The Matchmakers Strike of 1888

                                 The Strike Committee of the Matchmakers Union

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Happy Birthday NHS: We must keep fighting for it.

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

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

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

Franz Kafka - Magical realist (3/7/1883 -3/6/24)

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

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

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

Activists shut down UK-based Israeli owned arms and security factories ‘in solidarity with Palestinian people’

Pro-Palestinian activists have  for the second day occupied the roof of Israel owned Elbit Ferranti arms   factories in Oldham, in solidarity and in a peaceful protest of UK complicity in Israel’s human rights violations. vowing to stay up there “as long as it takes” to impose a two-way arms embargo between the UK and Israel so that “no more death can be inflicted on the Palestinian people”.
The activists from Manchester Palestine Action and the International Solidarity Movement, scaled the roof of the four storey building at 5 am yesterday morning, carrying banners with them that they draped from the roof edge of the five storey buildingn front of the building which read “UK Stop Arming Israel” and "Israel is killing protestors eery week," They were joined by placard- and banner-carrying activists at the front gates of the factory who chanted: “brick by brick, wall by wall, Israeli apartheid is going to fall”.
The campaigners acted in commemoration of the five-year anniversary of Operation Protective Edge (OPE). Israel attacked Gaza in July 2014 and killed over 2,200 Palestinians, primarily civilians; Israeli forces suffered 73 casualties,  primarily soldiers.
The group say that over the last five years the UK has raised their arms sales to Israel and are calling for an arms embargo and the closure of all Elbit factories in the UK. A group of activists also entered the new, hi-tech, Discovery Industrial Park in  Sandwich,Kent and headed towards Elbit’s, purpose-built Instro Precision factory, spraying painted slogans. They blockaded both of the gates to the factory and scaled a shipping container ,forcing the factory to close.

