Taking Sides - The Story Of The Workers Aid Convoys

Workers Aids Convoys to Bosnia 1992/95
Workers Aids Convoys to Bosnia 1992/95

Activist Bob Myers talks about a little-known internationalist action during the war in Yugoslavia. Between 1992 and 1995, British activists organised aid convoys to Tuzla.

An example of international solidarity from below.

Video, 50min, engl: https://en.labournet.tv/taking-sides-story-workers-aid-convoys

Submitted by Johanna Schellhagen on August 6, 2020

The convoys were not meant as humanitarian aid, but as an attempt to support the local working class: In the middle of the war, the people in Tuzla refused to be incited against each other along their ethnicity.

Tuzla lies in a mining area with a long history of workers' resistance, reaching as far back as the miners' strike of 1922. During the Yugoslavian war this region was besieged from all sides in the attempt to destroy the multi-ethnic society of the region.

In 1984/85 the miners in the Tuzla region had donated one day's wage per month to the striking British miners. In 1992 there was a call for the British miners to return this solidarity. Thus began the story of the aid convoys to Tusla.

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