revolutionary wave c.1905-1927

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

Throughout the spring of 1919, Winnipeg had been buzzing with the fervour of militant unionism among the working class. The city had witnessed a general strike the year previously, which had ended with partial gains for workers. Unemployment was high, wages were low and conditions poor.

Although unemployment decreased slightly in the few years immediately preceding the beginning of hostilities, inflation rose dramatically, increasing the prices of foodstuffs, rents and fuel, but decreasing workers’ wages by 15%. While conditions at work were fairly miserable, workers had to return to bad housing where overcrowding was not uncommon and disease rampant.

Britain’s only ever General Strike shook the British ruling class out of their thrones and showed brilliantly how collective working class action can change society.

It also showed how willing the ruling class and how unwilling labour leaders are to fight. Without wanting to sound too light-hearted: We could’ve done it if it wasn’t for those pesky Trade Union bureaucrats!

Hong Kong, Pearl of The Orient? Bastion of democracy against communism? Or a battleground for 200 years between worker and master?

The reformist unions then negotiated an end to the conflicts, clearing the path for the fascist reaction - the Biennio Nero (two black years) of 1921-22.

The First World War was hardly over, it was February 1919, and the leadership of the revolutionary rank-and-file union the Industrial Workers of the World was in jail. However, the IWW idea of the general strike became reality for five days in Seattle, Washington, when a walkout of 100,000 working people brought the city to a halt.

The strike forced the introduction of the world's first 8-hour working day law and large pay increases.

When the red flag flew in Munster

The revolution in the Ukraine was a libertarian revolution, and the workers and peasants fought both Tsarist reaction and Bolshevik domination.

In 1918 Rio de Janeiro city was shaken by a series of events that would culminate in one the most important episodes in the history of the Brazilian workers movement: an attempted insurrectionary strike designed to bring down oligarchic republican government and replace it with workers’ and soldiers' councils.

On May 1st, 1917 a massive strike wave and demonstration led to the fall of the reactionary government of Count Tisza, on the 23rd of May.

Workers' Memory, from Communism #4

"This signifies the rashest defiance of everything that stands for law and order and the worship of the Homeland, which is the worship of institutions under whose protection groups of more or less genuine workers attempt to vent their hatred and class resentment with unspeakable abuse" said the bourgeois of the "Union", 1921.