Myfanwy, Wales’ most famous love song.

John Cale yn perfformio Myfanwy ar Heno yn 1992.

John Cale performs Myfanwy Wales’ most famous love song  on Heno, S4C in his native Welsh back in 1992. 

Myfanwy Wales’ most famous love song, is surely one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs ever written. It was first performed on 21st May 1875, at the opening concert of the Aberystwyth and University Musical Society. The occasion was the 34th birthday of the song's composer, Joseph Parry, who at the time was Professor of Music at Aberystwyth University.

Joseph Parry was born on 21 May 1841 in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. He loved music from an early age, but the family - seven children in all - was often in financially difficult situations. As a result, Joseph went to work in the Cyfarthfa Mills at the age of 9. In 1854, when Joseph Parry was 13 years old, his father decided to move to America and settled in Danville in Pennsylvania, where there was a significant Welsh community,  where  he  worked  at  the  ironworks.

After some time in America, Parry returned to Britain to concentrate on his musical career, and he attended the Royal Academy of Music. He won major prizes at the National Eisteddfodau in Swansea and Llandudno and was admitted to the Gorsedd  in  1865  and  he took the bardic name of Pencerdd America. In Wales, Brittany and Cornwall a bardic name is one adopted by poets. The term Gorsedd refers to a gathering of bards in these three Celtic nations. 

Joseph Parry returned from the USA  and was offered a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, which he declined due to family commitments in the United States. However, such was Parry's musical ability and popularity, a fund was established to enable him and his family to move to London in 1868, allowing him to study at the Royal Academy of Music, during which time he became a particular favourite of Queen Victoria. 

Later Parry became the first Welshman to receive both Bachelor's and Doctor's degrees in music from Cambridge University. Parry and his family returned to the United States , where he established a school of music in Danville.

In 1873 he became Professor of Music at the University College, Aberystwyth and remained there until 1880.He composed the opera Blodwen in 1878. This was the first opera written in Welsh with the libretto by Richard Davies, who had died in 1877. In 1888 Parry settled in the small seaside town of Penarth and died there on 17th February 1903.The birthplace of Joseph Parry, 4 Chapel Row, Merthyr Tydfil, is now a museum and open to the public from April – September.  See their website for details http://www.visitmerthyr.co.uk  

Parry wrote the music of Myfanwy to lyrics written by Richard Davies (‘Mynyddog’; 1833–77). Some sources say it was written with Parry’s childhood sweetheart, Myfanwy Llywellyn, in mind,who  like Parry  himself  emigrated to America,  although  many  think  that the lyrics were probably inspired by the Ode to Myfanwy Fychan, a Welsh love poem, which was written by Hywel ap Einion Llygliw, a 14th century poet. Hywel fell, like many other suitors, for Myfanwy of Dinas Brân,who was the daughter of the Norman Earl of Arundel, and described as the most beautiful woman in Powys. Myfanwy was exceedingly vain and loved nothing better than being told how beautiful she was. 

Young men came to Dinas Bran from far and wide to seek her affection but she rebuffed them, even if they were rich and handsome because they could not compose and sing poems that did justice to her beauty. 

One man who  thought  he did have the talent to satisfy Myfanwy’s vanity was the poor but richly talented Hywel ap Einion who lived in the Dee Valley below. And one day Hywel plucked up the courage to climb up the hill to the castle with his harp, to sing and play to Myfanwy. Hywel instantly fell in love and became desperate for her hand in marriage;and  actually believed she had fallen in love with him because while he was playing and complimenting her on her beauty she could neither listen nor look at any other man.

Sadly, his hopes were dashed although she loved the attention and praise, she rejected this penniless poet for a richer, more distinguished suitor Goronwy Fychan ap Tudur the grandfather of Owain Tudor and great great grandfather of Henry VII. and married him  instead, instantly breaking the heart of poor Hywel  leaving  him  in  a pit  of  despair.

Hywel who was soon discarded and quickly forgotten by Myfanwy, wanders through the forests of the Dee Valley a broken man, his love lay in ruins just like Dinas Bran castle  is today and  being a poet Hywel ap Einion wrote a ballad declaring his yearning and loss  titled ‘Ode to Myfanwy Fychan of Castell Dinas Brân’. It went something like this: 

“Oh fairer thou, and colder too; 

Than new-fallen snow on Arran’s brow; 

Oh lovely flower of Trevor race; 

Let not a cruel heart disgrace;

The beauties of thy heavenly face! 

Thou art my daily thought each night;

 Presents Myfanwy to my sight.” 

This ode would have been in really old dialect, and the text of the poem by Hywel ab Einion Llygliw was printed in The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, a printed collection of medieval Welsh literature, published in three volumes by the Gwyneddigion Society between 1801 and 1807. which brought it to national prominence. A translation into  modern verse by Thomas Pennant ensured that it was well-known to historians and antiquarians in Wales and beyond and still inspires many Welsh poets and musicians to this day. 

Many centuries on in 1858, this original ode inspired Welsh poet John Ceiriog Hughes (1832–87) to compose a  poem 'Myfanwy Fychan' (1858),https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/9404#?xywh=-464%2C-67%2C1695%2C1333 based upon this story, that won a silver crown at the 1858 Great Llangollen Eisteddfod, the precursor of today’s National Eisteddfod.

In that same century, composer Joseph Parry was inspired to set music to lyrics written by Richard Davies, to form the popular love-anthem of Wales we know today as ‘Myfanwy‘

The story that inspired the song Myfanwy is a tragic and touching tale of the unrequited love a poor  poet felt, so I thought Hywel’s ardour  and how his heart was broken on the hill above Llangollen should be remembered  as too the life of Joseph Parry who brings this tale of loss alive in song.  

As  well  as the  lovely version performed by John Cale  at  beginning  of  the  post, this unique and well-known Welsh song, remains a firm favourite with Welsh male voice choirs all  over Wales.The  singer Cerys Matthews does a  fine version  too. Here's a rousing one  from the Morriston Orpheus Choir.

And  this version  by by  acclamed 24  year old cellist  Sheku Kanneh-Mason is  absolutely  stunning.

The song also is sung in the Welsh language biopic Hedd Wyn and is  used to tearjerking effect in  John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley,

and  is  also in the last scene of the Swansea-based movie Twin Town, and is also sung without exception at every Welsh Rugby Union international in the National Stadium, Cardiff.

Myfanwy has to be one  of the most touching poignant love songs ever written and performed really well can reduce one  to tears , just listen to this  version sung by  the late Ryan Davies in 1975.Certain  melodies  in  songs  can release  very  powerful  emotions  and Joseph  Parry's Myfanwy certainly does  this. The tune makes grief seem tangible, especially the last, drawn out "ffarwell".

The Lyrics of Myfanwy with English translation below  

Paham mae dicter, O Myfanwy,

Yn llenwi’th lygaid duon di? 

A’th ruddiau tirion, O Myfanwy, 

Heb wrido wrth fy ngweled i? 

Pa le mae’r wên oedd ar dy wefus 

Fu’n cynnau ‘nghariad ffyddlon ffôl?

Pa le mae sain dy eiriau melys,

Fu’n denu’n nghalon ar dy ôl? 

Pa beth a wneuthum, O Myfanwy 

I haeddu gwg dy ddwyrudd hardd? 

Ai chwarae oeddit, O Myfanwy 

 thanau euraidd serch dy fardd? 

Wyt eiddo im drwy gywir amod

Ai gormod cadw’th air i mi? 

Ni cheisiaf fyth mo’th law, Myfanwy,

Heb gael dy galon gyda hi. 

Myfanwy boed yr holl o’th fywyd 

Dan heulwen ddisglair canol dydd.

A boed i rosyn gwridog iechyd 

I ddawnsio ganmlwydd ar dy rudd.

Anghofia’r oll o’th addewidion 

A wnest i rywun, ‘ngeneth ddel, 

A dyro’th law, Myfanwy dirion 

I ddim ond dweud y gair “Ffarwél”. 

English translation  

Why is it anger, O Myfanwy, 

That fills your eyes so dark and clear?

 Your gentle cheeks, O sweet Myfanwy, 

Why blush they not when I draw near? 

Where is the smile that once most tender

Kindled my love so fond, so true? 

Where is the sound of your sweet words, 

That drew my heart to follow you? 

What have I done, O my Myfanwy,

To earn your frown? What is my blame? 

Was it just play, my sweet Myfanwy, 

To set your poet’s love aflame? 

You truly once to me were promised,

Is it too much to keep your part? 

