On this day

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 15th March 1919, thousands of women in Egypt marched in protest against the British occupation. In particular the arrest and deportation to Malta of Saad Zaghlul, a prominent Egyptian politician, and several other activists caused widespread outrage, and boosted anti-colonial sentiment. It was an early event in the Egyptian revolution which would eventually topple British rule.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 16th March 1921, the Red Army under the command of Leon Trotsky staged their bloody final assault on the workers and sailors of Kronstadt, after they revolted against the burgeoning Bolshevik dictatorship. The rebels, mostly dissident communists and socialists, protested against the suppression of strikes in Petrograd, and were calling for trade union freedom, free speech for workers and revolutionaries, freedom for socialist political prisoners and for the abolition of enhanced food rations to Bolshevik Party bureaucrats.

Trotsky had previously described the sailors as the "pride and glory of the revolution" due to their key role in the 1917 revolution. But when they rebelled against the new rulers Trotsky ordered them to be "subdue[d]… by force of arms", and a committee headed by Grigory Zinoviev threatened to "shoot" them "like partridges".

Trotsky and Zinoviev were both later killed themselves by the dictatorship they had helped establish.

Some have attempted to claim that the Kronstadt sailors in 1921 were mostly different individuals to those in 1917, however detailed research by researchers like Israel Getzler showed that the make-up of the garrison was overwhelmingly the same.
A similar rebellion also took place in Ukraine, in favour of control by workers and peasants themselves, rather than Party bureaucrats, which was also eventually crushed by the Red Army.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 16th March 1971, two US lieutenants at the Bienhoa air base near Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam, were killed when a fragmentation grenade exploded in the officers quarters. It was just one of hundreds of incidents during the Vietnam war of what was dubbed "fragging", when US troops would kill officers who they saw as oppressive or put them in excessive danger with their "gung ho" attitude.

Amidst a powerful anti-war movement in US forces, sometimes anti-war GI newspapers would put bounties on the heads of unpopular officers, in some cases forcing the officers to be sent back to the US and replaced.
In this instance, private Smith, a 24-year-old Black GI from Watts, Los Angeles, was accused of the attack but was later acquitted at a court-martial.

 

[Dystopiary]

Also in Vietnam on this day, was the Mỹ Lai massacre in 1968, the mass murder of civilians in South Vietnam. Between 347 and 504 unarmed people were killed by US Army soldiers.

 

[petee]

On this day, 16th March 1921, the Red Army under the command of Leon Trotsky staged their bloody final assault on the workers and sailors of Kronstadt, after they revolted against the burgeoning Bolshevik dictatorship. The rebels, mostly dissident communists and socialists, protested against the suppression of strikes in Petrograd, and were calling for trade union freedom, free speech for workers and revolutionaries, freedom for socialist political prisoners and for the abolition of enhanced food rations to Bolshevik Party bureaucrats.

Trotsky had previously described the sailors as the "pride and glory of the revolution" due to their key role in the 1917 revolution. But when they rebelled against the new rulers Trotsky ordered them to be "subdue[d]… by force of arms", and a committee headed by Grigory Zinoviev threatened to "shoot" them "like partridges".

Trotsky and Zinoviev were both later killed themselves by the dictatorship they had helped establish.

Some have attempted to claim that the Kronstadt sailors in 1921 were mostly different individuals to those in 1917, however detailed research by researchers like Israel Getzler showed that the make-up of the garrison was overwhelmingly the same.
A similar rebellion also took place in Ukraine, in favour of control by workers and peasants themselves, rather than Party bureaucrats, which was also eventually crushed by the Red Army.


View attachment 314623

it was an unhappy moment when i read a poster on this board (whose name i do really forget) refer to this as "the only good thing trotsky ever did."

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 21st March 1991, the abolition of the poll tax in the UK was announced, following a mass non-payment campaign and widespread rioting. The hated tax, introduced by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, charged the working class the same as the rich as there was a charge for every individual in a household. Despite the defeat of the working class movement in Britain in the 1980s, people up and down the country self-organised an unprecedented campaign which resulted in over 17 million people refusing to pay, with thousands of people clogging the country's court system. It was later replaced by the council tax, which charged rates based on house value.

