Every year Palestinians commemerate Land Day / Yom al-Ard/ which coincides with the third anniversary of the Great March of Return in Gaza, and is marked by Palestinians wherever they live. on the anniversary of March 30, 1978,when Palestinian villages and cities across the country witnessed mass demonstrations against the states plans to expropriate 2,000 hectares of land in and around the Arab villages of Araba and Sakhnin as a part of a plan to "Judaise the Galilee".Israel's Galilee region.
In coordination with the military, some 4,000 police officers were dispatched to quell the unrest. At the end of the day, six Palestinian citizens were Killed by occupation forces, Kheir Mohammas Salim Tasin, Khadija Qaeem Shavaboch, Raja Hssein, AbuRayva, Khader Eid, Mahmoud Khalayleh, Muhsin HasanHasan, Said Taha and Raafar Ali-Zheir, as they defended their land, and over one hundred injured by state security forces..
The Day of the land - or Land Day marked the first mass mobilization of Palestinians within Israel against internal colonialism and land theft. It also signalled the failure of Israel to subjugate Palestinians who remained in their towns and villages, after around 700,000 of them were either expelled or forced to flee massacres committed by Zionist armed groups in 1948.
Today's commemoration of Land Day is an emblematic reminderL that the day falls during the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians. With immense grief and rage at the horrors the Israeli military is committing in Gaza right now, we recognize Palestinians’ deep roots in their land as we support the struggle for Palestinian freedom.and remember the countless human rights violations that have characterised more than 70 years of Palestinian land confiscation and dispossession.
This important day in Palestinian history commemorates the Palestinians sense of belonging to a people, to a cause and a country, to stand united against racial oppression and rules of apartheid,and the discriminatory practices of the Israeli government, giving continual potency to the Palestinians cause , its quest for justice and Palestinian rights, and its resistance to injustice,who never cease to fight for their land while holding passionately to their history and identity. It is the right of return, recognised in the United Nations Resolution 194, that drives Palestinians to continue with the commemoration of Land Day - regardless of their geographical location.
The day is commemorated annually by Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and further afield in refugee camps and among the Palestinian diaspora worldwide, with demonstrations, marches and by planting olive and fruit trees, as a symbol of their resilience to daily occupation..
Despite attempts to suppress Palestinian political movements, Land Day has remained a unifying symbol of resistance for Palestinian citizens in their fight for land, identity, and rights.While Israeli settler colonial expansionism does not rest, neither does Palestinian perseverance and Palestinians are continuing to mark Land Day with anti-Israel protests around Israel, West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Land Day continues to be poignantly relevant as Israel continues to confiscate land, expand their colonies, and continue to build their illegal settlements in flagrant violation of all international conventions, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law.
Land day is a Palestine day, a day for its people to proudly declare that they are one from the River to the Sea. It serves to remind the world that the Israeli denial and suppression of Palestinian resistance and their right to self-determination is a policy intended to squash the Palestinian people’s will and dominate them to expand Israel’s settler colonialism.
The Keep Hope Alive - Olive Tree Campaign works to support the Palestinian farmers to protect their land, to restore their hope, to empower them and to strengthen their steadfastness, by providing them with olive trees and share with them actions of solidarity and support from partners and friends worldwide.
In 2018, the Day of the Land once again bore witness to the popular organizing of the people, as thousands upon thousands gathered in Gaza for the Great March of Return, and occupation foces again shot down Palestinians defending their land and upholding their rights, 47 years after the first Land Day massacre. Israel occupying forces killed 16 martyrs of the land and return, with over 200 more shot down in the marches in the months and days to come.
The Palestinian struggle is unified around rootedness in the land: from land defenders in Masafer Yatta, to farmers in the Naqab. From those who use the day to visit the location of their villages destroyed in the Nakba, to those in exile who demand return to their homeland.
Today, Palestinians are resisting Israel’s relentless onslaught across their homeland. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Most of Gaza’s residents are already refugees, displaced from their land by Israel’s previous campaigns of ethnic cleansing.
In Palestinian reality, every day is Land Day. Despite Israel's genocide and apartheid, Palestinians will never give up their right to return to their ancestral lands.Today and tomorrow I continue to stand side by side with my sisters and brothers in solidarity with their struggle for peace, justice, equality and an end to the illegal occupation of their land.
I would urge others who may read this to do the same.As we mark the 49th anniversary of Land Day, commemorate all of the Palestinians murdered in Israel’s genocide against 2.3 million people in occupied Gaza. The Indigenous people of Palestine will continue their struggle for liberation and for the return of refugees to their ancestral land despite the genocide. and will never give in.
When the Israeli occupation ends, which it must it wil see many Palestinians return to their homeland and live there because it is their land.
The Land Day strike inspired the following powerful poem by Tawfiq Zayyad, Palestinian poet, writer, scholar and politician, that continues to resonate across the Palestinian generations.
Here we will stay - Tawfiq Zayyad ( 7/5/ 29 - 5/7/ 94)
In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee, we shall remain like a wall upon your chest, and in your throat like a shrad of glass, a cactus thron, and in your eyes a sandstorm. We shall remain a wall upon your chest, clean dishes in your restaurants, serve drinks in your bars, sweep the floors of your kitchens to snatch a bite for our children from your blue fangs. Here we shall stay, sing our songs, take to the angry streets, fill prisons with dignity. In Lidda, in Ramla, in the galilee, we shall remain, guard the shade of the fig and olive trees, ferment rebellion in our children as yeast in the dough.
Link to poem by Mahmoud Darwish on the same theme :-
The international community must go beyond solidarity and demand an end to the occupation and defend the self-determination of the Palestinian people, as recognized by the International Court of Justice and the United Nations General Assembly.
We must demand a total ceasefire and support the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their safe return to their land, and to demand our governments ends its complicity in Israel’s settler-colonialism and apartheid, and to stop arming Israel, and ban all trade with illegal Israeli settlements on stolen land. To those here in Britain I will urge to write to Foreign Secretary David Lammy now. From the river to the sea Palestine will be free!
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered the government’s spring budget earlier today , and appallingly will now see welfare payments cut even further, hitting the poorest and the most vulnerable the hardest, and pushing a quarter of a million people into poverty.
At a time over three quarters of people in receipt of Universal Credit and disability benefits are already struggling to afford the essentials like food, and when millions of us are struggling to make ends meet, these cruel cuts are simply indefensible. People who are unable to work because they are disabled, sick or caring for others deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
A tightening of eligibility for the main disability benefit personal independence payment (PIP) and changes to the sickness element of universal credit (UC) last week had already prompted stark warnings from charities concerned over their impact on vulnerable people. But today Rachel Reeves confirmed UC health benefits for new claimants will be halved in 2026 and then frozen until 2030.
The department for work and pensions' (DWP) own impact assessment of the cuts , also published today revealed up to 3.2 million families who are current and future recipients will lose an average of £1,720 per year compared to inflation.
Today’s Spring Statement continuies the legacy of austerity since 2010, which saw the harshest spending cuts in generations. The cruel benefits cuts in Rachel Reeves spring statement aren’t because of her economically illiterate fiscal rules or balancing the books, she’s been gunning for benefits claimants for over a decade.The following is a link to an article from 2013.
Her welfare cuts are driven by ideology, not necessity.
Labour’s justification for the cuts makes little economic sense and is rooted in the kind of demonisation of people who rely on the welfare state that we have seen under successive Conservative governments: a scroungers versus strivers narrative pushed by politicians and the media alike.
A life on benefits is not an easy ride at the taxpayer’s expense. Around five out of six households on universal credit regularly go without essentials such as food and heating, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Making claims is also an arduous task. Many have described the Pip application process as complex and humiliating, while the work capability assessment for disabled people was linked to nearly 600 suicides in the three years following its introduction in 2010.
Far from being about streamlining and improving the welfare state, these cuts are a cynical, penny-pinching exercise, introduced with the sole aim of adhering to the chancellor’s self-imposed fiscal rules.
