Stuart Christie

Part of a series on
Anarchism
History Outline
Schools of thought Feminist Green Primitivist Social ecology Total liberation Individualist Egoist Free-market Naturist Philosophical Mutualism Postcolonial African Black Queer Religious Christian Jewish Social Collectivist Parecon Communist Magonism Without adjectives Methodology Agorism Illegalism Insurrectionary Communization Expropriative Pacifist Platformism Especifismo Relationship Syndicalist Synthesis
Theory Practice Anarchy Anarchist Black Cross Anarchist criminology Anationalism Anti-authoritarianism Anti-capitalism Anti-militarism Affinity group Autonomous social center Black bloc Classless society Class struggle Consensus decision-making Conscientious objector Critique of work Decentralization Deep ecology Direct action Free association Free love Freethought Horizontalidad Individualism Isocracy Law Mutual aid Participatory politics Permanent autonomous zone Prefigurative politics Proletarian internationalism Propaganda of the deed Refusal of work Revolution Revolutionary spontaneity Rewilding Security culture Self-ownership Social ecology Sociocracy Somatherapy Spontaneous order Squatting Temporary autonomous zone Union of egoists Voluntary association Workers' council
People Armand Ba Bakunin Berkman Bonanno Bookchin Chomsky Cleyre Day Durruti Ellul Ervin Faure Ferrer Feyerabend Godwin Goldman González Prada Graeber Guillaume He-Yin Kanno Kōtoku Kropotkin Landauer Liu Magón Makhno Malatesta Michel Most Parsons Pi Pouget Proudhon Rocker Santillán Spooner Stirner Thoreau Tolstoy Tucker Volin Ward Warren Zerzan
Issues Animal rights Capitalism Education Love and sex Nationalism Religion Violence
History Paris Commune Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA Cantonal rebellion Hague Congress International Conference of Rome Trial of the Thirty Haymarket affair May Day Congress of Amsterdam Tragic Week High Treason Incident Manifesto of the Sixteen Individualist anarchism in the United States 1919 United States bombings Biennio Rosso German Revolution of 1918–1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic Kronstadt rebellion Makhnovshchina Amakasu Incident Escuela Moderna Individualist anarchism in Europe Spanish Revolution of 1936 Barcelona May Days Red inverted triangle Labadie Collection May 1968 Provo LIP Kate Sharpley Library Australian Anarchist Centenary Carnival Against Capital 1999 Seattle WTO protests Really Really Free Market Occupy movement
Culture A las Barricadas Anarchist bookfair Anarcho-punk Arts Culture jamming DIY ethic Films Freeganism Glossary Infoshop Independent Media Center The Internationale Jewish anarchism Lifestylism "No gods, no masters" Popular education "Property is theft!" Radical cheerleading Radical environmentalism Squatting Symbolism
Economics Communization Cooperative Cost the limit of price General strike Gift economy Give-away shop Free association Labour voucher Market abolitionism Mutual aid Mutual credit Participatory economics Social ownership Wage slavery Workers' self-management
By region Africa Albania Algeria Andorra Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bangladesh Belarus Belgium Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Finland France French Guiana Georgia Germany Greece Guatemala Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Latvia Malaysia Mexico Monaco Mongolia Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Romania Russia Serbia Singapore South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tunisia Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom United States Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam
Lists Anarcho-punk bands Books Communities Fictional characters Films Jewish anarchists Musicians Periodicals
Related topics Anti-corporatism Anti-consumerism Anti-fascism Anti-globalization Anti-statism Anti-war movement Autarchism Autonomism Communism Counter-economics Definition of anarchism and libertarianism Labour movement Left communism Left-libertarianism Libertarianism Libertarian Marxism Libertarian socialism Marxism Situationist International Socialism Spontaneous order Voluntaryism
Anarchism portal Politics portal
v t e

Stuart Christie (10 July 1946 – 15 August 2020)^[1] was a Scottish anarchist writer and publisher. When aged 18, Christie was arrested while carrying explosives to assassinate the Spanish caudillo, General Francisco Franco. He was later alleged to be a member of the Angry Brigade, but was acquitted of related charges. He went on to found the Cienfuegos Press publishing house, as well as radical publications The Free-Winged Eagle and The Hastings Trawler, and in 2006 the online Anarchist Film Channel,^[2] which hosts films and documentaries with anarchist and libertarian socialist themes. His memoir Granny Made Me an Anarchist was published in 2004.

