Violence and Anarchism: A Polemic - Softcover

Richards, Vernon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0900384700 ISBN 13: 9780900384707

Publisher: Freedom Press, 1993

Synopsis

In 1960, South African police shot dead 56 and injured 160 unarmed people in the black township of Sharpeville protesting against the hated Pass Laws. Following the massacre a white farmer, David Pratt, tried to assassinate Dr. Vervoerd, the Prime Minister and mastermind of apartheid. Vervoerd survived, to receive telegrams of condolence from both the Queen and the British Prime Minister - unlike the relatives of the Sharpeville victims. A Freedom editorial, however ('Too Bad He Missed'), expressing support for Pratt coincided with a major CND anti-nuclear demonstration, provoking an avalanche of correspondence in the paper, both for and against violence. The Pratt affair and the Sharpeville massacre are retold here along with the whole assassination/violence controversy - set in context but otherwise unedited. Three essays round off the debate: Martyn Everett's exemplary A Short History of Political Violence in Britain reminding us how, as far back as the Norman Conquest, the state - itself built on violence - historically always reacts with violence when threatened, even in a so-called democracy, even against non-violent opposition; and Malatesta's penetrating, and still unsurpassed articles on the subject, Anarchism & Violence and Attentats - written in the volatile atmosphere of post-World War I Europe, when both revolution and fascism were in the air.

About this edition

• Publisher: Freedom Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0900384700
• ISBN 13: 9780900384707
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 87