Black Star – October 1981

Black Star was the paper of the Ballymena Anarchist Group. Interestingly, two other anarchist papers came out of Ballymena in the 1980s and 1990s (Antrim Alternative and Organise!).

click here to download

This first issue has articles on anarchism as working class politics, marriage, the build up of nuclear weapon stockpiles, religion as a prop for the status quo, the Labour Party as a “party of government, not of the class”, and a biographical piece about local man Jack White of the Irish Citizen Army who became an anarchist after his experiences in Spain fighting against Franco.

Possibly reflecting their background in the unionist community, there is no mention of the ‘national question’, British imperialism, republicanism or loyalism.

Black Star – February 1984

click here to download

This second (and final) issue of Black Star appeared two and a half years after the first! Four pages are given over to graphics illustrating Proudhon’s ‘What is government?’. Other articles deal with workers councils as enabling both the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a new society, an anti-militarist piece by Jack London, Spanish anarchism, and a biographical note about local anarchist and atheist Ida White, whose husband was the founder of the Ballymena Observer newspaper.

On the back page we see “Anarchists are now having regular discussion meetings throughout Ireland in Belfast, Cork, Ballymena and Dublin. The possibility of forming a national anarchist organisation has been discussed…” This process did see the foundation of the Workers Solidarity Movement later that year but the Ballymena Anarchist Group did not join. Instead they moved towards syndicalism. Organise!, an explicitly anarcho-syndicalist group and paper was the result.