Working Class History

[Bozo_Casanova 26284]

Fascinating thread, thanks for keeping it up.

Edited December 20, 2020 by Bozo_Casanova

[washparkhorn 9935]

Seconded. Subscribed. Salut!

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

Going back a bit.

On this day, 19 December 1925, Lepa Svetozara Radic was born in Bosanska Gradiska, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Lepa became a communist and joined the anti-Nazi partisans aged 15 in 1941. She was captured in 1943 while organising a rescue of around 150 women and children attempting to escape the fascists. The Germans offered to spare her life if she gave up the names of her comrades, but she responded that she was not a traitor and her comrades would reveal themselves when they avenged her death. The executioner subsequently reported that the "bandit" had "shown unprecedented defiance". 
The Yugoslav partisans eventually successfully defeated the Nazis the fascist Ustashe regime. 

[DigglerontheHoof 21065]

Damn.  That woman-child was a genuine badass and hero.   I hope her comrades kept her promise. 

Fucking nazi scum.

Edited December 23, 2020 by DigglerontheHoof
cause, fuck nazis

[Hugo Stiglitz 23357]

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "Old Gimlet Eye" was a senior United States Marine Corps officer who fought in both the Mexican Revolution and World War I. Butler was, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. Butler later became an outspoken critic of American wars and their consequences.
 

Butler exposed an alleged plan to overthrow the United States government.

In 1933, he became involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot, when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists were planning a military coup to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans to become dictator, similar to Fascist regimes at that time. The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot and the media ridiculed the allegations, but a final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler's testimony.

In 1935, Butler wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, where he described and criticized the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those in which he had been involved, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them. After retiring from service, he became a popular advocate, speaking at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists, and church groups in the 1930s.

Edited December 23, 2020 by Hugo Stiglitz

[wildcat09 29259]

Along the same lines, the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog has a long-running series titled "This Day in Labor History."  It's not updated daily but it's fascinating history and a good reminder of how evil unchecked capitalism can be.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

3 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

Damn.  That woman-child was a genuine badass and hero.   I hope her comrades kept her promise. 

Fucking nazi scum.

No doubt.

If anyone has 30 minutes and wants to hear the story of another badass-

https://www.si.edu/sidedoor/ep-3-milkmaid-spy

The FIRST spy the British were able to get behind Nazi lines into Vichy France was an American woman, Virginia Hall. Her first recruits into the Antifa Resistance? Nuns and prostitutes. Becomes so notorious amongst the Gestapo the British extract her requiring a 50 mile trek over the Pyrenees in winter on foot (singular). Then, once America enters the war, goes BACK into France working for the CIA's precursor, the OSS, where she dials the badassery up to 11.

[DigglerontheHoof 21065]

44 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

No doubt.

If anyone has 30 minutes and wants to hear the story of another badass-

https://www.si.edu/sidedoor/ep-3-milkmaid-spy

The FIRST spy the British were able to get behind Nazi lines into Vichy France was an American woman, Virginia Hall. Her first recruits into the Antifa Resistance? Nuns and prostitutes. Becomes so notorious amongst the Gestapo the British extract her requiring a 50 mile trek over the Pyrenees in winter on foot (singular). Then, once America enters the war, goes BACK into France working for the CIA's precursor, the OSS, where she dials the badassery up to 11.

Thanks for the link.   

Holy shit, yeah, Virginia Hall was an amazing woman.  Hiking over the highest pass in the Pyrenees, with cut-throat guides (meaning she couldn't show weakness or they'd kill her), in a blizzard, on one leg and one bloody stump is taking tough to superhero.  

That was 30 minutes well spent.

[Woland 729]

A while back that picture of Lepa was circulating around the internet, but she was labelled as a fighter against socialism.

[cactusflinthead 27594]

On 11/20/2020 at 10:18 AM, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

On this day, 19 November 1915, Joe Hill, Swedish-American Industrial Workers of the World union member and songwriter was executed by firing squad for a murder he did not commit. During his life, Hill wrote many songs such as 'There is Power in a Union', 'Casey Jones - the Union Scab' and 'The Preacher and the Slave' (where the saying 'pie in the sky' comes from). In his final letter to IWW leader Bill Haywood he wrote: "Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize." 
Learn more in this extensive work on Hill's life: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/joe-hill-the-iww-the-making-of-a-revolutionary-workingclass-counterculture

 

In

I don't know if you've heard of Otis Gibbs, but I'd be willing to bet you know of Billy Bragg.

Now Otis leaves some out of the story. 

I'll let Billy tell it. 

https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9vdGlzZ2liYnMuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8&ep=14&episode=aHR0cDovL290aXNnaWJicy5jb20vP3A9MTA0NA

https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9vdGlzZ2liYnMuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8&ep=14&episode=aHR0cDovL290aXNnaWJicy5jb20vP3A9MTA0OQ

 

Ep 29 & 30

Thanks for Giving a Damn

[washparkhorn 9935]

1 hour ago, cactusflinthead said:

In

I don't know if you've heard of Otis Gibbs, but I'd be willing to bet you know of Billy Bragg.

Now Otis leaves some out of the story. 

I'll let Billy tell it. 

https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9vdGlzZ2liYnMuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8&ep=14&episode=aHR0cDovL290aXNnaWJicy5jb20vP3A9MTA0NA

https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9vdGlzZ2liYnMuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8&ep=14&episode=aHR0cDovL290aXNnaWJicy5jb20vP3A9MTA0OQ

 

Ep 29 & 30

Thanks for Giving a Damn

They moved mountains. Humanity advanced.

Thank you.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 24 December 1913, a tragedy known as the Italian Hall disaster, or the 1913 massacre, occurred in Calumet, Michigan. The wives of copper miners who had been on strike since July organized a Christmas party at the Italian Hall. Exactly what happened next is disputed, but by the end of the night seventy-three people, fifty-nine of them miners’ children, were dead: crushed to death in the stairway as they tried to flee the crowded building.
Eight of the eyewitnesses who testified in front of a House of Representatives subcommittee reported that a man wearing a Citizens’ Alliance button yelled “fire,” leading to a crush on the stairs. Some people believe that the doors were held shut. The Citizens’ Alliance was an anti-union vigilante organisation that worked with employers to break strikes.
Learn more: https://libcom.org/history/christmas-eve-calumet-massacre-1913

(pics of childrens' bodies in the link)

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 25 December 336 CE, the first recorded celebration on this date of the birth of Jesus Christ, a Jewish refugee and radical born in what is now Palestine, took place. The bible makes no mention of Jesus's birth date, but Christians in Egypt chose to celebrate it on 6 January. The Western church later adopted the date of 25 December – winter solstice in the Julian calendar – which some scholars believe was in order to assimilate "heathen" celebrations of the sun on that day. While most Christian institutions today espouse conservative views, Jesus's early followers in the Middle East practised an informal type of communism. 
Learn more about them in this short history: https://libcom.org/history/early-christian-communists

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23357]

13 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

Jesus's early followers in the Middle East practised an informal type of communism. 

 One could argue Jesus operated with almost an anarchist philosophy in that he was constantly challenging the existing hierarchy structures in society, which of course ended up getting him killed. 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

4 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 One could argue Jesus operated with almost an anarchist philosophy in that he was constantly challenging the existing hierarchy structures in society, which of course ended up getting him killed. 

All I know is Trump ain't getting his fat ass thru a needle's eye, ammirite?

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 25 December 1914, 100,000 troops on the Western Front during World War I held an unofficial truce where they refused to fight one another. German troops began singing "Silent Night" in German, French and English, along with other Christmas carols. They decorated the trenches with Christmas trees, lit candles and hung multilingual banners wishing opposing armies "Merry Christmas". Across much of the front artillery fell silent, British troops joined in the carol singing and both sides began to shout Christmas greetings at one another.
On Christmas Day, soldiers began to climb out of the trenches to fraternise with the other side, bring back bodies from no man's land and exchange gifts like tobacco, chocolate and alcohol. In several areas there are first-hand accounts of often-improvised football matches being played.
The truce covered about 100,000 men, almost entirely on the Western front however there was also a small truce along part of the Eastern front between Austrian and Russian troops. Fighting continued in some areas.
Henry Williamson, a British private, wrote to his mother on December 26: "In [my] pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Haha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday the British & Germans met & shook hands in the Ground between the trenches, & exchanged souvenirs, & shook hands. Yes, all day Xmas day, & as I write. Marvellous, isn't it?"
British authorities were extremely angered by the mutiny, and ordered that soldiers engaged in informal truces be court-martialed.
Learn more about the Christmas truce in our podcast episode 38 with Srsly Wrong about mutinies, available on every major podcast app or our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/05/26/e38-mutiny-with-srsly-wrong/

