One hundred years ago, four million soldiers were facing off in frozen trenches stretching over 800 kilometers (500 miles), from Switzerland to the Belgian coast. By December, 1914, World War I had killed or wounded 85,000 British, 850,000 French and 677,000 German soldiers on the Western front.
As Joseph Stalin later said, the world socialist misleaders betrayed the working class and made the slaughter possible: “On the very eve of the war,…the workers were given a new slogan — to exterminate each other for the glory of their capitalist fatherlands.”
One soldier remembered, “In Christmas time, on the 24th of December… [we] were not at all unfriendly…against the enemy. There was a feeling in the air: ‘we can’t go on killing each other today.’ And this was a mutual feeling on both sides.”
Rank-and-file soldiers began spontaneous, unofficial truces all along the battle line. Lance Corporal George Ashurst, of the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers recalled: “It started by ‘Well, Merry Christmas, lads!’ You know, talking in the trench. We can hear Jerry [German soldiers]…chatting quite loudly….singing a Christmas carol, you know, in German. And damn good singing, too. We’re shouting: ‘Go on, Jerry!’…. ‘Encore!’ we’re shouting. And a fellow comes next, playing a cornet…. It was beautiful to hear him play it. And we were shouting: ‘Hurray!’ And there was no more shooting.”
Once it stopped, they came out of the trenches and met.
German artillery officer Richner remembered: “The fraternization between the both lines came to a climax when at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon about ten or twelve soldiers of our trenches and about the same number of French soldiers came to the middle of the two lines. The trenches were about 300 meters from each other, and [they] met there on the barbed wire and had champagne and wine and cigarettes to exchange, and then they came back.”
But fraternization continued. Ernie Williams, of a Cheshire regiment reminisced: “Somehow, this football appeared,….But we didn’t form a team.… It was a kick-about, everybody was having a go. … Boy, it was grand.… Kicked it about on top. Just to keep warm, of course.… And do you know, there were fellows walking about on top of our trench,….at tea time, and not a shot had been fired.”
….The soldiers began talking….One began to think that these chaps, who were like ourselves, whom we liked, and who felt about the war as we did…”
As the soldiers met, they questioned what they were being told and realized they had more in common with the working-class soldiers across the battlefield than with their own capitalist politicians and commanders.
Ernie Williams remembered: “I was thinking it was altogether wrong that we were having this war. Them fellows don’t want to fight us…. They’re ordinary people, like me. And they don’t want to fight. It’s the generals and them people that started this scrapping.”
The military command on both sides moved quickly to end the Christmas truce.
George Ashurst remembered: “We got orders: ‘Get back in your trenches, every man!’ The generals behind must have seen it and got a bit suspicious. Oh! We were cursing them to hell. Cursing the generals…. ‘Want to get up here in this stuff? Never mind your big giving orders in your big chateaux and driving about in your big cars.’ Yes. We hated the sight of bloody generals. We always did, all through the war! They gave orders for a battery of guns behind us to fire and the machine gun to open out…. Officers fired their revolvers at the Jerries, you know. Course, that started the war again.”
The 1914 Christmas truce demonstrated both the immense potential of the working class — able to halt a ferocious world war after five months of bitter combat — and the cruel weakness of spontaneous, unorganized action.
In 1917, Russian soldiers through the Bolshevik revolution exposed to communist refused to continue the war against Germany. But later, turned their guns against the Russian tsars and formed a workers’ state on one-sixth of the earth’s surface. It is only by organizing a revolutionary communist party that the working class can realize decisive victories over the ruling class.
(Note: All of the men who fought in World War I are now dead. This article is based on oral history recordings made after the war.)
Brooklyn, December 22 — “No justice, no peace, no racist police!” rang out loud and clear on the corner of Church and Nostrand in East Flatbush tonight, as members and friends of Progressive Labor Party broke Bill DeBlasio and William Bratton’s “ban” on protests (click here to view video). The politicians want to honor the cops shot on December 20. As speakers pointed out time and again, where was the bosses' time of mourning and concern for the children of Eric Gardner and so many other victims of racist police terror? Passing cars honked in support of the protest. People passing by joined the picket line for a time or two around, chanting and raising their fists in unity against racist murders by the police.
