117. General strike

In 1971 South-West Africa (now Namibia) had been under the rule of South Africa’s apartheid government for more than fifty years. Apartheid laws forced indigenous Namibian tribes to live in assigned tribal areas in the northern third of the country and required passes for movement within the country. The Ovambos were the main group of indigenous people, making up close to half the population, and inhabited the area called Ovamboland. The South African government had imposed a contract labor law system on all indigenous people.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Regarding the First Intifada as "nonviolent" is controversial because of the violence that accompanied the campaign. Aden Tedla's narrative does not try to hide the violent dimension. Three considerations lead us to include the case in this database. First, a significant part of the campaign leadership worked very hard to keep the campaign nonviolent. Second, the masses participated in the nonviolent methods, not in the violence. Third, other scholars in the field of nonviolent action include the Intifada, although acknowledging its ambiguities.

The Pashtuns are a Muslim group that occupied the North-West Frontier of British India, the area near present day Afghanistan. This area was occupied by the British in 1848 and divided into two areas. In one area, districts were established and made under British control. The other area was a tribal area where the people lived semi-independent lives without much influence from the British. In 1902, both the settled districts and the tribal region were consolidated into the “North-West Frontier Province” by the British Empire.

The Soviet forces that liberated Poland from Nazi occupation after World War II installed a government under which workers, employed by state-owned businesses, could not organize or represent themselves. During the 1970s, frustration with the one-party system grew and by the end of the decade, the Polish economy was near collapse.

On June 30, 1980, the government announced a 'reorganization of meat distribution' which resulted in an immediate 60% price increase and greater difficulty in obtaining meat.

The San Francisco general strike grew out of a coast-wide maritime strike in which ports up and down the west coast of the United States were closed by striking workers. While there were complaints about wages and working conditions, the strikers (headed by the International Longshoremen’s Association) were committed to workplace democracy, calling for worker control of unions and hiring and a coast-wide industrial organization inclusive of unskilled workers, skilled workers, and workers of all races and nationalities.

In the late 19th century, Russia’s autocracy, led by a Tsar (also czar), came under increasing attack. Alexander II was forced to liberate the serfs, but he was still assassinated in 1881 by a group called The People’s Will. His heir, Tsar Alexander III was badly shaken by this and launched a massive crackdown. In 1894, Nicholas II became Tsar and attempted to make a number of liberal reforms. For most, however, the reforms didn’t go far enough. In addition, a disastrous war with Japan from 1904-1905 shattered confidence in the Tsar’s ability to rule.

During his first seven years as president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic led the country into several wars with Croatia and Bosnia and isolated it internationally. While he spent money on the country’s secret police and military, unemployment reached as high as 50 percent before 1996. Citizens led several anti-war and pro-democracy campaigns in the early ‘90s, but failed due to lack of outside support. Opposition groups continued both violent and non-violent struggles against the regime, but neither was having any success.

Beginning in the year 1944, French West Africa experienced economic difficulties. Prices continued to augment, while salaries remained the same. This was complicated by the fact that insufficient sales (because of the poor salaries) also affected the wages of the workers. Wanting an increase in wages, on December 22, 1945, the workers of the ports of the French Company in the city of Dakar organized a strike. The workers from the printing shops of Dakar and the Senegalese electrical factory in Saint Louis joined in the strike.

The Seattle General Strike was the first general strike in the U.S. and marked the beginning of a post-WWI era of labor conflict.

The general strike in Ådalen, Sweden, in 1931 was part of a much larger industrial struggle between the Swedish Employers’ Federation (SAF) and the Swedish Union Federation (LO), a struggle that had been continuing since the late 19th century, if not longer.

“This is how every worker feels it: with varying degrees of clarity they feel themselves living at a moment that could be decisive for their class, a moment in which all can be staked, everything risked, and perhaps everything lost.

Before 1973, Uruguay had been one of few countries in South America with a near perfect record of political stability and a strong democracy (others included Chile and Costa Rica). The military coup in 1973 came as a profound shock to Uruguay. To make matters worse, this once peaceful nation was now living under a regime that used fear, threat, and intimidation to keep control of its populace.

Zanzibar, a former colony of Great Britain, is an island off the coast of Tanzania, located in East Africa. Under British rule the population of Zanzibar was divided between small but influential groups of Arabs, Indians, and Europeans and the two larger, primary groups on the island: those Africans born on Zanzibar itself and those born on the mainland of Tanzania, who later immigrated.