Elbit  Systems is the largest privately owned Israeli arms manufacturer and is one of the largest exporter of drones in the world, bought the formerly British-owned Ferranti Technologies for £15 million in 2007. Elbit unmanned aircraft systems (aka drones) have been used extensively against Palestinians.
Elbit produces 85% of all drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, UAV) used by the Israeli army, including the Hermes 450 and 900 drones which Israeli forces can equip with two air to ground missiles, or targeting systems to mark a target for other aircraft to attack.
Amnesty International reported in 2009 that Israeli drones were identified as taking part in attacks that killed Palestinian civilians in Gaza. A confidential Israeli military police report leaked to The Intercept showed how the Israeli operators of a Hermes 450 were responsible for killing four Palestinian children, cousins aged 10-11, playing on a beach during Operation Protective Edge. They killed one child with the first missile fired, and then fired a second missile to kill the remaining three.
The company prides itself in testing their products "in the field"  This testing amounts to the targeted killings of Palestinians, including many children, and to the extensie destruction of civil infrastructure in Gaza.  A company also  sordidly famous for providing cluster munitions banned by international law, and white phosphorus shells, both used against Palestinian civilian populations - a use also condemned by international law. Comments made by members of the Israeli military industrial complex lend weight to this claim. A brigadier general in the Israeli Army said at a convention on border control technology in Texas, “We have learned lots from Gaza,” he said. “It’s a great laboratory.”
Avner Benzaken, head of the Israeli army’s technology and logistics division, explaining the benefits of the occupation of Palestinian land, was reported as saying in Der Spiegel:
“If I develop a product and want to test it in the field, I only have to go five or 10 kilometres from my base and I can look and see what is happening with the equipment… I get feedback, so it makes the development process faster and much more efficient.”
After the 2014 OPE assault on Gaza, the term “combat-proven” was reported as being added to a military vehicle jointly manufactured by Elbit. During the first month of OPE in Gaza, Elbit’s shares increased by 6.1%.
There are many reports of the crashing of Elbit’s Skylark UAV during intelligence gathering operations in Gaza. The anxiety-inducing buzzing of Israeli military UAVs has become a permanent soundtrack to the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. The company has been one of the main providers of the electronic detection fence system to the Apartheid Wall in the occupied West Bank. Elbit, in cooperation with the Israeli military, developed a tunnel detection system installed as part of the matrix of technologies used to keep around 2 million Palestinians besieged in the open air prison that is the Gaza Strip.
Elbit Systems bought Israeli Military Industries (IMI) in 2018 for $495 million, which makes them the owner of the sole supplier of small-calibre ammunition to the Israeli army. Over the past year and a half, Israeli snipers have killed over 180 Palestinian protesters in the Great Return March in Gaza, including press, medics, disabled people and 57 children, yet the UK has approved some £14 million worth of arms sales during this period, according to the group.Israel’s military might, maintained by its arms trade with foreign governments like the UK, is a key factor in sustaining a much larger system of injustice and perpetual violence against the Palestinian people. That’s why justice campaigners here in the UK are increasing energy in their work to end the UK’s complicity in Israel’s abuse of Palestinian rights.
In 2017 the Campaign Against Arms Trade reported that the UK issued £221 million worth of arms licenses to defence companies exporting to Israel which makes Israel the eighth largest UK arms market, a huge increase on the previous year’s figure of £86m, itself a substantial rise on the £20m worth of arms licensed in 2015. In total, over the past five years, Israel has bought more than £350m worth of UK military hardware. The licences include categories of arms used in Israel’s attacks, such as sniper rifles, grenade launchers, surveillance drones and other equipment. While UK export controls are meant to prohibit the export of items that can be used in violation of human rights abroad, the UK Government insists it is confident that exports to Israel are not, while simultaneously claiming that it doesn’t track items after they’ve been sold. While a range of human rights organisations, the UN and even the International Criminal Court have expressed concern, the UK Government is digging in its heels and refusing to conduct any due diligence. As part of the wider Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, Palestine solidarity activists have called for the UK to end its extensive collaboration with the Israeli weapons industry and to institute a two-way arms embargo, at the same time, a range of human rights organisations, the UN and even the International Criminal Court have expressed concern, the UK Government unsurprisingly, the government has refused to listen, instead has not only taken no action, but has also made no effort to make Israel accountable for its increasing crimes and has thus been complicit in profitng off not only the desruction and death of innocent lives, but the intentional field testng of weaapons designed to terrify an entire populace.It’s not surprising then that campaigners are stepping up their efforts to stop ‘business as usual’ for the UK-Israel arms trade and they’re targeting different points in the chain of complicity.
There are many reports of the crashing of Elbit’s Skylark UAV during intelligence gathering operations in Gaza. The anxiety-inducing buzzing of Israeli military UAVs has become a permanent soundtrack to the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. The company has been one of the main providers of the electronic detection fence system to the Apartheid Wall in the occupied West Bank. Elbit, in cooperation with the Israeli military, developed a tunnel detection system installed as part of the matrix of technologies used to keep around 2 million Palestinians besieged in the open air prison that is the Gaza Strip. The company prides itself in testing their products "in the field" This testing amounts to the targeted killings of Palestinians, including many children, and to the extensie destruction of civil infrastructure in Gaza.
Elbit Systems has four subsidiaries in the UK; UAV Engines, Instro Precision, Ferranti Technologies and Elite KL. All have faced protests and in recent years. The Elbit-owned UAV Engines factory in Shenstone, Staffordshire, has been repeatedly targeted by activists, including protests, roof top occupations, and blockades at its gates, and was closed for nearly three days when it was similarly occupied in 2014 because it profits directly from the continual surveillance, control and violent repression of the Palestinian people.
The end of 2018 at least seemed to have marked a new turning point for the unscrupulous investments of banking and financial companies in the arms manufacturer Elbit Systems being excluded from pension and investment funds around the world over the company’s involvement in supplying surveillance systems and other technology to Israel’s Separation Wall and settlements in the West Bank. Elbit has also supplied surveillance technology for use along the US-Mexico’s border. In December 2018, following a campaign by a coalition of British NGOs against its investments, HSBC decided to divest from Elbit Systems due to its involvement in the production and commercialization of cluster munitions.
The recent action against Elbit has seen local residents rallying round in support with lots of interest from local school students, who can see the roof from their school , with some of the neighbouring residents   coming out to respect the minute's silence that was held last night at the gate of the factory - together with those on the roof.
See pictures and a short video n https://twitter.com/ManPalestine (you can look at twitter feed whether or not you have a twitter account. )
or on facebook https://www.facebook.com/ManchesterPalestineAction/
As a key company in the Israeli arms industry, the presence of Elbit’s factories in the UK should not go unchallenged. By targeting the factories,  campaigners are protesting the normalisation of militarism both in the UK and in Palestine. The Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions is clear that a suspension of ‘business as usual’ with Israel is necessary to achieve justice for Palestine, and campaigners are answering this call. Those who profiteer from suffering, violence and human rights violations like Elbit ,acting immoraly and in contravention of international law, should not be allowed to continue with business as usual. It is simply deplorable that Elbit can  still operate their four factories in the UK, where they manufacture their weapons with such impunity. and enables the Israeli military to maintain its brutal  oppression ad occupation of the Palestinians.

