John Olday

John Olday (10 April 1905 – 1977), birth name Arthur William Oldag, was born in London to a Scottish father and a German mother. He was brought up in New York City, and Germany. He became an artist, cartoonist and writer, and anarchist revolutionary. He was politically active in Germany, France and England in the 1930s and 1940s, and lived in Australia during the 1950s and 1960s. Returning to London in about 1970, he remained active in anarchist groups until his death in 1977.

Early life Born out of wedlock in 1905 in London, Olday is recorded as having no memory of his Scottish father. His German mother moved to New York City, where he was brought up until age 8 (1913), after which his mother returned to Germany and left him with his grandmother in Hamburg. His mother apparently returned to New York and American citizenship. In urban Hamburg, the child's life was immediately blighted by the onset of World War I and a hunger crisis precipitated by agricultural manpower losses and the Allied blockade of Germany In 1916, at the age of 11, he was a participant in workers' unrest against severe food shortages and black-market practices of the day.

Later Olday became active in the tumultuous unrest of the Kiel mutiny and the resultant November Revolution, reportedly "acting as an ammunition hauler for a Spartacist machine-gun emplacement. When the year-long struggle was crushingly defeated, he made a last-minute escape, narrowly avoiding certain execution"—but continued in violent activist causes until 1925, at age 20.

While still a teenager, Olday joined the Young Communist League of Germany but was expelled for “anarchist deviations”.

Artistic career Hamburg, 1925–1938 The few available sources (including some deemed autobiographical) indicate that Olday, having reached the age of 20, had chosen to exercise his talents as a draughtsman, cartoonist and writer, by which he could continue to advance revolutionary causes without offering himself as direct cannon-fodder. Withdrawing from participation in activist groups, The same source asserts that Olday's artistic and cabaret skills (and homosexual mannerisms) bestowed on him a position of privilege among "the highest circles" of the Hamburg Nazi Party, providing him with access to information which he was able to use to warn revolutionary friends and save them from committal to concentration camps. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, he renewed active links with former Anarcho-Sparticist colleagues and joined an active anti-authoritarian campaign against Hitler's dictatorship. He wrote regularly for a Hamburg newspaper. He also worked closely with Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union seafarers coming into the port of Hamburg. Inevitably, his behaviour attracted the attention of the Gestapo who were about to arrest him as he fled to England in 1937. This is an account of his life in Germany, illustrated with anti-Nazi cartoons.

In 1938 he entered into a marriage of convenience with Hilde Meisel (alias Hilda Monte), a member of the Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund, who thus acquired British nationality.

The transient relationship with Meisel reflected the active involvement of both in regular and dangerous assignments on the Continent in the months leading to the outbreak of war. With funds from anti-Chamberlain parliamentarians Olday coordinated the sinking of a Nazi munitions ship off the Dutch coast and the killing of a Jewish quisling in Antwerp. He also wrote the text of an appeal to German workers to sabotage the Nazi war industry.

In 1967, Olday opened a communal arts centre in the inner suburb of Paddington where he impressed visitors with his versatile talents ("He sings, he writes, he composes, he paints, he acts") and his sincerity, "the result of profound experience of sadness and life".

London (1970-1977) He returned to Europe in the late 1960s, settling in London in 1970 and remaining politically active until his death of stomach cancer in 1977.