The Making of London’s General Strike By Callum Cant and Matthew Lee
May 4, 2026
Introduction:
(Jacobin) One hundred years ago today, a general strike led by London’s dockworkers brought the city to its knees. Police violence and a conservative union beat the workers in the end, but the episode helped shape Britain’s labor movement.
On the first day of the general strike, the response in East London was strong. Almost all workers at the docks along the River Thames were on strike, as well as hundreds of thousands more in various other industries in the area. For the first time ever, clerical staff at the Port of London walked out, even before they were called out by their union.
In Canning Town, where dockers were confident that no one would be scabbing, mass pickets only formed after news spread that troops were working in the docks, attempting to load lorries. A crowd of locals blocked the entrance and booed the troops in the docks. The atmosphere was good-humored. Then, suddenly, the police started pushing the crowd from behind. The pickets were shunted further and further into the road, leading to arguments with officers, who began to wield their truncheons. The situation exploded. For half an hour, chaos reigned, and the pickets were forced to defend themselves. Strikers were injured, arms were broken, but they had stood their ground. It was just a taste of what was to come over the next nine days.
The next morning, before heading up the main road to the docks, hundreds of pickets walked along the side streets, pulling out the spiked railings from the walls of the houses. Arriving at the docks and seeing lorries again, they forced the drivers out of their wagons before turning over several lorries onto their sides. More lorries arrived, this time with troops on them. The police lined up to make sure the vehicles could get through the crowd. But the pickets weren’t going to be caught off guard again. The crowd pulled out their iron bars and pushed forward. This time it was the police’s turn for a beating.
The Hidden History of Juneteenth By Gregory P. Downs,
June 17, 2026
Introduction:
(Popular Resistance.org) Most people think Juneteenth was simply when enslaved Texans learned they were free.
But that is a myth. They knew the war ended but the fight for freedom did not end with one proclamation; it took months of occupation and struggle against planters who refused to give up their human property.
“We knowed what was goin’ on in [the war] all the time,” said Felix Haywood, dismissing the notion that his fellow Texas slaves were ignorant of the Emancipation Proclamation.
One hundred fifty years ago, the U.S. Army took possession of Galveston Island, a barrier island just off the Texas coast that guards the entrance to Galveston Bay, and began a late-arriving, long-lasting war against slavery in Texas. This little-known battle would endure for months after the end of what we normally think of as the Civil War. This struggle, pitting Texas freedpeople and loyalists and the U.S. Army against stubborn defenders of slavery, would become the basis for the increasingly popular celebrations of Juneteenth, a predominantly African-American holiday celebrating emancipation on or about June 19th every year.
The historical origins of Juneteenth are clear. On June 19, 1865, U.S. Major General Gordon Granger, newly arrived with 1,800 men in Texas, ordered that “all slaves are free” in Texas and that there would be an “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.” The idea that any such proclamation would still need to be issued in June 1865 – two months after the surrender at Appomattox – forces us to rethink how and when slavery and the Civil War really ended. And in turn it helps us recognize Juneteenth as not just a bookend to the Civil War but as a celebration and commemoration of the epic struggles of emancipation and Reconstruction.
