Ethel MacDonald

thumb| Camelia Ethel MacDonald (24 February 1909 – 1 December 1960) was a Glasgow-based Scottish anarchist, activist, and 1937 Spanish Civil War broadcaster on pro-Republican, anti-fascist Barcelona radio. Quotes Have you ever considered the period during which Anarchy prevailed in Soviet Russia, during which Syndicalism existed, during which Machno was defending the revolution as well as Trotsky? The period when comrades spoke of the Soviet power and not the Soviet Government. The period during which Lenin repudiated the age-long slanders of the anarchists, adapted himself to the language of direct action, and cried "All power to the Soviets." Then came diplomacy. The treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the diplomatic status of the Soviet Government, the invasion of the workshops, the new economic policy, trade delegation, ambassadors, communications with royalties, inspection of foreign armies, the jailing of anarchists and Bolsheviks, more new economic policy, recognition of foreign debts, Socialism in one country, meaning entrenched neo-bureaucratic capitalism in one country, recognition of and extensive trading with the fascist nations, and now the desire to sabotage the Spanish Revolution. In Britain and America, the parliamentary United Front are urging a parliamentary democracy in Spain as opposed to the Workers' Industrial Republic. Parliamentarism, Statism, destroyed the workers' struggle in Britain, betrayed the General Strike, and would betray now the workers' struggle in Spain, pioneered and saved by direct action, by syndicalism, by anarchism. The Spanish workers' struggle would rouse you from your sleep, rouse you to the horror of reality, rouse you to a realisation of the blood and crime and hopeless misery of capitalism. With closed fists only the anarchists and syndicalists of Spain first walked down the enemy, Fascism. "The United Front", fourth of seven speeches published by the Bellshill Speaker over the Barcelona Radio (12 March – 16 April 1937) and reprinted together as a penny broadside by Guy A. Aldred in Glasgow (1 May 1937). Facsimile reproduction, slightly reduced, in The Word, Mightier than the Sword, vol. 23, no. 6 (April 1962), p. 51 External links Category:Anarchists Category:Political activists Category:Women activists from Scotland Category:Radio personalities Category:1909 births Category:1960 deaths Category:Women born in the 1900s