[Nivek 16861]

Shooting at Stars is a children’s book about the truce.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 27 December 1831, the Christmas rebellion in Jamaica escalated as 60,000 of the country's 300,000 enslaved people went on strike and rose up against slavery. 
It is known as the Christmas rebellion as it began with a strike on Christmas day, demanding wages and more free time. The plantation owners rejected the demands, and so on December 27, enslaved people on the Kensington estate downed tools and set their sugarcane fields on fire. The rebels organised their own military units, and travelled through other estates, burning buildings and crops and recruiting others to join them.
Lasting 11 days, it was the biggest revolt of enslaved people in the British Caribbean colonies, and cost over £50 million damages in current money. While only 14 whites were killed, over 500 Black people were killed or executed in the aftermath. But as a result slavery across the British Caribbean was largely abolished two years later. 
Pictured: the destruction of the Roehampton estate during the rebellion

 

[F250 28691]

On 12/20/2020 at 12:04 AM, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

On this day, 20 December 1973, Spanish fascist prime minister who was hand-picked as general 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 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.
Pictured: A reconstruction of the event for the film Ogro (1979)
Learn more about the rise of fascism in Spain in our introduction to the Spanish civil war in podcast episodes 39-40. Find them on every major podcast app, or on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/06/17/e39-the-spanish-civil-war-an-introduction/

 

CSB

I was in Madrid in '93 when ETA blew up a military truck down the road from where I was staying. Loud boom followed by smoke and a handful of dead Spanish soldiers.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23357]

Something I didn’t appreciate until recently was how connected the rising labor movement in Europe was to World War I.

The kings were certainly feeling the heat of labor organizing against them in the industrial revolution and building nationalist war machines must have been viewed as an easy solution to curb revolutionary fervor. 

[tchookem 3900]

Something I didn’t appreciate until recently was how connected the rising labor movement in Europe was to World War I.
The kings were certainly feeling the heat of labor organizing against them in the industrial revolution and building nationalist war machines must have been viewed as an easy solution to curb revolutionary fervor. 

I mean it's still working today. People are very proud of the weapons made in their rural towns.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 28 December 1907, 10,000 households in New York City went on rent strike against rent price hikes. The action was sparked by 16-year-old textile worker Pauline Newman, who enlisted 400 other young women and girls who were factory workers to help persuade other families to join in. Landlords fought back with water shut offs and revenge evictions, but the families stood firm, and by early January around 2000 households won reduced rents. 
Pictured: tenants discussing the strike, early 1908
This is just one of hundreds of stories featured in our first book, Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion. We still have a few hundred copies remaining from our first print run, so you can still grab one here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/working-class-history-everyday-acts-resistance-rebellion-book

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 29 December 1939, French physician, libertarian socialist and women's rights activist Madeleine Pelletier died in an asylum where she had been interned after openly assisting an abortion for a teenage survivor of incest. Born into a poor family in 1874, Pelletier became a feminist and socialist, and was arrested for breaking a window at a polling place after she and other women were denied entry. While never admitted into intellectual circles, she was a pioneer of advanced feminist ideas, like gender roles being largely determined by society, rather than biology. While expressing no interest in sex in her personal life, Pelletier advocated for women's rights to sexual pleasure, as well as to contraception and abortion. Despite all the misfortune in her life, Pelletier declared: "I remain a feminist. I will remain one until my death even though I don't like women as they are now any more than I like the working class as it is. Slave mentalities revolt me."

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 29 December 1923, the Catcher racist riots began in Arkansas. Following an assault and murder of a white woman named Effie Latimer the previous day, angry white residents gathered and began attacking Black people, smashing Black people's gravestones, and digging up and burning their bodies. The mob of over 500 white racists was joined by police in the rioting, and the following day a special deputy sheriff shot and killed a 65-year-old Black man, Mr Rucks. Some Black residents tried to defend themselves, but after the governor sent National Guard troops to the area to join the assault, they were forced to surrender. Eleven African Americans were subsequently jailed for "night riding" – essentially participating in a mob attack of which they were in reality the victims. Two more Black men, Charles Rucks (Mr Rucks' son, pictured) and "Son" Bettis, were subsequently convicted of Latimer's murder and executed, despite there being no actual evidence of their guilt, and a third, John Henry Clay was sentenced to a life of hard labour, during which he died in 1928. Court paperwork reveals that during the unrest “anonymous notices were posted in public places and sent to certain individuals among the negro race, advising them to remove from the County of Crawford.” The entire Black population of the town was forced to flee due to the violence.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 29 December 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, US troops in the 7th cavalry regiment massacred over 200 Lakota men, women and children, many of them unarmed and fleeing, as well as some of their own colleagues. For these "brave" deeds over 20 servicemen were awarded the Medal of Honour. 
*
Learn more about Indigenous genocide and resistance in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/500-years-of-indigenous-resistance-gord-hill

