Remembering Sharpeville Massacre

 

On March 21, 1960. at a police station  in the  small Black South African  township of Sharpeville near  Johannesburg , following a day of demonstrations, police opened fire on a crowd of around 5,000 to 7,000 protestors. The crowds had gathered  to protest the establishment of apartheid pass laws which restricted movement of non-whites. designed to segregate the population.

 The Sharpeville Massacre took place in a South Africa that denied even basic democratic rights and freedoms to those considered as "non-white" under an apartheid (racial segregation and discrimination) system.

 Apartheid means “apartness” in the Afrikaans language. The concept was endorsed, legalized and promoted by the National Party, which was elected in South Africa in 1948 by a minority, exclusively white electorate.

 Apartheid laws placed all South Africans into one of four racial categories: “white/European,” “native/black,” “coloured,” (people of “mixed race”) or “Indian/Asian.” White people – 15 percent of the South African population – stood at the top, wielding power and wealth. Black South Africans – 80 percent of the population – were relegated to the very bottom. Apartheid laws restricted almost every aspect of black South Africans’ lives.

The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) planned a series of national protests against the pass laws in 1960. Black South Africans were asked to gather outside police stations around the country on March 21 and offer themselves up for arrest, for not carrying their pass books. 

 At Langa Township in Cape Town, two people were killed and 49 injured when police opened fire. Sharpeville, was through the 1950s a community untouched by anti-apartheid demonstrations that occurred in surrounding towns.  By 1960, however, anti-apartheid activism reached the town.  In March 1960, Robert Sobukwe, a leader in the anti-apartheid Pab=Adricn Congress (PAC)  organized the town’s first anti-apartheid protest.  In order to reduce the possibility of violence he wrote a letter to the Sharpeville police commissioner announcing the upcoming protest and emphasizing that its participants would be non-violent.

Nearly 300 police officers arrived to put an end to the peaceful protest.  As they attempted to disperse the crowd, a police officer was knocked down and many in the crowd began to move forward to see what had happened.  Police witnesses claimed that stones were thrown, and in a panicked and rash reaction, the officers opened fire into the crowd.  Other witnesses claimed there was no order to open fire, and the police did not fire a warning shot above the crowd.  As the thousands of Africans tried to flee the violent scene, police continued to shoot into the crowd.  Sixty-nine unarmed Africans were killed and 186 were wounded with most shot in the back.

 Sharepville became a symbol of the violence and racist cruelty of the apartheid regime that divided black and white and reduced Africans to third class citizens in the land of their birth.

 But there was also resistance. As the bodies were being carted away so news of the massacre raced around the countries’ poverty stricken townships. In Cape Town thousands of African workers stopped work and stevedores walked off the ships.

A “day of mourning” a week later resulted in riots and shooting around Johannesburg, and police baton charges at the crowds in Cape Town.

Nelson Mandela and his 29 co-accused in the infamous Treason Trial were still on trial when the massacre happened. In his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela recalled: “The massacre at Sharpeville created a new situation in the country ... A small group of us – Walter [Sisulu], Duma Nokwe, Joe Slovo and I – held an all-night meeting in Johannesburg to plan a response. We knew we had to acknowledge the events in some way and give the people an outlet for their anger and grief. We conveyed our plans to Chief Luthuli, and he readily accepted them. On March 26, in Pretoria, the chief publicly burned his pass, calling on others to do the same. He announced a nationwide stay-at-home for March 28, a national Day of Mourning and protest for the atrocities at Sharpeville. In Orlando, Duma Nokwe and I then burned our passes before hundreds of people and dozens of press photographers.”

                                                        Nelson Mandela burning his pass

The world was shocked too and condemnation was universal. International solidarity and the isolation of apartheid South Africa became one of the key elements contributing to its demise. People abroad, by linking hands with South Africa’s oppressed, provided inspiration and decisive support. On April 1, the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed a resolution condemning the killings and calling for the South African government to abandon its policy of apartheid. A month later, the UN General Assembly declared that apartheid was a violation of the UN Charter. This was the first time the UN had discussed apartheid. Since then, apartheid and many of its elements have been codified as crimes against humanity.

The massacre also sparked hundreds of mass protests by black South Africans, many of which were ruthlessly and violently crushed by the South African police and military.  On March 30, the South African government under Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd declared a state of emergency which made any protest illegal.  The ban remained in effect until August 31, 1960.  During those five months roughly 25,000 people were arrested throughout the nation.  The South African government then created the Unlawful Organizations Act of 1960 which banned anti-apartheid groups such as the Pan Africanist Congress and the African National Congress. 

The South African’s government’s repressive measures in response to the Sharpeville Massacre, however, intensified and expended the opposition to apartheid, many  members of both organizations mentioned decided to go underground. Nelson Mandela was among those who chose to become outlaws. He would later say, “We believe in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that ‘the will of the people shall be the basis of authority of the government,’ and for us to accept the banning was the equivalent of accepting the silencing of Africans for all time.'

Mandela and others no longer felt they could defeat apartheid peacefully. Both the PAC and the ANC formed armed wings and began a military struggle against the government.Nelson Mandela became commander-in-chief of the ANC’s armed wing, “Umkhonto we Sizwe” or “Spear of the Nation”They took to acts of sabotage against government targets, which sometimes killed civilians. These were denounced by South Africa’s main backers, Britain and the United States and the ANC was labelled as a “terrorist organisation”.Following his arrest, Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment on four counts of sabotage.

However, many foreign investors pulled out of the country and a number of sporting boycotts followed. Many long years of struggle and suffering lay ahead. but the  Sharpeville massacre was a turning point South African history and led to a chain of events that shaped the direction of resistance to apartheid both in South African and internationally and heped  create a receptive political setting for the British Boycott Movement’  Sharpeville certainly played a decisive role in the Boycott Movement's transformation into the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM).

The incident and its repercussions alsp led to the growing politicisation of the South African working class and created a more militant younger generation in the townships. The struggle in the townships grew steadily, with a major uprising in Soweto, Johannesburg in1976. By 1985, the regime had lost control of these working class districts and declared a state of emergency. The country was on the brink of civil war. Elements in the regime and leading businessmen opened talks with the ANC, recognising that it was the only organisation that could quell a revolutionary upsurge.

President F. W. de Klerk released the ANC’s Nelson Mandela from prison on February 2, 1990, heralding the end of the Apartheid system. White minority rule finally collapsed in 1994 in elections that brought the ANC and Mandela to power. Had he not released Mandela when he did, de Klerk said, “The prospects for a satisfactory negotiated settlement would have diminished with each successive cycle of revolution and repression”.

 Symbolically in 1994, Mandela signed the nation’s first post-apartheid constitution near the site of the 1960 massacre. The anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre is remembered the world over every March 21as International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Proclaiming the day in 1966, the United Nations General Assembly called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.

In South Africa, Human Rights Day is a public holiday wbich is celebrated on 21 March each year. The day commemorates the lives of those who died to fight for democracy and equal human rights for all in South Africa during apartheid an institutionally racist system built upon racial discrimination. 

 While the Sharpeville Massacre and its annual commemoration serve as a stark reminder of the violent consequences of the apartheid regime in South Africa and its threat to fundamental rights, freedoms, and human dignity, it is also a time to commemorate the ultimate defeat of this institutionalised system of oppression, and encourages us to continue to work to bring an end to all forms of racial discrimination, racial segregation, and apartheid around the world. But this work is not done, particularly as apartheid endures in Palestine.

