Remember, Remember the 5th of November

"Vote Guy Fawkes, the only man to enter parliament with honest intentions." Which is, of course, an old anarchist anti-election slogan . They say, the old ones are the best ones.

However it is well to remember that Guy Fawkes wasn't trying to destroy an evil theocracy, he was trying to install one. Fawkes was a fighter for Spain and the Catholic Church. His goal was to end the relatively slightly more egalitarian Protestant revolution in England by restoring Catholic domination.

Socialists of the world will be remembering how on  November the 5th, 1916,  some 250 Industrial Workers of the World supporters arrives in Everett in the Pacific North-West to fight for free speech, but gunfire breaks out as soon as they arrive, leaving several IWW union activists dead, & scores wounded. 74 union members are charged with murder in the incident; charges are later dropped. Big Bill Haywood & Samuel Gompers call on the federal government to protect the rights of working-class citizens in Everett, but no action is taken. The police, as is too often the case, "get away with murder."

"Everett, November Fifth"
["* * * and then the Fellow Worker died, singing 'Hold
the Fort' * * *"—From the report of a witness.]

Song on his lips, he came;
Song on his lips, he went;—
This be the token we bear of him,—
Soldier of Discontent!
Out of the dark they came; out of the night
Of poverty and injury and woe,—
With flaming hope, their vision thrilled to light,—
Song on their lips, and every heart aglow;
They came, that none should trample Labor's right
To speak, and voice her centuries of pain.
Bare hands against the master's armored might!—
A dream to match the tools of sordid gain!
And then the decks went red; and the grey sea
Was written crimsonly with ebbing life.
The barricade spewed shots and mockery
And curses, and the drunken lust of strife.
Yet, the mad chorus from that devil's host,—
Yea, all the tumult of that butcher throng,—
Compound of bullets, booze and coward boast,—
Could not out-shriek one dying worker's song!
Song on his lips, he came;
Song on his lips, he went;—
This be the token we bear of him,—
Soldier of Discontent!
Charles Ashleigh

The story of the  Everett Massacre by Walker C. Smith available here