Spanish Syndicallst National Congress

Highly satisfactory news has just arrived from France of the results established during the Congress of the delegation of 35,000 Spanish anarcho-syndicalists held in Paris from May 1st onwards.

We shall give in detail all the more important resolutions adopted as soon as we receive them. For the present we can only reproduce a translation of the cablegram just received from our correspondent:

"Congress tasks closed great enthusiasm. Reformist proposals rejected immense majority. Resolved unanimously to ratify principles National Congresses. New national committee elected includes Germinal Esgleas, Federica Montseny, Ruiz Elie. Several committees elected to determine essential points constructive work. Movement has centred itself right way. Details follow post. Yours fraternally, X."

The Voice of Experience

Our comrade Federica Montseny, militant of our movement in Spain, has replied in the following terms in answer to a direct question:

“My experiences in a government in the very critical circumstances for the life of Spain (1936-37) have confirmed my original lbelief that:

“Partial intervention in the state, sharing with the other political sections of the community, the responsibility of the governmental direction of the country can only lead to the failure and discredit of a revolutionary movement.

“The complex and sinuous texture of political collaboration invalidates all revolutionary action, nullifies all efficiency. To be able to do anything profound, serious and of consequence from above’, only the total control of power, would be the solution. That is to say dictatorship. And where would we go that way?

"If we arrived at such a conclusion our reason to exist as libertarians would cease.

"But the C.N.T. and the libertarian movement which for a century past have stimulated and encouraged the Spanish working-class, strengthening and inspiring its class-consciousness, have a greater mission to achieve than the dispute for power. They are entrusted by the small, but confident nucleus of anarchists the world over to fulfil a momentous task—to bridge two stages of civilization through the only possible means—Social Revolution of the Workers.”

Swedish Syndicalists

The annual report for 1944 of our Swedish comrades of the Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganization (SAC), has just been published. The organisation comprises 574 local branches with a total of 21,902 affliliated members, and the record of the year's activity is one of intense agitation and organisational work.

The SAC publishes two daily papers, “Arbetaren” and "Norrlandsfolket”, an industrial periodical "Travarnindiustriarhetaren” and a magazine entitled  "Syndikalismen". The organisation has its own editorial house and printing premises.

The SAC is divided into 18 propaganda districts for agitation and organisational work. During 1944 the local organisations worked effectively for the betterment of wages and working conditions of the members. Strike action was taken on 47 occasions.

With the end of the war out Swedish movement is widening its scope of activities and the prospect for the immediate future seems extremely promising.

Synclicalist International

The National committee of the SAC held its Annual Conference in Stockholm between March 31st and April 6th. Amongst the questions in debate one of the most important items was that of the reorganisation of our international (IWMA) which has maintained itself during the war years under great difficulties.

The text of the resolution adopted is as follows:

“The end is near of the bloody massacre of a world apparently mad, a world in which the oppressed peoples were forced to fight for their ‘freedom and democracy’. But the people cannot be constantly driven to war to sacrifice their lives in military slaughter to be later thrown again into misery and enslavement. Freedom and democracy must become realities after the war, and this will only be brought about if the people take affairs into their own hands, establishing economic freedom which is the basis of all other liberties.

“The Syndicalist movement of the world was suppressed by violence and disintegrated by repression in this era of terror. The time has now arrived for reorganisation, for a new concentration of all elements of our movement in exile, persecuted and dispersed all over the world.

“We know that we shall face the resistance of the victorious powers. We know that, as ever, it will be a hard struggle, but we also know that anarchosyndicalism has an historical mission to fulfil as the representative of the libertarian cause.

“We must establish immediately new contacts amongst syndicalislt revolutionaries of other countries, and after the necessary work of reorganisation we must convene an international -congress which, on the basis of the terrible experiences of the last decades, will fix the lines of action for the future activity of the anarcho-syndicalist movement internationally."

It is our task here, in Britain, to do our share in helping to rebuild our international of the revolutionary working-class.

Anarchists in France

We've welcomed recently the first numbers of the new series of “Le Libertaire”, the paper of our French comrades, founded 49 years ago by Louise Michel and Sebastian Faure in Paris.

It reappears now as the “Organe Federal du Mouvement Libertaire" into which the two traditional currents of anarchism that existed in the past in France the Union Anarchiste (U.A.) and the Federation Anarchiste Francoise (F.A.F.), have amalgamated during the German occupation.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz