On This Day in Working Class History

On this day, 7 July 1864, Filipino labour leader Isabelo de los Reyes was born in Vigan. He became a journalist and opponent of Spanish colonial rule, for which he was jailed and tortured. He was then deported to Spain and held in the infamous Montjuic Castle in Barcelona, alongside many anarchist political prisoners.
In 1901 he was allowed to return to the Philippines, and he brought with him a library of books by socialists like Karl Marx and anarchists like Mikhail Bakunin. He founded the Unión Obrera Democrática Filipina, and helped organise several strikes.
See our timeline of his life and activism on our Stories app, including sources and maps: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/tag/9461/isabelo-de-los-reyes

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On this day, 6 July 1934, 800 workers from two plantations in Couva, Trinidad, demonstrated in front of the warden's office complaining at the lack of work. Violence erupted when police attempted to keep protesters away from businesses, to which workers responded by looting. Unrest spread to other plantations, two bosses were attacked and one company headquarters was stoned and set on fire. British colonial police arrested 12 demonstrators. 
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10627/trinidad-plantation-riot

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On this day, 5 July 1777, the word ‘scab’, meaning ‘strikebreaker’, was used in print for the first time. One of the most important words in the working class vocabulary! 
By the late 16th century the word "scab" had come to be used as an English insult, somewhat akin to "lowlife" or "scoundrel". But at some point it began to be used by workers in industrial disputes as a label for workers who crossed picket lines and worked while their colleagues were striking for better pay or conditions. 
It first appeared in print in the Bonner and Middleton’s Bristol Journal, during a strike of shoemakers, where it reported: "The Conflict would not been [sic] so sharp had not there been so many dirty Scabs". 
On scabs, author Jack London famously wrote the following: “After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles." 
This quotation is illustrated in one of our July T-Shirts of the Month, made by a workers' cooperative and supporting grassroots unions in South Asia. Available here with global shipping: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/search?q=scab

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On this day, 4 July 1998, best friends Lin "Spit" Newborn, 24, a Black skinhead and singer, and Daniel Shersty, 20, a white US air force serviceman - both members of Anti-Racist Action (ARA) - were murdered in the desert outside Las Vegas by a gang of white supremacists. 
Newborn's friend, PJ Perez, described him as "a madman. A poet. A motherfucker whose good side you'd want to stay on. He was a father, a son, a passionate and dedicated fighter for what's right." Shersty was born to a working class family in Florida, and joined the air force in order to fund college which his parents could not afford.
The pair, both amateur musicians, met in Las Vegas, became fast friends and helped co-found the local chapter of militant anti-fascist group ARA. ARA took the fight to neo-Nazis who were recruiting in the local skinhead scene and attacking Black and Latine schoolchildren as well as white "race traitors".
One neo-Nazi was swiftly jailed for the murders, and others were convicted in 2012. ARA continued their fight against white supremacists across the US, and helped disrupt many of their activities, and successfully drove them from many local youth subcultures.
Learn more about Anti-Racist Action and the group's origins in Minneapolis in our podcast episode 49: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e49-anti-racist-action-in-minneapolis/
And check out our book, We Go Where They Go, the definitive history of ARA, also available on the podcast episode page.

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On this day, 3 July 1918, a general strike began on the British dependency, the Isle of Man. Sailors, dockers, school workers, transport workers, shop assistants and others walked out on strike demanding that the price of bread remain at 9p – the same price it was in the UK, where flour was subsidised by the state. Previous agitation on the Isle of Man had pressured the local government to implement a subsidy as well for six months to match the price, amidst rising prices during World War I. But that subsidy just expired and the price was scheduled to be increased to 1 shilling (12p).
Businesses that attempted to remain open were invaded by crowds of pickets and shut down. Fishing boats were allowed to dock, but fish had to be sold at prices set by a strike committee which was established by the workers. The strike committee also permitted shops in working class areas to open between the hours of 7 AM and 9 AM to allow people to buy food.
On the second day of the strike, the governor approached the strike committee and offered them 10.5p per loaf. But this was refused. The governor then met with the legislative council, which caved in and agreed to restore the 9p price. As a result the strike ended on July 5.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7941/Isle-of-Man-general-strike 