I wish no more your hand, Myfanwy,

If I no longer have your heart. 

Myfanwy, may you spend your lifetime

Beneath the midday sunshine’s glow, 

And on your cheeks O may the roses

Dance for a hundred years or so.

Forget now all the words of promise

You made to one who loved you well,

Give me your hand, my sweet Myfanwy,

But one last time, to say “farewell”.

Henri-Edmond Cross (20 May 1856 – 16 May 1910) French master neo-Impressionist painter and anarchist

Self-Portrait with Cigarette, 1880

Henri-Edmond Cross French master neo-Impressionist painter,  printmaker and anarchist  was born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix in Douai, a commune in the Nord département in northern France on 20th  of May 1856. He had no surviving siblings. His parents were French adventurer Alcide Delacroix and an  English mother Fanny Woollett. 

In order to distinguish himself from the painter Eugène Delacroix, Henri changed his name in 1881, shortening and Anglicizing his birth name to "Henri Cross".  

In 1865 the family moved near Lille, a northern French city close to the Belgian border. Alcide's cousin, Dr. Auguste Soins, recognized Henri's artistic talent and was very supportive of his artistic inclinations, even financing the boy's first drawing instructions under painter Carolus-Duran the following year. Henri was Duran's protégé for a year. His studies continued for a short time in Paris in 1875 with François Bonvin before returning to Lille. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and in 1878, he enrolled at the Écoles Académiques de Dessin et d'Architecture, studying for three years in the studio of Alphonse Colas. His art education continued, under fellow Douai artist Émile Dupont-Zipcy, after moving to Paris in 1881.

Henri Edmond Cross regularly exhibited at the Paris Salon. Cross' early work was characterised by his use of dark, heavy colours, which became brighter under Claude Monet and Georges Seurat's influence. 

In 1884, he founded the "Salon des Indépendants" together with Paul Signac and George Seurat and which consisted of artists displeased with the practices of the official Salon, and presented unjuried exhibitions without prizes.There he met and became friends with many artists involved in the Neo-Impressionist movement, including Georges Seurat, Albert Dubois-Pillet, and Charles Angrand. 

Despite his association with the Neo-Impressionists, Cross did not adopt their style for many years. His work continued to manifest influences such as Jules Bastien-Lepage and Édouard Manet, as well as the Impressionists.The change from his early, somber, Realist work was gradual. His color palette became lighter and he worked en plein air, he painted in the brighter colors of Impressionism. In the latter part of the 1880s, he painted pure landscapes which showed the influence of Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. 

In about 1886, attempting again to differentiate himself from another French artist – this time, Henri Cros – he again changed his name, finally adopting "Henri-Edmond Cross". . 

Around 1890, Henri-Edmond Cross' painting became discernible because of his unique use of the Neo-impressionist Pointillist style. The artist's landscapes, nudes and portraits were characterised by generous brush strokes and bright, clear colours. 

In 1892 Cross's friend Paul Signac moved to nearby Saint-Tropez, where they frequently hosted gatherings in Cross's garden, attended by such luminaries as Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Albert Marquet.  

Cross's affinity with the Neo-Impressionist movement extended beyond the painting style to include their political philosophies. Like Signac, Pissarro, and other Neo-Impressionists that Cross exhibited with Luce, Petitjean, La Rochefoucauld, Van Rysselberghe, Signac, Angrand, Seurat and the two sons of Pissarro, Cross  believed in anarchist principles, with hope for a utopian society and subscribed to the ideas of the anarchist theorist Kropotkin. 

Politics were actually inherent in the neoimpressionism movement. It was born during an especially turbulent period of French history, when industrial capitalism was overhauling the nation’s economy and cultural geography. Anarchism seemed to present a compelling salve for the rampant upheavals.

A variant termed anarcho-communism was formulated between the 1870s and 1890s by thinkers including Jean Grave, Pierre Kropotkin, Elisée Reclus, and Félix Fénéon, who advocated a combination of individual freedom and collective ownership of the means of production. They also provided ideological and material support for the neoimpressionists; Fénéon even gave the group their name.They  believed that science and technology would help liberate humanity both materially and spiritually. 

Cross painted landscapes where human figures blend with nature in harmony and evoked a future anarchist utopia in his paintings. Life was becoming gradually more controlled and regimented in the late 1800s with more obligations, more restrictions and an increasing complexity. All of these factors worked against creativity and spirituality and Cross and his fellow painters, writers and poets wanted to return to a world in which there was less control – a more utopian society. As he  said  "I want to paint happiness, the happy beings who will become the people in a few centuries when the purest anarchy is realised." 

Signac had already painted a vast canvas depicting this future society first entitled Au Temps d’Anarchie (In The Time of Anarchy) and then Au temps D’Harmonie ( In the Time of Harmony) . Carefree work for the good of the community, free love, and the joys of doing nothing are depicted.

Au Temps d’Anarchie (In The Time of Anarchy) - Paul Signac

Cross undertook a similar painting with his L’Air du Soir (The Evening Air) in 1894. 

L’Air du Soir (The Evening Air) - Henri-Edmond Cross

Evening Air depicts three sets of women languidly enjoying themselves beneath a group of trees set within an idyllic coastal landscape, while the dreamlike imagery and subtly applied chromatic scale the artist employs produces an overall mood of tranquillity. 

Like the other painters mentioned above, Cross contributed to the anarchist movement by donating illustrations to the anarchist paper Les Temps Nouveaux (New Times) edited by Jean Grave.In 1896 Cross created a lithograph, L'Errant (The Wanderer). This marked the first time he had worked with a publisher, and the piece was featured anonymously in Les Temps Nouveaux. The protagonist has a vision where workers throw a flag, a crown, and probably other insignia of capitalism/authority into a bonfire:https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/allan-antliff-anarchy-neo-impressionism-and-utopia

Here is a lithograph of L’errant at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: 

https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/209991

Cross's anarchist sentiments influenced his choice of subjects: he painted scenes illustrating an idealistic world free of constraints and artificial rules, morals and formality,  a world  he longed  for. He provided the cover illustration for the pamphlet À Mon Frère le Paysan (To My Brother The Peasant) written by the anarchist theorist and activist Élisée Reclus in 1899. The following year he did the same for Jean Grave’s booklet Enseignement Bourgeois et Enseignement Libertaire ( Bourgeois Education and Libertarian Education). 

He provided an illustration for the book of lithographs published by Les temps Nouveaux in 1905 and a drawing for the book Patriotisme, Colonisation. However, he was conflicted by the need to provide propagandist illustrations and his reservations about compromising his artistic ideas, feeling constrained by the nature of the pieces he offered. This did not stop him on several occasions donating his works as prizes in fund raising lotteries for Les Temps Nouveaux.

The depiction in his early paintings of peasants co-existing in sparse and unspoiled rural settings devoid of urban trappings reflects a sentimental anarchist vision of life in the countryside where people live together in harmony away from the corruption of the city. These themes continued in his subsequent Neo-Impressionist paintings with his use of colorful decorative forms and classical motifs, encouraging the viewer to identify such poetic beauty with an idyllic anarchist society.

Cross's paintings are full of nude women in the open air - a sort of return to Dionysian bliss.  His paintings are very beautiful. He was great atcapturing light and his paintings give the impression of someone who is constantly experiencing pure or enhanced perception. He tried to capture the shimmering beauty that accompanies this form of experience by using dots of colour (called Divisionist painting in academia)  

The Flight of the Nymphs - Henri-Edmond Cross 

Bathers - Henri-Edmond Cross  

Pines Along the Shore - Henri-Edmond Cross  

In Pines Along the Shore, painted in the south of France overlooking the Mediterranean, Cross weaves and layers separate brushstrokes, building his paint surface in a tapestry-like fashion from cool tones on the pine grove floor to brilliant foliage at the water’s edge to softer hues in the sky and mountains beyond.

Two Women by the Shore - Henri-Edmond Cross 

Cross’s attention to trees—along with other flora, the sea, and the sky, would have been consistent with anarchist thought. French anarchists even believed that the Mediterranean coast was an ideal cradle for the anarchist society of the future, because the sunshine and the harmoniously balanced elements (geographic and meteorological) were models of well-being for individuals and society.

Cross’s many paintings, drawings, and letters further attest to the importance of trees and flowers in his personal vision of happiness. He thoughtfully depicted specific species of plants throughout his career. In praising his Provençal environs, he described mimosas, eucalyptus, almond blossoms, and “hills covered in pines and cork-oaks that gently die away into the sea.”

