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During the late 1960s and early 1970s British anarchism was reconfigured when the Freedom Press Group, previously largely on its own, began to be confronted by a series of initiatives by Albert Meltzer, once a valued collaborator on Freedom but by now a bitter opponent, and Stuart Christie, recently released from a Spanish gaol for his involvement in an attempt on Franco's life. Their total achievement was impressive, creating a variety of libertarian organizations rivalling what was perceived as a liberal and bourgeois Freedom Press, criticized as reformist, compromised, unadventurous and out-of-date. In 1967 they launched the Anarchist Black Cross as an international solidarity organization for imprisoned militants and its bulletin became from 1970 a new anarchist journal, Black Flag, which for many years seemed to be the principal legacy. Yet publication was suspended in 2006 and it remains to be seen whether a new annual format in which Black Flag first appeared in autumn 2007 is maintained. Christie has published books and pamphlets under a series of imprints, notably the Cienfuegos Press (which also produced the six issues of the exciting Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review), followed by Refract and most recently the Meltzer Press and Christiebooks, although neither is likely to surpass the intensity of Cienfuegos's 47 items between 1974 and 1982. Instead it appears probable that the most durable and permanently influential creation of the current is already and will continue to be the Kate Sharpley Library (KSL), a national anarchist archive in the foundation and evolution of which Meltzer was a prominent contributor.
When the Brixton anarchists set up their 'Anarchist Centre* at 121 Railton Road in 1979 it was also decided to start a library, divided into lending and reference sections after the donations of both expensive and rare books. Some years previously Meltzer had established contact in nearby Lewisham with Kate Sharpley, who had been an anarchist and antiwar activist at the time of the First World War, and it was seen to be singularly appropriate to name the library after a working-class woman who had been previously unknown. A police raid on the squat at 121 precipitated the KSL's being moved in 1984, but only across the road and into another squatted building. Removal from London and specifically from...