 

[GarveyLives]

21 March 1960: South African police opened fire on a crowd of peaceful unarmed African demonstrators in the township of Sharpeville, killing 69 Africans and injuring 186 more. Most of them had been shot in the back.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 23rd March 1931, Indian revolutionary socialists Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar (pictured, L-R) were executed by British colonial authorities in what is now Punjab, Pakistan. They had been sentenced to death for assassinating a senior British police officer in 1928, to avenge the police killing of Lala Lajpat Rai during an anti-colonial demonstration.

While they opposed British colonialism, rather than narrow nationalism they advocated working class revolution against both British and Indian capitalists. They were all just 22-23 years old. Singh commented: "They may kill me, but they cannot kill my ideas. They can crush my body, but they will not be able to crush my spirit".

In the wake of their conviction, Mohandas Gandhi appealed to the Viceroy of India to commute their sentences, but he also appealed to huge crowds not to take action to secure their release, as he had signed a truce agreement with authorities. After they were executed, Gandhi was greeted by a crowd he described as "incensed" flying black flags and shouting “Gandhi go back”, “Down with Gandhism”, “Gandhi's truce has sent Bhagat Singh to gallows” and “Long live Bhagat Singh”. After their deaths, Bhagat Singh in particular became a national hero.

 

[Pickman's model]

On this day in 1991 was the last national anti-poll tax march in London, where anarchists were beastly to the militant speakers who were incessantly heckled. Contrary to my expectations militant did not report this as anarchists cheer all-britain anti-poll tax federation speakers

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 25th March 1939, the German Nazi government brought in a tougher new law forcibly conscripting all 10 to 18-year-olds into the Hitler Youth. But despite years spent trying to mould "national socialist" youths, thousands of working class young people formed gangs known as the "Edelweiss Pirates" to socialise and organise their own fun activities. They began to get into fights with Hitler Youth patrols and when the war started they conducted sabotage, slacked at work and began to help Jewish people, deserters and POWs. Some became partisans and launched armed attacks on Nazi officials. Some of them were executed, but many survived the war, where young workers slacking off continued to be a problem for the Allied occupiers.

 

[GarveyLives]

(Source: as stated in image)

​

27 March 2007: Toyin Agbetu, a Pan African human rights activist, from the Ligali Organisation, paid respect to African Ancestors by challenging the British monarch, Elizabeth Saxa-Coburg-Gotha (Windsor), church and government's commemorative ritual of appeasement and self approval at Westminster Abbey to mark the bicentenary of the British parliamentary Act to abolish what they disingenuously refer to as a 'slave trade'.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 30th March 1915, Francesc Sabaté Llopart, anti-fascist resistance fighter, and the most tenacious of the anti-Franco guerrillas, was born in Hospitalet de Llobregat, Catalonia.

With the outbreak of the civil war in 1936, Sabaté joined the anarchist Young Eagles column and fought against General Francisco Franco's Nationalists on the Aragon front. After the defeat of the Republic, Sabaté was interned in a concentration camp in France, and later joined the French resistance against Nazi occupation.

Following the end of World War II he re-entered Spain and joined the growing underground resistance to the regime. Amongst his many legendary exploits he freed other imprisoned activists, robbed banks, assassinated fascist leaders and cheated death on many occasions.

After robbing the home of a wealthy Franco supporter, Manuel Garriga, Sabaté left a note which read: "We are not robbers, we are libertarian resistance fighters. What we have just taken will help in a small way to feed the orphaned and starving children of those anti-fascists who you and your kind have shot. We are people who have never and will never beg for what is ours. So long as we have the strength to do so we shall fight for the freedom of the Spanish working class. As for you, Garriga, although you are a murderer and a thief, we have spared you, because we as libertarians appreciate the value of human life, something which you never have, nor are likely to, understand."

Sabaté outlived nearly all of the other active resistance fighters, only eventually succumbing to the bullets of the Civil Guard in 1960.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 31st March 1990, the poll tax riots broke out in Trafalgar Square, London, after police attacked 200,000 people demonstrating against an extremely unpopular and highly regressive tax introduced by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government.