Cross's paintings of the early- to mid-1890s are painted using closely and regularly positioned dots of colour [academia has invented a name for this too -  Pointillism], but as his technique matured he saw that the same effects he wanted could be achieved using little squares of colour, blocks created using a broadish brush, with small areas of unpainted canvas [or canvas that had only been primed] to create the vibrant shimmering light filled effect he wanted.

At the time he painted there were a number of theories of colour being proposed both in science and in the artistic world and Cross appears to have known about them, as he is adept at using colour contrasts and colour complements. Cross stated that he was "far more interested in creating harmonies of pure colour, than in harmonizing the colours of a particular landscape or natural scene." If we put this another way, realism was never intended, the intention was to produce an impression of what he had seen. 

Around 1896, as seen in this view of a spectacular cloud, he shifted toward larger, more emphatic brushstrokes, often surrounded by areas of white to achieve greater color intensity.

His method involved capturing the essence of the scene using watercolour or coloured pencil images in his sketchbooks and then using these notes back in the studio. He wrote of a rustic French outing: "Oh! What I saw in a split second while riding my bike tonight! I just had to jot down these fleeting things ... a rapid notation in watercolour and pencil: an informal daubing of contrasting colours, tones, and hues, all packed with information to make a lovely watercolour the next day in the quiet leisure of the studio." 

The change from his early, sombre, Realist work was gradual. His colour palette became lighter and he started to paint outside. In 1891, Cross exhibited his first large piece using the technique he had evolved. The painting was a portrait of Madame Hector France, née Irma Clare, whom Cross had met in 1888. Robert Rosenblum wrote that "the picture is softly charged with a granular, atmospheric glow". Cross eventually married Madame France in 1893.  

Madame Hector France - Henri-Edmond Cross 

So love was clearly one driver to his work. But there are other influences. He smoked, and he smoked a lot, until eventually from a combination of smoke and the lead in paints he started to suffer from rheumatism.Cross had  also began to experience troubles with his eyes in the early 1880s, and these grew more severe in the 1900s. He moved to the South of France in 1891 in an attempt to both help his rheumatism and capture the beautiful light there. 

He settled in the small hamlet of Saint-Clair near Lavandou, and spent the remainder of his life there, leaving only for Italian trips in 1903 and 1908, and for his annual Indépendants exhibits in Paris.  The Mediterranean landscape of the Côte d’Azur was to become his preferred subject matter for the remainder of his career, although he also painted idyllic scenes of bathers and mythological figures. 

Although he suffered greatly from rheumatism and conjunctivitis between 1903 and 1910, this did not prevent him from producing finished work. 

 

The Golden Isles - Henri-Edmond Cross 

In 1904, Matisse - soon to become the leader of the new Fauvism style - sojourned in Saint-Tropez, frequenting Signac and taking an interest in Cross's experiments. The exchanges between the two artists were rich and their influence mutual. 

The Fauvist painters (Wild Beasts).Charles Camoin, Henri Manguin, Albert Marquet, and Louis Valtat now also came down to the South of France. The revelling in colour that Cross saw in their paintings inspired him to be even more expressive in his own. 

His daring use of pure, abstract color and decorative design significantly influenced Henri Matisse and the French Fauves . Among the other artists influenced by Cross's  sensuous works were , André Derain, Wassilly Kandinksy, Henri Manguin and Jean Puy. 

In 1905 he had a solo show at Galerie Eugene Druet featuring thirty paintings and thirty watercolors. The show was very successful, receiving critical acclaim, and most of the works were sold. Belgian Symbolist poet Emile Verhaeren, wrote: "These landscapes ... are not merely pages of sheer beauty, but motifs embodying a lyrical sense of emotion. Their rich harmonies are satisfying to the painter’s eye, and their sumptuous, luxuriant vision is a poet's delight. Yet this abundance never tips into excess. Everything is light and charming ..."  .

His work was becoming more lyrical, and more decorative too. Cross had a model come to Saint-Clair and started to include a female figure in his sun-drenched landscapes, occasionally with a mythological pretext. Moving away from realistic themes, these paintings evince a new sensuous pleasure in painting. The catalogue to his last exhibition, organised in 1907 at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, was prefaced by Maurice Denis (1870-1943) and organized by his friend Felix Féneon, which included thirty-eight paintings and fifty-one watercolours. 

In spite of his physical weakness, in 1908 Cross returned to Italy, this time to Tuscany and Umbria, where he delighted in the masterpieces in the museums of Florence, Pisa, Siena and Orvieto. In 1909, Cross was treated in a Paris hospital for cancer. In January 1910 he returned to Saint-Clair, where he died of the cancer just four days short of his 54th birthday on 16 May 1910. He rests in the cemetery at Lavandou, beneath the sun that was such an inspiration to him. His fellow anarchist painter Van Rysselberghe provided a medallion for his tomb.

Cross's body of work is relatively small and unlike Signac, whose children promoted and preserved his works, Cross had no such help  as  he  had  no  descendents  and after his death his paintings were scattered  but today Cross's works can be found in various museums and public art galleries, including the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio; the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, Finland; the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia; the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; the Museum of modern art André Malraux, Le Havre, France; the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, Germany, etc.

As one scholar has written of Cross, ‘By the time of his death, his work stood as a hymn to color and sunlight, and helped form the vision of the Mediterranean coast which is commonplace today.’. 

Romani Resistance Day

Today is Romani  Resistance Day. On this day May 16, 1944, several thousand Roma and Sinti barricaded themselves in their baricades in Auschwitz-Birkenau and resisted their planned extermination.They had received information that the National Socialists planned to dismantle the so-called “Gypsy camp”(zigeunlager) and  were planning on eliminating them all, to make space for the next batch of prisoners, much more fit for labour than those who spent months in the harsh conditions of the camp. They knew exactly what was going to happen to them, seeing it so many times before, having their camp next to the crematory, and rather than silently let themselves be lead  to the gas chambers, fought back.

In the late 1930s, the first deportations of Roma to concentration camps  had begun. While the yellow star worn by the Jewish victims of the Holocaust is best known, the Roma had their own symbols, brown or black triangles, symbolising their ethnicity and their inherent ‘anti-social’ status.
By May 1944, the Nazis had  started to plan the “Final Solution” for the “Gypsy Family Camp” in Auschwitz. The initial date for the liquidation of the “Gypsy camp” was planned for the 16^th of May. The prisoners of the camp were ordered to stay in the barracks and surrounded by 60 SS men. When the SS men tried to force the prisoners out of the barracks they faced a rebellion of Roma men, women and children, armed with nothing more but sticks, tools and stones, and eventually the SS had to withdraw. The resistance of Roma prisoners gave them only a few additional months of life. The Roma revolt against the Nazis is the only recorded uprising in Auschwitz

The Roma Resistance Day is intended to commemorate this uprising, because the Sinti and Roma community's history of  anti-fascist resistance, to Nazi persecution are hardly known and  largely  missing, not only from history books, but also from the Roma movement’s own account of key events. In contrast, Jewish resistance to Nazi rule has become part of the broader discourse though research, literature, and popular culture. 

At least in November 2006, at the council and commemoration held in the former concentration camp in Neuengamme that  was established in  1938, in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg,in Northwest Germany. it was decided for the day to be commemorated as “Roma Resistance Day” a move that hopefully will make this incredible story of bravery and defiance in the face of hopelessness more widely known, adding not only to the history of the indignities the Romani suffered during World War II, but to the grander history of the Holocaust and of tyranny. 

Despite the great bravery of the prisoners, the story of the resistance on May 16, 1944 came to a tragic end: After the uprising, in order to weaken and reduce the size of the group and to to insure that such a flagrant defiance of the camp order cannot happen again: around one thousand young, able-to-work Roma were transferred to Buchenwald, another thousand was transferred in July to other camps, while women were sent to Rawensbrück, leaving but half of the original 6,000 people in the Zigeunerlager, mostly old, weak,  sick and children. Once again they attempted to resist, but this time they didn’t even have a fighting chance.

On orders from SS leader Heinrich Himmler, a ban on leaving the barracks was imposed on the evening of August 2 in the “Gypsy Camp”. Despite resistance by the Roma, 2,897 men, women, and children were loaded on trucks, taken to gas chamber V, and exterminated. Their bodies were burned in pits next to the crematorium. After the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945 only 4 Roma remained alive. 

