Today in Labor History November 4, 1839: The Newport Rising began. It was the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain. It began when approximately 4,000 Chartists, led by John Frost, marched on the town of Newport. When several were arrested, other Chartists, including coal miners, many armed with homemade weapons, marched on the Westgate Hotel (where they were held) to liberate them. Up to 24 were killed when soldiers were ordered to open fire on them. The Chartists were fighting for the adoption of the People’s Charter, which called for universal suffrage, the secret ballot, and the right of regular working people to serve in the House of Commons. Three leaders of the uprising were sentenced to death, but popular protests got their sentences commuted to Transportation for Life, probably to Australia or Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania). America’s first cop, Allan Pinkerton, supposedly participated in this rebellion. He was a known Chartist in those days, a physical force man who loved to battle cops and Tory thugs. Because of his history of street violence and vandalism, he had to flee Britain in the dark of the night, ultimately settling in Illinois, where he eventually set up the private detective agency that would go on to murder numerous union organizers, and set up hundreds more for long prison stints through the use of agents provocateur and perjured testimonies.
The riots were depicted in the following novels: “Sir Cosmo Digby,” by James Augustus St John (1843), “Rape of the Fair Country,” by Alexander Cordell (1959) and “Children of Rebecca,” by Vivien Annis Bailey (1995).
Welcome to the inaugural #FediBookFair. #authors and #publishers are invited to post about their #books, offer signed copies, etc, using the #FediBookFair hashtag.
#Readers can watch or follow the hashtag to find books to buy, and interesting authors to follow.
Today in Labor History November 3, 1793: French playwright, journalist and feminist Olympe de Gouges was guillotined during the Reign of Terror (1793–1794) for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her association with the Girondists. Her writings on women's rights and abolitionism reached a large audience in many different countries. She was also an outspoken advocate against the slave trade in the French colonies. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality.
Creatives: Would you like to better understand why writers & authors (+ musicians and artists) are being squeezed? The impact Amazon has had on the publishing industry, the chequered history of DRM, the dirt on copyright? How about 'how news got broken', 'why streaming doesn't pay' & what people in the creative industries can actually do about the current state of affairs? Highly recommend Choke Point Capitalism (by Rebecca Giblin & Cory Doctorow) as a read. Please ask your local library to get it in too so more people can have access.
I'm still looking for authors who have completed NaNoWriMo to come on my #WriteTalkWednesday show and discuss their writing (promo a book or two) and how they made it through #NaNoWriMo
Will need to be avail 6pm CST (central time) on Wedesdays in November.
This is a great labor novel, as good as any I have read. Given the current revival of pro-union sentiments, from Starbucks to Amazon to General Motors, I hope it will be widely read.
Today in Labor History October 21, 1981: Kuwasi Balagoon was finally captured following a Brinks robbery. Balagoon had been a member of the Black Panther Party. While in prison, he became disillusioned with the Panthers, became an anarchist and joined the more militant Black Liberation Army. He escaped from prison twice. In 1979, while on the lam from his second prison escape, he helped to free political prisoner Assata Shakur, who fled to Cuba and lives there to this day. In 1986, he died in prison from AIDS. In 2019, PM Press released a collection of writings by and about Balagoon called, “Kuwasi Balagoon: A Soldier's Story.” And the prison abolitionist group, Black and Pink, which supports LGBTQ and HIV-positive prisoners, has, since 2020, run a "Kuwasi Balagoon award" for those living with HIV/AIDS.
Today in Labor History October 20, 1895: Anarcho-syndicalist writer Gaston Leval, active in the Spanish Civil War, was born in France. He was the son of a French Communard. He escaped to Spain in 1915 to avoid conscription during WWI. Then left for Argentina during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera where he lived from 1923 to 1936. He returned to Spain and became a militant fighter, and where he documented the revolution and the urban and rural anarchist collectives.
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