On this day, 12 July 1979, Olive Morris, feminist, squatter and activist in the Brixton Black Panthers, died aged just 27. Born in Jamaica, Morris moved to the UK aged 9 to be with her forklift operator father and factory shop steward mother. One of her earliest political actions was at 17 when she intervened when police in Brixton, south London, were arresting a Black man for an alleged parking offence. She was racially abused and physically attacked by officers, then arrested, fined and given a three-month suspended sentence for two years. In her short life, Morris played a leading role in radical movements in Britain, getting involved with and helping found numerous groups and projects like the Black Women's Mutual Aid Group. She also was critical of the white left and union movement, which spouted rhetoric about "unity". But in reality, at employers like Standard Telephones and Cables, they defended practices like lower pay for Black workers, and scabbed on Black workers' strikes. About single issue anti-fascist groups, Morris said: “Not a single problem associated with racialism, unemployment, police violence and homelessness can be settled by ‘rocking’ against the fascists, the police or the army… The fight against racism and fascism is completely bound up with the fight to overthrow capitalism, the system that breeds both.” In 1978, she became unwell, and was then diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. She succumbed the following year. More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8405/olive-morris-dies * If you value our social media posts be sure to check out our podcasts. In our flagship longform podcast, Working Class History, we speak with participants in social movements about their experiences, and our daily mini podcast, On This Day in Working Class History, has one of our anniversaries each day. We also have a website and map containing thousands of our stories with full sources. Access these through https://workingclasshistory.com/ All of our work is funded by you, our readers and listeners, on Patreon. To learn more and support us visit https://patreon.com/workingclasshistory

On this day, 8 July 1972 Palestinian novelist and communist Ghassan Kanafani was killed along with his teenage niece, Lamees Najim, in a bomb attack in Beirut in an act for which the Israeli intelligence service Mossad claimed responsibility. Kanafani had been forced to flee his home following the 1948 Nakba (the ethnic cleansing which accompanied the creation of the state of Israel), and live as a refugee in Syria. He began writing fiction, much of which looked at the lives of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. He stated: “My political position springs from my being a novelist. In so far as I am concerned, politics and the novel are an indivisible case and I can categorically state that I became politically committed because I am a novelist, not the opposite". He subsequently joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. His obituary in the Lebanon Daily Star described him as "a commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ball-point pen, and his arena the newspaper pages." Learn more about Palestinian history in these books: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/palestine

Ti faccio una proposta che non potrai rifiutare 💡

diffondete la voce per farla arrivare a chi possa essere interessato! Avrei intenzione di organizzare un primo incontro su Zoom col formato obbligato di 40 minuti e poi, semmai, a distanza di alcuni giorni anche un secondo incontro, sia in base a quanto si arriva a dire nel primo, sia in base alle adesioni. Idealmente, sarebbe bello avere un gruppetto di almeno cinque persone. Alla fine della seconda occasione conterei di farvi fare dei piccoli esercizi di lettura, naturalmente solo per chi vorrà!