First of May Group

[ellipsis]

What do people know about the first of may group? I ask because I recently downloaded "Towards a Citizen's Militia", authored by said group, published by cienfuegos press, Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer anarchist publishing house. Wikipedia was not very helpful:

The First of May Group was an anarchist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism) anti-Franco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco) resistance movement which took militant action against the Spanish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain) dictator's regime. Formed in 1966 by exiles dissatisfied with what they perceived as the quietism of other opposition groups, actions attributed to the group include the occupation of the Vatican Embassy in 1966 and the machine-gunning of the Spanish embassy in London.[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_of_May_Group#cite_note-angels-0)
The group, though secret, was thought to have links to the CNT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_del_Trabajo), the FIJL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIJL) and the Anarchist Black Cross (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_Black_Cross).

But the book was published in 1980, leaving me confused.

[bcbm]

ak press has a book (http://www.akpress.org/2005/items/internationalrevolutionarysolidaritymovement) on them.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Stuart Christie was involved with them for a while, so his Granny Made Me An Anarchist'll have some stuff on them...but yeah, bcbm's book looks more useful.

[Devrim]

I imagine that it was one of those dodgy armed groups that Albert and Stuart were into.

Devrim

[ellipsis]

Well stuart was arrested in 64 for an assignation attempt on franco and he published books on the group as was already noted.

[Devrim]

Well stuart was arrested in 64 for an assignation attempt on franco and he published books on the group as was already noted.

Yes, Stuart has some of those really vague 'anarchisty' politics, which have led him into various things from involvement in a completely botched assassination job* to voting for RESPECT as a protest against Blair, both at other ends of the political extremes from palimentarianism to terrorism, but neither having anything to do with the working class.

Devrim

*Come on, what sort of assassins hitch hike to the job?

[The Ungovernable Farce]

I'm kind of more interested in Meltzer - did he make a conscious transition from armed struggle to syndicalism, or was he still into his guerrillaism while he was in DAM? It certainly sounds like Black Flag's changed a massive amount over the years, but I suppose that may be inevitable when you're an independent publication not linked to an organised group.

[Devrim]

I'm kind of more interested in Meltzer - did he make a conscious transition from armed struggle to syndicalism, or was he still into his guerrillaism while he was in DAM? It certainly sounds like Black Flag's changed a massive amount over the years, but I suppose that may be inevitable when you're an independent publication not linked to an organised group.

I am perhaps not the most objective person to post on this, as I never got on with Albert and found myself on opposing sides to him on some quite tense political issues, but I will comment anyway.

Yes, Albert, and the whole of the Black Flag collective, which at the time I knew him (late 80s) was composed exclusively of DAM members saw no contradiction between support for this sort of guerillaism and anarcho-syndicalism.

Black Flag may have changed. It isn't published on line now so I haven't read a copy in years, but I understand that it is now run by completely different people. At the time though BF was used by the people I mentioned to run a personal (fortnightly) paper, which carried articles that didn't fit the orientations of their organisations (monthly) paper.

Devrim

[ellipsis]

*Come on, what sort of assassins hitch hike to the job?

Building a bomb was the easy part. The hard part came when he needed to acquire a car.

Honestly you do have to give the guy some credit for trying.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Black Flag may have changed. It isn't published on line now so I haven't read a copy in years, but I understand that it is now run by completely different people. At the time though BF was used by the people I mentioned to run a personal (fortnightly) paper, which carried articles that didn't fit the orientations of their organisations (monthly) paper.

Devrim
It's pretty decent in its current incarnation as a biannual fairly heavyweight theoretical anarcho magazine. I think the contents of the current issue are a long way away from guerrillaism: http://libcom.org/library/black-flag-230-sneak-preview