Today in History July 31, 1703: The authorities placed write Daniel Defoe in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel. They did it because he published a politically satirical pamphlet. Instead of stones, people pelted him with flowers. Defoe’s most famous book, “Robinson Crusoe,” (1719) has been translated more than any other book in history, other than the Bible. He also wrote “Moll Flanders,” and “A Journal of a Plague Year.” In 1702, William III died. His successor, Queen Anne, immediately went on the offensive against nonconformists. Defoe was a natural target because of his pamphlets and political writings. She arrested him principally for his 1702 pamphlet, “The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters. Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church.” In this tract, he argued, satirically, for their extermination. He also ruthlessly satirized both high church Tories and those Dissenters who hypocritically practiced “occasional conformity.”
Today in History July 31, 1916: Electricity workers went on strike in Mexico City, launching a General Strike.
1900s-1910s
Today in Labor History July 31, 1921: Peter Benenson was born. He was an English lawyer and activist and founder of Amnesty International.
Today in Labor History July 31, 1922: A General Strike against Fascism began in Italy, running from July 31 to August 2. Socialists led the strike, which the fascists defeated. Rudolph Rocker, an Anarcho-Syndicalist of the period, said: “… the democratic government armed the Fascist hordes and throttled this last attempt at the defense of freedom and right. But Italian democracy had dug its own grave. It thought it could use Mussolini as a tool against the workers, but thus it became its own grave-digger.”
1960s
Today in Labor History July 31, 1968: Students protested the Olympics in Mexico City. They occupied schools and began a General Strike. Cops violently attacked them. The violence culminated with the Tlatelolco massacre, October 2. As a result, the cops slaughtered 350-400 people. They arrested and tortured thousands.
Alejandro Jodorowsky dramatized the massacre in his amazing film, “The Holy Mountain” (1973). In it, he showed birds, fruits, vegetables and other things falling and being ripped out of the wounds of the dying students. The late author, Roberto Bolaño, recounted the massacre in his novel “Amulet” (1999). He also retells the story in his novel, “The Savage Detectives.”
1970s
Today in Labor History July 31, 1970: Members of the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) went on strike over pay, pensions, the right to arbitration and the right to have agents. The strike lasted only two days, but inaugurated the NFLPA as a real union.
Today in Labor History July 31, 1972: In Operation Motorman, the British Army re-took the urban no-go areas of Northern Ireland (i.e., areas controlled by residents, including Republican paramilitaries). It was the biggest British military operation since the Suez Crisis of 1956, and the biggest in Ireland since the Irish War of Independence. The British used over 22,000 soldiers, including 27 infantry and 2 armored battalions. They also utilized several Centurion tanks. The Republican paramilitaries were not equipped for open battle on this scale and offered little resistance. The British shot several people in Derry, killing one. Later that day, nine civilians were killed by car bombs in the village of Claudy. Five of the victims were Catholic and four were Protestant.