 For decades, Israel has established and maintained an apartheid regime over the Palestinian people, through a plethora of laws, policies, and practices designed to ruthlessly segregate, fragment, and isolate Palestinians. The Palestinian people have been deliberately divided into four separate legal, political, and geographic domains, including Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza subject to Israeli military law, and as a result, Israel ensures that the Palestinian people are unable to meet, group, or live together, nor exercise any collective rights.

As I mark the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa, more efforts must be taken to ensure the legacy of apartheid, and all other forms of racial discrimination and oppression, are finally brought to an end. In the same way that apartheid fell in South Africa, supporters of human rights, international law, social justice, and equality must exert pressure today to uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.
"Remember Sharpeville" was the late South African activist, educator, journalist, former inmate with Nelson Mandela at Robben Island in the mid -1960s, and poet  Dennis Brutus memorial to the Sharpeville massacre of 1960,

 

 Remember Sharpeville - Dennis Brutus

 

 What is important

about Sharpeville

is not that seventy died:

nor even that they were shot in the back

retreating, unarmed, defenseless

and certainly not

the heavy caliber slug

that tore through a mother’s back

and ripped through the child in her arms

killing it

Remember Sharpeville

bullet-in-the-back day

Because it epitomized oppression

and the nature of society

more clearly than anything else;

it was the classic event

Nowhere is racial dominance

more clearly defined

nowhere the will to oppress

more clearly demonstrated

what the world whispers

apartheid with snarling guns

the blood lust after

South Africa spills in the dust

Remember Sharpeville

Remember bullet-in-the-back day

And remember the unquenchable will for freedom

Remember the dead

and be glad.

150th Anniversary of the Paris Commune

 

150 years ago on this  day March 18th, 1871, artisans and communists, labourers and anarchists took over the city of Paris and established the Paris Commune, rising  up against a despised and detested government and proclaimed the city independent, belonging to itself. The workers of Paris, joined by mutinous National Guardsmen, seized the city and set about reorganising society in their own interests based on workers' councils. It is said to be one of the first examples of  working people taking power.

This radical experiment in socialist self government lasted 72 days before being violently  being crushed in a brutal massacre that established France's Third republic.

This rebellion  would shake the foundations of European society to the core, the people rising up against a despised and detested government and its  its capitalist rulers  proclaiming  the city an  independent municipality, belonging to itself .  a commune where they would directly and collectively manage their society through new institutions and voluntary associations of their own creation. It would mark the first major experience of the proletariat seizing  political power. Taking charge of their own destiny.

The Paris Commune came into being in the context of the Franco-Prussian war which led to the collapse of the Second French Empire under the rule of Napoleon III, which was replaced by the Third Republic in late 1870. The Prussian army had surrounded Paris and held the city under a siege for around 4 month in the cold winter of 1870/71. It is reported that the people in Paris first ate the animals in the zoo and later rats in order to survive. Eventually, the French army surrendered and accepted the conditions for the peace treaty imposed by Bismarck.

The city of Paris was mostly defended by the National Guard instead of the regular army. A large fraction of the National Guard were proletarians, some of which were said to be undisciplined and rejected to wear the official uniform. While there was a general discontent with the unconditional surrender of the French army and nationalist calls to continue the war or revenge Prussia for the defeat were widespread, the First International had gained significant influence especially within the working class of Paris, as well. This combined the general frustration within the population due to the lost war and the devastating siege with a general urge for profound social change due to arising class consciousness. Accordingly, already within the last month of the war, some attempts of uprising were undertaken with popular demands like the civil control of the military and elections of a commune. However, those early attempts were repressed and foiled. An important detail of the peace deal between the French army and the Prussians was the fact that the National Guard were allowed to keep their weapons in order to “maintain law and order” in Paris.

The central government, not unaware of the revolutionary potential of an armed Paris, secretly sent troops into the city in the night of March 17^th/18^th in order to bring the cannons of the National Guard under the control of the central army. However, the attempt was soon revealed and the people of Paris quickly rushed to defend their cannons. Only a few shots were fired before the soldiers defected to the crowd that had surrounded them. On March 18^th, authorities of the central government started to flee from the city, followed by a general retreat of the French Army which left the National Guard in control of the city. The republican tricolor was replaced with the red flag. The Paris Commune was born.

The Paris Commune  was  the high point  in the surge  of the workers movement also expressed in the First International  founded in 1867. Ideologically charged, with lots of division, the backlash following the defeat of the Commune, also broke up the International in 1872, which would see it splitting into  two factions; Marxist and Anarchist. The leading  figures  on the two sides were Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin.

Both Marx and Bakunin supported and hailed the Commune - unlike some English trade unionists in the International, who recoiled in horror. Bakunin and his followers would use the word 'commune' a  lot saying  that the state could  be immediately abolished by transforming society into a federation of free communes. The Paris  Commune  reflected anarchist ideas of community control, workers associations and confederations, and surprisingly at the time Karl Marx strongly embraced the Commune, writing at the time he said " Working men's Paris, with  its commune,  will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. It's martyr's are enshrined in the great heart of  the working class."

Since then the Paris Commune has been thus variously described as either Anarchist or Socialist  depending on the ideology of the commentator.  It still fills me with much cause for celebration and inspiration. Along with the establishment of a state of, by, and for the working class, the Commune’s claim to greatness is the remarkable range of measures it passed. Rent payments were deferred, as were debt obligations for a period of three years, with no accrual of interest; goods held in the government pawnshop were released to their owners; the separation of church and state was declared, with the government no longer funding church operations and all religious emblems removed from classrooms; the standing army was abolished, replaced by the National Guard, with its officers elected by its members; the guillotine was publicly burned; all elected members of the Commune’s council were made revocable, with their wages limited to those of a worker; factories closed down by their owners during the siege and Commune were to be turned into cooperative enterprises under worker control; and night work for bakers was banned. The Vendome Column, the symbol of Napoleonic military glory, was torn down, its demolition organized by Gustave Courbet.

From March 18 to 28 May the two million  residents of Paris ran their city as an autonomous commune, establishing 43 worker co-operatives,  and advocated for a federation  of revolutionary communes across France, establishing an 8 hour day,and began to regulate workers wages and contracts, abolishing fines for workers, giving them compensation, this was truly a government who put the interest of workers first . It also aimed to make education free, opening up culture for the people, formerly the sole property of the wealthy, opening reading rooms in hospitals to make life pleasant for those sick. Paris was filled with life, ideas and enthusiasm , though their city was  under siege, attempts made to starve  and break the will of the people surrounded by a hostile army. 

The Commune also opened the way for the emancipation of women, allowing them a greater role in politics than they had previously enjoyed. The name of Louise Michel, who headed a vigilance committee and organized an ambulance service, is the best known of the female Communards, but there were others of note. The most important organization was the Union of Women for the Defense of Paris and the Care of the Wounded, co-founded by the Russian emigré Elisabeth Dmitrieff, who also fought at the barricades in the final days of the Commune and later fled to Switzerland. Women weren’t granted the vote or the right to sit on the Commune, but they played a key role at the barricades and were involved in the fight from its first day. The Communards famously set fire to many of Paris’ most famous and important buildings, the arson attributed to roving bands of revolutionary women known as Les Petroleuses.

Peter Kropotkin later enthused "Under  the name of the Paris Commune,  a new idea was born, to become a starting point for future revolutions.' But many others thoughts that the Paris Commune did not go far enough . 

Anyway the French government was not going to tolerate this radicalism in its capital, and finally the French army  marched from Versailles, but retaking the city would prove to be difficult, the communards would hold out for several weeks. The revolutionaries had built 600 barricades around the city which had to be cleared one by one. The French army finally entered Paris on May 21 and crushed the movement by May 28. Paris burned and was drowned in blood , the  estimate of Parisian civilians killed usually tally's to be around 20,000, many died on the barricades. The leaders of the Commune might have had faults  but for all their mistakes , they chose to fight to the end alongside  the other workers.  At the Père Lachaise Cemetery the French army lined up and executed 147 Commune members.

