Transcribing the Past

 An Irish Anarchist in France, in the Glasgow Evening Citizen (5 March 1884)   AN IRISH ANARCHIST IN FRANCE.  The London  Times  Paris correspondent, telegraphing last night, says: - Morphy, the young Irishman who has on several occasions appeared before the tribunals for writing anarchical documents, was tried to-day for an article in a Socialist newspaper offensive to morality, in the guise of comments on passages in the Bible. He was fined 500 francs.  

  Available on Kindle   Please support via ko-fi   The Libertarian Society by Georges Bastien Some Words on Georges Bastien This pamphlet was written in 1926 by Georges Bastien. Bastien (1885-1940) was a French Anarcho-syndicalist, that is he combined his Anarchist beliefs with Syndicalism. Syndicalism is the name of a school of socialism that views the building of revolutionary unions amongst the working class as the key to creating a revolutionary movement strong enough to supplant capitalism and begin the construction of a better world. Syndicalism, which literally translates into English as Trade Unionism, -from the Romance languages shared name for Labour Unions which is a Syndicate- traces its origins to the 19 th century socialist movement. Its early strongholds being the nations of France, Spain and Italy. In France, Syndicalism first rose to prominence with the creation of the Confederation Generale du Travail the General Confederation of Work (CGT)...

  There are a lot of important events in Labour history that get overlooked. The Coal Miners strike in 1948 in France is one of them. I have tried for days to find information on this event and so far all I've found is a short interview on Radio Fours History Hour, some archival footage from Pathe with no commentary just a few minutes of film reel recording random events during the strike and one article by a French Trotskyist organisation written at the time and translated into English at a later date. I'm assuming there's more information in French, but even with my limited French I wasn't get many results and couldn't read what I found. The Trotskyist article is interesting but unfortunately the authors were motivated by a desire to discredit the French Communist Party (PCF) and cast themselves as its replacement, rather than recount the events of the strike accurately for the benefit of all. And since its the only source I've found I can't tell...