On this day

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 10 May 1968, the “night of the barricades” took place in Paris as the May 68 rebellion escalated. Thousands of high school and university students took to the streets that evening, occupied the Latin Quarter and began barricading the streets with overturned cars, billboards, repurposed construction site materials and paving stones.

Le Monde newspaper reported that: "Sixty barricades will be put up in this way and be continually fortified. Many of them were higher than two meters tall. A veritable frenzy takes hold of the demonstrators in their hunt for materials that can reinforce the barricades they are building: cars, wood beams, rolls of wire, breeze blocks, scaffolding. Construction sites are pillaged. Helmets are taken, work vests; bulldozers are started up. There are soon anthills piling up, built of all that can be dragged along… There’s a sort of laborious, almost meticulous exaltation. A contagious enthusiasm, almost a joy."


Meanwhile, local residents fed the demonstrators, passing them food into the streets. At 2:15 AM on May 11, riot police moved in to try to clear out the protesters with tear gas and truncheons. Protesters singing the "Marseillaise" and the "Internationale" fought back with paving stones, while locals poured water from their windows onto the students to help them deal with the teargas. Police responded by firing tear gas into people's apartments.

By the early hours of the morning, police had forced most of the demonstrators to retreat. But their violence provoked widespread sympathy for the students, and the protests continued to grow, culminating in a general strike with factory occupations by millions of workers.

 

[Orang Utan]

On this day, 10 May 1968, the “night of the barricades” took place in Paris as the May 68 rebellion escalated. Thousands of high school and university students took to the streets that evening, occupied the Latin Quarter and began barricading the streets with overturned cars, billboards, repurposed construction site materials and paving stones.

Le Monde newspaper reported that: "Sixty barricades will be put up in this way and be continually fortified. Many of them were higher than two meters tall. A veritable frenzy takes hold of the demonstrators in their hunt for materials that can reinforce the barricades they are building: cars, wood beams, rolls of wire, breeze blocks, scaffolding. Construction sites are pillaged. Helmets are taken, work vests; bulldozers are started up. There are soon anthills piling up, built of all that can be dragged along… There’s a sort of laborious, almost meticulous exaltation. A contagious enthusiasm, almost a joy."


Meanwhile, local residents fed the demonstrators, passing them food into the streets. At 2:15 AM on May 11, riot police moved in to try to clear out the protesters with tear gas and truncheons. Protesters singing the "Marseillaise" and the "Internationale" fought back with paving stones, while locals poured water from their windows onto the students to help them deal with the teargas. Police responded by firing tear gas into people's apartments.

By the early hours of the morning, police had forced most of the demonstrators to retreat. But their violence provoked widespread sympathy for the students, and the protests continued to grow, culminating in a general strike with factory occupations by millions of workers.

View attachment 267629

My dad was a student in Paris then. Got arrested twice. They coshed him the second time and took him to hospital to get stitched up and the student doctor who treated let him out of a window!

 

[brogdale]

On this day, 10 May 1968, the “night of the barricades” took place in Paris as the May 68 rebellion escalated. Thousands of high school and university students took to the streets that evening, occupied the Latin Quarter and began barricading the streets with overturned cars, billboards, repurposed construction site materials and paving stones.

Le Monde newspaper reported that: "Sixty barricades will be put up in this way and be continually fortified. Many of them were higher than two meters tall. A veritable frenzy takes hold of the demonstrators in their hunt for materials that can reinforce the barricades they are building: cars, wood beams, rolls of wire, breeze blocks, scaffolding. Construction sites are pillaged. Helmets are taken, work vests; bulldozers are started up. There are soon anthills piling up, built of all that can be dragged along… There’s a sort of laborious, almost meticulous exaltation. A contagious enthusiasm, almost a joy."


Meanwhile, local residents fed the demonstrators, passing them food into the streets. At 2:15 AM on May 11, riot police moved in to try to clear out the protesters with tear gas and truncheons. Protesters singing the "Marseillaise" and the "Internationale" fought back with paving stones, while locals poured water from their windows onto the students to help them deal with the teargas. Police responded by firing tear gas into people's apartments.

By the early hours of the morning, police had forced most of the demonstrators to retreat. But their violence provoked widespread sympathy for the students, and the protests continued to grow, culminating in a general strike with factory occupations by millions of workers.