Before the July 2024 election, Keir Starmer repeatedly promised that there would be no return to austerity. But, from the winter fuel allowance to welfare, that pledge has been needlessly shattered. As it stands, the government is set to unleash the most punishing erosion of disability benefits the nation has ever seen, the highest rates of child poverty since 1998 and our already battered and bruised public services are facing another hammer blow. This is the opposite of what people voted for and many are viewing having cast their ballot for Labour as a mistake they won’t make twice.
Cuts to already precarious incomes won’t help disabled people find work. Instead, they’ll risk forcing more people to skip meals and turn to food banks to get by and push many deeper into poverty. The additional freeze to the health element of Universal Credit will undoubtedly force more people to decide between heating and eating, which is a choice no one should have to make.
It is a simple fact that alreafy many people are not getting the support they so genuinely need. And it's very difficult to see how this government of ours is going to make anything easier.This isn't what voters want. Seven in ten voters across political parties agree the social security for disabled people should at least be enough to cover essential living costs
The idea that the Chancellor’s hand was forced into this by extenuating circumstances is an entirely false economy; there is always a choice. Choosing disabled people to bear the burden of today’s self-imposed economising , a group which already make up 70 per cent of foodbank users, is most certainly a wrong and disgraceful choice of clear deliberate cruelty .
What is making me so angry about Rachel Reeves' cuts is their sheer brazen callousness. The needs and hopes and longing of the people for a better future just slapped away, and all the while billions are given over to war and the wealthy left untouched. This was a chance to introduce a tax on the super-rich and big corporations, to redistribute their extreme wealth and create a fairer society.
Rather than committing to investment in clean energy, housing, schools, nature restoration, culture, things that would meaningfully improve our lives ,the UK government squandered this opportunity.
Instead of targeting the wealthiest in society, the Labour government has chosen shamefully to attack those who are most vulnerable. A simple 2% tax on assets over £10 million could raise £24 billion, r — nearly five times as much revenue as will be gained from welfare cuts. .A meausre that had much public support too,
Rachel Reeves told MPs of the government plans to cut billions from welfare support for the sick and disabled, while diverting funds from the international development budget to increase military spending. finding £2.2bn to give to Big Military. Ensuring we are purveyors of military death and destruction so we can have "economic growth". It's psychopathic, and at the the same time MPs are getting a pay rise, and to me personally the government’s continual obsession with militarisation shows that it is morally bankrupt. .
Rachel Reeves could very easily have issued a Wealth Tax, but choose not too and like the Tories before her continues to treat our disabled people ,mentally ill and the vulnerable with disdain. We don't need more austerity, we need a system that protects not punishes.
It's all very worrying stuff, mny of us are scared and frightened at this present time, as we witness attacks on the poorest and most vulnerable that the previous Tory government would have been proud of. What an absolute bloody disgrace.
Rachel Reeves finds ‘personal criticism’ hard, but as she set out her plans of democide for the disabled.and the poor among us she has revelaed herself to be truly vindictive and evil Rachel Reeves has consigned so many now to a life of poverty or an early grave.
It is in the vital interests of the labour movement as whole to resist these cruel vicious cuts. The poor, disabled people and the sick are part of the working class, even if all of them are not currently in work. The Labour party seems to have forgotten this. Every imposition on them is a disgrace, and has the potential to affect everyone in work, or seeking work.
IF effected by all of this, as am sure a lot are, rhree charities, Mind, Scope and Citizens Advice - have already said they have seen a surge in people contacting them after last week's disability and sickness benefit cuts announcement. remember to be be kind to yourself. We must continue to fight this evil, and if you haven’t already, will you please email your MP urging them to call on the Work and Pensions Secretary to rethink these cruel cuts?
During the sacred month of Ramadam in a grave escalation of their genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians, and after countless violations, Israel has completely shattered the ceasefire in Gaza. In its most brazen breach of the agreement, Israel launched airstrikes into Gaza early Tuesday morning, killing over 413 people mostly civilians, including women and children. Targets of the attack included homes and tent camps across the Strip. More than 550 have been hospitalised while more bodies remain trapped beneath the rubble.
Israel has been consistently undermining the so-called “ceasefire” by both indirectly and directly killing Gazans throughout this period. On March 2, Israel sealed Gaza’s borders, blocking food, medical supplies, and essential goods from entering, and the Israeli occupation forces never stopped opening fire and killing Palestinians in Gaza. In reality, the genocide never ended.
The bombings have resumed, hitting densely populated areas, makeshift schools, residential buildings, and the temporary shelters of people who’ve lost their homes. Forced displacement orders are pushing families from one place to another with nowhere safe to go. With the siege still in place, food and water are scarce.
For the last two weeks, Israel has completely blockaded Gaza, using starvation as a weapon of war as it continued to kill Palestinians with impunity.Prices have sky rocketed; tomatoes now cost eight times what they did. Medical evacuations remain impossible; thousands of wounded, including 4,500 children, need urgent care outside Gaza. Make no mistake, Israel does not intend to stop bombing civilians including scores of children in Gaza. So I have to say. Don’t stop talking about Gaza.
The latest Israeli attacks on a defenceless population in Gaza are barbaric and inhumane. World leaders can no longer turn a blind eye.As children in Gaza continue to be killed by Israel, the least we can do is bear witness to the crimes committed against them. Remember that Hamas hasn’t fired a rocket at Israel in over 2 months.
The near-total decimation of the healthcare system in Gaza and the desperate shortages in medical equipment and supplies, exacerbated by Israel’s unlawful siege, effectively means a death sentence for many of those with serious injuries and illnesses, and those that in normal conditions would be easily curable.
The resumption of Israel’s attacks also puts the lives of 24 remaining Israeli hostages at risk who are believed to be alive. This is also a cruel blow for hostages and Palestinian detainees as well as for their families.
The international community must unite against these acts of genocide and hold Israel accountable for its flagrant breaches of international law. Israel is a terrorist State. 20,000 Palestinian families have lost at least one child in Gaza. Children in Gaza are being killed while sleeping. What an evil state can possibly mass kill children, in a clear crime against humanity.Nothing can justify the loss of life of a child. Nothing. Not self defense. Not human shields. Not a damn thing. How has bloody Keir Starmer 'reacted' by continuing to send Israel the weapons to kill them. Absolutely shameful.
Israel has committed war crime after war crime, emboldened by Western governments' refusal to act. All governments must respond to this despicable assault on civilians with immediate sanctions,stop arming Israel and force this monstrous country to end its war crimes.
Israel's bloodthirsty aggression proves peace was never the goal, only genocide and domination. Shame on a nation that bombs fasting children while the world watches in silence. Israel has systematically starved, forcibly displaced and deliberately deprived Palestinians in Gaza of everything they need to survive , water, food, medical help and shelter. This act of collective punishment is against international law, as is the indiscriminate killing of civilians.
“The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience." Dr Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International Secretary General.
Justice for Palestine starts with action! The international community needs to do more than just make noise right now.How are we meant to carry on as “normal” when a genocide is happening in front of our eyes?
Get on the streets and demand an end to Israel’s war crimes! We need to push for a permanent ceasefire, to allow humanitarian aid for people facing intolerable suffering. The siege of Gaza must be stopped, and water, food and fuel allowed in.
In news that will strike fear into the hearts of many, the UK Government is set to unveil more than £6 billion catastrophic cuts to the welfare budget which will mean those unable to work will lose money, during a massive price rise and cost of living crisis..
PIP is not linked to work but is awarded to help with the additional costs of disabilities. The Labour Government is also set to freeze PIP payments next year so that they do not rise with inflation. There will also be changes to the way Universal Credit is calculated. The basic rate paid to those searching for work will be raised, while the rate for those who are judged as unfit for work will be cut. The remaining £1bn will reportedly come through “a major investment for employment support for those who are looking for a job”.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall previously said that “there are people who shouldn’t be on benefits who are taking the mickey”. Yes, they're called 'The Royal Family' and currently UK Labour who are truly "taking the mickey"
What everyone needs to grasp that legacy welfare benefits, Carer's Allowance, Universal Credit and PIP are currently woefully inadequate. nly last week the United Nations called out the inadequacies of the UK’s disability benefits system. PIP and ESA don’t cover basic costs. Disabled people are already being pushed into extreme poverty by Tory welfare cuts.Any changes to benefits should support, not disadvantage, those with disabilities or long-term conditions.The welfare state is supposed to provide a safety net, not punish people for being disabled or out of work.
