Left-wing groupie Paul Mason has written a costume drama about the suppression of the Paris commune in 1871. We meet Louise Michel and her all-female gang of arsonists as they’re carted off to jail for setting fire to the Tuileries. After a harsh stint in the cells, they’re shipped out to the French colony of New Caledonia, in the eastern Pacific, where they live in an open prison. Things aren’t too bad. They mingle with the natives, enjoy the local hooch, and sing comradely songs about ‘spilling the blood impure’.
Escape is on the agenda. A committee of anarchists is said to be making swift progress across the ocean in a rescue ship. But when the women discover that the anarchists learned their nautical skills in Switzerland they begin to doubt the success of the mission. The post arrives. A nice intellectual in Paris has sent them The Philosophy of Poverty by Proudhon.
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