Working Class History

#OtD 22 Dec 1989 Irish author and French resistance activist Samuel Beckett died in Paris aged 83. Living in France during WWII, he joined the resistance, helping as a courier and storing weapons. More information, sources and map:

Working Class History

#OtD 17 Dec 1933 sexual contact between men was re-criminalised in the USSR, after it had been decriminalised in 1922 in the wake of the 1917 revolution. After it was introduced, gay and bisexual men began to flood into the gulags

Working Class History

#OtD 14 Dec 2008 journalist @muntazer_zaidi threw his shoes at President George W Bush in protest at the US occupation of Iraq, shouting "This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq." He resumed activism after 6 months jail

Working Class History

#OtD 13 Dec 1971 6000 Indigenous Ovambo workers in what is now Namibia went on strike against an exploitative apartheid forced contract work system. By January, they were victorious

Working Class History

#OtD 11 Dec 1981 a Reagan-backed death squad massacred around 1000 people in El Mozote, El Salvador. Prior to being killed, many of the victims were tortured and girls as young as 10 were raped by the US-trained troops

Working Class History

#OtD 10 Dec 2006 former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, died. His regime, supported enthusiastically by the UK and US, saw thousands of radicals, trade unionists and others rounded up and executed, with tens of thousands more jailed and tortured

Working Class History

#OtD 6 Dec 1918 Black British soldiers stationed in Taranto, Italy, violently mutinied against appalling and racist treatment. Though heavily repressed, many later returned home to the Caribbean and joined worker strikes and anti-colonial unrest

Working Class History

#OtD 6 Dec 1928 the banana massacre took place in Ciénaga, Colombia, when soldiers killed up to 2000 striking workers of the United Fruit Co., and their wives and children, who were fighting for one day off per week and pay in money rather than coupons

Working Class History

#OtD 4 Dec 1853 Errico Malatesta, mechanic and key anarchist theorist and organiser was born in Italy. Despite being repeatedly jailed, exiled and sentenced to death 3 times, he remained active and lived until the age of 78. Learn more in this book:

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Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta

With the timely reprinting of this selection of Malatesta’s writings, first published in 1965 by Freedom Press, the full range of this great anar...

#OtD 2 Dec 1984 the world's worst industrial disaster took place in Bhopal, India, when the Union Carbide chemical plant leaked poisonous gases to 5 million people, killing, blinding and disabling tens of thousands. No bosses were punished

Working Class History