Living utopia (Vivir la utopia) - Unique documentary on Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution (1936)

On a day like this, 83 years ago, a sequence of events occurred , that would lead to the Spanish Revolution . A moment in time that has come to represent the defining struggle of the age: a clash between not just between the opposing political ideologies of socialism and fascism, but between civilization and barbarism, good and evil.
 In 1931 with the proclamation of a Republic a Socialist-Republican Government was formed in Spain, which had the support of many revolutionary forces active in Spain.It had a commitment to the seperation of the church and the state, and a commitment to international peace, modern systems of education, land reform, and more equal roles for both men and women. By 1936 the Spanish Republic had recently been revived by the election of a moderately liberal government after 5 years of tension and retrenchment. A new popular front alliance of all anti-fascist parties had swept the country the previous year.
However on the night of 18th July, 1936 the army mutinied with their generals  and launched a coup against the people. They bought in foreign legionairres and colonial troops and under General Franco proclaimed a military takeover. A bitter struggle had begun.
Executions without trial were common place, Franco had the support of the aristocracy,the army, the landlords, the bankers, and the Church hierararchy and a clique of corrupt politicians went over to the conspirators the rest backed the Republic.The left wing of the popular front was determined to resist the Generals and resolved to distribute arms and weapons to newly formed militias. By the morning of 19th July truckloads of rifles from  the Ministry of War were on their way to the headquarters of the Socialist and Anarchist trade unions for distribution to their members. A few weeks later  a government emerged more than capable of defending the Republic against the Generals. It was the first Republican Government to have full Socialist, Communist and Anarchist support. However Franco had both Italian and German fascist support, with both their finance and intervention. The fascists defended a common view of the past, while the republican coalition though, had widely different visions of the future.

But the people rose, millions of people around the world felt passionately that rapidly advancing fascism must be halted in Spain; and more than 35,000 volunteers from dozens of other countries went to help defend the Spanish Republic, forces of red and black fought back united against fascism. In the countryside, peasants took control of the land, redistributing large estates and, in many places, collectivizing the land and setting up communes and a civil war  was waged, the workers immediately set up barricades and within hours the rising had been defeated. Arms were seized and given to workers who were dispatched to other areas to prevent risings. Madrid was also saved because of the heroism and initiative of the workers. Hearing of what had happened in Barcelona they had stormed the main army base in the city. Workers' militias were established. Workplaces were taken over and for ten months after July 1936, the people held power. Taking over the factories and the running of the whole of society. They organised workers’ committees  in enterprises and streets. They believed that they had power and fought to defend and extend it.The revolution that Spain was experiencing did not go unnoticed by visitors. George Orwell, who arrived to fight as a volunteer in a column raised by the POUM, a dissident Marxist party allied to the anarchists, describes his impressions upon reaching Barcelona:

"This was the first time that I found myself in a city where the working class was in control... The anarchists were virtually in control of Catalonia and the revolution was striding ahead... Activities of a servile nature had disappeared. No one said 'Senor' or 'Don', nor even 'usted'. Everybody was called 'comrade' and 'tu'; and said 'Salud!' instead of 'buenos dias'.

Barcelona was the nerve centre of the revolution in urban Spain. With the CNT and the FAI at the head of the antifascist militias committee, Catalonia underwent one of the most radical transformations in its history, affecting every aspect of its political, social and economic life. 80% of firms had been collectivised and all services were being run by the workers themselves. These changes were to be legalised by the Generalidad in October 1936.

But in a series of tragic events  they were sadly defeated aided by the British government who had agreed to a policy of 'non-intervention'  along with the help of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It was a brutal conflict that polarised Spain, pitting the Left against the Right, the anti-clericals against the Church, the unions against the landed classes and the Republicans against the Monarchists. It was a bloody war which saw, in the space of just three years, the murder and execution of 350,000 people, not forgetting all those who died from malnutrition, starvation, and war-engendered disease. It was also a conflict that became internationalised, becoming a battleground for the forces of Fascism and Communism as Europe itself geared up for war.
By April 1939, all of Spain was under fascist control and Franco declared a victory .Solidifying his power with a brutal dictatorship by oppressing and systematically killing any political opposition. General Franco's military regime remained in power until his death in 1975 depriving  Spain of freedom for several decades afterwards, the wound inflicted still resonates.
Over 40,000 other selfless men and women fought side by side for the ideas of liberty and social justice, solidarity and mutual aid from 53 different nationalities. Rallying to the republican cause.
For many it was not just a war to defeat the fascists it was the beginning of a new society. A revolution in fact, unfortunately revolutions do not succeed when the people are divided. There are many lessons to be learnt from this struggle, a struggle that continues to do this day.
The film above "Vivir la Utopia" (Living Utopia) is a unique 1997 feature-length documentary by Juan Gamero (Spanish with English subtitles) which chronicles the origins and evolution of the Spanish anarchist movement and its important role during the Spanish Revolution (1936-1939). The largest anarchist community of its kind in Europe at the time, millions of peasants and urban workers successfully established a society based on equality, mutual aid, participatory democracy and self-organization – all without a central state or government. This fascinating yet largely unknown non hierarchical sociopolitical experiment was eventually destroyed by forces from inside and outside the country. Featuring rare archival footage and interviews with surviving participants, Living Utopia is considered to be one of the most important documentaries on the subject and what it lacks in high-brow cinematic quality it makes up for with the passion of the people whose story it tells. By telling the stories of these social pioneers, the film emphasizes on the social changes and the political developments that have resulted in the rise of Franco and the Spanish Civil War. Extensive interviews with the old laborers and anarchist members are beautifully combined with black and white footage from the era of the revolution. Many years later people  are still looking for another world, a living utopia, Emma Goldman  once said  'To the daring belongs the future... when we run out of dreams, we die... .

