Remembering Friedrich Engels. Lifelong revolutionary, friend and collaborator of Karl Marx. ( 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895)

  

Friedrich Engels, Philosopher, Political economist, activist and Revolutionary Socialist, was born in Barmen, Rhenish Prussia, on the 28th November 1820. He was the oldest of the six children of Friedrich and Elisabeth Franziska Mauritia Engels. The senior Engels, a successful industrialist, was a Christian Pietist and religious fanatic. After attending elementary school at Barmen, young Friedrich entered the gymnasium in nearby Elberfeld at the age of 14, but he left it 3 years later. Although he became one of the most learned men of his time, he had no further formal schooling.

Under pressure from his tyrannical father, Friedrich was sent to the city of Bremen to be inducted into the family business by learning about the industry as a clerk to a firm of linen exporters.To assuage the deadly boredom, Engels wrote articles in newspapers that were critiques of the conditions of workers and the social costs of industrialisation. He had naturally not yet formulated any critique of capitalism per se, His ire was directed at the stultifying effects of Calvinism and the social costs of the Protestant work ethic with the misery it imposed on factory workers.
In 1841, bored with being deskbound in Bremen, Engels returned home to a life that he found equally tedious. To escape he, later that year, volunteered for one year’s service with the Royal Prussian Guards Artillery, based in the capital Berlin.

In Berlin, he came into contact with the radical  Young Hegelian movement who were inspired by the revolutionary essence of the  German idealist philosopher George Hegel, and attracted by his dialectical method which espoused constant development and change through contradiction. Engel's embraced these ideas.

They were bent on accelerating the process by criticizing all that they considered irrational, outmoded, and repressive. As their first assault was directed against the foundations of Christianity they helped convert an agnostic Engels into a militant aetheest, a relatively easy task since by this time Engels’s revolutionary convictions made him ready to strike out in almost any direction.

Engels said of the Young Hegelians that some, including himself, ‘contended for the insufficiency of political change and declared their opinion to be that a social revolution based upon common property, was the only state of mankind agreeing with their abstract principles.’

After some free-lance journalism, part of it under the pseudonym of F. Oswald, in November 1842 Engels moved to Manchester, England, to help manage his father's cotton-factory in Manchester. Several months prior to Engels’ arrival, the Chartist movement reached its peak. With 70,000 members, it was the first mass political movement of the working class anywhere in the world. The Chartists collected 3.3 million signatures on a petition presented to the House of Commons calling for universal suffrage for all men over the age of 21 to end the political monopoly of the capitalist class. However the rest of their programme went even further. As Engels stated of the Chartists programme had been put in to practice it would have amount to the end of the entire British establishment. The rejection of the petition by the House of Commons triggered a series of strikes that were brutally suppressed. Engels supported the cause and became friends with the left-wing Chartist leader Julian Harney and wrote for his newspaper, the Northern Star. He also had contact with the followers of Robert Owen’s utopian socialism.

Manchester in the 1840s was a crucible of the industrial revolution and Engels found himself working and living in a community dominated by the cotton manufacturers.
Here he came face to face with unbridled capitalist exploitation and the degradation of the working class.
He wrote later: ‘A few days in my old man’s factory have sufficed to bring me face to face with its beastliness, which I had rather overlooked.’
Although forced to work alongside the bourgeoisie, he made a point of not socialising with them. He wrote: ‘I forsook the company and the dinner parties, the port wine and champagne of the middle classes, and devoted my leisure hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain working men.’
Aged just 24, Engels, guided by Mary Burns a radical young working class Irishwoman who became his lifelong companion, witnessed capitalist industrialisation more extensive, repressive and exploitative than any he had seen in Germany.
In his first major book, ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844’, Engels reports in excruciating detail the miseries of child labour, starvation wages and appalling working conditions, resulting in crippling injuries or deformities even among the youngest workers.
He called living conditions in English industrial towns ‘the highest and most unconcealed pinnacle of social misery existing in our day’.

Accompanied by Mary, he witnessed and heard from their own mouths the conditions endured by workers and their families.
Engels wrote: ‘It is utterly indifferent to the English bourgeois whether his working-men starve or not, if only he makes money. All the conditions of life are measured by money, and what brings no money is nonsense, unpractical, idealistic bosh.’
Engels observed the rapid rise of illegal trade unionism.
He wrote: ‘The incredible frequency of these strikes proves best of all to what extent the social war has broken out all over England.
‘No week passes, scarcely a day, indeed, when there is not a strike in some direction.’
Many liberals had bemoaned the wretched inhuman conditions of the working class but they saw it as a helpless class that deserved the ‘help’ of their liberal superiors.
But ‘Condition of the Working Class in England’ was much more than just an exposé of the inhumanity of capitalism.
Engels was the first to understand that this oppressed mass was not just an exploited working class but the only class that could liberate mankind from capitalism – capitalism for Engels had created in the working class its own ‘gravedigger’.
The book created an immediate sensation in German radical circles (it was at first only published in Germany). Karl Marx was particularly enthusiastic about it.

In 1844 Engels began contributing to a radical journal called Franco-German Annals that was being edited by Karl Marx in Paris. In the same year1844, Engels contributed an article, ‘Outline of a Critique of Political Economy’. In this, Engels laid the foundational principles for the critique of bourgeois political economy. Engels demonstrated that all important phenomena in the bourgeois economic system arise inevitably from the rules of private  ownership of the means of production and a society without poverty could only be a society without this private ownership. This immensely fascinated Marx. He came to the conclusion that through a critique of bourgeois political economy, another thinker had come, independently, to the same conclusion that he had come to with his critique of Hegelian philosophy. The pioneering work by Engels, ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’, also greatly influenced Marx’s line of thinking on the beginnings of the industrial revolution that was taking place in England. During ten days of exchanges in August 1844, Marx’s admiration for Engels grew enormously. He admired Engels’ courage, dedication, single-mindedness and noted that both were in agreement on all theoretical questions of the day. Later that year Engels met Marx and the two men became close friends. A lifelong intellectual rapport and camararderie  was established between them. Finding they were of the same opinion about nearly everything, Marx and Engels decided to collaborate on their writing. It was a good partnership. Whereas Marx was at his best when dealing with difficult abstract concepts, Engels had the ability to write for a mass audience.

While working on their first article together, The Holy Family, the Prussian authorities put pressure on the French government to expel Karl Marx from the country. On 25th January 1845, Marx received an order deporting him from France. Marx and Engels decided to move to Belgium, a country that permitted greater freedom of expression than any other European state. Friedrich Engels helped to financially support Marx and his family. Engels gave Marx the royalties of his book, The Condition of the Working Class in England and arranged for other sympathizers to make donations. This enabled Marx to study and develop his economic and political theories.

In July 1845 Engels took Karl Marx to England. They spent most of the time consulting books in Manchester Library. Engels and Marx returned to Brussels and in January 1846 they set up a Communist Correspondence Committee. Engels returned to England in December 1847 where he attended a meeting of the Communist League's Central Committee in London. At the meeting it was decided that the aims of the organisation was "the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the domination of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society based on class antagonisms, and the establishment of a new society without classes and without private property".

Engels and Marx began writing a pamphlet together. Based on a first draft produced by Engels called the Principles of Communism, Marx finished the 12,000 word pamphlet in six weeks. Unlike most of Marx's work, it was an accessible account of communist ideology. Written for a mass audience, The Communist Manifesto summarised the forthcoming revolution and the nature of the communist society that would be established by the proletariat. The Communist Manifesto was published in February, t. The opening lines of the Manifesto - “a spectre is haunting Europe  highlight the revolutionary events taking place in Marx and Engels’ lifetime, which clearly had a profound impact on the thinking of the two men. It goes on to  declares proudly:

 ‘Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.’
It goes on: ‘What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.’
The Manifesto concludes: ‘Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!’

The French Revolution had given rise to a plethora of socialist movements. But these were generally of a utopian character, seeing socialism as simply a ‘great idea’ that had to be struggled for by ‘great men’. 

In contrast to this idealism, Marx and Engels sought to establish a materialist basis for the movement of the working class; hence their own description of their ideas as ‘scientific socialism’. 

