1919 - strikes, struggles and soviets

The Jewish community in Germany has been advised by their government not to wear the kippah in public in case they become targets of antisemitic attacks.

Antisemitic hate crimes have risen 20% in the last year and nine out of ten cases have been blamed on the extreme right. Concerns have also been raised about the growth in support for the far right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) within the ranks of the German army and police force - traditional breeding grounds for right wing authoritarianism.

On 13 April 1919, in Amritsar in the Punjab, India, 50 soldiers under the command of the British General Dyer opened fire on a crowd gathering in the Jallainwala Bagh – a garden-cum-open area popular for meetings and social or religious gatherings.

Many of the crowd were there to celebrate Vaisakhi, the Sikh New Year. No one was armed, there were no disturbances, it was peaceful.

The British authorities put the number of dead at 379, with more than a thousand injured. The actual number of fatalities will never be known.

As 1919 began, working-class people in Britain and many other countries looked forward to leaving the Great War behind them and rebuilding their lives.

The ‘Great War’ was finally over. When it had begun in August 1914, the British government predicted that it would be won by Christmas, but it had dragged on for four more years, with dreadful suffering and loss of life. In 1916, Britain began conscripting its men to fight.

Now that the fighting was done, the soldiers expected to go home to their civilian lives. Lloyd George had induced then to vote for him by pledging rapid demobilisation.

11 November 1918 had been merely an armistice. The war would not be officially over until peace terms had been negotiated.

The victorious Allied countries began six months of talks in Paris in January 1919, before compelling Germany to sign the treaty that ended the war at Versailles on 28 June.

The British left hailed the Russian revolution in 1917.

On 18 January 1919 in London, a mass meeting launched the ‘Hands Off Russia’ campaign to oppose British military intervention in support of the White armies’ attack on Bolshevik Russia. The campaign’s National Committee brought together the scattered sections of the British left: the British Socialist Party, Independent Labour Party, Workers’ Socialist Federation and Socialist Labour Party.

This would be the year in which the capitalist state rigorously enforced the role of the police, purging them of rebels, ensuring their loyalty and cutting any link between them and the workers’ movement. The events of 1919 shaped the police force we have now: an obedient enforcer of the system’s interests.

1918 had ended with British women voting in a general election for the first time ever. But it was only those aged 30 or over and who met a property qualification who could vote.

After Britain and its Allies had won the war, proclaiming themselves champions of freedom and democracy, the people of its imperial possessions stepped up their democratic demand for some of that freedom for themselves.

India

In its largest colony, India, Britain imposed the Rowlatt Act, extending wartime powers of indefinite imprisonment without trial. It prompted anger and rebellion, against both the Act and continuing British rule.