Beunaventarra Durruti laid to rest (14/7/1889 - 20/11/1936)

 

With forty years of  fighting, of exile, of jailings, of living underground, of strikes, and of insurrection, Beunaventura Durutti, the  legendary Spanish revolutionary and Anarchist lived many lives. Uncompromising, intransigent revolutionary, he travelled a long road from rebellious young worker to the man who refused all bureacratic positions, honours, awards, and who at death was mourned by millions of women and men. Durutti believed and lived his belief that revolution and freedom were inseperable. 

He was born the son of a railway worker on July 14^th 1896 in Leon, a city in central Spain. Aged 14 he leaves school to become a trainee mechanic in the railway yard. Like his father, he joins the socialist UGT union. He takes an active part in the strike of August 1917 when the government overturned an agreement between the union and the employers. This soon became a general strike throughout the area. The government brought in the army and within three days the strikers had been crushed. The troops behaved with extreme brutality, killing 70 and wounding 500 workers. 2,000 strikers were jailed. 

Durruti managed to escape to France, where he came into contact with exiled anarchists, whose influence led to him joining the anarchist CNT union upon his return in January 1919. He joins the fight against dictatorial employers in the Asturian mines and is arrested for the first time in March 1919; he escapes and over the next decade and a half he throws himself into activity for the CNT and for the anarchist movement. 

These years see him involved in several strikes and being forced into exile. Unwittingly the Spanish government ‘exported’ rebellion, as Durruti and his close friend Francisco Ascaso happily joined the struggle for freedom wherever they ended up, in both Europe and Latin America. 

The Spanish monarchy fell in 1931 and Durruti moved to Barcelona; accompanied by his French companion Emilienne, pregnant with their daughter Colette. He joined the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), a specifically anarchist organization, and together with other militants they form the ‘Nosotros’ group. These were members within the CNT of a radical tendency that harboured no illusions with respect to the recently proclaimed Republic, maintaining that the moment was ripe for continued progress towards a social revolution. 

With the electoral victory by the liberal/reformist Popular Front in February 1936, Left and Right were on a collision course, initiated very rapidly by Franco’s military rebellion on July 19^th 1936. The CNT and the FAI confronted the army with courage, organization and mass mobilizations. 

They triumphed in much of Spain despite the fascist superiority in weapons and resources. The anarchist contribution was decisive in resisting the fascists throughout the country and in Catalonia defeated the rebels singlehandedly, Durruti being one of the boldest fighters in this battle.

 Jose Buenaventura Durruti, always fought for the poor and downtrodden, and against the State, whether of the social democratic, fascist or marxist varieties When Spanish fascists attempted to overthrow  the  Republican government on July 19th 1936, Durruti and other comrades helped put down the uprising in Barclenoa. He became a member of  the Anti fascist Militia Committee and led the "Durruti" Column an almost  mythical  group of CNT militants to the  Zaragoza front. The Durruti column was able to liberate  much of Aragon. He  was an inspiration to many as a partisan of the Spanish people with an internationalist vision, who for him personally revolutionary thought and action went hand in hand. 

In 1936, after the liberation of Aragon from Franco's forces, Durruti was interviewed by Pierre van Paasen of the Toronto Star. In this interview he gives his views on Fascism, government and social revolution despite the fact that his remarks have only been reported in English - and were never actually written down by him in his native Spanish, well worth reading and can be found here https://libcom.org/history/buenaventura-durruti-interview-pierre-van-paasen 

 On 14th November Durutti arrived in Madrid at the height of the  civil war from Aragon,by air with 5,000 men( numbers vary according to different accounts). The column had to go by train as all the railway tracks had been bombed. He went  to the frontline on the 16th.

Tragically Durruti on the 19th November  1936, he was shot dead  by a sniper, receiving a bullet to his chest, as he rallied his militia  to continue their resistance after days of fighting without respite. he died the following day, at the age of 40.  His death was a tragedy for all free thinkers, in the fight against fascist tyranny. His death was also a turning point in the Spanish Revolution and one of the events that lead to the defeat of the revolution. 

When his body was returned to Barcelona  over 500,000  people took to the streets on this day November 22 1936  to follow his funeral procession, the  biggest funeral in Spanish history, a tribute to the place he played in peoples hearts, his coffin draped with the familiar diagonal red and black flag. A hero to the Spanish working class ,and today  Durruti remains a lasting icon of anarchism, both in Spain and around the world, a man who.was determined to leave this world a better place than when he entered it. With the rise again of the far right, no better  time than to remember this inspirational man who died fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

Rare footage of Beunaventura Durutti's funeral.

