Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
And an excellent pamphlet on this, from Notts People's Histreh, can be downloaded here: https://peopleshistreh.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/cheeseriotsebook.pdf
On this day
- Thread starter brogdale
- Start date
On this day, 4 October 1936, Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists planned to march through a predominantly Jewish section of East London, instead the Battle of Cable Street occured. The fascists were met by over 100,000 local residents and workers who – insistent that 'They shall not pass!' – fought both the blackshirts and the police protecting them, forcing the march to be abandoned.
Reg Weston who was there, described what happened when the fascists and their police escort met the crowds, including many women and dockworkers: "The fascists were assembling by the Royal Mint and police started to make baton charges, both foot and mounted, to try to clear a way for them to escort a march. They did not succeed. A barricade started to go up. A lorry was overturned, furniture was piled up, paving stones and a builders yard helped to complete the barrier. The police managed to clear the first, but found a second behind it and then a third. Marbles were thrown under the hooves of the police horses; volleys of bricks met every baton charge."
Meanwhile, women stood at the windows of local tenements, hurling missiles at police, and heading downstairs to pursue officers who fled.
Eventually, Weston explained: "the Metropolitan Police chief, who had been directing operations, told Sir Oswald it would be impossible for him to have his march through the East End to his proposed rally in Victoria Park. The uniformed Blackshirts formed up and marched. But they marched west not east. They went through the deserted City of London and ended up on the Embankment, where they just dispersed - defeated."
Learn more about Cable Street, and the fight against Mosley in the 1940s in our podcast episodes 35-37. Listen on every major podcast app or our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../17/e35-37-the-43-group/
Reg Weston who was there, described what happened when the fascists and their police escort met the crowds, including many women and dockworkers: "The fascists were assembling by the Royal Mint and police started to make baton charges, both foot and mounted, to try to clear a way for them to escort a march. They did not succeed. A barricade started to go up. A lorry was overturned, furniture was piled up, paving stones and a builders yard helped to complete the barrier. The police managed to clear the first, but found a second behind it and then a third. Marbles were thrown under the hooves of the police horses; volleys of bricks met every baton charge."
Meanwhile, women stood at the windows of local tenements, hurling missiles at police, and heading downstairs to pursue officers who fled.
Eventually, Weston explained: "the Metropolitan Police chief, who had been directing operations, told Sir Oswald it would be impossible for him to have his march through the East End to his proposed rally in Victoria Park. The uniformed Blackshirts formed up and marched. But they marched west not east. They went through the deserted City of London and ended up on the Embankment, where they just dispersed - defeated."
Learn more about Cable Street, and the fight against Mosley in the 1940s in our podcast episodes 35-37. Listen on every major podcast app or our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../17/e35-37-the-43-group/
On this day, 7 October 1879, Joe Hill, songwriter and Industrial Workers of the World revolutionary union martyr, was born in Sweden. Songs he wrote, like Rebel Girl and The Preacher and the Slave – which is where the phrase "pie in the sky" comes from – were sung by thousands of workers on picket lines across the United States, which had become his new home. He was executed by the state in Utah in 1915 for a crime he almost certainly didn't commit.
We have made available this extensive book on his life and works in our online store. Proceeds help fund our work: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/.../joe-hill-the-iww...
We have made available this extensive book on his life and works in our online store. Proceeds help fund our work: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/.../joe-hill-the-iww...
On this day, 7 October 1944, an armed rebellion broke out in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Resistance members in the camp found out the Sonderkommando (the Jewish prisoners tasked with working in the crematoria and disposing of bodies) were due to be murdered on that day. So the group fought back with knives and improvised weapons, like handmade grenades made from smuggled gunpowder in sardine cans. They burned down Crematorium IV, killed three SS officers, even cremating one, and injured others.
Pictured: Roza Robota, a member of the Auschwitz resistance.
Pictured: Roza Robota, a member of the Auschwitz resistance.
On this day, 11 October 1946, the British government announced that 1,038 military camps had been squatted in England and Wales by 39,535 people in a wave of occupations of empty properties by ex-servicemen and their families. Over 4,000 people had occupied such camps in Scotland as well. It was part of a huge wave of squatting of empty properties by working class families demanding decent housing after World War II, and forced the government to implement a huge programme of council house building.
