Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 119, December 2025
View PDF: https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/ftth0n
Contents
Half A Million Tramps.
Heath, Nick. Dupuy, Rolf (1946-2025).
Jones, W. E. and Richard Warren. The Bum on the Rods and the Bum on the Plush.
Leech, Frank and Edoardo Puglielli. Death of Emilio Ceragioli, Glasgow 1945.
Library update [Dec 2025].
Dupuy, Rolf and Nestor Makhno. The Spanish revolution, its mistakes and potential corrections [1934].
A Note on the ‘Prehistory’ of the Kate Sharpley Library.
Pude, Dave. Jack Kielty.
Thoughts on anarchist libraries.
Tom Brown, Tyneside syndicalist : a little more biographical info..
Thoughts on anarchist libraries
As mentioned in the last bulletin one of our readers said ‘The article & information about Georges Pilotelle & Columbia University must have been of particular interest to you. It prompted me to reread the article in the Dec. ’24 bulletin – ‘Freedom Press Library 1979’. […]
‘Beyond keeping a historical record, I am sure you have a view about the questions posed in the article and the wider purposes of an anarchistic library’.
The Kate Sharpley Library aims to preserve what anarchists have written (published or not) as an essential way to understand the ideas and history of the movement. To the best of our ability we try to make those things available, which leads into publishing. Which may be less librarianly, but has always has always been a concern of the KSL: see Albert’s ‘Anarchist Literature: “It Must Begin Again”’ in 1991.[1]
Anarchists of the past were always creating libraries: ‘libraries were “one of the fundamental pillars in the anarchist infrastructural apparatus” where one could read but also join in a common space.’[2] But inevitably there are more mentions of anarchist libraries than accounts of exactly what they were doing and why. I assume there’s a shared understanding of how they work. Which is not to say that they didn’t come in all shapes and sizes. In 1956 Robert Lynn reported on a workers’ library inside the North British Locomotive Co., Queens Park Works, Polmadic, Glasgow.[3] In San Francisco ‘The Russian anarchists’ reading room at 2787 Folsom Street became the International Group’s “Club Rooms,” open to the public six evenings a week and hosting monthly “comraderies” featuring spaghetti, concerts, and dancing.’[4]
Let’s end with Marianne Enckell of CIRA who has written about the how and the why: ‘It isn’t a matter of us archiving the memory of the movement in order to fix it in place; it is a matter of keeping our history alive and subversive, of affirming the existence of Anarchists (“There are not even a hundred of them…”) and their diversity against the suffocation by those in power.’[5]
Notes
1, In KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No.1 [1991] https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/vdndmd
2, Dr. Kirwin R. Shaffer ‘Anarchist Cultural Politics in Latin America: An Introduction’ in Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, Vol. 2023 No. 2 (2023) https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/adcs/article/view/21699
3, See Freedom, 1956/06/02
4, Kenyon Zimmer Immigrants against the State, p.183. There are photos of the room at https://nowtopians.com/history/silicon-valley-a-living-history
5, ‘The School and the Barricade’ (updated version, 2009) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/marianne-enckell-the-school-and… [original note: ‘“Y en a pas un sur cent…” An allusion to the poem “Les Anarchistes” by Leo Ferre.’]
Library update [Dec 2025]
New treasures on the website:
Billy MacQueen An issue of Liberty from 1903 (published by the International Propaganda Groups of America) https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/zkh3qq
Germany
Syndicalist Press in Germany 1897-1933 by Jonnie Schlichting https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/80gd2q
Berkman
On Bukharin on Anarchism at the Red Labor Congress https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/866vxd
Imanol
The Baix Llobregat [Lower Llobregat] Gang https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/wstt08 and Los Pataletes: the Story of a Libertarian Band Operating in the Malaga Area https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/vx0nj3
Bulgaria
[Pages of Bulgarian Anarchist History:] The Little-known Parachutists of 1953-1954 by Frank Mintz https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/wdbv7d
Biographies
‘Isaac Puente, Anarchist Doctor’ by Mikel Peciña with ‘Isaac Puente, Eighty-eight years on’ by Javier Irazabal https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/m37rzd (we’ve also posted Puente’s An Outline Program for Libertarian Communism [1933] https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/xd27hh)
‘Julia Romera Yáñez (1916-1941), the Life and Death of a Freedom Fighter’ Ángel Sody de Rivas https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/t4bbvt
Michele Centrone (1879-1936) https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/zw3thz
Albert
We have posted two articles by Albert Meltzer from 1976 ‘Extremism of the centre’ https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/z8wcw6 and ‘A struggle for the slums’ https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/fbg99c
Calendars
‘Anarchist Revolutionary Calendars’ for 1969 and 1970 (the days of which match 2026) now up https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/sf7p8j
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