On The Beach - Nevil Shute

ON THE BEACH – NEVIL SHUTE

There's nothing new under the sun and all roads still lead to Rome, which means that though 2020 is the year of the virus when people came face-to-face with their own mortality, it doesn't mean we've not been here before. As surely as empires rise so surely will they fall, whilst a civilization can be erased in the blink of an eye.

There were always going to be degrees of how seriously you took the Corona virus. For those on the front-line having to deal with it on a daily basis, for example, it was all too real and for them not to take it seriously would have been foolhardy in the extreme. For those thinking themselves to be far removed from the so-called 'front-line', any seriousness was just water off a duck's back and the whole knock-on effect of lockdown reduced to a weird inconvenience to their daily routine.

Constant comparisons have been made likening the pandemic to a war so in a continuation of that theme will children one day ask: 'What did you do in the war, daddy?' And what might be the reply? I fought on the front-line, son? I kept the home-fires burning, son? I maintained a sense of normality until things returned to normalcy, son?

Published in 1957 and set in the future of 1963, On The Beach by Nevil Shute is one of those books that appear in the Apocalyptic Literature lists that are being composed of late. It's the story of some people based around a Navy dockyard in Melbourne, Australia, as they face approaching death in the form of a tsunami of radioactive dust slowly sweeping over the world following a war between Russia and China. There are about six months left until the cloud hits Australia so death is imminent, the question being what to do and how best to live over those six months?

Some find solace and even meaning in getting drunk, some continue to work as normal so as to maintain a structure to their lives, whilst some studiously ignore it and simply pretend no such thing is going to happen. They're either being pragmatic or delusional but the interesting thing is that neither is in any way better than the other because essentially they're both coping mechanisms.

It's a bleak, dark read written at a slow, steady pace enabling the reader to get up close and personal with the characters. Without spoiling the plot too much, there's no happy ending to it. What the book does very effectively is to pose what is essentially an impossible question: How does one be happy and fulfilled if you know one day you are to die? It's a question, of course, that philosophers and some of the greatest minds ever have since time began pondered over but as far as I know there's never been one single, conclusive answer. And that in itself tells us something. Something that On The Beach conveys.

Each character in the book has or finds their own, personal way of attaining a semblance of fulfilment and happiness. All ways are equally valid. How some people choose to spend what is left of their lives is meaningless to others and vice versa. Some are simply resigned to the fact that they and everyone else will soon be dead whilst others rage against it. What many have in common, however, is a sense of being thwarted, of being cheated out of being happy by the actions of others. A sense of their unhappiness having being thrust upon them through no choice of their own. So it has always been. In On The Beach it's from those who started the war but in real life every generation has its demons, even today during the current Covid-19 pandemic there are those who are the cause of denying happiness and even life itself. And let's face it, we all know who they are.

On The Beach is relevant literature for irreverent times. It's a description of life in the raw where there is no light at the end of the tunnel so the only option is to build a light in the here and now. To light a candle rather than to curse the darkness.

John Serpico

Under Exmouth skies (Part 52)

UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 52)

Nothing really new under the sun... 

London Under - Peter Ackroyd

LONDON UNDER – PETER ACKROYD

"It's what?" asked Bill Grundy to a petulant Johnny Rotten. "Nothing. A rude word. Next question." Rotten shot back. "No, no, what was the rude word?" persisted Grundy. "Shit." replied Rotten. Which in a roundabout way brings us to Peter Ackroyd's London Under, where among many other things the author tells us all about the rivers of shit that flow beneath the streets of our capital city. It's a whole other world down there and shit, apparently, is the least of it particularly when compared to how it used to be. For example, Jonathan Swift once observed in his poem A Description Of A City Shower that: 'Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts and Blood, Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench'd in Mud, Dead Cats and Turnips-Tops come tumbling down the Flood.' The Flood he refers being the River Fleet, the largest and most well known of London's subterranean rivers.

