Bookfair.

 

             It is great to see that anarchist bookfairs are still regular and popular in the UK. Most are very successful and long may that be so. They are also very useful in bringing together those who see anarchism as the road to that better world. So remember remember the 5th of November, for that is the date of the Manchester Salford Bookfair, an excellent date with history in mind. Make this event a must, spread the word far and wide. Bookfairs are a must for those lovers of meet-ups, discussions, chat, meeting new friends and catching up with old comrades and getting a handle on what is happening around the country. 

 https://bookfair.org.uk

https://facebook.com/anarchistbookfair

 

https://twitter.com/abookfair

https://instagram.com/abookfair

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Opposites.

          Now that the over extravagant, way over the top extravaganza of a funeral is over, will the royals do what other families in this country do after a funeral, pay the bill? Or will that fall to Joe Mug, the tax payer. This whole extended period of mourning was a ostentatious show of pomp, power and privilege, a gross display of inherited plunder wealth. Yet millions turned up to fawn and weep in front of a class that don't give a monkeys about them. This entourage presides over a nation with millions living in poverty, children going hungry to school, elderly that can't heat their homes. This whole class of parasites wallows in obscene opulence and yet we have those who some how, hypnotised by the gloss and glitter show, believe they are part of that world. View some of the opulence HERE. This lavish circus, this Hollywood production of brutal British imperialism will have cost millions to perform, I doubt if the royals will pay a penny towards the performance. Millions spent in a couple of weeks, but no money for the poor, the elderly, the infirm. Another sickening aspect of this whole performance was that they were handing out blankets to those deadheads standing in the queue, when will we see such generosity to the homeless and the poor. 

Image courtesy of The Metro.

Image courtesy of Celebrity Land.  

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Chile.

   

                                                 Image courtesy of NPR.

       The people of that part of the planet that goes by the name of Chile have been fighting on the streets for freedom and justice for some considerable time. The longer the struggle the more brutal the state repression, the more young people get caught up in the mesh of the state's judicial and prison system. No evidence is so inefficient, no evidence is so outlandish for it not to convince the authorities to hold and incarcerate the youth of that land. 

The following from Act For Freedom Now:

Do Not Publish.

            This filming corresponds to a fiction based on information provided by different coordinating committees and popular defenders of the Chilean people, and at the request and need of the relatives and friends of political prisoners in the context of the Revolt. There are more than 1500 children, siblings, nieces, nephews, nephews and friends who have been imprisoned for months and even years. These are some of the «evidences» against them:

I took a selfie in a place near the crime scene.
Their clothing was similar to that of the police cameras.
Bragging posts about actions that occurred during a protest.
Message to bump into a demonstration on the day of the events.
Appears in color in independent press broadcasts live on the day of the events.
Has a tattoo in the same area as the suspect, although the design cannot be distinguished.
On that day the defendant was not at home.
He participates in a soup kitchen and a group from a vulnerable part of town.

             As absurd as it may seem, these are some of the «evidences» that by themselves, according to Chilean justice, can keep you in prison for investigation for YEARS, and in the worst case, serving a sentence.
           «DO NOT PUBLISH» is directed mainly to people active in the street demonstration and related media. «DO NOT PUBLISH» immediately seeks to get the demonstrators to take the security measures they have in their hands. The emphasis is on NOT POSTING content on your social and messaging networks where your appearance, identity and clothing could be ATTRIBUTABLE for direct action and eventual criminal investigation and potential incarceration.
            This post is accompanied by the following clarification both to report the gross amount of forced accusations at the expense of inaccurate and disconnected evidence; and to emphasize how necessary self-care is when you are at a demonstration. And so, the MISTAKES OF THE PAST ARE THE LEARNING OF TODAY AND TOMORROW.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

A Flag!

 

       A poem can often say in a few verses what a book takes several chapters to say. So with all the recent fawning at the feet of that symbol of British brutal imperialism, I thought the following lyrics from a song by The Wolfe Tones. The lyrics of The Butcher's Apron originate from a poem written by Henry Dupre LaBouchere.

 

The Butcher's Apron

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there!

It waits upon blazing hovels where African victims died, to be shot the explosive bullets or

wretchedly starve and die, and where the pirate hammers the isles of southern seas, at the

peak of the hellish vessel the English flag is free!

