#worker's revolt

[fromthewikimediacommons]

A poster from the uprising which began in May 1968 in Paris. The text reads "Workers, the struggle continues. Form base committees" (translated from French) (May 1968)

[omgcatrevolution]

Full text of Robert Darnton's "Worker’s Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin" (1984), including appendix (Nicolas Contat's account of the cat massacre)

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"In December 1918 some fifteen hundred municipal workers in Montreal went on strike. The dramatic, two-day walkout erupted against a background of hostility towards an undemocratic civic administration imposed earlier that year by the provincial government. After decades of growth and the annexation of smaller and indebted municipalities, the City of Montreal was heavily in debt. To ensure fiscal restraint the provincial government placed the city under a five-man administrative commission [for two years]. The action was taken at the behest of the Bank of Montreal, the city's principle creditor and a powerful symbol of English-Canadian financial capital at a time when French-Canadian workers expected to exert considerable influence over municipal authorities. To head the trusteeship Liberal Premier Jean-Lomer Gouin chose Ernest Décary, a notary who administered the investments of wealthy families...In a city where Mayor Médéric Martin won the support of most francophone workers by appealing to their nationalism and by promising to support their class interests, many French-Canadian workers were convinced that the trusteeship left them without any effective representation at the municipal level. "Montreal municipal workers organised their unions just as the civic administration was reorganising the civic employees and municipal workers with the help of [American] efficiency experts who redefined job assignments, delineated new lines of authority, determined wage scales, and participated in labour negotiations, the new police chiefs imposed by the administrative commission were hired from outside the force; one did not speak French fluently, and all three were accused of corruption by reform groups. The two-day strike, which erupted December 13, was likened by one reporter to a civil war. Fire alarms began ringing as soon as the strike began and continued throughout the rest of the day until 304 had been set off. Scabs were booed as they appeared in answer to the calls. Crowds gathered around firehalls to direct their anger at the replacement firemen [usually from Catholic Church directed unions/labour groups or bourgeois volunteers]. In working-class districts volunteer firemen were not allowed to leave their stations or were forcibly ejected. Some firehalls were sacked. Most of the violence was directed at strikebreakers...and most observers agreed that violence was initiated by sympathizers or strikebreakers rather than strikers. Mayor Martin had few powers under the civic trusteeship, but there were still clear benefits in having a mayor who identified with the workers. Martin had encouraged civic workers to unionize and refused to read the Riot Act, declaring he would not call out the army for a few black eyes." - Geoffrey Ewan, "Quebec: Class and Ethnicity" in The Worker's Revolt in Canada, 1917-1925, ed. by Craig Heron. pp. 101-103.