Solidarity and respect  with the roof top activists, and to those that endorse the call of Palestinian civil society to impose a two-way military embargo on Israel and to all those that continue to support  the legitimate fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.

Love hangs on a clock

I did not know, that love hung on a clock
That told, the minutes and the years,
The metal arms, forever going forwards on its face
To live in the palaces of the mind,
Where love comes to bury itself
Offering ticking, twinkling emotion
Moving its force into cells
Where hearts are captured,
Precious like times shifting pathways
The seconds moving one by one,
As we whirl and twirl in own free will
Sharing the gift of magical moments,
I truly believe that we should all be struck
By cupids  loving well aimed arrows,
Not by hatred, fear or division
But by steady pulses of harmony,
Arriving swiftly on the breeze
Releasing the scent of passion,
Capturing and soothing longing
Comforting, keeping us safe from harm.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ceredigion

"Lets not fool ourselves into believing that Israel is engaging in sincere negotiations on equal footing with the Palestinians. There is no balance of power. Israel is demanding that Palestinians surrender their rights. When Palestinians refuse to do so. They are accused of rejecting peace."
- Sutaya Dadoo
 

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) campaigns for justice for the Palestinians and advocates for their civil, political and human rights, in accordance with international law.

Palestine:  An issue for us all. 
PSC represents people in Britain from all faiths and political parties, who have come together to work for peace and justice for the Palestinian people. They are opposed to all forms of racism, including anti-Jewish prejudice and Islamophobia.
PSC was established to campaign:
for the right of self-determination for the Palestinian people
for the right of return of the Palestinian people
for the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli state from the occupied territories
against the oppression and dispossession suffered by the Palestinian people
in support of the rights of the Palestinian people and their struggle to achieve these rights
to promote Palestinian civil society in the interests of democratic rights and social justice
to oppose Israel's occupation and its aggression against neighbouring states
in opposition to racism, including anti-Jewish prejudice and Islamophobia, and the apartheid and Zionist nature of the Israeli state

 I am pleased to announce that a new branch is being launched in Aberystwyth today, please come and join us. The launch event will take place in Arad Goch in Bath Street from 1 p.m. To initiate the new group, Betty Huunter, Honorary President of PSC, will talk about the plight og children who find themselves on the frontline of Israeli military actions n Palestine, The soundtrack to the eent will be provided by Cor Gobaith, who will sing songs of hope for peace and justice in the region. The event will conclude with the inagural AGM of  the Ceredigion branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Acampaigner for many years Betty Hunter said "The Palestine Solidarity Campaign works for peace, equality and justice, ad against racism, occupation and colonisattion. We are dedicated to securing human righrs for Palestinian people hostage in their own land . and world leaders do nothing. We must boycott Israeli goods. We must call for sanctions against Israel. It is us the people, who can change history."