Ackroyd is like a tourist-guide on an open-top bus tour of London, calling out a veritable avalanche of obscure points of interest about different places but before you can strain your neck to see, the bus has moved on and he's onto his next obscure point regarding an entirely different place. London taxi drivers are but amateurs when comparing Ackroyd's 'Knowledge' to theirs. If anything, London Under is like Guy Debord's Situationist theory of the 'derive' and psychogeography where you wander through an urban setting allowing yourself to be drawn to any experience or attraction you encounter.

Ackroyd's focus, however, is on what lies beneath. The hidden and forgotten stories of the hidden and forgotten places of the London underground. The rivers, the tunnels, the cellars, chambers, catacombs and buried amphitheatres that most people have no awareness of as they go about their daily business. The closest most ever come to them being when travelling on the Underground but even there what can be seen is but the tip of the iceberg.

Beneath the streets of London, Ackroyd informs us, innumerable rivers flow, wending their way to the Thames. Under the pavements and roads, under tower blocks, housing estates and mansions countless rivulets and streams run their course like veins under the skin. Nowadays only the names of various streets, roads and areas give any hint of these hidden tributaries and it's only when you stop and think about them that their origins make sense, having some kind of connection to water: Fleet Street, Effra Road, Coldharbour Lane, Walbrook Street, Brook Street, Holywell Street, Conduit Street, Cromwell Road, Sadler's Wells, Millbank, Bayswater, Shoreditch, Spa Fields, Deptford, Stockwell, Shadwell, Clerkenwell, Camberwell, Chadwell Heath, Bridewell, etc, etc.

For all that, it's not only water and sewage that lies beneath but also the dead. Under areas near to churches, of course, are the graveyards but also under vast areas where history has been forgotten such as plague pits, pauper burial grounds and unconsecrated ground where suicides were once buried. These are the places of myth, legend and fear where dreams, nightmares and speculations are woven. Ackroyd explores them all, even referencing the influence of the underground upon culture in such books and films as War Of The Worlds, A Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, The Time Machine and Quartermass And The Pit. It all makes for a dizzy, bewildering yet eye-opening and enlightening trip.

As with most of his books, Peter Ackroyd's attention is upon London but an interesting thing about this particular book is what it illuminates without actually giving mention to. That being how the underground worlds that he writes about are not only unique to London but applicable also to any major city throughout the UK. For example, when I was teenager I worked for a wine company based in the centre of Bristol and whilst there discovered there were tunnels and vast labyrinths beneath the streets that very few people were aware of.

The tunnels and catacombs I had first-hand experience of was where wine was stored but there were also countless extensions of those tunnels that had been bricked up that were said to have once led down to the city docks. There was also the River Frome that was covered over that went from the city dock, right under the city to emerge uncovered on the other side in the St Judes area. As in London, there are also many streets, roads and areas of Bristol whose names are connected to water. There are also pits, pipes, sewage, water and drainage systems everywhere that are not given a second thought by those walking or driving above them. Similarly, the same would apply to Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Cardiff and so on.

Anyone living in London would or should find Ackroyd's London Under a fascinating read, giving much food for thought and a whole new insight into the city that could potentially make every day-to-day journey into a whole new adventure and experience. And if indeed London Under is an example of psychogeography and the Situationist 'derive' theory then it is much more than simply a book about shit and water and underground tunnels but is in actual fact nothing less than a revolutionary guide to combat the malaise and boredom of the society of the spectacle.

John Serpico

The Philosophy Of Punk - Craig O'Hara

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PUNK – CRAIG O'HARA

I don't wish to be too critical but if Craig O'Hara's book The Philosophy Of Punk is about the philosophy of Punk then it's very much like a Winnie The Pooh guide to global economics as practiced and analysed within the confines of Hundred Acre Wood. Winnie The Pooh's great, of course, and AA Milne's books can teach us many important and good things but at the same time, Winnie The Pooh is a fucking bear of very little brain who gets his advice from a frightened piglet by the name of Piglet.