Another thing people seem to forget is that British people are entitled to £23 billion pounds more in benefits payments than they actually claim. The public purse is billions better off because folks who need and are are entitled to support opt to struggle through solo. That's the real story of benefits in Britain.
If these announcements are actually true it's one of total shame for the Labour Party who will have revealed themselves to be totally morally corrupt sociopaths, they are currently giving billions to Ukraine, while planning to take billions from the Disabled. It's simply outrageous. Especially when you consider that Keith Starmer is only doing it for profit.
Labour recently signed a 100-year business deal with Ukraine. This is a warped ideological decision, not an economic one. the labour party just wants poor, old and disabled people to die.
The combination of Labours welfare cuts, almost all aimed at the disabled, their unashamed pro-Israel policy and the rest of their capitulations to power, privilege and wealth means no one with any pretensions to decency can remain within the party. Starmer has torn the heart and soul out of the party and it has no reason to exist any more.
Labour figures including Anas Sarwar, when asked why they are cutting welfare, are parroting the same slogan. "The clue's in the name. Labour. We're the party of work." There isn't any Labour party anymore. There are just three right wing parties. Reform, Labour and the Tories.
If you had any hope that the Labour party we all used to know; the one who gave us the NHS and the welfare state, who stood behind the workers and the people, was still here then this will finally kill that idea. The old Labour Party would have fought tooth and nail to help those in need but this lot seems instead of tackling the root of soaring living costs hellbent on sadistically hurting us.
Am absolutely disgusted at the Labour Party for even thinking that it's acceptable to try and balance the books at the expense of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society. Shame on them and anyone who thinks it's acceptable just because they aren't the Tories.
However hard they try to defend this, however they try to spin this, however they try to hide what they are doing in double talk their behaviour is evil and immoral in every sense of the word ,it's bad enough they support genocide. At least the Tories told us to our faces what they were doing; this shower lie, deceive and plot our deaths.
The cost-of-living crisis has hit those of us already experiencing poverty the hardest. Slashing billions from welfare will not help people into work or save money, We must continue to resist reforms that target and harm the vulnerable, mentally ill, disabled people, among us, that will only further deepen poverty and further exacerbating distress.
Why is this Government so reluctant to tax those who can afford to be taxed more, the mega-wealthy, who wouldn't even feel a 1 or 2% on their income? Crucifying and scapegoating the poor is not the answer. it's not reform, just a heartless unnecessarily cruel measure.
Plans to slash billions from welfare spending is an outrageous attack on the poorest. Imagine living with a disability, relying on essential mobility aids and medication, and already facing overwhelming expenses. Now, the Government wants to make huge cuts to our welfare system, which experts warn will push more people with disabilities into poverty.
Charities and even 80 Labour MPs, a fifth of the party, oppose these plans. We need to show the public’s voice with a huge petition saying NO to these cruel cuts. The welfare system is meant to support us when we need it most. Think about having an accident that left you struggling with high costs and then the Government slashed your support. We can’t let this happen - these cuts must be stopped in their tracks.
Opposing the removal of £6 billion from disabled people and some of the most vulnerable in society isn’t about being left or right—inside or outside Labour. It’s about basic decency. Please sign the following petition.
The radical German painter Franz Wilhelm Seiwert was born on 9 March 1894 in Cologne, the only child of a postal worker Johann Seiwert and his wife Margarethe, née Düppenbecker.. His father came from Andernach, his mother from Oberpleis (now the city of Königswinter)Seiwert grew up in humble circumstances, and began attending elementary school in 1900, which he completed in 1909.
Franz Wilhelm Seiwert was severely burned by a radiology treatment in 1901 at the age of seven and for the rest of his life feared he would die at a young age. This not only had a significant influence on his development, but also shaped his artistic work to such an extent that human suffering became the central theme of his work.
From 1910 to 1914, he attended the Cologne School of Applied Arts, and afterwards he worked for an architectural firm. During the First World War, Seiwert was not drafted due to his illness. Politically, he adopted a pacifist stance during this time, which was expressed in the fact that from autumn 1916 onwards he took part in the anti-war cultural lecture series in Cologne, privately organised by the writer couple Carlo Oskar (1984-1971) and Käthe Jatho (1891-1989). A close friendship developed between Seiwert and the couple, who soon gave him the name Franz in reference to Francis of Assisi (1184-1226),
Seiwert also came in contact with other up-and-coming artists such as Otto Freundlich (1878-1943), who was of key importance for the stylistic development of Seiwert's work in the following years and put him in touch with important contacts, such as the Berlin publisher Franz Pfemfert (1879-1954).
Seiwert received further inspiration for his art from the religious, philosophical and secular works of literary history that were presented and discussed at Jathos events, and which the artist dealt with in woodcut cycles, such as the Gospel of John (1917) or Homer's Odyssey (1919).
An exhibition of expressionist graphics by German avant-gardists organized by the "Jatho" circle in 1916 gave Seiwert the opportunity to present his own work in the form of a bust of Christ. His participation brought him his first commission from the women's rights activist Mathilde von Mevissen who entrusted Seiwert with painting the dome of her house in Cologne.
The year 1917 saw Seiwert become closer to the pacifist-communist artist movement during this time and in the following years became an important agitator of the movement in the Rhineland and an ardent advocate of the Marxist world revolution, and was actively involved in the international discussions concerning proletarian culture during the revolutionary upsurge following the First World War. "Throw out the old false idols! In the name of the coming proletarian culture"
He was also frequent contributor to Franz Pfemfert's anti-militarist magazine Die Aktion, and in 1917, Seiwert became a member of Pfemfert's "Anti-National Socialist Party" (German: Antinationale Sozialistenpartei) a political organisation originally clandestinely founded in Berlin in 1915, and after the end of the war in 1918/19 he was also co-founder of the Cologne branch of the Berlin "Working Council for Art".
While the connection to Pfemfert had already enabled the artist to exhibit in the Berlin offices of the "Aktion" in 1919, contact with social revolutionary artistic circles in the following years opened up the possibility of participating in numerous important exhibitions in Germany, which ultimately led to Seiwert's work's public breakthrough.
Also around 1919, the artist began writing social and cultural revolutionary, partly anarchist pamphlets that were published in socialist magazines. In these writings, the artist called for the "enslaved" proletariat to rebel against the capitalist consumer state and for the self-denial of its population.
On a political level, Seiwert demanded the removal of parties and leaders, rejecting Bolshevism and opposing the revolutionary centralization propagated by Russia, which in turn contradicted the Marxist doctrine he represented. Although a committed Communist he was never an actual member of the German Communist party KPD and was dismissive of party politics in general..
In 1919, alongside Max Ernst, Hans Arp and Johannes Baargeld, Seiwert was also instrumental in the creation of Cologne's significant, though short-lived branch of Dada. which was a radical artistic and literary movement that was a reaction against the cultural climate that supported the First World War. The Dadaists took an anti-establishment attitude, questioning art's status and favouring performance and collage over traditional art techniques. Many Dadaists went on to become involved with Surrealism.
Dada was an international, multi-disciplinary phenomenon that reacted against the nationalist climate supporting the First World War. The movement was defined by an anti-bourgeois, anti-establishment stance and a love of the absurd, nonsensical and ridiculous. The group even declared themselves anti-art, claiming, ‘Dada is anti-Dada!’.
Beginning in Zurich, the movement was later developed in Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, New York, Paris and Barcelona during and after the First World War. It is now considered the first conceptual art movement and a watershed moment in the development of modern art. The Dada language evolved alongside other avant-garde movements including Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism and a diverse output ranged from performance to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting, and collage.
Accounts on the discovery of the term ‘dada’ vary, although it is thought poet Richard Huelsenbeck plunged a knife into a German-French dictionary at random. The term appealed to the group, reflecting their childish sense of the absurd. It had an elastic quality, as Ball explained, ‘Dada means in Romanian, ‘Yes, Yes’, in French a rocking- or hobby horse. In German, it is a sign of absurd naivety.’
