On this day, 12 May 1940, 20-year-old Austrian Jewish University of Edinburgh student Edgar Lion was arrested by British police. His friends wouldn't see him or hear from him for years.
Lion was taken to a police station, then shipped to the Isle of Man alongside thousands of other Jewish detainees where they were locked up in hotels surrounded by barbed wire.
He was then taken to a dockyard and told to choose between two ships. He chose the one on the left, and so was taken to Canada – the other would end up in Australia.
In Canada, Lion was then interned alongside 2,300 other Jewish refugees in camps alongside German Nazis. Here the refugees were forced to perform harsh and boring physical labour for almost no pay: in Lion's camp, Sherbrooke, detainees could choose to make fishing nets or socks.
The refugees were held in camps in appalling and unsafe conditions for nearly three years.
Learn more about the treatment of Jewish people in Britain at this time…

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On this day, 11 May 1923, after months of agitation 150 mostly women rent strikers who had been jailed in the Mexican town of Veracruz the previous year were freed by the governor.
The women had organised strikes in detention, and fought with prison guards, while workers outside threatened a general strike for their freedom.
The tenants left the jail in groups of 10, the women wearing cream dresses and straw hats with red ribbons, while their supporters sang songs, shouted slogans and set off firecrackers.
The group then paraded through the main streets of the city to the office of the renters' union, where they declared their commitment to continue their direct action against landlords.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8337/veracruz-tenant-prisoners-freed

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On this day, 11 May 1968, French riot police began their assault at 2:15 AM on Paris's Latin Quarter, which had been occupied and barricaded by student protesters on the evening of May 10.
Over the course of the night, they eventually managed to evict the demonstrators, but the violence they employed against students and local residents provoked public anger, and protests continued to grow.
Reproduction artwork from the rebellion is available with global shipping in our online store to help fund our work: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/may-68

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On this day, 10 May 2009, leading Ecuadorian Indigenous rights activist and revolutionary Tránsito Amaguaña died a few weeks away from her 100th birthday in her native village of Pesillo.
Born into a Quechua family of hacienda workers, Amaguaña took part in a strike in 1931 demanding an eight-hour working day and Sundays off, amongst other improvements. Then, she later recounted, “the soldiers arrived. Fifty at every hacienda. They destroyed houses and arrested the leaders, tying them up and beating them.”
Amaguaña joined the Communist Party and helped found some of the first unions in the country for agricultural workers, and later helped set up rural cooperatives to provide land for other Indigenous people. She also helped establish schools for rural poor children teaching in Spanish and Quechua, and was jailed by authorities several times.
In the 1940s, campaigning was successful in achieving the abolition of forced taxes by the Catholic Church. Amaguaña recalled:…

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preciate the advice tho on sum rs 💯

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mane da russians on top

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On this day, 9 May 1763, what became known as Pontiac's war began when warriors from several Indigenous nations under the Ottawa leader Pontiac attacked British colonial troops at Fort Detroit in present-day Michigan.
While Fort Detroit itself did not fall, Native American fighters captured several forts, with Seneca warriors seizing Venango and Le Boeuf.
Despite British forces massacring unarmed Native Americans, and attempting to spread smallpox among the Native population, fighting continued into the following year, causing around 450 British casualties. The eventual peace agreement reached ensured important concessions to Native Americans, including a ban on colonisation west of the Appalachian ridge, and the loss of several forts.
Learn more about Indigenous peoples' history in these books: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/indigenous
Pictured: Painting of the Siege of Fort Detroit by Frederic Remington

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On this day, 9 May 1978, communist anti-Mafia campaigner Giuseppe ‘Peppino’ Impastato was murdered during an election campaign in which he was standing as a candidate for Democrazia Proletaria (Proletarian Democracy).
Badly beaten, his body was stretched over some railway lines with a charge of TNT placed under it.
Initially, police tried to paint Peppino as a left-wing terrorist, blown up by his own bomb; it would not be until 2001 that Peppino’s killers would be brought to justice.
His death was dramatised in the film "I cento passi".
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10936/giuseppe-impastato-murdered

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On this day, 9 May 1936 in Thessaloniki, Greece, police and soldiers attacked a workers' demonstration during a general strike against police repression, killing 12.
The funerals of the workers became mass demonstrations by over 200,000 people, and a further nationwide protest strike took place a few days later.
Just three months later General Metaxas declared a dictatorship to end the disorder, but was forced to introduce a maximum eight hour working day and introduce social protections like pensions and welfare payments.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10934/thessaloniki-massacre

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