In total, around 500,000 Roma and Sinti were killed during the Holocaust No official figures exactly exist, but it is estimated that between 220,000 and 500,000 Romani and Sinti,from Central Europe were killed during the war, the Nazis and their allies killed about 25 percent of Europe's entire Roma (a.k.a. Gypsy) population, accounting for half their total population at  the time. 

This genocide, known in the Romani language, as Porajimas which can translate as “destruction.” It's remembered as the worst event in their peoples' history. Other Romani people in the Balkans prefer to use the term 'samudaripen,' translating as “mass killing,” but there's still no general consensus in the community regarding how to call this tragedy, sometimes even borrowing the word 'holokausto.'

Auschwitz remains a powerful symbolic point of reference for European Roma , as it does, of course for global memory of the Holocaust. But even before this horrific moment in history the Roma were vilified, and maligned across Europe, an ethnic group originating in the northern Indian subcontinent before making their way to Europe most likely in the 14th century, the Roma had always been a migratory people who often faced local persecution wherever they ended up. And in the subsequent years since the Holocaust, their pain and suffering has been forgotten and diluted, wiped from the pages of history books while the same myths that were used to put them in camps in the first place persist into the 21st century. Widely accepted “facts” about Roma criminality and anti-social behaviour are today central to any conversation about the Roma community, despite a broad lack of understanding for the realities involved. The genocide of the Roma and the Sinti by the Nazis remains for many the "Forgotten Holocaust "
Surely  it is  time we should reject the notion that only the group with the highest number of victims deserves acknowledgement for their suffering.What matters most, in any case, is not the anomalies or the differences in the numbers, but the fact that both Jews and Gypsies were deemed “parasitic alien races” and targeted for racial extermination.It is certainly time for full recognition of the Roma and Sinti victims of the Nazis. 
We should not forget either,  that those who passed through the gates of Auschwitz were only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Romani victims of the genocidal policies of the Nazis and their allies. In occupied Poland, Serbia and the Soviet Union, they were hunted down by the same Wehrmacht units and death squads that massacred Jews. In Romania, some 25,000 were deported to “colonies” east of the Dniester river (Transnistria); nearly half of them did not survive the brutal conditions there.

After World War II, German society even denied for decades they had been persecuted and it took until 1979 for the German government to commence reparations and until 2011 for the killings to receive an official day of remembrance.. 

In 2015, the European Parliament declared August 2nd European Holocaust Remembrance Day for the murdered Roma and Sinti.  Let  us  today  honour  and  commemorates this courageous revolt as well as the suffering of Romani, Sinti, and Travelling peoples during the Holocaust and  stand in solidarity with the Roma community who continue to face prejudice and discrimination worldwide and  the  need to  fight  ahainst  hatred  and  persecution.

Even today, anti-Romani structural and legal racism is not just a relic of the past. Romani people all over Europe are fighting to gain or maintain their civil rights in the wake of state-sanctioned violence and ethno-nationalist regimes that use Romani people as scapegoats for economic decline and immigration issues.

We should  never  forget. We owe this to each and every victim, so that their memory will live on and so future generations can learn what hatred, stereotypes, ostracizing and isolation can do if left unchecked and unchallenged.

Marking 76 years of the Nakba

 

On May 15th Palestinians  and their allies around the world mark the  anniversary of  their  disposssession,  the Nakba ( Catastrophe in Arabic)  a poignant reminder of the forced displacement in 1948.of more than 750,000 Palestinians, about half of the Arab population  in Palestine at that time, who were forced out of their homes and lands and saw Palestinian villages wiped off the map in places like Yassin, Lydda, Tantura  by the hands of Zionist para-military groups like Haganah, that later formed the core of the Israeli Defense Force, Ergun and the Stern Gang. to establish the state of Israel. Events like  this  are at the core of the Palestinan peoples  national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza.  

The 1948 founding of Israel was founded with the Nakba, a series of atrocities that ethnically cleansed Palestinians from their homeland.  During Israel's "war of independence," Palestinians were driven from their homes, never to be allowed to return. Hundreds of towns were razed; villagers were massacred. Their very existence on the land was nearly wiped from history as Israel built new towns over the ruins.  This devastating event is given almost no attention in  history books or by the mainstream news media but is essential in understanding the ongoing violence in Israel-Palestine and the Middle East in general.  

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the establishment of the Palestine Mandate, the British colonial power began implementing its plan of creating a Jewish state on Palestinian land. At the same time, the Zionist movement was lobbying Western powers to support the mass migration of Jews to Palestine and recognize a Jewish claim to the land.  In 1917, the Balfour Declaration declared British support for a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, and that's how the Day of Nakba officially began. 

The  notorious declaration was made in a letter written by Britain's then-Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, to Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Zionist movement. The letter was endorsed by Britain's then-Prime Minister David Lloyd George..The letter stated the British would "use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object". For Zionists, this was a clear victory.

The vast majority of Palestinian refugees, both those outside the 1949 armistice lines  and those internally displaced, were barred by the newly declared state of Israel from their right to return to their homes or the reclaiming of their property, and in doing so Israel violated international law. It is the defining event that formed and solidified the Palestinian liberation struggle.

To understand the Nakba is to first confront its sheer scale and totality. Before the Nakba there was a large, deeply rooted, and essentially ancient Arab society in most of what, within a few months, became the Jewish state of Israel. In effect, one day it was there, as it had been for living memory, and the next day it was gone. An entire society, with the exception of relatively small groups in a few places, simply vanished.

After World War I, the League of Nations broke the Ottoman Empire up into territories assigned to different colonial powers. The lands that today constitute Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories were placed under British rule, but with two explicit and incompatible purposes: Britain was already committed to supporting the recently established Zionist movement that sought to create “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. 

Then in Britain came the notorious 1917 Balfour Declaration and the Palestine mandate, in which the overwhelming Palestinian majority was simply referred to as “existing non-Jewish communities,” with “civil and religious rights,” but not political ones.

With the Balfour Declaration, the government of the time was seeking Jewish support for its war efforts, and the Zionist push for a homeland for Jews, which was becoming an emerging political force. In 1917, Jews constituted 10% of the population, the rest were  Arabs. Yet Britain recognised the national rights of a tiny minority and denied it to the majority This was a classic colonial document which totally disregarded the rights and aspirations of the indigenous population. In the words of Jewish writer Arthur Koestler: “One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.”

It was a shock to the Arab world, which had not been consulted and had received promises of independence of its own in the post-war break up of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians have always condemned the declaration, which they refer to as the "Balfour promise" saying Britain was giving away land it did not own.

The Balfour Declaration constituted a  dangerous historical precedent and a blatant breach of all international laws and norms, and this  act of the British Empire to “give” the land of another people  for colonial settlement created the conditions for countless atrocities against the Palestinian people. Balfour, in a 1919 confidential memo, wrote: 

 “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”  

The discriminatory language used by Sir Arthur Balfour and seen in the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate reveal the prejudiced rational behind British foreign policy in Palestine. A month after the Balfour Declaration on 2 December 1917, the British army occupied Jerusalem. In 1923, the British Mandate for Palestine came into effect, and included the entire text of the Balfour Declaration. Through the Mandate, Britain would go on to rule Palestine for three decades.

As a result of all of this the Palestinian people were denied the right to independence and statehood, and were treated as refugees in their own land. The Nakba resulted in the destruction of much of Palestinian society and much of the Arab landscape was obliterated by the Zionist state. And in the post 1948 period the Palestinians became second class citizens, subject  to a system of military occupation by a government that confiscated the bulk of their lands.

Even the word 'Nakba' was banned by the Israeli Minister of Education in 2009, and was removed from school textbooks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayah said at the time that the word was tantamount to spreading propoganda against Israel. But the word Nakba is the term that about a fifth of Israel's population, the Palestinians use to describe this day.

The influx of Zionists to Palestine, supported by the British, was however was met with fierce Palestinian resistance and is very important to note that the Palestinian leadership in Al-Quds at the time insisted on continuing negotiations with the British to resolve the simmering tensions, Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam, a Syrian leader living in Haifa since 1922, began calling for resistance against the British and the Zionists.  In 1935, Al-Qassam was surrounded by British forces and killed along with some of his men. His resistance inspired many Palestinians.

By 1936, an Arab resistance erupted against British imperialism and Zionist settler colonialism and by  1939, the Palestinians found themselves fighting two enemies: British colonial forces and Zionist militia groups.

And although the British had backed mass Jewish immigration to Palestine, the colonial power began to limit the number of Jews arriving in the country in an attempt to quell Arab unrest.This new limit on immigration upset the Zionists and they launched a series of terrorist attacks on British authorities to drive them out, while at the same time the Zionists continued to further advance their dream of creating a Jewish state on Palestinian land. 

