On This Day in Working Class History

On 8 April 2019 protests began in Gabon against government proposals to reduce access to student grants. Many university students were entitled to grants of around 83,000 CFA francs per month, and 65% of its recipients were aged 20 or over. The government planned to set 19 as the maximum age, as well as require high marks in examinations to be eligible.
High school and university students in the capital Libreville and elsewhere walked out of class and took to the streets, and there were some scuffles with police. One participant, Samantha, told a journalist that she found the "reform particularly unfair to the working classes". In response, the government shut down all schools in the country. Protests continued for three days until the government backtracked and agreed not to implement the changes.
Gabon had accepted a loan from the International Monetary Fund in 2017, a condition of which was that the government had to reduce public spending.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7987/gabon-student-protests

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On this day, 7 April 2010, 800 Carlsberg factory workers in Copenhagen, Denmark, walked out on strike in protest at new management policies to restrict beer drinking at work. The company's truck drivers joined the strike in sympathy. The previous week, Carlsberg removed beer coolers from the factory floor, which contained free beer for workers to drink throughout the day. Instead they declared that workers would only be allowed to drink beer in the canteen at lunch hour. The strike lasted for five days but ended in defeat. However the following month workers walked out again for a pay increase. This is an article about the strike from the time: https://libcom.org/news/carlsberg-workers-walk-job-retain-right-drink-beer-work-09042010 The workers may have been unknowingly continuing a tradition from a century before in the US when many workers prepared to strike against prohibition, declaring "no beer, no work", with design we have reproduced to help fund our work: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/no-beer-no-work

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On this day, 6 April 1712, a major rebellion of enslaved people in North America took place in New York City.
The enslaved people set fire to a building on Maiden Lane, near Broadway and, as the colonists tried to put out the blaze, the rebels attacked them with guns, hatchets and swords, killing nine and injuring six. They then made their escape to the north, which was as yet undeveloped. 
Militia and armed colonists then went on the hunt for the rebels. Six rebels died by suicide to avoid capture, and 40 put on trial. 18 were acquitted and others pardoned, but the remainder were brutally executed. Some were crushed to death, others were burned alive, some were hanged and others starved to death.
In the wake of the revolt, stricter laws were established to try to discourage future rebellions, including restrictions on direct communication between enslaved people, a ban on their possessing firearms, and harsher punishments.
Learn more about slavery and rebellions against it in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/a-history-of-pan-african-revolt-c-l-r-james

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On this day, 5 April 1977, US disability rights activists and organisers stormed and occupied the offices of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and Seattle, demanding the enactment of section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This was a crucial piece of disability civil rights legislation that had been passed 4 years earlier, which mandated that no federally funded programs could exclude persons with disabilities.
Despite the Act’s passage, the federal government, under the leadership of HEW director Joseph Califano, had been delaying their directive to create regulations which would operationalise the legislation. During that time regulations had been weakened in favour of business interests, under the guidance of an HEW task force which included no persons with disabilities. In response disability rights activists across the US formed the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD), who began organising the sit-ins.
Most notably, in San Francisco, disabled rights activists Judith Heumann, Kitty Cone, and Mary Jane Owen successfully organised approximately 150 disabled activists, and their supporters, in a 25 day occupation of the US Federal Building. This action was supported through a solidarity network which included the Black Panthers providing meals, allied politicians sending mattresses and bedding, and the International Association of Machinists, who helped to transport protestors, wheelchairs. and other equipment, and facilitated the transport for a delegation to Washington.
The regulations for section 504 were signed into law on 28 April, 1977.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/12535/504-sit-in

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On 4 April 1886 Rev Newman Smith, pastor of the Centre Congregational Church in New Haven, Connecticut, delivered a lecture at the Labor Lyceum in the city where he condemned strikes.
According to the New York Times, New Haven at the time had "picked up the reputation lately of having more strikes than any other city of its size in the country". Business owners, and the media, were uniting to fight against the Knights of Labor and other organisations of workers trying to achieve better pay and safer working conditions.
Rev Smith, while he said he supported the right to strike, claimed that strikes "killed the goose that lays the golden eggs." He also argued that strikers should not try to prevent scab replacement workers from working, arguing that "if 70 men in any community say they won't work in a certain way and the seventy-first man shan't work at all if not with them, the public will stand by the seventy-first man every time."        
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7950/pastor-condemns-strikes

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On this day, 3 April 1967 construction firm Myton, assisted by the police and the construction workers' union National Federation of Building Trades Operatives, attempted to bring in a scab workforce to replace unofficial strikers who were demanding reinstatement of victimised worker activists on the Barbican site in London. The strikers had been out for 6 months, and were threatened with expulsion from their union (which would also cost them jobs in closed shop sites). A union official who tried to support the workers was sacked by the union. Still the workers held out for over 7 more months against the employers, the unions and the police but were eventually forced to give in. 
More information and sources: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10152/myton-buses-in-barbican-scabs

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On this day, 2 April 1863, a group of women, having been refused an audience with the governor John Letcher, took to the streets of Richmond, Virginia to protest food shortages, hoarding, and the spiralling inflation in the Confederate capital. The march soon turned into a riot with government warehouses, grocery stores, and commercial establishments attacked and raided. Chants of “bread or blood” and “we celebrate our right to live — we are starving!” were reported by various eyewitnesses. Troops, deployed by the authorities, then threatened to fire upon the protestors, causing them to disperse, and over sixty women and men were arrested and tried for their participation in the riot.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9152/richmond-bread-riot

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On this day, 1 April 1949, 6,000 workers in 11 breweries in New York City walked out on strike for a pay increase, better staffing and a 35 hour working week instead of 40. The strike lasted 2 1/2 months, and massively slashed beer production in New York, previously the capital of the production in the country, causing Wisconsin to overtake it. The drought of local brew meant that beers from the Midwestern United States managed to penetrate the market for the first time, with Blatz becoming briefly popular. They eventually won most of their demands, and a reduced working week of 37 1/2 hours.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8037/new-york-brewery-strike

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On this day, 31 March 2009, around 40 workers in the Caterpillar factory in Grenoble, France stormed their bosses' offices and kept four of them hostage, demanding better severance packages for workers being laid off. 
Over 700 French Caterpillar workers were being made redundant. 
The action was successful, and the company increased its pot of redundancy money by €1.5 million: leading to an average payout of €80,000 per worker. 
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10383/caterpillar-bossnapping

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On this day, 30 March 1976, a general strike and mass protests were launched in Palestine and by Palestinian citizens of Israel in protest at the Israeli government seizing large amounts of land owned by Palestinians in Galilee in order to construct Jewish settlements and military facilities. 
A solidarity strike took place in most Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. There were widespread clashes with security forces, and six unarmed demonstrators were shot by police and the military, with around 100 people wounded and hundreds of others arrested. 
The protests, and anger at the repression galvanised a sense of Palestinian solidarity in the area, and sparked greater agitation for Palestinian rights. 
While the expropriation plan was successful in proportionately reducing the Arab population of Galilee from 92% down to 72%, significant expropriations of land in the area largely ceased in the 1980s. 
30 March is now commemorated annually in Palestine and by Palestinians in Israel as Land Day with demonstrations and general strikes. 
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10311/general-strike-in-palestine

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