It's all good and enjoyable stuff but you wouldn't really base your whole existence on earth and use as a guide to life the teachings of an imaginary bear in a kids book, would you? Not unless you're a Christian or a Muslim and you follow the Bible or the Koran, of course. Ha ha ha!

In his defense, O'Hara only wrote his book originally as a 'graduation requirement' for Boston University in America and it was only meant to have been read by three professors. Hence, because this was his entire intended readership he obviously felt he needed to explain the most simplest and basic things such as, for example, what a fanzine is: 'A magazine put out by Punks for and about Punks'. This is all well and good and perfectly reasonable but it needs to be said it does tend to lower the bar somewhat.

So, what have we got? What are the main tenets of Punk philosophy, or as O'Hara puts it, 'the Key Particulars of the Punk Philosophy'? Well, according to O'Hara essentially they're A: Anarchism (encompassing pacifism and direct action). B: Gender issues (encompassing sexism, feminism, and homosexuality). C: Environmentalism (encompassing ecology and animal rights) and D: Straight Edge.

O'Hara's main sources on which he bases his research are the magazines Maximumrocknroll, Flipside, and Profane Existence, along with the book Threat By Example. Again, this is all well and good but the problem is that whilst having a global audience they are all American publications and this means that though quoting a lot from such English bands as Crass, Chumbawamba and the Subhumans, it's all perceived and interpreted through the prism of American culture, an American education, and American-forged sensibilities. It's near-unavoidable for O'Hara to not do so.

We are all a product of where we are from, be it geographically, socially or economically. I am a product of my Englishness and my background just as O'Hara is a product of his which means, of course, that my perception of Punk is as much affected by these things as O'Hara is affected by his. We can try to meet in the middle and try and build on that which we have in common but it's never going to be a hand-in-glove fit and there's always going to be differences.

With this in mind, I would argue that these differences and these commonalities are political ones and right there is the nub about O'Hara's book. Rather than it being the philosophy of Punk that he writes about, it is in actual fact the politics of Punk. If viewed this way, the whole thing tends to become a whole other ball game. Philosophy is a way of interpreting the world but as Marx said, the point isn't to interpret but to change the world. And if the political ideas you espouse are not doing this then they are redundant and they need to be reconsidered, revaluated and then reapplied.

I wouldn't say O'Hara's book is totally redundant but it's fairly close to being so. It prods at a number of ethical ideas which makes for it being worthy but unfortunately being worthy nowadays doesn't really cut it. We may not be dealing nowadays with anything so stark as, for example, Nazi extermination camps but we are dealing with the kind of politics that leads to such camps.

Western capitalism is an abomination. It's been an experiment that has served its purpose and now needs to be reined in if not totally overthrown. It is a man-made system that is essentially destroying the world. It's as simple as that. For sure, we can see the benefits of capitalism but these benefits are greatly outweighed by the downside. For sure, we can see the goodness of man and his beauty, compassion and his empathy but we also see the stupidity, the selfishness and the greed.

Being nice to your neighbour and being anti-war in an abstract kind of way is a good place to start as from little acorns great oaks grow but in our heart of hearts we know it's not enough. The juggernaut of destruction has long passed us by and is now miles in front down the highway, leaving us as little more than road kill.

To bring the juggernaut to a halt we need to somehow scrape ourselves up off the ground and somehow catch up with that juggernaut and then somehow ram it off the road. Or even somehow get in front of it and somehow build some kind of road block so as to somehow bring it to a halt. Somehow. If we fail to do so then it's going to be like the end scene in Thelma And Louise and the juggernaut is going to go flying off the edge of the cliff to its own destruction, at the same time taking out not only everything in its wake but also everything in its path.

But then there's this doubt, isn't there? This doubt that tells us that actually we know we're never going to catch up. Little victories might be gained and we might curb some particular outrage but in our heart of hearts - stuck in our tiny, isolated bubbles – we know the power we hold is as nothing compared to the power of that and those we are against. So when in Rome we do as the Romans and we attend the gladiator games, we indulge in the orgies and we get drunk on the wine. In the meantime, the barbarians are gathering at the gate, the volcano is about to blow and our empire is going to be buried.

