History

Labour law and order

Submitted by wojtek on Nov 2 2012 23:56

An article by Preston Clements for Freedom exposing the political farce that was the repealing of the Trades Dispute Act in 1946 and in turn the reactionary nature of the Labour Party and trade union bureaucrats.

Hollywood could not have better staged the repeal of the Trades Dispute Act than did the highly publicised politicians at Westminster.

Children's strikes in 1911

Submitted by Steven. on Nov 1 2012 23:05
School children in Hull on strike in 1911 "for shorter hours and no stick"

Dave Marson's excellent 1973 pamphlet on the little-known mass walkouts of schoolchildren in the UK and Ireland in 1911, the same year that saw widespread industrial unrest and strikes. Their demands included shorter hours and an end to corporal punishment in the form of the cane and the strap.

EDITORIAL NOTE

The WOW factor: Wollongong’s unemployed and the dispossession of class and history

Submitted by wojtek on Oct 25 2012 21:40

The following is the text of a paper delivered to the first biennial Wollongong History Conference hosted by the University of Wollongong in June, 2007. The theme for the conference was Memory, Heritage and Place: Wollongong’s Changing History.

[b]The paper is based on part of my honours thesis completed in 2006, which involved interviewing people who were active in the Wollongong Out of Workers’ Union (WOW) during the 1980s (excerpts of two of those interviews can be found in [url=http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=unity&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com.au%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dillawarra%2Bunity%2Bwoll

Dryhurst, Nannie Florence, 1856-1930

Submitted by Battlescarred on Oct 24 2012 13:49
Nannie Dryhurst

A short biography of anarchist Nannie Dryhurst, active in the Freedom group.

“I cannot but recall with feelings of deep gratitude how Mrs Dryhurst, during those years, would in spite of her middle-class education and upbringing, cordially interest herself in and render help to every comrade of the most down-trodden class who was fortunate enough to come in contact with her” (William Wess)

Effects of automation in the lives of longshoremen

Submitted by IDP on Oct 23 2012 06:16
Break-bulk longshoring on San Francisco waterfront

This chapter in Stan Weir's Singlejack Solidarity tells the history of how, from the victory in the 1934 General Strike through the first Mechanization & Modernization (M&M) Agreement in 1961, longshore workers in San Francisco had 27 years of near-total control of the labor process on the waterfront in the "largest, longest, and most successful formal experiment in workers' control ever conducted in the United States."

With the M&M the ILWU negotiated those gains away, exchanging huge individual pay-outs for containerization and a 90% reduction of the workforce. The 134-day longshore strike in 1971 was the last attempt to reverse this.

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California labor: Total engagement

Submitted by IDP on Oct 23 2012 05:27
1901 San Francisco Strike of Teamsters, longshore and maritime workers

This chapter from Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception (1949) tells the history of class war in San Francisco, when "all of labor [was] pitted against all of capital." The conditions were unique: "Nowhere in the world has there been a more favorable economic environment, nor more freedom for social and political experiments than in California." The result? Wobbly organizing and near-general strikes on the San Francisco waterfront in 1886, 1893, 1901, and 1916, setting the stage for the 1934 General Strike, followed by the Oakland General Strike in 1946.

Demanding the impossible: A history of anarchism - Peter Marshall

Submitted by working class s... on Oct 23 2012 00:48

Navigating the broad 'river of anarchy', from Taoism to Situationism, from Ranters to Punk rockers, from individualists to communists, from anarcho-syndicalists to anarcha-feminists, Demanding the Impossible is an authoritative and lively study. It explores the key anarchist concepts of society and the state, freedom and equality, authority and power and investigates the successes and failure of the anarchist movements throughout the world.

When opening the document you will notice that all pages apart from the title page are small. If you zoom in to 100%, the text will be the correct size. you will then need to scroll all the way to the right to see it.

"El sainete porteño" and Argentine reality: The tenant strike of 1907

Submitted by wojtek on Oct 20 2012 22:55

An article by Donald S. Castro on Nemesio Trejo's theatre production Los inquilinos (The Tenants) and the 1907 rent strike in Buenos Aires, Argentina on which it is based.

Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 44, No. 1/2 (1990), pp. 51-68

The Falklands farce

Submitted by wojtek on Oct 19 2012 15:15

A number of Freedom articles published in the lead up to and during the Falklands War. Taken from The State Is Your Enemy: Selections From Freedom 1965-86.

There is blood on your hands Mr. Lawson!

Submitted by wojtek on Oct 18 2012 15:47

A Freedom article reporting on the suicide of the Spanish anti-fascist Agustin Solar on the 11th July, 1945, and then Labour government's policy of interning anti-fascists.

The cruel and idiotic policy of the British Government is driving the Spanish Anti-fascists interned at Chorley to take refuge in madness and suicide. On the 11th July, 1945, Agustin Soler committed suicide at Kirkham Camp. Since then two other Spaniards have gone insane. The most recent tragic case is that of Eusatgio Bustos, aged 53 and belonged to the Spanish Libertarian Movement.