They explained that socialism is not an a historical blueprint for society, but a system of socio-economic relations. This system, in turn, requires certain material conditions - the development of large-scale industry and monopolies; a strong working class; the interconnectivity of the world market - in order to arise and flourish. Most importantly, Marx and Engels identified the agents for this revolutionary change: the organised working class - the “gravediggers” of capitalism. This radical potential of the working class could be seen in the enormous movements shaking Europe at the time: from the Chartists in Britain, to the revolutions that swept across the continent in 1848

Three days after the manifesto was published, a revolutionary uprising in France overthrew the monarchy. The revolution spread to Germany in March and rapidly expanded across Europe. The feudal rulers of the German states were forced to abdicate in droves or accept parliaments and constitutions. In May, the National Assembly began meeting in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, where it was to draft a constitution for a united Germany.

The founders of Marxism were not mere observers to such events.Marx and Engels did not hesitate for a moment to participate in the revolution. Drawing on the tradition of the Rheinische Zeitung, which was banned in 1843, Marx and Engels founded the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (NRZ) in Cologne.The men hoped to use the newspaper to encourage the revolutionary atmosphere that they had witnessed in Paris. Three hundred and one editions of the paper appeared between June 1, 1848 and May 19, 1849, and the publication reached a circulation of 6,000, a considerable number at the time. The newspaper saw itself as the left wing of the democratic camp and its task as pushing forward the bourgeois revolution, which, as the Communist Manifesto had declared, “will be but the prelude of an immediately following proletarian revolution.”

Engels helped form an organisation called the Rhineland Democrats. On 25th September, 1848, several of the leaders of the group were arrested. Engels managed to escape but was forced to leave the country. Karl Marx continued to publish the New Rhenish Gazette until he was expelled in May, 1849. Engels and Marx then moved to London.

In November 1850, unable to make a living as a writer in London and anxious to help support the penniless Marx, Engels returned to his father’s business in Manchester. All the time, the two men kept an almost  daily correspondence, exchanging ideas and opinions and collaborating in developing the theory of scientific socialism. Friedrich Engels sent postal orders or £1 or £5 notes, cut in half and sent in separate envelopes. In this way the Marx family was able to survive.
At the same time, they took a leading role in the struggle of workers in Britain and across the world.
In 1864, Marx and Engels founded the International Working Men’s Association retrospectively known as the First International,.which, in accordance with their idea of uniting workers of all countries, was to have a tremendous significance in the development of the international working class movement.

The International was a rich tapestry of working class organisations and left-wing groups, containing utopian socialists, communists, and anarchists. But despite the ideological confusion within the IWA, Marx and Engels saw the International’s creation as an enormous step forward for the working class. After all, as they would later comment in respect to their criticisms of the Gotha Programme, the political document adopted by the nascent Social Democratic Party of Germany: "Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes." 

Nevertheless, Marx and Engels made it their goal to bring ideological clarity to the International, putting the movement on a firm theoretical foundation. This is why both Marx and Engels dedicated so much of their time and energy to corresponding with other leading political figures and - most importantly - producing vital works of Marxist theory.

This process of political clarification did not come without fierce battles and struggles, however - most notably with Bakunin and the anarchists.

Following the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, Marx and Engels wound up the First International to focus their attentions elsewhere. But their efforts were not in vain. Rather, this aborted attempt to create an international revolutionary organisation, in retrospect, can be seen as the prelude to the creation of mass working class parties that were founded on the basis of Marxist ideas.

In September 1870 Engels moved to London, settling near the home of Marx, whom he saw daily. A generous friend and gay host, the fun-loving Engels spent the remaining 25 years of his life in London, enjoying good food, good wine, and good company. He also worked hard, doing the things he loved: writing, maintaining contact and a voluminous correspondence with radicals everywhere. 

After Marx’s death, Engels continued alone as the counsellor and leader of the European socialist movement, which had become a mass force. His advice was eagerly sought after, and he drew on his vast knowledge and experience in his old age.

Like Marx, Engels knew many foreign languages, he could converse freely in English, French, Italian, and could read Spanish and almost all Slavic and Scandanavian languages. He and Marx conducted a massive correspondence on a host of questions. Incredibly, this covers 13 volumes of the Collected Works, amounting to 3,957 letters. These reveal the fascinating close bond between them and their joint work.

Marx died before he could put the final touches to his vast work on political economy. Using the drafts left by Marx, Engels put his own research aside and took on the colossal task of completing Marx’s work, editing and publishing volumes two and three of Capital. Only he could decipher Marx’s unintelligible handwriting.

Engels continued to write prefaces to the ‘Communist Manifesto’ and other newer editions of their works on the basis of contemporary developments enriching the international working class struggles and urging its forward movement.

On Aug. 14, 1889, the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, the Second International was founded in Paris at Engels’ initiative. Around 300 parties and organisations from 20 countries were represented. Engels was in particularly close contact with the leaders of the German Social Democracy, who regularly sought his advice. He attended the Third Congress of the International in Zurich. In the closing session, he addressed the delegates first in English, then in French, then in German.

After Marx’s death (1883), Engels served as the foremost authority on Marx and Marxism. Aside from occasional writings on a variety of subjects and introductions to new editions of Marx’s works, Engels  other two late publications were the books Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats (1884; The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State) and Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (1888; Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy). All the while he corresponded extensively with German social democrats and followers everywhere, so as to perpetuate the image of Marx and to foster some degree of conformity among the “faithful.”

Engels died of cancer in London on Aug. 5, 1895 a revolutionary communist to the very core. His ashes were cast into the sea off Beachy Head in Eastbourne. 

Upon  hearing of the death of Friedrich Engels 1895, Vladimir Lenin wrote:“The name and life of Engels should be known to every worker...Above all, he taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, substituting science for dreams...”

“Let us always honour the memory of Frederick Engels - a great fighter and teacher of the proletariat!”

In the history books, Engels is often recorded as simply being Marx’s philanthropic benefactor. It is true that Engels’ financial contributions (obtained from his bourgeois family’s textile industry wealth) were essential in allowing Marx to dedicate his time to writing. But, as a result, Engels’ own important political contributions to the ideas of Marxism are often overlooked.

In truth, Engels was himself a theoretical giant.  Engels’ masterful command of language, his ability to present complex material in an understandable way, his encyclopedic knowledge, and his humour, which shone through even in connection with the most serious topics, make the reading of his works a pleasure to this day. He not only had a profound knowledge of economics and history, but also a burning interest in philosophy, science, literature, and even military tactics.Without him, Marx's work would have been impossible and would not have been preserved. Marxism was originally an Engels-Marx-ism Whoever speaks of socialism today must not forget Engels for the vital contribution that he made to developing the ideas of Marxism, for which we owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.

I will acknowledge we should not forget those that twisted communism into tyranny's that Marx and Engel's  could not have anticipated. In none of his writings did Engel's  condone, mass murder, torture or show trials.

It is fashionable in some academic circles to try and emphasise political differences between Marx and Engels. However the voluminous correspondence between the two lifelong friends shows the inseparability of their bond. Their multiple co-written titles, meanwhile, provides further evidence of their close political connection.

During his lifetime, Engels experienced, in a milder form, the same attacks and veneration that fell upon Marx. An urbane individual with the demeanour of an English gentleman, Engels customarily was a witty associate with a great zest for living. He had a code of honour that responded quickly to an insult, even to the point of violence. As the hatchetman of the “partnership,” he could be most offensive and ruthless, so much so that in 1848 various friends attempted unsuccessfully to persuade Marx to disavow him.

Today I remember a man who dedicated his life to the revolutionary struggle  of the proletariat to free itself from the chains of capitalism and usher in a new era of history. Without doubt his  towering revolutionary spirit lives on in the Marxist tendency, which  continually defends his legacy, and the struggle for world socialism and many  after his birth Britain is still, sadly a country that murders it's poor, if we really want to remember him we should continue to fight against poverty and the conditions that creates it. And as long as capitalism exists, his teachings will remain relevant.

Whoever wins the Tory leadership campaign, ordinary people lose.

The political vacuum left by Boris Johnson and the lack of clear candidates on who should replace him as Prime Minister has led to a contest where the Conservative Parliamentary Party has whittled down a long list of potential contenders to two. Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor and Liz Truss, the acting Foreign Secretary. After an initial feeling of happiness after the news of Johnson;s resignation my fear is that his replacement could be just as bad.

So far they have both tried to adopt the style and themes of Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady whose sweeping right-wing policies remain popular among Conservative voters. Her target audience is the roughly 160,000 members of the Conservative Party who will choose the next leader. For these voters, many of whom are older and  very right-wing, Thatcher remains a revered figure, second only to Winston Churchill in the pantheon of Tory grandees. The contest has revealed the  sad reality that such a few amount of people could decide our next Prime minister,making a mockery of what our  democracy is supposed to stand for. 

