Today in Labor History June 4, 1919: Trotsky banned the 4th Ukrainian Congress of Free Soviets with his Order #1824. He also sent troops to destroy the Rosa Luxemburg Commune near Provkovski, and declared the Ukrainian anarchist insurgent Nestor Makhno an outlaw. The Free Territory within Ukraine, also known as Makhnovia (after Nestor Makhno) lasted from 1918 to 1921. It was a stateless, anarchist society and it was defended by Makhno’s Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army (AKA the Black Army). Roughly 7 million people lived in the area. The peasants who lived there refused to pay rent to the landowners and seized the estates and livestock of the church, state and private landowners, setting up local committees to manage them and share them among the various villages and communes of the Free State.
Today in Labor History May 31, 1838: Kentish peasants clashed with British troops in the Battle of Bosendon Wood. Sir William Courtenay led the uprising. Courtenay had previously run for public office and spent time in a lunatic asylum. He built up a large local following in the previous four years with his millenarian preaching and demonstrations against the New Poor Law of 1834. On May 29, 1838, he led a march through town, with a loaf of bread on a pole (a local symbol of protest). They continued protesting for the next two days, alarming the town’s wealthy elites. When the authorities tried to arrest Courtenay, he shot and killed a constable. The authorities quickly mustered a small army. Courtenay had a gun and a sword, but his followers had only sticks. Courtenay managed to kill a Lieutenant in the ensuing battle, but was promptly killed by other soldiers, who also killed eight of his followers.
Today in Labor History May 30, 1431: Teenage peasant soldier and crossdresser, Joan of Ark, was burned at the stake by an English tribunal, in part for the “blasphemy” of wearing men’s clothes. After her arrest, her male attire was taken from her and she was forced to sign a document (which she may not have understood) declaring she would no longer cross dress. But when her captors returned her men’s attire, to test her will, she promptly put the clothes back on. During her trial, she vowed, 'For nothing in the world will I swear not to arm myself and put on a man's dress.'" Twenty-fiver years later, Pope Callixtus III declared her a martyr. In 1909, they beatified her and they granted her sainthood in 1920. Transgender activist, writer and communist, Leslie Feinberg, argues in Transgender Liberation that "Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by the Inquisition because she refused to stop dressing as a man… an expression of her identity she was willing to die for rather than renounce."
She rose to prominence during the Hundred Years’ War, which was essentially a feud between competing monarchies (French and English) that left the peasants poor, hungry and at risk of being slaughtered. England had been winning the war and had almost gained control over France when Joan of Ark decided to intervene. She had been having religious visions and was convinced that only she could turn things around for France. She travelled to Chinon to meet King Charles, disguised as a male soldier, which later led to charges of cross-dressing. Convincing the King to turn the conflict into a religious war, she led his troops in the Battle of Orleans. By many contemporary accounts, it was her military advice that won the battle. However, by her own words, she never killed a man, preferring to carry the banner “forty times better” than a sword. In the centuries after her death, she became legendary.
Today in Labor History May 30, 1381: Tax collector John Bampton sparked the Peasants’ Revolt in Brentwood, Essex. The mass uprising, also known as Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, or the Great Rising, began because of attempts to collect a poll tax. However, tensions were already high because of the economic misery and hunger caused by the Black Death pandemic of the 1340s, and the Hundred Years’ War. During the uprising, rebels burned public records and freed prisoners. King Richard II, 14 years old, hid in the Tower of London. Rebels entered the Tower and killed the Lord Chancellor and the Lord High Treasurer, but not the king. It took nearly six months for the authorities to suppress the Peasants’ Revolt. They slaughtered over 1,400 rebels. Roughly 600 years later, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried again to impose a poll tax on Britain’s working class. It also sparked a revolt which brought an end both to the tax and Thatcher’s regime. Billy Bragg references Thatcher’s poll tax in his song, All You Fascists.
Today in Labor History April 17, 1996: Brazilian police attacked 2,000 landless peasants, killing 19 and wounding 69. Over 1,000 would be killed in similar protests throughout the 1990s.