                       Appendix - The Symbols of Anarchy

[1]1 What is the history of the Black Flag?
[2]2 Why the red-and-black flag?
[3]3 Where does the circled A come from?

  Introduction

   Anarchism has always stood deliberately for a broad, and at times
   vague, political platform. The reasoning is sound; blueprints create
   rigid dogma and stifle the creative spirit of revolt. Along the same
   lines and resulting in the same problems, Anarchists have rejected the
   "disciplined" leadership that is found in many other political
   groupings on the Left. The reasoning for this is also sound; leadership
   based on authority is inherently hierarchical.

   It seems to follow logically that since Anarchists have shied away from
   anything static, that we would also shy away from the importance of
   symbols and icons. Yet the fact is Anarchists have used symbolism in
   our revolt against the State and Capital, the most famous of which are
   the circled-A, the black flag and the red-and-black flag. This appendix
   tries to show the history of these three iconic symbols and indicate
   why they were taken up by anarchists to represent our ideas and
   movement.

   Ironically enough, one of the original anarchist symbols was the red
   flag. As anarchist Communard Louise Michel put it, "Lyon, Marseille,
   Narbonne, all had their own Communes, and like ours [in Paris], theirs
   too were drowned in the blood of revolutionaries. That is why our flags
   are red. Why are our red banners so terribly frightening to those
   persons who have caused them to be stained that colour?" [The Red
   Virgin: Memoirs of Louise Michel, p. 65] March 18th, 1877, saw
   Kropotkin participate in a protest march in Berne which involved the
   anarchists "carrying the red flag in honour of the Paris Commune" for
   "in Switzerland federal law prohibited public display of the red flag."
   [Martin A. Miller, Kropotkin, p. 137] Anarchist historians Nicolas
   Walter and Heiner Becker note that "Kropotkin always preferred the red
   flag." [Peter Kropotkin, Act for Yourselves, p. 128] On Labour Day in
   1899, Emma Goldman gave lectures to miners in Spring Valley, Illinois,
   which ended in a demonstration which she headed "carrying a large red
   flag." [Living My Life, vol. 1, p. 245] According to historian Caroline
   Waldron Merithew, the 300 marchers "defied police orders to haul down
   the 'red flag of anarchy.'" [Anarchist Motherhood, p. 236]

   This should be unsurprising as anarchism is a form of socialism and
   came out of the general socialist and labour movements. Common roots
   would imply common imagery. However, as mainstream socialism developed
   in the nineteenth century into either reformist social democracy or the
   state socialism of the revolutionary Marxists, anarchists developed
   their own images of revolt based upon those raised by working class
   people in struggle. As will be shown, they come from the revolutionary
   anarchism most directly associated with the wider labour and socialist
   movements, i.e., the dominant, mainstream social anarchist tradition.
   As Nicholas Walter put it:

     "[The] serious study of anarchism should be based on fact rather
     than fantasy, and concentrate on people and movements that actually
     used the word. However old and wide the ideas of anarchism may be .
     . . no one called himself an anarchist before [Proudhon in] 1840,
     and no movement called itself anarchist before the 1870s . . . The
     actual anarchist movement was founded . . . by the
     anti-authoritarian sections of the First International . . . This
     was certainly the first anarchist movement, and this movement was
     certainly based on a libertarian version of the concept of the class
     struggle." [The Anarchist Past and other essays, pp. 60-1]

   Unsurprisingly, the first anarchist symbols reflected the origins and
   ideas of this class struggle movement. Both the black and red-and-black
   flags were first used by revolutionary anarchists. The black flag was
   popularised in the 1880s by Louise Michel, a leading French
   communist-anarchist militant. From Europe it spread to America when the
   communist-anarchists of the International Working People's Association
   raised it in their struggle against capitalism before being taken up by
   other revolutionary class struggle anarchists across the globe. The
   red-and-black flag was first used by the Italian section of the First
   International and this had been the first to move from collectivist to
   communist-anarchism in October 1876. [Nunzio Pernicone, Italian
   Anarchism, 1864-1892, p. 111] From there, it spread to Mexico and was
   used by anarchist labour militants there before being re-invented by
   the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists in the 1930s. Like anarchism itself,
   the anarchist flags are a product of the social struggle against
   capitalism and statism.