This book is his definite biography :

https://libcom.org/library/durruti-spanish-revolution

 Further reading:-

Daniel Guerin - No Gods, no masters; 2006

Durruti - The people Armed - Abel Paz

   "  We  have always  loved in slums and holes in the wall. We will  know how to accommodate ourselves for  time. For you must not forget we can also build. It is we who built the palaces and cities here in Spain and America and everywhere. We the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the  least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is  not the slightest  doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing every minute."-  Beunaventarra Durruti

Spain, Aragon , 1936

Marking the 203rd anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre

  

 

The 16th of August, marks  the 203rd  anniversary of the infamous Peterloo Massacre, one of the most significant atrocities carried out by the British authorities against their own people and one of the  bloodiest episodes and most dismal in British history. The massacre by official accounts is believed to have involved 18 deaths and injuries to as many as 700 protesters, including  many women who paid the price for exercising their democratic rights to freedom of assembly.Though the actual death toll was likely much higher.

Peterloo involved the assembly at St Peter’s Field in  post- Napoleonic Manchester (since renamed St Peters Square.)  a crowd of  60,000 to 89,000 peaceful working class pro-democracy (none of them were armed) and anti poverty protestors  had gathered, many in their Sunday best, proud and defiant  amid growing poverty and unemployment, mainly from the Corn Laws that artificially inflated bread prices, demanding the right to vote at a time when only  3% were on the electoral register.Manchester , despite its vast population, hadn't a single MP. Trade Unions were already widespread but illegal and were frequently suppressed violently.  

The first few decades of the 19th century, enshrined in public imagination as the elegant age of the Regency, were a time of severe political repression in England. The Tory government, led by Lord Liverpool, feared that the kind of revolutionary activity recently witnessed in France would break out in England – probably in Manchester, where social conditions were so desperate – and chose decided to stamp out all dissent and free speech.

The government was at war with France, which saw Wellington triumph over Napoleon’s forces at Waterloo in 1815.But as Paul Foot once wrote, the British government was also waging war against its own people.

The key speaker at St Peter’s Field was a famed orator by the name of Henry Hunt, the platform consisted of a simple cart, and the space was filled with banners emblazoned with messages calling for - Reform, universal suffrage,and equal representation. Many of the banners poles were topped with the red cap of liberty- a powerful symbol at the time.However, local magistrates peering out a window from a building near the field panicked at the size of the crowd, and proceeded without any notice to read the Riot Act, ordering the assembled listeners to disperse. It would almost certainly have been the case that only a very few would have heard the magistrates. The official 'guardians of the peace' then promptly directed the local Yeomanry to arrest the speakers. The Yeomanry could be described as a kind of paramilitary force with no training in crowd control and little in the way of proper discipline similar to the riot police that ran amok at the Battle of Orgreave during the miners strike of the 1980's. On horseback they charged into the crowd, and pierced the air with cutlasses and clubs. Many in the crowd believed the troops had drunk heavily in the lead up to the assault. In the melee, 600 Hussars who had initially been held in reserve, were ordered to attack unarmed civilians, with brutal consequences.They sliced indiscriminately at men, women and children as they tried to get to the speakers platform. Within minutes, people were sabred, trampled and crushed. Screams reverberated across the square. The Manchester Guardian described how " the women seemed to be the special objects of the rage of these bastard soldiers," 

The massacre was named ‘Peterloo’ in ironic comparison to the battle of Waterloo, that took place four years earlier.The victims included a two year old boy, William Fides, who was ridden oer by the cavalry after he was knocked from his mothers arms, and an an old Waterloo veteran , John Less, who was slashed to death by the cavalry's sabres.

After the massacre, it was the victims, and not the aggressors who were treated as criminals, and feared discrimination by their employers. And no doubt many of those injured died as a result of their injuries some weeks or even months later. In those days of primitive medical care and lack of welfare provision, a serious injury was often a death sentence, and for a wage earner to be incapacitated  equalled the threat of starvation for a family. At this time many handloom weavers and spinners were already living in a state of semi starvation.

The government of Lord Liverpool, backed up the public officials and the actions of the troops and was adamantly unwilling to apologize for the appalling violence. Henry Hunt, Samuel Bamford and other radical leaders were arrested for treason. This capital offence  was later commuted to a lesser one, and they served prison sentences of several years.

