May '68-The Fire Last Time

cork | anti-capitalism | event notice Tuesday April 29, 2008 20:05 by Joe Moore - Socialist Workers Party mapuche at eircom dot net 087-2994796

Public Meeting

A public meeting marking the 40th anniversary of May 1968 will be held on Thursday 8th May at 8.00pm in the Victoria Hotel, Patrick St., Cork. The speaker is Paul O'Brien, author of "Shelly and Revolutionary Ireland."

This year marks the 40th anniversary of 1968. The events of 1968 developed at a hectic pace. The Ford sewing machinist's strike for equal pay launched the women's movement in Britain, and in Northern Ireland the civil rights movement was born.

The real truth about 1968 was an unwelcome one for our rulers and their hangers-on. The oppressed showed they could fight back-and sometimes that they could win.

In the US, civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, was shot and killed. He had gone to Memphis to support a strike by refuse workers, and had called for a general strike in the city.

The possibility of the civil rights movement linking up with working class struggle posed a terrible threat to the whole system.

The centres of world power were now shaken. The war in Vietnam was causing huge upheavals inside the US. Riots had followed King's murder.

When the Democratic Convention met in Chicago in August, a huge anti-war demonstration was brutally attacked by police.

In October, civil rights demonstrators in Derry protesting at anti-Catholic discrimination, were attacked with clubs and water cannon. Police then rampaged through the Catholic Bogside district. It was the start of a new phase of struggle.

Similar examples could be accumulated from all around the world. 1968 initiated a decade of struggle, with massive working class movements in France, Italy, Britain, Portugal, Poland, Iran and elsewhere. A new generation built militant movements for women's and gay rights, against racism and war.

Much has changed since 1968. The sexist and racist ideas that were then commonplace have been pushed back, though not thoroughly uprooted.

In 1968, we wanted to smash a system based on war and racism, on inequality, oppression and exploitation. We still do. In the words of the Paris students' slogan, "Be realistic. Demand the impossible."