Biography

Early life

Christie was born in the Partick area of Glasgow, Scotland, and was raised in Blantyre by his mother and grandparents, becoming an anarchist at a young age. He ascribed this to his grandmother's influence: "Basically, what she did was provide a moral barometer which married almost exactly with that of libertarian socialism and anarchism, and she provided the star which I followed."^[3] He joined the Anarchist Federation in Glasgow in 1962, at the age of 16. He became active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), attracted to the more militant approach of the Direct Action Committee and Committee of 100, and took part in the confrontational Faslane Naval Base CND demonstration on 14 February 1963, among others.^[4]

Attempt to assassinate Franco

On the last day of July 1964, an 18-year-old Christie departed London for Paris, where he picked up plastic explosives from the anarchist organisation Defensa Interior.^[5]

Before he left England, he was interviewed for a television programme with Malcolm Muggeridge, a known MI6 contact, and asked whether he felt the assassination of Franco would be right. He answered that it would; when the programme was broadcast after his arrest in Spain, these comments were edited out.

Christie hitchhiked into Spain and was arrested in Madrid on 11 August 1964 in possession of explosives. He faced a military trial and a possible execution sentence by garrote, but was instead sentenced to twenty years in prison. An accomplice, Fernando Carballo Blanco, was sentenced to thirty years' imprisonment. He served three years in Carabanchel Prison, where he studied for A-Levels and was brought into contact with anarchist prisoners, including Miguel García García, Luis Andres Edo and Juan Busquets.^[6] Christie was later freed. The official reason given by Francoist Spain was that it was due to a plea from Christie's mother.^[6]

Back in Britain

After his release he continued his activism in the British anarchist movement, re-formed the Anarchist Black Cross and Black Flag with Albert Meltzer, was acquitted of involvement with the Angry Brigade, and started the publishing house Cienfuegos Press, which for a number of years he operated from Sanday, Orkney, where he also edited and published a local Orcadian newspaper, The Free-Winged Eagle.

Christie had various writing and journalistic jobs including as editor of an unauthorised British edition of Pravda and Argumenty i Fakty (Arguments and Facts International) in the late years of the Soviet Union and the early years of the Russian Federation.^[3]

Published work

An updated and single-volume version of his autobiography Granny Made Me an Anarchist was published in 2004 by Scribner. It had previously been published in three parts, the other titles being General Franco Made Me a Terrorist,^[7] and Edward Heath Made Me Angry.^[8][9] Christie attracted criticism from some fellow anarchists for making a gestural protest vote against Labour and its war in Iraq by voting for George Galloway's Respect - The Unity Coalition in the European Parliament elections that year, because of the general anarchist stance against participating in capitalist democracy.^[3] Christie also wrote articles attacking freemasonry.^[10]

He also wrote, with Meltzer, The Floodgates of Anarchy. Christie's other books include Stefano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist,^[11] (on Italian neo-fascist terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie, founder of Avanguardia Nazionale and member of P2 masonic lodge) and We, the Anarchists! A study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927–1937 (2000).^[12] As a publisher Christie founded Cienfuegos Press in 1972 and edited the Cienfuegos Anarchist Review (c. 1977–1982), Refract Publications (1982), The Meltzer Press (1996) and Christiebooks/Christiebooks.com/Read 'N' Noir. His The Christie File was published by the Cienfuegos Press in 1980. He also edited The Hastings Trawler, a monthly magazine that ran from 2005 to 2006.^[13]

Christie also translated into English the biography of Francisco Sabate Llopart, Sabate: An Extraordinary Guerrilla, by Antonio Téllez Solá.

Reviews

Ross, Raymond J. (1981), "Review of The Christie File", in Murray, Glen (ed.), Cencrastus No. 6, Autumn 1982, p. 35

Personal life

Christie's wife of more than 50 years, Brenda Christie, died of cancer at the age of 70 in June 2019.^[14] Stuart Christie died aged 74, also from cancer, on 15 August 2020.^[15]

See also

• Colin Ward

References

Further reading

• "Stuart Christie". Anarchist Encyclopedia. Daily Bleed. Archived from the original on 9 December 2015.
• 1964: Stuart Christie's account of his actions in a Franco assassination attempt
• Campbell, Duncan (24 November 2006). "A revolution in cinema?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077.

External links

• ChristieBooks and Anarchist Film Channel, Radio etc.
• "'My stomach churned. Something had gone badly wrong … '", an edited extract from Granny Made Me an Anarchist, by Stuart Christie. Guardian.co.uk Guardian News and Media Limited. 23 August 2004.

Interviews

• "Looking Back at Anger", Stuart Christie interview with Andrew Stevens. 3:AM Magazine. 2004.
• BBC Witness History: The Plot to Kill Franco

This page was last edited on 1 November 2023, at 10:50