In reckoning with the French state’s actions concerning the Commune, it is important to also highlight that even after the mass executions had ended, a further 9,000 Communards were sentenced to either imprisonment or exile. In the forts along the French Atlantic Coast, but above all in the penal colony on New Caledonia—known as the “dry guillotine”—Communard resistance fighters died in great numbers, before an amnesty declared in 1880 permitted survivors to return to their homeland.

The amnesty, however, was no rehabilitation; the sentences received by the Communards retained their legal validity, and to this day French authorities have staunchly refused efforts to have them revoked. This means that the Communards retain the status of political criminals. The intent here is clear: to delegitimize the Paris Commune. In this sense, the depiction of the aforementioned events published in an 1881 issue of the German magazine Der Sozialdemokrat to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Commune’s defeat remains as apt as ever. A sea of blood separating two worlds; on the one side, those who struggled for a different and better world, and on the other, those who sought to preserve the old order

 There is a wall at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, known as “Le Mur des Fédérés”. It was there that the last fighters of the Paris Commune were shot and every year, thousands, and sometimes, as in 1971, tens of thousands, of French people, but also people from all over the world, visit this exalted place of memory of the labour movement. They come alone or in demonstrations, with red flags or flowers, and sometimes sing an old love song, which became the song of the Communards: “Le Temps des Cerises”. We do not pay homage to a man, a hero or a great thinker, but to a crowd of anonymous people who we refuse to forget.

 

 

After its demise, the Commune became all things to all people on the left; for some, the first socialist state, for others, anarchism in action. For Friedrich Engels, as he wrote in his postscript to Marx’s The Civil War in France, it was the “dictatorship of the proletariat” that he and Marx and the First International had long called for. It was, in reality, not just the first revolution of its kind, but in many ways the last, above all a product and prisoner of France’s particular conditions and history. The measures implemented by the Commune, a form of government that, like so much else about its foundations, harked back to the French Revolution, would be echoed through the decades, inspiring movements around the world and playing an essential role in the rise of the left. But if Engels is right and the Paris Commune was the embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, many of those who later invoked their ideas ultimately betrayed them..Engels’s description was championed by Marx and later by Lenin who, in the months leading up to the Russian Revolution, called for the creation of “a state of the Paris commune type.”

As Walter Benjamin said in his theses “On the Concept of History” (1940), the struggle for emancipation is waged not only in the name of the future but also in the name of the defeated generations; the memory of enslaved ancestors and their struggles is one of the great sources of moral and political inspiration for revolutionary thought and action. The Paris Commune is therefore part of what Benjamin calls “the tradition of the oppressed”, that is to say, of those privileged (“messianic”) moments in history when the lower classes have succeeded, for a while, in breaking the continuity of history, the continuity of oppression; short - too short - periods of freedom, emancipation and justice which will, each time, serve as benchmarks and examples for new battles.

Since then  both Communists, left wing societies,  socialists, anarchists and others have seen the Commune as a model for a  prefiguration of a liberated society, with a political system based on participatory democracy from the grass roots up.Just as Lenin saw the October revolution in the tradition of the Paris Commune as he proved by euphorically counting every day up to the historical 73 day mark of resistance of the Commune, this legacy has been continued in the resistance of Sur in Bakur (North-Kurdistan) as well as with the revolution in Syria and Rojava (West-Kurdistan). It is a story of possibility not failure, evidence that points to the seeds of building an alternative society, that unites a spring of peoples, resisting together., and committed to continue building up the practical alternative we want to live. 

Many aspects of this first attempt at social emancipation of the oppressed retain an astonishing relevance and should be reflected on by the new generations. Without the memory of the past and its struggles there will be no fight for the utopia of the future.The people of Paris began the fight for a new world, I guess it's up to us to finish the task.

 

“If socialism wasn’t born of the Commune, it is from the Commune that dates that portion of international revolution that no longer wants to give battle in a city in order to be surrounded and crushed, but which instead wants, at the head of the proletarians of each and every country, to attack national and international reaction and put an end to the capitalist regime.” —Edouard Vaillant, a member of the Paris Commune.

Vive la Commune!

further reading :- 

History of the Paris Commune - Lissagary

Voltarine de Cleyre on the Paris Commune

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voltairine-de-cleyre-the-paris-commune?v=1575118490

The Paris Commune: Revolution and counter revolution in Paris 1870 -1871

https://libcom.org/history/paris-commune-revolution-counterrevolution-paris-1870-1871

                                Communards at the barricades.

Defend the Right to Protest

 

Labour's U-turn on how to vote on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court's  Bill is to be welcomed but it is solely down to the brave women who attended Clapham Common vigil over the weekend. Women wanted to gather to express their pain, grief, anger and solidarity in memory of Sarah Everard. instead we saw the atrocious scenes from south London where totally unwarranted policing led to women manhandled, handcuffed and arrested for participating in a vigil for a murdered woman despite the fact that one of their own serving police officers has been charged with this vile crime.

Policing like this do not happen by accident. It’s hard to find words. I don’t think I need to. The condemnation has been almost universal, with calls for the resignation of the Met police chief Cressida Dick  and even of the Home Secretary. They won't of course and despite the disgraceful police violence at the Sarah Everard vigil, this week Boris Johnson and Priti Patel are attempting to force through legislation to vastly restrict our right to protest, despite much opposition..

The government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts which is being debated today and voted on tomorrow, includes a huge and dangerous extension of police powers , the legislation allows for protestors to be thrown into jail for up to ten years. It will increase the use of stop and search. It will drastically reduce the scope for the public to peacefully protest while empowering the police to go much further in their efforts to stop it. 

The bill will also be able to say when demonstrations should start and finish; they will be able to determine maximum noise levels at static protests, thus, for example, affecting the noise pickets mounted by grassroots unions like CAIWU, UVW and the IWW. Even “one-person protests” will be subject to these new police powers. Already the police and the State have huge powers to restrict protest, increased with the pandemic, and now the Johnson regime wants to up the ante by increasing these powers even more. This bill is a massive attack on our freedoms and civil rights. What we saw at the weekend has again shown why that is totally unacceptable.but will be our future unless we protect the fundamental right to assemble 

The Good Law project points out that the Bill will give ‘new powers to the police to restrict peaceful protests’ which would ‘legislate that right out of meaningful existence.’It is the sort of legislation that one would expect to see in a military junta. All, it seems, in response to the Extinction Rebellion protests, after the climate activist group brought central London to a standstill and blockaded printing presses last year.  Home Secretary Priti Patel said on  Extinction Rebellion tactics she said they represent“a shameful attack on our way of life. The very criminals who disrupt our free society must be stopped.‘She also previously expressed outrage at Black Lives Matter protests saying “protesting in the way that people did last summer was not the right way at all …. Those protests were dreadful.” On Extinction Rebellion tactics she said they represent“a shameful attack on our way of life. The very criminals who disrupt our free society must be stopped.‘

The whole point of protest is that it will have an impact. It may well cause  unease or annoyance to those who don't agree with its aims, but that cannot outweigh the value of our freedom to peacefully assemble and to express our views. Without loud, disruptive protest  causing "annoyance" , wives would still be husband's property, women wouldn't have the vote. rape within  marriage would still be legal. Imagine telling the suffragettes to be quiet, the poll tax protestors not to a nuisance, or civil rights marchers that they can't stop traffic,

Black Protest Legal Support, a group set up to monitor policing of the BLM protests last summer,said that it is “vital we stand firmly against narrowing the space for civil disobedience, the attempted silencing of black voices and the chilling effect this will have on protest rights more broadly.”