During the First World War, Zurich was a refuge for international artists, writers and thinkers. Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings initially founded the movement in 1916 in the city’s Cabaret Voltaire, with other members including Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara, https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2014/04/tristan-tzara-441896-251263-radical.html Marcel Janco and Richard Huelsenbeck.
The Zurich group published a Dada magazine and held numerous art exhibitions spreading their anti-war, anti-art ideas. They also held regular evening events with experimental poetry readings, music and dancing, and Tzara and Arp famously explored ‘chance’ through ripping up and scattering paper pieces onto the floor.
In 1917, Tzara went on to found Galerie Dada on Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich and later became the leader of the movement, spreading the word through letters to France and Italy. After the end of the First World War in 1918, many artists returned to their home countries and spread Dada ideas further. In Berlin, Huelsenbeck founded Club Dada, with major figures including John Heartfield, George Grosz and Hannah Hoch. Their work reflected a fascination with technology, and took on deeper political leanings than the Zurich group.
Kurt Schwitters was excluded from the Berlin group, due to his work’s aesthetic qualities, instead founding his own one-man group in Hanover in 1919, in which he termed his art Merz. In Cologne, Max Ernst and Johannes Theodor Baargeld formed a Dada group in 1918, later joined by Hans Arp who made series' of ground-breaking collages.
Seiwert would take part in the Dada-Constructivist conference in Dusseldorf in 1922 and then establish himself as the leader of the Gruppe Progressiver Künstler (The Progressive Group of Artists). This was a group who sought to reconcile Constructivism with a realism that carried radical political views. The style that Seiwert advocated was one of sharp graphic clarity, geometric precision and which also contained words printed on the surface whose themes concentrated on Marxist writings, on workers and on unionist principles as in Soviet era Russian Constructivism.
As Ernst was to remember though, due to political differences, Seiwert had ultimately pulled out of taking part in the much-celebrated Cologne-Dada inaugural exhibition shortly before its opening. According to Ernst, Seiwert's decision was made on the grounds that he found their concept of Dada not revolutionary enough, or as he described it, not 'socially concrete'.
Instead, along with the ar tists Willy Fick, Heinrich Hoerle, Angelika Hoerle. Anton Räderscheidt and his wife Marta Hegemann, Seiwert founded the alternate, 'Gruppe Stupid' to which Ernst and Baargeld,would also, for a time, be affiliated.
The Gruppe Stupid' aimed to address sociopolitical issues through an art of proletarian character. Seiwert described the group's esthetic: "We are attempting to be so clear that everyone will be able to understand us." Räderscheidt's studio was their base of operations, but by 1920 he had abandoned the constructivist style. The group exhibited together and issued a publication, "Stupid 1", before disbanding.
While Seiwert's post-war art was primarily characterized by an expressionist-cubist style, in which sculptural works predominated alongside the often symbolic, figurative and abstract prints, from 1920/21 the artist developed a representational-constructivist formal language, partly based on medieval painting, which fulfilled his claim to simplify, symbolize and typify the motifs of his propagandistic, proletarian art.
Workers, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert 1926
Demonstration, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert , 1925
With the change from woodcut to linocut around 1920, Seiwert also made a change in craftsmanship in an effort to implement a socialist art. At the same time, his sculptural activity declined. The artist found motifs and themes for his socially critical works of the early 1920s in the political and social events in the Ruhr region, where radical, revolutionary tendencies and the progressive impoverishment of the working class due to hyperinflation and the Allied occupation policy were particularly evident between 1918 and 1923. In 1921, Seiwert is known to have travelled to Berlin for the first time, where he made important contact with regard to his cultural and political activities in the artist couple Margarete (1891-1984) and Stanislaw Kubicki (1889-1943), who organised an international exhibition of revolutionary artists in Berlin in 1922 with artist and writer friends.
The acquaintances he made with László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) and El Lissitzky (1890-1941) through his participation in the international “Congress of New Progressive Artists in Düsseldorf” in 1922, meant that Seiwert increasingly dealt with abstraction in his work at this time. His visit to the Berlin “1st The “Russian Art Exhibition” in 1922 with works of suprematist and constructivist art by Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935), Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953) and Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) had a lasting influence on his work.
A kind of counterpoint to his previous writings on revolutionary theory was the pseudo-historiographical article "The Development of the Communist Movement in Germany", published in 1922, in which Seiwert attempted to explain the course and failure of the socialist post-war revolution. The failure of all Spartacist uprisings, which the artist believed was the fault of the Social Democrats, forced him in 1923 to believe that there was no such thing as proletarian art and culture, which meant that his social revolutionary graphics decreased significantly from 1924 onwards and he began to focus on sociological oil paintings as well as typographic and architectural work.
He also took on advertising commissions during this time and, together with Heinrich Hoerle, worked as a consultant for the Cologne architects Wilhelm Riphahn and Caspar Maria Grod (1878-1931). In 1924 Seiwert took part in the "1st General Art Exhibition of the West" in Moscow, where he exhibited again in 1926. In the same year he visited Otto Freundlich in Paris, who had emigrated there in 1924. This stay was followed in 1927 by another trip to France, to Chartres and Paris, during which he developed friendly contact with Fernand Léger (1881-1955) and Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), after whose sculpture "The Kiss" Seiwert designed the gravestone for his mother in 1929.
Seiwert expanded his political commitment in 1925 by writing several articles for the Cologne newspaper "Sozialistische Republik". From 1927 onwards, his architectural work was reflected in his collaboration with the magazine "Westdeutsche Bauschau", for which he wrote numerous articles until 1929. Together with Gerd Arntz, August Sander and El Lissitzky, Seiwert produced works for the International Press Exhibition in Cologne in 1928, where he came into contact with the Bohemian artist Augustin Tschinkel (1905-1983).
In 1929 he founded the magazine "a-z", a journal of progressive art which he edited until its final issue in February of 1933. This became a vehicle for the exposition of Figurative Constructivism, describing its origins as "From the expressionist-cubist art-form abstract constructivism was developed, which in turn led into Figurative Constructivism"and of which his 1927 painting Freudlose Gasse (Joyless Alleyway) is one of the finest examples.
As in the work of his fellow 'Progressive', Gerd Arntz, the simplified geometry of this painting is intentional. Seiwert saw the rigid structure of his paintings as analogous to the similarly rigid structures of life imposed upon the proletariat by the ruling powers.
As opposed to a work depicting social disintegration and decay such as George Grosz's 1918 Gefährliche Strasse for example, (and which this painting, in some ways, resembles) the rigid structures and strict compartmentalisation of Freudlose Gasse confront the viewer with an easy-to-read diagram of social order and control. Here, the picture outlines the essential stereotypes of much of 1920s German Realist painting: the bourgeois in his bowler hat, the naked prostitute and the policeman-guardian of the establishment, all neatly aligned into subordinate performative roles within the overall structure of the nocturnal metropolis. Serving as a simple lexicon of German night-life in the 1920s.
In 1933, Nazi threats forced Seiwert to temporarily flee to the mountain range of Siebengebirge, but his health was badly deteriorating, due to the incurable radiation burns he had received as a child, and after friends brought him back to Cologne, he died on July 3rd 1933, just before the Nazis undoubtedly would have come for him. The Franz-Seiwert-Straße in Cologne commemorates the artist.
Selbstbildnis (Self-portrait) by Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, 1928,
International Women's Day (IWD), celebrated on March 8, is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The women's day has been celebrated for well over a century, with the first one in 1911.
The day marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women's achievements or rally for women's equality.
Marked annually on March 8th, women's day is one of the most important days of the year to celebrate women's achievements, raise awareness about women's equality, lobby for accelerated gender parity and fundraise for female-focused charities.
The day is marked in various ways across different cultures. In some countries, it is a public holiday, while others observe it with demonstrations, panel discussions, and cultural events. In Italy, women receive yellow mimosa flowers as a symbol of solidarity and appreciation. In China, some workplaces grant female employees a half-day off. Countries such as Argentina and Spain hold large-scale rallies advocating for women’s rights.
One of the most recognizable symbols of International Women’s Day is the color purple, representing justice and dignity. Alongside green (hope) and white (purity), these colors were originally chosen by the Women’s Social and Political Union in the United Kingdom in 1908.
