Each improvement in the conditions of the ordinary people is paid for in the blood of one or more from our communities. Every increment of decent conditions we gain is at the heavy cost of blood, sweat and tears from our brothers and sisters. Despite this we can never relax in the belief that we have won those gains for all time. Those from whom we wrestled them will always try to take them back by stealth, duplicity, corruption, force and their brand of the "stamp of legitimacy". Today the attack to claw back the conditions we won over decades is in full swing, wages are cut/frozen, contracts are ripped up and replaced by "zero hours" contracts, working conditions are shredded, social benefits/services are decimated. If we accept this onslaught without an all out fight, we do an injustice to those from our communities who paid with their life to win them in the first place. Our history is littered with the blood of an army of our heroes, we can pick one from any era, they are there, calling on us to fight for justice.
August 1831, Dic Penderyn was hanged on a trumped up charge, his real crime, he was a a union man, a fighter for better conditions, the type detested by this system of repression, exploitation and corruption. When our present lords and master come at us with their scythe of austerity and deregulation of working practices, let's remember we paid for these conditions by the blood of our own, we insult our heroes if we hand them back without a bloody fight.