50 years after Stonewall Uprising

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, the New York City  police department carried out a raid on the Stonewall Inn, a  popular Gay Bar in the Greenwich Village .The move was a clear condemnation by law enforcement officials of the city's underground gay population Yes it was a dive bar, but even that characterisation was optimistic, since it couldn't get a ligour license. It's drinks were bootlegged and heavily watered down. The contents of no bottle ever matched its label. There were no fire exits and there was no running water. But in that Greenwich Village Tavern, there was music, there was dancing, and there was freedom. It was a place of sanctuary, and one of the only places for New York's gay community to socialise and truly be themselves.
Pror to 1962, same sex relationships were a felony in every state, making it illegal for people of the same sex to show affection towards one another, dance with each other or even just be together. often punished by lengthy prison sentences. Same-sex loving men and women met in secret, fearing the long-term consequences of exposure. Gender nonconforming indiiduals and cross-dressers might find themselves shunned to the fringes of society. Early efforts at LGBTQ activism had smoldered for years before Stonewall. There had been riots in other gay spaces before. And there had certainly been plenty of police raids at the Stonewall in the past. But the anger that erupted on this day when police attempted to arrest patrons of the Stonewall Inn, sparked a uprising that galvanised the  LGBTQ civil rights movement as we know it today.
It was a raid like so many others, but this time after some patrons and local residents witnessed  police barging into the bar, slaming people against the walls, calling them derogatory names, and then taking money from their wallets. When police finally let patrons oout of the bar and ordered them to disperse they refused, and after an officer struck a prisoner on the head, they spontaneously fought back against years of oppression by hurling rocks and bottles at the police, anything in fact within arm's reach.A number of people even wrestled a parking meter from the ground and tried to use it as a battering ram. The police, fearing for their safety, locked themseles inside the Stonewall Inn as the angry mob outside grew into the thousands. Some were attempting to set the property on fire.Following media coverage of the event, thouusands protested and clashed with riot police over the next six days,.Reinforcements were eventually able to get the crowd under control, well for one night at least. But people had discovered a power that they were not even aware they had, releasing a sense of pride and liberation.

Shouts of 'gay power' and 'we shall overcome' could be heard down the street as support spread.It was a watershed for the worldwide gay rights movement, because it was the first time LGBT people had forcibly resisted the police. On Saturday, the windows of the Stonewall were boarded up and painted with gueer liberation slogans like 'We are Open,' 'Support Gay Power- C'mon in girls.' Hostile press coverage was also pinned to the boards, That night the crowd of protestors returned and were led in 'gay power; cheers by a group of gay cheerleaders. There was sustained handholding, kissing, and posing which had appeared only fleetingly on the street before.
Soon the crowd got restless "Let's go down the street and see what's happening girls," someone yelled. They did and were confronted by the Tactical Patrol Force, (originally set up to stop anti-ietnam war protests) Howeer, the TPF failed to break up the crowd, who in defiance sprayed them with rocks and other projectiles. The third day of rioting fell five days after the raid on the Stonewall Inn. On that day 1,000 people congregated at the bar and again took the cops on in the streets.
Once the riots had subsided, protestors were filled with motivation to organise for their rights, th aftermath saw an explosion in gay movement organisation, pride and political activism. A year after the  riots, residents began marching on Christopher Street and Sixth Avenue. The date, June 28 was dubbed Christopher Street Liberation Day. Thousands of people marched the street while thousands of other people lined up alongside them to protest the treatment of the LGBT  community at the hands of the law. With Stonewall, the spirit of 60's rebellion spread to LGBT people in New York and beyond, who found themseles liberated and part of a community, sparking a new sense of urgency about demanding tolerance for persecuted communities.Inspired by New Yor's example, actiists in other cities including Los Angeles, San Fracisco, Boston and Chicago, organised gay pride celebrations that same year. The Stonewall uprising changed the state of play, and sent out a clear message that eough was enough and that it was time fir the harassent and discrimination to end.
It is important to recognise the fact the gay rights movement did not begin at Stonewall, there were gay activists  and calls for "gay power"well before tht early morning of June 28, 1969. What was different about Stonewall was that gay actiists around the country ad the world were prepared to commemorate it publicly. It was not the first rebellion, but it was the first to be called "the first" and that act of naming mattered, the uprising did mark a turning point, igniting a new atmosphere of militant gay liberation. Radical groups like the libertarian left wing Gay Liberation Front (GLF)  and the Gay Actiists Alliance (GAA), were formed  in New York and beyond who sought links with the Black Panthers, the Womens Liberation movement and anti-war organisations. Similar organisations were soon creaed around the world including Canada, France, Brtain, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Australia and New Zealandin, becoming a lasting force that would carry on for the next half-century and beyond.

