1910s

1911: Liverpool general transport strike

Strikers gathered at St Georges Hall

A short history of the strike movement that took hold of Liverpool during the summer of 1911. Culminating in a massive general strike of all transport workers, the movement displayed some of the most extraordinary scenes of class solidarity seen in Britain.

The strike movement of Liverpool occurred during the great period of industrial unrest that was to grip Britain between 1910 and the outbreak of the First World War. Beginning with a walk-out of seamen, the strike soon snowballed and went on to reach epic proportions, involving up to 70,000 people.

Left-Wing Communism in Britain 1917-21...An Infantile Disorder? - Bob Jones

A survey of the anti-parliamentarist communist movement in Britain during and after WWI, and the effects of Comintern/Bolshevik directives on the efforts at organisational unity.

Lenin's famous manual of reformism, "Left Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder(1920), which directed Communists to work within parliament and existing labour unions, was partly a response to British anti-parliamentarism.

US Green Corn rebellion, 1917

In 1917, the Working Class Union reacted to the imposition of military conscription with an ill-fated but heroic armed rebellion that stands with the agitational campaigns of working class anarchists as a revolutionary responce to US entry into World War One.

It's still a matter of conjecture what convinced “Rube” Munson and the WCU there was going to be a national rebellion.

I'd like to thank the work of Oklahoma grass-roots historians and journalists for finding and publishing period newspaper accounts

From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution - Otto Ruhle

Workers from the FAUD

Written in 1924, this pamphlet charts the development of the Russian and German revolutions, and attempts to point forward from the failure of these two major events, analysing the role of the parties and the trade unions in their respective failures.

This online version taken from http://www.marxists.org

From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution

1 The Bourgeois Revolutions

1919: US steel strike

While defeated by overwhelming police repression against pickets and union halls, the 1919 strike is significant in the history of organized class struggle in basic manufacturing and the high point of William Z. Foster's "bore from within" approach to syndicalism.

1919 Steel Strike
October 3, 1919

The Steel Strike Still Holds Public Attention

October 10, 1919

The Steel Strike is Still On
With Few if Any Changes

The Workers' Committee: An Outline of its Principles and Structure

JT Murphy

Pamphlet written by J.T.Murphy and published by the Sheffield Workers' Committee in 1917. It describes the structure of the workers' committees that developed during the first world war and proposes coordinating them into local and national committees in parallel with the trade unions.

“Where the men and women think lightly of the laws; . . . . where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons; . . . . where outside authority enters after the precedence of inside authority; where the citizen is always the head and ideal; where children are taught to be laws to themselves; . . . there the great city stands.” - Walt Whitman.

Calgary 1919: The Birth of the OBU and the General Strike - Eugene Plawiuk

One Big Union: Miners in 1919

Eugene Plawiuk's history of the Calgary general strike of 1919, which started off as a sympathy strike for the Winnipeg general strike and soon escalated into their own struggle for union recognition.

The One Big Union was founded a mere two months before it was baptized by the Winnipeg General Strike. The founding Convention was held in the Calgary Labour Temple (which still stands today, though it has been converted into a Chinese Restaurant).

The Edmonton General Strike of 1919 - Eugene Plawiuk

Workers on the streets of Winnipeg, 1919

Eugene Plawiuk's account of the Edmonton general strike of 1919 which was sparked off in solidarity with the general strike in Winnipeg,

In May of 1919 a heat wave crossed the province. Edmonton had reached temperatures of 85 degrees. Like the heat wave a mood of union militancy was in the air across Alberta, indeed across Western Canada. A strike wave would soon erupt sweeping the West like a prairie fire.

1919-1922: The Workers’ Opposition

Leading Workers' Opposition activist, Alexandra Kollontai

A short history of a group within the Russian Communist Party that struggled against the increasing party bureaucracy and for trade union control over industry which, by 1922, had been forcibly disbanded by the party.