If we do not stand up now. This new Bill will be used against our children and young people peacefully protesting whether over climate change or racism. Shami Charkrabati has called the plans “worryingly authoritarian”. Liberty has branded them a “staggering assault on our right to protest as well as an attack on other fundamental rights”.

Liberty interim director Gracie Bradley told LBC radio that she was concerned about the proposals amid the use of coronavirus regulations to curb protest.

 “We’ve seen nurses fined £10,000 at the weekend for protesting about their pay and it looks like these supposedly temporary measures are going to become permanent and our right to stand up to power … will be reduced,” she said. 

Over 100,000 people have now signed Netpool's petition opposing the government's new Policing Bill and calling  on the National Police Chief's Council to adopt their Charter for Freedom of  Assembly Rights,  setting out how police should protect not restrict the right to protest. You can sign it here https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/protect-the-freedom-to-protest

In total more than 150 groups have expressed alarm at the government’s plans.

 Political protest is the cradle of law making in society. Attempts to restrict it touches upon the fundamental cornerstones of our democratic rights.

 Tony Benn once remarked that every generation has to fight the same battles against the powerful. To protect our democracy, our public services, our rights and liberties. It now falls to this generation to defend our right to protest and challenge the power of government.

Our freedoms are under threat like never before . We cannot stand by and watch this hard right Tory government take away our democratic rights.

Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Protest is not only a right but a duty in the face of the many social, economic, environmental and political injustices in this society. Change only comes about by organising protest. 

 If you haven't already contacted your MP  it is now a matter of urgency to urge them to vote against it. As mentioned Labour has confirmed they will be voting against the Bill but we need others to join them. You might have an MP who you think immovable on the issue, but a lot of surprising voices were raised in anger over the Met’s atrocious behaviour on Saturday.

Protests can change  politicians minds. We must fight for our right to protest.This shocking attempt to curtail basic human rights and freedoms must be opposed.  It is certain that we shall have to be prepared to protest. We can do so safely and peacefully. For it is not a right we can allow to be taken away. Please sign the following petitions, Protect the right to protest, stop the assault on our freedoms. 

 https://www.open-britain.co.uk/protest?utm_campaign=pcsc_bill_1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=in

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions/uk-government-stop-assault-our-freedoms

https://act.friendsoftheearth.uk/petition/add-your-name-defend-right-protest?utm_source=appeal&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=politics&utm_content=FY2021-03_lm2103018_cta-button-1-ill-sign-the-letter&source=FN21

Fukushima Ten Years on.

Ten years  ago on March 11, 2011, at 2.46 pm Japan Time, a 9.0 magitude earthquake struck the Tohoku region of Honshsho Japan. It was the strongest tremor to hit the country and one of the strongest in the history of the world. The tremors lasted six minutes. Some 20 minutes after the earthquake hit, a  masive tsunami swept across coastal towns from the northern island of Hokkaido to the southern island of Okinawa, wiping out entire villages in the provinces of Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate destroying more than 400,000 buildings and homes, and killing 15,891people and and forcing more than 160,000 residents to flee as radiation spewed into the air..

A nuclear disaster compounded the horror when tsunami waves reached the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, with power out,the emergency cooling generators weren’t functional, and explosions began in the reactor containment buildings; this in turn caused nuclear material to leak out of the plant. causing the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. In addition too those already lost more than 3,700 people  mostly from Fukushima, died from illness or suicide in the aftermath of the tragedy.ad more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-03-japan-tsunami-nuclear-tragedy-years.html#jCp

In addition, more than 3,700 people—most of them from Fukushima—died from illness or suicide linked to the aftermath of the tragedy, according to government data

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-03-japan-tsunami-nuclear-tragedy-years.html#jCp

Unsurprisingly, critics of nuclear power  seized upon the accident to argue that because nature is unpredictable, nuclear power is simply too risky. Following the nuclear meltdown, Japan's entire stable of nuclear reactors were gradually switched off. But almost half a decade on, Japan is considering whether it should recommence its pursuit of nuclear energy - especially given its continued struggle to decommission the Fukushima reactors that are still inundated by contaminated water. 

Nuclear reactor facilities, which need a reliable source of water for cooling purposes, are usually located near the ocean or alongside a large lake or river.That's a somewhat fraught positioning from the lens of climate science, particularly since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report from 2007 found that ocean levels are rising roughly 1.2 inches each decade, with some scientists predicting that water levels could rise by as much as a meter by the end of the century.

That may not sound like much, with most nuclear power plants a full 20 to 30 feet above sea level, but each additional inch of water increases the risk of flooding and heightens storm surges, two of the more significant threats of a warmer planet.

The potential risks of tsunamis to nuclear power plants are well understood and a set of international standards has been developed to mitigate those risks. Yet, despite Japan’s history of tsunamis, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Japan’s nuclear regulator, did not apply those standards. It failed to review studies of tsunami risks performed by the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power, known as Tepco. It also failed to ensure the development of tsunami-modeling tools compliant with international standards.

Tepco was also negligent. It knew of geological evidence that the region surrounding the plant had been periodically flooded about once every thousand years. In 2008, it performed computer simulations suggesting that a repeat of the devastating earthquake of 869 would lead to a tsunami that would inundate the plant. Yet it did not adequately follow up on either of these leads.

Many people still do not trust Tokyo Electric because of its bungled response to the disaster..Around 12,000 people who fled their homes for fear of radiation have  since filed dozens of lawsuits against the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the stricken nuclear plant. Ten years later, about 5,000 workers pass through gates into the crippled plant each day to pull apart the plant, which still has about 880 tonnes of melted fuel debris in its reactors, and. radioactive water is continuing to flow into the Pacific Ocean from the crippled No ,1 plant, while the radiation levels at the crippled plant are still at unimaginable levels. 

 At 2:46 p.m.,the exact moment the earthquake struck a decade ago, Emperor Naruhito and his wife led a minute's silence to honour the dead in a commemorative ceremony in Tokyo. Silent prayers were held across the country.

 Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told the memorial ceremony that the loss of life was still impossible to contemplate.

 “It is unbearable when I think of the feelings of all those who lost their loved ones and friends,” said Suga, dressed in a black suit.

At the ceremony attended by emperor and prime minister, the attendees wore masks and kept their distance, and did not sing along with the national anthem to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

 “I would like to express condolences from the bottom of my heart to everybody who suffered from the effects of the disaster,” Suga added, reaffirming support for those affected by the disaster. Carrying bouquets of flowers , many walked to the seaside or visited graves tp pay respect to friends and relatives washed away by the water. 

As people remember the thousands killed in the Great East Japan,  despite the billions poured into reconstruction efforts by the Japanese government, scars on the landscape remain visible and the tragedy continues to wreak misery for many,  more than 50,000 people  still remain displaced, because of this man made disaster.

However at least all of Japan's reactors were halted after the accident and nuclear safety regulations were tightened significantly. Just nine reactors are currently operational, compared to 54 before March 2011, and two dozen are set for decommissioning.

Nuclear accounted for just 6.2 percent of electricity generation in Japan in fiscal 2019, a fraction of the 30 percent before the accident, according to official figures.

The government's current goal, which is being reviewed, is for nuclear to account for 20-22 percent of electricity generation by 2030 -- a target viewed as impossible by many experts.