Truss has undergone a complete political reinvention to become the favorite to succeed Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative party and UK Prime Minister., the former Remain supporter is now a Brexiter with the zeal of a convert.after the vote went the other way She is also a political survivor as the longest continuously serving member of the cabinet, having worked under three prime ministers. She’s also gone from yelling slogans as a child against Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s Conservative government and leading Oxford University’s Liberal Democrat society to become the darling of the Tory Party right.  “My parents were left-wing activists, and I’ve been on a political journey ever since,” Truss said in an ITV debate of Tory leadership.

Her politics are now  Reaganite in flavour, with a foreign policy world view in which Britain stands alongside America against Russia and China, unsupported by its wimpish European neighbours. References to the cold war and “freedom” pepper her comments on international affairs.

Truss ,has appealed to the right wing of her party  through her so called libertarianism, trumpeting the value of free markets, backing low taxation and repeatedly railing against the “nanny state” interfering in the lives of ordinary Britons. Her politics are Reaganite in flavour, with a foreign policy world view in which Britain stands alongside America against Russia and China, unsupported by its wimpish European neighbours.References to the cold war and “freedom” pepper her comments on international affairs.

Truss's campaign has been boosted by her proposals on tax which amount to reversing the hike in national insurance contributions for all taxpayers and cancelling a planned increase in corporation tax, all paid for, it would seem, by re-profiling repayments on Covid related debt.

She’s won admirers among ardent Brexiteers by challenging the EU over the Brexit deal struck by Johnson’s own government, introducing a bill overriding the bulk of its provisions on Northern Ireland and is believed to show a willingness to break parts of the Good Friday Agreement in order to rectify issues with the protocol, a move that could risk a resuming of violence,

Even while protesting loyalty to Johnson, the foreign secretary has done little to disguise her ambitions to claim the top job, schmoozing with colleagues in social events known as “fizz with Liz” and running a carefully-curated instagram feed that rivaled the social media operation run by Sunak’s team.

 Sunak’s foreign policy beliefs are less pronounced. He rose to high office on a sharp trajectory. Barely three years ago, he was a junior minister discussing edicts to local councils about boycotts of Israel. Unlike Truss, Sunak was an early and firm supporter of Brexit – a fact that ought to be his strongest appeal to Conservative members. But his reputation as a tax-raising chancellor has dented his popularity among the electorate.

Whilst Sunak’s ethno-religious background is significantly different than previous contenders for PM, Sunak’s educational and class background is very much similar. In his youth, Sunak attended Winchester boarding school, one of the highest performing fee-paying schools in Britain and subsequently attended Oxford University where he read Politics Philosophy and Economics. Sunak’s privileged background has in large part fuelled a public perception of Sunak as an elitist.

Sunak’s net worth is estimated to be approximately $887 million and in  the context of corruption and a regime built on one law for the rich and one for the poor, Sunak has been damaged by his wife’s “non-dom” status, and a recently surfaced video where Sunak in his youth claims to have no working-class friends has cemented Sunak’s privileged and out-of-touch image.

In connection to Sunak’s vast wealth has been a recent scandal pertaining to media the revelations that Sunak’s wife, the daughter of an Indian, billionaire and business magnate, Narayana Murthy, who despite living in the UK has a non-domiciled tax status in the UK, meaning her tax contributions are vastly lower.

Let's not forget  they both were not only first-hand witnesses but also active participants in all the errors and failings of the Johnson government from which they are now so keen to distance themselves whilst continuing to praise the author. They both claim to have known better all along, and have both had months to think about the policies they were going to present as part of their campaigns in order to sound coherent and credible.

Yes  they have plenty of promises, but no commitment  to delivering policies that are desperately needed to cope with the current cost of living crisis and the rising poverty we are facing. With either of them in charge the current crisis  will only get worse.What is singularly absent in the plans of both aspirants is a proposal to help struggling households.

6.3 million households are currently in fuel poverty, by the time one of these candidates takes residence in Downing Street, fuel bills will be set to rise to a whopping 8.5 million ny thee end of the year, The Bank of England  have hiked interest rates again  from 1.25% ti 1.75% , the  biggest rise  in 27 years as it battles to curb rising prices of energy, food and other commodities.The continuing war in Ukraine is unlikely to offer respite to volatile markets or reduce fuel costs for motorists and households.In this unremittingly grim story, the story of struggling Britain in 2022.

Both Sunak and Truss appear to have little to say except pander to the demands of their rank and file for tax cuts now. Both of course at the same time further capitalist economic policies which are proving incapable of stopping Britain and the global economy entering recession,  feverishly offering more cash to the rich, ­without being drawn into much detail about how the poor will foot the bill. Sunak said he wants to slash taxes by 20 percent by the end of the decade. He is promising to cut income tax to 16p, which would put some £6 billion less into the public purse. It’s a move targeted at ­buttering up the rich. But it will come as little comfort as cost of living crisis continues to bite and a cold winter looms over millions of people.

With more Tory misrule, unless we get rid of them,we will forever be poisoned and imprisoned by their policies, that are infected with fear, nationalism and hate, delivering more austerity and dollops of neoliberalism, while lacing us with propoganda their party's preferred pill to medicate and keep the nation in a docile state.

In recent months, the most controversial policy utilized by the government has been Priti Patel's inhumane Rwanda policy,  revealing the Conservatives politics of cruelty that will see asylum seekers being deported to the country in a draconian effort to end the boat crossings of refugees fleeing crisis and danger, a right guarantee under international law.

The policy has been endorsed by both candidates publicly however, Truss has discussed the importance of expanding the policy to deter immigrants. She has proposed the possibility of expanding deportations to Turkey, which already holds the largest refugee population in the world.

The existing Rwanda policy is already controversial within the public sphere, since not only does it send vulnerable asylum seekers to a country with recent human rights abuses, but the scheme is expected to cost the public taxpayer millions and millions without any clear certainty that the policy will curb the flow of migrants across the channel as only a small minority of asylum seekers will face deportation.

As energy prices soar sky high. and we are barely able to survive I  predict  them continuing to destroy our society, whoever wins, they are committed to austerity, racism and accelerating climate chaos. Both want to undermine workers’ rights and make it harder to protest.

If the Tories retain their grip on power I can only foresee this nasty party, getting nastier and nastier, that will effect the lives of so many ordinary people. A future of  no hope,only despair that will see them  not letting us retire until we are 75. Strikes made illegal,  trade unions being banned.  Scottish and Welsh assemblies dissolved. Judges to become purely political appointments. Chain gangs to replace community service. Workhouses for the feckless, undeserving poor. Refugees offered to countries as cheap Labour.The return of  capital  and corporal punishment. People forced to sing the National anthem after films and the the return of the bloody  Black and white minstrels, as they tighten their authoritarian ad regressive grip.

But a real alternative can be built to all this , and we can at least be energised by the strike of the RMT workers which has huge support among the public. There will also be industrial action of workers in BT. Postal workers and nurses will be balloted for strike action. There is a real  need for coordinated action on the cost of living crisis and a mass movement that can ensure it is not just Johnson that is removed from power, but the Tories as a whole. .

Nichelle Nichols, 'Star Trek' Icon. Trailblazer and activist, dead at 89

It is with great sadness I write that legendary  American actress, singer, and dancer Nichelle Nichols ( born Grace Dell Nichols) best known for her portrayal of Nyota Uhuraa (Uhuraa was taken from the Swahili for "freedom")  an officer of African descent  in Star Trek: The Original Series, and its film sequels. has passed away on July 30  at age 89, her family announced in a statement. "Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away" her son Kyle shared on the actress' official website. He added, "Her light however, like the ancient galaxies now being seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration. Hers was a life well lived and as such a model for us all." 

 A family spokesman said the actress died in Silver City, New Mexico, where she was living with her son. 

Her groundbreaking performances in Star Trek, which was light years ahead of its time  corresponded with the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and helped set the first standard for diversity and inclusion in mainstream screen entertainment. Not only was it a rarity to see a black woman  on primetime TV, it was even rarer to see a black woman cast in such a high powered role.  She was portrayed displaying a command of a non-menial job, communications officer on the USS Enterprise  almost unheard of on television, which Black women were often shown as maids and nannies. 

Nichol's impact was immediate and undeniable, making her an icon and hero to countless viewers across the globe.