   We would like to point out that this appendix is partly based on Jason
   Wehling's 1995 essay Anarchism and the History of the Black Flag.
   Needless to say, this appendix does not cover all anarchists symbols.
   For example, recently the red-and-black flag has become complemented by
   the green-and-black flag of eco-anarchism (the symbolism of the green
   should need no explanation). Other libertarian popular symbols include
   the IWW inspired "Wildcat" (representing, of course, the spontaneity,
   direct action, solidarity and militancy of a wildcat strike), the
   "Black Rose" (inspired, no doubt, by the demand of striking IWW women
   workers in Lawrence, 1912, for not only bread, but for roses too) and
   the ironic "little black bomb" (among others). Here we concentrate on
   the three most famous ones.

  1 What is the history of the Black Flag?

   As is well known, the black flag is the symbol of anarchism. Howard
   Ehrlich has a great passage in his book Reinventing Anarchy, Again on
   why anarchists use it. It is worth quoting at length:

     "Why is our flag black? Black is a shade of negation. The black flag
     is the negation of all flags. It is a negation of nationhood which
     puts the human race against itself and denies the unity of all
     humankind. Black is a mood of anger and outrage at all the hideous
     crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of allegiance to one
     state or another. It is anger and outrage at the insult to human
     intelligence implied in the pretences, hypocrisies, and cheap
     chicaneries of governments . . . Black is also a colour of mourning;
     the black flag which cancels out the nation also mourns its victims
     the countless millions murdered in wars, external and internal, to
     the greater glory and stability of some bloody state. It mourns for
     those whose labour is robbed (taxed) to pay for the slaughter and
     oppression of other human beings. It mourns not only the death of
     the body but the crippling of the spirit under authoritarian and
     hierarchic systems; it mourns the millions of brain cells blacked
     out with never a chance to light up the world. It is a colour of
     inconsolable grief.

     "But black is also beautiful. It is a colour of determination, of
     resolve, of strength, a colour by which all others are clarified and
     defined. Black is the mysterious surrounding of germination, of
     fertility, the breeding ground of new life which always evolves,
     renews, refreshes, and reproduces itself in darkness. The seed
     hidden in the earth, the strange journey of the sperm, the secret
     growth of the embryo in the womb all these the blackness surrounds
     and protects.

     "So black is negation, is anger, is outrage, is mourning, is beauty,
     is hope, is the fostering and sheltering of new forms of human life
     and relationship on and with this earth. The black flag means all
     these things. We are proud to carry it, sorry we have to, and look
     forward to the day when such a symbol will no longer be necessary."
     ["Why the Black Flag?", Howard Ehrlich (ed.), Reinventing Anarchy,
     Again, pp. 31-2]

   Here we discuss when and why anarchists first took up the black flag as
   our symbol.

   There are ample accounts of the use of black flags by anarchists.
   Probably the most famous was Nestor Makhno's partisans during the
   Russia Revolution. Under the black banner, his army routed a dozen
   armies and kept a large portion of the Ukraine free from concentrated
   power for a good couple of years. On the black flag was embroidered
   "Liberty or Death" and "The Land to the Peasant, The Factories to the
   Workers." [Voline, The Unknown Revolution, pp. 607-10] In 1925, the
   Japanese anarchists formed the Black Youth League and, in 1945, when
   the anarchist federation reformed, their journal was named Kurohata
   (Black Flag). [Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, pp. 525-6] In
   1968, students carried black (and red) flags during the street fighting
   and General Strike in France, bringing the resurgence of anarchism in
   the 1960s into the view of the general public. The same year saw the
   Black Flag being raised at the American Students for a Democratic
   Society national convention. Two years later the British based magazine
   Black Flag was started and is still going strong. At the turn of the
   21st century, the Black Flag was at the front of the so-called
   anti-globalisation protests. Today, if you go to any sizeable
   demonstration you will usually see the Black Flag raised by the
   anarchists present.

   However, the anarchists' black flag originated much earlier than this.
   Louise Michel, famous participant in the Paris Commune of 1871, was
   instrumental in popularising the use of the Black Flag in anarchist
   circles. At a March 18th public meeting in 1882 to commemorate the
   Paris Commune she proclaimed that the "red flag was no longer
   appropriate; [the anarchists] should raise the black flag of misery."
   [Edith Thomas, Louise Michel, p. 191] The following year she put her
   words into action. According to anarchist historian George Woodcock,
   Michel flew the black flag on March 9, 1883, during demonstration of
   the unemployed in Paris, France. An open air meeting of the unemployed
   was broken up by the police and around 500 demonstrators, with Michel
   at the front carrying a black flag and shouting "Bread, work, or lead!"
   marched off towards the Boulevard Saint-Germain. The crowd pillaged
   three baker's shops before the police attacked. Michel was arrested and
   sentenced to six years solitary confinement. Public pressure soon
   forced the granting of an amnesty. [Anarchism, pp. 251-2] August the
   same year saw the publication of the anarchist paper Le Drapeau Noir
   (The Black Flag) in Lyon which suggests that it had become a popular
   symbol within anarchist circles. ["Sur la Symbolique anarchiste",
   Bulletin du CIRA, no. 62, p. 2] However, anarchists had been using
   red-and-black flags a number of years previously (see [4]next section)
   so Michel's use of the colour black was not totally without precedence.