After the war, Israel refused to allow them the right to return because it says it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders. Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. 

In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population. Israel’s rejection of Palestinians’ right of return has been a core grievance in the conflict and was one of the thorniest issues in peace talks that last collapsed 15 years ago.  Now, many Palestinians fear a repeat of their painful history on an even more cataclysmic scale.  All across Gaza, Palestinians in recent days have been loading up cars and donkey carts or setting out on foot to already overcrowded tent camps as Israel expands its offensive. 

The Zionist strategy of expelling Palestinians from their land was a slow and deliberate process. According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Zionist leaders and military commanders met regularly from March 1947 to March 1948, when they finalized plans to ethnically cleanse Palestine.  As Zionist attacks on the British and Arabs escalated, the British decided to hand over their responsibility for Palestine to the newly founded United Nations.

In November 1947, the UN General Assembly proposed a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab one. Jews in Palestine only constituted one-third of the population - most of whom had arrived from Europe a few years earlier - and only retained control of less than 5.5 percent of historic Palestine. Yet under the UN proposal, they were allocated 55 percent of the land. The Palestinians and their Arab allies rejected the proposal. The Zionist message was simple: Leave the land or be killed. The Zionist movement accepted all this on the grounds that it legitimized the idea of a Jewish state on Arab land. But they did not agree to the proposed borders and campaigned to conquer even more of historic Palestine. 

As the date (May 14, 1948) selected by the British for their Palestine Mandate to expire approached, Zionist forces hastened their efforts to seize Palestinian land. In April 1948, the Zionists captured Haifa, one of the biggest Palestinian cities, and subsequently set their eyes on Jaffa. On the same day, British forces formally withdrew, and David Ben-Gurion, then-head of the Zionist Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel.  Overnight, the Palestinians became stateless. The world’s two great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, immediately recognized Israel. 

As the Zionists continued their ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians, war broke out between neighboring Arab countries and the new Zionist state. The UN appointed Swedish diplomat, Folke Bernadotte, as its mediator in Palestine. He recognized the plight of the Palestinians and attempted to address their suffering. His efforts to bring about a peaceful solution and halt to the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign ended when he was assassinated by the Zionists in September 1948. 

Nevertheless the  UN continued to push for an armistice deal between Israel and those Arab countries.  Bernadotte was replaced by his American deputy, Ralph Bunche. Negotiations led by Bunche between Israel and the Arab states resulted in the latter conceding even more Palestinian land to the newly founded Zionist state. In May 1949, Israel was admitted to the UN, and its grip over 78 percent of historic Palestine was consolidated. The remaining 22 percent became known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Israel was established by means of brutal massacres that were documented even by Israeli historians (Deir Yassin, Kafr Qasim, Tantura, etc.), through ethnic cleansing, and an attempt to erase Palestinians both from their land and global collective memory. Israel destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages and changed the names of other cities and villages to similar, Hebrew names. Israel’s policy of denying self-determination to Palestinians in the West Bank is understood as an occupation; but in fact, this denial of self-determination over natural, cultural, and economic resources and repression of Palestinians’ individual rights are part of daily life wherever you go in Palestine.  

This is the Palestinian peoples history and it is essential we should be allowed to talked about. It is it not wrong to question, when other regimes oppress, we question them too, we have a duty to criticise and condemn, when fundamental freedoms and rights are violated. Any state that acts aggressively is open to criticism. All human beings are entitled to human rights.

76 years later over 7 million Palestinians live as refugees or exiles, and are still denied the right to return to the land from which they, or their family, were forcibly expelled. A right which is enshrined in international law. In May 1949, Israel was admitted to the UN, and its grip over 78 percent of historic Palestine was consolidated. The remaining 22 percent became known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

This period of time is what we remember today, and also now marks the anniversary of those killed during the Great Return March in Gaza in 2019. Thousands of Palestinians, stuck in the blockaded Gaza strip, initiated protests that started in Gaza as a way to draw attention to the living conditions in Gaza, where currently more than 1.3 million Palestinian refugees live, but more importantly as a march for the right of return.

This Great March characterized the use of peaceful activism by Palestinian citizens since the early 2000s. These mobilizations aim to defend land rights, rights to resources, mobility through non-violence and sometimes innovative actions to attract international attention demanding their right to return to their homes from which they were expelled in 1948. They were also condemning the continued occupation and siege. Hundreds of people were killed during these marches, including children, disabled protesters, journalists and paramedics.

There is no peace in stolen lands, especially when people still cry for liberation and the right to return to their lands. The fact is the Nakba never ended. It continues every day as Palestinians are evicted from their homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to be replaced by illegal Jewish-only settlements. It continues as Israel’s occupation obstructs and severely restricts Palestinians’ attainment of rights and fundamental freedoms, including: the right to life, the right to liberty and security of person, and their right to an adequate standard of living.

Today we are witnessing Israel engage in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza on an even larger, more violent scale. In the aftermath of October 7th, a second Nakba has been unfolding in Gaza  before  our  eyes, with over 35,000 Palestinians killed. Of the 2.2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, 1.9 million people have been forcibly displaced and many of their homes have been destroyed by Israel's brutal attacks.

That is well over twice the number that fled before and during the 1948 war. We  are  witnessing the mass displacement and exodus trails of refugees marching on foot, under constant bombardment and intensifying siege, leaving behind destroyed homes and lives. The civilian massacres, happening daily and hourly  with  the  total  destruction of Palestinian life, culture, and society. The razed streets of Gaza, filled with rubble and reeking of blood and trampled by heartbroken survivors. The bodies of dead children strewn in the streets and under the rubble. 

Israel rejected a ceasefire deal and began a full-scale assault on the civilians in Rafah. Roughly 1.3 million displaced Palestinians are currently sheltering in Rafah, a city built to host only 300,000, and over 1 million Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing catastrophic food insecurity and acute starvation. For Palestinians, the violence and mass displacement brings back memories of 1948 but indeed the Nakba never ended, it has continued for the past 76 years.

The Rafah Crossing has been closed, and aid has been cut off, as Israeli Forces escalate their ground incursion into Rafah, putting the lives of over half of Gaza’s population at risk. 100,000 people have been told to evacuate eastern Rafah by Israeli Forces. The areas that citizens are being told to evacuate to lack the most basic standards for safe and dignified living.

Again and again, Palestinians have asked: “Where are we supposed to go?” At the same time, settler violence has escalated in the West Bank, expelling more than 1,000 Palestinians from their homes since October. The dispossession of the present resonates painfully with the exile of the past.

The international community is strongly opposed to any forced mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza , an idea embraced by far-right members of the Israeli government, who refer to it as “voluntary emigration.”  Israel has long called for the refugees of 1948 to be absorbed into host countries, saying that calls for their return are unrealistic and would endanger its existence as a Jewish-majority state. It points to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who came to Israel from Arab countries during the turmoil following its establishment, though few of them want to return. 

Even if Palestinians are not expelled from Gaza en masse, many fear that they will never be able to return to their homes or that the destruction wreaked on the territory will make it impossible to live there. A recent UN estimate said it would take until 2040 to rebuild destroyed homes. 

In Gaza, Israel has unleashed one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, at times dropping 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs on dense, residential areas. Entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to wastelands of rubble and plowed-up roads, many littered with unexploded bombs. 

The World Bank estimates that $18.5 billion in damage has been inflicted on Gaza, roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of the entire Palestinian territories in 2022. And that was in January, in the early days of Israel’s devastating ground operations in Khan Younis and before it went into Rafah.

Even before the war, many Palestinians spoke of an ongoing Nakba, in which Israel gradually forces them out of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories it captured during the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for a future state. They point to home demolitions, settlement construction and other discriminatory policies that long predate the war, and which major rights groups say amount to apartheid, allegations Israel denies.

Palestinians still have no state and no equality, Refugee camps still exist all over the world and a majority of Palestinians live in the diaspora and Palestine is occupied  in the most brutal way possible.

For the nearly six million Palestinians who live between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Nakba remains an ongoing process, as Israel uses a range of tools to restrict their livelihoods. Against  their  will  the Nabka  has  divided the Palestinian people between Gaza and the West Bank. Still searching for justice and dignity who despite the international attention that the Nakba has received over the years, the state of Israel to this day has not yet recognized the Nakba, nor their responsibility for what happened in 1948.