We know it's coming, we've heard the warnings but either like the cows in the field we're too dumb to realise it's a slaughterhouse we're heading for or in actual fact we simply don't care either way as everything is so void of any meaning that life and death are now virtually the same things?

The philosophy of Punk? Let's crack open another beer and talk about something else. Something even, dare I say, a bit more interesting and a bit more relevant? Why don't we instead talk about sex, dope, guns and fucking in the street? Let's just talk about anything else! Let's talk about anything that might up our game a little bit and enable us as individuals and as a world to move forward. Let's up our game and try and break free from the stranglehold we are being held in. Let's up the ante a bit and try and escape from the self-applied noose that is slowly tightening around our collective neck.

John Serpico

Too High Too Far Too Soon - Simon Mason

TOO HIGH TOO FAR TOO SOON –

SIMON MASON

There was a nagging familiarity with Simon Mason's memoir, Too High Too Far Too Soon, that was impossible to shake off. I kept looking at the section of photographs of the author included within its pages and thinking 'Do I know this man? Have I met him or seen him somewhere before?' Then finally on page 275 there it was: 'As well as sharing a house, they also rented a studio together in Easton and over the following years, whenever I was passing through, we'd all hang out, either at the workspace, The Plough pub or various free parties and festivals'.

Simon is talking about the neighbourhood where I used to live in Bristol and my then local pub, The Plough. The 'they' he refers to is Banksy and his flatmate who did indeed frequent from time to time the same pub. It's a small world.

The title of Simon Mason's book is taken from the Waterboys song, The Whole Of The Moon, and he describes the pivotal moment when whilst on LSD he watched them perform at Glastonbury Festival in 1986. I was there too and though I wasn't on acid, from what I remember they were indeed very good, The Whole Of The Moon being for everyone watching them the very high point of the set.

The book starts with him writing about Weston-super-Mare where he grew up and the drugs he started taking whilst living there. Weston-super-Mare, of course, is next to Bristol and was always well known to be a place where heroin could be scored quite easily. I was never into heroin though I knew a fair few people who were. I was never into crack cocaine either, unlike Simon who discovered it whilst living in Los Angeles having flown over to America for a 'holiday' at the age of eighteen.

As you might gather, Simon's book is all about drugs and rock'n'roll and his experiences of both whilst traversing their respective worlds, which as everyone knows is essentially one and the same world.

It's not the most difficult thing to write a book about your drug-taking experiences. If you've ever done drugs then you're going to have some anecdotes to tell. If – as Joe Strummer once sang – you've ever been a 'drug prowling wolf who looks so sick in the sun' then you're going to probably have a lot more. Did I ever say about the time me and my friends once had a gun pulled on us by some Jamaican Yardie at some free party? Probably not because it's not of much interest to anyone else and the same goes for a lot of Simon's anecdotes.

Getting mugged at gun-point on Venice Beach as he informs us he was is all well and good but of little interest to others. On the other hand, taking Bez of the Happy Mondays up to the travellers field at Glastonbury Festival to score some opium is of interest, if only limited. This is what Simon informs us he does and it's his very first foray into supplying drugs to the stars and his first tentative steps into making it into a career.

1994 and Simon's back at Glastonbury Festival and this time he's got his own tent in the fenced-off camping area at the back of the pyramid stage where he's set himself up as the main on-site dealer, with members of Oasis being some of his best customers. The drawback being that in a bid to ingratiate himself with the band, Simon's giving his drugs to Oasis for free and though it leads to him introducing them to the audience at T in The Park before they make their entrance on stage – that's about it. Essentially, he's paying for the privilege of hanging out with them.

There's still profit to be had from selling to normal punters and journalists but the cost of glad ragging with what is soon to be one of the biggest bands in the world doesn't come cheap. The only payback apart from his five seconds of fame introducing them on stage being some good anecdotes derived from the whole experience.