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 5 January 1915, the revolutionary union Industrial Workers of the World organised a delegation of 150 hungry unemployed people to storm the elite Commercial Club in Sioux City demanding work or unemployment relief. To the horror of a local journalist they helped themselves to bread rolls on the way out. The next day the city council created 400 jobs for the unemployed grading roads. 
Learn more about the IWW at this time in our podcast episode 6: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/05/23/wch-e6-the-industrial-workers-of-the-world-in-the-us-1905-1918/
Pictured: an IWW street meeting around this time

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 10 January 1966, biracial voting rights activist Vernon Dahmer was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. While he managed to save his wife (pictured with a photo of Vernon) and child, he died from severe burns and smoke inhalation the following day. He had offered to pay the poll tax for anyone who could not afford to register to vote: which would have helped enfranchise more Black people.

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 11 January 1908, blacklisted American actor Lionel Stander was born. Most famous in recent years for playing the chauffeur in 1980s hit TV show Hart-to-Hart, Stander was a popular Hollywood actor, and active in supporting strikes and anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigns and was blacklisted during the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and 50s. Early in his career he helped organise actors in the Screen Actors Guild, raised money for anti-fascists in Spain during the civil war of 1936-9 an campaigned against racist miscarriages of justice like the Scottsboro boys case. 
Stander later became one of the most defiant actors pulled in front of the anti-communist House Un-American Activities Committee. Not only did he refuse to inform on any of his colleagues, he exasperated the committee by speaking over senators and lawyers, ignoring their questions and instead testifying about the committee itself: "I know of some subversion, and can help the committee if it is really interested…  I know of a group of fanatics who are desperately trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States by depriving artists and others of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without due process of the law. If you are interested in that, I would like to tell you about it. I can tell names, I can cite instances, and I am one of the first victims of it, and… these people are engaged in the conspiracy outside all the legal processes to undermine our very fundamental American concepts upon which our entire system of jurisprudence [legal system] exists".
*
We only post highlights on here, for all our anniversaries follow us on Twitter

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 12 January 1865, a key meeting took place with Black leaders in Savannah, Georgia, in which the infamous "40 acres and a mule" plan was devised during the US civil war. Union general William Sherman met with 20 Southern Black ministers, including James Lynch and Garrison Frazier, to think of ways to help defeat the Confederacy. The ministers stated that giving land which Black people could farm themselves would be key. Four days later, Sherman issued his Special Field Order No. 15, agreed by President Abraham Lincoln, which ordered the seizure of 400,000 acres of land from Confederate landowners, to be given in 40 acre lots to freed Black families. Sherman later ordered that the army could lend mules to the families. In the wake of the order, many Black families took matters into their own hands and began occupying land, farming it and governing themselves. But the order was reversed by the next president, the white supremacist, former slaveowner and Confederate sympathiser Andrew Johnson. Johnson, who wrote “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men" ordered that the land should be returned to its former owners: the men who had declared war on the United States.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 15 January 1929 minister and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia. While famous for advocating non-violent resistance, he did not condemn those who rioted, and he personally had armed guards and a private arsenal to protect himself, and applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon which was denied by racist authorities. Towards the end of his life he became increasingly radical, criticising militarism, war, poverty and capitalism as well as racism, which alienated some of his liberal supporters. For example, he said that people "must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society".
Learn more about his assassination in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/an-act-of-state-the-execution-of-martin-luther-king-william-f-pepper