Police launched a violent assault on peaceful demonstrators, including rapidly driving police vans through the crowd. But this backfired severely when the crowd defended itself, pushed back the police, then went on the offensive, destroying property and expropriating goods from stores (looting). South Africa House, the diplomatic outpost of the apartheid regime, was set on fire.

One participant recalled: "The most important thing for me was the way people were prepared to face the riot police. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was incredible to see people running in to pull others out when they were being arrested… The next thing that sticks in my mind was seeing the ordinary pigs in full flight down Whitehall, and the roar of the crowd chasing them… The noise was brilliant, the bravery of people on my side was enough to convince me that we are not so helpless after all."

Police arrested more than 300 people on the day, with around 150 subsequent arrests. Meanwhile leading left establishment figures denounced the rioters promised to "name names" and "root out the trouble-makers". But the riot helped spur more widespread opposition to the tax, introduced in England the following week, and was eventually defeated by a mass non-payment campaign.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 1st April 1649, a farmer and writer called Gerrard Winstanley along with a small group of 30 to 40 men and women occupied St. George's Hill, Watton, Surrey, England and began tilling the land collectively. Over the coming months, numerous local people would join them and for the movement which became known as the Diggers.

Winstanley was a Protestant who began to write pamphlets criticising the church which held that "god is in the heavens above the skies". Instead he argued that god was "the spirit within you". In a pamphlet published in January 1649 he wrote: "In the beginning of time God made the earth. Not one word was spoken at the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another, but selfish imaginations did set up one man to teach and rule over another."

The politics of the Diggers were a form of proto-communist anarchism, advocating direct action, common ownership and the dissolution of hierarchy.


*

 

[Dystopiary]

Good stuff, AmateurAgitator. I appreciate you doing these.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Good stuff, AmateurAgitator. I appreciate you doing these.

Thankyou. I simply copy and paste from the Working Class History facebook page most of the time.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 7th April 1926, Violet Gibson, a 49-year-old Irish aristocrat and peace activist attempted to assassinate Italy's fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, in Rome.

She had armed herself with a pistol wrapped in a shawl, and a rock to break his car window if needed. As she fired at his head, Mussolini moved, meaning that the bullet hit his nose, travelling through both nostrils. She tried to fire again but the gun misfired. She was violently beaten and almost killed by an angry mob, until she was arrested by police.

Gibson endeavoured to obtain release by convincing doctors she was mad. While her conversations and correspondence were lucid and rational, her absence of children was interpreted as psychologically abnormal. Along with a previous suicide attempt, and a violent reaction she had to a fascist inmate, she was deemed "insane".

She was deported to Britain, where she spent the rest of her life in a mental hospital. No one attended her funeral.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 7th April 1872, radical doctor, women's rights advocate, anti-war prisoner and lesbian from a working class background Marie Diana Equi was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Moving to Portland, Oregon, she was one of the first women doctors in the state, who provided birth control information and abortions when both were illegal. She was clubbed by police while supporting a strike of women cannery workers, which led her to become an anarchist and to get involved with the Industrial Workers of the World union. In 1918 she was sentenced to 3 years in prison at San Quentin for opposing US involvement in World War I, but maintained her activism after her release.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 8th April 2013, former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher died. Street parties broke out across the UK, particularly in working class areas and in former mining communities which were ravaged by her policies.

Her legacy is best remembered for her destruction of the British workers' movement, after the defeat of the miners' strike of 1984-5. This enabled the drastic increase of economic inequality and unemployment in the 1980s. Her government also slashed social housing, helping to create the situation today where it is unavailable for most people, and private property prices are mostly unaffordable for the young.

Thatcher also complained that children were "being cheated of a sound start in life" by being taught that "they have an inalienable right to be gay", so she introduced the vicious section 28 law prohibiting teaching of homosexuality as acceptable.
Abroad, Thatcher was a powerful advocate for racism, advising the Australian foreign minister to beware of Asians, else his country would "end up like Fiji, where the Indian migrants have taken over". She hosted apartheid South Africa's head of state, while denouncing the ANC as a "typical terrorist organisation". Chilean dictator Pinochet, responsible for the rape, murder and torture of tens of thousands of people, was a close personal friend.