The event would  also usher in a series of draconian laws that further restricted the liberties of the population.It would lead to the suppression of public expression of opinion, debate , gathering and dissent.The populace did not decline into apathy, however. A large public outcry ensued, and an effort was made by various reformers to document the truth of what had occurred in the center of Manchester on that fateful day. Peterloo led directly to the formation of one of Britain’s leading progressive newspapers, the Manchester Guardian (now the more watered down Guardian). The aftermath of the event would in itself unleash a wave of public anger and protests, which eventually was to lead to the Great Reform Act of 1832, which led to limited suffrage and to today's parliamentary democracy. Many historians now acknowledge Peterloo  as hugely influential in ordinary people winning the vote and credit it with giving rise to the Chartist movement, and  strength to other workers rights movements. We should never forget on whose shoulders we today stand, a reminder that what rights that we have today were hard one.

In Italy, in the aftermath of Peterloo, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley having heard of the horror, his outraged response was  to compose his powerful political  91-verse poem, The Mask of Anarchy. The word anarchy then meant something quite different to how we view it today, Shelley used it to describe the chaos of tyranny, in which no one but the very few who own and control society can plan their lives for themselves.

The poem was written in the ballad tradition. Ballads in the early 19th century were verse narratives, often set to popular tunes and typically sold on the streets as a cheap disposable form of literature. They often focussed on tragedies, love affairs or scandals. By adopting this style,Shelley could be seen  to be speaking with the voice of the common man. 

The Mask of Anarchy recounts a nightmare in which the three Lords of the Tory Cabinet parade in an awful possession, murdering and deceiving while Britain dissolves into anarchy. He rouses the people to free themselves from their oppressors, by supplying them, among other things, with a powerful definition of freedom.

He begins his poem with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time: God,  the King and Law, and he then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action. The poem mentions several members of Lord Liverpool's's government by name: the Foreign Secretary, Castlereagh who appears as a mask worn by Murder, the Home Secretary,Lord Sidmouth., whose guise is taken by Hypocricy, and the Lord Chancellor,Lord Eldon whose ermine gown is worn by Fraud.The crowd at this gathering is met by armed soldiers, but the protestors do not raise an arm against their assailants:

Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war,

And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many - they are few."

That closing verse is perhaps one of the best known pieces of poetry in any movement of the oppressed all over the world such is it's resonance.Encouraging people to rise up and challenge the tyranny that they are facing every day of their lives, against the undeniable injustices.faced by the many at the hands of the few. The rallying language of the poem  has led to elements of it being recited by students at Tiananmen Square  and by protestors in Tahir Square during the revolution in Egypt in 2011.It would inspire the campaign slogan "We are many, they are few" used by anti Poll Tax demonstrators  in 1989-90, and also inspired the title of the 2014 documentary film We are Many, which focussed  on the worldwide anti-war protests of 2003, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has also memorably used the final stanza.
Shelley’s friend and publisher, Leigh Hunt did not publish the poem until after Shelley’s death fearing that the opinions in it were too controversial and inflammatory. The Masque of Anarchy  has been described as “the greatest political poem ever written in English” by people such as Richard Holmes. It inspired Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience which in turn influenced the anarchist writings of Leo Tolstoy.Percy Bysshe Shelley believed that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”He would remain a serious advocate for serious reform for the rest of his life, and would come to serve as a prophetic voice and inspiration to those, like the Chartists who created significant movements for peaceful reform, alongside generations of activists to this present day. Many years later his powerful poem is as relevant in austerity gripped Britain as when it was first written and  reminds us that Poetry can serve to inspire and motivate people and change and influence ideas. It is one of the most powerful tools we have.

Full text of Shelley's Mask of Anarchy can be found here:-

http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/anarchy.html 

An earlier post on Shelley can be found here :-

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2017/08/percy-bysshe-shelley-august-4-1792-july.html

The terrible events  that happened on August 16th, 1819  were recently  dramatised by director Mike Leigh in his  historical drama Peterloo. In this gripping account he presents a devastating portrait of class and political corruption which develops our understanding of how the working poor in Britain have coped with oppression . It  is a necessary film for our times, .which should be shown up and down the country in schools so that our children  can learn more about this shameful piece of British history.