The Maori often cursed it with his bitterness dying breath, and the Arab hath hissed his hatred

as he spat at its folds in death, and the helpless Hindu feared it, and the Kenyan did the

same, and the Irish blood hath stained it, with a deep indelible stain.

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there!

It is floated on scenes of pillage, it is flaunted on deeds of shame. It has waved o'er fell

marauders, as they ravished with sword and flame, it has looked upon on ruthless slaughter,

and massacred dire and grim, and has heard the shrieks of victims drowning the jingo hymn.

Where is the flag of England? Seek lands where the natives rot. Where decay, and assured

extinction must soon be a people's lot. Go search for once glad islands where death and

disease are rife, and the greed of colossal commerce now fattens on human life.

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there!

Where is the flag of England? Go sail where rich boats come. With shoddy and loaded

cottons, and beer and Bibles and guns. Go where brute forces triumphed, and hypocrisy

makes its lair. In your question you'll find the answer, it was and still is there!

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info     

Memories.

 

          Away back in 1986 I was part of the small  Amnesty International group that planted a wee tree in the grounds of Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum to mark 25 years of Amnesty's work.. Forgot all about but recently thought I would try to re-visit it, but wasn't sure exactly where it was planted. So today with my partner we sought out the tree and it was, no longer a slim sprig of a tree but a beautiful powerful knuckled tree with its magnificent roots plunging into the earth. Of course when we planted it, I didn't need the extended aluminum arm, it seems age has acted on both of us, but the tree seems to be going from strength to strength. I only hope the fight for freedom and justice grows stronger like our wee tree.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

History.

        

Just a reminder that when the British arrived in 1700s, India had 27% of global GDP. But after 200 years of theft and millions starved to death, by 1947 India had 3% of global GDP, 90% living below the poverty line, a literacy rate of 17% and life expectancy of 27. Ashok Kumar.

          Over the last week or more we have had a wall to wall master class in propaganda drumming up support for the symbol of brutal imperialism.  The media failed to give a dissenting voice a space. I thought, there must be dissenting voices against this cavalcade of pomp privilege and power, against this adoration of the symbol of imperial brutality. So with that in mind I publish in full this article from  

                                                Image couresy of Slavery Images.

