(73) resolutions, decided to take his group back to Spain.

Sabaté, restricted to France from 1949 till 1955, had repea­ tedly attempted to get the organisation to undertake some concerted action and fill the organisational vacuum. Given that this was not forthcoming, he decided to act on his own initiative, without involving the organisation. He formed the "Iberian Federation of Anarcho-Syndicalists", but subsequently renamed them the "Federation of Anarcho- Syndicalists Groups" after discussions with the Inter­ Continental Commission of the C-N.T./F.A.I. ("apolitical" organisation in exile). He had no desire to cause a split within the organisation, but felt something had to be done. Even after the name change and discussions however, the

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exile organisation still disowned and attacked them. .

The Anarcho-Syndicalist Groups ceased to function in the winter of 1956/57, as a result of severe repression. Forty- three militants were arrested throughout Barcelona.

During their brief period of activity they managed to

publish a newspaper "El Combate"# and one is deeply impressed by Sabatfe's attempts to incite resistance. He fired projectiles out of a sort of mortar bomb, which sent propaganda hurling about two hundred yards, and recorded speeches which he would play in factory canteens or anywhere where there were groups of workers. After the dismantling of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Groups, SabatS spent the next few years trying to get the exile organisation take some action in Spain, and indeed was hopeful that the Tenth Congress of the C.N.T./ M.L.E. in 1959 would bring about reunification and some sort of stra­ tegy. . But again, nothing was done.

In a desparate bid he took his group back to Spain, in

December 1959, but never even reached Barcelona. He had totally underestimated the growing efficiency of the Spanish Special Branch and International Police co-operation across fron­ tiers. . The five men in blue overalls, mountain boots and ruck-sacks were a complete anachronism in Franco's Spain in the late 50's. Spain was now integrated within the Western sphere of influence, and, with the signing of the Pact of Madrid in 1953, had begun to receive the economic and military backing of the United States. The period which opened in 1936 was well and truly over.

The 1950's mark the end of a whole period of Spanish

anarchist history. Never before had the state been able to smash so completely a movement which had shown great capa­ bility in clandestine struggle. While C.N.T. militants were important in the 1951 transport boycott, and many workers still retained great sympathy for the organisation, the

historic anarcho-syndicalist movement never managed to emerge during the dark years of Franco's rule. The experiences of the Republic, but particularly the Civil War, had left their mark upon the organisation in exile, now split irrevocably in a

"political" and an "apolitical" wing. Anarchist orthodoxy had been questioned, and militants, such as Garcia Oliver and Horacio Prieto, had called for the establishment of a libertarian party alongside the traditional trade union organisation of the C.N.T.

Others had collaborated with Falange chiefs within the vertical trade unions, while some practiced an "entrist" tactic within them, secretly agreed to by the exile organisa­ tion. d l ) ' L0ng and cherished anarcho-syndicalist practice was unable to be adhered to in the context of severe

repression. Those who held committee posts controlled the organisation, and the gap between leaders and the rank and

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file widened inexorably. ' ' . Under Franco's increasingly efficient police state, little remained of the revolutionary elcin which had characterised the Spanish anarchist movement for some eighty years.

Certainly the anarchist movement had always had to contend with clandestine conditions in the unstable political world of Spanish society, and had to resort to "authoritarian"

measures during periods of repression to save the organisation from oblivion. Moreover, perhaps more than any other European anarchist movement, it had shown great ideological flexibility and diversity, calling for the "dictatorship of the proletariat" under the influence of the Russian Revolution, and the setting­ up of a federal socialist republic during the years of

Republican government from 1931 to 1939. The ideological development of some of its leading militants during this period, I believe, is of important historical interest, and belies some of the assumptions about the immutability of anarchist thought. This development was thwarted however, by the exigencies which the Civil War imposed, and began a process of centralisation and bureaucratisation which culminated in the setting-up of an executive council of the libertarian movement at the war's end. This trend was exacerbated during the years of exile, when, as we have seen, the exile orga­ nisation strove to maintain control of all activities of the interior C.N.T., and refused to openly discuss strategic questions out of fear of its own legal existence in France. Removed from happenings within Spain, and without the pressure which only an active movement can give, Spanish anarchist

thought stubbornly clung to anarchist tenets which had

frequently been questioned during the C.N.T.’s long involvement

within the workers' movement, and "ossified" to an extent unheard of in Spanish anarchist history.

But the years of Franco's rule would create other forces, forces which would claim a heritage which they believed

would regenerate the sleeping body of the anarchist movement, and thus claim a place within the newly-emerging, but powerful workers' movement towards the end of the Francoist period. These "new" anarchists would find their way blocked at every turn by the entrenched bureaucracy of the organisation in exile, and it was this struggle which would ultimately condemn the organisation to impotence and eventually lead to its demise. The strategies and projects which these groups expounded are incomprehensible without reference to the

politics of the last years of Franco's reign, and the type o f workers' movement which had developed. It is to this that we must now turn our attention.