This sobering but enthralling blast from the past, superbly shot by the director's regular cameraman Dick Pope, sees Leigh seamlessly move between the lives of disparate characters in the years after Waterloo: a family of weavers headed by Maxine Peake's matriarch: the Westminster government and gluttonous Prince Regent (an unrecognisable Tim McInnerny), fearful of losing his head to the forces of revolution; venomous Manchester magistrates determined to quash any radicalism; and moderate reformists and supporters from the local press, who invite tub-thumping speaker "Orator" Hunt (a terrific Rory Kinnear) to address the masses on that fateful day. Though the film is of considerable length, it's never plodding - Leigh leavens the mood with pointed humour and subtle mockery, whether it's in the pomposity and idiosyncrasies of the ruling classes, Vincent Franklin's apoplectic reverend magistrate or Hunt's smug, southern snobbishness. The climactic massacre is unheralded and low key, yet once the mayhem unfolds, it's easy to be reminded of recent crowd crises like Orgreave, the Poll Tax riots and Hillsborough. No doubt, Ken Loach would have been more strident with the material. To his credit, Leigh manages to take quirky slice-of-life drama to impressively epic heights and express a quieter indignation. But it's indignation, nonetheless. 

 

 

Peterloo  has  since become a rallying cry for the working class and radicals, a symbol of the vile nature of the ruling class. Thousands marched  through the streets of Manchester at the weekend and called for action in  a demonstration to commemorate the Peterloo Massacre, Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was among those who addressed  the crowd during speeches at St Peter's  Square.He received rousing cheers when he expressed solidarity with workers  fighting back against exploitative employers.

The gathering came amid a spiralling  cost of living crisis, with  energy bills  and fuel prices soaring  over the past year, and further sharp increases  expected to follow in October and next January. It also  took place against a backdrop of widespread industrial action  for workers across the country, as repeated  calls were made for a 'summer of solidarity.'

Following his appearance at the event  Mr Corbyn wrote on Twitter, "At todays  commemoration of the Peterloo Massacre  in Manchester we sent a strong message, We need an immediate wealth tax with our energy, water, rail and mail in public hands to bring down bills and help us build a fairer society of peace, justice and shared wealth"

 Repesentatives from  the RMT union which has been striking  over pay and conditions for its members this summer, werenison and the Fire  in attendance at the event. Other unions including Unite, Unison and the Fire Brigades Union were also present. 

Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union president Ian Hudson said tht in the current Tory leadership contest, fewer people are voting  than had the right to participate in parliamentary elections at the time of Peterloo.

He said  that "people have the right to food, not to foodbanks" and called for the abolition  of reviled zero-hours contracts, which leave those on them with no guarantee of work or wages.

The lessons that we  draw from Peterloo remain as valid today as ever, that we do not forget  that our rights have been won by others and must be constantly defended. A time to pause and to consider this significant moment in history when our working class ancestors were  slaughtered whilst peacefully protesting for basic civil rights that we today, take for granted.We must continue to display our defiance. More than that, in today's society with the Conservatives  current  draconian  Policing Bill, it’s a reminder that Peterloo was about demanding basic democratic rights and that all these years later a Tory Government is still trying to restrict them and take them away from us and are continuing to attack peoples rights to free assembly and their continuing  assaults on the weak and vulnerable among us, it is a timely reminder of how governments are still not averse to attacking its own people and we should put Shelley's words into practice and rise like lions, because we are many and they are few.

 

                                 Print of the Peterloo Massacre published by Richard Carlisle
     

               

 

Hurrah for the Blackshirts : Remembering The Daily Mail's Support For Fascism

On January 15 1934, The Daily Mail newspaper ran with the notorious headline “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” which was written by Viscount Rothemere, whose family incidentally still own the Mail, an article that  celebrated Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists (BUF).

Mosley was highly influenced by Benito Mussolini, so much so that members of the BUF were given the nickname of ‘Blackshirts’ as their uniform was modelled on that worn by those belonging to the National Fascist Party in Italy.Mosley’s Blackshirts dressed up like Mussolini’s thugs and saluted like Hitler’s, but theirs was a distinctly English program. The first of Mosley’s “10 Points of Fascism” announced that the BUF was “loyal to King and Country” and its “watch-word… is ‘Britain First.’”