   Not long after, the black flag made its way to America. Paul Avrich
   reports that on November 27, 1884, it was displayed in Chicago at an
   anarchist demonstration. According to Avrich, August Spies, one of the
   Haymarket martyrs, "noted that this was the first occasion on which
   [the black flag] had been unfurled on American soil." By January the
   following year, "[s]treet parades and mass outdoor demonstrations, with
   red and black banners . . . were the most dramatic form of
   advertisement" for the revolutionary anarchist movement in America.
   April 1885 saw Lucy Parsons and Lizzie Holmes at the head of a protest
   march "each bearing a flag, one black, the other red." [The Haymarket
   Tragedy, p. 145, pp. 81-2 and p. 147] The Black Flag continued to be
   used by anarchists in America, with one being seized by police at an
   anarchist organised demonstration for the unemployed in 1893 at which
   Emma Goldman spoke. [Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the
   American Years, vol. 1, p. 144] Twenty one years later, Alexander
   Berkman reported on another anarchist inspired unemployed march in New
   York which raised the black flag in "menacing defiance in the face of
   parasitic contentment and self-righteous arrogance" of the "exploiters
   and well-fed idlers." ["The Movement of the Unemployed", Anarchy! An
   Anthology of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth, p. 341]

   It seems that black flags did not appear in Russia until the founding
   of the Chernoe Znamia ("black banner") movement in 1905. With the
   defeat of that year's revolution, anarchism went underground again. The
   Black Flag, like anarchism in general, re-emerged during the 1917
   revolution. Anarchists in Petrograd took part in the February
   demonstrations which brought down Tsarism carrying black flags with
   "Down with authority and capitalism!" on them. As part of their
   activity, anarchists organised armed detachments in most towns and
   cities called "Black Guards" to defend themselves against
   counter-revolutionary attempts by the provisional government. As noted
   above, the Makhnovists fought Bolshevik and White dictatorship under
   Black Flags. On a more dreary note, February 1921 saw the end of black
   flags in Soviet Russia. That month saw Peter Kropotkin's funeral take
   place in Moscow. Twenty thousand people marched in his honour, carrying
   black banners that read: "Where there is authority there is no
   freedom." [Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, p. 44, p. 124, p. 183
   and p. 227] Only two weeks after Kropotkin's funeral march, the
   Kronstadt rebellion broke out and anarchism was erased from Soviet
   Russia for good. With the end of Stalinism, anarchism with its Black
   Flag re-emerged all across Eastern Europe, including Russia.

   While the events above are fairly well known, as has been related, the
   exact origin of the black flag is not. What is known is that a large
   number of Anarchist groups in the early 1880s adopted titles associated
   with black. In July of 1881, the Black International was founded in
   London. This was an attempt to reorganise the Anarchist wing of the
   recently dissolved First International. In October 1881, a meeting in
   Chicago lead to the International Working People's Association being
   formed in North America. This organisation, also known as the Black
   International, affiliated to the London organisation. [Woodcock, Op.
   Cit., pp. 212-4 and p. 393] These two conferences are immediately
   followed by Michel's demonstration (1883) and the black flags in
   Chicago (1884).

   Thus it was around the early 1880s that anarchism and the Black Flag
   became inseparably linked. Avrich, for example, states that in 1884,
   the black flag "was the new anarchist emblem." [The Haymarket Tragedy,
   p. 144] In agreement, Murray Bookchin reports that "in later years, the
   Anarchists were to adopt the black flag" when speaking of the Spanish
   Anarchist movement in 1870. [The Spanish Anarchists, p. 57] Walter and
   Heiner also note that "it was adopted by the anarchist movement during
   the 1880s." [Kropotkin, Act for Yourselves, p. 128]