When he first meets Oasis he chops out some lines of coke for them as a freebie and after finishing off, notices the rolled-up £20 note he's also supplied has vanished. For the first and only time one of them asks how much he's selling it for?

'Sixty a gram,' Simon tells him to which he's asked if he can do it for fifty? Simon agrees and is given his rolled-up £20 note back and told the rest will be sorted out later...

The band's van breaks down on the motorway whilst on the way to a festival and when the AA arrive they're told it will have to be towed away. The AA man tells them he's got space for four passengers to get them to their destination and the others will have to wait a few hours for the tow truck to arrive to ferry away the others. So the lead guitarist steps up and makes an executive decision:

'Right, obviously I'm going with the AA man now, cos I'm in fookin' charge and I've got press interviews in three hours' time. Simon, you're coming with me for obvious reasons'. Simon doesn't say which band members were left behind but it's pretty funny to think that the guitarist viewed Simon as being more important than them...

Later on at the festival, the same guitarist tells Simon 'You are my personal chemist this weekend and as such you need to remain within 20 feet of me for the duration, OK?'

'Of course, it'll be my pleasure,' Simon replies.

'It's your fookin' job, Simon!' the guitarist tells him. No mention is made, however, of payment...

As Oasis ascend to super-stardom, Simon's services are not deemed as being indispensable and he's ditched, or rather the band simply fail to make contact with him ever again. Life goes on, however, and Simon's next plan is to make a bid for fame and fortune himself by forming his own band. Unfortunately, all that happens is that he ends up being a fully-fledged junky strung out in heavens high hitting an all-time low.

As an insight into the depths a person can sink in pursuit of heroin, Simon's book is as good as the multitude of other books written on the same subject. From William Burroughs, to Christiane F, to Shaun Ryder's autobiography. Apart from a few of the anecdotes its saving grace is the self-depreciating, black sense of humour that runs through it. At times, the dialogue is even quite comical in a Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels kind of way. Which makes you wonder if during the writing of it Simon had one eye on the possibility of it being made into a film? It's all there but the problem is that it's all been done before with Trainspotting.

Nowadays Simon Mason is a recovering addict who sings and plays guitar in a band called Hightown Pirates. They're a relic from the past, of course, ploughing an epic, Rolling Stones/Eric Clapton groove but for all that are surprisingly good. They're never going to be massive and I suspect Simon knows this but that's okay because the bottom line is that Simon's very lucky to still be alive and that anything he does from now on whether it be making music, writing a book or just being a good father and helping other people is a bonus. A little gift to the world as a way of saying both 'sorry' and 'thank you'.

John Serpico

Fighters Against Fascism - Max Arthur

FIGHTERS AGAINST FASCISM – MAX ARTHUR

“I ain't got no heroes,” as Johnny Rotten once said “They're all useless.” and overnight a generation identified and adopted 'No more heroes' as a totem. We were all so much older then and we're younger than that now, however, and after being round the block a few times we see now that there are indeed heroes in this world, with some more deserving of the accolade than others. The International Brigades – those men and women from all corners of the globe who made their way to Spain during the Spanish Civil War in defense of the Republic against Franco and his fellow Fascist supporters – are such heroes to me.

Fighters Against Fascism – British Heroes Of The Spanish Civil War by Max Arthur is a collection of the fascinating and inspiring testaments of various British men and women who answered the call in 1936 and headed to Spain. There are eight testaments in total, this being the total number of those still alive at the time of writing who went there and survived to live to a ripe old age. Written in 2009 they are now, however, all departed, serving to make the book more poignant and more important than ever.

The first thing that is apparent when reading these testimonies is that they were all of the Left, but also that they were all working class and had all come from extreme poverty. As Jack Jones (who in later life went on to become the General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union) says: 'I was continuously struck by the working class background of most of the British and Irish who were fighting in Spain. This was the first working class war, in which people got involved directly, rather than being in an organised force in trenches. In that sense it was genuine warfare.'