Let's not forget either the radical history of the day itself. Ever since women fought for the right to vote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the essence of their fight has been political. They have put forward their claims on society as a matter of right, facing all kinds of state-inspired discrimination and violence against them and state-sanctioned attempts to relegate them to second, third and fourth grade citizenship based on brutal identity politics and exploitation.
Women, however, speak in their own name and refuse to accept any limitations on their right to decide all matters which affect their lives. Their courage and determination in the front ranks of the struggle for a society which recognizes everyone as equal members of the body politic with equal rights and duties inspires everyone to also fight for the rights of all.
In 1909 the Socialist Party of America organized a New York City march commemorating a garment workers’ strike the previous year when hundreds of women workers in the New York needle trades demonstrated in Rutgers Square in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to form their own union and to demand the right to vote. This historic demonstration took place on March 8th. It led, in the following year to the ‘uprising’ of 30,000 women shirtwaist makers which resulted in the first permanent trade unions for women workers in the USA. The famous slogan bread and roses made its debut at this protest The Socialist Party of America declared National Woman's Day, to be celebrated on February calling for better pay and working conditions as well as the right to vote. It was at the second annual meeting of the International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen in 1910, that Clara Zetkin, a prominent Marxist activist from Germany’s Social Democratic Party, proposed the following motion at the Copenhagen Conference of the Second International: “The Socialist women of all countries will hold each year a Women’s Day, whose foremost purpose it must be to aid the attainment of women’s suffrage. This demand must be handled in conjunction with the entire women’s question according to Socialist precepts. The Women’s Day must have an international character and is to be prepared carefully.”
The conference agreed. During the First World War, she along with Karl Liebnecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and other International SPD politicians, had rejected the party's policy of Burgfrieden , which was a call to refrain from strikes during the war. Among other anti-war activities she also organised an international socialist womens anti-war conference in Berlin, 1915. She however was not just an organiser, but also a great writer and thinker. That still remains an inspiration today. Because of her anti-war opinions, she was arrested several times, during the war and in 1916 was taken into 'protective custody'.She also held the view that still holds much resonance today, that the source of women's oppression was in capitalism, and that any form of liberation, could only be served with the self-emancipation of the working class.
IWD, consequently, was celebrated for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19, 1911. Women in these countries demanded the right to vote, to hold public office and the right to work. Russian women began celebrating IWD in 1913, and on IWD 1914, across Europe there were marches against the impeding imperialist war and for a women's right to vote. In 1917 in Russia, International Women’s Day acquired great significance , it was the flashpoint for the Russian Revolution.
On March 8th women workers in Petrograd held a mass strike and demonstration demanding Peace and Bread in protest at the deaths of more than 2 million Russian soldiers in the war. The strike movement spread from factory to factory and effectively became an insurrection. After the Russian Revolution, in 1922, in honour of the women’s role in 1917, Lenin declared that March 8th should be designated officially as women’s day in the Soviet Union. From there, it was primarily celebrated in communist countries such as China. But on the heels of the U.S civil rights movement in the 1960s, as women fought sex discrimination in the 1960s and ’70s, the United Nations declared 1975 as International Women’s Year.
In 1977 the U.N. officially marked IWD by inviting member countries to celebrate women’s rights and world peace on March 8. It has since been celebrated in more than 100 countries, and has been made an official holiday in more than 25. Ever since, International Women’s Day celebrations have been held on March 8 in countries across the globe — serving as an annual reminder of the revolutionary potential of working women., and in 1996, began to adopt an annual theme for every year. The first theme was "Celebrating the past, Planning for the Future."
The International Women’s Day website https://www.internationalwomensday.com/ has announced that this year’s theme is ‘For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality and Empowerment’, calling for urgent action that can unlock equal rights, power and opportunities for all and a feminist future where no one is left behind. Central to this vision is empowering the next generation, particularly young women and adolescent girls as catalysts for lasting change.
Aligned with this global movement, the agency theme, ‘Accelerate Action’, is an important rallying call that reflects the UN's urgency to drive gender equality forward and emphasises the importance of taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality and addressing systemic barriers and biases that women face, both within personnel and professional situations.
While the progress made in women's rights should be applauded, it it's a very sad fact that for many women in the present day, little if anything has improved, since all those years ago when women initially marched. Many women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.
This day then is an appropriate occasion to remember the too many gaps hindering, sometimes in a brutal and cruel manner, the process towards the full recognition and protection of women’s rights as universal human rights. change is still happening too slowly for thousands of women and girls around the world.
At the current rate of progress, it will take until 2158, which is roughly five generations from now, to reach full gender parity, according to data from the World Economic Forum. That's why this year International Women's Day aims to highlight the importance of taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality.
Statistics show the gaps that still exist, in conflict zones, reports of sexual violence have surged, with a 50% increase in recorded cases in 2023. Women and girls made up 95% of the victims. An estimated 119 million girls worldwide remain out of school. Women continue to have access to only two-thirds of the rights that men enjoy in most countries.
In 2024, nearly half the world’s population participated in elections, but the growth in female political representation was at its lowest rate in 20 years. A we observe International Womens Day, lets stand up for all women still trapped by injustices, still suffering from abuse, acknowledge all those who have been persecuted, jailed, tortured, simply for being a woman. Especially those who are among the most vulnerable in this present moment of time - the refugees.
Let us also celebrate the powerful women who've fought dictatorship, risked their lives to fight climate change and led mass movements for justice across the world, we cannot let their contributions go unnoticed today and every day. As Audre Lorde said "I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own,"
We must acknowlege too that freedom from gendered oppression will not be complete without the liberation of all oppressed people, whether here in Britain or across the world.As far back as the period of the British Mandate, Palestinian women were organising together to advance the struggle for liberation, both as women and as proud Palestinians.
Today, despite the fact that 70% of those killed by Israel in Gaza since 2023 have been women and children; despite the current complete restriction of aid which will push thousands of women further into desperation; despite Israel’s escalating violence against Palestinian women across the West Bank including the recent killing of eight months pregnant Palestinian woman Sondos Jamal Muhammad Shalabi in Nur Shams refugee camp; and despite the gendered and sexual violence that is central to Israel’s settler-colonial project; incredibly, Palestinian women continue to resist.
In November 2023, Palestinian feminists issued a call https://bdsmovement.net/Ending-Gaza-Genocide-Feminist-Issue-Call-From-Palestinian-Women to people across the world to escalate campaigns as a form of meaningful solidarity to bring down Israel’s regime of oppression. They called for aid to Gaza, to reject the forcible transfer of Palestinians from their home and for countries across the world to impose a comprehensive military-security embargo on Israel. Shamefully, the British government has utterly failed to answer this call. It is up to us to ensure they are held to account.
As the statement from Palestinian feminists reads: “This moment is the litmus test for humanity and the very meaning of justice and freedom. If not now, when?”
Actions will be taking place for International Women’s Day across the country. I encourage you to stand, today and every day, with all those oppressed by patriarchal and colonial violence, and all those internationally who are still fighting sexism and the inequality, exploitation and hardship and continue to try and promote gender equality and political justice, that will make this world of ours a better place for everyone. Happy International Women’s Day! Let;s not forget its socialist feminist origins. and use March 8 to pledge to redouble our efforts accelerate and protect and extend women’s rights “for the many not the few.”
With the sighting of the new moon, almost two billion Muslims worldwide have begun to observe the Holy month of Ramadan. The holy month of fasting spans a period of 29 to 30 days and celebrates the first time when the Quran was revealed to Prophet Muhammad, according to Islam. Ramadan is the ninth month and the most sacred of the Islamic lunar calendar, that is observed worldwide.