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 21 January 1950, George Orwell, celebrated British author and socialist who fought against the fascists in the Spanish civil war and revolution, died aged 46. Orwell fought with the socialist POUM militia, and was wounded by being shot in the neck, while many Western journalists and authors just hung out in Barcelona hotels. 
While right-wingers are often fond of quoting Orwell to try to defend providing a platform for fascists, Orwell himself was not such a fan, as he described in his account of the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia: "When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist — after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct".
He also vividly described the atmosphere in revolutionary Barcelona: "The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing… It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle… Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senor' or 'Don' or even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou,' and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos Dias.'… Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low… Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the barbers' shops were Anarchist notices (the barbers were mostly Anarchists) solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves." 
Learn more about the conflict in our podcast episodes 39-40: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/06/17/e39-the-spanish-civil-war-an-introduction/
Pic: Orwell, the tall man, with his unit and his wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 23 January 1919, Black and white sailors gathered, hoping to be hired for work, in the mercantile marine office by the Glasgow Docks. A fight broke out between a group of sailors from Sierra Leone and white workers who objected to foreign labour competing with them for limited jobs. Soon the white mob grew to several hundred strong, and the rioters armed themselves with guns, knives, batons, and bricks. The sailors from Sierra Leone sought shelter in their lodgings, but the white rioters surrounded building and attacked it, smashing its windows. In response, some of the Black sailors fired shots down at the crowd. Eventually, police detained 30 Black sailors in “protective custody”, then charged them with riot and weapons offences. None of the white rioters were arrested. This was just the first of many race-related harbour riots that took place across Britain in 1919 - which left five people dead, hundreds arrested, and dozens seriously injured. But what’s remarkable about this case is how closely it’s linked to the strike for a 40-hour working week: it took place just days before the famous Battle of George Square, and some of the same people were involved. Manny Shinwell was imprisoned for his role in the Battle of George Square, but it was also he, as local secretary of the British Seafarers’ Union, who addressed 600 white workers on the morning of the race riot demanding “action” against workers of colour. Shinwell would become the longest-serving Labour Party MP, Secretary of State for War in Clement Attlee’s government, and Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. But his branch of the BSU banned Black members. Such racism was, sadly, a feature of party-political trade unionism from its inception. The Trades Union Congress, which established a parliamentary labour party in 1899, had since 1892 been calling for a total ban on immigration, and it supported the anti-Semitic Aliens Act of 1905.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 20 January 1934, Nazi Germany introduced a decree "regulating national labour" which according to the US government "introduced the fuhrer-principle into industrial relations". 
The owner was deemed the fuhrer of an enterprise, who was responsible for making all "decisions for the employees and labourers in all matters concerning the enterprise"… "The employees and labourers owe him faithfulness". 
Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Front, which was set up by the state after all trade unions were banned, told a meeting of Siemens workers in Berlin, some of whom were enslaved labourers: "We are all soldiers of labour, amongst whom some command and the others obey. Obedience and responsibility have to count amongst us again... We can't all be on the captain's bridge, because then there would be nobody to raise the sails and pull the ropes. No, we can't all do that, we've got to grasp the fact." 
Along with other measures against radical workers, Nazi policies led Ley to declare in 1935 that Germany was the first European country to end the class struggle. They also helped reduce the share of national income going to workers: which fell from 56.9% in 1932 to 53.6% in 1938, while the share going to big business soared from 17.4% up to 26.6%.
Pictured: Nazis seizing a trade union office
*
If you appreciate our work researching and promoting people's history like this, consider supporting us on patreon and getting exclusive bonus podcast episodes as well as free books, calendars and more: https://patreon.com/workingclasshistory

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 21 January 1946, the largest strike in United States history took place when 750,000 steelworkers went on strike, part of a massive strike wave in the wake of World War II. Find out more in this excellent book about US mass strikes: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/strike-jeremy-brecher

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19093]

On this day, 25 November 1960 three sisters – Patria Mercedes Mirabal Reyes, Minerva Mirabal Reyes and Antonia María Teresa Mirabal Reyes were assassinated for their opposition to the US-backed Dominican dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (content note: mention of sexual violence). They had started a group called the Agrupación Política 14 de Junio (14 June Movement), named after the date of a massacre Patria witnessed. Two of the sisters, Minerva and Maria Teresa, were imprisoned, raped and tortured on several occasions and their husbands arrested and tortured too. However, they persisted in their resistance and Trujillo decided to put an end to them once and for all. On May 18, 1960, Minerva and Maria Teresa, along with their husbands, were convicted and were sentenced to three years in prison for undermining the security of the Dominican state. In a strange gesture, on August 9, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal were released by express provision of Trujillo. Their husbands, however, remained in prison. Purportedly a show of generosity, it was however part of a plan by which they would be assassinated by the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar secret police. On November 25 the sisters and Rufino de la Cruz, who was driving their jeep, were stopped by Trujillo's henchmen. They were separated and clubbed to death. The bodies were then gathered and put in the jeep, which was run off the mountain road in an attempt to make their deaths look like an accident. In honour of the women, the UN later designated 25 November International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
 

