An Anarchist's Story
BBC2, 9pm
An Anarchist's Story ought to have been titled A Story of Anarchism. Having been billed as the 70-year-old legend of one particular woman, Ethel MacDonald, political activist, this proved to be the timeless story of a unique period of political activism in Barcelona.
That cavil about nomenclature aside, An Anarchist's Story told a Spanish Civil War tale that was saddening and not a little inspiring - especially if you believe in yon old-timey stuff like political principles, moral ideals, social unity and the overthrow of the oppressive boss class and suchlike.
Bringing tears to a glass eye - as well as to the seat of an ageing socialist's raggedy trousers - An Anarchist's Story opened with words direct from Ethel's youthful Lanarkshire heart: "Governments will never save the people. They exist to exploit and destroy the people. There is but one force that can save the people - and that is the people themselves."
These days, folk who believe in those sentiments might go so far as to have them printed on a T-shirt - do you know anywhere I can get some run up? - but in 1936, 26-year-old Ethel ventured across Europe to assist in fighting the earliest war against fascism, in what became Franco's Spain.
It was no jolly gap-year holiday excursion, either. Near-penniless, Ethel walked and hitched the last 95 miles to the Catalonian capital from Perpignan.
I was rather hoping that An Anarchist's Story might have given us more insight into the influences from Ethel's youthful life in Bellshill that drove her powerful political beliefs. Seventy years on, first-hand testimony is naturally going to be scarce, but Ethel did grow up as one of nine children; surely the programme could have talked to one MacDonald descendent who might have had some revealing bit of family lore to pass on.
Instead, we were given a well-worn recitation of historical fact (General Strike, Great Depression, three million unemployed, united Lanarkshire coal miners, emergent female emancipation), accompanied by a brief dramatisation of what was apparently a pivotal moment in Ethel's development as a committed political animal.
As a teenager, you see, Ethel had been sent to Dumfries by dole-office bureaucrats in pursuit of what transpired to be a non-existent job.
She'd walked and hitch-hiked most of the 140 miles there and back, passing through such places as Dungavel, Muirkirk and New Cumnock. In comparison, her subsequent hike from France into Barcelona must have seemed a luxury holiday.
As a 19-year-old, Ethel became first a typist, then a propagandist working on the denunciatory pamphlets and leaflets created in the Glasgow office of tweed-clad English upper-crust anarchist Guy Aldred.
It was Ethel's way with the written word, plus her ability to speak English, which led her to Spain to take part in what An Anarchist's Story identified as the first modern mass-media war. Ethel was required to write civil war despatches that were picked up by newspapers around the English-speaking world, as well as broadcasting on a Barcelona anarchist radio station.
Sadly, no audio recordings of Ethel have survived. Some of her writings have, including this rousing plea designed to enlist Spanish Civil War volunteers from among the folk back in Blighty gathered round their wirelesses: "The English language is held by those who speak it to be the greatest language of freedom . . . ringing in the accents of the martyrs, not the callous, cynical tones of the persecutor or judge."
Perhaps Ethel's most personal bit of writing concerned her rueful year-long struggle to learn Spanish while in Barcelona. With the failure of the anarchist experiment, Ethel returned to a life of anonymous political struggle in Glasgow, dying at the age of 51.
Venceremos, Ethel, venceremos.
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