The original “Star Trek” premiered on NBC on Sept. 8, 1966. The legendary sci-fi TV series promised to seek out new life and new civilisations which it did in abundance.  As far as exploring new planets, it entered  virgin territory as far as casting went. The Star Trek franchise (it later became a cartoon and a series of films) devised by Gene Roddenberry, reflected it's creator's optimism, with different nationalities, races and species happily co-existing. Its multicultural, multiracial cast was Gene's message to viewers that in the far-off future, the 23rd century. human diversity would be fully accepted. 

Nichelle went on to make  American television history with the first scripted interracial lip to lip  kiss with Star Trek's Captain Kirk, William Shatner, in the 1968 episode "Plato's Stepchildren." representing another way in which the series, as well as its fictional crew, boldly went where none had gone before.

 

 

Nichols, radiating professionalism and 1960s mod-style sex appeal from her chair on the Enterprise’s bridge, opened a channel to Hollywood for stars like Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson, and Pam Grier. She was an integral part of one of the most influential shows of the 1960s that impacted the imagination of space exploration and opened doors for future equality and inclusion for women.

The death of this Star Trek legend opened the floodgates of mourners who remembered her not only for her cosmic contribution to the entertainment industry as one of the first Black women featured in a major TV series, but also for the warmth and generosity of her soul.

I am so sorry to hear about the passing of Nichelle," wrote Shatner on Twitter, who starred alongside Nichols in the original TV series. "She was a beautiful woman & played an admirable character that did so much for redefining social issues both here in the US & throughout the world."

Shatner said he "will certainly miss her" and sent his "love and condolences to her family."

" I shall have more to say about the trailblazing, incomparable Nichelle Nichols, who shared the bridge with us as Lt. Uhura of the USS Enterprise," her co-star George Takei wrote on Twitter. "For today, my heart is heavy, my eyes shining like the stars you now rest among, my dearest friend."

 Kate Mulgrew, who portrayed Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, praised Nichols for pathing the way for female actresses.

Sharing a photo of Nichols in her Lt Uhura role to Twitter, Mulgrew wrote: “Nichelle Nichols was The First.

 “She was a trailblazer who navigated a very challenging trail with grit, grace, and a gorgeous fire we are not likely to see again. May she Rest In Peace.”

While actress Jeri Ryan, who played Borg drone Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager, said: “RIP to a true legend. Her legacy will live forever” in her tribute.

And U.S. President Joe Biden said Nichols "redefined what is possible for Black Americans and women."

"Our nation is forever indebted to inspiring artists like Nichelle Nichols, who show us a future where unity, dignity, and respect are cornerstones of every society," he said in a statement.

Nichelle Nichols (b.Grace Dell Nichols), the daughter of a chemist and a homemaker, was born in Robbins, Illinois. on Dec. 28, 1932, and grew up in nearby Chicago.

After studying classical ballet and Afro-Cuban dance, she made her professional debut at 14 at the College Inn, a high society Chicago supper club. Her performance, in a tribute to the pioneering Black dancer Katherine Dunham, reputedly impressed bandleader Duke Ellington, who was in the audience. A few years later, newly re christened Nichelle, she briefly appeared in his traveling show as a dancer and singer.

At 18, she married Foster Johnson, a tap dancer 15 years her senior. They had a son before divorcing. As a single mother, Nichols continued working the grind of the nightclub circuit.

In the late 1950s, she moved to Los Angeles and entered a cultural milieu that included Pearl Bailey, Sidney Poitier and Sammy Davis Jr., with whom she had what she described as a “short, stormy, exciting” affair. She landed an uncredited role in director Otto Preminger’s film version of “Porgy and Bess” (1959) and assisted her then-boyfriend, actor and director Frank Silvera, in his theatrical stagings.

In 1963, she won a guest role on “The Lieutenant,” an NBC military drama created by Roddenberry. She began an affair with Roddenberry, who was married, but broke things off when she discovered he was also seriously involved with actress Majel Barrett. “I could not be the other woman to the other woman,” she wrote in  her 1994, autobiography, "Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories," which became a best seller. (Roddenberry later married Barrett, who played a nurse on “Star Trek.”)

Nichols’s second marriage, to songwriter and arranger Duke Mondy, ended in divorce.Nichols on Dec. 28, 1932, in Robbins, Illinois, started her career as a dancer and singer, and she wanted to be the first Black ballerina when she was younger. She originally danced  during performances by Duke Ellington and his band, and got her break when Ellington asked her to sing one night when the lead performer became sick. 

Once in Hollywood, she made her film debut in 1959’s "Porgy and Bess," dancing with Sammy Davis Jr. the first of a string of film and TV roles that led up to "Star Trek."

She was widely praised for breaking down barriers in an era when Black women were rarely seen in prominent TV roles. Nichols also used her celebrity to shed light on the civil rights struggle in the '60s. Early in the series, Nichols considered quitting her role as Lt. Uhura having been offered work on Broadway. But a chance encounter with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made her reconsider. In a 2011 NPR interview, Nichols said that the late civil rights leader kept her from leaving the show. Telling her it was the only show he would allow his children to watch. Nichols explained that at a fundraiser for the NAACP, King urged her to remain on the show rather than leaving for Broadway.  “When we see you, we see ourselves. And we see ourselves as intelligent, and beautiful and proud,” she recalled King telling her. The following Monday she rescinded her resignation to show creator Gene Roddenberry.  

In 2016, she spoke to ABC Audio about how she lent her star status to NASA decades later to encourage diversity in its ranks of real-life space travelers;

"NASA recruited me, hired me to recruit women and minorities for the space shuttle program. And until that time there were no people of color even considered," she explained, adding with a laugh, "And after that, we were all over the place!"  "I interviewed quite a few young women that were interested in that and who navigated a very challenging trail with grit, grace, and a gorgeous fire we are not likely to see again. didn't think they had a chance. And one interview with me and they knew they did."  

In just four months, Nichols was credited with bringing in more than 8,000 applications, of which more than 1,600 were women and more than 1,000 were people of color. 

Her many film roles ranged from 1974's Isaac Hayes Blaxploitation movie "Truck Turner" to 2005’s Ice Cube comedy "Are We There Yet?"

For many years, she performed a one-woman show honoring Black entertainers such as Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt and Leontyne Price. She also was credited as co-author of two science-fiction novels featuring a heroine named Saturna.

Nichols did not appear in director J.J. Abrams’s “Star Trek” film reboot that included actress Zoe Saldana as Uhura. But she gamely continued to promote the franchise and spoke with candor about her part in a role that eclipsed all her others.

“If you’ve got to be typecast,” Nichols told the UPI news service, “at least it’s someone with dignity.”

On TV, Nichols had voice roles in the animated series "Futurama," "The Simpsons," "Spider-Man" and "Gargoyles." Nichols also appeared in the daytime drama "The Young and the Restless" and NBCs "Heroes." playing the great aunt of a young boy with mystical powers.

 In 2016 she  received a lifetime achievement award from the Saturn Awards in 2016, which honor sci-fi entertainment.

Nichols was a regular at “Star Trek” conventions and events into her 80s,, and she was beloved by fans everywhere for her warm , caring presence and devotion to Trek's ideals. Howevr her schedule became limited starting in 2018 when her son announced that she was suffering from  advanced dementia.

Nichols was placed under a court conservatorship in the control of her son Johnson, who said her mental decline made her unable to manage her affairs or make public appearances.

Some, including Nichols’ managers and her friend, film producer and actor Angelique Fawcett, objected to the conservatorship and sought more access to Nichols and to records of Johnson’s financial and other moves on her behalf. Her name was at times invoked at courthouse rallies that sought the freeing of Britney Spears from her own conservatorship.

But the court consistently sided with Johnson, and over the objections of Fawcett allowed him to move Nichols to New Mexico, where she lived with him in her final years.

Nichols leaves behind a rich  legacy of breaking boundaries,racial barriers, fighting for civil rights, and inspiring many to dream and believe beyond their surroundings and humble beginnings. She is survived by her son, Kyle Johnson. She also leaves behind three living Star Trek cast members, William Shatner, George Takei, and Walter Koenig.

As she makes her final journey around the stars , my deepest condolences go out to her friends and family.  She will not be forgotten. Let's keep her memory alive by spreading the message of peace and equality amongst all people. 