   Now the question becomes why, exactly, black was chosen. The Chicago
   "Alarm" stated that the black flag is "the fearful symbol of hunger,
   misery and death." [quoted by Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 144] Bookchin
   asserts that anarchists were "to adopt the black flag as a symbol of
   the workers misery and as an expression of their anger and bitterness."
   [Op. Cit., p. 57] Historian Bruce C. Nelson also notes that the Black
   Flag was considered "the emblem of hunger" when it was unfurled in
   Chicago in 1884. [Beyond the Martyrs, p. 141 and p. 150] While it "was
   interpreted in anarchist circles as the symbol of death, hunger and
   misery" it was "also said to be the 'emblem of retribution'" and in a
   labour procession in Cincinnati in January 1885, "it was further
   acknowledged to be the banner of working-class intransigence, as
   demonstrated by the words 'No Quarter' inscribed on it." [Donald C.
   Hodges, Sandino's Communism, p. 21] For Berkman, it was the "symbol of
   starvation and desperate misery." [Op. Cit., p. 341] Louise Michel
   stated that the "black flag is the flag of strikes and the flag of
   those who are hungry." [Op. Cit., p. 168]

   Along these lines, Albert Meltzer maintains that the association
   between the black flag and working class revolt "originated in Rheims
   [France] in 1831 ('Work or Death') in an unemployed demonstration."
   [The Anarcho-Quiz Book, p. 49] He went on to assert that it was
   Michel's action in 1883 that solidified the association. The links from
   revolts in France to anarchism are even stronger. As Murray Bookchin
   records, in Lyon "[i]n 1831, the silk-weaving artisans . . . rose in
   armed conflict to gain a better tarif, or contract, from the merchants.
   For a brief period they actually took control of the city, under red
   and black flags -- which made their insurrection a memorable event in
   the history of revolutionary symbols. Their use of the word mutuelisme
   to denote the associative disposition of society that they preferred
   made their insurrection a memorable event in the history of anarchist
   thought as well, since Proudhon appears to have picked up the word from
   them during his brief stay in the city in 1843-4." [The Third
   Revolution, vol. 2, p. 157] Sharif Gemie confirms this, noting that a
   police report sent to the Lyon prefect that said: "The silk-weavers of
   the Croix-Rousse have decided that tomorrow they will go down to Lyon,
   carrying a black flag, calling for work or death." The revolt saw the
   Black Flag raised:

     "At eleven a.m. the silk-weavers' columns descended the slops of the
     Croix-Rousse. Some carried black flags, the colour of mourning and a
     reminder of their economic distress. Others pushed loaves of bread
     on the bayonets of their guns and held them aloft. The symbolic
     force of this action was reinforced by a repeatedly-shouted slogan:
     'bread or lead!': in other words, if they were not given bread which
     they could afford, then they were prepared to face bullets. At some
     point during the rebellion, a more eloquent expression was devised:
     'Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant!' -- 'Live working or
     die by fighting!'. Some witnesses report seeing this painted on a
     black flag." [Sharif Gemie, French Revolutions, 1815-1914, pp.
     52-53]

   Kropotkin himself states that its use continued in the French labour
   movement after this uprising. He notes that the Paris Workers "raised
   in June [1848] their black flag of 'Bread or Labour'" [Act for
   Yourselves, p. 100] Black flags were also hung from windows in Paris on
   the 1st of March, 1871, in defiance of the Prussians marching through
   the city after their victory in the Franco-Prussian War. [Stewart
   Edwards, The Communards of Paris, 1871, p. 25]

   The use of the black flag by anarchists, therefore, is an expression of
   their roots and activity in the labour movement in Europe, particularly
   in France. The anarchist adoption of the Black Flag by the movement in
   the 1880s reflects its use as "the traditional symbol of hunger,
   poverty and despair" and that it was "raised during popular risings in
   Europe as a sign of no surrender and no quarter." [Walter and Becker,
   Act for Yourselves, p. 128] This is confirmed by the first anarchist
   journal to be called Black Flag: "On the heights of the city [of Lyon]
   in la Croix-Rousse and Vaise, workers, pushed by hunger, raised for the
   first time this sign of mourning and revenge [the black flag], and made
   therefore of it the emblem of workers' demands." [Le Drapeau Noir, no.
   1, 12th August 1883] This was echoed by Louise Michel:

     "How many wrathful people, young people, will be with us when the
     red and black banners wave in the wind of anger! What a tidal wave
     it will be when the red and black banners rise around the old wreck!