I hope you didn't get too much shit from the filth.
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
Not on that occasion. A nice chap from Birnbergs turned up and made sure it was all tickety boo.
What's birnbergs?
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
A decent law firm that's often there if you get nicked on a demo.
deeyo
hurled unheard to this world.
...1999 in stockholm, sweden, björn söderberg was shot & killed by nazi scum.
libcom.org
www.arbetaren.se
(second link to a very good article in swedish. google translate is your friend.)
SAC Activist Murdered by Fascists
An article from the UK based anarchist journal, Black Flag on the 1999 murder of a Swedish syndicalist by fascists.
20 år sedan mordet på Björn Söderberg – och ett förändrat Sverige
Det har gått 20 år sedan mordet på syndikalisten Björn Söderberg. Attentatet var kulmen på en upptrappad våldsvåg från den svenska vit makt-rörelsen under 1990-talet. Arbetarens Johan Apel Röstlund minns tillbaka och pratar med några av dem som var med den omskakande hösten 1999.
www.arbetaren.se
(second link to a very good article in swedish. google translate is your friend.)
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
On the day that most likely translates to October 13, 1157 BCE in our current calendar, the earliest recorded strike in history was first reported. The dispute is recounted in a papyrus written by a scribe in the ancient Egyptian town that is now called Deir el-Medina. Gangs of skilled construction workers in the employ of Pharaoh Ramses III stopped work when, eighteen days after their payday, they had still not received their wages, which would have been paid in food and other goods. The workers shouted that they were hungry and sat down by a temple. Officials gave them some pastries, and they returned home, but the following day they protested once more, demanding their pay at the central grain storehouse in Thebes. Eventually they received their back pay, but the pattern of workers needing to go on strike to be paid what they were owed was repeated multiple times.
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On this day, 16 October 1854, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland. After graduating from Trinity College, Wilde left for Oxford and then London, where he became an advocate of libertarian socialism and an early inspiration for what would, many years later, become a movement for LGBT+ rights. Wilde’s most overt political statements are to be found in his essay, “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” in which he observed that “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”
He was a leading proponent of aestheticism and became famous as the author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
At the height of his fame he was convicted of gross indecency after unsuccessfully prosecuting his male lover’s father for libel. He was sentenced to two years hard labour and his experiences in prison inspired his final work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He lived his final years in exile and poverty and died of meningitis at the age of 46.
Here is his essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism": https://libcom.org/.../soul-of-man-under-socialism-oscar...
He was a leading proponent of aestheticism and became famous as the author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
At the height of his fame he was convicted of gross indecency after unsuccessfully prosecuting his male lover’s father for libel. He was sentenced to two years hard labour and his experiences in prison inspired his final work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He lived his final years in exile and poverty and died of meningitis at the age of 46.
Here is his essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism": https://libcom.org/.../soul-of-man-under-socialism-oscar...
On this day, 19 October 1989, after 15 years in prison, a UK judge quashed the convictions of the Guildford Four calling them unreliable and based on confessions extracted by police through violence and threats against family members. The four innocent Irish people had been framed for bombings of two pubs in Guildford that had been carried out by the pro-independence Irish Republican Army, which killed four soldiers and a construction worker. No police were punished for the torture or lies.
This was an article written about it at the time: https://libcom.org/history/after-guildford-four-red-menace
This was an article written about it at the time: https://libcom.org/history/after-guildford-four-red-menace
On this day, 26th October 1983, the Northwood and Pinner hospital in England was occupied by its workers in protest at its proposed closure, led by matron Jean Carey.
From the following day, they ran the hospital themselves collectively and eventually the workers won, and it stayed open for a further 25 years.
From the following day, they ran the hospital themselves collectively and eventually the workers won, and it stayed open for a further 25 years.