The right of return for Palestine refugees is a right guaranteed by international law and enshrined in UN General Assembly resolution 194. Knowing that the displacement of Palestinians is still being practiced by Israel today in the West Bank and Gaza, the question of the ongoing Nakba needs to be addressed to achieve justice and peace in the region. The right for Palestinian refugees to return to their land must be the precondition for a dialogue for peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine.

The development of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine is deemed a breach of international law, and thus by doing business in these settlements, many international companies are contributing to the economic viability of settlements and are normalising Israeli annexation of Palestinian land, and aiding in promoting discrimination, oppression and injustice.

As a result the Nakba still reverberates today because  Al Nakba is constant and continuing, felt through all aspects of Palestinian life, whether in Israel. the Occupied Territories, the refugees camps, or even in settled Palestinian communities abroad. The Nabka is not a static event, but rather an ongoing reality for Palestinians. The Nakba is felt each time a Palestinian family is forcibly removed from their home. The Nakba is felt each year that the crushing siege on Gaza continues, and with each  deadly Israeli air strike. 

Today, as we observe the sad sombre event of the Nakba  lets be more determined  than ever to stand up to Israeli policies of apartheid. It is more important than ever that the  international community keep defending Palestinian human rights, support Palestinian protests against forced housing demolitions and land theft and put real pressure on Israel to end its occupation and comply with international law. To take all measures within international law to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing strategy resulting in ongoing human rights violations and international crimes committed against the Palestinian People, including forcible transfer, colonization and apartheid.

The ongoing occupation of Palestinian land also makes the Boycott Divestment  Sanctions (BDS) campaigns all the more urgent and necessary. Lets remember that  Palestinians will never to give up and be content to mourn the ghost of Palestine. They still belong to their land, and though time drifts, for the Palestinians their memory is never erased, still  proudly belonging to the land of their ancestors, where their  hearts and minds can never leave.  It is time for the leaders of the world to understand that there is no homeland for the Palestinians except Palestine.

The crimes that were committed in 1948 draw haunting parallels to the actions that Israeli forces have been committing in Palestine in recent months  but let's  also remember  today that the Palestinians  will remains  unbroken, lets continue to stand with them and  keep demanding  that they are allowed to move freely again in their own land and are given keep  back the dignity and respect and basic rights  that they all deserve as human beings and to assert the right of the Palestinian people, as a whole, to self-determination, which includes the right to permanent sovereignty over natural wealth and resources and the right of return of Palestinian refugees, in order to achieve justice and durable peace for the Palestinian People.

The  Palestinian people, over more than a hundred years, have proven that they are a people that can’t be abolished and uprooted. Palestinian steadfastness and determination have always been a source of inspiration for many national liberation movements. Today, Gaza embodies another symbol of the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their adherence to their rights, freedom, and dignity—despite the brutality of the genocide committed by Israel against them.  

The international community faces a pivotal moment today to correct the historical wrong committed against the Palestinian people. Palestinians have called today on British workers to take action to support their struggle against Israel’s system of oppression.  On Nakba Day join the workplace day of action for Palestine:

https://palestinecampaign.org/events/nakba-76-workplace-day-of-action/

76 years from the Nabka and its horrors first happening  Israel has surpassed itself annihilating much if the Strip and committing it's cruellest, most inhumane, savage crimes yet. It's time they were held accountable. This was never about hostages. This has been about total annihilation of the Palestinian people.

Today let’s send a strong message of solidarity to Palestine and thePalestinian people suffering! We cannot be silent in the face of an ongoing genocide. Lets keep calling  for a  permanent ceasefire,  stand with Palestine struggling for freedom, justice, equality and return  and call  for  an end to the occupation.Pressure governments to impose immediate unilateral and multilateral lawful sanctions against Israel, starting with a military-security embargo, as called for by the UN Human Rights Council and dozens of UN human rights experts. 

Every day of impunity granted to apartheid Israel brings further devastating consequences to Indigenous Palestinians and to what’s left of international law’s credibility. Ceasefire is the bare minimum; today is a day for justice and liberation. Free Free Palestine! 

 

Poetic Obligation

 

I wish so much I could look far away

Try not to think of all the suffering,

The darkest moments causing so much pain

Write poems about flowers and things that cheer, 

Beyond the somber stains of humanity

Rogue state releasing daily calamity,

In the name of  religion, staining  and ruining

Creating pernicious, damaging hateful feeling, 

As thousands lay dead, under clouds of terror 

A great deal of them, children, cries silenced forever, 

Frauds now call for ceasefire but yesterday did not give a toss 

The devil is in the details, it's too late to save innocents lost,

Exterminated with barbarity their dignity cruelly stripped away 

In landscapes of destruction, sorrow paints an ugly scene,

People trapped and confined in an open air slaughterhouse 

Mercilessly killed, maimed, pummeled with trauma and loss,

My anger remains with those who've been complicit 

With immoral utterrances allowed genocide to elicitate,

Rage releases as blood spills from the rivers to the sea

Tears shed with feelings of despair and anxiety,

We must continue to question, what's not right

Refuse to be silent, and never look away,

Sprinkling words to make minds question

Soaked with compassion, dare to care,

In these darkest of hours, loudly condemn

Wishing that the pipes of peace can sound again, 

Gossamers of warmth casting intricate webs

Sparkling sharply over intangible threads,

Allowing harmony's unwinding momentum 

To repel the pulses devoid of reason,

Let the flames of equity burn brightly 

To warm  souls and sweep away the misery,

Where wounds run deeply and keep on growing

May healing find its way, honour each lost name, 

Duty bound with all of our united force and power 

As days awaken, justice must be allowed to flower.

All eyes on Rafah

 

Emergency Protests for Rafah are  taking  place today,.Israel has chosen Yom Hashoah, the day Israel observes as a memorial for the 6 million Jews and five million others were killed by Nazi Germany and its allies in the Holocaust to  to tell hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced starving civilian Palestinian population  people in  Rafah to evacuate, fully aware that the majority of these people have nowhere to go. 

Israel dropped leaflets on the eastern areas of Rafah and ordered residents and displaced people to evacuate the areas (around 250,000 people live there)  The evacuation areas include the Rafah and Karm Abu Salem crossings, so humanitarian aid might stop flowing to Gaza at any time and the ability to travel might be impossible soon The areas designated for relocation are devastated, crowded and devoid of key services. There are no assurances of safety or return once hostilities end for those forced to relocate.

For over six months, Israel has deliberately and systematically targeted civilians and aid workers, including in clearly marked ‘safe zones’ and ‘evacuation routes.’ Any claims it now makes that civilians can be safely evacuated, have lost credibility. Al-Mawasi area - a so-called humanitarian safe zone where people have been told to flee - has already been targeted twice.

Don’t take your eyes off Rafah. Ground invasion is imminent. Another  dark chapter in Gaza genocide unfurls. If Western governments allow this to happen, there will be no coming back for humanity. The evidence that this will result in yet more death and destruction is overwhelming.

The language of "humanitarian safe zones" is completely disingenuous. Israel is a terrorist rogue state. Israel  are going to invade any minute now. We’ve reached the darkest point of the whole genocide. This is what they promised wouldn’t happen. It’s happening.  The only “safe place” left in Gaza is going to be destroyed and invaded. Palestinian people can’t evacuate quickly enough from Rafah  Experts have already  warned  us  that  an invasion of Rafah will lead to a massacre and humanitarian catastrophe for a population already facing famine.

Israel believes it can massacre with impunity because Western governments will not act: Arms. trade, military and economic aid will continue to flow to the apartheid state.  Let's  not  forget the  the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered during the Holocaust but  let us also remember the 34,000  Pallestinian civilians, plus the hundreds of medics, journalists, and humanitarian aid workers who have been murdered in Israel's ongoing Holocaust in Gaza. 

Israel's crackdown on Palestinian journalists makes it difficult to get coverage of what's going on.  Israel is forcibly shutting down the Al Jazeera office in Jerusalem, just as it drives over 100,000 Palestinians out of Rafah. From killing 100 plus Palestinian journalists to censoring media, Israel is trying to hide its heinous war crimes from the world..

Never forget  either that  both Starmer and Sunak not only turned their back on a clear genocide  that is happening, they supported it.They defended war crimes and blocked ceasefire motions for months  The blood will never wash clean.

The situation in Rafah is deeply concerning, and the international community must act swiftly to prevent further escalation and protect innocent lives..There hasn’t been a more urgent moment in this entire genocide  to raise our voices in unwavering solidarity and advocate for peace which matters now more than ever..