A majority of Japanese remain opposed to nuclear power after the trauma of the Fukushima disaster, and dozens of lawsuits have been filed by communities near plants in a bid to prevent them restarting.Also following Fukushima, a number of countries including industrial powers like Germany have dramatically cut their dependence on nuclear power.

Sadly ten years after Fukushima, the nuclear lobby is still trying again to sell nuclear power as a miracle cure against the climate crisis . It is therefore our duty as a society tirelessly to educate about the risks and devastating effects  of nuclear technology, for the world to look beyond dependence on  nuclear power and look into more environmentally friendly  sources of energy. and make sure. that the lessons  of Chernobyl and Fukushima should not ever be forgotten. for the earth not to be harmed and  for people not to scream in despair. feel the aftershocks of heartache and pain, the dangers of nuclear power have not gone away, and will never be safe for this beloved planet of ours..   

A Resilient Flame

We are contained, all prisoners 

Eyes flickering in search of sanction,

A brief call of freedom, a little respite

The flavoured  fruits of nourishment,

Beyond the shits storms that envelope

The flannel footed dawns that hold us,

How wild swings the compass these days

Every second swings into shuffling darkness,

We sit and watch beneath the skies

Gently bowing to an omnipresent God,

Pondering  existence of chain linked fences

Showering the world with our desperate cries,

Oh what a time of blistering deliverance

Coats hammered by the afternoon rain,

It's a long and winding road, energy depletes

But shared hallucinations, bring good will,

The sweetness of touch that lingers

Hearts of kindness, flowering the gloom,

Dreams still unravelling as we tread

With yearning, mind's adrift with hope;

Beyond the walls that divide and confuse

Unfettered we will kiss and hold hands.

Lucy Gonzales Parsons: ‘more dangerous than a 1,000 rioters’

 

Although the early years of Lucy Ella Gonzales Parsons are shrouded in mystery, the historical record revealed that she came from African America, Native American, and Mexican ancestry,.the daughter of John Waller, a Muscogee, and Marie del Gather from Mexico.Parsons Her parents died when she was a child and was raised by relatives.

 Since she was born in Texas around 1853, her parents were probably slaves. Lucy quickly learned to function in her prejudiced society by using different names. Often giving Lucy Gonzales as her name, she used her Mexican ancestry to explain her dark skin tone instead of acknowledging her African American roots.

While Lucy was living with Oliver Gathings, a former slave, she met Albert Parsons.

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, on June 24, 1848, Albert Parsons was one of ten children of the owner of a shoe and leather factory. Both of his parents died when he was just five years old and Albert’s older brother William and Esther, a slave, helped raise him in Texas. After he attended school for about a year, Albert went to work as an apprentice at the Galveston Daily News. While still a teenager, Albert served in the Confederate Army including a stint in Parson’s Mounted Volunteers. 

After the Civil War, Albert settled in Texas, attending college at what is now Baylor University and working on several other newspapers. He became an activist for former slaves and a Republican overseer of Reconstruction which earned him the admiration and respect of the former slaves he championed and the hatred of his fellow southerners and the Ku Klux Klan. In what seemed to him a natural crossover, he also became interested in the rights of workers.

In 1869, Albert worked as a traveling correspondent and business agent for the Houston Daily Telegraph and during this time he met Lucy Ella Gonzales Waller. They were married in 1872, and Lucy Parsons, a political force in her own right joined her destiny with her political mentor and partner. Their marriage not only produced an interesting combination of political ideas, it also committed what southerners, especially Ku Klux Klan members, called miscegenation.

The South enforced both legal and social laws against miscegenation or racial mixing through marriage or cohabitation. In 1872, shortly after their marriage, the Parsons left Texas because of their political involvement and their interracial marriage. Four years before the formal ending of Reconstruction in 1876 when all federal troops left, the South methodically instituted restrictive Jim Crow segregation laws. Albert worked tirelessly to register Black voters and his enemies shot him in the leg and threatened to lynch him.  

In 1873, Albert and Lucy Parsons moved north to Chicago to what they hoped would be a better life. Albert began work as a printer for the Chicago Times.Life in Chicago didn’t provide a safe haven for the Parsons. They arrived in Chicago during the Panic of 1873, a financial collapse and depression that lingered on for years. Causes of the Panic of 1873 include post Civil War inflation, over speculation especially in railroads, a large trade deficit, declining bank reserves, and European economic problems stemming from the Franco-Prussian War. Chicago and Boston also suffered the financial losses from devastating fires, Chicago in 1871 and Boston in 1872.

As Albert’s tenure as a printer continued, so did the labor troubles of the United States. A law called the Contract Labor law of 1864 permitted American businesses to contract and bring immigrant laborers into the country which created a surplus of unskilled workers in cities like Chicago and lowered wages. Socialist and anarchist ideology also gained a toe hold in the United States and began to radicalize its labor force.

After they settled in a German-immigrant community, embracing first socialism and then anarchism Albert and Lucy became Labour actiists. In 1877, the Baltimore Ohio Railroad cut worker’s wages igniting a nationwide strike and motivating railroad workers all over the country to join picket lines. Reaction to the railroad strike rippled through Chicago in the summer of 1877 when Chicago railroad workers  took up the cause with a vengeance, derailing an engine and baggage cars fighting sporadic battles with the police.
 Motivated by the plight of striking workers, Albert embraced an activist role, taking time from his work and family life to advocate peaceful ways for workers to negotiate. Soon the small number of workers he initially addressed grew to crowds of more than 25,000 people and Albert stood at center of the Chicago anarchist movement. Lucy stood by his side both literally and figuratively.

Albert and Lucy Parsons joined the Socialist Labor Party in 1876, and they were active members of the International Working People’s Association or the First International which supported racial and gender equality. Albert Parsons also became the editor of the Alarm, the anarchist weekly journal that the International Working People’s Association published. 

As Albert’s labor activities and speech making increased so did his fame and eventually the Chicago Times fired him for supporting striking workers and the printers’ unions in Chicago black listed him. Lucy Parsons opened a dress shop to support Albert and their two children, Albert Jr. and Lulu Eda.  Like Twentieth Century women, Lucy found herself jugging her family responsibilities and her career. She chaired meetings for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union with her friend Lizzie Swank, and she began to write for several radical publications.

 Both her friends and enemies considered Lucy Parsons  a more dangerous radical than Albert, because of her outspoken speeches and writing defending the rights of poor people. She also challenged the  establishment because she refused to be confined to the role of a homemaker but expanded her resume to include militant and radical woman. The Chicago Police Department describing her 'as more dangerous than a thousand rioters.'

Together she and Albert  would fight for African American voting rights, and against KKK terror, condemning racist attacks and killings. Getting involved also in  radical labour organising, they fought for the rights of political prisoners, women, people of color, and homeless people, advocating a syndicalist theory of society.

She began writing for the radical newspapers The Socialist and The Alarm.' On the topic of the growth of homeless people  begging for food on the streets of Chicago, the Chicago  tribune said ' When a tramp asks you for bread , put strychnine or arsenic on it and he will trouble you no more, and trouble will keep out of your neighbourhood.' In response to this depravity, Lucy wrote one of her most famous articles  called - ' To Trams, the Unemployed, the Disinherited, and Miserable.' 

On May 1, 1886, Albert and Lucy Parsons and their two children, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue to support the eight hour work day, and this parade is considered to be the first May Day parade.  The International Working Peoples Association organized a campaign for the eight hour day and on May 1, 1886, a national strike of American workers began in support of an eight hour day.

Over the next few days over 340,000 male and female workers participated in the strike with more than 25 percent of them hailing from Chicago. The unity of the Chicago workers so surprised Chicago employers that they granted the workers a shorter work day.  Thrilled, Lucy Parsons proclaimed that the United States was ripe for a mass worker’s revolution.