On this day, 29 October 1940 in France, Iranian Muslim diplomat Abdol Hossein Sardari wrote to Vichy collaborationist government officials to try to persuade them that Jews from Central Asia (Jugutis) were not technically Jewish under Nazi race laws. In 1943, as a result of his arguments, the Nazis eventually agreed and exempted them. Sardari began issuing Iranian passports to Jews, without the consent of his bosses, and helped up to 2000 escape the regime.
On this day, 1 November 1910, anarchist and syndicalist workplace militants met in Barcelona to found the National Confederation of Labour union, the CNT, with the aim to “speed up the economic emancipation of the working class through the revolutionary expropriation of the bourgeoisie”. The CNT would grow to become the leading force in Spanish working class politics, playing a leading role in various general strikes, uprisings and the Spanish civil war and revolution. Four decades of Franco failed to break it and it is still active today.
Learn more about the Spanish civil war in our podcast episodes 39-40. Find them wherever you get your podcasts or go to https://workingclasshistory.com
Pictured: members of the CNT women's section, Mujeres Libres, c1936
Learn more about the Spanish civil war in our podcast episodes 39-40. Find them wherever you get your podcasts or go to https://workingclasshistory.com
Pictured: members of the CNT women's section, Mujeres Libres, c1936
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On this day, 4th November 1910, in a prelude to the Champagne riots of the following year, several grape growing communes in the Champagne region of France decided to stop paying taxes. Growers were angry at Champagne producers driving down prices, and importing cheaper grapes from elsewhere in Europe to make their "Champagne," and so they wanted the government to legislate that Champagne had to be made mostly from grapes from the region.
A few months later on January 17th, simmering discontent erupted into violence when growers in the village of Damery intercepted a truck of imported grapes and threw it into the river Marne. Growers then raided the warehouses of a producer they considered "fraudulent,", and raised a red flag at the town hall. Protests, including singing of the Internationale, escalated to a full-blown insurrection. The government responded by initiating a nine-month occupation of the area by 40,000 troops, but they did implement the law protesters had demanded.
A few months later on January 17th, simmering discontent erupted into violence when growers in the village of Damery intercepted a truck of imported grapes and threw it into the river Marne. Growers then raided the warehouses of a producer they considered "fraudulent,", and raised a red flag at the town hall. Protests, including singing of the Internationale, escalated to a full-blown insurrection. The government responded by initiating a nine-month occupation of the area by 40,000 troops, but they did implement the law protesters had demanded.
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On this day, 9th November 1918, German workers were fighting to end World War I as revolution swept the country and the Kaiser abdicated. Berlin was gripped by an anti-war general strike, while rebel sailors, soldiers and workers were taking to the streets. The deputy chairman of the Socialist Party (SPD), Philipp Schneidemann, learned that revolutionary socialist Karl Liebknecht, fresh from prison, planned to declare a socialist republic. So to avoid being outmanoeuvred, he defied the party leader and took to a balcony at the Reichstag where he declared a republic. That evening, dozens of workers from large Berlin factories, mistrusting the SPD leadership, occupied the Reichstag and announced elections to factory and army regiment councils to form a revolutionary government the following day.
Learn more about the German revolution in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/.../all-power-to-the...
Learn more about the German revolution in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/.../all-power-to-the...
Attachments
On this day, 10th November 1944 13 members of the Ehrenfeld anti-Nazi resistance group were hanged in the street in Cologne by the Gestapo. Those killed were named :
Hans Steinbrück, Gustav Bermel, Johann Müller, Franz Rheinberger, Adolf Schütz, Bartholomäus Schink, Günther Schwarz, Roland Lorent, Peter Hüppeler, Josef Moll, Wilhelm Kratz, Heinrich Kratina and Johann Krausen.
Steinbrück had escaped from a concentration camp and formed a resistance group based in the suburb of Ehrenfeld. He had stockpiled a number of weapons, and with others had shot several police officers.
Six of those executed were working class youths, members of the nationwide underground group the Edelweiss Pirates, which was an anti-authoritarian alternative to the Hitler Youth. There were over 3,000 Pirates in Cologne alone, including Schink, who shirked at work, fought running battles with young Nazis, and carried out acts of sabotage against the military, like assassinating the head of the Cologne Gestapo.