Information Clearing House,

            As millions of Britons and admirers the world over mourned Queen Elizabeth II’s death Thursday, others — especially in nations formerly colonized by the British Empire — voiced reminders of the “horrendous cruelties” perpetrated against them during the monarch’s reign.
          “We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth, because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history,” declared Julius Malema, head of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters party in South Africa.
          “Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952, reigning for 70 years as a head of an institution built up, sustained, and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanization of millions of people across the world,” he continued.
          “During her 70-year reign as queen, she never once acknowledged the atrocities that her family inflicted on native people that Britain invaded across the world,” Malema noted. “She willingly benefited from the wealth that was attained from the exploitation and murder of millions of people across the world.”“The British royal family stands on the shoulders of millions of slaves who were shipped away from the continent to serve the interests of racist white capital accumulation, at the center of which lies the British royal family,” Malema added.
         Larry Madowo, a CNN International correspondent from Kenya, said during a Thursday broadcast that “the fairytale is that Queen Elizabeth went up the treetops here in Kenya a princess and came down a queen because it’s when she was here in Kenya that she learned that her dad had died and she was to be the queen.”
        “But that also was the start of the eight years after that, that the … British colonial government cracked down brutally on the Mau Mau rebellion against the colonial administration,” he continued. “They herded more than a million people into concentration camps, where they were tortured and dehumanized.”
        In addition to rampant torture — including the systemic castration of suspected rebels and sympathizers, often with pliers — British forces and their local allies massacred unarmed civilians, disappeared their children, sadistically raped women and clubbed prisoners to death.
        “And so,” added Madowo, “across the African continent, there have been people who are saying, ‘I will not mourn for Queen Elizabeth, because my ancestors suffered great atrocities under her people that she never fully acknowledged that.”
         Indeed, instead of apologizing for its crimes and compensating its victims, the British government launched Operation Legacy, a massive effort to erase evidence of colonial crimes during the period of rapid decolonization in the 1950s-’70s.
        “If the queen had apologized for slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism and urged the Crown to offer reparations for the millions of lives taken in her/their names, then perhaps I would do the human thing and feel bad,” tweeted Cornell University professor Mukoma wa Ngugi. “As a Kenyan, I feel nothing. This theater is absurd.”
         Aldani Marki, an activist with the Organization of Solidarity with the Yemeni Struggle, asserted that “Queen Elizabeth is a colonizer and has blood on her hands.”
        “In 1963 the Yemeni people rebelled against British colonialism. In turn the Queen ordered her troops to violently suppress any and all dissent as fiercely as possible,” he tweeted. “The main punitive measure of Queen Elizabeth’s Aden colony was forced deportations of native Yemenis into Yemen’s desert heartland.”
         “This is Queen Elizabeth’s legacy,” Marki continued. “A legacy of colonial violence and plunder. A legacy of racial segregation and institutionalized racism.”
         “The queen’s England is today waging another war against Yemen together with the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.,” he added.
          Melissa Murray, a Jamaican-American professor at New York University School of Law, said that the queen’s death “will accelerate debates about colonialism, reparations, and the future of the Commonwealth” as “the residue of colonialism shadows day-to-day life in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean.”
           Numerous observers noted how the British Empire plundered around $45 trillion from India over two centuries of colonialism that resulted in millions of deaths, and how the Kohinoor — one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, with an estimated value of $200 million — was stolen from India to be set in the queen mother’s crown.
           “Why are Indians mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II?” asked Indian economist Manisha Kadyan on Twitter. “Her legacy is colonialism, slavery, racism, loot, and plundering. Despite having chances, she never apologized for [the] bloody history of her family. She reduced everything to a ‘difficult past episode’ on her visit to India. Evil.”
           An Indian historian tweeted, “there are only 22 countries that Britain never invaded throughout history.”
          “British ships transported a total of three million Africans to the New World as slaves,” he wrote. “An empire that brought misery and famine to Asia and Africa. No tears for the queen. No tears for the British monarchy.”
          Negative reaction to the queen’s passing was not limited to the Global South. Despite the historic reconciliation between Ireland and Britain this century, there were celebrations in Dublin — as a crowd singing “Lizzie’s in a Box” at a Celtic FC football match attests — and among the Irish diaspora.
           “I’m Irish,” tweeted MSNBC contributor Katelyn Burns, “hating the queen is a family matter.”
            Welsh leftists got in on the action too. The Welsh Underground Network tweeted a litany of reasons why “we will not mourn.”
             “We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the protection of known child molesters in the family,” the group said.
              “We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the active destruction of the Welsh language, and the Welsh culture,” the separatists added.
             Summing up the sentiments of many denizens of the Global South and decolonization defenders worldwide, Assal Rad, research director at the National Iranian American Council, tweeted, “If you have more sympathy for colonizers and oppressors than the people they oppress, you may need to evaluate your priorities.”

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Re-imagining?

        

Image courtesy of Oral History Columbia

      Gentrification, redevelopment, re-imagining, all nice sounding words for turning public spaces into private spaces, for changing places that were free to use, to money making enterprises for some corporate bodies. Everything has to produce a profit. Free public spaces don't make money for the big boys, so have to go. This is something that most ordinary citizens are aware of, it is not a local feature, it is world wide across this capitalist world. Everything must be privately owned, so you pay the corporate beast for every amenity in your city, town or village.
        Of course there is resistance to this plundering of public assets, but not enough. The perpetrators of this plundering exercise have wealth, the power of the state and the corporate world on their side, we have our solidarity. The stronger that solidarity against this plundering the more likely we are to win. There is no power on earth stronger than the combined will of the people, and that is what has to come together to defeat this ravaging of our public spaces for profit. 

                                                    Image courtesy of Glasgow Live.

 An extract from Act For Freedom Now:

Athens,Taking responsibility on 2/9/22

In recent years we have been experiencing a generalised attack on the neighbourhood of Exarcheia, with squat evictions, clearing operations and the attempt to impose a regime of police occupation on the neighbourhood.At the present time this attack is intensifying, with the assistance of Attiko Metro and the attempt to build a metro station in the square. The choice of the square for the construction of the station is a political and ideological choice of the municipal authority and the state, part of the broader strategy that has been expressed explicitly in recent years in the state’s counterattack against Exarcheia, a neighbourhood where resistance and struggle against exploitation and oppression has been territorialized both symbolically and practically.