 Mosley himself was commissioned in the 16th Lancers but joined the Royal Flying Corps at the outbreak of the First World War. Injured in a crash in 1915, he rejoined the Lancers and fought in the trenches between October 1915 and October 1916. He joined the Conservatives after military service to become an MP at 22. From the first, he challenged the old guard even within his own party, and was re-elected as an Independent before crossing the House to join Labour where he campaigned on unemployment. With his matinee idol looks and dramatic oratory, Mosley cut a darkly glamorous, radical figure.After the 1931 general election, Mosley toured Europe and it was that particular expedition which drew his attention to fascism. Following his travels, at 34 he founded the New Party, which – influenced by Mussolini – morphed into the quasi-military British Union of Fascists 19 months later in October 1932, with Mosley himself as the leader.

 Lord Rothermere, had launched the Daily Mail in 1896 with his elder brother, Alfred Harmsworth, who was later named Lord Northcliffe. By 1930, they owned 14 daily and Sunday newspapers, and a substantial share in three more.Shortly after Mussolini came to power, Rothermere laid his cards on the table. In an article in the Mail entitled “What Europe Owes to Mussolini,” he expressed his “profound admiration” for Italy’s new leader.

“In saving Italy he stopped the inroads of Bolshevism which would have left Europe in ruins… in my judgment he saved the whole Western world,” Rothermere declared.

His frequent visits to Italy seemed only to further stoke Rothermere’s enthusiasm for the Duce.

“He is the greatest figure of the age,” Rothermere proclaimed in 1928. “Mussolini will probably dominate the history of the 20th century as Napoleon dominated that of the early 19th.” He praised Mosley and the Blackshirts seeing them as the correct party to “take over responsibility for [British] national affairs”.

 Rothermere initially believed that Britain was “not suited” to fascism, but a general strike in 1926 and a fear that Baldwin was displaying “the feebleness which tries to placate opposition by being more socialist than the Socialists,” led him to reappraise this view as a new decade dawned.

 The Mail’s enthusiasm for the Nazis would grow as their support in Germany surged.By the 1930 election, when the Nazis’ seats in the Reichstag jumped from 12 to 107, Rothermere was a convert.

“[The Nazis] represent the rebirth of Germany as a nation,” Rothermere wrote in the Mail. The election, he correctly prophesied, would come to be seen as “a landmark of this time.”

It wasn’t hard to see why the Mail’s fawning coverage of the Nazis so delighted the Fuhrer — the paper uncritically reported the butchery of the Night of the Long Knives.

“Herr Adolf Hitler, the German Chancellor, has saved his country,” began its story on the frenzy of extrajudicial killings, and cheered the Nazis on as they trampled the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

When German troops marched into the Rhineland in March 1936, the Mail suggested Hitler had “cleared the air” and warned against “Bolshevik troublemakers.” It offered a glowing report of the Anschluss two years later — penned by Price, who had hitched a ride in Hitler’s convoy as it sped towards Vienna.

 Grateful for this unusual support from the foreign press,gained the Mail exclusive access to publish interviews with Hitler, it also earned Lord Rothermere and his son a place at the dinner table as honoured guests of Hitler himself.Following his meetings, Rothermere believed Hitler — a “simple and unaffected man” and a “perfect gentleman” — to be “obviously sincere” in his desire for peace. “There is no man living whose promise given in regard to something of real moment I would sooner take,” he later argued. A vicious reactionary anti-semite, Rothermere saw the Nazi dictator as an ally against the spread of (Jewish) communism and backed Hitler's actions to remove Jews from public life in Germany. During the Munich crisis of 1938 his papers urged capitulation to Hitler's demands for the German-speaking regions of Czechoslovakia (though they did advocate rearmament, just in case). The Mail objected time and again to the admission to Britain of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria. 

                                                      Lord Rothermore and Hitler

Under the headline Hurrah for the Blackshirts Rothermore praised Mosley and the Blackshirts seeing them as the correct party to “take over responsibility for [British] national affairs”;auding Mosley’s aim of bringing Britain “up to date” by following in the footsteps of Europe’s “best governed” nations, Italy and Nazi Germany. The article urged a similar “revival of national strength and spirit.” Following their proprietor’s cue, staff at the paper began showing up for work wearing black shirts.

Rothermere’s other newspapers also threw their support behind the effort. The Mirror urged its readers to “Give the Blackshirts a helping hand,” and printed the addresses of Mosley’s local recruiting offices. A visit to Germany or Italy, Rothermere assured readers, showed that “the mood of the vast majority of the inhabitants was not cowed submission, but confident enthusiasm.”