The Islamic Calendar follows the phases of the moon, commonly known as the lunar cycle. As a result, the Holy month of Ramadan falls approximately 10 days earlier each year in the Gregorian calendar. The Ramadan start date for 2025 was expected to fall around 28 February following the sighting of the moon over Mecca or respective countries. This year, the month-long fasting festival started on March 1, but the fasting started on Sunday, March 2
Lasting for 29 or 30 days, Ramadan 2025 will end around 30 March, with the celebratory days of Eid al-Fitr estimated to start around 30 March, again with a possible difference of a couple of days.A joyous celebration that begins with a special prayer known as the Salat al-Eid. This day is characterised by feasting, wearing new clothes, giving gifts, and spending time with family and friends. It’s also a time when muslims continue their charitable practices by giving Zakat al-Fitr, ensuring that even the less fortunate can join in the festivities.
This holy month is among one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Muslims will fast (Sawm) and abstain from food and drink (physical component) from dawn to sunset, and offer more prayers (Salāh) and to learn self-discipline, patience, humility, and enhance community cohesion (spiritual aspect). Muslims will also donate to charity (Zakāh), and carry out charitable acts, pursue to improve one’s character, and spend time with family and friends.
For Muslim communities, Ramadan is not only a month of fasting but also a sacred time to delve deeper into and appreciate cherished human values, including upholding the rights of fellow human beings, serving communities, and strengthening bonds with each other. A month of mercy, forgiveness, and blessings. Muslims also aim to grow spiritually and become closer to Allah and their loved ones. They do this by abstaining from pleasures like smoking, drinking and sexual intercourse between sunrise and sunset each day.
One of the most important aspects of the Ramadan fast is called “niyyah” which literally means “intention.” Muslims must not simply (or accidentally) abstain from food; they must achieve the requirement of niyyah. A Muslim’s intention to fast must come from the heart and from a place of worship to Allah. So if someone fasts for political or dietary reasons, they will not achieve niyyah. According to scripture, “Whoever does not make niyyah before dawn, would not have fasted”.
In much of the Muslim world, restaurants are closed during the daylight hours of Ramadan. Families wake up early, before the sun rises, and eat a meal called “sohour”. After the sun sets, the fast is broken with a meal called “iftar”. Iftar often begins with eating dates and drinking sweet drinks to give fasting Muslims a quick energy boost. It can include any type of food, but the dessert almost always includes konafa or qatayef. Konafa is a cake made of wheat, sugar, honey, raisins, and nuts, and Qatayef is a similar but smaller cake, that’s folded to encase the nuts and raisins. In between the two meals, the night-time iftar and the pre-dawn sohour, Muslims can eat freely.
As we begin this Holy Month, Palestinian, Lebanese, Sudanese and Syrian people are beginning to rebuild their lives despite their homes, hospitals, schools and places of worship being destroyed as Winter sets in. Fearless women in Afghanistan continue to fight for their freedom. Over a million Rohingya remain in Cox’s Bazaar, some for decades. Civilians continue to come under attack and face famine in South Sudan and Yemen.
Meanwhile, Uyghur Muslims in China endure their religious freedoms being repressed, mass surveillance, arbitrary detention, and the erosion of their cultural and religious identity.
This Ramadan, lets remember the importance of charity, and in giving back to affected communities as well as keeping those who have lost their lives in the Gaza genocide in mind.
Lets stand united, stand alongside Muslim communities around the world and continue to challenge injustice in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Iran, Lebanon, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen and many other places.
The other night I was speaking to a palestinian friend in gaza and despite Israel halting all aid from going inside of Gaza on the first days of Ramadan, they were gathering for Iftar in the rubble of their destroyed neighborhood, I have never encountered such faithful, resilient, and indomitable people as Palestinians before.
Under the weight of a prolonged Israeli blockade and widespread devastation left by Israeli military attacks, Palestinians in Gaza are clinging to the traditions of Ramadan with unwavering determination.. Remember that nearly eivery single mosque has been destroyed in the north of Gaza. yet they keep their faith despite everything. Thouigh undoubtedly. anxious about where their meals to break their fasts will come from.
Remember the women and children fasting in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Their resilience shines a light of hope in the face of adversity.
This Ramadan, lets also all be reminded of our collective responsibility to firmly stand against Islamophobia, racism, and hate in all their forms.
To all who are observing this holy month, May this sacred time bring peace to your hearts, light to your souls, and strength to your faith. Ramadān Mubārak, May it be a blessed one. Filled with love, light and countless blessings. Wa Salam (with peace), Free Palestine 🌙✨
The first few weeks of March will be a time of deep reflection for hundreds of thousands of people across the UK and here in Wales who will recall what they were doing when the 1984/85 coal miners’ strike began and ended. On March 3rd 1985 the UK Miners’ Strike ended in defeat for Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers when miners reluctantly and bitterly voted to return to work, after just two days short of a year on strike in what was Britain’s longest and largest industrial dispute. and a turning point for the working class in Britain.
Here's a short updated history of this iconic but bitter strike that came to define the decade, It was the most prolonged and significant in post-war history and destined to change the face of industrial relations in Britain beyond recognition. A story of hardship and hope, division and defiance, perseverance and pride.
The appointment of Ian MacGrego as head of the National Coal Board on 28 March 1983, is seen as the moment at which the strike became inevitable? Given his record at British Leyland (appointed by a Labour government) and later at the British Steel Corporation, it was quite clear that he was appointed by the Prime Minister as Chairman of the National Coal Board with a mandate to butcher the mining industry.
His appointment was greeted with particular disdain by the National Union of Mineworkers, especially by its president Arthur Scargill. Scargill was concerned at MacGregor's uncompromising business methods,branding MacGregor "the American butcher of British industry."
On March 6, 1984, the National Coal Board announced its plan to cut the nation’s coal output by 4 million tons, in an effort to stem a $340 million annual loss, and of the imminent closure of Cortonwood colliery, Yorkshire, and Polmaise colliery, Scotland, together with 20 other planned pit closures and the loss of 20,000 jobs .
At the time, Britain had 170 working collieries, commonly known as pits, which employed more than 190,000 people. Scargill and the NUM estimated the board’s plan would mean the closure of 20 pits and the loss of some 20,000 jobs.
This led to a swift response from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).national president, Arthur Scargill who said the plan would lead to 80,000 job losses. Scargill's prediction proved to be correct
The same day the plan was announced, Scargill used this as an opportunity to call a nationwide strike against the planned pit closures.
Yorkshire and Scottish miners came out on strike, swiftly followed by Durham and Kent. On March 8, , Arthur Scargill, announced that the strikes were official under Rule 41 of the union’s constitution and called on the other NUM Area coalfields to support the action.
Controversially, he never held a national vote within the NUM, and not all miners were on board with the walkout. In some parts of the country, miners kept working, causing tensions with picketing workers who branded them as “scabs.”
Support in Wales was initially confused with the Executive Committee (EC) of the South Wales National Union of Mineworkers (SWNUM) recommending strike action during their conference of March 9, and local NUM lodges in South Wales voting 18 to 13 to stay in while respecting any picket lines, by 12th March, half of Britain’s 187,000 miners had downed tools becoming one of the most inspiring but bitter class struggles in British history.
Using Scargill’s militant picketing tactics, the striking miners managed to shut down many pits across Britain. But unlike in the 1970s, Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – riding high from her victory in the Falklands – had secretly and cynically prepared for battle by stockpiling two years’ worth of coal before announcing the closures. And she was hellbent on defeating “the enemy within” by any means necessary, even if it meant turning the full force of the state against its own people.
For the first time in a postwar national strike, British police were openly used as a political weapon.Paramilitary riot police placed mining communities under total siege. A scab workforce was organised to break the strike, and billions were spent to keep the power stations running without coal. The full weight of the courts was used to sequestrate the funds of the miners' union and break its resolve. Civil liberties were forgotten as miners were beaten and arrested even when standing still. Agent provocateurs and spies were deployed. State benefits were withheld in order to starve the miners back to work. What had begun as an industrial dispute degenerated into a clash of ideologies and civil class war. For twelve months, the miners and their families held out against unprecedented onslaughts and unimaginable hardships in order to save jobs and preserve communities.The South Wales miners alone would prove to be obdurate, solid and immovable throughout the long year of hardship and deprivation. Their heroism, determination and courage alongside striking miners across the UK astonished the world, and would charge and inspire the political consciousness of hundreds of thousands of people, as it did for me, aged 16 and a half at the start of the strike as they demonstrated their unconquerable will to fight.