The Murder of Frank H Little (1879 – August 1, 1917)

 

Today in Labour history, 1st August 1917, labour organiser and an executive board member of the radical Industrial Workers of the World, the Biracial  half-Cherokee  Frank Henry Little was in the middle of the night  dragged from his hotel room in Butte, Montana, by 6 masked men beaten, tied to the bumper of a car, dragged to the outskirts of town, beaten and tortured him some more before they hanged him from a railroad trestle. When his battered corpse was cut down a few hours later, the police found a note written in red crayon pinned to his underwear: “Others Take Notice. First and Last Warning.”

Frank Little apparently was born in Illinois in 1878, but moved to Missouri, then Ingalls, Oklahoma, the area around Yale, near Stillwater, as a child. His father was a doctor. He had two  brothers and two sisters. Both brothers attended college at Stillwater  

In 1900: Little had become a “hard rock” metal miner and an Arizona member of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM)  and in 1903: Little had been hired by WFM to organize the copper camps of the Clifton Morenci Metcalf area  The Western Federation of Miners was the main force launching the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).which  Little joined  in 1906.

The I.W.W. was founded in 1905 by Eugene V. Debs, William "Big Bill" Haywood, and others who believed that workers should be organized into a single industrial union because individual trade unions were likely to be pitted against each other during disputes with the employers. The I.W.W. was founded on the belief that the working class and the employing class have nothing in common and that the historic mission of the working class is to abolish capitalism and replace it with an economic system based upon human need rather than private profit, so that the benefits of the good life could be extended beyond the privileged few.

Little had only rolled into Montana’s copper mining hub two weeks before helping to organise a miner's strike against the Anaconda Copper Company.  A roving agitator he especially gained fame as a leader in the free speech fights at Missoula, Fresno, and Spokane, and went on to organize the lumberjacks, metal miners, oil field workers and harvest bindle stiffs all over the West and Southwestern states. If local authorities denied the IWWers the right to speak in public or to congregate under the protection of the Bill of Rights, the union people would go to jail rather than give up. In fact, using the tactic now known as nonviolent resistance, Little led them into jail over and over again. He was almost always the first one arrested and the last one freed. Free speech in America owes a great deal to Frank Little.

 Little Pioneered Non-Violent Struggle  long before  Gandhi or Martin Luther  King.In addition to innumerable jail sentences, Little also suffered mob violence at least twice before the final fatal episode. He was kidnapped by businessmen and knocked unconscious after being held for several days.

Y.ears later he was held again. With a rope around his neck for emphasis, Little was told to desist from labor organizing and to name any union men in the area. He did neither and was eventually rescued.

Little's  hatred of exploitation and oppression and of all those who profited by it in one way or another was irreconcilable. He was always for the revolt, for the struggle, for the fight. Wherever he went he “stirred up trouble” and organized the workers to rebel. Bosses, policemen, stoolpigeons, jailers, priests and preachers—these were the constant targets of his bitter tongue. He was a blood brother to all insurgents, “to every rebel and revolutionist the world over.”

Little was also known for his incendiary anti-war speeches that rankled many of the townspeople. America had entered the Great War just four months earlier, and Little’s convictions were controversial even amongst his peers. Although most IWW members, or Wobblies, were ideologically opposed to a war that was viewed as nothing more than yet another example of capitalist gain at the expense of the workers, few dared to be as boldly outspoken as Little. Even IWW founder “Big Bill” Haywood argued that the Wobblies should silence their views for the sake of the organisation’s progress. And so Frank Little found himself on the radical fringe of an already radical-fringe organisation. “Better to go out in a blaze of glory than to give in,” he would say. “Either we’re for this capitalist slaughterfest or we’re against it. I’m ready to face a firing squad rather than compromise!” 

 Little's speeches against the Anaconda Company, the draft and World War I were supported by many Butte miners but engendered fear among Company executives and others. Although the Company and local officials pushed for Little's arrest for "treasonable utterances," U.S. district attorney Burton K. Wheeler found insufficient evidence to indict.

But in its  determination to quash anti-war dissidents, the United States government singled out and targeted  the IWW – going so far as to spread rumours that the organisation was subsidised by Germany – and Frank Little’s murder was to have devastating consequences for the bourgeoning radical labour movement.  Little  would be a signal martyr to America’s nascent Red Scare.

 Frank Little’s last speech, for which he paid with his life, was directed against the capitalist war. In that speech he set up his own doctrines against those of the warmongers. His philosophy, compressed into a single sentence, was picked up and carried all over the country on the telegraph wires with the news of his assassination. “I stand for the solidarity of labor.”

Days after the lynching, Montana authorities declared martial law against anti-war opponents, associates of Little’s were arrested and accused of ‘espionage’, and both the miners’ strike and union were crushed. Beyond Montana, Little’s death was a harbinger of a string of blatantly undemocratic federal laws, specifically the Espionage and Sedition Acts which outlawed any form of dissent. Moreover, the government used the IWW’s association with anti-war opposition to initiate a subjugating campaign of repression against the labour movement, culminating in the 1920 Palmer Raids  which effectively destroyed the IWW’s momentum and power for the next thirty years. 

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer spearheaded efforts to round up anarchists, communists, and other political radicals and then deport them when possible. World War I and the 1917 Russian Revolution inflamed American fears of the spread of radicalism and immigration from Europe, contributing to the first “red scare” in the United States. As state and local governments purged radicals from public service and cracked down on left-wing labor organizing, Palmer undertook the most visible campaign against radical organizations, often immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Between November 1919 and January 1920, Palmer’s agents deported nearly 250 people, including notable anarchist Emma Goldman, and arrested nearly 10,000 people in seventy cities.

 Little's  killers were never brought to justice.

 Years later, writer Dashiell Hammett  would recall his early days as a Pinkerton detective agency operative and recount how a mine company representative offered him $5,000 to kill Little. Hammett says he quit the business that night.

An estimated 10,000 workers lined the route of Frank Little's funeral procession, which was followed by 3,500 more persons. in what was the largest funeral in Montana history.And in the aftermath would see federal troops bought in to quash labor unrest in Butte, and in the  month following Little's murder  the IWW's offices were raided and the organization and its members were hounded into near obscurity. There is no reasonable estimate of the number of unionists deported, jailed, blacklisted, or killed. Even Frank Little’s close relatives were afraid to talk about him. His personal effects, his writings, the death mask made from his face, and the movie made at his gigantic funeral are lost to history. The only remaining trace of the great Frank Little is his tombtone  in Mountain View Cemetery. Butte which is still well cared for by local activists. His grave marker reads : Slain By Capitalist Interests For Organizing And Inspiring His Fellow Men."

Even though Frank Little was executed on this day , his ideas will live on as long as people remember him.We must continue to stand on the shoulders of working class giants, and remember that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Travis Wilkinson's  2002 documentary film An Injury to One tells the story of Frank Little and his lynching in Butte, Montana.

 

 

Celestial Love

Blessed are the spheres

Where lovers play

When souls are pierced

And softened hearts glide

In rhythmic momentum

Thunderous bolts beat

As two silhouettes in the sky 

Pirouette their magic

Electrocised in union 

As dream bubbles awake

No force of gravity weighing down

Composure is cast adrift

Rousing pulsations charge 

Like stars sparkling

In body, in mind, cosmic time

lighting up the dark

Under painted rainbows

Energy orbits seas of tranquillity 

Emotions erupting  pulling together

Blissfully into ones, heart

Weaving love's essence

Flowers of passion  blooming

In the vastness of the galaxy 

Celestial bodies become one

Floating in deep space

Together in warm embrace.

Solidarity with the RMT

Solidarity to the 40,000 members of the Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport (RMT) who took strike action yesterday. The workers taking this action include guards, signallers, maintenance and catering staff who are striking against a multipronged attack on their working conditions by Network Rail and the 14 Train Operating Companies. These including proposed £2bn of cuts to the rail system which will result in 2,500 maintenance staff and 625,000 fewer hours of maintenance, the closure of 1,000 ticket offices, and an 8% pay rise over two years at a time when the RPI rate of inflation is already running at 11.4%. The RMT is striking against policies that threaten to make the railways less safe and less viable as a system of transport, when the extreme heatwaves of last week have foregrounded the necessity of transitioning to a transport system based on public provision rather than private vehicles. They will next take strike action  on  Saturday 30 July and again on  Thursday 18 and Saturday 20 August.

