1980s
1986: Victoria nurses' strike
The history of the second state-wide strike of nurses in Victoria, Australia against cuts and over wages, conditions and staff/patient ratios, which won its demands, with the solidarity of other workers.
Nurses are often seen as the archetypal ‘handmaidens’ of men. Yet if there was ever an experience that demolished this image, it was the Victorian nurses’ strike of 1986, in which a predominantly female workforce took on and defeated the State Labour government.
1985: Victoria nurses' strike
The history of the first state-wide strike of nurses in Victoria, Australia over wages and staff/patient ratios.
It ended in a partial victory, despite the unions' lack of militancy and more importantly layed the groundwork of rank-and-file organisation which was to play a key role in the 1986 nurses' strike.
1981: Kortex sweatshop strike
The history of a victorious strike of 300 mostly female immigrant workers in an ultra-exploitative textile sweatshop in Australia.
Sweatshop rebels
How quickly people can change. The December 1981 Kortex strike illustrates how women’s oppression and their exploitation as workers combine and interact. A struggle in the workplace can spill over into the home and family life, with remarkable consequences.
1983: The US invasion of Grenada
Historian Howard Zinn's account of the American invasion of the small Caribbean island of Grenada, ostensibly to 'protect' US citizens, but in fact to re-assert US military and financial dominance over the region.
In the autumn of 1982, President Reagan sent American marines into a dangerous situation in Lebanon, where a civil war was raging, again ignoring the requirements of the War Powers Act as the government did with Cambodia in the Mayaguez affair.
1986: The Iran-Contra Affair
Chomsky's brief account of the US selling arms to Iran via Israel in order to fund far-right paramilitary contras in Nicaragua.
The major elements of the Iran/contra story were well known long before the 1986 exposures, apart from one fact: that the sale of arms to Iran via Israel and the illegal contra war run out of Colonel Oliver North's White House office were connected.
1970-1987: The contra war in Nicaragua
Noam Chomsky's account of the US-backed “contra” counter-insurgency in Nicaragua against the left-wing government brought to power on the back of a popular mass movement from below.
It wasn't just the events in El Salvador that were ignored by the mainstream US media during the 1970s. In the ten years prior to the overthrow of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, US television - all networks - devoted exactly one hour to Nicaragua, and that was entirely on the Managua earthquake of 1972.
1970-1990: The war of counter-insurgency in El Salvador
Noam Chomsky on the ultra-violent war of the right-wing regime in El Salvador against grassroots resistance of workers, peasants and liberation theologists – socialist clergymen and women.
The crucifixion of El Salvador
For many years, repression, torture and murder were carried on in El Salvador by dictators installed and supported by the US government, a matter of no interest in the US. The story was virtually never covered. By the late 1970s, however, the government began to be concerned about a couple of things.
22. The Unreported Resistance
In the early 1990s, a writer for the New Republic magazine, reviewing with approval in the New
York Times a book about the influence of dangerously unpatriotic elements among American
intellectuals, warned his readers of the existence of "a permanent adversarial culture" in the United
States.
21. Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus
Halfway through the twentieth century, the historian Richard Hofstadter, in his book The American
Political Tradition, examined our important national leaders, from Jefferson and Jackson to Herbert
Hoover and the two Roosevelts—Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. Hofstadter
Wage slavery (for no change)
An attack on the (soon to be abolished) Greater London Council, its then-leader Ken Livingstone and 1980s municipal leftism, this leaflet was originally published in the mid-1980s by the Campaign for Real Life. It was co-written with BM Combustion.