The Sunday Dispatch offered free tickets to Mosley’s rallies, prizes for readers who submitted letters on why they liked the Blackshirts, and regular features on attractive female fascists, under headlines such as “Beauty joins the Blackshirts.”

 By 1936 anti-semitic assaults by fascists were growing and windows of Jewish-owned businesses were routinely smashed. Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’  The Daily Mail headline is just one chilling indication of the very real threat Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists posed in the mid 1930s which concluded with a direct call for young men to join Oswald’s party.and  certainly helped boost  the BUF membership considerably, perhaps to as many as 50,000 active members..

 When, on 7 June 1934, Oswald Mosley addressed a tumultuous rally at London's Olympia, his British Union of Fascists seemed on the verge of political acceptability. Yet with its chaos, violence and subsequent condemnation in the press, Olympia marked the beginning of the end for the Blackshirts.

Mosley’s blackshirts had been harassing the sizeable Jewish population in the East End all through the 1930s and a primary focus of its anti-immigrant and antisemitic sentiment was Stepney, an East End neighborhood then home to 60,000 Jews descended from families who fled pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as Irish and other immigrant workers. and on 4th October 1936, Mosley planned the BUF’s biggest and boldest initiative yet. His uniformed Blackshirts would march through London’s East End, home to one of the country’s largest Jewish communities. The intention was quite clear: to cause fear and stir up hate. On the day, more than a hundred thousand east enders, of any faith or none, turned out to protect their community. The fascists were forced to retreat in what became known  as the Battle of Cable Street https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/10/remember-battle-of-cable-street-no.html. in which tens of thousands of anti-fascists  battled 6,000 police and 3,000 BUF Blackshirts to refuse the fascists passage through Stepney. Taking their example from Spanish Communists during the siege of Madrid months earlier, they used as their slogan “¡No pasarán” and erected three sets of barricades on Cable Street. Irish dockworkers tore up paving stones and filled the street with broken glass and marbles to defeat mounted police. They did, not pass.

Mosley lost thousands of supporters as people began to make links between what was happening at home and events in Nazi Germany.s the Second World War loomed,.and during the Second World War, the British authorities viewed Mosley as an enemy sympathiser – if the Nazis successfully invaded the UK, it was believed he would head up the regime on home soil – and had him interned, along with his wife. The pair lived together in the grounds of Holloway prison for the majority of the war, before being released in 1943.After the war, Mosley formed the Union Movement in 1948, but his influence had waned.and The Union Movement was eventually dissolved in 1973 after failing to gain significant ground.

The Daily Mail began to change its editorial line and moved away from explicitly supporting fascists and their regimes. But, the racism and xenophobia remained a key part of their  so called ‘journalism’ and has continued through to this day. Rothermere died in 1940 a broken man, desperately disappointed that the great dictator in Berlin had not forged an alliance with London to vanquish Stalin. He was an utterly disgusting human being..

The forces of Fascism are on the rise again, in Europe and around the world.we must continue to resist wherever they are promote and try to come together. Those who daub synagogues with anti-semitic graffiti or defile mosques with anti-Islamic hate or any other communities that suffer abuse or racism, we  must  forever be on the side of those communities, and they will never be given any welcome, and be outnumbered and humiliated by antifascists. Whilst they continue to intimidate and stoke up division with their racist ideology and their  hatred against difference and people marked as socially undesirable. they  will always be met with resistance, their routes blocked by those that seek to defend their communities from fascist violence.

Sill a high-circulation right-wing tabloid much beloved by “Middle England” The Daily Mail still weathers the occasional barbs about its disreputable past whilst creating hate-filled media stories that create a violent culture of hostility towards migrants and refugees. Remember Rothermere was pro-Nazi. The Daily Mail was pro-Nazi. The Daily Mail is the traitors' paper. Never forget, never forgive. Lower than vermin, as Aneurin Bevan once said. 

 

 Daily Mail Poem

I pour scorn on its petty margins
Its distortion of realities silhouette,
The daily shame, should be its new name
Cross out all its lies, we'd be left with empty pages,
Drinking toasts to underbellies of nastiness
It sharpens its pen on bile,
With agenda of spreading hatred
Is enough to scramble your brain,.
A bully that's scared of everything
Its dark heart  distorts reality,
With script of venom and division
In truth, worth nothing at all,
Its pinning sense of intolerance
Is a message I don't want to hear,
A tabloid  rag not fit for the gutter
Full of twisted opinion and bad news
Designed to leave us disheartened,
Don't know how anyone can call it a friend.

