Cover photo: Working Class History interactive map of resistance. Credit: Working Class History
For ten years, Working Class History has meticulously documented small and grandiose acts of popular resistance across the globe, indexing the actions across time, space, and several key themes, such as resistance to foreign occupation, fascism, and labor exploitation. As we look to the past in this month’s issue, we are sharing snapshots of significant April moments throughout history. Remembering these events, which include the definitive end of the Portuguese Empire, a labor action in Japan, the destruction of a symbol which has been mistakenly associated with working class revolution for centuries, and a preventable escalation of police violence in the United States. Each of these stories are worth remembering in detail as they offer a glimpse on how April has been experienced by thousands of ordinary people before us.
Communards destroy guillotine
On April 6, 1871, rebel national guard troops of the 137th Battalion in the Paris commune seized the local guillotine, smashed it to pieces and burned it outside the town hall of the 11th district to the applause of a huge crowd of onlookers.
The government had recently created a new type of guillotine which was quicker and easier to transport. The district commune committee had voted to seize these “servile instruments of monarchist domination” and destroy them “once and forever… for the purification of the district and the consecration of our new freedom”. While some on the left glorify the guillotine, in fact it has mostly been used as a weapon against radicals and the powerless. For example while use of the guillotine is most famously remembered in terms of the execution of aristocrats during the French revolution, the new “revolutionary” government soon began using it against those on their left.
The German Nazi government was also a big proponent of the guillotine, executing over 16,000 people with the device, including many resistance activists like Sophie and Hans Scholl. French colonial authorities used the guillotine to execute anti-colonial activists in places like Vietnam. France’s government also continued to use it at home, where its last use was against a Tunisian agricultural worker who was convicted of murder and was beheaded in 1977.
Bavarian Council Republic
On April 7, 1919, workers’ councils declared the Bavarian Council Republic in Germany. Many of the leading figures were anarchists, including Gustav Landauer and Ret Marut, a.k.a. famous author B. Traven. However troops sent by the Social Democratic government crushed the rebellion at the end of the month, killing hundreds.
Carlsberg workers strike for free beer
On April 7, 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. 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.”
Union of Women Paris Commune
On April 11, 1871, women in France set up the Union of Women for the Defence of Paris, during the Paris commune uprising. Those gathered elected a central committee, who would be paid an average worker’s wage, and would be instantly recallable by those who elected them. It established committees which met all over the city, and according to historian Kristin Ross, it was “the Commune’s largest and most effective organisation”.
In addition to organising women to defend the commune and care for the wounded, the union called for a reduction in working hours, for work to be rotated, to avoid injuries from excessive repetition, for equal pay with men, and for the abolition of gender inequality.
In May, when the French army attacked Paris, members of the Union of Women built barricades alongside men, battled against government troops, and helped treat injured fighters. Many women were amongst the victims when the government succeeded in retaking the city and began massacring communards, arresting, jailing, and executing others. The London Times claimed that the women of Paris forgot “their sex and their gentleness to commit assassination, to poison soldiers, to burn and to slay”.
Prisoners taking control of Buchenwald
On April 11, 1945, expecting the arrival of US troops, the resistance within the Buchenwald concentration camp stormed the watchtowers and seized control of the camp. Nazi authorities had been attempting to evacuate the camp, relocating 28,000 prisoners. But the resistance, who had infiltrated many important administrative roles in the camp, had sabotaged the operation by obstructing orders and delaying the evacuation. A third of those evacuated soon died, so the delays saved many lives.
US forces arrived later in the day on April 11. By the time of its liberation, at least 53,000 people had died there since it opened in 1937.
Longest prison rebellion
On April 11, 1993, possibly the longest prison rebellion in US history took place in Lucasville, Ohio. Black and white prisoners, including those in the Aryan Brotherhood, fought together against mistreatment by prison authorities.
Barcelona women’’s prison jailbreak
On April 14, 1931, radical workers attacked the Amalia women’s prison in Barcelona freeing the prisoners therein. Anarchist Maria Rius was one of the women involved in the assault, who had previously been jailed for planning jailbreaks. She later took part in the Spanish civil war and revolution, joining the Hilario Zamora Column, and fled to France following the defeat of the Republic.
Sabuk liberated zone in South Korea
On April 21, 1980, the working class mining community in Sabuk, South Korea, took control of their town setting up a “liberated zone” amidst a strike of coalminers demanding a 40% pay increase. The movement began on 15 April when 25 workers protested against their union. On 21 April, four protesting workers were seriously injured by a police jeep. In response, protests grew, and workers occupied key parts of the town, seizing police weaponry and dynamite from the mines. The following day, 300 armed police arrived, but 5,000 protesters succeeded in driving them from the area. Local women, housewives and other residents took an active part in the struggle, and the community set up their own security detachments. The movement was even more remarkable given that South Korea was governed by a brutal military dictatorship backed by the US. By 24 April, employers and authorities agreed to all of the workers’ demands, including a pay increase and an amnesty for the protesters, in return for workers laying down their weapons. However, after this took place the state ignored its promise and on 7 May abducted and tortured over 70 people. On 4 August, 30 of those were sentenced to between one and five years’ imprisonment. Three of those who were tortured died young as a result.