View attachment 267629

 

[GarveyLives]

(Source: as stated in image)

On 11 May 1981, Robert Nesta ("Bob") Marley died of cancer.​

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 12 May 1940, 20-year-old Austrian Jewish Edinburgh University student Edgar Lion was arrested by British police. His friends wouldn't see him or hear from him for years. Lion was taken to a police station, then shipped to the Isle of Man alongside thousands of other Jewish detainees where they were locked up in hotels surrounded by barbed wire. He was then taken to a dockyard and told to choose between two ships. He chose the one on the left, and so was taken to Canada – the other would end up in Australia.

In Canada, Lion was then interned alongside 2,300 other Jewish refugees in internment camps alongside German Nazis who had also been interned. Here the refugees were forced to perform harsh and boring physical labour for almost no pay: in Lion's camp, Sherbrooke, detainees could choose to make fishing nets or socks. The refugees were held in camps in appalling and unsafe conditions for nearly three years.



Learn more about struggles of Jewish people in Britain at this time in our podcast episodes 35-37 about the anti-fascist 43 Group: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../17/e35-37-the-43-group/

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 13 May 1968, up to 10 million workers began a general strike in France in the May 68 rebellion, as hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Paris following violent student riots. While the rebellion did not overthrow capitalism, which was the aim of a number of participants, it did result in many significant improvements to pay and working conditions.

 

[marty21]

View attachment 265867

Interrupted the snooker

 

[GarveyLives]

(Source: Archival footage from PBS documentary 'Let the Fire Burn')​

Bones of Black children killed in police bombing used in Ivy League anthropology course

Philadelphia incinerated remains of police bombing victims without telling families

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 14 May 1938, the players of the England football team raised their arms to give the Nazi "Heil Hitler" salute before a match in Berlin. They had been instructed to do so directly by the British Foreign Office. Reportedly the players at first refused, until the British ambassador and Football Association secretary intervened and ordered them to do so.

At the time the British government had signed an agreement with Hitler permitting his annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia, and much of the British ruling class supported the dictatorships of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco as bulwarks against communism. According to his biographer one of the players, Stan Cullis, would not perform the salute and was dropped from the team for that match as a result.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 14th May 1940, 81 years ago the most dangerous woman in America died, a radical fighter, Red Emma, anarcho-communist, true feminist, tireless speaker, great writer, persecuted by all, the great Emma Goldman.

Emma Goldman, was a legendary anarchist and defender of women's rights and sexual freedom, died in Toronto, Canada, at the age of 70. Born into a Jewish family in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, she emigrated to the USA, where she became known as "Red Emma".

An electrifying public speaker and extremely competent propagandist, she was arrested countless times for her activism and described by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as "the most dangerous woman in America." In the 1890s she helped run an ice cream parlor with her partner Alexander Berkman, who later attempted to assassinate an industrial businessman who had had striking workers killed.

When Berkman was incarcerated, Goldman helped organize a daring jailbreak attempt, digging a tunnel into the prison from a nearby house, although it was unsuccessful. She was eventually deported from the United States for her activities to Russia, where she joined the revolution, although she became critical of the Bolshevik state when they began to suppress strikes and workers' protests.

She later traveled to Spain to help in the fight against fascism during the Spanish civil war and remained active until the end.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 18 May 1980, workers and students in Gwangju, South Korea, rose up against their brutal US-backed dictator, Chun Doo-hwan.

Peaceful protesters were fired upon, with many shot and others beaten and stabbed to death by paratroopers. This sparked an uprising across the city, as local residents raided local armouries and police stations, seized weapons and eventually succeeded in driving out government troops.

Workers and locals then took control of the city, running it collectively for several days, until paratroopers invaded once more and bloodily suppressed the rebellion, killing hundreds.

Though unsuccessful in meeting its immediate goals, the uprising contributed to the end of decades of dictatorship late in the 1980s.

We spoke with participants in the rebellion for our podcast which is coming soon. So subscribe today on your favourite podcast app or at https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast to ensure you don't miss it.

Pictured: Gwangju residents and citizens' militia during the uprising.

 

[MrSki]

Same day as Ian Curtis died.

 

[brogdale]

On this day, 18 May 1980, workers and students in Gwangju, South Korea, rose up against their brutal US-backed dictator, Chun Doo-hwan.

Peaceful protesters were fired upon, with many shot and others beaten and stabbed to death by paratroopers. This sparked an uprising across the city, as local residents raided local armouries and police stations, seized weapons and eventually succeeded in driving out government troops.

Workers and locals then took control of the city, running it collectively for several days, until paratroopers invaded once more and bloodily suppressed the rebellion, killing hundreds.