Summer of Love

In conditions of splendour across the land
finding passion, following its hungry shout,
soaring through the trees and breeze
as we play hide and seek
under the fiery sun
sharing our love
for woman, spirit, man.

Climbing fissions of desire
beyond the cruelty of life
under the influence, defying gravity
seeking hands of human friendship
that resurrect lifes limbo
drawn to positive forces
painting pictures anew.

Under turpentine clouds
sizzling and shimmering
lifting us to a future
where we can keep seeking
the same water of  life
kissed by the sun
feeling the warmth of its embrace.

Swimming among tides of change
sunshine taking us to horizons of love
flowing with  devotion
allowing dreams to expand
unleashing awakening yearnings
as evening releases harmony
a blanket of stars to catch our breath.

Truth can set you free : this is my version.

Media 

( mee-dee- uh)

noun

An institution largely controlled by rich people, in order to convince poor people to blame other poor people for problems created by rich people.

Constantly manipulating, perpetuating myths, that allow the poor to be blamed for their poverty, that allows the rest of society to avoid taking any responsibility.Allows dangerous policies to be imposed on whole sections of society without the full consequences from being examined. Through a systematic misrepresentation of the poorest in society. Offering us a constant stream of propoganda, disinformation and lies. This is turn, influences the way people see the world, and as a result, the media is a key by which the general population comes to accept, and support things. It also enables people to adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitised and fatalistic. Increasingly the focus lies on sensationalism and entertainment that leads to the overuse of soundbites, that tend to be repeated indefinitely.
Bias in the media is a global phenomenon and as the media grows in power, the political and economic interests of news outlets and the ones who control it have grown as well, which has its impact on the opinons of those that are easily influenced. Sections of  of Britain’s biggest papers, release racism, transphobia and homophobia also operate insidiously under the guise of “free speech”, “open platforms” and “rational debate”. We saw this when Newsnight asked whether alt-right figurehead Tommy Robinson was dangerous or just “a man raising concerns that others ignore”; and it reared its head  recently  when Question Time mused on whether it was “morally right” that “five-year-old children” learn about the existence of queer people. These debates are often set up in a way that is unrepresentative or makes an equal footing impossible – like a panel that is skewed towards racists or transphobic people, with only one black person or one trans woman to represent. Also according to research by YouGov, from a few years ago, the British media definitely has a skew to the right, the study covering 7 European countries  found that people’s perceptions of right-wing bias were most pronounced in the UK. The study, involved 8,358 people showed that UK citizens were the most likely to think that the press is too negative about immigration.

Overall 26 per cent of the survey respondents said that UK newspapers, radio and TV was “too right-wing” as opposed to 17 per cent who said it was “too left-wing.” The study focused on five topics: immigration, housing, health, economics and crime. It certainly was grim reading. And it certainly seems to hae got far worse since this report initially came out.
The great Noam Chomsky has helped develop a detailed and sophisticated analyse of how the wealthy and powerful use the media to propogandise in their own interests behind a mask of objective reporting. More of which you can read about in a book he wrote with Edward Herman called Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media. It is noted however that mainstream media journalism has fallen precipitously in the minds of the public in recent years. 

Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the media

In the last decade or so, with the growth of the internet, alternative news websites, social media sites like facebook and twitter, it has made it easier to encounter a range of voices that together can often give a fuller picture of a story and reveal gaps in knowledge and  can at least have the capacity to challenge certain agendas  and narrives of unrelenting bias. People have begun to finally realise that they they are being misled, manipulated and lied to and have started to resent it. Unlike the corporate mainstream media, this blog does not rely on well paid journalists, or the reliance and dependence on the concerns of advertisers, but tries to remain truly independent in spirit. Trying to release a point of view that is not distorted in favor of state corporate interests.
It is clear that the establishment though is still afraid of free voices, that try to  push for social change. Voices that hopefully can and will continue to hold the powers to be held to account. Beyond the daily inane machinations of the mainstream media,  that refuse to serve and maintain the status-quo. 
We should all  try and seek to report the truth , providing fair and comprehensive accounts of events and issues, counter narratives to what we are peddled daily. If we continue to fail to report the truth , and consider story's from every angle, we fail the public and one another. This at end of day,,is only my point of view and I am sure their are those out there who will find my words an irrelevence, a mere distraction, in the larger scheme of things. We all have our different versions of reality, different  opinions  that can at least help people see and interpret things differently.Even if you don’t think you have great leverage to change things, you need to talk about bias where you see it, and the media organisations you see that are failing us.
I hope to keep on releasing my free expression, the truth as I see it, a truth that sets me free, oh plus the usual mixture of my own poetical musings and thoughtful willful distraction.

Wildness - Henry David Thoreau.

