There is going to be a small celebration to mark the beginning of the Spanish Revolution "July 19th 1936-2006"
12.30pm on next Wednesday (19.07.2006) outside the
Spanish Tourist Bureau, 221 Queen Street, Melbourne.
It's been called by Dr Joseph Toscano Email: anarchistage@yahoo.com
As others will focus on the Spanish revolutionaries themselves I intend
to read out the following:
"One rebel worker who went to Spain and died there alas was IWW
organiser speaker and editor of Direct Action 1928-29 Ted Dickinson.
Dickinson, Edward Alexander (1903 - 1937) Birth: 21 April 1903,
Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England
Death: 12 February 1937, Spain
DICKINSON, EDWARD ALEXANDER Son of Edward Dickinson, fish merchant, and
his wife Mary Cormack, née Ross.
Ted came to Melbourne with his family as a small child. His father was
killed soon after and his mother remarried and moved to New South
Wales.
In 1923 he returned to Melbourne, studied with the Workers' Educational
Association and became friends with Charlie Reeves, one of the
Industrial Workers of the World leaders who had been gaoled in 1917.
Dickinson became a leading figure in the I.W.W. in Melbourne and later
in Sydney, where he became known as a Domain orator: he was a stirring,
enthusiastic and fiery speaker.
In 1928-29 Dickinson was in Adelaide to revive the I.W.W. newspaper
Direct Action. He was extensively involved in political activity with
those out of work.
Especially concerned with attempted evictions, he tried to organize
unemployed workers who gathered daily at the Adelaide Labour Exchange.
During the 1928 waterfront strike Dickinson was active both in Adelaide
and the Port.
On 1 October 1928 he was arrested as 'one of the leaders' of a 'riot'
which had occurred on 27 September when 5000 unionists drove scabs off
the ships at the Port.
Dickinson was charged with 'unlawfully taking part in a riot' and
'seditious libel' for several articles in Direct Action.
He received six months imprisonment for sedition and three months for
riot and was fined £50.
On 19 October 1929 at Holy Trinity Church, Adelaide, Dickinson married
Myrtle Ellen Ankers, tailoress.
At the end of that year he was employed as the representative of an oil
company which sent him to England.
There, again unemployed, he set up a fish stall at Battersea markets
and survived the Depression.
Politically active, he went on hunger marches and spoke regularly in
Hyde Park.
He helped form a broad organization to oppose Sir Oswald Mosley's
Fascists and the Chamberlain government's appeasement policies.
In 1935 when the Labor Party leader Clement Attlee condemned the
Italian invasion of Abyssinia, Italy's foreign minister challenged him
to a duel.
Shortly after, speaking at Hyde Park, Dickinson accepted the challenge
on behalf of the peace movement; he added that he had spent many years
in the Australian bush and was familiar with firearms though he
preferred boxing gloves.
At the end of 1936 Dickinson went to Spain to fight with the
International Brigade against Franco.
He became a lieutenant, second in charge of a machine-gun company of
the British Battalion.
Reports emphasized his abilities as a 'born leader' and organizer.
His commanding officer described him as 'a brilliant man with a dynamic
personality'.
Dickinson was captured by the Fascist forces on 12 February 1937; after
two comrades were shot, he is reputed to have said: 'If I had a bunch
of Australian bushmen here we'd have pushed you bastards into the sea
long ago'. He was immediately taken aside and shot.
As the order to fire was given, he called to the other prisoners: 'Keep
your chins up, boys. Salud!'.
Select Bibliography
Direct Action (Adelaide), 5 May, 20 Oct, 17 Nov 1928, 9 Feb 1929;
The IWW's weekly Industrial Worker and One Big Union Monthly featured
reports by Pat Read and other Wobblies in the Spanish trenches.
Mail (Adelaide), 11 Feb 1939;
N. Palmer et al, Australians in Spain (Syd, 1948);
R. N. Wait, Reactions to Demonstrations and Riots in Adelaide, 1928 to
1932 (M.A. thesis, University of Adelaide, 1973);
L. Fox (ed), Depression Down Under (Syd, 1977);
SOURCE:
Author: Ray Broomhill,
'Dickinson, Edward Alexander (1903 - 1937)',
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 8,
Melbourne University Press,
1981, p. 302.
www.iww.org.au
Never let them fool you or take you by suprise,
The dirty smell of the politician, the man with the greed in his eyes.
One big union, that's our plan!
And the IWW is your only man,
The flames of discontent we'll fan for the cause that never dies.
Background from Wikipedia:
SPANISH REVOLUTION
In Spanish history, there have been several revolutions. This one took
place in Republican controlled territory during the Spanish Civil War
(1936–1939), and was predominantly a social revolution.
The Spanish Revolution of 1936 began during the outbreak of the Spanish
Civil War. Much of Spain's economy was put under worker control; in
anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%,
but lower in areas with heavy socialist influence. Factories were run
through worker committees, agrarian areas became collectivized and run
as libertarian communes.
Even places like hotels, barber shops, and restaurants were
collectivized and managed by their workers.
George Orwell describes a scene in Aragon during this time period in
his book Homage to Catalonia. [1]
"I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any
size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in
capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one
was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of
working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on
terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in
practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be
true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by
which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of
Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life--snobbishness,
money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.--had simply ceased to exist. The
ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is
almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no
one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone
else as his master."
The communes were run according to the basic principle of "From each
according to his ability, to each according to his need".
In some places, money was entirely eliminated, to be replaced with
vouchers. Under this system, goods were often little more than a
quarter of their previous cost.
Despite the critics clamoring for "maximum efficiency" rather than
revolutionary methods, anarchic communes often produced more than
before the collectivization.
The newly liberated zones worked on entirely libertarian principles;
decisions were made through councils of ordinary citizens without any
sort of bureaucracy
(it should be noted that the CNT-FAI leadership was at this time not
nearly as radical as the rank and file members responsible for these
sweeping changes).
In addition to the economic revolution, there was a spirit of cultural
revolution. Traditions some viewed as oppressive were done away with.
For instance, women were allowed to have abortions, and the idea of
"free love" became popular. In many ways, this spirit of cultural
liberation prefigured that of the "New Left" movements of the 1960s.
As the war dragged on, the spirit of the revolution's early days
flagged. In part, this was due to the policies of the Communist Party
of Spain, which took its cues from the foreign ministry of Stalin's
Soviet Union, the source of most of the foreign aid received by the
Republican side. The Communist policy was that the war was not the time
for the revolution, that until victory in the war was won the goal had
to be the defeat of the Franco forces, not the abolition of capitalism,
which was to be addressed once the war had been won. The other
left-wing parties, particularly the anarchists and the Trotskyists,
disagreed vehemently with this; to them the war and the revolution were
one and the same. Militias of parties and groups which had spoken out
too vociferously in opposition to the Soviet position on the war soon
found further aid to have been cut off. Partially because of this, the
situation in most Republican-held areas slowly began to revert largely
to its prewar conditions; in many ways the "revolution" was over well
before the triumph of the Franco forces in early 1939.