Mansoura-España occupation
On April 21, 2007, 150 garment workers, mostly women, occupied the Mansoura-España textile factory in Egypt against job losses and unpaid wages. Management tried various tricks to break the occupation, even threatening to fabricate prostitution charges against the women workers for sleeping away from home under the same roof as men who were not their husbands. But the workers held out against both bosses and their union, occupying their factory for two months before winning concessions on both job losses and unpaid wages.
Carnation Revolution
On April 25, 1974, Portugal’s right-wing Estado Novo dictatorship was overthrown by a military coup by low ranking army officers who had formed the Movement of the Armed Forces (MFA). When officers loyal to the dictatorship ordered the troops to open fire, a mutiny by rank-and-file soldiers effectively prevented a counter-revolution. The events would become known as the Carnation Revolution, as few shots were fired and people adorned troops with red and white carnations which were in season and being widely sold on the streets at the time. The collapse of the regime was then followed by a working class uprising which lasted over 18 months. Urban workers took over their workplaces and rural workers took over land and farmed it collectively. The key factor in the unpopularity of the regime was the long-running colonial war against independence movements in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Principe which had been raging since anti-colonial uprisings in the early 1960s. After the revolution these former colonies all soon achieved independence.
April Revolution
On April 26, 1960, South Korean dictator President Rhee was forced to resign from power in the April revolution after thousands took to the streets. After initially killing dozens of demonstrators, on April 25, soldiers refused orders to open fire on protesters. This spelt the death knell for the US-backed dictatorship.
On April 26, 100,000 people took to the streets in Seoul. Police initially opened fire, killing four and injuring 31 in front of Dongdaemun police station, but protesters attacked the building, and set it on fire, destroying it. But the army sat by, with teenagers climbing onto tanks shouting “the soldiers are on our side.” Rhee realised his position was untenable, and after meeting with representatives of the protesters, he agreed to step down at 10:19 AM. The new, democratic government would be overthrown in another military coup the following year, and democracy only eventually restored after a wave of strikes and protests in 1987.
Mutiny of French sailors
On April 27, 1919, the crew of the French military cruiser Waldeck-Rousseau which had been sent to fight Russian revolutionaries mutinied. They presented a list of demands including better food and immediate return to France, and said that if authorities didn’t give in, they would hand the ship over to the revolution. Part of a wave of mutinies across the French fleet, it successfully stopped French intervention in the Russian civil war.
Nazis try to invade Dominica
On April 27, 1981, nine white supremacists from the US and Canada were arrested as they prepared a boat full of weapons, bedecked with a Nazi flag, to try to invade Dominica.
The racists, including Ku Klux Klan members and the later founder of neo-Nazi website Stormfront, planned to establish a white dictatorship in the 99% non-white nation, and trade with apartheid South Africa. They were each jailed for just three years.
Okayama bus drivers refused to charge passengers for tickets
On April 27, 2018, bus drivers with the Ryobi Group in Okayama, Japan, began a “fare strike” where they drove their routes as normal but refused to charge passengers for tickets. Drivers covered ticket machines with blankets or stickers to allow passengers to travel for free in a dispute demanding better job security in the face of a new rival bus company, Megurin, beginning operations in the city. The action continued until at least mid-May. Rather than agree to the workers’ demands, the company began taking legal action to block Megurin from operating a competing route. At the time of writing (April 2021), discussions at the local government level were still ongoing.
LA riots
On April 29, 1992, following the acquittal of the police officers caught on film brutally beating Rodney King, an unarmed Black motorist, riots erupted across Los Angeles in the biggest urban revolt since the 1960s.
Public anger exploded after the acquittal, which was the last in a long line of egregious, brutal, and racist practices by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Officers would openly use racial slurs over police radios, and would terrorise residents of Black and Latine neighbourhoods. Newsweek reported that the rebellion was multiracial:
“Hispanics and even some whites—men, women and children—mingled with African-Americans. The mob’s primary lust appeared to be for property, not blood. In a fiesta mood, looters grabbed for expensive consumer goods that had suddenly become “free.” Better-off Black as well as white and Asian-American business people all got burned.”
There was widespread expropriation of goods, which many participants felt was justified. One former gang member named Will told the International Herald Tribune: “A lot of people feel that it’s reparations. It’s what already belongs to us.” LAPD, federal law enforcement personnel, National Guard and US Army troops were brought in to suppress the rebellion. By the time it was over, more than 60 people had been killed, 10 of them by law-enforcement, and property damage was estimated at over $1 billion.