ANARCHIST WITH A SENSE OF HISTORY

One hundred and eighteen years ago, on the 12^th February 1894, a young French anarchist by the name of Émile Henry (b.1872), detonated a bomb at the Café Terminus of Paris’s Gare Saint-Lazare. One person was killed and twenty wounded.  He was eventually executed by guillotine on the 21^st May 1894 age 21. His last words allegedly reported were "Courage camarades! Vive l'anarchie!" He also made a rather lengthy address to the jury to support his actions. Here are some excerpts. In his address he makes various remarks concerning other incidents which have occurred in other countries showing an overall grasp of the history of the anarchist movement of the late nineteenth century, and in particular the atrocities against the Paris Commune of the 1871, before he was even born.

Émile Henry

I became an anarchist only recently. It was no longer ago than around mid-1891 that I threw myself into the revolutionary movement. Previously, I had lived in circles wholly permeated with the established morality. I had been accustomed to respecting and even cherishing the principles of the nation, family, authority and property.

But those educating the present generation all too often forget one thing – that life, indiscreet with its struggles and setbacks, its injustices and iniquities, sees to it that the scales are removed from the eyes of the ignorant and that they are opened to reality. Which was the case with me, as it is with everyone. I had been told that this life was easy and largely open to intelligent, vagarious people, and experience showed me that only cynics and lackeys can get a good seat at the banquet.

I had been told that society’s institutions were founded on justice and equality, and all around me I could see nothing but lies and treachery. Everyday I was disabused further. Everywhere I went, I witnessed the same pain in some, the same delights in others. It did not take me long to realize that the same great words that I had been raised to venerate: honour, devotion, duty were merely a mask hiding the most shameful turpitude.

The factory-owner amassing a huge fortune on the back of the labour of his workers who lacked everything was an upright gentleman. The deputy, the minister whose hands were forever outstretched for bribes were committed to the public good. The officer testing his new model rifle on seven-year-old children had done his duty well, and in open parliament the premier offered him his congratulation. Everything I could see turned my stomach and my mind fastened on criticism of social organization. The criticism has been voiced too often to need rehearsing by me. Suffice it say that I turned into an enemy of a society which I held to be criminal.

Momentarily attracted by socialism, I wasted no time in distancing myself from that party. My love of liberty was too great, my regard for individual initiative too great, my repudiation for feathering one’s nest too definite for me to enlist in the numbered army of the fourth estate. Also, I saw that, essentially, socialism changes the established order not one jot. It retains the authoritarian principle, and this principle, despite what supposed free-thinkers may say about it, is nothing but an ancient relic of the belief in a higher power.

(...)In the merciless war that we have declared on the bourgeoisie, we ask no mercy. We mete out death and we must face it. For that reason I await your verdict with indifference. I know that mine will not be the last head you will sever (...) You will add more names to the bloody roll call of our dead.

Hanged in Chicago, Beheaded in Germany, garroted in Xerez, shot in Barcelona, guillotined in Montbrison and in Paris, our dead are many; but you have not been able to destroy anarchy. Its roots go deep: its spouts from the bosom of a rotten society that is falling apart; it is a violent backlash against the established order; it stands for the aspirations to equality and liberty which have entered the lists against the current authoritarianism. It is everywhere. That is what makes it indomitable, and it will end by defeating you and killing you.

Engraving of the seven anarchists sentenced
to die for Degan's murder. An eighth defendant,
not shown here, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The reference to Chicago is known as The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket massacre or Haymarket riot). This was a demonstration of unrest that took place on Tuesday 4^th Ma, 1886, at the Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a rally in support of striking workers. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they dispersed the public meeting. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians and the wounding of scores of others.

In the internationally publicized legal proceedings that followed, eight anarchists were tried for murder. All were convicted, with seven sentenced to death and one to a term of 15 years in prison, although the prosecution conceded none of the defendants had thrown the bomb. The death sentences of two were subsequently commuted to terms of life in prison and another committed suicide in jail rather than face the gallows. The other four were hanged on November 11, 1887.

Emil Max Hödel

The beheading in Germany referred to the beheading of Emil Max Hödel who was beheaded on the 16^th August 1878. Emil Max Hödel was a plumber from Leipzig, Germany who became known for a failed assassination. A former member of the Leipzig Social-Democratic Association, he was expelled from the organization in the 1870s and eventually became involved in anarchism. Hödel used a revolver to shoot at the German Emperor, Wilhelm I, on 11^th May, 1878, while the 82-year-old and his daughter, Princess Louise of Prussia, paraded in their carriage. When the bullet missed, Hödel ran across the street and fired another round which also missed. In the commotion one of the individuals who tried to apprehend Hödel suffered severe internal injuries and died two days later. The State convicted Hödel after a photographer, who took the radical’s picture days before the assassination attempt, testified that after he took the picture, Hödel said it would sell thousands once a certain piece of information [was] hashed through the world.

The Spanish references refer to incidents where, the lack of revolutionary organization led many anarchists to commit acts of violence as a form of direct action. Occasional uprisings broke out, as in Jerez, with no success, but violent retribution. The government came to equate anarchism with terrorism and responded in kind. Anarchists were met with the severest repression; a famous example is the mass arrest and resulting torture of anarchist prisoners at the castle of Montjuich in Barcelona in 1892. As many as 400 people were brought to the dungeons following a bombing (the guilty party was never found). International outrage followed reports that the prisoners were brutally tortured: men hanged from ceilings, genitals twisted and burned, fingernails ripped out. Several died before being brought to trial, and five were eventually executed.

Ravachol

The mention of Montbrison referred to François Claudius Koenigstein, known as Ravachol, who was a French anarchist who had been guillotined at the Montbrison prison two years earlier on the 11^th July 1892. He was the perpetrator of three dynamite attacks against representatives of the judiciary.

The Paris reference was La Commune de Paris. This was a group of citizens who, at the end of the Franco-Prussian war, briefly ruled Paris from March 18 (more formally, from March 28) to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution. Debates over the policies and outcome of the Commune contributed to the break between those two political groups. The commune was severely put down by the official French Government forces, whilst the victorious Prussian Army looked on from the outskirts of Paris.

Having supported the Commune in any way was a political crime, of which thousands could be, and were, accused. Some Communards were shot against what is now known as the Communards’ Wall in Père Lachaise Cemetery while thousands of others were tried by summary courts martial of doubtful legality, and thousands shot. Notorious sites of slaughter were the Luxembourg Gardens and the Lobau Barracks, behind the Hôtel de Ville. Nearly 40,000 others were marched to Versailles for trials. For many days endless columns of men, women and children made a painful way under military escort to temporary prison quarters in Versailles. Later 12,500 were tried, and about 10,000 were found guilty: 23 men were executed; many were condemned to prison; 4,000 were deported for life to New Caledonia. The number killed during La Semaine Sanglante can never be established for certain, and estimates vary from about 10,000 to 50,000. According to professor Benedict Anderson, "7,500 were jailed or deported" and "roughly 20,000 executed."

Is it surprising the young Émile came out with: "My love of liberty was too great, my regard for individual initiative too great, my repudiation for feathering one’s nest too definite for me to enlist in the numbered army of the fourth estate. Also, I saw that, essentially, socialism changes the established order not one jot. It retains the authoritarian principle, and this principle, despite what supposed free-thinkers may say about it, is nothing but an ancient relic of the belief in a higher power."?    One could easily have heard these remarks recently on the steps of Saint Paul's Cathedral, on the streets of New York, in front of the Town Hall in Bristol.