Back in the UK, she protected numerous politicians accused of paedophilia including Peter Hayman, Peter Morrison and Cyril Smith. She also lobbied for her friend, serial child abuser Jimmy Savile, to be knighted despite being warned about his behaviour.

Thatcher was eventually forced to step down after the defeat of her hated poll tax by a mass non-payment campaign.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 9th April 1898, Paul Robeson, Black singer, actor, American football player, communist and anti-colonialist was born in Princeton, New Jersey. The son of a previously-enslaved father who escaped a plantation, and a blind mother who died when he was six years old, Robeson learned 15 languages including Latin, ancient Greek and Swahili, and played in the National Football League while graduating from law school.

He quit the sport to focus on his acting and singing careers, starring in films such as “All God’s Chillun Got Wings” (1924) and releasing hits like “Ol’ Man River”.

He also became a revolutionary, and was deeply involved with the struggle against fascism, actively supporting the fight against nationalist general Francisco Franco during the Spanish civil war. He played an active role supporting many workers' struggles, as well as the fight against racism and colonialism.

After World War II, as cold war tensions escalated, he was attacked by the anti-communist programme of Sen Joseph McCarthy, blacklisted and had his passport revoked, which destroyed his career. This began a slide into depression and mental illness, which later resulted in a suicide attempt and repeated medical intervention.

Despite his hardship, he maintained his ideals, and to a tribute held for his 75th birthday which he was unable to attend, he sent a recorded message stating: “I want you to know that I am the same Paul, dedicated as ever to the worldwide causes of humanity for freedom, peace, and brotherhood.”

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 19th April 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising broke out in earnest when Jewish people fought back against Nazi attempts to deport them to the Treblinka extermination camp.

2,000 German troops and police backed up with tanks entered the ghetto with the intention of removing the surviving residents, and were met by around 750 resistance fighters with a small number of smuggled small arms and some home-made Molotov cocktails. They forced the Germans to retreat and come back with reinforcements. After several days of failure to overcome the rebels, the Germans began burning down the entire ghetto one building at a time.

Despite this, the resistance managed to hold out against the onslaught for 27 days, killing around 300 Germans. While some fighters managed to escape through the sewers, 7,000 Jewish people were killed and another 7,000 eventually deported to Treblinka.



Pictured: Warsaw ghetto resistance fighters including Malka Zdrojewicz, right, who survived the death camps.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 22nd April 1993, Stephen Lawrence, a Black British teenager, was murdered in a racist attack while he waited for a bus in Eltham, London. Rather than devote adequate resources to finding the killers, instead the London Metropolitan Police infiltrated the Lawrence family's campaign for justice in order to find ways to smear and discredit the family. However, ultimately years of campaigning forced the government to acknowledge the institutional racism of the police force, and two of the killers were eventually convicted in 2012.

 

[The39thStep]

On this day Portugal overthrows 48 years of fascism



also on this day, Italy overthrows 23 years of fascism

 

[The39thStep]

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day Portugal overthrows 48 years of fascism



also on this day, Italy overthrows 23 years of fascism

View attachment 320019

The Estado Novo was para-fascist, not fascist. It had some characteristics of fascism but not all of them.

 

[Pickman's model]

The Estado Novo was para-fascist, not fascist. It had some characteristics of fascism but not all of them.

but did it meet the fascist minimum?

 

[AmateurAgitator]

but did it meet the fascist minimum?

I don't think so no. It did not have everything in the fascist core if you ask me.

 

[The39thStep]

The Estado Novo was para-fascist, not fascist. It had some characteristics of fascism but not all of them.

This news will be of great relief to those who lived under it

 

[ouirdeaux]

I never use the word fascism, because in my experience no two people agree on what it means. It tends to be used to describe a variety of unpleasant state behaviours. I'm not sure how splitting hairs about whether Portugal's regime technically adhered to some academic definition of fascism is advancing the sum of human knowledge.

 

[Pickman's model]

I never use the word fascism, because in my experience no two people agree on what it means. It tends to be used to describe a variety of unpleasant state behaviours. I'm not sure how splitting hairs about whether Portugal's regime technically adhered to some academic definition of fascism is advancing the sum of human knowledge.

i think it is more broadly used in its 1960s definition of 'people the speaker or writer doesn't like'