Welcome to the Kate Sharpley Library
The Kate Sharpley Library exists to preserve and promote anarchist history. (More information.)
Everything at the Kate Sharpley Library - acquisitions, cataloguing, preservation work, publishing, answering enquiries is done by volunteers: we get no money from governments or the business community. All our running costs are met by donations from members of the collective, subscribers and supporters, or by the small income we make through publishing. Please consider donating and subscribing.
We also try to promote the history of anarchism by publishing studies based on those materials - or reprints of original documents taken from our collection. Check out our books and pamphlets available for sale or explore our online documents or browse back issues of our Bulletin.
Our physical library (in California) includes books, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts and ephemera documenting the history of anarchist movements. Contact us to arrange a visit.
Recent news
London Anarchist Bookfair 2024
The London Anarchist Bookfair 2024 is on Saturday 12 Ocotber at Rich Mix 35-47 Bethnal Green Road E1 6LA (and stuff at other locations) See https://anarchistbookfair.london/August 2024 Kate Sharpley Library Bulletin online
KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 114-115, August 2024 [Double issue] has just been posted on our site: https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/m0cj0z The pdf is up at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/c868p3Contents:
Invisible or just underrated? "I think the anarchist disinterest in recruiting and self-promotion (certainly compared to the ‘revolutionary parties’ of the left), coupled with their involvement with the grassroots action partly explains why their actions are now less visible." Thoughts on anarchist solidarity with the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85 https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/6q58vk
Kate Sharpley: what do we know? "Is ‘Kate Sharpley’s story’ just that, a story? It’s possible, but what would it change?" https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/612m75
Louise Bolotin 1961-2022 "At her funeral, it was said “she never put up with anything just because convention dictated that she should”." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/qnkcdc
Giuseppe Pinelli, Anarchist by Sergio Falcone "The figure of Pinelli has come to symbolize opposition to the established order in general and police powers in particular." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/kkwk6t
Political Violence and Liberty : Stuart Christie on The German Guerilla "We already know that, however lofty the motive, power corrupts. Secrecy and violence are its two most important ingredients." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/k0p4pn
1926: The Watershed of Class History by Albert Meltzer "We neglect at our peril the old syndicalist traditions which existed within the British working class movement before 1926." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/1zct58
Elena Melli Tribute [1946] "Young, sturdy and daring, she could be seen in the years after the first war in the front ranks in street demonstrations, imbued with an ardent belief that made her heedless of danger." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/d7wp0b
Anarchist History roundup July 2024 https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/rjdhvg
Calverton Colliery [Picketing report, 1984] "women on picket lines have been virtually ignored, although many have been on the ‘Front Line’ since day one of the strike." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/76hggj
Miners - the latest [Report on on visit to Nottinghamshire, 1984] "Also, on the picket line we were not allowed to shout ‘scab’ or swear, unless we wanted to get arrested. The scabs were instead called ‘little monkeys’ and ‘bounders’ (!)." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/wwq0v5
Whose Strike? "This isn’t Arthur Scargill’s war. This is a fight by the miners and their families to protect their livelihoods and communities. And its also a fight for all the working class." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/dncmps
Kinnochio speaks and his nose starts to grow "At long last there are signs that a large number of miners are thoroughly sickened with the behaviour of the TUC and Labour Party scabs – and may be able to make the first real break of a significant section of the British working class from its ‘own’ supposed party." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/mw6pbh
More Hell Raisers Needed "Police sealed off Hatfield Main Colliery entrance and fought off attempts to stop scabs by a mass picket organised locally. Local NUM organiser, Dave Douglass was snatched by the police, but the pickets retaliated. Media coverage was nil." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/4tmr4c
London, England [Letter about anarchist actions in support of the miners strike; bulletin contents] "We in the Direct Action Movement were pretty active with the miners’ strike, collecting funds, helping on picket lines, etc. Consequently anarcho-syndicalism (anarchism) got a good name with the miners who were sick of the so-called “Left” who only pushed their particular brand of “bossism.”" https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/sn050s
Was the Miners Strike winnable? "Even in their hour of defeat the miners showed more courage and solidarity than the whole trade union and organised labour movement in Britain has been able to muster since its inception." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/rr50mw
Out of the shadows: two comrades of Ponzán Vidal [Book Review] "Spanish anarchists played a key role in the WW2 escape lines, getting escaped servicemen (and others) out of Nazi-occupied Europe. Two new biographies shed extra light on this." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/8pk2fx
For Stuart
This August will be the fourth anniversary of the death of our friend and comrade Stuart Christie. We have just posted the Introduction to 'A Life For Anarchy: A Stuart Christie Reader' https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/5tb4dgNew book – Blind Spot : Manuel Huet and the libertarian underground in France by Imanol
Manuel ‘Manolo’ Huet Piera was part of the anarcho-syndicalist action groups in the years before the Spanish Revolution, fought in the Spanish Civil War and worked in the Ponzán network smuggling escapers and refugees out of Vichy France during the Second World War. After the war, Huet continued to aid the resistance to Francoism where, until now, his contribution was necessarily unacknowledged.Blind Spot : Manuel Huet and the libertarian underground in France by Imanol (translated by Paul Sharkey) is available at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/q575q3
March 2024 Kate Sharpley Library Bulletin online
KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 113, March 2024 has just been posted on our site: https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/h44kx6 The pdf is up at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/c5b1n5Contents:
Sport, War & Aggression [Letter, 1966] by Albert Meltzer "But let us face it, the majority who resisted conscription, either by objection or indiscipline, desertion or struggle within the forces, were the aggressive types, or, as the psychologists might have it, the ‘delinquents’." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/02v8dw
Looking for Decio Anzani "Anzani was arrested as an ‘enemy alien’ (because he was a ‘subversive’) and killed when the Arandora Star was torpedoed (2 July 1940)." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/6m91vt
Decio Anzani by Alfio Bernabei "In 1903 he was called up into the army but deserted instead and had then to leave Italy. The State Archives in Rome show reports about him from Italian spies in Switzerland, France, Belgium and Great Britain." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/pnw036
Decio Anzani [tribute, 1946] "An attack by fascists was answered by the deportation of antifascists to Canada!" ... "His case is a good illustration of the queer sort of antifascism to which those ruling Britain subscribed." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/5mknjj
Unsettled Questions in Socialism & Anarchism at the International School "These leaflets had been used as scrap paper to write a translation of Edmund Burke from English into French on their back, and were archived in a file bearing no connection at all to the London French, so this was an entirely chance discovery which revealed the role of the School as a meeting place where debates were organised by the British anarchist Agnes Henry." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/573psp
Peter Good and the Cunningham Amendment by Seymour Di Sobedience "who can top the handmade, multicolour hedonism of the R Supward Press? Thank you, Peter!" https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/crjg8v
A brief history of the Centro Studi Libertari/ Archivio Giuseppe Pinelli by Luigi Balsamini [Review] "Their story is not only ‘local history’ but throws light on anarchist activities and connections from the seventies onwards." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/b8gw74
For a Future Made By Us All [Book Review] "it felt like a dialogue: respectful and the opposite of preachy." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/ncjvx5
Georges Levezan, a Rumanian Student in the International Anarchist Movement by Adrian Tataran "How and where Georges Levezan died we do not know; there is every likelihood that he stayed on in France until the end of his days." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/8czbj2
March 2024 KSL Update "We have just bought another selection of anarchist ephemera – thanks to our Friends and others who have made donations to the KSL." https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/rfj8tj