Interestingly, he identifies an exception to this in the appearance of a young Ted Heath – future British Prime Minister – who was there as part of a five-man delegation from the Federation of University Conservative Associations. Though not there to take up arms, apparently Heath was genuinely supportive of the Spanish Republic as opposed to those in the Labour Party who advocated non-intervention who Jones held a strong feeling of repugnance towards. As Jones says, he had more support from Ted Heath than he had from the Labour leaders and in later life identified more with him than with Harold Wilson.

Heath was, however, an exception as exemplified in the testimonial of Bob Doyle, a former IRA member who whilst being held captive in a Fascist concentration camp in San Pedro de Cardena was visited by a British government delegation headed by Lady Chamberlain, widow of the British Foreign Secretary, Austin Chamberlain, who was the brother of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

Whilst inspecting the line of prisoners, Lady Chamberlain asked them why they had come to Spain, to which they all replied “To stop Fascism before it comes to England”. According to Doyle, she probably would have preferred someone to say “I was in Hyde Park one day and someone came up and asked me if I wanted to go to Spain and as I was unemployed, I joined up”. Disgusted with the actual replies, she turned to her escort and said “I say, can you pick me out an intelligent one?”

All of the testimonials give mention to Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts and indeed, Jack Edwards says in his testimonial 'If it was me I'd have bloody shot Mosley if I'd had a gun. I would: I hated the bastard. He was against the working class and that was it'.

What also binds them all is their conviction that if other governments had supported the Spanish Republic and quashed the Fascist threat in its infancy, the course of history might have been different, and perhaps there would have been no Second World War.

According to Penny Feiwel, who went to Spain as a nurse: 'If the Fascists in Spain were beaten, there wouldn't be any danger of air raids over London. I never ceased to believe this, all the time I was in Spain. Spain was a warning of what would happen to all of us. If we let Spain go, then it would be our fate too, to go to war'.

According to Sam Lesser, an East London boy growing steadily wary of the rise of the Blackshirts: 'The Spanish could have beaten Fascism, and could have stopped Hitler and Mussolini. I know it sounds idiotic to say so – we might even have averted or avoided the Second World War'.

And according to Jack Jones again: 'At that time Hitler and Mussolini weren't the enemy of everyone in Britain, but at the time of the civil war there were Mosleyites – Fascists openly marching around in black shirts. The Second World war ended any idea of sympathy for Fascism. Our cause was justified subsequently, so in a way we feel ours was a little part but in a progressive direction, justified later by the war against Fascism in general, in which the whole country was involved'.

When Johnny Rotten declared that he didn't have any heroes, he himself became a hero of sorts but at the same time forged a contradiction and a conundrum. Rotten inadvertently threw a question mark over the word that ultimately could only be resolved subjectively. The word 'hero' comes always with context and it's the context that always needs to be considered before agreeing whether the attribute is fitting or not.

When it comes to the people featured in Max Arthur's book and indeed to all those who joined the International Brigades, there is no doubt in my mind that they are heroes whose bravery, foresight, compassion and conviction should be applauded and forever remembered. The word 'hero' is too easily bandied about these days as indeed so too the word 'Fascist'. Max Arthur's book and the testimonies therein underscores the true meaning of the word.

As La Pasionaria Dolores Ibarruri declared in her farewell speech to the International Brigades at a parade at which more than 300,000 people lined the streets: 'Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Republicans – men of different colours, differing ideology, antagonistic religions – yet all profoundly loving liberty and justice, you came and offered yourselves to us unconditionally. You gave us everything – your youth or your maturity, your science or your experience, your blood and your lives, your hopes and aspirations – and you asked us for nothing. But yes, it must be said, you did want a post in battle, you aspired to the honour of dying for us.

Banners of Spain! Salute these many heroes! Be lowered to honour so many martyrs!

You can go proudly. You are history. You are legend.'

John Serpico

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