Peter Ridpath (centre) at home on the picket line.
When I heard last week that London Wobbly Peter Ridpath had passed away I wanted to write something for the blog but didn’t have enough biographical info to do him justice.
Here’s a proper obituary from his London Branch
and one from the Anarchist Communist Group
Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of Peter’s company on numerous actions, demo’s, union events and bookfairs, and I liked him a lot.
I found him to be jolly, kind-hearted, interesting to talk to and militant as fuck. A dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary syndicalist and anarchist, he was a familiar face on picket lines across the capital, and argued quietly but persuasively against bureaucratic and centralising tendencies.
So long Peter, we’re going to miss you.
– Felix Sabot, Dorset IWW.
dorsetiww, (April 21, 2018 @ 13:07:32):
I think humanity is finally rejecting what has always been an impossible project, the project of representation. The present proliferation of major and minor pharaohs around the world is the final and ludicrous stage of that impossible project. My life can’t be lived as a representation; my representative can’t realize my aspirations, take my steps or engage in my actions. The pharaohs are the final and definitive proof of the impossibility of representation. I think we’ve all finally learned what took me so long to learn, namely that I’m robbed of my enjoyment if my representative enjoys himself for me, that my hunger remains when he eats for me, that I don’t express myself when he speaks for me, that my mind and my imagination stagnate when he thinks for me and decides for me, that I lose my life when he lives for me. – Fredy Perlman, Letters of…
Industrial Workers of the World Dorset 