Baruch Hirson

Year of Fire, Year of Ash. The Soweto Revolt: Roots of a Revolution?

Baruch Hirson's seminal 1979 book on the Soweto Uprising.

General strike, South Africa 1922 - Baruch Hirson

Baruch Hirson on the 1922 South African general strike. HIrson deals at length with the racial politics of the strike, which despite militancy and facing aerial bombings by the newly formed South African Air Force failed to include the black working class, who had been out on strike regularly in the proceeding three years.

Syndicalists in South Africa, 1908-17 - Baruch Hirson

Submitted by Ed on Nov 9 2015 22:21
Mary 'Pickhandle' Fitzgerald addressing strikers in Market Square, 1913.

Baruch Hirson, South African Trotskyist, provides some insight into the South African syndicalists of the early twentieth century recovering the history of South African left traditions ignored or caricatured in the South African Communist Party and academic accounts. Although his interest was in the Communist Party and the Trotskyists that emerged subsequently, his work also touched on the anarchist and syndicalist tradition, as this interesting paper shows.

Various documents on the Stalinism of the ANC

Submitted by red jack on Oct 3 2009 12:02

This article by Baruch Hirson was first published in "Searchlight South Africa" No.5 in July 1990. It exposes the authoritarianism at the heart of the African National Congress - an organisation that became fully Stalinist during the Cold War and which continues to operate with a toxic mix of paranoia and authoritarianism.

Strike Across The Empire, 1925 - Baruch Hirson and Lorraine Vivian

Submitted by Red Marriott on Jun 24 2007 21:09
British seamen marching to jail in Wellington, New Zealand, September 1925.

A fascinating and detailed account of a little known international seamens' strike in 1925, lasting over 100 days and spreading from Britain to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.