On May 3, 1886, police fired into a crowd of unarmed strikers at the McCormick Harvest Works in Chicago, wounding many strikers and killing four of them. The Radicals called a meeting for May 4, 1886, in Haymarket Square to discuss the situation. Many versions of the story say that the Chicago police fired on a peaceful rally and an unknown person threw a bomb, while some modern labor historians like Timothy Messer-Kruse argue that the anarchists had a premeditated plan and provoked the confrontation. However it started, a riot broke out and one officer was killed and several officers and workers were wounded.

Over the next few days, police scoured Chicago, searching for and arresting any anarchists and radicals they could capture. They raided homes, offices, and meeting halls of suspected radicals and Albert Parsons had not been in Haymarket Square that day, but the police accused him as one of the eight men responsible for the bombing. Albert Parsons went into hiding, moving to Waukesha, Wisconsin, and remaining there until June 21, 1886.

Both proud and angry that Albert Parsons believed in his anarchism enough to die for it, Lucy launched into a campaign for clemency. She toured the United States on a speaking tour, distributing fliers and pamphlets about the unjust arrests and trials, and raising funds to help the defendants. Armed policemen greeted Lucy had almost every place she visited, barring her admission to meeting halls and monitoring her speech and actions.

As well as outside threats, Lucy Parsons also had to fight a battle within the labor movement. She had belonged to the Knights of Labor for over ten years and she vehemently disagreed with Terence Powderly, the leader of the Knights. Terence Powderly opposed strikes and often discouraged Knights of Labor members from participating in them and he strongly disagreed with radicalism. He believed that the government should make an example of the Haymarket defendants and the Knights of Labor firmly stood against the Haymarket defendants. 

Despite these setbacks, Lucy continued her speaking tour, sparking more interest in the Haymarket case and becoming more and more famous in her own right.  

The police kept Lucy Parsons under constant surveillance and whenever they had the slightest suspicion she knew Albert’s whereabouts, they arrested her. Although they never charged Lucy with conspiracy in the bombing, the authorities did arrest and charge Oscar Neebe, Adolph Fisher, August Spies, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Carl Engle, and her husband Albert. Eventually, Albert turned himself in to stand with his fellow defendants and they were brought to trial, even though many of them were not even at Haymarket Square at the time of the riot.  

Corporate lawyer William Perkins Black defended the anarchists, and witnesses testified that none of the eight defendants had thrown the bomb. The jury found them all guilty. Oscar Neebe was sentenced to 15 years in prison and the others drew death sentences. Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab asked for clemency and eventually Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned them and they were released from prison on June 26, 1893. Albert Parsons could have been pardoned as well, but he didn’t petition Governor Altgeld for a pardon because he felt that asking for a pardon meant admitting guilt and he had committed no crime.

The day before his death,Albert Parsons wrote a letter to his two young children. Dated Dungeon No. 7, Cook County Jail, Chicago, Illinois, November 9, 1887, the letter read:

“To my Darling, Precious Little Children Albert R. Parsons, Jr. and his sister Lulu Eda Parsons:

As I write this word, I blot your names with a tear. We will never meet again. Oh, my children, how deeply, dearly your Papa loves you. We show our love by living for our loved ones, we also prove our love by dying when necessary for them. Of my life and the course of my unnatural and cruel death, you will hear from others.

Your Father is a self-offered sacrifice upon the altar of liberty and happiness. To you I leave the legacy of an honest name and duty done.Preserve it. Emulate it. Be true to yourselves, you cannot be false to others. Be industrious, sober, and cheerful.

Your mother! She is the grandest, noblest of women. Love, honor, and obey her. My children, my precious ones, I request you to read this parting message on each recurring anniversary of my death in remembrance of him who dies not alone and for you, but for the children yet unborn. Bless you my darlings! Farewell,

Your Father,

Albert R. Parsons”

On November 10, 1887, while in his jail cell, Louis Lingg committed suicide by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth and on November 11, 1887, Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fisher and Carl Engle were hanged..https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2019/11/commemorating-haymarket-martyrs.html
Lucy brought her two children. Lulu Etta and Albert Jr., to see their father one last time. The police arrested her and her children and took them to jail. They forced Lucy to strip and left her naked in a cold cell with her children while they executed her husband. When they finally released her, she vowed to continue her fight against injustice even though the authorities had killed her husband and she feared that they would kill her too. 

The immigrant workers of Chicago revered her, politicians reviled her, and the general public maintained an intense fascination with her, all for good reason. Parsons lived a life that was rife with contradictions. She denied that she was of African descent, instead claiming that her parents were Hispanic and Indian.  She remained largely indifferent to the injustices faced by black laborers, focusing her attention on the white workers of Chicago and other big cities. In private, she took lovers after the death of her husband, but in public presented herself as a prim Victorian wife and mother and a grief-stricken widow.  She glorified the bonds of family, yet did not hesitate to rid herself of her son Albert Junior when he threatened to embarrass her by joining the U. S. army. In 1899 she had Junior committed against his will to an insane asylum, where he died twenty years later.

After her husbands death , Lucy came into her own as one of the leading radicals of the day. she continued to spread her anarchist message, and became known for her powerful oratory, urging the laboring classes to “Learn the use of explosives!” to protect themselves from predatory industrialists and police forces.  In describing her, Parsons’s enemies often evoked the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. She was a “firebrand” who delivered “fiery,” “red-hot,” “incendiary,” “inflammatory” speeches that her critics feared would spark a bloody uprising among her followers  

 In 1905 she participated in the founding of the International Workers of the World, in what became known as the 'Wobblies ' She was one of two women, the other being Mary Harris “Mother” Jones,  https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2012/11/mary-harris-jones-151830-30111930.htmlwho founded the IWW. The union welcomed all workers, regardless of nationality, religion, gender or skill, into its ranks. she believed in their committment  to direct action, which she believed  would inspire a strong working class movement. She was a founding member of the Chicago chapter and wrote for the organization’s paper. Drafted as a speaker at the IWW founding convention, Lucy used this opportunity to speak to the tactics required to end oppression and for success in strikes and outlined her vision:

“We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it, and the only way that we can be represented is to take a man to represent us. You men have made such a mess of it in representing us that we have not much confidence in asking you. …

“We [women] are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men. Whenever wages are to be reduced the capitalist class use women to reduce them, and if there is anything that you men should do in the future it is to organize the women. …

“Now, what do we mean when we say revolutionary Socialist?

“We mean that the land shall belong to the landless, the tools to the toiler, and the products to the producers. … I believe that if every man and every woman who works, or who toils in the mines, mills, the workshops, the fields, the factories and the farms of our broad America should decide in their minds that they shall have that which of right belongs to them, and that no idler shall live upon their toil … then there is no army that is large enough to overcome you, for you yourselves constitute the army. …

“My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out and starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production. …

“Let us sink such differences as nationality, religion, politics and set our eyes eternally and forever toward the rising star of the industrial republic of labor; remembering that we have left the old behind and have set our faces toward the future. There is no power on earth that can stop men and women who are determined to be free at all hazards. There is no power on earth so great as the power of intellect. It moves the world and it moves the earth. …

“I hope even now to live to see the day when the first dawn of the new era of labor will have arisen, when capitalism will be a thing of the past, and the new industrial republic, the commonwealth of labor, shall be in operation.”