- Information
Ferguson Project: Solidarity with Anti-Racists and Defying Cops
- Information
- 11 December 2014 201 hits
Ferguson, MO, November 30 — More than forty Progressive Labor Party members and friends from New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles traveled here this weekend to express solidarity with the workers of Ferguson and demonstrate against racist police terror. In the wake of the grand jury’s refusal to indict racist killer kkkop Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown, young members of Progressive Labor Party learned how to organize under pressure. We met the escalation of police repression with an escalation of our own, training a significant number of new fighters and recruiting more than a dozen — mostly Black, Latin, and Asian women — to the Party.
The rebellion of the workers in Ferguson has led and inspired the international working class. They have shown us a glimpse of the power of multiracial fightback under militant Black leadership. The weekend’s impact went far beyond its relatively modest scope. It showed that when communists put forward a revolutionary line in bold defiance of the bosses and police, workers respond and unite with PLP into battle.
PL’ers and Friends Walk the Walk
Upon arriving in Ferguson on Friday, November 28, our comrades and friends immediately organized to go to a demonstration in front of the Ferguson police department, where community members have been protesting every day since Michael Brown was killed on August 9. There we met many friends and contacts our Party has made over successive trips to Ferguson, where cops had declared a ban on marching in the street. Against the opposition of liberal and religious misleaders, more than 150 mostly Black workers joined in taking the street and closing an intersection near the police department. The cops responded by lining up in riot gear and declaring the streets off-limits to demonstrations.
PLP has a long and proud history of challenging police bans on marching in the street, dating back to the Harlem Rebellion of 1964. Sustaining this history of militancy, we first rallied on the sidewalk in front of the police station. Several of our comrades called upon the community and the National Guard troops guarding the station to join our march and fight back. One older Ferguson resident spoke movingly of his memories of the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, and how the situation has not changed for Black workers in the United States.
PL’ers then made the decision to march into the street, prompting the riot police to charge. They attacked our line and arrested a total of 16 comrades and protesters, brutalizing the demonstrators with batons and chemical weapons. We responded with chants that reflected our communist ideas, such as: “The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan, all a part of the bosses’ plan!” Throughout the weekend, we tried to clarify how the capitalist ruling class uses racist terror and the state apparatus to protect its profit system and to divide and discourage all workers from fighting back.
The police attack galvanized community people who had gathered there. Many were moved to support us after witnessing the cops’ viciousness, and the class treason of the liberal misleaders encouraged the police to arrest us.
New Leaders Step Up and Continue the Fight
Prior to our arrival, according to residents, the confrontations with Ferguson police had been brave but spontaneous. By marching down Florissant Street and temporarily closing the intersection by the police station, PLP followed the leadership of the bold local fighters and also brought discipline and organization to the front line. The arrests posed a significant challenge for the PL’ers who survived the waves of police charges. Following our Party’s emphasis on building youth leadership for a mass party and adhering to militant discipline, our remaining comrades treated those who’d been beaten and pepper-sprayed. Although many were inexperienced at providing political and tactical leadership, PL’ers and friends closed ranks, with several friends of the Party stepping up to provide leadership.
The next morning, Saturday, we met to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our activity. We assigned new teams and formed an agenda to meet more local workers. After attending a mass meeting at a nearby church, where we met with friends in the community, one team went door-to-door in Ferguson to sell CHALLENGE. Another attended a rally that afternoon, with a third team remaining at the church with additional arriving comrades from Chicago to participate in discussions there. In this way we were able to bring more workers and students to our barbecue dinner and forum that evening.
Solidarity with Ferguson Workers
The dinner helped strengthen our relationships with the Ferguson community. As one rebel put it, PLP represents the true meaning of the word “solidarity,” while everyone else “just puts it on Facebook or comes through here like they’re shooting a music video.”
Following dinner, we invited our friends to come back out with us for another rally. Police presence was tripled around the Ferguson police station, with groups of riot cops standing by in adjacent alleys. This time we were received even more warmly by the community, who exchanged hugs with us and joined our chants.
While the young leaders of that evening made the estimate not to challenge the police in taking the street following the previous night’s losses, our presence brought out crowds of Black workers in front of the police station. They kept coming, even as we left to recover our comrades from jail, who were being held for 24 hours from the previous night. None of the comrades were charged. The police riot had nothing to do with “legality” under the bosses’ racist system. The cops acted simply to harass and intimidate us — but they failed!
In follow-up discussions from the Party’s trip to Ferguson, the consensus was that the weekend inspired and moved all who had come. Besides the new comrades who stepped up their commitment to smash racism and fight for communism by joining the Party, many more re-committed to build our PLP.
Why Join PLP?