     "The red banner, which has always stood for liberty, frightens the
     executioners because it is so red with our blood. The black flag,
     with layers of blood upon it from those who wanted to live by
     working or die by fighting, frightens those who want to live off the
     work of others. Those red and black banners wave over us mourning
     our dead and wave over our hopes for the dawn that is breaking."
     [The Red Virgin: Memoirs of Louise Michel, pp. 193-4]

   The mass slaughter of Communards by the French ruling class after the
   fall of the Paris Commune of 1871 could also explain the use of the
   Black Flag by anarchists at this time. Black "is the colour of mourning
   [at least in Western cultures], it symbolises our mourning for dead
   comrades, those whose lives were taken by war, on the battlefield
   (between states) or in the streets and on the picket lines (between
   classes)." [Chico, "letters", Freedom, vol. 48, No. 12, p. 10] Given
   the 25 000 dead in the Commune, many of them anarchists and libertarian
   socialists, the use of the Black Flag by anarchists afterwards would
   make sense. Sandino, the Nicaraguan libertarian socialist (whose use of
   the red-and-black colours we discuss [5]below) also said that black
   stood for mourning ("Red for liberty; black for mourning; and the skull
   for a struggle to the death" [Donald C. Hodges, Sandino's Communism, p.
   24]).

   Regardless of other meanings, it is clear that anarchists took up the
   black flag in the 1880s because it was, like the red flag, a recognised
   symbol of working class resistance to capitalism. This is unsurprising
   given the nature of anarchist politics. Just as anarchists base our
   ideas on actual working class practice, we would also base our symbols
   on those created by that self-activity. For example, Proudhon as well
   as taking the term "mutualism" from radical workers also argued that
   co-operative "labour associations" had "spontaneously, without
   prompting and without capital been formed in Paris and in Lyon. . . the
   proof of it [mutualism, the organisation of credit and labour] . . .
   lies in current practice, revolutionary practice." [No Gods, No
   Masters, vol. 1, pp. 59-60] He considered his ideas, in other words, to
   be an expression of working class self-activity. Indeed, according to
   K. Steven Vincent, there was "close similarity between the
   associational ideal of Proudhon . . . and the program of the Lyon
   Mutualists" and that there was "a remarkable convergence [between the
   ideas], and it is likely that Proudhon was able to articulate his
   positive program more coherently because of the example of the silk
   workers of Lyon. The socialist ideal that he championed was already
   being realised, to a certain extent, by such workers." [Pierre-Joseph
   Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 164] Other
   anarchists have made similar arguments concerning anarchism being the
   expression of tendencies within working class struggle against
   oppression and exploitation and so the using of a traditional workers
   symbol would be a natural expression of this aspect of anarchism.

   Similarly, perhaps it is Louise Michel's comment that the Black Flag
   was the "flag of strikes" which could explain the naming of the Black
   International founded in 1881 (and so the increasing use of the Black
   Flag in anarchist circles in the early 1880s). Around the time of its
   founding congress Kropotkin was formulating the idea that this
   organisation would be a "Strikers' International" (Internationale
   Greviste) -- it would be "an organisation of resistance, of strikes."
   [quoted by Martin A. Miller, Kropotkin, p. 147] In December 1881 he
   discussed the revival of the International Workers Association as a
   Strikers' International
   for to "be able to make the revolution, the mass of workers will have
   to organise themselves. Resistance and strikes are excellent methods of
   organisation for doing this." He stressed that the "strike develops the
   sentiment of solidarity" and argued that the First International "was
   born of strikes; it was fundamentally a strikers' organisation."
   [quoted by Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary
   Anarchism, 1872-1886, p. 255 and p. 256]

   A "Strikers International" would need the strikers flag and so,
   perhaps, the Black International got its name. This, of course, fits
   perfectly with the use of the Black Flag as a symbol of workers'
   resistance by anarchism, a political expression of that resistance.

   However, the black flag did not instantly replace the red flag as the
   main anarchist symbol. The use of the red flag continued for some
   decades in anarchist circles. Thus we find Kropotkin writing in the
   early 1880s of "anarchist groups . . . rais[ing] the red flag of
   revolution." As Woodcock noted, the "black flag was not universally
   accepted by anarchists at this time. Many, like Kropotkin, still
   thought of themselves as socialists and of the red flag as theirs
   also." [Words of a Rebel, p. 75 and p. 225] In addition, we find the
   Chicago anarchists using both black and red flags all through the
   1880s. French Anarchists carried three red flags at the funeral of
   Louise Michel's mother in 1885 as well as at her own funeral in January
   1905. [Louise Michel, Op. Cit., p. 183 and p. 201] Anarchist in Japan,
   for example, demonstrated under red flags bearing the slogans "Anarchy"
   and "Anarchist Communism" in June, 1908. [John Crump, Hatta Shuzo and
   Pure Anarchism in Interwar Japan, p. 25] Three years later, the Mexican
   anarchists declared that they had "hoisted the Red Flag on Mexico's
   fields of action" as part of their "war against Authority, war against
   Capital, and war against the Church." They were "fighting under the Red
   Flag to the famous cry of 'Land and Liberty.'" [Ricardo Flores Magon,
   Land and Liberty, p. 98 and p. 100]