"We do not ride on the railroad, it rides upon us"

Organic radical thinker Henry David Thoreau was born today on July 12 1817

He promoted a simple natural way of life and spoke out against modern civilization and the violence of the state.and his ideas thankfully  still permeate all our seasons, who reminded us that when unjust laws are made wee should bot hesitate to break them. His essay  from 1848, Civil disobedience stands as a classic statement of principled resistance, and is a beautiful manifesto of much needed intent, that appeals to  people of individual conscience to resist political authority .https://archive.org/details/CivilDisobedience-HenryDavidThoreau

I will end with this wonderful quote from him which was written in 1851, long may Thoreau's legacy grow

"We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where
the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe;
to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more
solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close
to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore
and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and
unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed
and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough
of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor,
vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the
wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud,
and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets.
We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life
pasturing freely where we never wander."

FROM - Walden, 1894.

https://orgrad.wordpress.com/a-z-of-thinkers/henry-david-thoreau/

Far right extremist Tommy Robinson sent to prison, for contempt of court

Far right extremist Tommy Robinson, the 36-year-old founder of the anti-immigration, anti-Muslim English Defence League (EDL), whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who has 11 previous convictions for violence. assault, drug and public order offenses, mortgage fraud and using another person's passport to travel to the US  has been convicted and jailed for contempt of court over a video he broadcast on social media which featured defendants in a criminal trial.
Prejudicing a trial is a natural consequence when there is an offence of contempt of court committed. When an individual interferes with the court’s constitutional role in the course of justice, they may influence the jury’s verdict, rendering such a verdict unfair and compromising the trial as a whole.
Judge  Dame Victoria Sharp sentenced him to 19 weeks, less 138 days for time served for a previous offence. A sentence  simply not long enough for some. Passing sentence, she said: "We are in no doubt that the custody threshold is crossed in this case, in particular having regard to the common law contempt that the respondent committed."Nothing less than a custodial penalty would properly reflect the gravity of the conduct we have identified."
 Dame Victoria continued: "The respondent (Robinson) cannot be given credit for pleading guilty. He has lied about a number of matters and sought to portray himself as the victim of unfairness and oppression."This does not increase his sentence, but it does mean that there can be no reduction for an admission of guilt."In May 2017 Robinson was given a three-month suspended at Canterbury Crown Court.
Nick Lowles, chief executive of HOPE not hate, said: “Stephen Lennon put at risk the trial of men accused of horrendous crimes with his live streaming antics. He doesn’t care about the victims of grooming, he only cares about himself. He now faces yet another stint behind bars.
“So far this year, he’s been humiliated at the ballot box, kicked off social media platforms for hate speech, jailed for contempt, and it’s only July.”
Robinson had arrived arrogantly late  in court with his legal team  and arch provocatur  Katie Hopkins in tow, wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the words "convicted of journalism", on the front and “Britain = North Korea” on the back, which if it was the case, well he would not have been granted the honour of a trial, he would have simply dissapeared, Ever  the opportunist he also wore a badge reading "I support soldiers A-Z" , that has recently become a rallying call to the far right,.despite the grey areas and the continual injustices that permeate on all sides.
Outside  the court Robinsons supporters booed as news of his sentence filtered through, with violent protests erupting as his supporters threw cans at the police while chanting "We love you Tommy". A group the made their way to Parliment's Carriage Gates to continue their protest, blocking thee roads around Parliament Square.
Personally my heart does not bleed for Robinson one bit, a  fosterer of hatred and division, who only recently, in much  irony, despite his vitriol against refugees and asylum seekers, worried that jail might not be an experience he enjoys, he hypocritically  appealed directly to  Donald Trump to grant him political asylum, whilst continuing to deny safe haven for others. Robinson and his fellow far-right supporters are aware that a sense of victimhood is a powerful tool for attracting support and encouraging collective action. In his biography, Enemy of the State, he actually acknowledges the importance of being seen as the victim "going to gang up on me and that I would come off as the victim … it was exactly as I wanted it to go”
Robinson  and his supporters are adept at playing the victim, time and  time again, but as he and his followers continue  with  their antagonistic discourse, and obvious hatred to other people differing opinions, let this judgement at least be welcomed. I do not though for one moment think it will halter one bit their hateful discourse, who will at end of day, use  Robinsons punishment  as a torch for their rallying call of hatred and division, that we must continually challenge.

Palestine +100: Stories from a century after the Nakba

The Nakba or Day of Catastrophe,saw the displacement of more than 700,000 people following the Israeli War of Independence, and saw the massacre of civilians, and the razing to the ground of hundreds of Palestinian villages. Against their will, the Nakba divided the Palestinian people between Palestine and diaspora, betwee Gaza and the West Bank, between those who hold a refugee identification card and who don't. Seventy years on, more than 5.5 million refugees are scattered all over the Middle East and the world, and are still waiting to exercise their internationally recognized right to return.
Following Comma Press’popular Iraq + 100, which asked Iraqi writers what the country will look like a century after the 2003 invasion, Palestine + 100 is  a new anthology from them posing a question to contemporary Palestinian writers: what might your home city look like in the year 2048, exactly 100 years after the Nakba. How might that war reach across a century of repair and rebirth, and affect the state of the country its politics, its religion, its language, its culture and how might Palestine have finally escaped it, and found its own peace, a hundred years down the line? As well as being an exercise in escaping the politics of the present in a country which some have called the largest prison in the world , this  necessary anthology is an opportunity to showcase contemporary Arabic writers offering their own spin on science fiction and fantasy.The stories  cover a range of approaches from SF noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, peace treaties that span parallel universes, and even a Palestinian superhero, in probably the first anthology of science fiction from Palestine ever. Featuring stories from a range of writers, including: Talal Abu Shawish, Liana Badr, Selma Dabbagh, Samir El-Youssef, Anwar Hamed, Mazen Maarouf, Ahmed Masoud, Nayrouz Qarmout, and Rawan Yaghi.The voices contained within  demnd to be heard.
Translated from the Arabic by Raph Cormack, Mohamed Ghalaieny, Andrew Leber, Thoraya El-Rayyes, Yasmine Seale and Jonathan Wright.
Winner of a PEN Translates Award:
.https://www.englishpen.org/translation/pen-translates-autumn-2018-awards-announced/
Comma Press is a not-for-profit publishing initiative dedicated to promoting new writing, with an emphasis on the short story. It is committed to a spirit of risk-taking and challenging publishing, free of the commercial pressures on mainstream houses. In April 2012, Comma became one of the Arts Council's new National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs). The collection will not be available until July the 25th. More details below.