She went on to found The Liberator newspaper writing extensively in the newspaper on topics such as worker strikes, industrial conflict, and classism. Parsons believed that revolutionary social change was possible through the empowerment of labor unions. She sought to overthrow capitalism and dismantle the federal government by advocating for the creation of a new society self-managed by workers. In her writings and speeches, Parsons addressed the oppression of women and the working class, and was among the first to address lynchings and racial oppression in the South, but largely arguing that capitalism and the economic conditions were to blame.

While she continued championing the anarchist cause, she came into ideological conflict with some of her contemporaries, including Emma Goldman  over her focus on class politics over gender and sexual struggles,  nevertheless she continued to work with various Labour groups, while raising two children that she had had with Albert. Finding time to organise demonstrations, talking to crowds of workers, for the unemployed, homeless and hungry delivering power passionate speeches against police brutality, judicial murder. Getting involved in the International Labour Defence, fighting for Sacco and Vancetti,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2014/08/remembering-sacco-and-vanzetti-executed_23.html Tom Mooney, Scottbro Nine, 9 young African Americans who had become symbols of criminal injustice at the time, and for Women's emancipation,  for free birth control, advocating for organisation of sex workers,and the struggle and rights of the poor and disenfranchised. Preaching justice for the poor by way of revolution. Her radical beliefs prompted the police to arrest her many times but  believing in freedom of speech, she  would spend the rest of her life, fighting the forces that seeked to eliminate her voice.

Continuing to remain active into her eighties, she died in a suspicious house fire on  the 7th of March 1942 her lover, George Markstall, died the next day from wounds he received while trying to save her. She was believed to be 89 years old. It seems she was viewed as a threat to the political order in death, as well as in life,  it was revealed that her ashes barely being cold, the Chicago Police force seized  her entire personal library, in all it's 3,000 volumes,  on sex, socialism and anarchy and turned it over the F.B.I. Most of it would never be seen again, an attempt to whitewash and write her out of history as they tried to rob her of the work of her life.

 Fortunately some of her writings survived, as do her ideas,  fighting strongly for what she believed in, defying both racial and gender discrimination, at the forefronts of movements and battles for social justice, her entire life. She challenged the racist and sexist sentiment in a time when even Radical Americans, believed a woman's place was in the home.Parsons' radical vision for a just society was decades ahead of her time, making her the predecessor for so many women of color who sought to challenge the system.

The legacy of her fight for workers rights, freedom of speech, the African-American, is still a strong influential one. Her voice still resounding against all kinds  of oppression and the forces of capitalism long after her death. She is buried  near her husband in Waldheim Cemetery (now Forest Home Cemetery), Forest Park, Illinois.

 

 For more information on Lucy, The Lucy Parsons Project has a wealth of links including links to Lucy's own writings.

Lucy's speech on the principles of Anarchism:

Rosa Luxemburg at 150 : A Revolutionary Legacy

 

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of  Rosa Luxemburg,Marxist theorist, agitator, internationalist, philosopher, economist.Rosa was one of the most famous political figures of the last century. For the international workers’ movement, she is renowned as a dedicated socialist whose sacrifice and theoretical contributions to Marxism make her one of history‘s foremost revolutionaries. The close proximity of her birth date to International Women’s Day (8 March)https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-socialist-roots-of-international.html means that this year, more than ever, Rosa Luxemburg’s courageous life and revolutionary ideas will be of  continual interest to many.

Rosa Luxemburg was born on March 5, 1871, in the city of Zamosc, Poland, then under control of czarist Russia. Her father, Eliasz Luxemburg, was a prosperous timber trader, who had inherited his business from his father, Abraham. of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen. Rosa’s mother was Lina Loewenstein, the daughter of a traditional rabbi and sister of a Reform rabbi. Rosa, who grew up speaking German, Polish and Yiddish, was the youngest of the couple’s five children. As a young child, she suffered from a hip ailment, which left her permanently afflicted with a limp.

During Poland’s 1863 uprising against Russian rule, Eliasz supplied the independence movement with weapons, so that for several years after the revolt’s failure, he had to remain in hiding from czarist authorities. In 1873, the family moved with him to Warsaw, where Rosa attended the gymnasium. 

Even during high school, Rosa was drawn to politics, becoming active in the Proletariat party, a forerunner to the Polish Socialist party. After several of her comrades in the party were arrested and executed, she decided to pursue her higher education in Switzerland. Luxemburg began at the University of Zurich as a student of zoology but ended up focusing on economics, philosophy and law. Throughout her political career, Luxemburg consistently opposed Polish nationalism, believing that socialist action had to take place on the international level, and that a separate revolution in Poland would be self-defeating.

Similarly, she was opposed to Jewish nationalism or separatism. Though she was sensitive to the problem of anti-Semitism, she was sure it would disappear with the overthrow of capitalism. since 1899,she became an important figure in the world socialist movement, and became involved in the international organisation of workers overcoming physical infirmity and the prejudice she faced as a Jew to become an active revolutionary whose  philosophy enriched every corner of an incredibly productive and creative life.

After finishing her studies in 1898, Luxemburg moved to Germany, gaining citizenship via a marriage of convenience and  became a member of the Social Democrat Party of Germany (SPD),which, unlike the German SPD of today, was developing into a mass party of the working class. At that time, the social democrats had a clear anti-capitalist orientation, invoking Marxist doctrine, she became lleader of the radical wing of the Party , however  she broke with the SPD  after it supported the imperialist drive towards war, she believed in the build up to the First World War that 

' workers blood should not be shed in defence of the capitalist system'.

The 1905 Russian revolution had a profound effect on discussions within the international labour movement, at the time. Although it was crushed, this event strengthened the revolutionary wing. There were extensive discussions about the lessons from 1905, for example, the role of the mass strike.

In the period running up to the 1905 revolution, massive strikes had already shaken the Russian Empire: individual strikes quickly spread like wildfire.Unlike many SPD leaders, Luxemburg enthusiastically supported a new form of workers’ struggle – the mass strike. When revolution broke out in Russia in 1905, she seized the opportunity to study this phenomenon at first hand, hailing it in her book The Mass Strike as : 

“the natural method to mobilise the broadest proletarian layers into action, to revolutionise and organise them” and simultaneously a means “to undermine and overthrow the established State power as well as to curb capitalist exploitation”.She argued that " The mass strike is the first natural, impulsive form of every great revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and the more highly developed the antagonism is between capital and labour, the more effective and decisive must mass strikes become. The chief form of bourgeois revolutions, the fight at the barricades, the open conflict with the armed poor of the state, is in the revolution today only the culminating point, only a moment on the process of the proletarian mass struggle."

Returning to the false separation between economic and political struggle, she pointed out that in a revolutionary period the economic struggle grows into a political one, and vice versa. There is a reciprocal influence between the two, as each enriches and deepens the other. The Mass Strike shows in detail how this occurs; it also demonstrates how completely justified she was to have faith in the ability of the working class to grow and learn and lead the struggle for a better world. Rosa Luxemburg recognised that the political action of a mass strike is one of the most important tools of the working class in its struggle for liberation.

The right-wing of the SPD and the trade union leaders, of the time, rejected this position, arguing that mass strikes are only possible when the entire working class is organised and trade union coffers are filled to the brim.

Though Luxemburg was militant about the idea of proletarian revolution, she was also strongly anti-militarist. She believed in democracy and was an outspoken opponent of the Bolsheviks’ belief that a small cadre of bureaucrats should made political decisions on behalf of the proletariat: Revolution had to be political as well as economic, she felt.

Because of  her socialist agitation during this terrible war , she spent the majority of the years from the outbreak of World War One in 1914 to the revolution of November 1918 behind bars, imprisoned for being one of the very few people in Germany with the courage to speak out against the slaughter unfolding in the trenches. In the Junius Pamphlet, written from her freezing prison cell in early 1915, she painted a vivid picture of the choice she believed humanity faced in those years:

 “Either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration—a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war”.