Learn more about the pirates and related groups in our podcast episode 4: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../wch4-anti-nazi-youth.../
Hans Steinbrück, Gustav Bermel, Johann Müller, Franz Rheinberger, Adolf Schütz, Bartholomäus Schink, Günther Schwarz, Roland Lorent, Peter Hüppeler, Josef Moll, Wilhelm Kratz, Heinrich Kratina and Johann Krausen.
Steinbrück had escaped from a concentration camp and formed a resistance group based in the suburb of Ehrenfeld. He had stockpiled a number of weapons, and with others had shot several police officers.
Six of those executed were working class youths, members of the nationwide underground group the Edelweiss Pirates, which was an anti-authoritarian alternative to the Hitler Youth. There were over 3,000 Pirates in Cologne alone, including Schink, who shirked at work, fought running battles with young Nazis, and carried out acts of sabotage against the military, like assassinating the head of the Cologne Gestapo.
Learn more about the pirates and related groups in our podcast episode 4: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../wch4-anti-nazi-youth.../
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Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
November 10th 1969, first episode of Sesame Street.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
1977: a work study offices is lamed by the red brigades in turin
Today, 11th November, is Armistice Day, commemorating the end of World War I in 1918. The official commemorations never mention what actually ended the war: the mutinies and revolutions which swept Russia and Germany, as well as Bulgarian, French and British forces, albeit to a lesser extent.
So take some time to remember those tens or hundreds of thousands of British troops in World War I who mutinied or tried to find ways of avoiding killing their German fellow workers, like Harry Patch, the last survivor of the war, or the millions of Germans, French and Russians who did likewise.
Learn more about the mutinies and combat resistance in our podcast episode 38 with Srsly Wrong: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../e38-mutiny-with.../
So take some time to remember those tens or hundreds of thousands of British troops in World War I who mutinied or tried to find ways of avoiding killing their German fellow workers, like Harry Patch, the last survivor of the war, or the millions of Germans, French and Russians who did likewise.
Learn more about the mutinies and combat resistance in our podcast episode 38 with Srsly Wrong: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../e38-mutiny-with.../
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On this day, 22nd November 1980, Leeds Women Against Violence Against Women held a demonstration to protest police inaction around the Yorkshire Ripper murders and the proposed curfew for women. Around 500 protesters marched through Leeds where they blocked traffic, attempted to storm a TV and radio station, smashed windows at the university, fought police and journalists, and attacked a cinema which was showing a film involving Ripper-style killings of women. The women also argued that any curfew for women's safety should not be on women, but on men.
More information: https://secretlibraryleeds.net/.../the-leeds-women.../
More information: https://secretlibraryleeds.net/.../the-leeds-women.../
On this day, 25th November 1941, three young Austrian boys, members of the Schlurf movement, were arrested by the Gestapo for destroying a Hitler Youth noticeboard. The Schlurfs were working class Austrian youths who rejected Nazism, militarism, racism and the work ethic. They had long hair and listened to jazz and swing music. The boys wore sharp double-breasted suits and the girls or "Schlurf kittens" wore coloured dresses with knee length hemlines. The Nazis campaigned against the "Schlurf menace", and many Schlurfs fought Hitler Youth in the streets. After the Allied victory, the new "democratic" authorities continued to denounce as "Schlurfs" young workers who rejected work discipline and authority.
More in our podcast episode 4: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../wch4-anti-nazi-youth.../
More in our podcast episode 4: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../wch4-anti-nazi-youth.../
On this day, 9th December 1842, one of the founders of contemporary anarchist communism, Peter Kropotkin was born. An activist, scientist, and philosopher, he abandoned his aristocratic background in favour of the revolutionary working class struggle. He participated in the 1917 Russian revolution, and wrote numerous influential works, including Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution. In this work he criticised interpretations of the ideas of Charles Darwin which focused on competition, and highlighted instances of cooperation in the natural world. "If we ... ask Nature: 'who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?' we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization."