The Stonewall Inn made headlines again in 2015, when its story came to the silver screen,  but critics at the time said that Stonewall depicted brave, cisgender white males as the unsung heroes of the moement, but in reality it was trans women of color, homeless queer people, sex workers, gay bi and pansexual people who were the riots heart and soul.

The resisters who stood up to the police on this day could hardly have imagined that within 50 years, the United States and other Western countries would go from criminalising homosexuality to guranteering the equal right of same sex couples to marry. Despite the gains made since and why we celebrate Pride in June, ( beyond the sequins and the glitter, it remains a protest, not just an excuse to party) half a century on from the Stonewall Riots, the global LGBT community still faces significent problems.
It was only as recently as 2017 that the UK Government finally issued a posthumous pardon to all gay or bi men who were convicted under pernicious sexual offences laws in the last century which enabled police to criminalise people for being gay or bi. In many South Asian and Middle Eastern, in fact around 70 counties  homosesxuality is still illegal and in around 70 countries ,as far as the law goes punishable by death.Anti-gay bullying is still prevalent in schools and workplaces and ati LGBT sentiment is still being combatted across the world, Sadly there is still to much stigma attached for being who we are. But for many that fight has its roots in those dramatic riots in Greenwich all those years ago.
The LGBT  movement is still a work in progress, so any single acronym is just a working title. Many other groups could be added to the acronym, including queer, intersex, and loving people of all kinds who just don't fit in the conventional pink and blue boxes of gender. This movement is a rainbow coalition of communities.The struggle will continue as long as governments do not fully respect and protect the "inherant dignity" and "egual and inalienable rights of all members of the human family" , as the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights so eloquently pronounces, regardless of their gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.
When we remember the Stonewall Rebellion, we should aso commit to common memory, think of the many rebels who thought they might be alone but found common ground in movements of popular resistance.We still have so mucch further to go in the fight for equality. With on going solidarity with other oppressed people across the world, with rage and love we can firmly find  our pride. The legacy of Stonewall remains as important as ever.

Stonewall at 50 documentary

Happy Birthday Emma Goldman (27/6 -1869 – 14/5/1940)