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-you-missed-in-history-cl-21124503/episode/the-mirabal-sisters-30186405/

Great podcast on them.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 25 January 1995, Manchester United footballing legend Eric Cantona kung fu kicked a fascist football hooligan, Matthew Simmons, during a match against Crystal Palace. Simmons, who attended far-right National Front and British National Party rallies and has a raft of violent convictions including attacking a football coach who called him "Nazi scum", allegedly heckled Cantona as a "foreigner". 
Cantona's maternal grandfather was from Barcelona, and fought against the forces of fascist General Franco during the Spanish civil war, before being forced to flee to France after the nationalist victory. 
Years later appearing on the BBC, Cantona was asked what the highlight of his career was. He replied "When I did the kung fu kick on the hooligan… I think maybe it's like a dream for some, you know sometimes to kick these kind of people. So I did it for them. So they are happy." 
So what do you think, did Cantona make you happy? Let us know in the comments…
We have produced some merch commemorating the occasion. Check it out here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/football

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 24 January 1977 the Atocha massacre took place in Madrid when 9 left-wing lawyers were shot in an attack by fascists. They entered the offices of the CCOO union with machine guns looking for a communist transport strike organiser. When they couldn't find him they shot one lawyer and lined 8 others up against a wall and shot them, killing 5 and seriously wounding the others including a pregnant woman.
On the exact same day elsewhere in the city, 21-year-old student María Luz Nájera Julián was killed by police during a demonstration against the fascist murder of a left-wing bricklayer, Arturo Ruiz, the previous day on a demonstration calling for the release of political prisoners. Police let his attackers escape and instead charged Ruiz's fellow demonstrators.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 27 January 1866 Alice Wheeldon, British suffragette, socialist and anti-war campaigner, was born in Derby. She was later sentenced to 10 years' penal servitude, alongside her daughter Winnie and son-in-law, on bogus charges of conspiracy to murder the prime minister, Lloyd George. 
She fought for women's right to vote, then with the outbreak of World War I began opposing the war, and sheltered young men on the run from conscription. One man she let into her home was a convicted criminal who had been declared criminally insane and was working for MI5 (Britain's domestic secret service) who then framed her family. 
Her health was permanently damaged by prison, and she died shortly after her release. Her son emigrated to the Soviet Union but was shot by the Cheka (secret police). 
Pictured left-right: a prison warder, Alice's two daughters and Alice

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 28 January 1917, Carmelita Torres, a 17-year-old Mexican maid who worked in the United States, refused to take the mandatory gasoline bath given to day labourers at the border, and convinced 30 other trolley passengers to join her. Her protest spread in what became known as the bath riots.
Torres was one of many workers who crossed the border between Juarez and El Paso each day. In the name of public health, Mexican workers were frequently subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment. They had to strip naked, brave, undergo a toxic gasoline bath, and have their clothes steamed. The stated aim of the programme was to kill lice, which can spread typhus. However, it was not applied to everyone crossing the border: just working class Mexicans. In addition to gasoline being poisonous, it was also a deadly fire risk. A group of prisoners in El Paso being treated with gasoline were burned to death in an accidental fire. Furthermore, US health workers were secretly photographing naked Mexican women. 
On January 28, anger at the practice finally exploded, and within a few hours Torres had amassed a crowd of several thousand mostly women protesters. They blocked all traffic and trolleys into El Paso. They pelted immigration officers with rocks and bottles when they try to disperse them, and when US and then Mexican troops arrived they received the same treatment. The riots were eventually suppressed by the soldiers, and Torres herself was arrested. This appeared to have the effect of discouraging future protests. 
The enforced bathing and fumigation of Mexican workers with toxic chemicals like gasoline, and later DDT and Zyklon B, continued until the 1950s. The use of Zyklon B at the border appealed to scientists in Nazi Germany, who in the late 1930s began using the agent at borders and in concentration camps for delousing. Although notoriously they later used it to exterminate millions of people in the Holocaust.