Though unsuccessful in meeting its immediate goals, the uprising contributed to the end of decades of dictatorship late in the 1980s.

We spoke with participants in the rebellion for our podcast which is coming soon. So subscribe today on your favourite podcast app or at https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast to ensure you don't miss it.

Pictured: Gwangju residents and citizens' militia during the uprising.


View attachment 268905

For anyone who's not see it:
A Taxi Driver - Wikipedia

 

[A380]

18 May Helen Sherman became The first British person in space.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 19 May 1925, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, was born in Omaha, Nebraska. The son of a supporter of Marcus Garvey and local leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, he would become one of the most influential advocates of equal rights as well as one of the harshest critics of white supremacy in the United States before his assassination in 1965.

In particular his advocacy of self defence for Black people shocked the establishment:

"Every time you pick up your newspaper, you see that I'm advocating violence. I have never advocated any violence. I've only said that Black people who are the victims of organised violence perpetrated upon us, we should defend ourselves… So, we only mean vigorous action in self-defence and that vigorous action we feel we're justified in initiating by any means necessary. The press call us racist and people who are 'violent in reverse.'… They make you think that if you try to stop the Klan from lynching you, you're practising 'violence in reverse.'"

Originally a member of the Nation of Islam, El-Shabazz later left the group and founded the secular Organization of Afro-American Unity. He increasingly came to reject capitalism as inherently linked to racism, declaring in 1964: "You can't have capitalism without racism."

Just three days before his murder he delivered a speech stating:

"We are living in an era of revolution, and the revolt of the American Negro is part of the rebellion against the oppression and colonialism which has characterised this era… it is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter."

 

[spitfire]

This is quite amusing, bit of a slow burner but On This Day...

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 24 May 1988, the homophobic 'Section 28' passed into law in the UK under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.

Section 28 was introduced as an amendment to the Local Government Act of 1988. It was supported by the right-wing press, especially the Daily Mail and Telegraph, and reactionary religious groups like parts of the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and the Muslim Council of Britain. It stated that local authorities "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".

The legislation arose at a time when AIDS was on the radar and there was media panic about the 'loony left' councils "indoctrinating" (educating) children with information about homosexuality in schools. It led to a spring in gay activism in Britain, and a comics anthology written by Alan Moore and others was also published in opposition to it - AARGH! Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia.

Section 28 was eventually repealed in 2003, despite the opposition of later Conservative leaders like David Cameron and Theresa May who tried to keep the law on the books.

 

[Badgers]

 

[GarveyLives]

On 25 May 2020 ...

What Minneapolis Police said happened

What the entire world saw happen​

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 25 May 1978, police in Aotearoa/New Zealand attacked a land occupation by Māori people at Bastion Point, near Auckland, which was demanding the return of the stolen land. The Ōrākei Māori Action Committee had been occupying the land for 506 days before police moved in to evict them, arresting 222 people and demolishing buildings. However, protests continued, and in 1988 the government agreed to return the land to the Ngāti Whātua people.

 

[BillRiver]

RIP George Floyd.

George Floyd’s Brother Can’t Mourn. He’s Too Busy Fighting.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

From Derry anarchists (facebook):

On May 29, 1830, Louise Michel was born in France, one of the most emblematic figures of anarchism, possibly on a par with references such as Bakunin, Malatesta and Teresa Claramunt. A teacher by vocation, Louise was a self-sacrificing feminist with criticisms and proposals that were advanced for the moment.

Her commitment to socialism and freedom will lead her to be part of the armed defense of the Paris Commune in 1871, leading the 61st Montmartre women's battalion, in addition to establishing the defense of the Clamart and Neouilly barricades, among others.

After the defeat in the Commune, she was imprisoned in the French colony of New Caledonia, where she became an anarchist and immediately collaborated with the independence movement.

Once liberated in France, together with Sebastian Faure, she promoted the newspaper Le Libertaire, in addition to re-engaging fully with the strike movements and the workers' struggle. She died in 1905 at the age of 74, leaving behind a whole life dedicated to the struggle for socialism, freedom and the emancipation of women. An inspiration to all anarchist thinking to this very day.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

From Working Class History:

On this day, 29 May 1830, Louise Michel, Paris communard, teacher, anarchist and French national hero at the time, was born. She led an absolutely fascinating life.