The striking miners faced off against police forces backed by Thatcher’s government, in clashes that often turned violent. The stakes were high on both sides: Scargill compared the strike to Britain’s fight against Nazi Germany, while Thatcher viewed it as an opportunity to crush militant labor unions for good. Documents declassified in 2014 revealed that Thatcher considered calling out the military to transport food and coal, and even declaring a state of emergency in order to strengthen her government’s position.
Miners on picket lines were brutalised and attacked by baton-wielding police in full riot gear. For me at the time this was to be a year of great awakenings, seeing their fight, I started to see connections with other peoples struggles. The plight of the poor and unemployed, Nicuragua and Apartheid South Africa, people being daily attacked by Margaret Thatchers rabid Government. I decided to take sides with with those who decided to take on the right wing policies of Thatchers government. The rights and wrongs of whether the miners should have had a national ballot has been widely discussed, but like many others at the time I believed that once the miners were out, it was our duty to support and work for them. Within weeks of the strike starting 80% of miners supported the strike, standing against what they saw as the unjustifiable attacks on their right to existence and resistance.
Some of the worst violence occurred in South Yorkshire, including a standoff at the British Steel coking plant in Orgreave on June 18, 1984 involving 10,000 miners and 5,000 police officers
At Orgreave it became apparent, of the true intentions of Thatchers government, with the full collusion of the police ,it was noticed that they had no intention of finding reconciliation or settlement to this industrial dispute. The sole intention was an ideological one, to mortally wound the National Union of Mineworkers, to defeat it with military force and with naked violence ,by any means necessary. As the miners attempted to blockade the Orgreave coking plant. The police showed the lengths they would go to break the strike with violent attacks, mass arrests and deliberate but fortunately unsuccessful attempts to fabricate evidence and frame miners. The insult was added to by the BBC reversing footage of miners defending themselves from police attacks to try and make out that the police were attacked first. It was one of the most brutal attacks by the state on its own citizens of the last 20th Century.It saw the police going berserk under state orders, repeatedly attacking individuals wherever they sought refuge, as they fled into a nearby Wheatfield and into the community of Orgreave, where the police carried on their pursuit through the streets. A scene of ugliness, fear and menace, as all concepts of Law and order that the constabulary were supposed to withhold abandoned all its basic principles. At the end the day in what became known as the “Battle of Orgreave.” over 100 people were arrested, for no crime whatever, with many more being injured along with the Miners leader Arthur Scargill.
Following Orgreave, the police conducted a deliberate and co-ordinated attempt to frame arrested miners for one of the most serious events on the statute book - the offence of Riot. No police officer has ever been prosecuted or even disciplined for their role in the terrible events that occurred.Campaigners have long been calling for a public inquiry into the horrendous events that occurred on 18 June 1984, simply asking for an apology to the victims who suffered in this bloody confrontation. A report in 2015 by the police watchdog, the IOPC, said there was “evidence of excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers”.
Despite increasing hardships the miners fought on with determination and bravery. During the course of the strike over 6,000 were arrested, with over 20,000 miners being injured in acts of state violence. Throughout the strike I would witness, how the right wing media was used to vilify and undermine. The media being used to lie, and used as a political weapon to crush the miners resiliance, the media also enabling to misrepresent, and divide the movement,being used to churn out a Niagara of lies against the miners..The propoganda part of Thatchers assault, was being pushed out everyday, at her so called ' enemy within.'
Psychological pressure was utilised with the police encouraged to wave wads of cash at pickets, designed to undermine and demoralise, the use of scabs increased, bussing them through picket lines in a determined effort to break the will of the striking miners. NUM headquarters harboured a spy. Phone tapping of leaders of the dispute was routine.Anti-union laws were also used against the NUM, which was effectively hounded out of legal existence and its funds sequestered by the capitalist courts.
Throughout the country, groups emerged, either as individuals or part of miners support groups, raising money and awareness, standing in solidarity. Disparate groups found common ground, from the Unemployed, the Peace Movement, students, other Trade Unions, all standing firmly behind the miners in their great struggle.
One of the most commented upon aspects of the strike was the involvement of women, who grouped together to set up ‘Women Against Pit Closures.’ The women from the mining communities in particular acted as bulmarks of strength, organising welfare and support which was vital in sustaining the strike, setting up food kitchens to feed hungry miners and their families, to going on national rallies in London or fundraising as far away as Canada. At the heart of their actions was a sense of solidarity with their menfolk, and a real sense of the mining community.
Women’s activism drew on traditions of protest in the coal fields going back to 1926. Strengthening one another’s morale, supporting isolated women, fundraising and campaigning, women fed and clothed entire communities. Women’s action groups acquired expertise on all strike-related matters from DHSS claims to mortgage repayments and international solidarity. They also provided the strike with many of its most respected and sought-after public speakers.
Had there been no support from women the strike would have collapsed very quickly. As Elaine Robe from Hatfield Main Women’s Support Group wrote: “We attended and organised pickets, rallies and raised money. We didn’t want to be an appendage to the NUM.”
For many women the strike was liberating, uplifting, and enriching, meeting and talking to people or travelling without their husbands. Others reported how their mental health improved. Many vowed to carry on being politically active after the strike was over.
Welsh Women’s Support Group
The strike saw a radically new development; a network of some 300 miners’ support groups. These extended the length and breadth of the country, from Aberdeen to Belfast and from Ipswich to the Isle of Wight, in response to the NUM’s call for fundraising on behalf of the beleaguered mining communities.
The miners’ supporters included the young, the poor, student and inner city radicals, peace activists, and the unemployed, for whom trade unionism had hitherto had little meaning, as well as ethnic minorities in inner city areas such as London, Birmingham and Bradford. Liverpool raised a million pounds with Catholic and Protestant churches fundraising side by side.
Many of these groups were run by members of the Labour Party, the Communist Party, and non-aligned trade unionists. The strongest were large, efficient, and formidably well-organised; others were small, informal, and extemporary in nature; many were set up by constituency Labour parties or local trades councils.
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) also played a vital role organising links with pits and gave help as they recognised the state’s oppression. By the end of the strike, 11 LGSM groups had emerged with the London group alone raising £22,500 by 1985 (equivalent to £73,000 in 2021) in support. Their story is told in the 2014 film Pride.and consequently the NUM led the pride demonstration in London in 1985.
After the end of the miners' strike in March 1985, several LGSM pride members joined the newly-formed Lesbians and Gays Support the Printworkers, established on a similar model to LGSM - to raise funds for striking printworkers in dispute with Rupert Murdoch.
Members of CND were also very active. Virtually every TUC-affiliated trade union had members fundraising, with women trade unionists often working directly with women in the coal fields. NUPE’s successful Fill a Bag and Feed a Family campaign was supported by Belfast’s lowest paid workers: school cooks, council employees and cleaners. It was these prodigious fundraising efforts that extended the duration of the strike and stood between the miners, penury and capitulation for so long.
The chant of the miners’ support groups was: “The miners united will never be defeated”. It was an energising time, new friends were made, the camerardie that emerged was simply amazing.Many saw this struggle as a tipping point between social democracy, civil liberties and the welfare state and of the one hand, and on the other, neoliberalism, authoritarianism and austerity.
Culture and music are important in any political struggle, Songs and words are another way to win minds, put over political ideas and boost morale in any struggle and that was certainly true when Maggie Thatcher declared war on the Coal Industry and the Miner’s.Many artists, writers, musicians, were also heavily involved in the process of solidarity, passionately supporring the strike .Some, such as Billy Bragg, Chumbawamba,, The Men they cou;dn't hang wrote songs about the strike, while many many others, including the Redskins and Crass, participated in benefit concerts to raise money.
Throughout 1984 there were regular musical events, fundraisers and rallies in support of strikers and their families. Soup kitchens and food parcels funded from supporters enabled mining families to feed their children and themselves while they were without pay.
Billy Bragg - Which Side Are You On?
The raising of funds was so necessary as have to remember that sStriking miners and their families were not eligible for security benefits and their dependants were prohibited from receiving ‘urgent needs payments’ under the Social Security Act of 1980, although £15 was nonetheless deducted from benefits to cover ‘notional strike pay’.
