Submitted by TFSR in Podcasts

This week on The Final Straw we’ll be airing the second half of our interview with anarchist, author and cartoonist nonagenarian, Donald Rooum from Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Donald has written introductions to anarchism and has been a leading organizer in movements in the U.K. against nuclear war, the death penalty and the use of corporal punishment against children in schools. This summer, Bursts and William found their way to London and were delighted to sit down and chat with Donald in the East End hear his stories.

In the first portion of this chat, which aired on July 29th, 2018, Donald spoke about his beginnings in anarchism, his art studies, his time creating the Wildcat comics for which he’s best known, anarchists of his time from the 1940’s through today and his activism mentioned above.

Now, you’ll hear about Donald Rooum’s “15 minutes of fame” in which he was nicked on his way to a demonstration against a visit to London by King Paul of Greece and Queen Frederika in 1963 and charged by Detective Sergeant Harold “Tanky” Challenor for carrying a brick to the demonstration. The problem for Donald is that the brick was placed in his pocket by Challenor while he was in police custody. The problem for Challenor is that Donald was smart enough to realize this, collect the proof of the framing attempt and successfully defend himself in court against the charges. In what became known as the “Challenor Affair”, Donald’s self-defense shook the public trust in policing in the U.K. and lead to the Detective Sergeant’s downfall for corruption. Donald also talks about the case that overshadowed the “Challenor Affair” at the time, known as the Profumo Affair. After that, Donald defends the work of Max Stirner on Egoism, Benjamin Tucker’s translation and it’s mistakes, Eddie Shaw (mentioned in this libcom article) and the Glasgow anarchists of the 1940’s, multi-generationality in anarchism, human nature and anarchism, Rojava, and Murray Bookchin. Of note, Donald confuses Murray Bookchin’s “Social Ecology” ideas with the “Deep Ecology”, which Bookchin railed against.

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