On this day

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 5 August 1936, Spanish railway worker, anti-fascist military leader and anarchist Buenaventura Durruti gave his famous “new world in our hearts” interview shortly after the outbreak of the civil war with journalist Pierre Van Passen.

After the right-wing nationalist military-rising, which was backed by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, the workers and peasants of Spain fought back. Faced with potential devastation in the conflict, Durruti told Van Passen: “We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a while. For you must not forget that we can also build. It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.”

Our podcast episodes 39-40 give a brief overview of the Spanish civil war: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../e39-the-spanish.../

 

[brogdale]

3 years gone.

 

[Sprocket.]

On this day in 1887 Marcus Garvey was born.

 

[Sasaferrato]

1966

View attachment 150298

An enduring memory. I was 14, and can clearly remember Richard Dimbleby reporting, up to his knees in mud, tears streaming down his face.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

up to hos knees

hos knees?

 

[Sasaferrato]

hos knees?

Corrected.

 

[brogdale]

An enduring memory. I was 14, and can clearly remember Richard Dimbleby reporting, up to his knees in mud, tears streaming down his face.

My childhood memory is of my Mum & my Nan crying and hugging me tightly.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 24 August 1943, French philosopher and anti-fascist Simone Weil died in London. Previously she had opposed French colonialism in Asia and North Africa, taken part in the factory occupations during the popular front government in 1936, then travelled to Spain to fight against the right-wing military rising of general Francisco Franco. Weil fought in the Durruti column until she was injured in an accident and left the country.

In collaborationist Vichy France, she got a job as an agricultural labourer and worked with the resistance, until she travelled to London with her Jewish parents to keep them safe. There she continued writing on behalf of the resistance, sleeping only around three hours per night. Her cause of death was officially designated a suicide from self-starvation and tuberculosis, but biographers state that while people in occupied France lived on minimal food rations, Weil did the same, which severely worsened her illness.

Learn more about the Spanish civil war in our podcast episodes 39-40: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../e39-the-spanish.../

Pictured: Weil in Spain

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 25 August 1944, a group of 32 Spanish and eight French resistance fighters tackled an entire German column, consisting of 1,300 men in 60 lorries with six tanks and two self-propelled guns, in La Madeleine, France. The Maquis blew up the road and rail bridges and positioned themselves on surrounding hills with machine guns. The battle raged from 3:00pm till noon the following day. Three Maquis were wounded, while 8 Germans were killed, nearly 200 wounded and the rest surrendered. After his humiliating defeat, the Nazi commander killed himself before he could be captured.

We have a podcast episode coming soon on the Spanish resistance. Find us on your favourite podcast app by searching "Working Class History" and subscribe today to make sure you don't miss it.

Pictured: some of the La Madeleine fighters

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 30 August 1976, riots broke out at the Notting Hill Carnival in London, after carnival-goers, sick of police harassment of the many Black attendees, fought back against officers.

Both Black and white young people set fire to police vehicles, hurled stones and other projectiles at the police, smashed windows and expropriated goods from stores.
Police at the time did not have riot equipment, so they try to use dustbin lids and road signs as shields, and drove their vehicles into the crowd, although some of them had to be abandoned when they were pelted with stones, then set on fire. Anarchy magazine reported that "Police were knocked over like ninepins by volleys of bricks and bottles". Meanwhile the notoriously violent Special Patrol Group helped spread the disturbances by attacking people at random.

By the end of the night, over 300 police were injured, with 35 of their vehicles damaged. 17 young Black people were subsequently put on trial for 79 offences, but only two were convicted.

White Riot by the Clash was written by Joe Strummer after he attended the carnival.

 

[Serene]

On this day, 5 August 1936, Spanish railway worker, anti-fascist military leader and anarchist Buenaventura Durruti gave his famous “new world in our hearts” interview shortly after the outbreak of the civil war with journalist Pierre Van Passen.

After the right-wing nationalist military-rising, which was backed by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, the workers and peasants of Spain fought back. Faced with potential devastation in the conflict, Durruti told Van Passen: “We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a while. For you must not forget that we can also build. It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.”

Our podcast episodes 39-40 give a brief overview of the Spanish civil war: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../e39-the-spanish.../


View attachment 282204

Whats with the " and Anarchist " bit?

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Whats with the " and Anarchist " bit?

Definitely up there with the most stupid and pointless comments I've seen posted on these forums.

 

[Serene]

Definitely up there with the most stupid comments I've seen posted on these forums.

I dont know who he was. I just looked it up and seen he was indeed an Anarchist. My comment was from me finding the description amusing, and not from saying it was incorrect.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

I dont know who he was. I just looked it up and seen he was indeed an Anarchist. My comment was from me finding the description amusing, and not from saying it was incorrect.

Your comment was completely pointless and very stupid and ignorant.

 

[Serene]

Your comment was completely pointless and very stupid and ignorant.