Emma Goldman the legendary writer, feminist and anarchist  was born on this day the 27th of June 1869 into a Jewish ghetto in Kovna, a western corner of the Russian Empire. Due to her gender  religion, and her family’s lack of resources, the course of her life seemed preordained —marriage, toil, children, an early death. Higher education was a luxury that her family deemed unnecessary; her father told her that “all a Jewish daughter needs to know is how to prepare gefilte fish, cut noodles fine, and give the man plenty of children.” As a Jewish woman in Tsarist Russia her life was perpetually under threat; a rash of bloody pogroms broke out in 1881, and she bore witness the violent antisemitism that continued to plague her homeland after she emigrated to the States in 1885 at age 16 in search of freedom.
Though she had already been exposed to leftist politics by fellow workers at her factory job in Rochester, the 1886 Haymarket affairhttps://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2017/05/haymarket-square-riot-anniversary.html and ensuing state execution of the anarchists Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and August Spies became the crucible in which Goldman’s radicalization and ongoing political self-education was forged. “I saw a new world opening before me,” she wrote  then, and as she wrote in a 1910 essay, “Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive” 
Around this time, Goldman came into contact with another anarchist, Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend. The two worked together and in 1892, they were both outraged by an incident in Pittsburgh. Striking men at the Homestead factory of Carnegie Steel had been repressed to such an extent that some had actually been killed.
With funding from Goldman, Berkman bought a gun and used it to shoot Carnegie Steel”s manager, Henry Clay Frick. The attempt to assassinate him failed, although Frick was seriously wounded. Berkman received a life sentence for his act and the federal government attempted to stamp out anarchism. It it became her life’s work to spread the message of liberation far and wide.  Convinced that the political and economic organization of modern society was fundamentally unjust, she embraced anarchism for the vision it offered of liberty, harmony and true social justice. For decades, she struggled tirelessly against widespread inequality, repression and exploitation.
 By 1893, laws had been enacted that made anarchist speech itself a crime. Goldman ignored them, stating that women could never be prevented from talking by the government, and as a result she was imprisoned. After her release in 1895, she dropped the most extreme of her views, such as support for assassination and general strikes.
Instead, she called for a “revolution in morality,” by which she meant that a struggle needed to be joined against religious and racial prejudice and intolerance.  She served prison terms for such activities as advising the unemployed to take bread if their pleas for food were not answered, for giving information in a lecture on birth control, and for opposing military conscription, this led to an eighteen-month imprisonment before the First World War for encouraging Americans not to register for the draft. Described by authorities as 'one  of the most dangerous women in America,' she was deported  to Russia in 1919, by this time the Communist revolution had taken place and Goldman fully expected to experience the “workers paradise” she had heard so much about. Instead, she discovered not only repression, but also an unpleasantly anti-Semitic atmosphere. Goldman criticized the undemocratic nature of Lenin”s rule and became increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet state. In the wake of the Kronstadt rebellion she denounced the Soviet Union for it's violent repression of independent voices.
She moved to Europe, and travelled and lectured in many countries. She came to Wales, Emma's itinerary of speaking dates during her stay in the UK shows that the most extensively toured area was the south Wales coalfield. During two weeks in 1925 she spoke to audiences from Swansea to the Rhondda, commenting in her letters that the coalfield was a "splendid field" to spread anarchist ideas. As an orator Emma Goldman was fiery and brilliant, drawing crowds of thousands to hear her speak. She is known for her extraordinary energy and appetite for life.
Goldman’s openness brought an altogether human element to the sometimes inflexible realm of radical ideological thought. For her, life was about roses as well as bread. She is remembered as an earthy, bohemian woman who loved art, music, and sex, and saw no reason for a revolutionary to deprive themselves of beautiful things." I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful things," so said Red Emma, without adjectives, who sought a way of being free, who would rather roses on her table, than diamonds on her neck.  Who simply chose to cling on throughout her life to her deep ideals,a beautiful ideal for a better world. She told us " Ask for work, if they don't give you work, ask for bread . If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread." This attitude gave rise to one of the most popular quotes attributed to her: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.”