These ideas continue to be influential today. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote of Kropotkin: "I would hold that Kropotkin’s basic argument is correct. Struggle does occur in many modes, and some lead to cooperation among members of a species as the best pathway to advantage for individuals. If Kropotkin overemphasized mutual aid, most Darwinians in Western Europe had exaggerated competition just as strongly. If Kropotkin drew inappropriate hope for social reform from his concept of nature, other Darwinians had erred just as firmly (and for motives that most of us would now decry) in justifying imperial conquest, racism, and oppression of industrial workers as the harsh outcome of natural selection in the competitive mode."
We have made available several of Kropotkin's works, as well as a brand new beautiful illustrated edition of Mutual Aid in our online store. Check them out here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/.../all/peter-kropotkin
These ideas continue to be influential today. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote of Kropotkin: "I would hold that Kropotkin’s basic argument is correct. Struggle does occur in many modes, and some lead to cooperation among members of a species as the best pathway to advantage for individuals. If Kropotkin overemphasized mutual aid, most Darwinians in Western Europe had exaggerated competition just as strongly. If Kropotkin drew inappropriate hope for social reform from his concept of nature, other Darwinians had erred just as firmly (and for motives that most of us would now decry) in justifying imperial conquest, racism, and oppression of industrial workers as the harsh outcome of natural selection in the competitive mode."
We have made available several of Kropotkin's works, as well as a brand new beautiful illustrated edition of Mutual Aid in our online store. Check them out here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/.../all/peter-kropotkin
On this day, 14th December 1853, Errico Malatesta, an Italian mechanic and key anarchist theorist was born in Italy. You can get an idea of his effectiveness as an organiser from police reports about him at the time: “Malatesta’s return from London was the signal for a reawakening of the anarchist movement in Ancona ... Malatesta immediately set about reorganising it... In a short time in Ancona, anarchists and sympathisers number some 600 individuals, consisting predominantly of dock porters, workers, and criminal elements of the town... his qualities as an intelligent, combative speaker who seeks to persuade with calm, and never with violent, language, are used to the full to revive the already spent forces of the party, and to win converts and sympathisers, never losing sight of his principle goal, which is to draw together the forces of the party, and undermine the bases of the State, by hindering its workings, paralyse its services, and doing anti-militarist propaganda, until the favourable occasion arises to overturn and destroy the existing State”. He was sentenced to death three times, and spent many years in jail or exile but lived until the age of 78.
This book is a great account of his life and ideas: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/.../life-and-ideas...
This book is a great account of his life and ideas: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/.../life-and-ideas...
On this day, 16th December 1871 in France, teacher and revolutionary Louise Michel was put on trial in the wake of the crushing of the Paris commune, where the workers and soldiers had taken over. She was charged with trying to overthrow the government, encouraging citizens to arm themselves, possession and use of weapons amongst other offences. Exiled to prison in New Caledonia, Michel spent four months in a cage on a prison ship. She became a national hero, and was granted amnesty in 1880. When a man tried to assassinate her, Michel defended him in court, claiming "he was misled by an evil society".
Read a short biography of her here: https://libcom.org/history/michel-louise-1830-1905
Read a short biography of her here: https://libcom.org/history/michel-louise-1830-1905
On this day, 20th December 1973, the Spanish fascist prime minister who was hand-picked as dictator Francisco Franco's successor, Luis Carrero Blanco, was assassinated in Madrid. Basque separatists ETA had spent five months digging a tunnel under a road he went down to attend mass. They then detonated a bomb as he drove over, shooting his car 20 metres into the air and over a five-storey building, earning Carrero Blanco the nickname of "Spain's first astronaut".
His successor was unable to hold together different factions of the government, and so this action was credited by some for helping accelerate the restoration of democracy after Franco's death.
Learn more about the civil war which resulted in Franco's seizure of power in our podcast episodes 39-40: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../e39-the-spanish.../
Pictured: a recreation of the incident from the 1979 film, Ogro -
His successor was unable to hold together different factions of the government, and so this action was credited by some for helping accelerate the restoration of democracy after Franco's death.
Learn more about the civil war which resulted in Franco's seizure of power in our podcast episodes 39-40: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../e39-the-spanish.../
Pictured: a recreation of the incident from the 1979 film, Ogro -
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