   So for a considerable period of time anarchists used red as well as
   black flags as their symbol. The general drift away from the red flag
   towards the black must be placed in the historical context. During the
   1880s the socialist movement was changing. Marxist social democracy was
   becoming the dominant socialist trend, with libertarian socialism going
   into relative decline in many areas. Thus the red flag was increasingly
   associated with the authoritarian and statist (and increasingly
   reformist) side of the socialist movement. In order to distinguish
   themselves from other socialists, the use of the black flag makes
   perfect sense as it was it an accepted symbol of working class revolt
   like the red flag.

   After the Russian Revolution and its slide into dictatorship (first
   under Lenin, then Stalin) anarchist use of the red flag decreased as it
   no longer "stood for liberty." Instead, it had become associated, at
   worse, with the Communist Parties or, at best, bureaucratic, reformist
   and authoritarian social democracy. This change can be seen from the
   Japanese movement. As noted above, before the First World War
   anarchists there had happily raised the red flag but in the 1920s they
   unfurled the black flag. Organised in the Kokushoku Seinen Renmei
   (Black Youth League), they published Kokushoku Seinen (Black Youth). By
   1930, the anarchist theoretical magazine Kotushoku Sensen (Black
   Battlefront) had been replaced by two journals called Kurohata (Black
   Flag) and Kuhusen (Black Struggle). [John Crump, Op. Cit., pp. 69-71
   and p. 88]

   According to historian Candace Falk, "[t]hough black has been
   associated with anarchism in France since 1883, the colour red was the
   predominant symbol of anarchism throughout this period; only after the
   First World War was the colour black widely adopted." [Emma Goldman: A
   Documentary History of the American Years, vol. 1, p. 208fn] As this
   change did not occur overnight, it seems safe to conclude that while
   anarchism and the black flag had been linked, at the latest, from the
   early 1880s, it did not become the definitive anarchist symbol until
   the 1920s (Carlo Tresca in America was still talking of standing
   "beneath the red flag that is the immaculate flag of the anarchist
   idea" in 1925. [quoted by Nunzio Pernicone, Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a
   Rebel, p. 161]). Before then, anarchists used both it and the red flag
   as their symbols of choice. After the Russian Revolution, anarchists
   would still use red in their flags, but only when combined with black.
   In this way they would not associate themselves with the tyranny of the
   USSR or the reformism and statism of the mainstream socialist movement.

  2 Why the red-and-black flag?

   The red-and-black flag has been associated with anarchism for some
   time. Murray Bookchin placed the creation of this flag in Spain:

     "The presence of black flags together with red ones became a feature
     of Anarchist demonstrations throughout Europe and the Americas. With
     the establishment of the CNT, a single flag on which black and red
     were separated diagonally, was adopted and used mainly in Spain."
     [The Spanish Anarchists, p. 57]

   George Woodcock also stressed the Spanish origin of the flag:

     "The anarcho-syndicalist flag in Spain was black and red, divided
     diagonally. In the days of the [First] International the anarchists,
     like other socialist sects, carried the red flag, but later they
     tended to substitute for it the black flag. The black-and-red flag
     symbolised an attempt to unite the spirit of later anarchism with
     the mass appeal of the International." [Anarchism, p. 325fn]

   According to Abel Paz, anarchist historian and CNT militant in the
   1930s, the 1st of May, 1931, was "the first time in history [that] the
   red and black flag flew over a CNT-FAI rally." This was the outcome of
   an important meeting of CNT militants and anarchist groups to plan the
   May Day demonstrations in Barcelona. One of the issues to be resolved
   was "under what flag to march." One group was termed the "Red Flag"
   anarchists (who "put greater emphasis on labour issues"), the other
   "Black Flag" anarchists (who were "more distant (at the time) from
   economic questions"). However, with the newly proclaimed Republic there
   were "tremendous opportunities for mass mobilisations" which made
   disagreements on how much emphasis to place on labour issues
   "meaningless." This allowed an accord to be reached with its "material
   expression" being "making the two flags into one: the black and red
   flag." [Durruti in the Spanish Revolution, p. 206]

   However, the red-and-black flag was used by anarchists long before
   1931, indeed decades before the CNT was even formed. In fact, it,
   rather than the black flag, may well have been the first specifically
   anarchist flag.