When she was 67 and living in London, the Spanish Civil War broke out, and she threw herself into the cause, mustering support for its anti-fascist International Brigades in their battle against General Franco's  Nationalist troops who were supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and sharing her admiration for what she saw as the only working class revolution to have been fomented on anarchist ideals, subsequently backing the Spanish anarchists, as they tried to restructure society with one hand, while battling fascist, Stalinist threats  lined up against them on the other.
Goldman’s openness brought an altogether human element to the sometimes inflexible realm of radical ideological thought. For her, life was about roses as well as bread. She is remembered as an earthy, bohemian woman who loved art, music, and sex, and saw no reason for a revolutionary to deprive themselves of beautiful things." I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful things," so said Red Emma, without adjectives, who sought a way of being free, who would rather roses on her table, than diamonds on her neck.  Who simply chose to cling on throughout her life to her deep ideals,a beautiful ideal for a better world. She told us " Ask for work, if they don't give you work, ask for bread . If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread." This attitude gave rise to one of the most popular quotes attributed to her: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” In her autobiography Living My Life (1931) she describes how she was once admonished for dancing at a party in New York and was told “that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway.” Goldman speaks furiously on the occasion here;
 “I became alive once more. At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause .I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal” I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.” This episode was later paraphrased and transformed into the famous quote.
Goldman’s biographer and feminist writer Alix Shulman explained that in  1973, he  befriended printer who asked him  for a quotation by Goldman for use on a t-shirt. Shulman sent him the passage from Goldman’s autobiography, but the printer rephrased the passage into  the famous quote “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution”. As Shulman recounts, the citation subsequently found its way onto millions of buttons, posters, T-shirts, bumper stickers, books and articles: I still think it's lovely when I wake to  know where the sentiment and quote that greets me in the bathroom actually derives from.
 Goldman was arrested a number of times throughout her life for “offenses” like distributing information on birth control, encouraging men to avoid registering for the draft, and for espionage. She remained fearless, even after a lifetime of constant government surveillance, and repression.
During the final year of her life, Goldman”s were nomadic: she called herself a “woman with no country.” She was equally forthright in her objections to all kinds of totalitarian rule, whether they came from Stalin, Hitler, or Franco. As the anti-Semitism of Nazi  Germany became more and more extreme during the late 1930s, Goldman wrote about her Jewishness. in 1939, Goldman moved to Toronto, where she organized on behalf of Spanish women and children refugees fleeing  victorious dictator  Franco Before her death, Mariano Vázquez, the former Secretary-General of the CNT-FAI, a Spanish anarchist organization, sent her a message naming her as “our spiritual mother.” Even as her own health failed, her last thoughts were with the oppressed working class, and her final actions were to do what she could to leave a better world behind. She died in Toronto in May of 1940 after suffering from a series of strokes. She was 70 years old.
After her death, Goldman’s life and work received little attention until anarcho-feminists in the 1960’s revived interest in her writings and thus reignited her spirit of resistance. Anarcho-punks in the 1980’s and 1990’s and anti-capitalist activists of the new millennium kept Red Emma’s legacy alive, referencing her in song and counter-culture, naming infoshops and collective projects in her honor around the world.
Today as I celebrate Emma Goldman's birthday she is warmly remembered for the anarcho-feminist, anti-militarist and internationalist contributions she made to the social revolutionary struggles in life. She once famously declared that “Everyone is an anarchist who loves liberty and hates oppression" In troubling times, her words and deeds continue to inspire as we come together and believe in better days. Beyond the panic of our current predicaments and journeys  their our those who will keep on fighting for a fairer society, that continue to champion her pursuit of universal justice towards a more humane, fair and fulfilling world. Her dream lives on and the struggle continues for a better world. 