Any lever or platform., anything and everything you have.Don't look away. Call it what it is, a genocide.  Let's pray for our Palestinian brothers and sisters.  Speak up.demanding accountability from the Israeli government and justice for the victims of this senseless violence. Let us persist in our advocacy, ensuring that our elected officials hear our call for action 

We must act before more atrocities take place and press even harder for an immediate, permanent ceasefire to end the death and destruction, allow more aid into Gaza and enable  peace and justice to  prevail in Gaza. The least we can do for the Palestinians is to boycott companies that support and fund this ongoing genocide.

Website to Check the boycott brands:https://boycott.thewitness.news/

Remembering the life of Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Revolutionary Socialist Political Activist and Campaigner for Women’s Rights

 Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst revolutionary socialist political activist and campaigner for women’s rights, who is remembered chiefly for her use of militant tactics in the fight for women’s right to vote. was born on the  5th of  May 1882 in Old Trafford .Manchester, the second daughter of the future militant suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst and the radical lawyer Dr Richard Pankhurst.The family briefly located to London. When they returned to Manchester in 1893 her parents joined the Independent Labour Party and Sylvia became an activist, being particularly influenced by her father 

The Pankhurst family home was a meeting place for intellectuals and political activists, so while she was still young Pankhurst met among others Annie Besant, the American feminist Harriot Stanton Blatch, and William Morris – who exerted great artistic and political influence on her.

‘If you do not work for others you will not have been worth the upbringing’. 

She also acquired from her father her lifelong atheism. Sylvia’s father, Richard, died quite young in 1898 when she was sixteen. A lawyer, Richard graduated from radical Liberalism to socialism and campaigned for the progressive causes of the day. He was the architect of the Married Women’s Property Act, an important reform.Pankhurst was also profoundly influenced by her father’s progressive ideals and she strove always to live up to his admonition: 

‘If you do not work for others you will not have been worth the upbringing’. 

The other two members of the Pankhurst nuclear family were Sylvia’s sister Adela and her brother Harry. Adela immigrated to Australia where she became a founder member of the Communist Party, but ended up on the extreme right. Harry, a progressive for his brief life, died in 1910.

Pankhurst attended Manchester High School for Girls and trained as a scholarship student at both the Manchester Municipal School of Art and the Royal College of Art. On graduation she supported herself by selling her paintings and textile designs, and made a tour of industrial areas to paint portraits of working women. She also designed murals, banners, regalia and merchandise for the suffragette Women’s Social and Political Union, including the famous ‘Angel of Freedom’ motif.

As a young woman, she was inspired by her parents who were prominent in the labour movement. Her mother Emmeline led the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant suffrage organisation and from the age of 24, alongside her sister Christabel, Sylvia worked for the WSPU.Her deep feminism led to revolutionary, anti-capitalist politics and resulted in an ultimate split with her family. As a young woman she moved to London’s impoverished East End where she set up a childcare center and fought for poor women’s right to vote. Living and working among the most oppressed informed her deepening socialism, internationalism and ultimate anti-fascist work. 

After helping establish the Labour Party, Pankhurst was disgusted with its many betrayals by reformist politicians and party leaders. Winston Churchill had her physically removed from a platform where she was speaking, proclaiming he would not be “hen pecked” into supporting women’s voting rights. The extreme misogyny and violence that suffragists endured from authorities left her with a profound distrust of the entire parliamentary process. 

Her commitment to the cause was remarkable Between 1913 and 1914, Pankhurst was imprisoned 13 times. As the movement became more militant, including a mass window-breaking campaign, police stepped up their abuse. They raped, assaulted, and twisted women’s breasts, an extremely intimate form of torture. In prison, Pankhurst suffered solitary confinement, hunger strikes and forced feeding — administered orally and vaginally. Sylvia had the dubious honour of being force fed more than any other activist. She was seen by the British Secret Service as a threat to national security (apparently more so than any other suffragette), but even at this time the government was wary of bad PR. If Sylvia, or any other suffragette had died whilst in prison, their cause would have had all the greater prominence.

Accordingly, under the so called ’Cat and Mouse Act’ which was passed in 1913, prisoners weakened by hunger strikes and at risk of death could be released, and then re-arrested once they had recovered.  Despite her commitment, Sylvia’s desire for social equality was increasingly at odds with her mother and sister. Their main focus was on the suffragette cause, and they saw less value in promoting the rights of the working class in general.

In 1913, Sylvia was expelled from the WSPU and, with the help of Keir Hardie (a friend since her childhood) formed her own organisation, eventually known as the Workers Suffrage Federation (WSF). The WSF campaigned against poverty and for better social conditions, and her particular focus was on the East End of London. 

By the outbreak of war in 1914, the rift in the Pankhurst family had become a chasm. Emmeline and Christabel suspended their campaign for female suffrage, and the WSPU supported the war effort. Remarkably, there are even accounts of the WSPU handing out white feathers to those who refused to enlist. In contrast, Sylvia was a pacifist and saw the war as a means by which the ruling elite would preserve imperialism and inequality. Sylvia and other women, in the light of the WSPU’s pro-government and pro-war stance, set up the Women’s Peace Army. Sylvia became both a peace activist and a campaigner (and provider) of services for working class communities. In her work The Home Front she showed that the policy of starvation was deliberately used to boost Army recruitment. She also exposed the activities of many of those profiteering from both war and the shortage of food.

A revolutionary and world citizen,  she welcomed the Russian Revolution in 1917 and travelled there in order to assess the extent to which the Revolution liberated women. At the same time, she travelled widely throughout Western Europe to build links with other progressive forces. Her involvement in the creation of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) showed the extent to which Sylvia was prepared to argue for a particular approach. She had a robust dialogue with Lenin and although she joined the CPGB there were disagreements about the position of the Dreadnought. and was expelled from the CPGB. 

As a result of her experience Sylvia developed a much more internationalist perspective than many of her peers. She understood from the beginning that fascism in Italy was largely financed by banks and large business in order to operate in their interest. This was at a time when not only the British ruling class but many on the Left saw Mussolini as a positive development.

She began to apply her socialism to a broader analysis of fascism and to develop a critique of British Imperialism. She visited India in 1926 and wrote a book – India and the Earthly Paradise – which portrayed the brutality of the British occupation.

Sylvia was the most incarcerated and tortured of the Pankhursts, and  in 1921 she was once more His Majesty’s guest in Holloway Prison. This time her crime was not the struggle for women’s equality but sedition, in publishing anti-war articles in her newspaper the Workers’ Dreadnought.  Her health compromised by previous imprisonment and torture, and suffering from endometriosis, one of the bravest Britons of the 20th century served another prison term, this time as a newspaper publisher defending freedom of the press. 

Sylvia used her six-month solitary sentence to write.  A political prisoner, her only permitted writing materials were a small slate and chalk. Yet she was prolific during this period. On release, she published the poetry anthology Writ on Cold Slate, whose title sonnet agonizes about writing under such conditions. 

Whilst many a poet to his love hath writ, 

Boasting that thus he gave immortal life,

My faithful lines upon inconstant slate, 

Destined to swift extinction reach not thee.

Her ultimate goal was a greater level of social equality, or as some might say “social justice”. She was one of the key anti-austerity campaigners of her day. In 1923, she wrote: "Our desire is not to make poor those who today are rich, in order to put the poor in the place where the rich are now. Our desire is not to pull down the present rulers to put other rulers in their places. We wish to abolish poverty and to provide abundance for all”.  

 In 1924 Sylvia moved from the East End of London to Woodford Green, into Red Cottage with Silvio Corio, an Italian anarchist/journalist/painter and her lover and companion for 30 years. Sylvia continued to demand the vote for working class men and women (not just propertied middle class women) and this eventually came in 1928. In 1927 she give birth to her and Corio's son Richard, named for her father, whom she loved and revered,  but she also had little truck with social convention;and declined to marry  Silvio.and the birth of a child out of wedlock, widened the rift with her mother and sister, who were scandalised by the affair..

Sylvia Pankhurst had an uncompromising conviction that both individuals and communities have a shared responsibility for everybody’s welfare. She resolutely refused to differentiate between people on grounds of sex, class or colour, placing her intelligence, courage, energy and vision at the service of all. Intensely altruistic, there seemed to be no limit to the sacrifices she was willing to make for others. 

The rise of fascism in the 1930s led Pankhurst to return to active politics. She was a staunch opponent of fascism and campaigned against appeasement. Pankhurst was highly attuned to events in fascist Italy because of  her relationship  with Silvio Corio .No longer in the communist or organised labour movement, Pankhurst’s activities were as an individual, as a journalist, publicist, speaker and letter writer. 