This comes as wannabe Prime Minister-to-be Liz Truss pledges to restrict the fundamental right of rail workers to strike, and the introduction of new legislation that will allow companies to hire agency workers to replace strikers. These proposals will make it harder for everyone to defend themselves from companies who care more about their rates of profit than their workers and the people using their service and  is a direct attack on one of the main pillars of our democracy It’s only repressive regimes that stop people going on strike. The RMT stands firm as a beacon for all workers. A workers ability to withdraw their labour is a fundamental right.

Mick Lynch general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, said “coordinated and synchronised industrial action” would be needed if legislation is brought in.

He went on to say the “very dangerous situation” risks taking the country back to “Victorian times”.

The comments came as strikes by members of the RMT and Transport Salaried Staffs Association crippled services on Wednesday, with only around one in five trains running and some areas having none at all.

Meanwhile, Aslef announced its members will walk out on Saturday August 13, saying train firms failed to make a pay offer to help members keep pace with increases in the cost of living.

A general strike, which can only be called by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), is when a “substantial proportion” of workers in multiple sectors refuse to work until their demands, usually around pay and working conditions, are met.

The RMT are fighting not just for themselves, but for us all: as well as their livelihoods. The safety standards of the British rail network are under real threat. The government-backed rail operators are attempting to reduce staffing levels on platforms, trains, and tracks in order to drive down wages, which they see simply as an overhead cost. Further, they intend to rehire many workers on zero-hours agency contracts in order to circumnavigate labour rights such as paid leave for holiday, sickness, and parenthood as well as allowing them to dismiss workers without notice or redundancy pay. 

The transport industry is one of the few remaining industries in Britain with high union membership. This attempt to break it up by dividing the workforce is a direct attempt to weaken the unions, and the labour movement as a whole.  On top of it all, comes a slap in the face: during this period of exaggerated cost of living,  they are offering the workers that they aren’t trying to sack a real-terms pay cut.  These cuts also come shortly after the Train Operating Companies turned a £600m profit. In 2020, the Rolling Stock Companies, who own the trains, paid out almost £1bn in dividends to their shareholders.This isn't just about the railways, it's about every one of us who's struggling while the rich get richer. 

During lockdown, many of us celebrated the key workers who kept the country going in very difficult (and often dangerous) circumstances. Those same workers are collectively organising for better pay and conditions and we should stand 100% behind them.  Rail staff work in all types of adverse weather and conditions. Most of them are enduring two to three year pay freezes. Meanwhile MPs on £84,144 a year received a £2,212 pay rise just a few months ago and a 28% pay rise since 2010,totalling £18,406. 

If the Tories want to look at pay restraint I suggest this is where they start. While Conservative Ministers and the Tory press will attempt  to demonise hard working RMT members, they should be reminded of the low standing of MP’s, CEO’s and Journalists in the public eye.

This strike is a beacon of resistance and  a victory for the RMT will mean a victory for all, who struggle for a fairer and more equal society. They have done more to fight back in the last few weeks against the derisory economic conditions so many of us face (not just for RMT members, but for us all) than any other political force active in the UK today and have emerged as pacemakers in what is being billed as the summer of discontent. 

Mick Lynch the general secretary of the RMT has been leading from the front. His union is ready to help others across the public sector to coordinate and strengthen action to pursue pay claims and defend conditions. We must never accept such an unprecedented assault on ordinary people's pay and conditions. The basic demand for decent work and a decent livelihood is an  infinitely reasonable.one and the rail strikes are entirely justified. Anyone who values public services and wants to address the climate crisis should support these strikes. 

The momentum of the union movement is growing once again in Britain after half a century of targeted assault. Public support is on the rise, and workers in unions across the country are balloting to take action and stand up for their rights and their dignity. The doubling-down on anti-union rhetoric by the government and press is evidence that they are aware of the power that a unionised workforce wields, and that they are threatened by it. The strikes have also highlighted how we need a publicly owned and democratically controlled transport system more than ever.

Despairingly Sir Keith Woodentop in the midst of all of this has in a shameful dishonourable manner sacked junior shadow transport minister Sam Tarry for daring to show solidarity with striking RMT workers.Supporting workers as they fight  for their jobs, pay and conditions is exactly what Labour is suppose to do. Lets not forget  that Trade unions formed UK Labour to become the political voice of workers and to fight for a decent standard pf life for all. Every single Labour MP should come out in solidarity with Sam Tarry, join him on the picket line and have a vote of no confidence in Starmer.

I stand in full solidarity with the members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers I’m so appreciative of anybody that’s prepared to stand up for themselves and has the self-respect to stand up for themselves,and call up on the employers and Government Ministers to enter into meaningful negotiations with the trade union to preserve jobs, ensure decent pay and safe working conditions. Strike, fight and stay united!

You can donate to the RMT hardship fund, which helps striking members who are taking part in the dispute, via PayPal, cheque, or credit card.

Simon Bolivar : El Libertador ( 24/7/1783 - 17/12/1830)

On July 24, 1783, Latin American revolutionary and liberator Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, in what is now Venezuela then a Spanish Colony. During his lifetime, Bolivar became known as ‘El Libertador’ or the Liberator through  big instrumental in helping countries such as Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia all achieve independence. 

 Bolivar   to  some acted as a political dictator, but Bolívar’s commitment to republican democracy was fluid. Although he believed that a republic was the best form of government, he wasn’t confident that the people of Peru and Upper Peru were ready for a democratic form of government. He also proposed a lifetime presidency for Gran Colombia, believing it needed a strong central government. Bolívar’s own ambivalence about democracy can be seen as a forerunner of twentieth-century South American politics, where many countries have veered between democracy and dictatorship. In that way, Bolívar can be regarded more like the continent’s father,.

His family came from a long line of wealthy Spanish aristocrats and businessmen on both sides. His father, Colonel Juan Vicente Bolívar y Ponte, and his mother, Doña María de la Concepción Palacios y Blanco, inherited vast swaths of land, money, and resources. The Bolívar family fields were labored over by the Native American and African slaves that they owned.

Little Simón Bolívar was petulant and spoiled , though  in fairness he had suffered great personal  tragedy. His father died of tuberculosis when he was three, and his mother died from the same disease about six years later. Because of this, Bolívar was mostly cared for by his grandfather, aunts and uncles, and the family’s longtime slave, Hipólita. 

Hipólita was doting and patient with the mischievous Bolívar, and Bolívar unabashedly referred to her as the woman “whose milk sustained my life” and “the only father I have ever known.”

Soon after his mother died, Simón Bolívar’s grandfather passed away, too, leaving Bolívar and his older brother, Juan Vicente, to inherit the enormous fortune of one of Venezuela’s most prominent families.

His grandfather’s will appointed Bolívar’s uncle Carlos as the boy’s new guardian, but Carlos was lazy and ill-tempered, unfit to raise children or command such a mountain of wealth.

Without adult supervision, Bolívar had the freedom to do as he pleased. He subsequently ignored his studies and spent much of his time roaming around Caracas with other children his age.

At the time, Caracas was on the cusp of a serious upheaval. Twenty-six thousand more black slaves were brought to Caracas from Africa, and the city’s mixed-race population was growing as a result of the inevitable intermingling of white Spanish colonizers, black slaves, and native peoples.

There was growing racial tension in the South American colonies, since the color of one’s skin was deeply tied to one’s civil rights and social class. By the time Bolívar reached his teens, half of Venezuela’s population was descended from slaves.

Underneath all of that racial tension, a yearning for freedom began to simmer. South America was ripe for rebellion against Spanish imperialism.

Bolívar’s family, although one of the wealthiest in Venezuela, was subject to class-based discrimination as a result of being “Creole” — a term used to describe those of white Spanish descent who were born in the colonies.

By the late 1770s, Spain’s Bourbon regime had enacted several anti-Creole laws, robbing the Bolívar family of certain privileges only afforded to Spaniards born in Europe. 

Still, being born into an upper-crest family, Simón Bolívar had the luxury of travel. At age 15, the heir apparent to his family’s plantations, he went to Spain to learn about empire, commerce, and administration.

In Madrid, Bolívar first stayed with his uncles, Esteban and Pedro Palacios.

“He has absolutely no education, but he has the will and intelligence to acquire one,” Esteban wrote of his new charge. “And even though he spent quite a bit of money in transit, he landed here a complete mess….I am very fond of him.”

Bolívar wasn’t the most considerate guest, to say the least; he burned through his uncles’s modest pensions. And so he soon found a more suitable patron, the marquis of Uztáriz, another Venezuelan who became young Bolívar’s de facto tutor and father figure and taught Bolívar math, science, and philosophy.