The NUM did not make strike payments although they did issue a small allowance to active pickets. Family income had been depleted by the previous year’s overtime ban. Poverty therefore became endemic once household savings had ran out with some strikers and their families finding themselves perilously near to destitution.
Sadly eventually some miners started drifting back there will broken, what with the increasing hardships they faced, but it should be noted that 63% of the miners stayed out to the bitter end. despite the strikers being pitted against the full force of the ruling class, while still amassing huge sipport and solidarity across the country, they were betrayed ulrimately by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party’s refusal to mobilise support, especially their spineless leader Welsh 'windbag' and class traitor Neil Kinnock, who refused to attend picket lines or events supporting the miners, in effect helping Thatchers dirty war of attrition.
In fairness the Party rank and file were with the miners. Labour Party activists, premises and equipment were involved in the miners' strike to a degree probably not seen in any dispute since the 1920s. The National Executive Committee backed the miners and called for a levy to support them. Conference condemned police violence and defied Kinnock's request to condemn pickets' violence.
But what most people saw, courtesy of TV, was the public weaseling of Kinnock, Roy Hattersley and others. We should not underestimate the role played by these acrions in dampening the spirits of the labour movement. The notorious strike-breaking Union of Democratic Miners also appeared on the scene. They recruited working miners using the absence of a national miners ballot, particularly in Nottinghamshire as an argument.
Their leaders, including at least one Labour councillor, encouraged miners to scab and thus undermine the strike. The socialist MP Denis Skinner recounted that they even burned down the pickets’ kitchen at the Clipstone pit in his constituency. One of their leaders was later jailed for stealing £150,000 from a charity for elderly miners.
When the strike was over members of the scab UDM settled in for the long period of prosperity and security promised to them by a grateful establishment. Their UDM leader Roy Lynk was awarded an OBE for ‘services to trade unionism’ but after paving the way for mass pit closures and privatisation, he and Nottinghamshire’s former strike-breakers. to their fury, bu with irony were betrayed too Nottinghamshire’s pits were closed in contrast to the promises lavished upon them during the strike.
After a year on strike and some of the most bitter class war in UK history on 3rd March 1985, an NUM delegate conference narrowly voted to end the strike after facing the harsh reality that workers were going hungry without wages or depleted reserves of union pay. It ended without any peace deal over pit closures and Thatcher’s government not making a single concession.The final vote was 98 to 91 to return to work. A turning point for the working class in Britain, this iconic strike came to define the decade.
The argument is still repeated that the miners lost because their action was reckless, the state was too strong and no national ballot was called. Tactically a strike ballot of miners could have been held, even after the strikes had begun, as it would have undermined scabbing, reduced coal production, and the Tories and right of the Labour movement would not be able to accuse Scargill and the NUM leadership of being undemocratic. The union could have organised meetings with Nottinghamshire miners away from management to persuade them that action was needed to defend their jobs.
Many though however, understand that the key reason for the defeat was the betrayal and spineless role of the TUC, the trade union bureaucracy, and the leader of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock and the full forces of the state against them.
The miners would march back to work together, broken hearted but their heads held high in defiance.
Thatcher though was graceless in victory. “There is no such thing as society,” she infamously declared. Her neo-liberal blueprint would result not only in the selling off and selling out of the coal industry, but also the decimation of Britain’s manufacturing industry, the subjugation of all trade unions, and the doubling of unemployment and inflation. Though the heroic struggle ended in defeat, the proud and dignified nature of the return to work, like the Maerdy miners of South Wales who marched back to work behind colliery bands and banners who thus robbed Thatcher of the "total" victory she and her class sought. Nevertheless, the Tory government subsequently closed over 100 pits and more than 100,000 were made redundant. The pit closure programme was carried through remorselessly. It tore the guts out of the industry and out of the mining communities. The mining industry was decimated. Subsequently, most of Britain's collieries closed and by the time the industry was privatised in 1994 there were just 15 collieries left and by the time Thatcher died in 2013, only three remained. .
It would lead to lasting unemployment and poverty, the shattering of organised labour, the hollowing-out of mining and other working-class communities, and a steady increase in social inequality in British society, with lingering scars in former mining areas, just as the workers had warned with their slogan "Close a pit, kill a community". The strike may have been defeated but years later I remember the courage and sacrifice made during this bitter struggle and the spirit of revolt they unleashed, and those who remained defiant to the end, and acknowledge the miners who were arrested and locked up on trumped up charges.The communities that never fully recovered from the financial blow of the strike. Those who fought for the survival of a humane society here in Wales and across Britain, and a vile government who used the powers of the state in almost all its entirety to defeat the miners and to teach the whole working class a lesson. Miners and their families will remember those miners and their strike supporters who will have passed away since, and in particular those who were killed either by reckless lorry drivers at picket lines at the time or from the “death by malice” of someone hurling a brick at a striking miner, as was the case with the two individuals mentioned a bit earlier David Jones outside Thorseby Colliery in the Nottingham coalfield and Joe Green who was killed on the picket line.
The folksinger Dick Gaughan was also a tireless supporter of the Miners Strike, performing at benefit gigs all over the UK. Immediately after the strike he wrote a song about it entitled The Ballad of 84, first performed at a benefit for sacked miners at Woodburn Miners Welfare Club in Dalkeith, Midlothian in '85. Gaughan's song recalls the strikers who died, as well mentioning Malcolm Pitt and others who were imprisoned:
Let's pause here to remember the men who gave their lives / Joe Green and David Jones were killed in fighting for their rights / But their courage and their sacrifice we never will forget / And we won't forget the reason, too, they met an early death / For the strikebreakers in uniforms were many thousand strong / And any picket who was in the way was battered to the ground / With police vans driving into them and truncheons on the head/ It's just a bloody miracle that hundreds more aren't dead... And Malcolm Pitt and Davy Hamilton and the rest of them as well / Who were torn from home and family and locked in prison cells'.
Whatever the cold economic arguments about the profitability of coal, or otherwise, the end of the strike paved the way for the destruction of a proud industry and the communities it had sustained for generations.The legacy of its defeat can be seen today in our workplaces and communities following an advancement of free-market capitalism that has resulted in low pay, precarious work and the extensive privatisation of our public services.
Passions remain unwaned, with a lingering resentment toward the government and police force that endure to this day, but in the end I feel the miners strike has left us with a legacy that we should be proud of, of a people and community standing together in solidarity in the face of adversity.
I will never forget the tremendous hardship and suffering the miners and their families suffered whilst trying to protect their communities The fighting spirit of the miners lives on , It has left behind a tradition of courageous struggle, which can still be seen among us today with people fighting for their lives and what they believe in.
Forty years after this bitter dispute ended the courage and determination of the miners and their families, struggling to defend their communities from an unparalleled assault by the ruling class, should serve as an inspiration to a new generation. The miners might have lost the strike but they had made history. Their struggle to defend their industry and their communities had earned them their place alongside the Chartists, the Levellers, the demonstrators at Peterloo, and the Jarrow marchers of 1936 in the annals of English radicalism..
Lest we forget either that out of the strike came a rebirth in many ways. While many former miners faced unemployment, others went back to college and requalified for new professions. Miners’ wives, in even greater numbers, returned to education and became teachers, social workers or probation officers. The children of mining families, brought up during and after the strike, made the fullest use of the expansion of the university sector.
The strike had politicised mining families and encouraged many of them to become involved in other causes, to become local councillors or even MPs. And while the pits closed, the heritage of the mining industry was preserved through mining museums, the revival of banner-making for the Durham miners’ gala, and the political struggle continues through the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign.https://otjc.org.uk/
The strike is rich in lessons, and we would be doing that heroic struggle no favours if we did not also try to understand the mistakes which played an important role in the dispute as well as drawing inspiration from the colossal resolve and sacrifice of the miners’ struggle.and the voices of those who sustained it for a year, and offers some guidance and hope to public and private sector trade unionists in dispute today. The circumstances are very different, of course, but today’s activists could certainly draw courage and resolve from that momentous time in history. .
Test Department and the South Wales Miners Striking Choir - Comrades in Arms
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