https://commapress.co.uk/books/palestine-100/

Beds of roses

Finding no sanctuary in my sleep
Nightmares roaring in my head,
Scenes of desolation and devastation
Certainly no bed of roses.

In war ravaged countries
The rattling call of injustice,
A cauldron of death and despair
No respite or any beds of roses.

Amid the poverty and desperation
Where people grieve for their dead,
The ever flowing tide of human misery
For the children, no beds of roses..

Anguished eyes gaze, frail hands reach out
Barren lands flooding with tears overflowing,
Global silence decapacitating hope
as the night calls, no bed of roses.,

While humanity turns away and abandons
Another dawn exudes deaths mephitic odour,
How can we fail to speak out, not be silent
Reach out, cultivate fertile beds of roses,.

An injury to one is an injury to all
A collective thorn of pain and misery,
We can cover our eyes, be indifferent
Or help those in need, offer beds of roses.

From the heartache, filled with cries
We can send messages to the politicians,
The gift of solidarity to those that deserve
And when wars cease, beds of roses will grow.

https://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com/2019/07/08/beds-of-roses-by-dave-rendle/

The Matchmakers Strike of 1888

                                 The Strike Committee of the Matchmakers Union

In the late 19th century Londons' East End was known for it's serious deprivation,,overpopulated by depressing living conditions, sweated industries, poverty and disease.
In 1850  the  Quakers William Bryant and Frances May established Bryant & May  to sell matches. At first they imported the matches from Lundstrom’s in Sweden, but as demand outstripped supply, they decided to produce their own, and set up a factory in Bow, in London, producing hundreds of millions of matches each day. It was also the largest employer of women in East London, with a staff of over 2,000 women and girls. Many of the poor, uneducated, and unskilled women they employed had come from Ireland following the potato famine. They lived in abject poverty, in filthy housing unfit for human habitation and were often subject to prolonged hours of backbreaking work making matches.

Despite their public reputation as philanthropists and Quakers, the factory owners subjected their wokers to awful conditions, their product was ironically called "safety matches" but they were far from safe for the women who made them. The matchmakers faced a life of hard toil for very little reward, earning a pittance while the company's shareholders recieved dividends of over 29%. Outraged by these exploitive conditions, crusading  socialist journalist Annie Besant. having heard a complaint against  Bryant & May at a Fabian Society meeting – resolved to investigate conditions in the factory for herself.When Besant went to speak to the factory girls in Bow, she was appalled by what she found. Low pay and long hours were quite ubiquitous, but the Bryant & May workers were treated without compassion and often endured physical abuse and extortionate fines as punishment for shoddy work. Matchstick manufacture came with particular health implications, and Bryant & May did nothing to alleviate the effects of ‘phossy jaw’, a form of bone cancer caused by the cheap white  phosphorous that they used, causing yellowing of the skin and hair loss. The whole side of the face turned  green and then black, discharging foul smelling pus and finally death. Additionally the condition caused jaw and tooth aches and swelling of the gums. The only treatment was the disfiguring cutting away of the affected areas. More expensive red phosphorous carried much lower risks to the women  but the company refused to use it.

By 1888, resentment had been building for some years,in 1882 Mr Bryant, wishing to curry favour with the then present Prime Minister Mr Gladstone, arranged to have a statue erected of him in front of St Mary's church. Nothing wrong with this you might think until you learn that to pay for it he deducted a certain amount each week from his workers wages. When it was unveiled the matchgirls demonstrated by throwing stones, but this had little effect on Bryant & May that was to come six years later when the women down tools and walked out.
It was Annie Besant’s exposure of the terrible conditions at the Bryant and May factory, after hearing a speech by Clemantine Black, at a Fabian society meeting on the subject of Female Labour, in which she described  the twelve-hour days and the inhumane, as well as dangerous working conditions at the Bryant & May factory that really brought matters to a head. It led to Besant’s article in her socialist publication  The Link on 23rd June 1888 entitled White Slavery in London which pulled no punches, depicting Bryant and May as a tyrannical employer and calling for ‘a special  circle in the Inferno for those who live on this misery, and suck wealth out of the starvation of helpless girls’, and went on to describe how the match girls, some as young as thirteen worked from 6am to 6pm with just two short breaks. From their meagre wages her readers were told the women had to house, feed and clothe themselves, the wages were further decreased if they left a match on the bench and by the cost of paint, brushes and other equipment they needed to do their work. Then apart from the likelihood of developing 'phossy jaw' there were there dangers of losing a finger or even a hand in unguarded machinery. Besant called the factory "a prison-house" describing the match girls as "white wage slaves" and "oppressed"

