Just as the history of French and British activity against international anarchism involves some questions we cannot now answer definitively and perhaps never will, there are limits to the implications one can draw from all the parallels and recurrent themes among the wars on terrorism of the late nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries. Yet an understanding of the history of the anti-anarchist struggle can lend valuable perspective to consideration of the public security issues that have taken on paramount importance since the 11th of September. It cannot provide ready answers, but it can help to frame questions.
Did Europe win its battle against anarchists because of or in spite of the willingness of democratic regimes to subvert their traditional protection of civil liberties? A Benjamin Franklin saying – ‘they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety’ – has been trotted out frequently in the past year’s debates across Europe and North America. But is it all so simple? Or do the claimed successes of the French secret policemen and their British collaborators show that desperate times require desperate measures?
Full text available via Scribd