The choice of the metro station in Exarcheia square is not based on the needs of the inhabitants for their movements – it could not be, as under the condition of class domination our movements are defined and organised in the metropolis by the state as the transport of the commodity work force. The choice of the station in the square is not based on the neighbourhood’s desires for the use of public/open space, but against them, seen as another opportunity to deploy hundreds of cops in the neighbourhood with the intention of destroying its only square, meeting place and political activity and handing it over to the interests of capital.

FREE MOVEMENT BASED ON OUR NEEDS AND NOT ON STATE/CAPITAL’S INTERESTS
THE SQUARE – THE STREET – THE POLYTECHNIC – EXARCHIA DOESN’T FREQUENT MUSEUMS
REGENERATION MEANS DISPLACED POOR PEOPLE
EXARCHIA WILL ALWAYS BE HERE – FIRE TO THE ATTIKO METRO CONSTRUCTION SITES
COPS – CONTRACTORS – CITY HALL – ALL BASTARDS WORKING TOGETHER

humble and rebellious

Anathema.

           I love anarchist journals, periodicals, papers, but love them more when they end up on the streets. Here's a chance if your able, to print and distribute, for free, one such periodical, Anathema.

 

Anathema: A Philadelphia Anarchist Periodical. Volume 8 Issue 1.

Originally published by Anathema.

Volume 8 Issue 1 (PDF for reading 8.5×11)

Volume 8 Issue 1 (PDF for printing (11×17)

In this issue:

• Land & Freedom
• Munich Raid
• The Electrification of the World
• On Hopelessness
• Situational Awareness
• Jane’s Revenge
• The Facts of Art

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Epidemic.

 

           PLEASE PLEASE MAKE IT STOP. This endless throng of wooden headed individuals from ordinary backgrounds, fawning in front of a millionaire who in his entire life has never earned a penny of his wealth, it was handed to him from stolen wealth from across the blood soak empire. They’ll stand and weep and cheer and gush at his presence, then go home and worry about paying the energy bills, how to feed their families. We have to, with urgency, find a vaccine to cure this epidemic of the virus patriotism that blights our land. We have to find that antidote called sanity and spread it across the country or all will be lost and our people will continue to live with that blight of long patriotism, condemned to illusion and poverty. 

 

Image courtesy of LEGIT.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Solidarity.

 

Image courtesy of The National.

                The launch of Glasgow's Enough is Enough campaign on Wednesday 7th September saw the Old Fruit Market Hall jammed packed with people demanding action on the cost of living crisis, (exploitation crisis) There was anger and passion from the audience and the speakers. Let's hope that this will spill over onto our streets and generate a mass movement to bring justice and fairness to our society.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info 

CRASS.

 

                                                   Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

 An Extract from Spunk Library:
        

         Throughout the 'hippy era we had championed the cause of peace, some of us had been on the first CND marches and, with sadness, had watched the movement being eroded by political greed. Throughout the 'drop out and cop out' period we hung on to the belief that 'real' change can only come about through personal example, because of this we rejected much of hippy culture, notably the emphasis on drugs, as being nothing but escapism.
        It is sad that many punks appear to be resorting to the same means of escape while in their blind hypocrisy they accuse hippies of never having 'got it together' - neither will these new prophets of the pipe dream.
        We had hoped that through a practical demonstration of peace and love, we would be able to paint the grey world in new colours; it is strange that it took a man called Hope the only 'real' hippy with whom we ever directly became creatively involved, to show us that that particular form of hope was a dream. The experiences to which our short friendship led made us realise that it was time to have a rethink about the way in which we should pursue our vision of peace. Wally's death showed us that we could not afford to 'sit by and let it happen again'. In part, his death was our responsibility and although we did everything that we could. it was not enough.
        Desire for change had to be coupled with the desire to work for it, if it was worth opposing the system, it was worth opposing it totally. It was no longer good enough to take what we wanted and to reject the rest, it was time to get back into the streets and attack, to got back and share our experiences and learn from the experiences of others. A year after Wally's death, the Pistols released 'Anarchy in the UK', maybe they didn't really mean it ma'am, but to us it was a battle cry. When Rotten proclaimed that there was 'no future', we saw it as a challenge to our creativity - we knew that there was a future if we were prepared to work for it. It is our world, it is ours and it has been stolen from us We set out to demand it back, only this time round they didn't call us 'hippies', they called us 'punks'.

