Voices of 1968. Documents from the Global North

Voices of 1968
Documents from the Global North

Edited by Salar Mohandesi, Bjarke Skærlund Risager, Laurence Cox

Voices of 1968. Documents from the Global North

The year 1968 witnessed one of the great upheavals of the twentieth century, as social movements shook every continent. Across the Global North, people rebelled against post-war conformity and patriarchy, authoritarian education and factory work, imperialism and the Cold War. They took over workplaces and universities, created their own media, art and humour, and imagined another world. The legacy of 1968 lives on in many of today’s struggles, yet it is often misunderstood and caricatured.

Voices of 1968 is a vivid collection of original texts from the movements of the long 1968. We hear these struggles in their own words, showing their creativity and diversity. We see feminism, black power, anti-war activism, armed struggle, indigenous movements, ecology, dissidence, counter-culture, trade unionism, radical education, lesbian and gay struggles, and more take the stage.

Chapters cover France, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland, Britain, the USA, Canada, Italy, West Germany, Denmark, Mexico, Yugoslavia and Japan. Introductory essays frame the rich material – posters, speeches, manifestos, flyers, underground documents, images and more – to help readers explore the era’s revolutionary voices and ideas and understand their enduring impact on society, culture and politics today.

Author Biography

Salar Mohandesi is an Assistant Professor of History at Bowdoin College and a founding editor of Viewpoint Magazine. His current project, From Anti-Imperialism to Human Rights, traces the history of transnational anti-Vietnam War activism.

Bjarke Skærlund Risager is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography & Planning, University of Toronto where he works on a project on resistance to gentrification and precarity under post-industrialisation. He recently co-edited Property Claims: What Disagreement Tells us about Ownership (Routledge, 2018). He is the co-editor of Revolution in the Air?: 1968 in the Global North(Pluto, 2018).

Laurence Cox is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, National University of Ireland Maynooth. A long-time activist, he co-founded the social movement journal Interface and researches popular struggles for a better world. He is co-author of We Make Our Own History: Marxism, Social Movements and the Twilight of Neoliberalism (Pluto, 2014) and co-editor of Revolution in the Air?: 1968 in the Global North (Pluto, 2018).

Contents

Introduction

1. Canada
Introduction
Québec Liberation Front: Manifesto (1963)
Keith Bryne, Rosie Douglas, Elder Thébaud: Black Writers Congress: The Organizers Talk … (1968)
Native Alliance for Red Power: Program (1969)
Workers’ Unity: Salt of the Earth … Two for the Price of One (1971)

2. Czechoslovakia
Introduction
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’s Central Committee: Action Programme (1968)
Ludvík Vaculík: Two Thousand Words that Belong to Workers, Farmers, Officials, Scientists, Artists, and Everybody (1968)
Minister of the Interior for the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the City Council and the Minister of the Interior for the National Front: Dear Citizens (1968)
Aktual (Milan Knížák): Russians, Go Home! (1968)
Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia: Proclamation Adopted at the Opening of the Congress (1968)
A Letter from Jan Palach addressed to the Union of Czechoslovak Writers (1968)

3. Denmark
Introduction
Ole Grünbaum: Emigrate (1968)
Erland Kolding Nielsen: Democracy or Student Rule? (1968)
Lisbeth Dehn Holgersen, Åse Lading, Ninon Schloss & Marie-Louise Svane: Something is happening, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? (1970)
Jacob Ludvigsen, The military’s “forbidden city” on Christianshavn was quietly taken by common civilians (1971)

4. France
Introduction
l’Avant-garde Jeunesse: Report on Anti-Imperialist Day (1968)
Action: Why We Are Fighting (1968)
Fredy Perlman: Liberated Censier (1968)
The Young Workers at the Factory: Long Live the Agreement of the Masses (1968)
Manifesto of the 343 (1971)

5. Great Britain
Introduction
Dave Slaney: The occupation of LSE (1968)
J.W.: Network: or How We beat the Gallery System (1969)
International Times: “People Round about Living in Fear” (1970)
Black Women’s Action Committee: The Oppressed of the Oppressed (1971)
Gay Liberation Front: Manifesto (1971)

6. Italy
Introduction
The Sapienza Theses (1967)
Renato Curcio: Manifesto for a Negative University (1967)
Anonymous: leaflet for the Valle Giulia protest (1968)
Workers’ Power: Lessons from the Revolt in France (1968)
Lucio Magri: Prague Stands Alone (1969)
Workers’ Committee of Porto Marghera: By Working We Produce Capital (1970)
Red Brigade (sic): Communique no. 3 (1970)
Women’s Struggle Movement of Padua: Document no. 1 (1971)

7. Japan
Introduction
Akiyama Katsuyuki: To the Fighting Students and Workers of All Japan and the Whole World, (1967)
Asahi Shinbun: No Police Warning: Riot Police Beat Citizens As Well (1968)
Red Army Faction: Declaration of War (1969)
Oda Makoto: Interview (1969)
Tanaka Mitsu: Liberation from the Toilet (1970)

8. Mexico
Introduction
National Strike Committee: List of demands (1968)
Gilberto Guevara Nieble, Ana Ignacia Rodriguez and Maria Alice Martnez Medrano: Eyewitness accounts (1968)
Jaime Sabines: Tlatelolco 1968 (1968)

9. Northern Ireland
Introduction
Campaign for Social Justice: Londonderry: one man, one vote (1965)
Derry Housing Action Committee: ‘68 DHAC ‘69 (1969)
Russell Kerr, John Ryan and Anne Kerr: Three eyewitnesses report on Londonderry (1968)
Bowes Egan and Vincent McCormack: Burntollet (1969)
Paddy Doherty and Nell McCafferty: Battle of the Bogside (2004 interviews on 1969)
“A republican in the Civil Rights Movement”: Britain and the barricade (1969)
Devlin in the US (tbc)

10. United States
Introduction
Paul Potter: Vietnam War Speech (1965)
The Black Panther Party: Ten-Point Program (1967)
The Diggers: Trip Without a Ticket (1967)
Tom Hayden: 2, 3, Many Columbias (1968)
Redstockings: Manifesto (1969)
Young Lords Party: 13-Point program (1970)

11. West Germany
Introduction
Michael Vester: The Strategy of Direct Action (1965)
Rudi Dutschke and Hans-Jürgen Krahl: Self-Denial Requires a Guerrilla Mentality (1967)
Dutschke Shooting (1968)
Kommune 1: Why are you Burning, Consumer? (1967)
Women’s Council of the Frankfurt Group: Liberate the Socialist Notables from their Bourgeois Pricks! (1968)
TBC (1969)

12. Yugoslavia
Introduction
Demonstrators’ Action Committee and Students’ Assembly in Student City: Resolution of the Student Demonstration (1968)
Members of the Rally, Students and Professors: Comrade Workers, Citizens, and Youth (1968)
Plenum of the University Committee of the Student Union at the University of Belgrade, University Committee of the League of Communists at the University of Belgrade and the Student Action Committee of All Faculties, Colleges and Academies in Belgrade: Political Action Programme (1968)
Proclamation of the Revolutionary Students of the Socialist University “Seven Secretaries of the Young Communist League” (1968)
Discussion held by the General Assembly of the Philosophy and Sociology Faculty (1968)
Further reading

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