Management were furious at the workforce for the revelations, and reacted by attempting to force the workers to sign a statement that they were happy with their working conditions. When a group of women refused to sign, the organisers of this action were sacked and  three women whom they suspected of leaking information were fired.  Outraged, 1,400 employees rose up in protest, including girls as young as 12. on 5th July 1888, 1400 girls and women  walked out of the Bryant and May match factory in Bow, London and the next day some 200 of them marched from Mile End to Bouverie Street, Annie Besant’s office, to ask for her support. While Annie wasn’t an advocate of strike action, she did agree to help them organise a Strike Committee.The firm first tried to force the women to condemn Besant. They refused, smuggling out a warning note:  ‘Dear Lady, they have been trying to get the poor girls to say it is all lies that has been printed and to sign a paper…we will not sign…’
They stayed out for two weeks: as there was no union to provide strike pay, the Match Girls went door to door raising money in support of their cause, whilst Annie Besant and other members of the Fabian Society started an emergency fund to distribute to striking workers. A Strike Committee was formed and rallied support from the Press, and some MPs. William Stad, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, Henry Hyde Champion of the Labour Elector and Catherine Booth  of the Salvation Army,  joined Besant in her campaign for better working conditions in the factory. However, other newspapers such as the Times, blamed Besant and other socialist agitators for the dispute, but in reality it was the brutal conditions that  bred militancy within rather than it being imported in from outside.
Bryant & May tried to break the strike by threatening to move the factory to Norway or to import blacklegs from Glasgow. The managing director, Frederick Bryant, was already using his influence on the press. His first statement was widely carried. 'His (sic) employees were liars. Relations with them were very friendly until they had been duped by socialist outsiders. He paid wages above the level of his competitors. He did not use fines. Working conditions were excellent...He would sue Mrs Besant for libel'.
'Mrs Besant' would not be intimidated. The next issue of The Link invited Bryant to sue. Much better, she asserted, to sue her than to sack defenceless poor women.She took a group of 50 workers to Parliament. The women catalogued their grievances before a group of MPs, and, afterwards, 'outside the House they linked arms and marched three abreast along the Embankment...' Besant's propagandist style was bold and effective and she had a fine eye for the importance of organisation. She addressed the problem of finance. An appeal was launched in The Link. Every contribution was listed from the pounds of middle class sympathisers to the pennies of the workers. Large marches and rallies were organised in Regents Park in the West End as well as Victoria Park and Mile End Waste in the east. 

The strike committee called for support from the London Trades Council, the most prominent labour organisations of the day,who responded positively, donating £20 to the strike fund and offering to act as mediators between the strikers and the employer. The London Trades Council, along with the Strike Committee of eight Match girls, met with the Bryant & May Directors to put their case. Such was the negative publicity, directed  by middle class activist Annie Besant, it overwhelmed the owners of the factory, By 17th July, their demands were met and terms agreed in principle, the company announced that it was willing to re-employ  the dismissed women and bring an end to the fines system, the Strike Committee put the proposals to the rest of the girls and they enthusiastically approved and returned to work in triumph. The Quaker reputation as good employers was tarnished by this strike: whatever the reasons, Bryant and May had not taken the care of their employees that people expected of Quakers. Disappointingly, though, it wasn’t until 1906 – almost 20 years later – that white phosphorous was made illegal.Partly because of Annie's journalism and mainly because of the remarkable courage of the factory women , the Bryant & May dispute was the first strike by unorganised worker to have garnered widespread publicity, with public sympathy and support being enormous. One of the Matchgirls' most enduring successes  was to secure Bryant & May's agreement for them to form a union. The inaugural meeting of the new Union of Women Match Makes took place at Stepney Meeting Hall on 27th July and 12 women were elected and it became the largest female union in the country. Clementina Black from the Women's Trade Union League gave advice on rules, subscriptions and elections. Annie Besant was elected the first secretary. With money left over from the strike fund, plus some money raised from a benefit at the Princess Theatre, enough money was raised to enable the union to acquire permanent premises.
By the end of the year, the union changed its rules and name. It became the Matchmakers Union, open to men and women, and the following year sent its first delegate to the Trade Union Congress.
The Matchmakers Union ceased to exist in 1903,  but this strike in 1888 was unprecedented and changed the character of organised labour, it was a landmark victory in working-class history. A  history lesson that should be taught in our schools As such, it was a vital moment for both female empowerment and the increasing momentum of the workers’ cause. The strike had a significance that is difficult to put into words. In its physical scale it was unremarkable for the period,  but its significance for the future of the British trade union movement was colossal, since the strike redefined the very nature of trade unionism, and because of its success helped to inspire the formation of unions all over the country, and  helped give birth to our modern-day general unions and laid down the foundations of the rights of women workers. A story  that has inspired activists ever since, a symbol of what can be achieved when people bond together in solidarity, that has seen plays and musicals  being written about the triumph of the Matchwomen, which saw Bryant & May dogged by the notorious association until it stopped trading in 1979.
The match girls’ success gave the working class a new awareness of their power, and unions sprang up in industries where unskilled workers had previously remained unorganized, as these new unions sprang up in the years that followed, new leaders of the working class emerged, people like Tom Mann, Will Thorne, John Burns and Ben Tillett and one year after the strike in 1889  it would see a sharp upturn in strikes, most notably the Great Dock Strike involving workers from across the Docklands area,confident that if the match girls could succeed, then so could they.
In 1892, philosopher and social scientist Friedrich Engels highlighted this new mass movement as the most important sign of the times:
“That immense haunt of human misery [the East End] is no longer the stagnant pool it was six years ago. It has shaken off its torpid despair, it has returned to life, and has become the home of what is called the ‘new unionism’, that is to say, of the organisation of the great mass of ‘unskilled’ workers. This organisation may to a great extent adopt the forms of the old unions of ‘skilled’ workers, but it is essentially different in character.
“The old unions preserve the tradition of the times when they were founded, and look upon the wages system as a once for all established, final fact, which they can at best modify in the interests of their members. The new unions were founded at a time when the faith of the eternity of the wages system was severely shaken; their founders and promoters were socialists either consciously or by feeling; the masses, whose adhesion gave them strength, were rough, neglected, looked down upon by the working class aristocracy; but they had this immense advantage, that [em]their minds were virgin soil[/em], entirely free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated ‘old’ unionists.
“And thus we see these new unions taking the lead of the working-class movement generally and more and more taking in tow the rich and proud ‘old’ unions.” (F Engels, Preface to the English edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892)
The TUC (Trade Union Congress) commented that the match girls strike is not just of historic interest. " It is an absolutely critical example of how after decades of low struggle and disappointment a militant movement can revive. Its genesis could come from the most unpredictable and apparently unpromising source."
The TUC  went on to suggest that todays, call centre personnel, supermarket till staff and other poorly paid workers could use the matchmakers example as a springboard for improving their own working conditions. Women in their defiance, continue to challenge health inequality and those who seek to oppress and exploit them not only nationally, but also globally. Women in their droves are standing up for other women, and are no longer willing to accept poor health outcomes as an inevitability of their oppressed lives. Years after the matchmakers strike the flame against injustice is still kept very much alive,  burning bright.

