8 Historical Working Women Moments for 8 March
For what was once International Working Women’s Day, before it became International Women’s Day upon being co-opted by the UN and its corporate sponsors, we have written on 8 struggles throughout history in which working women played a vital and influential role.
1. The 1915 Rent Strike in Glasgow, Scotland
During the First World War, in May 1915, landlords in overcrowded Glasgow made the decision to increase rents. Tenants rightly saw this as profiteering (there was a law against that!) and refused to pay the increase but continued to give the “factor” (the landlords’ rent collector) the old rent. This was the start of the rent strike. The landlords responded by individual evictions via the Sheriff’s Court but were surprised by the collective response. Working class women formed tenants’ associations like the famous South Govan Women’s Housing Association, led by Helen Crawfurd, Mary Barbour, Agnes Dollan and Jessie S
The Year 1919
The Year 1919
In this issue of Virus, we highlight important events that happened one hundred years ago. We have articles on little known events like the soviets in Ireland, the Seattle and Winnipeg general strikes, and the unrest in Britain, including the Luton riot, the police strike and mutinies in the armed forces. But 1919 was more than those events. There were uprisings all over the world.
In Mexico, the Revolution that had started in 1910 rumbled on until 1920 but in 1919 one of the most important revolutionaries, Emiliano Zapata, was murdered on April 10th by the forces of President Carranza. The United States took the opportunity of the attack by the revolutionary forces of Pancho Villa on the border town of Ciudad Juarez to send its troops into Mexico, to repulse Villa’s forces.