You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday January 7, 1904
Cripple Creek District, Colorado - Striking Miners to Be "Vagged" by Military Order
William D Haywood, Secretary-Treasurer
Western Federation of Miners
Charles Moyer, President
Western Federation of Miners
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Today is the last day given, by order of of the Military, for the striking miners of the Cripple Creek District to return to work or face arrest and deportation by the military. The Western Federation of Miners has issued circulars urging the men to refuse the orders to leave their homes:
NOTICE-To all members of the W. F. M. of the Cripple Creek district-It has been decided in many courts that members of organized labor are not vagrants. Keep your union cards and refuse to be driven from home. If compelled to leave by force of arms, union men are advised to return immediately to the Cripple Creek district. The Western Federation of Miners will provide for all striking miners' families.
CHAS. H. MOYER, President
WM. D. HAYWOOD, Sec.-Treas.
W. F. M.
The military is now on a rampage against the circular in the city of Victor. The Miners' Union hall has been searched, the
Victor Record has been officially warned to cease printing the offending literature, and a young boy has been arrested for distributing same. Soldiers are marching up and down the streets ripping the circulars from telegraph poles and store fronts.
SOURCE
The Cripple Creek Strike
-by Emma F Langdon
(Part I, 1st pub 1904)
NY, 1969
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/...
Photos: Moyer and Haywood
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/...
See also: Hellraisers Monday December 30, 2013
"December 30, 1903, all unemployed men were notified to leave the district in a proclamation issued by the Military District Commander."
http://www.dailykos.com/...
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Wednesday January 7, 1914
From the Miners' Bulletin: Gov. Ferris Visits Michigan Copper Strike Zone
Confers With Mine Managers, County Officials and Strikers Committee
Governor Woodbridge N. Ferris arrived in the copper country Monday evening at 7 o'clock and was escorted immediately to the Douglass Hotel Houghton by a delegation of citizens. The governor spent the evening in conversation with friends. Yesterday was taken up by conferences with county officials and others in an effort to secure information regarding the strike situation from the Mining Companies side of the controversy. Attorney Hilton of the Federation of Miners sent the governor a letter yesterday asking him for a conference with the striker representatives. The governor phoned Mr. Hilton that just as soon as he could spare the time he would hear them, but at a late hour yesterday, he had not informed the committee that he was ready to receive them. The governor stated that he did not wish, nor intend to speak to the strikers personally, but would confer with their committee. The governor has signified his intention of trying to bring the warring factions together in a settlement of the labor trouble, and it is sincerely hoped that success may crown his efforts.
The
Miners' Bulletin further reports that the Governor is highly critical of various Keweenaw county officials who are deemed to be too friendly towards the strikers. The Governor, it seems, prefers the attitude of the Houghton County Board which is completely dominated by the Mine Owners, and is presided over by James MacNaughton, manager of the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company.
SOURCES
Miners' Bulletin
"Published by authority of
Western Federation of Miners
to tell the truth regarding
the strike of copper miners."
-of Jan 7, 1914
Death's Door
The Truth Behind Michigan's Largest Mass Murder
-by Steve Lehto
MI, 2006
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Tuesday January 7, 2014
Recently Released cabinet papers confirm: Thatcher lied about the Great Miners Strike
From Channel 4 News with Video:
Thatcher vs the miners: official papers confirm the strikers’ worst suspicions
Amid the cooled air of a vault at the National Archive I trace my finger across Maggie Thatcher’s handwriting, in the margin of a typewritten note marked Secret.
She’s scribbled: “13 RoRo, 1,000 tons a day, 50 lorries a day…”
If you think destroying some of Britain’s most cohesive communities was a great achievement, then these jottings are a token of genius. They reveal Mrs Thatcher engaged in battle micro-management worthy of a Monty or Wellington.
The documents show the Conservative government was, in the middle of the [1984] miners’ strike, facing defeat.
Read full article by Paul Mason and view video here:
http://blogs.channel4.com/...
From Counterfire:
Miners strike lies: thirty years of hurt
Reading Paul Mason’s website about the recently released cabinet papers relating to the 1984 miners’ strike reminded me of the Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbell’s, infamous comment: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Thatcher must have had this in mind when she claimed that a hit list of seventy pits was a figment of Arthur Scargill’s imagination. Of course, the papers have now revealed that it was Thatcher who lied and had indeed approved Ian MacGregor’s pit closure programme of seventy-five pits. The lie was certainly ‘big’ and formed part of a carefully constructed narrative to discredit our leader and isolate the NUM from the wider labour and trade union movement.
The Tories’ hit list also nails the lie that Scargill initiated the strike for political ends. Clearly, it was the government who engineered the timing of the dispute and provoked the conflict which left us no alternative to but strike in defence of our jobs and communities. That we were right to do so is supported by the released papers and was also confirmed by the butchering of our industry in the following decade which, incidentally, went well beyond the closure of seventy pits.
Read full article by Joe Henry here:
http://www.counterfire.org/...
See also:
Great UK Miners' Strike of 1984-85
http://en.wikipedia.org/...(1984-85)
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM)
http://en.wikipedia.org/...(Great Britain)
H/T to tardis10 for the alert on this story.
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Between The Wars The Thatcher Years-Billy Bragg
I paid the union and as times got harder
I looked to the government to help the working man
But they brought prosperity down at the armoury
We're arming for peace, me boys between the wars
-Billy Bragg