OBITUARIES

Maximilien Rubel
Maximilien Rubel died in Paris at the age of 82 in late February. He had originally arrived in Paris in 1931 to finish his studies in philosophy, sociology and law that he had started in his home town of Czerlowitz, which had been first ruled by the Austro-Hungarians, then by the Romanians, and is now in the Ukraine. He began to frequent radical circles and to express solidarity with the struggle for social emancipation., particularly from 1936 when he gave support to the efforts of the Spanish Anarchists. This activity put him in contact with unorthodox Marxists, Anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists. His militant activity began in earnest during the Second World War when he wrote a number of leaflets in German (his mother tongue) distributed among the German forces of occupation by the tiny Revolutionary Proletarian Group in which he was active alongside Roger Bossiere, still a militant today! The leaflets denounced both Nazism and the Western imperialist powers. He took the double risk in this very dangerous work of being both a Jew and a revolutionary.

A supporter of council communism, he participated in the late forties and the fifties in the activities and the debates of that current, scattered to the four corners of the world by Stalinism, in particular his published correspondence with Anton Pannekoek. He began a critical examination of the work of Marx, and indeed began to produce a Complete Works of Marx. He ferociously denounced both capitalism and what he saw as the false socialism of Leninism. His essay Marx-Theoretician of Anarchism horrified both orthodox Marxists and anarchists. His critique of the Soviet Union and its satellites directed the fire of the Stalinists of the French Communist Party upon him. Unlike others who started out as anti-authoritarian critics of Stalinism, he did not change into a defender of capitalism and Cold War 'anticommunism'. He had contacts with the libertarian socialists of Socialisme ou Barbarie (who in their turn had a great influence on the British group Solidarity) and the anarchist communists of the excellent magazine Noir et Rouge. He was closely allied to Rene Lefeuvre whose Spartacus publishing house brought out a vast series of anarchist, council communist and critical Marxist books and pamphlets. He remained a convinced anti-capitalist and anti-statist right up to his death.

Albert Meltzer
Albert Meltzer who died on 7th May this year aged 76, had been a class struggle anarchist from the age of 16. He took part in work around the Spanish Revolution and was a member of the editorial board of War Commentary, (which changed its name to Freedom at the end of the war). This anarchist fortnightly maintained a consistent revolutionary anti-war stand, and an outstanding quality and level of writing. During the fifties Meltzer retired from the movement, returning to edit a number of pamphlets produced by his Coptic Press and to work with the group producing Cuddon's Cosmopolitan Review which addressed itself to cultural as well as directly political issues. Together with Stuart Christie he began producing the monthly Bulletin of the Anarchist Black Cross in 1968 which later became Black Flag in 1970. This journal gave coverage to news of the international anarchist movement, in particular details of repression and info and support for class war prisoners. Indeed Meltzer's work in establishing the ABC has led to a legacy of a number of local ABCs throughout Britain and ABCs in other countries. Their support for class war prisoners is invaluable and their efforts should be supported. One of Meltzer's other achievements was his sizeable contribution to the Kate Sharpley Library, a valuable resource and archive of the British anarchist movement, as well as of course his publishing of many pamphlets.

Albert's commitment to class struggle Anarchism was an influence on several generations (indeed, it contributed to this writer's development of class struggle ideas). His loathing of the liberals in the anarchist movement, as he called them, particularly the likes of George Woodcock, were understandable, but his verbal opposition to them was sometimes vitriolic in the extreme, to the extent of calling them fascists. Now, they may be many things, but the misnomer of fascist was not one of them. His heartfelt disgust at the way that the revolutionary core of anarchism was distorted by those who talked about pacifism, denied the existence of class or class struggle, and espoused gradualism in opposition to revolutionism, sometimes led him to write in terms guided more by his heart than his head. This vituperative style of writing sometimes spilled over into attacks on those who did espouse revolutionary ideas. Albert was no friend of the Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists or the Anarchist Workers Association in the seventiess and there were attacks on these groups in the pages of Black Flag. At a time when the Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists, then inside the Anarchist Federation of Britain, was developing ideas about the need for a revolutionary organisation Albert Meltzer was seen as a natural ally. He had recently written on the need for organisation in Black Flag. The ORA comrades were then told by Albert that he did not mean a specific revolutionary organisation but a vague "workers' organisation" based on non-existent workers' clubs. The ORA saw this as a brush-off, and that Albert had back-tracked on his previous pronouncements. Some ORA comrades engaged in some stupid name-calling with things like "Pope Albert" being thrown around.. He quite understandably bore a grudge, when a search for possible areas of co-operation and convergence might have been more useful (true for both sides). Albert did not readily identify specifically with anarcho-syndicalism in the sixties and seventies, perhaps influenced by his friendship with Ted Kavanagh with whom he had collaborated with on Cuddon's, and who had profound criticisms of anarcho-syndicalism. His later identification with anarcho-syndicalism translated into membership of the Solidarity Federation where latterly his ideas on "workers' organisation" have appeared to have been remarkably influential.

These criticisms should be weighed against Albert's important contributions to British revolutionary anarchism and to his lifelong devotion to the vision of a stateless and classless society.

Robert (Bobby) Lynn
The Glasgow anarchist Bobby Lynn has died aged 74. As a engineering apprentice in the shipyards, he came in contact with the anarchists who were organising open-air public meetings and factory gate meetings many of which attracted audiences of up to a thousand. The anti-war stance of the anarchists and their support of workers struggles at a time when the Communist Party dominated the Glasgow workplaces through the unions and the shop stewards' committees and actively sabotaged strike action in line with their support for the war effort, attracted Bobby to libertarian ideas. Just after the war, his agitation in the workplace attracted the attention of both bosses and Communist union officials. As a result he was blacklisted and took a job in the Merchant Navy and spent some years at sea.

Returning to Glasgow in the early fifties, he joined the Glasgow Anarchist Group. He was active in reviving the group in the seventies and initiated many activities as well as writing a number of pamphlets like Vote: What For? In the nineties it was he who started the Glasgow Anarchist Summer Schools which continue to this day. He was determined to attend the one this year but was cheated by death by a few days. His anarchism was heavily influenced by two speakers who had come into the Glasgow movement, Jimmy Raeside and Eddie Shaw, who bizarrely twinned the individualist ideas of Stirner with those of anarcho-syndicalism. So as Conscious Egoists they were able to explain anarcho-syndicalism as "applied egoism" and anarcho-syndicalist organisation as "unions of egoists". Bobby Lynn remained true to this strange fusion right up to his death.