The Workers Opposition began to form in 1919, as a result of the policies of War Communism, which set a precedence for the domination of the Communist Party over local party branches and trade unions. During the civil war, the Workers Opposition began agitating against the lack of democracy in the Communist Party as a result of the centralising actions of the party’s bureaucracy.

The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia - Ian Bedford

A short critical, but generally sympathetic, assessment of the Australian Wobblies.

From; Labour History no. 13, (Journal of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History), Nov. 1967.

THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD IN AUSTRALIA
IAN BEDFORD

Memoirs of the I.W.W. [Australia] - Bill Beattie

Recollections of struggles in the years around the First World War - by a former Australian Wobbly.

From; Labour History no. 13, (Journal of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History), Nov. 1967.

MEMOIRS OF THE I.W.W. [Australia]
Bill Beattie

1912: The Lena Massacre

A short history of the brutal suppression of a strike by Russian gold miners protesting low wages and inhumane working conditions in 1912.

Situated in the dense forest of south-east Siberia, the massive goldfields that lined the river Lena were, at the turn of the century, amongst the most profitable enterprises in the Russian Empire. The Lena Gold Mining Joint Stock Company (Lenzoloto), the principal owner of the majority of goldfields in the region, was running at profits of 7,000,000 roubles a year.

The Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919: The Forgotten Revolution - Alan Woods

Hungarian Soviet Republic

Trotskyist Alan Woods on the Hungarian uprising of 1919. Wood's account suffers from the usual analytical errors by Trotskyists but is included for reference to these little-known events.

November 12, 1979

German revolution image gallery

Images from the German Revolution. Including the Wilhelmshaven Revolt.

Wilhemshaven 6th November 1918

1918: Rice riots and strikes in Japan

Rice riot in Okayama

From July-September 1918, Japan was swept with a wave of riots from rural fishing villages to major industrial centres and coal fields, in what was the largest upheaval in Japan to date, and the widest ranging popular disturbances since the unrest during the Meiji restoration of 1868.

1905-1918 in Japan was called the Era of Popular Violence (民衆騒擾期, minshû sôjô ki). This began with the Hibiya Incendiary Incident (日比谷焼討事件, Hibiya Yakiuchi Jiken) - a citywide riot in Tokyo that started with a banned protest in Hibiya park; against the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty which ended the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905.

1917: The Proletariat's Democratic Revolution in Finland

Red Guard

The following is an excerpt from 'The Truce and the Great Retrenchment' - Chapter 6 of Year One of the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge.

Sacrificed by the Bolsheviks at the negotiating table as they agreed the Brest-Litovsk treaty with international capital ("The revolution will not be lost simply because we will be giving the Germans Finland, Latvia and Estonia" - Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp.

1919: The Story of the Limerick Soviet

Bruree Workers Soviet Mills, April 1919

The Story of the Limerick Soviet, April 1919 By D.R. O'Connor Lysaght (1979)

Introduction

On 21st January, 1919, Dail Eireann held its opening session and the Irish Volunteers drew their first mortal blood since 1916 at Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary. These facts have set the seal for subsequent historians of the first months of the year.

Revolutionary Syndicalism in Mexico - John M. Hart

Solderaras in the Revolution

A short history of Mexican anarcho-syndicalism, which dominated the early labour movement prior to and during the Mexican Revolution.

"The Mexican revolutionary syndicalists: their form of organization - anarchosyndicalist; their leadership - artisan and professional; their numbers - 150 000; their goals - the seizure and operation of the means of production and the onset of worldwide proletarian revolution; their means - revolutionary war against capitalism by workers' militias and the general strike."

Cochon, Georges, 1879-1959

Georges Cochon

A short biography of French anarchist, pioneering tenants' organiser and conscientious objector Georges Cochon.

Grandfather of squatting
Georges Alexandre Cochon was born on the 26th March 1879 at Chartres. Earning a living as a worker in the upholstering trade, he gravitated towards the anarchist movement in Paris.

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