Why should workers, students and soldiers join Progressive Labor Party? Because it’s the only fighting organization that defines and confronts capitalism as the source of racist police terror. The capitalist class — and their cops and KKK-tied militias who lined the rooftops in Ferguson — are terrified of an organized, disciplined, multiracial movement led by communists. We have a lot of work ahead of us. But we emerged from this weekend one step closer to building a mass Party that will shatter this racist capitalist system once and for all. PLP salutes the Ferguson rebels. We invite all workers to join our international Party and fight back like Ferguson for communist revolution!
Los Angeles, November 27 — Hundreds shut down freeways, confronting the LAPD as Progressive Labor Party, friends, and other protesters took the streets following the announcement that Darren Wilson would not be indicted for the murder of Michael Brown. We maintained that multiracial unity is crucial in the fight against racist police terror.
Starting in the Crenshaw District we marched to the Police Department headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. Along the way, with our banner, signs, and bullhorn PLP helped lead the march chanting “Indict, convict, send those killer pigs to jail. The whole damn system is guilty as hell.”
The march turned militant as protesters begin throwing bottles and rocks. A cop pulled out a shotgun trying to intimidate protesters marching onto the 110 Freeway, a major freeway which passes through downtown Los Angeles. Protesters, however, responded with more bold acts: tearing down a fence and running up an embankment that led onto the freeway where we halted traffic.
Clergy, Politicians = Misleaders
In the days that followed, we participated in these street protests, leading chants in English and Spanish and regularly confronting the racist police. While many of these protests have had a spontaneous character, pastors and other community misleaders have tried steering the politics of these protesters towards passive collaboration with local politicians and the police.
In turn, PLP have stressed the need for multiracial working-class unity and turning these militant street protests into training grounds for revolutionary communist struggle. We have also connected the struggle in the U.S. around police terror to the ongoing struggle in Mexico against state-sanctioned repression of militant students.
PLP helped provide political leadership to these marches, met friends and co-workers in the process, and made some new contacts. We still can do more to encourage others to attend these militant protests with us. With this in mind, we are planning events and actions to connect our friends on our campuses and workplaces to this fightback. Some comrades who visited Ferguson recently are giving talks in classrooms to build working-class solidarity and inspire fightback.
Bring Ferguson to Work and School
We are also planning a rally in the garment district against racist police killings to connect the struggle of immigrant workers and oppressed Black workers in U.S. cities. Connecting these street protests to our long-term strategy for building a revolutionary communist movement in key sectors of society will require us to bring this fight to where we work and study. We will hold a teach-in next month and rally on the relationship between Ayotzinapa, Mexico and Ferguson at a local university. Our objective is to both discuss how to fight growing fascism and how universities are complicit in creating the racist ideology which justifies police repression.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The PLP has been in the streets repeatedly to protest police murder, from Ayotzinapa, Mexico to Ferguson, from New York City to Oakland. We are outraged by the capitalist system’s murder of our youth and we are inspired by the fightback. We are discussing the events with our co-workers, classmates, and friends, and we aim to take advantage of the situation to expose the system and radicalize the working class.
When the radical students of Ayotzinapa were disappeared by the Mexican government, we distributed a leaflet and protested at the Mexican consulate in San Francisco. Our leaflet linked the state violence in Ayotzinapa and Ferguson. A capitalist system that provides no future for its youth is relying more and more on state terror to keep the working class in line. At the rally we chanted in English and Spanish, “Drug war, No! Class war, Yes!” (Guerra del narco, No! Guerra de clases, Si!)
Our collective discussed ways to better prepare for these events. As a result, we purchased a megaphone and at the latest Ferguson rally, we led chants like “Indict, convict, send that killer cop to jail/ The whole damn system is guilty as hell!” To the popular chant, “Hands up, don’t shoot” we added a second line, “Fists up, fight back!”
PLP is taking the situation seriously, fighting to expand our influence by discussing the events with friends and comrades.
The corporate-controlled media is busy trying to convince people that militant protesting is “going about it the wrong way” and that the important thing is to “keep it peaceful.” We argue that there is nothing “peaceful” about busines-as-usual under capitalism. They killed Eric Garner in cold blood on camera, just like Oscar Grant was killed on camera here in Oakland seven years ago, and now Tamir Rice.
It is not time for silent, peaceful “protests.” It is time for the working class to take direct action against the police state. We applaud the recent action by protesters who chained themselves to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and shut down all train access to and from San Francisco for two hours. Working-class mass action can shut down the system. Communist revolution can smash it forever.