   The earliest recorded use of the red-and-black colours was during the
   attempted Bologna insurrection of August 1874 where participants were
   "sporting the anarchists' red and black cockade." [Nunzio Pernicone,
   Italian Anarchism, 1864-1892, p. 93] In April 1877, a similar attempt
   at provoking rebellion saw anarchists enter the small Italian town of
   Letino "wearing red and black cockades" and carrying a "red and black
   banner." These actions helped to "captur[e] national attention" and
   "draw considerable notice to the International and its socialist
   programme." [Nunzio Pernicone, Op. Cit., pp. 124-5 and pp. 126-7]
   Significantly, another historian notes that the insurgents in 1874 were
   "decked out in the red and black emblem of the International" while
   three years later they were "prominently displaying the red and black
   anarchist flag." [T. R. Ravindranathan, Bakunin and the Italians, p.
   208 and p. 228] Thus the black-and-red flag, like the black flag, was a
   recognised symbol of the labour movement (in this case, the Italian
   section of the First International) before becoming linked to
   anarchism.

   The red-and-black flag was used by anarchists a few years later in
   Mexico. At an anarchist protest meeting on December 14th, 1879, at
   Columbus Park in Mexico City "[s]ome five thousand persons gathered
   replete with numerous red-and-black flags, some of which bore the
   inscription 'La Social, Liga International del Jura.' A large black
   banner bearing the inscription 'La Social, Gran Liga International'
   covered the front of the speaker's platform." The links between the
   Mexican and European anarchist movements were strong, as the
   "nineteenth-century Mexican urban labour-movement maintained direct
   contact with the Jura branch of the . . . European-based First
   International Workingmen's Association and at one stage openly
   affiliated with it." [John M. Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working
   Class, 1860-1931, p. 58 and p. 17] One year after it was founded, the
   anarchist influenced Casa del Obrero Mundial organised Mexico's first
   May Day demonstration in 1913 and "between twenty and twenty-five
   thousand workers gathered behind red and black flags" in Mexico City.
   [John Lear, Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens, p. 236]

   Augusto Sandino, the radical Nicaraguan national liberation fighter was
   so inspired by the example of the Mexican anarcho-syndicalists that he
   based his movement's flag on their red-and-black ones (the Sandinista's
   flag is divided horizontally, rather than diagonally). As historian
   Donald C. Hodges notes, Sandino's "red and black flag had an
   anarcho-syndicalist origin, having been introduced into Mexico by
   Spanish immigrants." Unsurprisingly, his flag was considered a
   "workers' flag symbolising their struggle for liberation." (Hodges
   refers to Sandino's "peculiar brand of anarcho-communism" suggesting
   that his appropriation of the flag indicated a strong libertarian theme
   to his politics). [Intellectual Foundations of the Nicaraguan
   Revolution, p. 49, p. 137 and p. 19]

   This suggests that the red-and-black flag was rediscovered by the
   Spanish Anarchists in 1931 rather than being invented by them. However,
   the CNT-FAI seem to have been the first to bisect their flags
   diagonally black and red (but other divisions, such as horizontally,
   were also used). In the English speaking world, though, the use of the
   red-and-black flag by anarchists seems to spring from the world-wide
   publicity generated by the Spanish Revolution in 1936. With CNT-FAI
   related information spreading across the world, the use of the CNT
   inspired diagonally split red-and-black flag also spread until it
   became a common anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist symbol in all
   countries.

   For some, the red-and-black flag is associated with anarcho-syndicalism
   more than anarchism. As Albert Meltzer put it, "[t]he flag of the
   labour movement (not necessarily only of socialism) is red. The CNT of
   Spain originated the red-and-black of anarchosyndicalism (anarchism
   plus the labour movement)." [Anarcho-Quiz Book, p. 50] Donald C. Hodges
   makes a similar point, when he states that "[o]n the insignia of the
   Mexico's House of the World Worker [the Mexican anarcho-syndicalist
   union], the red band stood for the economic struggle of workers against
   the proprietary classes, and the black for their insurrectionary
   struggle." [Sandino's Communism, p. 22]