Linton Kwesi Johnson - New Crass Massahkah

On 18 January 1981, a fire at a house party in New Cross, South-East London, led to the deaths of 13 young Black people including Yvonne Ruddock, who was celebrating her 16th birthday. One of the survivors later took their own life.

Police declared the fire to be an accident, but to this day many suspect it was a racist arson attack. The authorities failed to seriously investigate these claims, despite the fact that racially abusive letters had been sent to the homeowner, and an incendiary device found outside the house. The police treated the families of the dead like suspects, rather than victims, and the Daily Mail falsely suggested several Black people had been arrested in connection with the fire. 

In the days that followed there was little coverage of the terrible loss of young life in the newspapers.,The cold silence of the white establishment conveyed a brutally simple message that the loss of young black lives was simply unimportant. As Johnny Osbourne sang pointedly ’13 Dead (and Nothing Said)’. 

In the aftermath, the community felt a devastating sense of loss. Sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, friends, classmates – all taken away long before their time. 

But what compounded the pain was the sense that the community had and was continuing to be ignored. It is customary for Prime Ministers and the Crown to acknowledge a mass loss of life by the way of sending a message of condolence. Yet Margaret Thatcher, after nearly two years in office at that time, failed to reach out to the community. 

Thatcher fostered a hostile environment for the black and minority ethnic community, and was widely considered to be courting supporters of the far-right National Front group through the use of anti-immigrant rhetoric. This was taken further by her minister Jill Knight, who appeared to condone direct action against parties with sound systems, a staple of the Black British culture at the time. 

The suspicions of foul play were well founded – New Cross was known to many as the race hate capital of Britain.Many other Black  homes in the area had been attacked by supporters of the fascist National Front, and a Black community centre was burnt down. Almost exactly a decade earlier, white racists had petrol bombed a Black people’s party in Lewisham, injuring 22 people.

Ever since the ‘Windrush generation’ had been brought to the country to help rebuild Britain’s post-war economy, they were met with hostility and violence. The police regularly raided Black meeting places such as the Mangrove Restauarant, as well as the annual Notting Hill Carnival. The same year as the New Cross fire also saw the passing of the British Nationality Act, the last of a series of immigration laws explicitly targeting people of colour; tearing apart countless families in the process. 

The Prime Minister’s silence propelled the wave of black activism that had  been sparked by the fire, as protestors rallied to the words 'thirteen dead and nothing said' and ‘Here to Stay, Here to Fight’.

The New Cross community demanded answers and, in light of perceived inaction by the police, hundreds attended a meeting a week after the fire. There was a strong feeling that the fire had been an attack, started by a petrol bomb.

Out of the ashes of this terrible tragedy came an unprecedented political mobilisation led by the families, the New Cross Massacre Action Committee and the wider black community.  

It resulted in the historic ‘Black People’s Day of Action’ on Monday 2 March, 1981, where 15,000 people from all over the country filed by 439 New Cross Road bound for the Houses of Parliament and Fleet Street in peaceful protest, but their march was disrupted by harsh police tactics and faced relentless attacks from the right-wing media.

Tension between the community and the police remained high, particularly amongst young people who felt they were being unfairly targeted by the police.In April that year, an incident involving a stabbed youth sparked a riot in Brixton that lasted a weekend and brought the issue of race relations to the top of the agenda.

To date, no-one has ever been charged with starting the New Cross fire. The police bungled the investigation  and no one was arrested or prosecuted  which summed up the racist indifference of the state to black communities  and sickeningly  racist  abuse was sent to victims families. The racism behind the tragedy politicised a generation, and continues to shape modern Britain.

 Thinking back now perhaps the most appropriate way to remember those lives cut short so cruelly is to renew a commitment and vigilance to challenging contemporary racism in all its forms. 

 Linton Kwesi Johnson’s ‘New Crass Massahkah ’ conveyed in dub poetry perhaps the most enduring and powerful form of historical witness. 

New Crass Massahkah -   by Linton Kwesi Johnson

first di comin
an di goin
in an out af di pawty

di dubbin
an di rubbin
and di rackin to di riddim

di dancin
and di scankin
an di pawty really swingin

den di crash
an di bang
an di flames staat fit rang

di heat
an di smoke
an di people staat fi choke

di screamin
and di cryin
and di diein in di fyah.