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/emma-goldman-2761869-14540-anarchism.html

International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

Every year on June 26, International Day in Support of Victims of Torture is marked. The day is observed to come in support of people who have been tortured or abused. The emphasis of the day is to understand that torture is not acceptable and is also a  despicable crime that is unjustified in any circumstance not even as a measure of last resort. All acts of torture  should be effectively prosecuted  to prevent such acts from occurring again. We should  continue to remember and condemn the degrading and destructive impact of torture, showing support for its victims worldwide.

The day was declared by the United Nations in 1997. The proposal of the day was made in Denmark which is also home to world-famous International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT).

The day June 26 was selected to mark this day for two reasons. One was that on June 26, 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed amid World War II, the first international instrument obliging UN members to respect and promote the human rights and the other reason was that on June 26 in 1897, the United Nations Convention against torture and other cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment or punishment came into force.
The first event was launched in 1998 and since then more than 100 organization in several countries over the world mark this event and celebrate the campaign. Various rehabilitation centers and human rights organisations around the world celebrate the UN's International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on 26 June every year. Events on this day give a chance to unite and raise voice against torture. Several organisations like the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims and Amnesty International have played an active role in organising events around the world to promote and make people aware about this day. Various activities like photo exhibitions, distribution of posters and other material to boost people's awareness related to human torture etc. are organised.
According to Human Rights Law torture is defined as any act  by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person in which a public official is directly or indirectly involved for a specific reason. Torturers are seen as the ‘enemy of all mankind'. It is considered so barbaric and incompatible with civilised society that it cannot be tolerated.
Torture seeks to annihiliate the victim's personality and denies the inherent dignity of the human being. Torture and ill-treatment are forbidden by both international law and law here in the UK. There are no circumstances whatsoever in which torture and ill-treatment can be justified, including in conflict, for counter-terrorism purposes or other threats of crime, or other religious or traditional justification.Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.The UN Convention Against Torture requires countries to take active steps to prevent torture and says “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever … may be invoked as a justification of torture”.In the UK, the Human Rights Act means we can raise the European Convention on Human rights (ECHR) in our courts. Article 3 ECHR says no one should ever be tortured or treated in an inhuman or degrading way, no matter what the situation. Torture means any act by which severe pain and suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on someone for the purposes of obtaining information, for punishment or intimidation. Treatment or punishment is degrading if it humiliates and debases a person beyond accepted forms of punishment. 
Despite the absolute prohibition of torture under international law, torture persists in all regions of the world. Concerns about protecting national security and borders are increasing used to allow torture and other forms of cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment. It's pervasive  consequences often go beyond the isolated act on an individual, and can be transmitted  through generations and lead to cycles of violence. Lets not forget the victims of torture who are routinely being held in immigration detention centres in breach of the government’s own rules.
Torture can ruin the mental health of a person and it requires a special kind of help at times. There have been rehab centers in support of victims to help them get over the traumatic experiences.The UN Voluntary Fund for victims of torture which is administrated by the UN Human Rights office in Geneva is a unique victim-focused mechanism that accepts funding for the assistance to victims of torture and their families.
The European Union reiterated its strongest opposition to any kind of acts of torture worldwide, in its  declaration, saying: “Through its external action, the EU and its Member States also engage with third countries in regular political and human rights dialogues and financially support civil society organisations in fighting torture.” Also in the last four years, the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights supported anti-torture projects worldwide worth €23 million, and an additional amount of €8 million is foreseen for 2019.

We are witnessing a global crisis on torture. Yet you only have to glance at the news to know that laws alone are not enough. Torture is thriving because rather than respecting the law, many governments are either actively using torture or turning a blind eye. According  to  Nils Melzer, UN's special rappoeteur on torture, Julian Assange  is showing all the symptoms associated with prolonged exposure to psychological torture. Torture is as alive as ever, with documented cases of torture techniques such as electroshock, waterboarding and rape. It is happening across the world, in dark prison cells, secret detention cells and in broad daylight. Most of those responsible never face justice.
On this important day let's  acknowledge the wrongs committed against torture victims over the years and reaffirm the self-worth of victims of torture as human beings and equal participants in civic life entitled to the full enjoyment of all rights. Stand in solidarity with the men and women who survived the horrendous acts of torture who are beacons of hope, who hae endured the unimaginable and are living testimonies of the resilience of the human spirit. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “On this International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, I urge all States to end impunity for perpetrators and eradicate these reprehensible acts that defy our common humanity. ”https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2019-06-26/secretary-generals-message-international-day-support-of-victims-of-torture

Place of Poetry : I am Wales

Places of Poetry is a community arts project, centred on a newly designed digital map of England and Wales. Through the course of a four-month summer public campaign, writers from across the country were invited to write new poems of place, heritage and identity, and pin them to the map. Places of Poetry will help us reflect on our national and cultural identities, and celebrate  the diversity, heritage and personalities of place. the following was my contribution

I am Wales

I am here, under a cloud of dream
on sacred turf,  I wander
as the rain  patters down
the land of my mothers and ancestors
on the west coast mooching about at leisure
as seasons leap and flowers bloom
the stem of hiraith glowing
I drift with time and memory
as the days dark shadows 
creeps softly over day
surrounded by mountains and valleys
wild and elemental 
inhaling the whiff of two languages
where  each buoyant moment catches a nerve,
leaves me safe,  with strength within
poetry of my heart sings
from deep within my veins
forging and shaping
with dragons tongue
the shape of things to come

https://www.placesofpoetry.org.uk/poem/22076/?fbclid=IwAR01LfojJXtZGHAxYcYIqGqoH-q2K0HbSTQCyiDVzMW1Nd3z4O84NJf7CdU