Further reading
 
A match to fire the Thames by Ann Stafford. Hodder and Stoughton, 1961.


Matchgirls strike 1888: the struggle against sweated labour in London's East End by Reg Beer. National Museum of Labour History, 1979.

 “It Just Went Like Tinder; the Mass Movement and New Unionism in Britain 1889: a Socialist History.” John Charlton, Redwords, 1999.

Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in History by Louise Raw (2011)Bloomsbury

British women trade unionists on strike at Bryant &May, 1888
https://microform.digital/boa/collections/53/british-women-trade-unionists-on-strike-at-bryant-may-1888/detailed-description 

Happy Birthday NHS: We must keep fighting for it.

Nye Bevans legacy came into the world 71 years ago this morning, then Minister of Health in Attlee’s post-war government, when he opened Park Hospital in Manchester at a time of rationing and shortages, when we were nearly bankrupt, a jewel  that the war generation left us with, a proud legacy, for us to all to continue to share.For the first-time doctors, nurses, opticians, dentists and pharmacists all worked under one organisation. It was a ray of hope in that bleak time, and it remains one today. The creation of the NHS in 1948 was the product of years of hard work and a motivation from various figures who felt the current healthcare system was insufficient and needed to be revolutionised..
Born in 1948 to a post-war Britain amidst the rubble of war,and a skeptical medical profession, the NHS has had its ups and downs over the years. However, its role and importance as a symbol of our Britishness and intense pride in being able to provide universal care, free at the point of delivery, has remained throughout, out of the belief that healthcare should be available to all, regardless of wealth,with health and care as priorities – not profit, .these ideals remains one of the NHS’s core principles.

Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health, on the first day of the National Health Service, 5 July 1948 at Park Hospital, Davyhulme, near Manchester. 