I found your post about the Historical character to be interesting and I thank you for it. I enjoy reading about history. The post I made where I was laughing was subjective. I didnt intend it to disparage your post, and I apologise if it came across in that way. I was laughing at the way that the word appeared, it got me laughing.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 31 August 1913, police attacked a crowd in Dublin in a drunken rampage that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” It was one of many violent confrontations that took place in the early days of the Dublin Lockout, a bitter industrial dispute that lasted until 1914 and saw two strikers killed and many hundreds wounded. Jim Larkin’s Irish Transport and General Workers Union had attempted to organise the workers on Dublin’s tram network, and the owner of the company, William Murphy, had fired hundreds of workers whom he suspected of sympathising with the union.

When the workers struck in protest, the Dublin employers demanded en masse that their workers sign a pledge declaring that they would neither join the ITGWU nor strike with them in solidarity. When workers refused, the employers locked them out, replacing them with scab labour from Britain or elsewhere in Ireland. From the start, the strike was characterised by intense violence between the strikers on one side and the scabs and police on the other. In pitched battles, strikers and their families smashed tram windows and fought with the police, throwing stones and firing slingshots that had been supplied by James Connolly.

In response to the escalating violence, the authorities banned a proposed march. But Larkin was not a man easily deterred, and he promised he would appear dead or alive. The road was overlooked by the Imperial Hotel, which was part-owned by Murphy. Wearing a fake beard, the fiery trade unionist shuffled into a hotel dressed as an elderly man, and once a crowd had gathered on the street below, he cast off his disguise and ran to the window, from where his booming voice exhorted the workers to action and victory. Immediately, around 300 police attacked, beating the crowd, most of whom were uninvolved onlookers. One such onlooker, the MP Handel Booth, later described how the police, “behaved like men possessed… wildly striking with their truncheons at everyone within reach.”

 

[Badgers]

3 September 1189. Richard I (“The Lionheart”) was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey. The ceremony was performed by Baldwin of Exeter, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The ceremony was an elaborate affair, consisting of many prayers and rites.

 

[DotCommunist]

wasn't that the longest he spent in england in his whole life, spending the rest of it beefing with saladin over who bagsies the holy land.

 

[MrSki]

wasn't that the longest he spent in england in his whole life, spending the rest of it beefing with saladin over who bagsies the holy land.

Could he even speak English as it was then?

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 10 September 1676, pioneering English revolutionary Gerrard Winstanley died aged 66. He was a tailor, then farmworker and the primary theoretician of the movement called the Diggers, or True Levellers during the English civil war who took over enclosed lands and farmed them collectively.

In 1649, prefiguring many later communist and anarchist thinkers, Winstanley wrote in The True Levellers Standard Advanced: "In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another."

He went on to argue that: "Those that Buy and Sell Land, and are landlords, have got it either by Oppression, or Murder, or Theft; and all landlords lives in the breach of the Seventh and Eighth Commandements, Thous shalt not steal, nor kill."

Pictured: illustration of Winstanley by Clifford Harper

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 11 September 1973, right-wing general Augusto Pinochet launched a coup against the elected left-wing government in Chile of Salvador Allende. Allende had appointed Pinochet as head of his armed forces the previous month, and used the position to orchestrate the coup. (Content note: this post contains graphic descriptions of violence and sexual violence).

On day one, the new government began rounding up thousands of people – mostly working class activists and left-wingers – in the national stadium, killing many. The brutal military dictatorship, which was backed by western powers like the US and UK, implemented the harsh right-wing economic ideology of the neoliberal Chicago Boys.

While international observers heralded the resultant "economic miracle", in reality living standards declined for the vast majority of the population, with wages falling and spending on healthcare, education and housing being cut.

Any workers who attempted to resist were murdered, tortured, imprisoned or "disappeared". A popular method of execution by the regime was to throw civilians to their deaths from helicopters into the ocean or over the Andes mountains. Many of the alt right today celebrate these murders with "helicopter memes".

Over the next 17 years, more than 3,000 people were murdered by the regime, with more than 37,000 others illegally imprisoned or tortured. Many prisoners, men and women, were systematically raped and sexually abused by guards, with women a particular target. In addition to being violated by guards, some women were sexually assaulted with dogs, rats and spiders, and forced to have sex with male family members. Many children of those killed were given to the Catholic church, or adopted, with the children either not informed or told their parents had died in accidents.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 12 September 1992, anti-racist group Anti-Fascist Action fought neo-Nazis heading to a Blood & Honour music gig in the Battle of Waterloo in London. It was probably the biggest street fight against fascists in the city since Lewisham in 1977.

Blood & Honour drew crowds of up to 2000 racists to listen to bands with names like "Dead P*ki in the Gutter". To try to avoid anti-fascists, Blood & Honour didn't disclose the location but instead chose Waterloo station as a redirection point. So around 100 anti-fascists headed to the station.

One of the participants later recalled: "I was very nervous. I thought we were going to be slaughtered. Everyone knew that Blood and Honour could muster ten times more people than we had."