In 1803, Simón Bolívar returned to Europe and witnessed the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte as the King of Italy. The history-making event left a lasting impression on Bolívar and gave rise to his interest in politics. 

For three years,, with his most trusted tutor  Don Simon Rodriguez, who taught the young Bolivar about the ideals of liberty, enlightenment and freedom.He also studied the works of European political thinkers, from liberal Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke and Montesquieu to the Romantics, namely Jean-Jacques Rousseau. When he was 14, his mentor Rodriguez had to flee the country because he was under suspicion of plotting against the Spanish rulers. Bolivar entered the military academy Milicias de Veraguas, where he developed a passion for military strategy.

In 1799, he travelled to Europe to complete his education. Whilst in Madrid, he met  María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alayza, a half-Spanish, half-Venezuelan woman two years Bolívar’s senior.

They had a passionate, two-year courtship in Madrid before finally getting married in 1802. The newly wed Simón Bolívar, 18 and ready to take over his rightful inheritance, returned to Venezuela with his new bride in tow.

But the quiet family life he envisioned would never become. Just six months after arriving in Venezuela, María Teresa succumbed to a fever and died.

Bolívar was devastated. Though he enjoyed many other lovers in his lifetime after María Teresa’s death,,most notably Manuela Sáenz who would later save him from an assassination attempt. María Teresa would be his only wife.

Later, the renowned general credited his career change from businessman to politician to the loss of his wife, as many years later Bolívar confided to one of his commanding generals: “If I were not widowed, my life would have maybe been different; I would not be the General Bolívar nor the Libertador….When I was with my wife, my head was filled only with the most ardent love, not with political ideas….The death of my wife placed me early in the road of politics, and caused me to follow the chariot of Mars.”

Bolivar moved to Paris, where he continued to read the great enlightenment thinkers of Europe, which had an important influence on his political beliefs.Through his own unique interpretations of all of these writings, Bolívar became a Classical Republican, believing that the interests of the nation were more important than the interests or rights of the individual (hence his dictatorial leadership style later in life). He alo became enamoured of the ideals and vision of the American and French revolutions. Also, it was in Europe, that the idea of gaining independence for Latin American countries became an aspiration. He met Alexander von Humboldt who had recently spent five years in south America, he remarked to Bolivar:

“I believe that your country is ready for its independence. But I can not see the man who is to achieve it.”

This thought stayed with Bolivar and on a visit to Rome, at the top of Aventine Hill, he made a celebrated vow that he would not rest until his fatherland had been liberated from Spain.

Whilst in Paris he witnessed the coronation of Napoleon.. Bolivar was mostly impressed with Napoleon and felt that Latin America needed a similar strong leader. Unlike the United States, he worried that Latin America lacked the education and strength to cope with full liberty.

In 1807, Bolivar returned to Venezuela via the United States. He found that the Spanish colonies were increasingly agitating for independence. When a triumphant Napoleon deposed the Spanish Royal family from political power, people in south America saw it as an opportunity to assert their independence from Spain. Bolivar became heavily involved in the movement for independence and in 1810, he was chosen to go on a mission to Britain to seek military and financial support in their campaign for independence but his mission was a failure. He returned to Venezuela, " Let us banish fear and lay the foundation stone of American liberty. To hesitate is to perish,” he proclaimed on July 4, 1811, America’s independence day. 

Venezuela declared independence the next day but the republic would be short-lived.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, many of Venezuela’s poor and non-white people hated the republic. The nation’s constitution kept slavery and a strict racial hierarchy completely intact, and voting rights were confined to property owners. Plus, the Catholic masses resented the Enlightenment’s atheistic philosophy.

On top of public resentment toward the new order, a devastating series of earthquakes toppled Caracas and Venezuela’s coastal cities, quite literally. A massive uprising against the junta of Caracas spelled the end for the Venezuelan republic.

Simón Bolívar fled Venezuela , earning safe passage to Cartagena by turning in Francisco de Miranda to the Spanish, an act that would forever live in infamy.

From his tiny post on the Magdalena River, in the words of historian Emil Ludwig, Bolívar began “his march of liberation there and then, with his troop of two hundred half-caste Negroes and Indios…without any certainty of reinforcement, without guns…without orders.”

He followed the river, recruiting along the way, taking town after town mostly without combat, and eventually gained full control of the waterway. Simón Bolívar continued his march, leaving the river basin to cross the Andes mountains to take back Venezuela.

On May 23, 1813, he entered the mountain city of Mérida, where he was greeted as El Libertador, or The Liberator.

In  what is still considered one of the most remarkable and dangerous feats in military history, Simón Bolívar marched his army over the highest peaks of the Andes, out of Venezuela and into modern-day Colombia.

It was a gruelling climb that cost many lives to bitter cold. The army lost every horse it had brought, and much of its munitions and provisions. One of Bolivar’s commanders, General Daniel O’Leary, recounted that after descending the far side of the highest summit “the men saw the mountains behind them…they swore of their own free will to conquer and die rather than retreat by the way they had come.”

Bolívar also sought to unify Peru and Bolivia, which was named after the great general, into Gran Colombia through the Confederation of the Andes. But after years of political infighting, including a failed attempt on his life, Simón Bolívar’s efforts to unify the continent under a single banner government collapsed. 

With his soaring rhetoric and unflappable energy, Simón Bolívar had roused his army to survive the impossible march. O’Leary writes of the “boundless astonishment of the Spaniards when they heard that an enemy army was in the land. They simply could not believe that Bolivar had undertaken such an operation.” 

But though he had earned his stripes on the battlefield, Bolívar’s wealthy status as a white Creole at times worked against his cause, especially compared to the fierce Spanish cavalry leader named José Tomás Boves who successfully amassed support from native Venezuelans to “squelch the people of privilege, to level the classes.” 

Those loyal to Boves only saw that “the Creoles who lorded over them were rich and white…they hadn’t understood the true pyramid of oppression,” beginning at the top with imperial colonialism. Many natives were against Bolívar due to his privilege, and in spite of his efforts to liberate them. 

In December 1813, Bolívar defeated Boves in an intense battle at Araure, but “simply couldn’t recruit soldiers as quickly and effectively as [Boves],” according to biographer Marie Arana. Bolívar lost Caracas soon afterward, and fled the continent.

He went to Jamaica, where he wrote his famous political manifesto known simply as the Jamaica Letter. Then, after surviving an assassination attempt, Bolívar fled to Haiti, where he was able to raise money, arms, and volunteers.

In Haiti, he finally realized the necessity of attracting poor and black Venezuelans to his side of the fight for independence. As Cañizares-Esguerra points out, “this isn’t due to principle, it’s his pragmatism that is moving him to undo slavery.” Without the support of slaves, he had no chance of ousting the Spanish. 

In 1816, he returned to Venezuela, with support from the Haitian government, and launched a six-year campaign for independence. This time, the rules were different: All slaves would be liberated and all Spaniards would be killed.

Thus, Bolívar liberated enslaved people by destroying the social order. Tens of thousands were slaughtered and the economies of Venezuela and modern-day Colombia crumbled. But, in his eyes, it was all worth it. What mattered was that South America would be free from imperial rule.

He pushed on to Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia (which is named after him), and dreamt of uniting his newly liberated territory, essentially all of northern and western South America ,as one massive country ruled by him. But, once again, the dream would never fully materialize.

On Aug. 7, 1819, Bolívar’s army descended the mountains and defeated a much larger, well-rested, and utterly surprised Spanish army. It was far from the final battle, but historians recognize Boyaca as the most essential victory, setting the stage for the future victories by Simón Bolívar or his subordinate generals at Carabobo, Pichincha, and Ayacucho that would finally drive the Spanish out of the Latin American western states. 

Having reflected and learned from earlier political failures, Simón Bolívar began to piece together a government. Bolívar arranged for the election of the Congress of Angostura and was declared president. Then, through the Constitution of Cúcuta, Gran Colombia was established on Sept. 7, 1821. 

 Gran Colombia was a united South American state that included the territories of modern-day Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, parts of northern Peru, western Guyana, and northwestern Brazil. 

On Jan. 30, 1830, Simón Bolívar made his last address as president of Gran Colombia in which he pled with his people to maintain the union:

“Colombians! Gather around the constitutional congress. It represents the wisdom of the nation, the legitimate hope of the people, and the final point of reunion of the patriots. Its sovereign decrees will determine our lives, the happiness of the Republic, and the glory of Colombia. If dire circumstances should cause you to abandon it, there will be no health for the country, and you will drown in the ocean of anarchy, leaving as your children’s legacy nothing but crime, blood, and death.”