Penny Rimbaud, London, jan/Mar., '82. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Patriotism!

            I couldn’t escape some of the media’s deluge of patriotic nonsense at the loss of one of their imperial figureheads. What shocked me most about this outpouring was a clip on TV of young woman crying because the Queen had died. This young woman of what looked like ordinary working class family, crying at the death of a woman who lived in a world of obscene opulence, so divorced for her own working class standards, she would be unable to comprehend that lavish privileged world, a women she in all probability had never met, but somehow swallowed the patriotic fabricated rubbish that surrounds that whole family and missing what they stand for, privilege, wealth and power. Monarchy is an anathema to democracy and yet vast numbers of ordinary people fall for the illusion that they, the royal family are part and parcel of life with us. The peasant and the lord are never partners, the wealth power and privileges of the lord divides and creates a wall where the peasant must know their place, and it is not in the same big happy family. Patriotism is the narcotic used to dumb the minds of the population, create that illusion that we are all one big happy family, special, different from others, better.

Patriotism

No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,
if truth be known, ’tis nothing but a multi-coloured rag
held aloft by some foolish hand
inciting worker and peasant to kill
on some green and wooded hill,
peasant and worker from some other land.
Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag
that brings out fools to stand and brag
of brutal deeds painted grand,
deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still
killed by my brothers' misguided hand.
No allegiance have I for the Nation
this man made autocratic creation
that divides my brothers in a world so small,
binds us to a country's cause, right or wrong,
bids us follow its drum, sing its song,
then sheds our blood in some border brawl.
No, I'll be no slave to flag or nation,
have no ear for power oration,
though its iron heel is on my breast,
my back feels its leather thong,
at patriotism's barracoon, I'll be no guest.

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Keelie 34.

            The Glasgow Keelie No.34 is out today, as usual it packs a punch. From the con of the smart meter to the energy crisis, (exploitation crisis) where are the strikes, how to support them, how to get involved in this struggle for justice. We have had bubbling Boris and now limp Liz, and it is that same old waffle of pie in the sky. Now is the time to let that anger burst out, take to the streets and take control of our lives. The Glasgow Keelie will be at The Old Fruit Market at the launch of the "Enough is Enough" campaign, tonight Wednesday 7pm. 7th September 2022. Get down there, grab your copy of the Glasgow Keelie and support the campaign.

Read the Keelie on line:

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Bood Money.

          How much money and resources are the Western imperialists prepared to pour into Ukraine to keep the bloodshed going, in the hope that it will bankrupt Russia? To them the human cost is of no consequence.
          It appears to be limitless as billions are paid into the coffers of the arms industry with more sophisticated and deadly weapons making their way to Ukrainian soil. One estimate puts America as paying out on average, between Feb. 25, 2022 and Aug. 19 2022 approximately $228 million per day. This war in Ukraine is between tow imperialist camps, the American and its vassals imperialist camp and the Russian imperial camp. It just so happens that the bloodshed is taking place on Ukrainian soil and it is Ukrainian blood that is being shed.
          The result to you and I is of course a savage attack on our living standards, which is being milked by the super corporate world. They never miss an opportunity to turn a crisis into a goose that lays the golden egg, for them. 

 

QUOTE:

          Researcher Stephen Semler documented the 21 distinct military aid packages that the Joe Biden administration approved for Ukraine in the year between August 2021 and August 2022, at a total of $40.13 billion.
          Two of those 21 pledges were approved before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Excluding these two presidential drawdowns from August and December 2021, which are worth $260 million combined, the Biden administration passed $39.87 billion for military aid in Ukraine between February 25, 2022 (the day after the Russian invasion) and August 19, 2022.
         This $39.87 billion in pledged military aid divided by the 175 days between February 25, 2022 and August 19, 2022 comes out to an average of approximately $228 million per day.
          This spending does not include the billions more that the US government has pledged in economic aid to Ukraine. It likewise excludes the tens of billions of dollars of military aid that European countries have approved for Ukraine.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

It's Time.

