Resistance! was produced in 1980 by members of the Dublin Anarchist Group who also ran the ABC bookshop in Dublin’s Marlborough Street. Much of the magazine is given to stories about “state repression” (H Block, Mountjoy jail, the Curragh military prison, Noel & Marie Murray, torture of criminal suspects in Sundrive Road garda station, and an uncritical short about an arson attack on a clothing factory which had a contract for Garda and Army uniforms – with no mention of the people put out of work). Circulation was about 500 copies.
Other articles of note are one criticising the Sunday World columnist Fr Brian Darcy for “writing lies and misrepresentations” attributing industrial unrest to “sinister anarchist groups” like the Socialist Workers Party!; and a review of “the right” which put Trotskyists and Fianna Fail on the same side of the left/right divide.
Believing in the concept of creating alternative anarchist organisations (unions, campaign groups, etc.) rather than being active where people already are and trying to win them over, we see a call for a new ‘syndicalist’ union and the announcement of a ‘Student Anarchist Movement’. Nothing more was heard about either. In the anti-nuclear movement, for which the Contaminated Crow magazine in 1979 listed 46 local groups, they refused to engage with others and instead set up their own Anti-Nuclear Collective. They were also sympathetic to “armed struggle” but there is no suggestion that they actually practiced it.
Only two issues of this magazine were published and the group disappeared shortly afterwards, though a couple of members were involved in the formation of the Dublin Anarchist Collective in 1983.
Among those involved were ex-Provos like Billy Jackson and Jackie Crawford, as well as Mike Gilliland (whose father was a former President of the Methodist Church), Doreen McGouran, Steve Woods, Denise Jackson.
irishanarchisthistory 
Jun 12, 2012 @ 13:33:13
Mike Gilliland, one of the editors, went on to write a 342 page novel. The Free is set in Ireland where a general strike is transforming itself into a revolution. You will recognise Dublin streets, and Dublin banter.
Originally published in 1986 by Hooligan Press, it has recently been reprinted by CreateSpace and is available from Amazon. It is also free to read on the ‘net, via Gooogle Boooks, Scribd, Issuu and the Anarchist Library. The author writes from what might be called a ‘counter-culture’ position.
“There’s a General Strike on, and thousands were still arriving from the North suburbs who had missed the battle. People have marvelled at it, my prisoners were saying it, but to us it came natural. I saw a school full of prisoners, and street kitchens starting up, first aid stations, people queuing to give blood, lorries starting to get in and each building being checked over. In one shop they found six armed soldiers hiding in the toilet, and a dozen rioters hiding in the next room! It’s horrible in some ways, how life goes on.
“Later in the night we saw houses already being occupied, and jams of CoOp lorries moving out goods and supplies. There was plenty of personal looting. But one thing is cleared up, there’s no more question of us laying down our arms. We have stolen the entire city, maybe the whole country, and one day the whole world! The Revolution is happening and I seen it!”
Jun 12, 2012 @ 14:24:56
Jackie Crawford was one of two anarchists who were interned without trial in 1971, the other being John McGuffin. Both were members of the ‘anarchist wing’ of Peoples Democracy. It has been suggested, by Paddy McGuffin (John’s nephew) among others, that this experience led them to question the effectiveness of the civil rights strategy and to develop a sympathy for the Provisional IRA.
Crawford was allegedly involved in the 1983 robbery of the Allied Irish Bank in Dun Laoghaire, which netted IR£8,500. We don’t have any information to suggest this was “political”.
Crawford, who had sold the British anarchist paper Freedom in Belfast’s Castle Street in the late 1960s, died in the late 1990s, aged just 47.
Aug 19, 2012 @ 00:39:52
I wondered what became of Jackie – he got in trouble in Long Kesh with the stone-head wing of the Provis – it’s a complicated and, essentially, trivial story. Did he die outside of Belfast? I returned to Belfast in 1979 (left again 2002), but never encountered him.
Aug 31, 2012 @ 10:26:07
The article’s mention of “Contaminated Crow” magazine and the Irish anti-nuclear movement reminds me of another publication involved in that movement, “Dawn” magazine. “Dawn” was the Irish pacifist magazine which had links to the international peace group the Fellowship of Reconciliation. While “Dawn” was not specifically an anarchist publication, it did run features of interest to anarchists, including articles on Herbert Read and Dorothy Day.
Sep 14, 2012 @ 13:51:49
Dawn was very interesting – the editor (meaning practically everything form writing most of it to the stapling – I was the grand-sounding ‘Editor of Gay Star’) was a Dubliner (Rob Fairmichael?). McGuffin wasn’t interned he was ‘Detained’ – that’s a month’s worth of internment. ‘They’ then decide whether, in the surprisingly explicit language of Internment Orders, it is ‘expedient’ that one is kept in the sweetie-bottle for as long as the Minister of Home Affairs wishes.