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 5 February 1885, King Leopold of Belgium declared his new colony the Congo Free State. What followed was one of the most horrific examples of European colonialism, as the regime began the ruthless exploitation of the local population, forcing them to extract natural resources and ship them back to Belgium. 8 to 10 million Africans were killed, with many more mutilated for acts as minor as failing to hit production targets.
Learn more about Belgian colonialism in Congo in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/lord-leverhulme-s-ghosts-colonial-exploitation-in-the-congo-jules-marchal
Pictured: A Congolese worker, Nsala, with the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter, Boali. His daughter and wife were killed and eaten by the militia of the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company as he hadn't met his rubber quota for the day.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 20 February 1895, Black abolitionist and advocate for women's rights who escaped slavery, Frederick Douglass, died in Washington DC aged 77. Douglass wrote his first autobiography in 1845, in which he named his former enslaver, and so he headed to the UK and Ireland, in part to avoid his former enslaver trying to reclaim his "property". There he spent two years raising the international profile of the movement to abolish slavery. He then returned to the US and set up a newspaper, The North Star, and after the civil war fought for the rights of the poor, women, Black people, Native Americans and Asian migrant workers.
On the latter, during a wave of anti-Asian racism sweeping the US, Douglass argued to people of European descent that they did not did not exclusively own the country: “It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here.” The right to migrate, he said, is the “great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity.”

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 25 February 1941, a general strike was called in the Netherlands against the anti-Jewish measures of the occupying Nazis. Organised by communists, it was largely repressed the next day, and key activists were sent to the concentration camps, although some survived the war. 
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Read this and hundreds of other stories in our first book, Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion, available here (or our link in bio on Instagram): https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/working-class-history-everyday-acts-resistance-rebellion-book

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 2 March 2016, Honduran Indigenous environmental activist Berta Cáceres was assassinated in her home. Of Lenca descent, she co-founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and was a leading participant in defending Lenca land from illegal logging and US military bases. She was also an advocate for LGBT+ and women's rights, and believed that: “Mother Earth – militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated – demands that we take action.” 
At the time of her murder, Cáceres was heavily in Indigenous protests against hydroelectric dams being constructed by energy company DESA alongside Chinese firm Sinohydro and the World Bank. Several members of COPINH were killed by the Honduran military and company security during protests, which eventually forced Sinohydro and the World Bank to withdraw from the project. Cáceres was eventually shot dead in her home. A Mexican environmentalist, Gustavo Castro Soto, was also shot twice but survived. 
Nine men were later arrested and charged for the murder. They included the executive president of DESA, who was also a former military intelligence officer, as well as three other current or retired military officers, two of whom had been trained by the US military at the notorious School of the Americas. Seven low ranking conspirators were subsequently convicted and jailed. The DESA president is due to go on trial next month.
Learn more about her life and murder in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/who-killed-berta-caceres-nina-lakhani

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On this day, 3 March 2000, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet returned to Chile a free man after being released by Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw. 
16 months earlier he had been in the UK, he claimed for medical treatment, although it was alleged he was there to negotiate arms contracts – a possibility which is extremely likely, given that it later emerged that he was being paid bribes by British arms manufacturer BAE Systems. 
Spain issued an international warrant for his arrest for breaching human rights laws for being responsible for the torture of dozens of Spanish citizens as well as a Spanish diplomat. Pinochet was also responsible for the murders of over 3000 and the torture and illegal imprisonment of tens of thousands of Chileans. Pinochet was placed under house arrest by British authorities, while international right-wing figures like George HW Bush and Margaret Thatcher called for his release. Straw claimed that he ordered the mass murderer to be freed on health grounds, although this was disputed by many people, including the governments of France, Switzerland and Belgium. 
Pinochet was then flown back to Chile, where he had immunity, and was given a hero's welcome. Small groups of people, mostly relatives of his victims, protested against his arrival, but they were violently attacked by police. 
His immunity in Chile was later partially stripped, and he was charged with various offenses having been deemed medically fit to stand trial. However, he died in 2006 before being convicted of any of his crimes.
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If you would like to read more of our anniversaries each day, make sure to follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wrkclasshistory

[washparkhorn 9935]