These ideas can be traced back to the early 1900s with the Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law in 1909. The report was headed by the socialist Beatrice Webb who argued that a new system was needed to replace the antiquated ideas of the Poor Law which was still in existence from the times of the workhouses in the Victorian era. Those who were involved in the report believed it was a narrow-minded approach from those in charge to expect those in poverty to be entirely accountable for themselves. Despite the strong arguments provided in the report, it still proved unsuccessful and many ideas were disregarded by the new Liberal government.
Nevertheless, more and more people were beginning to speak out and be proactive, including Dr Benjamin Moore, a Liverpool physician who had great foresight and a pioneering vision of the future in healthcare. His ideas were written in “The Dawn of the Health Age” and he was probably one of the first to use the phrase ‘National Health Service’. His ideas led him to create the State Medical Service Association which held its first meeting in 1912. It would be another thirty years before his ideas would feature in the Beveridge Plan for the NHS.
Before the creation of the NHS or anything like it, when someone found themselves needing a doctor or to use medical facilities, patients were generally expected to pay for those treatments. In some cases local authorities ran hospitals for the local ratepayers, an approach originating with the Poor Law. By 1929 the Local Government Act amounted to local authorities running services which provided medical treatment for everyone. On 1st April 1930 the London County Council then took over responsibility for around 140 hospitals, medical schools and other institutions after the abolition of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. By the time the Second World War broke out, the London Council was running the largest public service of its kind for healthcare.
Today, we have a lot to thank the NHS for; from the introduction of polio and diphtheria vaccinations to all under 15-year olds to the success of smoking cessation services and cancer screening services, the NHS has been instrumental in many of the medical achievements the UK has seen over the last 71 years.a shinig example of what separates us from the US. It offered for the first time a free healthcare system for all, and has since  played a vital role in caring for all aspects of our nations health. It has been the envy of the world ever since. My own father served it well for nigh on 40 years.Remember we paid for it, so it is owned by us, it is our precious commodity, it must survive, we must tear the vultures hands from it.
It wouldn’t be possible to run a 7-day NHS, caring for millions of people day-in-day-out without the hard work and dedication of its staff. Despite all the adversity that’s thrown at them: poor pay, bursary cuts, hospital parking fines and staff shortages to name a few; they continue to become stronger and relentlessly deliver fantastic healthcare to the nation .Recent tragic events that have taken place in London, Manchester and Grenfell Tower have once again highlighted the strength, professionalism , dedication and bravery of our healthcare staff. It is truly inspiring to see how amazing the staff handled the awful situation and it was a testament to every healthcare worker throughout the UK. They  are a credit to our nation and we couldn’t be more proud.
The NHS  here in Wales employs close to 72,000 staff which makes it Wales’ biggest employer. I can never forget the compassion they gave to my dear departed, the staff always managing to keep her spirits high, never once showing any dereliction of care.Dedicated, compassionate staff  are under increased pressure, leading to low moral. Recent figures have emerged that 2/4s of hospitals have been warned about dangerous staff shortages.
As the Tory's and their rotten hearts seek to dismantle it,  we should not forget Nye's words who said ' It will last as long as their are folk with enough faith to fight for it. We  cannot reach the day again where people make a profit out of our sickness.On its birthday we should also join the call for fair pay for all NHS staff - scrap the cap ,Public sector pay has been capped for too long. This is despite rising inflation and increased living costs. Workers in the UK are on average £1200 worse off a year than in 2008. It's not OK that NHS staff like nurses are resorting to food banks to get by
We are now standing at a precipice: the NHS has been severely damaged by underfunding and privatisation .But remember we paid for it, so it is owned by us, it is our precious commodity, it must survive, we must tear the vultures hands from it. Recently Jeremy**** the Tory party wannabee had the gall to suggest he'd saed the NHS when he was health secretary.Mr **** said he’d “fought to improve patient safety and deliver the cash boost that will secure our NHS for the future” before he was moved to his current role as Foreign Secretary. Lets nor forget that NHS campaigners and professionals who were heavily critical of Mr **** when he was in charge of healthcare.  Junior doctors were involved a four year dispute with him over pay and conditions, which included unprecedented walkouts. As the Tory's and their rotten hearts seek to dismantle our beloved NHS we should not forget Nye's words who said ' It will last as long as their are folk with enough faith to fight for it.' We  cannot reach the day again where people make a profit out of our sickness . The NHS is a shining example of how a caring society can create  good and safe care based on social solidarity., making such a great contribution towards social and health equality.  A beacon to the world. And the greatest example of Socialism in action and the basic decency and fairness of our labour movement.
Thank you to all of those who have worked and who are still working tirelessly to provide the best care to over 64 million people in the UK. The last 72 years wouldn’t have been possible without them. It is currently tthough in real danger, under attack from those that want to privatise it, run it down and fragment it now more than ever and we can't allow this to happen.With American putocrats turning their eyes on the NHS,it's more important than ever to that we continue to defend it with all we've got. It is not now or any day for sale. Today, and everyday, we must keep fighting to protect this most special institution and the people working within it.

Franz Kafka - Magical realist (3/7/1883 -3/6/1924

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Franz Kafka - " Don't bend, don't water it down, don't try to make it logical, don't edit your own soul  according to the fashion.  Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. "