Forced to hand herself in following the Paris commune when authorities threatened to murder her mother, she was charged with trying to overthrow the government, encouraging citizens to arm themselves, possession and use of weapons, wearing a military uniform, planning to assassinate hostages and more, and was sentenced to life time deportation to the prison colony of New Caledonia. There she supported the anti-colonial uprising of the Indigenous Kanak people, and returned when the communards were pardoned nearly seven years later.

She was subsequently jailed repeatedly and survived an assassination attempt when she was shot in the head.

This is a short biography: https://libcom.org/history/articles/1830-louise-michel

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 30 May 1814, Mikhail Bakunin, Russian revolutionary and founder of collectivist anarchism was born. Born in Tsarist Russia, Bakunin developed a burning hatred of injustice. He left the army and threw himself into the radical movement, playing a leading role in the 1848 insurrection in Dresden. He was deported from France, arrested and sentenced to death in Germany, extradited and sentenced to death in Austria, extradited and jailed in Russia then exiled to Siberia, from where he escaped.

Although sometimes flawed, his experiences led him to develop the ideas which formed the basis of the modern anarchist movement in the last decade of his life.

This is a short account of his incredible life: https://libcom.org/history/bakunin-mikhail-1814-1876

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 1 June 1985, British police brutally attacked people heading to Stonehenge in the "Battle of the Beanfield". Police smashed the windows of vehicles the travellers and others were using, dragged people out through the broken glass, beating them and breaking teeth, glasses and bones. They arrested 420 people, the biggest mass arrest of civilians in hundreds of years, systematically looted, smashed and burned travellers' homes and 7 dogs were killed by the RSPCA. Authorities at the time were determined to destroy Britain's traveller communities.

This is a short account of what happened: https://libcom.org/history/1985-battle-beanfield

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 4 June 1950, the 43 Group of militant anti-fascist Jewish ex-servicemen and women voted to disband itself at an extraordinary general meeting in London, England. The group had been formed four years prior by Jewish people who had fought in the British Army against the Nazis in World War II, who had seen the horrors of the concentration camps, and who returned home to see fascists organising openly on UK streets. They resolved to continue their fight against fascism, racism and anti-Semitism by any means necessary.

The group included people like decorated war hero Gerry Flamberg, apprentice hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, gay former officer Harry Bidney and women like Doris Kaye, who infiltrated fascist groups, and Julie Sloggan, who was one of its most ardent street fighters. They disrupted and broke up fascist meetings, usually after breaking through the fascists' police guard, and harassed fascist aristocrat Oswald Mosley and his followers in towns and cities up and down the country.

Eventually Mosley went into exile, and fascist organising dwindled to such a level that the 43 Group dissolved itself. Although veterans of the group would throw themselves back into the movement when Mosley attempted a comeback in the 1960s.

Learn more about the 43 Group in our podcast episodes 35-37, with a former member: https://workingclasshistory.com/.../17/e35-37-the-43-group/

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 15 June 1970, one of the biggest strikes in Turkish history took place after the government introduced two laws which made it more difficult for workers to change unions, in order to keep workers in the moderate Türk-İş union federation rather than joining the more militant DİSK federation. Up to 150,000 workers in Istanbul walked out, joined by others in Ankara, Izmir, Izmit and elsewhere.

Police and soldiers attacked the workers, killing at least four workers, including Abdurrahman Bozkurt, Yaşar Yıldırım, Mehmet Gıdak and Mustafa Baylan and injuring nearly 200. The government then enacted martial law for three months, and thousands of workers were sacked, but resistance continued and in 1972 the new laws were annulled.

 

[A380]

And again. 16 June 1963 Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

On this day, 16 June 1531, English king Henry VIII modified the vagrancy laws he brought in the previous year, which were key in creating the working class. People kicked off communal land who were not in wage labour were designated as vagabonds, and on their first offence were to be whipped, then on the second whipped with half an ear sliced off and upon a third offence they were to be executed. This and similar laws enacted across Europe, backed up by intense state violence, created a class of people forced to sell their labour to survive: the working class.

Karl Marx described these legal mechanisms in volume 1 of his work, Capital: "Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system."
This expropriation was extended across the globe by violent colonialism.

Rather than being a natural state of affairs as it is often portrayed, the creation of the working class was fiercely resisted for hundreds of years, and indeed still is to this day in some areas.

 

[GarveyLives]

16 June 1976: Student Mbuyisa Makhubo carries fatally injured Hector Pieterson after he was shot by South African troops during the 1976 Soweto uprising, during which African children - several hundred of them, according to some estimates - were massacred by the white supremacist government in South Africa.

Lest We Forget​