51 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

On this day, 3 March 2000, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet returned to Chile a free man after being released by Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw. 
16 months earlier he had been in the UK, he claimed for medical treatment, although it was alleged he was there to negotiate arms contracts – a possibility which is extremely likely, given that it later emerged that he was being paid bribes by British arms manufacturer BAE Systems. 
Spain issued an international warrant for his arrest for breaching human rights laws for being responsible for the torture of dozens of Spanish citizens as well as a Spanish diplomat. Pinochet was also responsible for the murders of over 3000 and the torture and illegal imprisonment of tens of thousands of Chileans. Pinochet was placed under house arrest by British authorities, while international right-wing figures like George HW Bush and Margaret Thatcher called for his release. Straw claimed that he ordered the mass murderer to be freed on health grounds, although this was disputed by many people, including the governments of France, Switzerland and Belgium. 
Pinochet was then flown back to Chile, where he had immunity, and was given a hero's welcome. Small groups of people, mostly relatives of his victims, protested against his arrival, but they were violently attacked by police. 
His immunity in Chile was later partially stripped, and he was charged with various offenses having been deemed medically fit to stand trial. However, he died in 2006 before being convicted of any of his crimes.
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If you would like to read more of our anniversaries each day, make sure to follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wrkclasshistory

The Chile Project was morally bankrupt. Irrational exuberance. inhumanity.

[cactusflinthead 27594]

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 11 March 1975, there was an attempted far right coup in Portugal, known as the March 11 Intentona. This happened in the context of the revolutionary period that Portugal which began with the fall of the right-wing dictatorship on 25 April 1974. 
After the resignation of president António Spínola in September 1974, a left-wing government took power headed by prime minister and Communist Party-sympathiser, Vasco Gonçalves. Seeking to reverse the growing radicalisation of the revolution, Spínola led an attempted military coup, which failed due to the massive popular support of the MFA (movement of the armed forces - a movement of soldiers and junior officers that overthrew the dictatorship) and forced him to flee to Franco's Spain. In the cars of the Spinolist officers, massive amounts of money and cheques were found, signed by Espirito Santo (bankers of BES) and António Champalimaud, the richest man in Portugal at the time, with a fortune of around 9 billion euro (in 2020 equivalent), half of the Portuguese GDP in 1974. 
This counterrevolutionary threat, financed by the Portuguese capitalist class and supported by the Spanish and Brazilian military dictatorships, further spurred the revolution. Workplace and land takeovers accelerated under the slogan "land to those who work on it" and compelled Vasco Gonçalves, in cooperation with unions and the workers, to order the nationalisation of almost 70% of the Portuguese economy, including the financial empires of the Espirito Santo and Champalimaud families, who fled to Brazil where they also possessed vast wealth. During the attempted coup one soldier died and 15 people were injured during the bombing of a military garrison near the Lisbon airport. 
Learn more about the Portuguese revolution in our podcast episodes 41-42. Find them on every major podcast app or our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/08/13/e41-42-the-portuguese-revolution/

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 13 March 1945, two working class sisters, Vera and Libera Arduino, were executed in Italy by fascists alongside their father, a houseguest and some neighbours. Factory workers around the region sent delegations to the funeral, and stopped work while it was ongoing. One girl raised a red flag on the roof of her factory, while an electrician disconnected wiring to prevent the fascists calling for backup. The sisters had been active in the anti-fascist women's resistance group, the Gddd. 
This is a short history of the organisation: https://libcom.org/history/armed-yellow-mimosa-women’s-defence-assistance-groups-italy-1943–45

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On this day, 15 March 1908, the Rochester Democrat And Chronicle newspaper in New York denounced female anarchists, with this headline: "Women anarchists have become the terror of world's police". The article stated that "the guardians of the world nearly always find a woman implicated when a ruler is stricken down", then contradictorily claimed that "emotional women lose sense of fear".  (Content note: sexual and gendered violence)
This headline seems especially relevant today given the scenes we saw across the UK at the weekend, where police attacked, assaulted and arrested women around the country at candlelight vigils commemorating the murder of a young woman, Sarah Everard, allegedly by a serving police officer with a history of committing sex offences.
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For an incisive critique of the nature of policing in our society, check out this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/the-end-of-policing-alex-s-

Edited March 15, 2021 by Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 17 March 1942, Yugoslav communist and anti-fascist militant Nada Dimić was executed in the Stara Gradiška concentration camp. Born of Serbian parents, she was a member of the first Yugoslav partisan unit in Croatia, and participated in sabotage raids on railroads. She was arrested by pro-Nazi Ustasha agents in 1941 and brutally tortured, but admitted nothing and soon escaped. On 3 December 1941, Dimić was confronted by Ustasha police while trying to help people escape fascists into partisan areas. When asked to identify herself, Dimić grabbed a revolver from her handbag and shot one of the officers. She was then arrested, imprisoned, tortured again and executed by firing squad. In 1951 she was declared a national hero of Yugoslavia.
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