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On this day, 2 July 1848, enslaved people in St Croix (now the US Virgin Islands) rebelled, burned down plantations and besieged the town of Frederiksted. The Caribbean island was at that time a Danish colony, and it had been decreed that slavery would be abolished in 1859, but the enslaved workers refused to wait. 
After revolutions in Europe led to turmoil in nearby Martinique and Guadeloupe, hundreds of rebels seized the moment and rose up. By the end of the day, only the local military garrison, Fort Frederiksværn, had not yet been overrun. 
The following day, the governor general, Peter von Scholten arrived. Faced with demands from the enslaved people to immediately abolish slavery, or they would burn the town to the ground, he relented and shouted out: “Now you are free, you are hereby emancipated.”
Technically von Scholten had no authority to abolish slavery, and he was strongly criticised by enslavers and Danish authorities. But faced with a fait accompli, Denmark had no real choice but to accept the situation. The agreement achieved by the formerly enslaved people went even further than just immediate emancipation, as the order issued on the night of July 3 also applied to the Danish colonies of St Thomas and St John, and directed that the enslaved had the right to keep their current housing and provisions for three months, and that elderly and ill labourers had to be looked after by the former enslavers "until further determination".
The old enslavers subsequently sued the Danish government demanding recompense for the loss of their "property". Danish Parliament rejected their claim, on the grounds that "slavery [was] itself an institution in conflict with religion and justice". But they did then agreed to pay a relatively low compensation figure of $50 per enslaved person.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9191/st-croix-enslaved-revolt

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On this day, 1 July 1919, prohibition of the sale of alcoholic drinks stronger than 2.75% in the United States was due to come into force. Hundreds of thousands of workers in New York and New Jersey had voted to strike on this day if the law was enforced. They wore pins declaring "No beer no work". 
Strike action was called off by union leaders, and prohibition was eventually introduced the following year. 
We have reproduced the workers' original artwork to help fund our work: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/no-beer-no-work

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On this day, 30 June 1977, a riot and mass strike took place against police repression in Faridabad, India. Thousands of factory workers downed tools, shutting down local industry in protest against the death in police custody of Harnam Singh, a maintenance foreman, working in one of the leading companies of Faridabad. Violence had erupted in many parts of Faridabad and vehicles proceeding to the capital were stoned, looted and burnt. According to co-workers, Harnam Singh had been tortured to death by the police on the factory premises in the presence of the managing director, a sub-inspector of police, and some other senior company officials.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10304/faridabad-mass-strike

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On this day, 29 June 1892, workers at the Homestead Carnegie steel plant in Pennsylvania were locked out after workers refused to accept new production demands. 
Andrew Carnegie was determined to break the Amalgamated Association of Iron Steel Workers, in which skilled workers at the plant were organised. His plant manager, Henry Clay Frick, locked out the union workers, then sacked them on 2 July. The non-union, so-called "unskilled" workers then walked out on strike in protest. 
Frick brought in 300 armed Pinkerton detectives to break the strike. They did kill nine strikers, but eventually a crowd of 10,000 workers, many of them armed, repelled the attack. 
The workers held out until November, when the governor brought in 8,000 militia to escort strikebreakers into the plant. The dispute basically destroyed the Amalgamated Association, and enabled Carnegie to implement pay cuts and longer working hours.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10109/homestead-steel-lockout

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On this day, 28 June 1969, the Stonewall rebellion began in the early hours. The New York Police Department, as part of its policy of closing gay bars, raided the Stonewall Inn, which had a substantial poor and working class LGBT+ clientele. However, for the first time in the city, rather than submitting to arrest, a crowd began to gather around the police. Inside the bar, gender nonconforming people, trans women and lesbians began resisting invasive body searches. And outside, a butch lesbian fought back against police when they arrested her, calling on the crowd that had formed to “do something.” According to some eyewitnesses and her own account, this individual was Stormé DeLarverie, a biracial lesbian and drag performer, who was known as a “guardian of lesbians” in the Village, although this is disputed by others who point to the fact that the only police record for a lesbian arrested that night was of a Marilyn Fowler.
The crowd, which included a significant number of Black, Latine, and white LGBT+ patrons and passersby, then began to physically fight the police, triggering riots that lasted for six days. Those involved in the disturbances included activists like Marsha P. Johnson and John O’Brien, popular folk musician Dave Van Ronk, as well as many others.
In the aftermath, participants and other LGBT+ radicals set up the Gay Liberation Front, which revolutionised the gay rights movement. They organised anniversary protests on June 28 the following year in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and elsewhere. This became the annual Pride celebration that continues to this day all over the world.
In our podcast episodes 25-26, participants in these events tell their story. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or here on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2019/05/13/e21-22-the-stonewall-riots-and-pride-at-50/

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