But the Nazis were turning up in small groups, and so, the anti-fascist wrote: "We spent the rest of the afternoon ambushing groups of fascists as they arrived, and trying to avoid the police. For example, four fascists arrived by car and were set upon until every window was broken, and the rest of the car was not exactly in showroom condition. The battles raged in all the surrounding streets. A comrade from Norwich and myself piled into a group of three fascists by the Waterloo roundabout. One of them turned to attack my comrade and I stuck my foot out to trip him up and with wonderful luck it was perfectly timed and he keeled over and hit his head, crack, on the pavement."

Learn more in this short personal account of the events: https://libcom.org/.../15-waterloo-blood-and-honour-gig...

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 15 September 1888, the first ever Yom Kippur ball was held in London, England. It was organised by local Jewish anarchists through the East End Yiddish newspaper Arbayter Fraynd (Worker's Friend), and was intended as an explicity anti-religious gathering in an area populated largely by Jewish immigrants.
Billed as a dinner with lectures and recitations followed by singing and dancing, support was drummed in the day before under the slogan “Down with superstition! Long live the spirit of freedom!”.

There was an exceptionally high turnout and despite numerous attempts to disrupt the gathering leading to the police making several arrests, the 24-hour event was seen as a victory. Yom Kippur balls were subsequently organised by Jewish radicals elsewhere in cities like New York and Montréal.

Learn more about Yiddish-speaking revolutionaries at this time in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/.../revolutionary...

Pictured: members of Arbayter Fraynd in London, 1912.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 17 September 1963, Raghbir Singh, a Sikh man, became the first person of colour to work on a bus in Bristol, England, after a mass campaign forced the dropping of the "colour bar" the previous month. The ban on hiring Black or Asian workers was enforced by the Bristol Omnibus Company and the TGWU union, but after a four-month boycott workers voted to end the practice.

This is a history of the dispute: https://libcom.org/.../black-white-buses-1963-colour-bar...

 

[Badgers]

#OnThisDay 1991: Bottom was first broadcast … and brought much hilarity.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 25 September 1968, the Seattle city council brought in a gun-control law at the behest of Republican mayor, James Braman to prevent self-defence patrols by the Black Panthers.

Authorities around the US were panicked by the sight of Black people defending themselves from violence by white racists and police. In particular they were alarmed in Seattle when armed Panthers appeared at Rainier Beach high school to defend Black students who had been attacked and threatened by whites.
The city passed an emergency measure to prohibit the display of a "dangerous weapon" to "intimidate others". It was just one of many laws introduced around this time, often by Republicans, and often with the support of the National Rifle Association, to disarm Black people.

Learn more about the Panthers in these books by former members: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/.../black-panthers


Pic: Panther protest against a similar law in Feb 1968

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 28 September 1846, troops from the 1st Royal Dragoons opened fire on starving food rioters in Dungarvan, Ireland. A contemporary report described how “The distress” was “truly appalling in the streets; for, without entering the houses, the miserable spectacle of haggard looks, crouching attitudes, sunken eyes and colourless lips and cheeks, unmistakably bespeaks the sufferings of the people.” Meanwhile, an abundance of food was being exported for profit. On 28 September, several thousand people attempted to break into the quay-side grain stores. When the ringleaders were arrested, a section of the crowd demanded release of the prisoners and then marched to the centre of town, where they looted several bakeries.

The British 1st Royal Dragoons were deployed to the scene and the riot act was read. When the crowd refused to disperse, Captain Sibthorp gave orders to fire. Two rioters were seriously wounded, and one of them, Michael Fleming, subsequently died of his injuries. In the coming days, four companies from the Lancashire Regiment were sent to enforce order in Dungarvan, but despite their presence, on 1 October dock workers refused to load grain for export as they feared reprisals. The Great Famine (which was really mass murder and not a famine - food was exported rather than there being an actual shortage of it) lasted until the 1850s. It killed around a million people and forced an even greater number to flee Ireland.

Pictured: Artist’s impression of the Dungarvan food riot from the London Pictorial Times

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Stop the City - Thirty eight years ago today 1500 people descended on the City of London in the first of four huge protests against war, militarism, capitalism and the exploitation of people, animals and nature.

 

[Serge Forward]

Got my collar felt by the filth on that one.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 2 October 1766 the Great Cheese Riot of Nottingham, England, began. At the annual Goose Fair, a mob formed who were angry at the excessive price of cheese, and groups of mostly women and children seized cheeses and began wheeling or carrying them away.

The mayor attempted to restore order but was knocked down by a cheese. Two or three of the crowd were arrested, so then the crowd attacked the building housing them, tearing up the pavement and smashing its windows until they were released.

The army arrived the next day and serious clashes with rioters occurred, with soldiers repeatedly firing at crowds, killing one William Egglestone by accident as he attempted to guard some cheese. Still, on Saturday rioting and expropriations continued, with a crowd seizing a boat full of cheese. Several hundred people then attempted to burn a windmill before eventually retreating from the soldiers who had been sent to defend it.