Franz Kafka one of  the most influential writers of the 20th century, was a Jewish Czech writer, born in Praque on this day July 3, 1883.who died at the age of 40, in 1924, of TB largely unpublished and unknown, but not after having written some of the most extraordinary works of all time. After his death with the posthumous publication of his novels, letters and diaries he rose to international fame as a literary genius, one of the founding fathers of magic realism and the modern novel.
He is now considered the most influential profoundly misunderstood writers of our time. Often reduced to abstract philosophical despair, his writing was also often a scathing critique of capitalist society and bureaucracy informed by his contact with radical political groups . His most famous works are two unfinished novels, The Trial and  The Castle and the short story The Metamorphosis,(Die Verwandlung) an eerie tale of a man who finds himelf changed into a giant insect. This shocking and beautifully told novella is widely acclaimed for its greatness.Written before the holocaust, a literary sighting of the terror that we can create and the beasts we can so easily become.
His family was of German culture  but as they belonged to the ghetto, they were excluded from realtionships with the German minority in Praque.Tragedy shaped the Kafka home. Franz’s two younger brothers, George and Heinrich, died in infancy by the time Kafka was 6, leaving the boy the only son in a family that included three daughters (all of whom would later die in Nazi death camps or a Polish ghetto).
Kafka had a difficult relationship with both of his parents. His mother, Julie, was a devoted homemaker who lacked the intellectual depth to understand her son’s dreams to become a writer. Kafka’s father, Hermann, had a forceful personality that often overwhelmed the Kafka home. He was a success in business, making his living retailing men’s and women’s clothes. His father ruled the family with great authority, who has been  described as a huge ill-tempered domestic tyrant, who on many occasions directed his anger towards his son and was disrespectful towards his escape into literature.  This led to Franz becoming an extremely sensitive adult, with a delicate personality.
He finished secondary school and entered the Deutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität in 1901, studying first chemistry and then law .While in his first year of university, Kafka became friends with Max Brod. They remained friends for Kafka's entire life. Brod encouraged Kafka's love of reading, and introduced him to some of the influences on his later work, including Dostoyevsky, Goethe, and Gogol.
In 1906, Kafka earned his Doctor of Law degree and began his professional career. Though he wanted to be writing, Kafka worked foran insurance agency, fpr 14 years, the Worker’s Accident Institute of Bohemia from 30 August 1908  to his early retirement  on 1 July 1922, in a relatively undemanding job that left him time to write. Kafka had tried to join the military to fight in World War I, but he was denied due to his poor health.
He was not an ordinary person, it is generally agreed that Kafka suffered from clinical depression and social anxiety throughout his entire life, and also suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains, he was different, living in a state of anxious solitude, which resulted in him turning into a tormented genius. "I need solitude for my writing " the author said, but "not like a hermit - that wouldn't be enough but like a dead man." His writings stem from his battle with tuberculosis, complicated by neurosis and psychosomatic disorders associated with organic disease. On all accounts  Kafka seemed to be a well established and elegant figure, respected and liked by his circle of associates, he tried to keep private just how nervous he felt, and only revealed this to his director (at the Worker’s Accident Institute of Bohemia) when he had to ask for an extended leave with pay.
His complicated love life did not make his life  any easier for him, despite his complications, he was a bit of a ladies man. But his personal life  raged with complications. His inhibitions and insecurities plagued his relationships. Twice he was engaged to marry his girlfriend, Felice Bauer, before the two finally went their separate ways in 1917.
A   political radical  who was  an admirer of the anarchist Peter Kropotkin, and was drawn into the world of the libertarian socialism movement. Kafka’s opposition to established society became apparent when, as an adolescent, he declared himself a socialist as well as an atheist. Throughout his adult life he expressed qualified sympathies for the socialists, he attended meetings of Czech anarchists (before World War I). Even then he was essentially passive and politically unengaged. As a Jew, Kafka was isolated from the German community in Prague, but, as a modern intellectual, he was also alienated from his own Jewish heritage. He was sympathetic to Czech political and cultural aspirations but his identification with German culture kept even these sympathies subdued. Thus, social isolation and rootlessness contributed to Kafka’s lifelong personal unhappiness.
Kafkas strange stories, appeal to me a lot, earning their own adjective, Kafkaesque, to describe an aspect of social reality and political science  that tends to be overlooked. With his libertarian sensibility, Kafka succeeded in capturing the oppressive and absurd nature of the bureaucratic  nightmare, the opacity, the impenetrable and incomprehensive character of the rules of the state hierarchy as they are  seen from below and outside, which  destroys the mind and body and numbs the soul. Despite his perverse search of guilt to expiate , he did not surrender. In front of the omnipresence of evil and falsity he took refuge in words as an antidote to despair. Kafka’s heroes search for truth in a world of alienation, irrationality and injustice. They submit and endure and try to explain the inexplicable.
Kafka later would fall in love with Dora Dymant (Diamant), who shared his Jewish roots and a preference for socialism. Amidst Kafka’s increasingly dire health, the two fell in love and lived together in Berlin. Their relationship largely centered on Kafka’s illnesses. For many years, even before he contracted tuberculosis, Kafka had not been well. Constantly strained and stressed, he suffered from migraines, boils, depression, anxiety and insomnia. He died in Kierling, Austria, on June 3, 1924. He was buried beside his parents in Prague’s New Jewish Cemetery in Olsanske.
Plagued by self-doubt, Kafka burned a huge amount of his writing, it's estimated that he burned more than 90% of what he wrote and, aware that his fragile health was failing, he asked his best friend Max Brod, who was to be his literary executor, to destroy any unfinished manuscripts on his death, unread. Fortunately for the world, Brod published it instead.
The Trial, written in 1914, was published in 1925. It tells the bizarre story of a man named Josef K., who works at a bank. He is arrested on his 30th birthday but he is never told what for. He is released and told to wait for his trial. It drags on for two years and Josef never knows what he is charged with. On his 32nd birthday, two men show up at him home and take him away. They stab him in the heart and he dies.
The Castle, which Kafka started in 1922, was unfinished when the author died in 1924. It was published by Max Brod after Kafka's death. It tells the story of a man named only K. who comes to a village. The village is ruled by a castle beside it, though no one is completely sure what the castle does. K.'s right to be in the village is questioned and then revoked when K. is about to die.
Sadly a lot of his work still  chimes with the world today as the world again  descends into fear and madness. Many years after his death his works act like guidebooks to the very dark feelings most of us know only to well , concerned with powerlessness, self-disgust and anxiety. This literary genius turned the stuff of nightmares however, into redemptive, consoling art. Kafka taught us, truth always ends as it begins, in the inexplicable, can any hope for a better future exist? It is this sense of despair and pessimism , and in his letters, Kafka writes of listening to “the frightened voices from within”, as it is these fears that form a path to truth. Everybody should read some Kafka.

Will Self's Kafka journey: A Praque walking tour.