She scolds those who sit quietly as injustice is done: 

" Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus, it reveals itself in its true, its naked form."

After Germany's defeat she was released, and with her friend Karl Liebnecht,  formed the anti war Spartacist league, and  she assumed the leadership of the radical independent socialists. Her will and her desire was to see an end to all exploitation and oppression.

Her faith was a socialist idea  that  combined the powerful passion of both mind and heart. She devoted herself to the cause of revolution,and its preparation. She lived and breathed its fire, with selflessness and devotion, in every waking moment she dedicated herself to its cause.  Standing bravely up for freedom with a  strong powerful intellect. An individualist, she formulated her own ideas, using her own words to energise and radicalise the people and bring about a socialist revolution. 

She followed no leader, was no ones puppet and while Rosa was enthusiastic about the Russian revolution, she nevertheless criticized Lenin, her lifelong comrade, for his concession of democracy and centralist tactics such as the dissolution of the Provisional Government and Constituent Assembly. Luxemburg defended democracy as an integral part of  the process of revolution as well as its goal. When  she criticised Lenin,  it was in relation to dictatorial aspects. She said " Terror has not crushed us. How can you put your trust in terror."

 She quoted Leon Trotsky saying

 "As Marxists we have never been idol worshippers of formal democracy." She went on "All that really means is: We have always distinquished the social kernal of social inequality and lack of freedom hidden under the sweet shell of formal equality and freedom - not in order to reject the latter but to spur the working class into being satisfied with the shell, but rather, by conquering political power, to create a socialist democracy to replace bourgeois democracy - not to eliminate democracy altogether....... but socialist democracy is not something which begins only in the promised land, after the foundations of socialist economy are created, it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and the construction of socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of power by the Socialist party. It is the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Yes, dictatorship! But this dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class - that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses, it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the political training of the mass of the people."

Possibly her  believe in democracy is what failed her philosophically, nevertheless the questions she posed still worth looking at today. She also wrote " the revolution is the sole form of war, and this is also its most vital law - in which the final victory can be prepared only by a sense of defeat.".
She had determination by the buckets and a steely willful commitment.She herself took part  in  revolutionary events , recognising the need of a revolutionary party, which could unite and give a lead in a revolutionary situation, seeing  socialism as a movement of the proletarian masses that should emphasise unity and equality rather than highlight the oppression of any particular group, with an undogmatic commitment to an unfinished notion of freedom that still appeals to many people today.
In November 1918 after four years of war, German society crumbled both at the front at home, and a revolutionary fervour swept the land, the working class took to the streets in a series of strikes and the navy mutinied., though critical with some demands of the revolutionary movement, Rosa threw in her lot with her comrades, believing that she could not simply wait on the sidelines. Subsequently on the night of January 15, 1919 she  and  Liebnecht were abducted, tortured in the luxury Hotel Eden, and then driven seperately to the nearby Tiergarten Park and murdered, Liebknecht was delivered to the  city morgue while Luxemburg’s skull was smashed by a rifle butt and her body dumped into Berlin’s Landwehr canal. They were both 47.
Her body was only recovered five months later after the winter ice had thawed. She was buried next to Liebknecht in the Friedrichstelde Cemetery.
Famously on the evening of her murder almost certainly knowing that her fate was sealed she wrote.

'"The leadership has failed. Even so, the leadership can and must be recreated from the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the decicive element, they are the rock on which the final victors of the revolution will be built. Order reigns in Berlin! Your 'order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will already raise  itself with a rattle and announce with fanfare, to tour terror; I was, I am, I shall be!"

 The murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht were a major blow to the immediate hopes of the German (and by extension, the world’s) working class. But Luxemburg’s legacy as a revolutionary activist and theorist couldn’t be extinguished so easily. Her ideas, whether on the question of reform versus revolution, the significance of the mass strike or the civilisation-threatening barbarism of imperialist war, are as relevant today as ever.

Today 150 years after her birth she has left an indelible mark on history,  her ideas can be pressed into many meanings. There is a feminist Rosa, an anarchist Rosa, then there is a red Rosa, but she remains an icon in the truest sense of the word.  “She was the sharp sword, the living flame of revolution.” So wrote Clara Zetkin in her obituary for her close friend and comrade, Rosa Luxemburg. The words are a fitting tribute to a woman who was an outstanding leader of the socialist movement who never shied away from speaking her mind..

She has become part of Germany's cultural memory, immortalised in art, poetry, an award winning biopic, a musical and a graphic novel. And in her own words too, as well as being a brilliant Marxist theorist. Luxemburg was a prolific writer of letters, and her emotive lyrical writing has seen her emerge as a literary figure in her own right. Here's to Red Rosa, lets hope her spirit is not forgotten. Peace, bread, roses, Her revolutionary socialist politics endure because the struggle against barbarism remain as relevant as ever.

Here is poem written by Bertolt Brecht in 1920 about Rosa.

About the drowned girl - Bertolt Brecht

As she drowned, she swam downwards and was borne,
From the smaller streams to the larger rivers,
In wonder the opal of the heavens shone,
As  if wishing to placate the body that was hers.

Catching hold of her were the seaweed , the algae,
Slowly she became heavy as downwards she went,
Cool fish swam around her legs, freely,
Animals and plants weight to her body lent.

Dark light smoke in the evenings the heavens grew,
But early in the morning the stars dangled, there was light,
So that for her, there remained too,
Morning and evening, day and night.

Her cold body rotted in the waters there,
Slowly, step by step, god too forgot,
First her face, then her hands, and finally her hair
She became carrion of which the rivers have a lot.

 

Luxemburg and Liebknecht are commemorated  every year on the second Sunday of January when red flowers are scattered on their graves.

Red Rosa now has vanished too.
Where she lies is hid from view.
She told the poor what life is about
And so the rich have rubbed her out

- Bertolt Brecht, "Epitaph, 1919"

She was also much admired by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893 -1978), a musicologist, composer, poet and novelist, who gained little recognition for her poetry during her own lifetime, who once joked, ' I intend to be a posthumous poet!
Like Rosa Luxemburg, she was appalled by the militarism of the First World War. Here is her tribute to Rosa Luxemburg , first published in her 1925 collection The Espalier.

I Bring Her a Flower

Sweet faith
Such looks of quiet hath
That those on whom she’s smiled
Lie down to sleep as easy as a child.

No night,
However dark, can fright
Them, no, nor day
To come, however bleak and fell, dismay.

But sound
Sleep they in prison-bound
As when at liberty
And if they wake, they wake in charity;

Like her,
Who rousing at the jar
Of weary foot in the rain
Pitied the wakeful sentry for his pain.

(1925)

 

 Further Reading

Rosa Luxemburg: A reapraisal - Lelio Besco
Andre Deutsch, 1975.

Rosa Luxemburg: A life
- Elizvieta Ettinga , Beacon Press 1987.

The letters of Rosa Luxemburg, Verso

The essential Rosa Luxemburg :Reform or Revolution and the Mass Strike

Red Rosa;a Graphic  biography of Rosa Luxemburg - Kate Evans. Verso


"either capitalism will continue, with fresh wars and a rapid plunge intp chaos and anarchy, or else capitalist exploitation will be abolished." Rosa Luxemburg 14/12/18 Rote Fahne

"Revolutionary idealism .... can be maintained over any period of time only through the intensely active life of the masses themselves under conditions of unlimited freedom." Rosa Luxemburg

" Being human means throwing  your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be."Rosa Luxemburg