             You would imagine by now the ordinary people of this country and other countries, would have realised that no matter what authority was in power, they never have the interests of the ordinary people as an agenda. Without traveling too far from my home, history tells us we, the ordinary people, have to always struggle and fight for any semblances of having fairness and justice, and so often we have failed. Have a glimpse of our fair city's history
            Let's go back to 1787, Glasgow weaver strike for better conditions, The 39th Regiment of Foot, under the command of Colonel Kellet was sent. With them went the Lord Provost, the Sheriff-Substitute, a Magistrate and others intent on dispersing the weavers. The groups met at a spot near Drygate Bridge. The soldiers were ordered to open fire, 3 weavers were killed outright and three were mortally wounded. A considerable number were wounded. How many can only be guessed at. 

          15 February 1800: Unemployment and high taxes during this period caused wide spread demonstrations which culminated on the 15th. of February 1800 when angry and hungry crowds took to the streets. They marched along Argyle Street attacking meatsellers and grocers’ shops. Meanwhile vast crowds in the districts of Townhead and Calton were also smashing into similar types of shops. The authorities felt compelled to call out the troops to disperse the rioters. 

        1812 Weavers strike: 1812 saw in Scotland until that date. The weavers were on strike in an attempt to protect their living standards. The strike was on the whole a peaceful protest, though the Magistrates and the Government claimed otherwise in an attempt to become heavy handed with the strikers. The strike lasted three months and eventually run out of funds and collapsed. Because of this strike Trade Unionism was declared illegal in Scotland and remained so until 1824. Seven of the strikers were arrested and charged with 'illegal combination' and were each sentenced to 18 months in prison. 

          6th. March 1848: There was a serious riot in the city of Glasgow on the 6th of March 1848. It came about when the unemployed operatives had expected a distribution of provisions. The provisions never appeared and the starving and angry crowds set off up Irongate and other main streets of the city centre breaking into food and gun shops. Business in the city came to a stand-still and all city centre shops closed. The people continued to march through the streets shouting 'bread or revolution'. Eventually the 'riot act' was read. Other groups marched off in other directions entering food shops and demanding bread. The authorities, alarmed at the events sent to Edinburgh for more troops. The following day crowds again gathered at Bridgeton where 'out-pensioners' were under arms. A young boy threw an object at the troops and was arrested but the crowd stormed the arresting group and rescued the boy. Police Superintendent, Captain Smart gave the order to fire: five of the crowd were shot. The Military continued to patrol the streets and the crowd still lined the streets for some days. All public offices were securely guarded.

         1915 rent strike:  1915 saw Glasgow and Clydeside districts gripped by a massive grass roots movement against large rent increases imposed by landlords. Over 25,000 tenants refused to pay rent increases. The struggle spread to the Clydeside engineering workshops and shipyards, forcing the government to introduce the 1915 Rent Restriction Act. 

          Glasgow's Bloody Friday: In 1919 the struggle for a shorter working week came to a head with a strike which had the support of practically all the workers in the area. Marches and demonstrations were organised. One massive demonstration in George Square caused the authorities some concern and the police baton charged the crowd creating mayhem. The government fearing revolution sent English troops with tanks into the city. 

 

 

      Of course this is just a snapshot of the struggles of the ordinary people of our fair city, there were many, many more and this is typical of all countries across the globe. We can jump forward and today in the UK there are strikes by post workers,  bin collectors, railway workers, dock workers, warehouse workers office staff, and many many more groups, all struggling for a decent life, just as the weavers of 1787 tried. In all these years nothing has really changed. Surely now with all the continuing hardship, poverty destitution and our knowledge of the system, is the time to make that change and bring an end to a society based on profit for the few. Time to create that better world where, we see to all our people's needs, a world of mutual aid based on co-operation between communities freed form the greed driven profit motive. Workers, stay home and the system collapses.

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Resistance.

  

     For September Read of the Month, we at Spirit of Revolt bring you a fascinating booklet of the occupation of Mainshill Woods in Lanarkshire to prevent opencast coal mining destroying the woods. It is from The Hetherigton Collection, T SOR-2.  It details tactics, strategies and survival techniques. Excellent drawings and descriptions. A wealth of useful information. A must read.

READ ON LINE:

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