Following World War I, Canada was suffering massive unemployment and inflation. A wave of unsuccessful strikes across Canada, the 1917 overthrow of the Tsarist regime in Russia, and the growth of revolutionary industrial unionism created an atmosphere of labor unrest in a country that had almost no labor regulations. 

In March 1919, diverse labor leaders met in Calgary in Western Canada to discuss the creation of an industrial union to be called the One Big Union to work for higher wages, improved working conditions, official union recognition and collective bargaining.

During the Cold War era, Albanians endured the totalitarian rule of Enver Hoxha. When Hoxha died in 1985, Ramiz Alia took over a Communist country with a history of repression and burdened by massive debt, poverty, and widespread underdevelopment. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and facing mounting pressure from the Albanian populace, Alia instituted modest political reforms in early 1991 and on March 31 held the Albania’s first free and open elections in 60 years.

The Basotho Congress Party came into power in the democratic elections of 1993. Lesotho, a kingdom, possessed a system of government that was characterized by the presence of both a monarch and elected officials. The monarch at the time of the elections, King Letsie III, made an attempt to persuade the newly elected BCP government to reinstate his father, King Moshoeshoe II, as king. King Moshoeshoe had previously been exiled for trying to amend the constitution to allocate more power to the throne.

Luis Fortuño was elected governor of Puerto Rico in the 2008 general election. Fortuño was very popular within his own party, the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico (PNP), and his popularity continued over to the election for governor. On November 4, 2008, Fortuño won the election for governor by 220,000 votes, which was the largest margin of victory in over 40 years.

The Togolese President Gnassingbé Eyadema came to power in 1967 after he led the army in a bloodless coup to take over the previously multi-party government.  By 1990, Eyadema had been president for 23 years and had banned all political parties except for his Rally of the Togolese People.  President Eyadema had been able to keep the country’s economy relatively stable at the same time as he put many of his Kabye tribe members into top government and military posts.  Nearly 70% of all members of the military were from the Kabye tribe, despite the fact that the Ewe tribe repres

For three months in 2009, opposition groups in Niger protested President Mamadou Tandja’s attempts to change the constitution so as to allow him a third five-year term in office (extending past December when his mandate was supposed to expire). President Tandja ordered a referendum on the matter to take place in early August. The Front for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) led most of the protests and strikes.

In the beginning of 2002, many workers in Macedonia – both private and public sector – were unhappy with their salaries and benefits. In the private sector, many industries were not making a profit, and as yet, had no security regarding future employment; their unions had proposed early retirement for the 37,000 workers at issue, but the government claimed that they did not have sufficient money to enable such a solution.

Following the end of World War I, Trinidadians faced unfair labor policies and low wages.  They also dealt with inflation and racism.  Unhappy Trinidadians formed the Trinidad Workingmen’s Association (TWA) in response to the problems they faced.  The TWA advocated for the working class in Trinidad and agitated for higher wages.   

In the late nineteenth century, the Argentinian working class had gained greater self-identification during the economic crisis of 1898–1904, when labor strikes – an unknown phenomenon up to then – unleashed the rapid expansion of labor organizing and labor unions, and the national FORA (Regional Argentinian Workers' Federation) was created. In the first decade of the 20th century, union actions were met with extreme repression by the state, which proved incapable of responding through conciliation, leading to general strikes in 1902, 1904, and 1906.

Yemen is a country of over 20 million people located in West Asia, at the intersection of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.  After a history of being one country it experienced three centuries of separation into North and South, most recently divided between the Ottoman and British empires early in the 20th century.  

The country finally united again in 1990, when the north and south merged and became the Republic of Yemen.  The parliament of each former nation elected the new president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, as it formed the new government.

After over seven years of a harsh and bloody war between Algeria’s socialist National Liberation Front (FLN) and the French military, Algeria had finally claimed its independence from France in 1962.  However, internal turmoil among the state’s leaders threatened to disrupt the country’s peace. At a FLN party congress in late May 1962, one of the leading FLN members, Ahmed Ben Bella, convinced the FLN to vote out the government-in-exile, the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA), and its leader Ben Youssef Ben Khedda.  

Wallis and Futuna is an overseas department of France situated in the Pacific, 225 miles west of Samoa and 300 miles northeast of Fiji.  The islands’ population stands at around 15,000 people.  Between February and June of 1994, the Force Ouvrière union on Wallis and Futuna organized strikes for a variety of demands chiefly dealing with the high cost of living and the lack of a public educational option in primary school.