   This does not contradict its earliest uses in Italy and Mexico as those
   anarchists took it for granted that they should work within the labour
   movement to spread libertarian ideas. Therefore, it is not surprising
   we find movements in Mexico and Italy using the same flags. Both were
   involved in the First International and its anti-authoritarian
   off-spring. Both, like the Jura Federation in Switzerland, were heavily
   involved in union organising and strikes. Given the clear links and
   similarities between the collectivist anarchism of the First
   International (the most famous advocate of which was Bakunin) and
   anarcho-syndicalism, it is not surprising that they used similar
   symbols. As Kropotkin argued, "Syndicalism is nothing other than the
   rebirth of the International -- federalist, worker, Latin." [quoted by
   Martin A. Miller, Kropotkin, p. 176] So a rebirth of symbols would not
   be a co-incidence.

   Thus the red-and-black flag comes from the experience of anarchists in
   the labour movement and is particularly, but not exclusively,
   associated with anarcho-syndicalism. The black represents libertarian
   ideas and strikes (i.e. direct action), the red represents the labour
   movement. Over time association with anarcho-syndicalism has become
   less noted, with many non-syndicalist anarchists happy to use the
   red-and-black flag (many anarcho-communists use it, for example). It
   would be a good generalisation to state that social anarchists are more
   inclined to use the red-and-black flag than individualist anarchists
   just as social anarchists are usually more willing to align themselves
   with the wider socialist and labour movements than individualists (in
   modern times at least). However, both the red and black flags have
   their roots in the labour movement and working class struggle which
   suggests that the combination of both flags into one was a logical
   development. Given that the black and red flags were associated with
   the Lyon uprising of 1831, perhaps the development of the red-and-black
   flag is not too unusual. Similarly, given that the Black Flag was the
   "flag of strikes" (to quote Louise Michel -- see [6]above) its use with
   the red flag of the labour movement seems a natural development for a
   movement like anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism which bases itself on
   direct action and the importance of strikes in the class struggle.

   So while associated with anarcho-syndicalism, the red-and-black flag
   has become a standard anarchist symbol as the years have gone by, with
   the black still representing anarchy and the red, social co-operation
   or solidarity. Thus the red-and-black flag more than any one symbol
   symbolises the aim of anarchism ("Liberty of the individual and social
   co-operation of the whole community" [Peter Kropotkin, Act for
   Yourselves, p. 102]) as well as its means ("[t]o make the revolution,
   the mass of workers will have to organise themselves. Resistance and
   the strike are excellent means of organisation for doing this" and "the
   strike develops the sentiment of solidarity." [Kropotkin, quoted by
   Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism:
   1872-1186, p. 255 and p. 256]).

  3 Where does the circled-A come from?

   The circled-A is, perhaps, even more famous than the Black and
   Red-and-Black flags as an anarchist symbol (probably because it lends
   itself so well to graffiti). According to Peter Marshall the
   "circled-A" represents Proudhon's maxim "Anarchy is Order." [Demanding
   the Impossible p. 558] Peter Peterson also adds that the circle is "a
   symbol of unity and determination" which "lends support to the
   off-proclaimed idea of international anarchist solidarity." ["Flag,
   Torch, and Fist: The Symbols of Anarchism", Freedom, vol. 48, No. 11,
   pp. 8]

   However, the origin of the "circled-A" as an anarchist symbol is less
   clear. Many think that it started in the 1970s punk movement, but it
   goes back to a much earlier period. According to Peter Marshall, "[i]n
   1964 a French group, Jeunesse Libertaire, gave new impetus to
   Proudhon's slogan 'Anarchy is Order' by creating the circled-A a symbol
   which quickly proliferated throughout the world." [Op. Cit., p. 445]
   This is not the earliest sighting of this symbol. On November 25 1956,
   at its foundation in Brussels, the Alliance Ouvriere Anarchiste (AOA)
   adopted this symbol. Going even further, a BBC documentary on the
   Spanish Civil War shows an anarchist militia member with a "circled-A"
   clearly on the back of his helmet. Other than this, there is little
   know about the "circled-A"s origin.

   Today the circled-A is one of the most successful images in the whole
   field of political symbolising. Its "incredible simplicity and
   directness led [it] to become the accepted symbol of the restrengthened
   anarchist movement after the revolt of 1968" particularly as in many,
   if not most, of the world's languages the word for anarchy begins with
   the letter A. [Peter Peterson, Op. Cit., p. 8]

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append2.html#black
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append2.html#redblack
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append2.html#circledA
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append2.html#redblack
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append2.html#redblack
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append2.html#black
