Let’s face it, November is a bloody boring month, sandwiched between the Holy Month of Halloween and the weird rituals that accompany the latter-day midwinter feast; bonfire night ain’t what it was.
On 25th November we celebrate Class warrior John Hardy, killed in action on that day in 1830 near his home in Tisbury, Wiltshire. Four hundred quarrymen and labourers confronted the landowner and local M.P. John Bennett to demand two shillings per day. Bennett was knocked unconscious and his threshing machines broken. The starving workers were attacked by the infamous Yeoman Cavalry, a petty bourgeois militia modelled on such as the Carolina slave patrols, French Gendarmerie and the Dublin Constabulary, the ancestors of modern law enforcement. Fighting with a crowbar and an axe, Hardy put up ferocious resistance, slaying two cavalrymen and unhorsing another, as he took aim with a captured musket he was shot dead.
What is terrorism? It’s how states govern, instilling fear of starvation, exclusion, incarceration, violence and death at the hands of their hired thugs. The world over, governments of venal charlatans accuse journalists, musicians, artists, writers and peaceful campaigners – even medics, of terrorism, whilst butchering non-combatants with impunity.
So this November, let’s celebrate all those who fearlessly, recklessly or fecklessly took up arms against overwhelming force, in the name of personal autonomy and conscience. Now we know none of these are spotless, they are only flesh and blood, so pick your favourites and we won’t judge.
You might like: John Brown, Dedan Kimathi, Wat Tyler, Ravachole, Laureano Cerrado Santos, Abdullah Ocalan, Kaneko Fumiko, Bobby Sands, Leila Khaled, Francesc Sabate LLopart, Nat Turner, Warren James, Emilliano Zapata, Alexander Berkman, Spartacus, Alfredo Bonanno, Constance Markievicz, Manuel Lecha, Peter the Painter, John Barker, Luigi Galleani, Georg Elser, Clara and Pavel Thalmann, Mikhail Bakunin, James Connolly, Marusya Nikiforova, Stuart Christie, Fanya Kaplan, Satoshi Kirishima, Cato, Nelson Mandela, Wolfe Tone, Anna Campbell, Buenaventura Durruti, the Ascasos, Karari Njama, Jim Larkin, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, Ulrike Meinhof, Joe Slovo, Jack White, Toussaint L’Ouverture, General Ludd and Captain Swing, the Arditi del Populo, the Makhnovtchina, the Communards, the Chartists, the Bonnot Gang, the People’s Will, the Zapatistas, Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire.
And don’t forget those who were tarred with the terrorist brush by spiteful and clueless regimes: Francisco Ferrer, Fred Hampton, Big Bill Heywood, Iris Mills, Angela Davis, Andreu Nin, Emma Goldman, Altheia Jones-LeCointe, the Reavey and O’Dowd families, Frank Little, Flores Magón, Ethel MacDonald, Steve Biko, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Winston Silcott, Kneecap, Darcus Howe, Anas al-Sharif, Jean-Charles de Menezes, Martyrs – Haymarket and Tolpuddle, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet at Kronstadt, Bradford, Guildford and Birmingham numbers, the Enugu Colliers, the proprietors and patrons of McGurk’s bar.
How to celebrate? Well that’s up to you, but if you’ve never heard of these people you could start by doing a little research, then you can judge their actions by your own standards. And if you’ve ever been accused of terrorism, take courage, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Wessex Solidarity