Gran Colombia was dissolved later that year and replaced by the independent and separate republics of Venezuela, Ecuador, and New Granada. The self-governing states of South America, once a unified force under the leadership of Simón Bolívar, would be fraught with civil unrest through much of the 19th century. More than six rebellions would disrupt Bolívar’s home country of Venezuela.

As for Bolívar, the former general had planned to spend his last days in exile in Europe, but passed away before he could set sail. Simón Bolívar died of tuberculosis on Dec. 17, 1830, in the coastal city of Santa Marta in present-day Colombia . He was only 47 years old. 

Bolivar had wished to be buried in Caracas. But the new leaders of Venezuela called him a tyrant and refused his body. He was buried in Colombia, abandoned by friends and hated by enemies. Most of his enlightened reforms were soon forgotten. This rejection of the Liberator did not last long. In 1842, he was reburied in Caracas. 

Simón Bolívar is often referred to as the “George Washington of South America” because of the similarities the two great leaders shared. They were both rich, charismatic, and were key figures in the fight for freedom in the Americas. But the two were very different. 

“Unlike Washington, who suffered excruciating pain from rotten dentures,” says Cañizares-Esguerra, “Bolívar kept to his death a wholesome set of teeth.”

But more importantly, “Bolívar did not end his days revered and worshiped like Washington. Bolívar died on his way to self-imposed exile, despised by many.”

He thought that a single, centralized, dictatorial government was what South America needed to survive independent from European powers ,not the decentralized, democratic government of the United States. But it didn’t work.

During his lifetime, he was both revered for his firebrand rhetoric promoting a free and united Latin America, and reviled for his tyrannical proclivities. Despite his notoriety, Bolívar did have a leg up on the U.S. in at least one respect: He freed South America’s slaves nearly 50 years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal” while owning dozens of slaves, whereas Bolívar set all of his slaves free.

While Bolívar didn't act alone, he was clearly the catalyst and "cult of personality" behind the 19th-century liberation movement that won independence for six Latin American nations:Venezuela , Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Bolivia.

Unlike Washington, Bolívar died a failure. In 1830, deprived of his office and military commission, Bolívar was about to go into self-imposed exile when he succumbed to tuberculosis. His political enemies, then in charge of Venezuela, outlawed even the mention of his name.

And that's the way it remained until the 1870s, when a new generation of Venezuelan elites went looking for political symbols that would rally supporters to their cause. The late 19th-century Venezuelan President Antonio Guzmán Blanco  is credited with reviving the " cult of Bolivar."

Guzmán Blanco created the modern Venezuelan currency and named it the bolívar. He also built the National Pantheon of Venezuela and had Bolívar's remains reinterred in its hall of heroes.

Simón Bolívar remains the most celebrated historical figure in South America today, particularly in the countries he liberated. As a result, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Plurinational State of Bolivia both bear his name, as do their Bolívar and Boliviano currencies as well as an endless array of parks and plazas throughout the continent and 24th July is celebrated as Simon Bolivar day across Latin America.

His fame  has continued to grow to mythical proportions and continues  to inspire millions in Latin America, especially the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez  as well as Colombian revolutionary Simon Trinidad  currently  political prisoner of the U.S held in solitary confinement in the "Guanantanemo of the Rockies" or Florence Colorado Supermax Prison. 

Bolivar maintained the fight against Spain when all appeared hopeless  and he did not give up until he had overcome all the obstacles on the road to liberation and independence, He called himself "the man of difficulties ," and in truth he was that. Bolivar's greatest political mistake was hi failure to recognise the forces of nationalism which were soon to vitalize the Latin American countries. His desire to give his world a firm and stable foundations were justified even if his methods were erroneous, Latin America has continued to foster pronunciamentos and revolutions in confirmation  of Bolivar's mot sombre apprehensions, Since Bolivar passed into history, South America  has not produced his equal. 

Human Pawns

Save them from the kratocracy

Who pave pathways  of pain

With fruitless detours

Travelling through borders

Struggling to survive.

Equivalence rendered meaningless

Desperation on a string

Vulnerability intensified

Compassion dead

As pawns precariously placed.

Decades of deceit

Governed by monsters

Pouncing like prejudicial panthers

Pounding their prey

With poison paws.

As gills of demons

Exhale their toxins

Polluting the oxygen

New antidotal measures

Must freshen the air.

Beyond chains of division

Games that people play

That leave many consumed

The cancer of power thwarted

Tenuous grip torn from the brink.

It's not only a heatwave, it's a Climate Emergency

 

As of 1pm today the temperature has risen above 40C for the first time in the UK's history,  according to provisional Met Office figures. The mercury hit a record 40.2C at London Heathrow by 1pm.

The climate crisis is very real  and it's time to act. We have not seen anything like it , and we can't compare this looming heat emergency to the summer of 1976.

A warmer world is due to human induced climate change, that makes  it extremely difficult to break extreme heat thresholds, We continue to see this across the planet, not just in Europe where heat records have also been shattered in regions of Belgium, France, Netherlands and Germany, which has led to impassioned demands for governments to take more ambitious action to combat the climate crisis. Sadly a lot of people are vehemently in denial over this. But I've never seen any evidence to the contrary, the fact remains it's getting hotter and far more uncomfortable very quickly at an alarming rate of knots.. If anything , we've been far too conservative  in our estimates in our estimates of the speed, scope and severity of even moderate levels of climate change. Thousands of people have already died from this heat wave.Extreme heat is also endangering the environment and homes, with wildfires raging in Portugal, Spain and France.

British authorities have described it as a "national emergency" and southern Britain is under an “extreme” heat warning for the first time on record. We're not approaching a climate emergency, we're already in one.

Meanwhile Governments are sitting on their hands while the planet burns, None of the current Tory candidates treat the climate emergency with the seriousness it deserves instead has focused on tax cuts and culture war issues, rather than the climate.. Despite a flurry of headline-grabbing pledges, national commitments bring us nowhere near to meeting the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees. According to Climate Action Tracker, 73% of existing “net-zero” pledges are weak and inadequate—“lip service to climate action.” What is more, a yawning gap remains between pledges, which are easy enough to make, and actual policies, which are all that really count. You can pledge all you like, but what we need is action. Right now existing government policies have us hurtling toward 2.7 degrees of heating in the coming decades. 

As temperatures approach 3 degrees, 30-50% of species are likely to be wiped out. More than 1.5 billion people will be displaced from their home regions. Yields of staple crops will face major decline, triggering sustained food supply disruptions globally. Much of the tropics will be rendered uninhabitable for humans. Such a world is not compatible with civilization as we know it. The status quo is a death march. Our governments are failing us,failing all of life on earth.
In light of  all of this rebels from XR have today  cracked windows at News UK and sprayed ' Tell the Truth' and ' 40 degrees =Death'; to highlight the failure of the Murdoch press to cover the heatwave and the Climate Crisis. 

The more the climate heats up  the more the public has to turn up the heat on governments. Averting climate catastrophe needs radical action now, a rapid phase out of all fossil  fuels, an end  to deforestation, and an  end to  capitalism, and the  need to  switch to a socioeconomic system that prioritizes  preserving our only home mother earth and it's biosphere for future generations.

Ultimately this means  replacing our destructive global economic system with one that offers potential for sustainability, greater fairness, and human flourishing.

Let's not forget that rich countries are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the excess emissions that are causing climate breakdown. They also have levels of energy use that are vastly higher than other countries, and vastly in excess of what is required to meet human needs, with most of the surplus being diverted to service corporate expansion and elite consumption. Zero by 2050 is a global average target. A fair-share approach would require rich countries to eliminate most fossil fuel use by no later than 2030 or 2035, to give poorer countries more time to transition.

Even in the short term, there are innumerable steps that can be taken to steer our civilization toward a life-affirming trajectory. Nature itself can be part of the solution, trees, wetlands, plants and rivers which all help to reduce air temperatures. We must invest in nature  and drastically cut emissions. Obviously all this means our lifestyles will all have to change drastically,  our overt reliance on consumerism, but it is  so necessary ,as  the stakes have never been higher, and we can't afford to wait until 2050, because by then  it will be too bloody late and we will all be fucked. We have a  choice though collective action or collective suicide.