities on helping the many Spanish refugees thrown into French prison camps after fleeing Spain following the victory of Franco and his forces in the Spanish Civil War. During the German occupation of France she helped to secure and fabricate papers for the resistance and people on the run, as well as harbouring resisters and smuggling people to safety.

Many years later she was – as almost to be expected – involved in the events of May 1968, and in 1974 she launched her own anarchist newspaper entitled Le Refractaire which she remained at the helm of until her passing in 1983 at the age of 85.

Picqueray starts her book with a long quote from the French anarchist Sebastien Faure, whose words set her off at a tender age and continued to guide her throughout her whole life. The bottom line, as Picqueray puts it is that it is on love that anarchy is based.

Picqueray's final message at the end of her book is a passionate one and sums up one of the main reasons for her writing it: 'Let the young take up the torch, let them learn and be unsparing in their efforts. Should events evolve, the anarchist philosophy is still relevant. It is achievable, and it is the most beautiful thing, the thing that will bring happiness through freedom and joie de vivre.

Long live Anarchy! Go for it, young people! Go for it!... for Love, Fraternity, and Liberty!'

My Eighty-One Years Of Anarchy is May Picqueray passing on the anarchist baton to the next generation in the continuing fight for a brighter and better future.

John Serpico