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s she urged British politicians and opinion formers to reconsider their support for Mussolini and to question their mistaken belief in the potential effectiveness of appeasement. She constantly urged her local MP Winston Churchill to direct his attention to the danger of what was happening in Italy rather than focusing only on Germany. Those elements within the British social elites who offered enthusiastic support for Mussolini included politicians, like Churchill, the centre ‘moderate’ and right-wing press, such as the Observer – whose stated editorial policy was to support Mussolini’s continuation in power..

Pankhurst diverting her energies futilely towards influencing the bourgeoisie rather than organising amongst the working class. She moved to reformism. She admired Carlo Rosselli, who escaped from captivity in Italy, fought in the Spanish Civil War and was murdered on orders from Rome. Sylvia’s admiration of Rosselli, known for his non-Marxist ‘liberal socialism’, is indicative of the direction of her thinking at this time. The British Labour Party and radical movements had greatly influenced Rosselli’s theory of reformist liberal socialism. Sylvia read his book Socialisme Libéral, published in 1930, which contained a passionate critique of classical Marxism in favour of democratic socialist revisionism synthesizing Italian and British political thinking and practice.

Pankhurst accepted a flow of invitations from the Labour Party to speak on the menace of fascism for women. Sylvia devoted a section of her ‘Fascism as It Is’ series in New Times to ‘Women under the Nazis’.

Documenting in detail the exclusion of women from all employment by public bodies, government departments, local councils, hospitals, charities and – as far as possible – even schools, Sylvia pointed out that among the women eliminated ‘are the very people who, since the Revolution of 1918, have actually created government departments dealing with infants’ welfare and the education of girls and women’. She warned against the reaction now turning back the clock in Germany on hard-fought-for feminist advances. 

Pankhurst’s activities were not limited to speaking and writing; she and Corio undertook practical solidarity activity. For example, she founded the Women’s International Matteotti Committee which campaigned for Italian political prisoners. In 1933 Pankhurst and Corio organised an International Day of Protest ‘in support of victims of Italian fascism.’ 

The Italian fascist regime had designs for imperialist conquest in Africa. In October 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia with overwhelming military superiority. Emperor Haile Selassie personally led stiff resistance against the odds. It took until May 1936 for Italian forces to enter Addis Ababa. Haile Selassie symbolised resistance to European colonialism. While the great powers and the League of Nations (forerunner of the UN) did nothing but impose some paltry sanctions against Italy’s aggression, in reality supporting Italy. However, there was massive support world-wide for Ethiopia. Blacks in the US, South Africans and West Africans volunteered to go to Ethiopia to fight, but were prevented from doing so. 

Pankhurst’s letter writing went into overdrive. She pilloried the inaction of the British government in letters to ‘the Manchester Guardian, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Herald, Daily Express, News Chronicle and numerous local, provincial and international papers.’ On the day Addis Ababa was occupied the first issue of Pankhurst’s new venture, New Times and Ethiopia News, went to print. The first issue spelt out the paper’s position.  The cause of Ethiopia cannot be separated from the cause of international justice … We shall set ourselves resolutely to combat fascist propaganda [and], to secure the continuance and strengthening of sanctions … We shall strive to induce measures by the League to resist the fascist usurpation, and to aid and defend Ethiopia, and will persistently urge that Britain take the responsibility of initiating an active League policy … We shall urge that Britain shall herself individually give aid to Ethiopia.  

Pankhurst’s campaigning for effective sanctions on Italy contributed to pro-Ethiopia public opinion in Britain. She reported receiving daily bags of letters from women ‘thanking me for my repeated protests against the inaction of the League … and of the British Government in face of Italy’s breach of the covenant and diabolical attack on a Member State of the League.’ 

From 1936 to the outbreak of the Second World War  Sylvia saw Fascism as the antithesis of everything she believed in: it was chauvinist and militarist, whereas she was an internationalist, opposed to war; Mussolini had no truck with democracy, whereas she, like her father, believed in its extension; Fascism held that women’s primary duty was breeding soldiers for the Duce, whereas she had been a feminist all her life; and, as a Socialist, she deplored the suppression of the Italian Socialist and trade union movements. 

In October 1936 Pankhurst took part in the Battle of Cable Street, a successful mass action that prevented the fascist Blackshirts from marching through the heart of London’s Jewish East End. It was a turning point that set back fascism in Britain. Shortly after, Pankhurst spoke at a rally in the East End and was hit by one the missiles thrown by fascist thugs. 

Ger commitment to  Ethiopia continued after the war. She raised enough money to build Ethiopia’s first teaching hospital. Sylvia campaigned for liberation throughout Africa, prompting a Foreign Office official to comment in 1947 that ‘we agree with you in your evident wish that  that this horrible old harridan should be choked to death with her own pamphlets’ 

After Corio died in 1954 Sylvia accepted an earlier invitation from  her  dear  friend  Emperor Haile Selassie, Sylvia and her son Richard went to live in Ethiopia. permanently in 1956 IN  Addis  Ababa, where she edited the Ethiopia Observer  the emperor and moved with her son to live permanently in Ethiopia in 1956. There she helped to found the Social Service Society and edited a monthly periodical, the Ethiopia Observer. She was honoured with the decoration of the queen of Sheba, first class. 

Towards the end of her life Sylvia Pankhurst re-established contact with friends from the early suffrage days, including Teresa Billington-Greig, a founder member of the WSPU, who sent a copy of her autobiography to Sylvia for her comments. She had maintained a relationship with her sister Adela, who shared her socialist views, and in the 1950s Sylvia even corresponded once more with Christabel. In 1959 an exhibition of her art was held at the French Institute in London and she willingly contributed material to the organizers. Sylvia died the following year in Addis Ababa, on 27 September 1960. She was regarded so highly in Ethiopia that the emperor ordered that she should receive a state funeral, which was attended by himself and other members of the royal family. She is the only foreigner buried in front of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa, in a section reserved for patriots of the Italian war.  Pankhurst's name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, Westminster, London.[There is a two-dimensional silhouette constructed of Corten steel representing Pankhurst as a campaigning suffragette in Mile End Park, Bethnal Green, London. She is also the subject of a mural, completed 2018 by Jerome Davenport, on the gable-end of the Lord Morpeth pub on Old Ford Road in Bow, London. It is next door to the house in which she lived between 1914 and 1924 while working with the ELFS and WSF.

In October 2022, London's Old Vic Theatre announced for 25 January 2023 the world premiere of Sylvia, a hip hop musical about Pankhurst. Directed and choreographed by Kate Prince, it seeks to tell her story to "younger and more diverse audiences".

Whether or not you agree with her politics, and with the nature of her activism, it’s hard to deny Sylvia’s role in the campaign for women and universal suffrage in the UK, and although the focus of her activities changed over time, Sylvia Pankhurst supported socialist and revolutionary politics and campaigns for women's political and sexual freedom   and  in promoting wider social change throughout her life. in promoting wider social change.

Unlike her  mother and sister, Emmeline and Christabel, she was not focused solely on the rights of middle class and propertied women. Her suffrage work and political campaigns prioritised the most oppressed women: the women of the working class. Across the board, she championed worker’s rights and opposed the mass unemployment that was wrecking poor industrial and inner city communities. and opposed the jingoism and bloody carnage of the First World War; supporting the campaign against conscription and backing those who refused to fight: the conscientious objectors.

Her name and picture (and those of fifty-eight other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018 while a musical about her life entitled Sylvia premiered at the Old Vic in September the same year. 

There is also a sculpture of Sylvia Pankhurst located in Mile End Park, Bethnal Green, London. The two-dimensional statue silhouette is constructed of Corten steel (which is designed to rust over time) and is one of three located in the park, which together form part of a national project by charity Sustrans to beautify areas used by foot, public transport and cycle commuters. The three figures portrayed were selected by the local community for the contribution they made to local history or culture. 

Sylvia Pankhurst  once said she hoped to be remembered “as a citizen of the world,” and being one, required the constant taking of sides.and  Pankhurst took sides until the very end.She was a trailblazer,  long before  most  others, Her life is a study in implacable strength, physical courage and perseverance. A life profoundly relevant for today’s urgent struggles and hopes. Her  legacy is a rich  one and is remembered through the Sylvia Pankhurst Centre in London, a sexual health clinic.

‘I am going to fight capitalism even if it kills me.’  -  Sylvia Pankhurst