Cuban Popular Resistance to the 1953 London Sugar Agreement

In 1953, faced with a catastrophic fall in the price of sugar, representatives of the major sugar producing and consuming nations of the world met in London to agree a mechanism for stabilising the international sugar market. Cuba was heavily dependent on the export of sugar and any change in either the price received for the sugar crop, or the amount that could be sold, had a huge effect on the island's economy. Despite having failed to diversify its economy into other areas to any great extent, by the 1950s Cuba had two independent markets for its sugar exports, one provided by the United States quota system and the other being the so-called ‘world market'. However, when the political threat of a reduction in the US quota coincided with a heavy fall in the price on the world market, the Cuban sugar industry faced a crisis. The Cuban government, which had come to power in a military coup in March 1952, had more economic problems to solve than just the falling price of sugar. A report for the World Bank had recommended wage cuts, easier dismissal regulations and mechanisation of industry as part of a package to raise productivity and increase profitability by reducing the share of the national income that went to labour. Cuban workers had a long tradition of militant defence of their wages and conditions, and so any attempt to increase productivity – which would have resulted in increased unemployment and lower standards of living for Cuban workers – required an authoritarian regime capable of overcoming resistance from the trade unions. Given the importance of sugar for the economy, any attempt to generally increase profitability could not succeed unless profits from sugar could be maintained, which in turn was dependent upon arresting the fall in world prices. The method chosen to implement the cut in exports, as required by the London Sugar Agreement, was to cut production by shortening the harvesting period. This served the double objective of reducing the amount of sugar on the world market, while reducing the plantation owners' wage bill because the cane cutters were only paid during the actual harvest. Such an approach, given the militant traditions of the sugar workers, would bring the Batista regime into direct confrontation with the sugar workers and lead to their biggest strike for 20 years. As both the London Sugar Agreement and the sugar workers' strike of 1955 are largely ignored in modern historiography, this paper traces the course of events and argues that, in an economy dominated by an industry that was so dependent on international market conditions, the contradiction between the needs of capital and labour would give the Cuban workers good reason to support the revolution in 1959. Starting from a discussion of the detailed relationship between sugar price fluctuations and the crisis in the Cuban economy, it can be seen how this led to participation in the London Sugar Agreement. The fact that this in turn brought the government and employers into conflict with the sugar workers requires an explanation of Cuban working-class politics and traditions of struggle. Before recounting the details of the 1955 strike, the paper continues with an analysis of the US sugar-quota system and an explanation of the manner in which American domestic politics exacerbated the already grave problems of the Cuban sugar industry. Finally, it argues that the different perceptions of the sugar workers and their employers as to the outcome of the strike led to increased working-class support for the revolutionary forces at the same time as many capitalist interests became disillusioned with the dictatorship

A Working-class Heroine Is Also Something To Be: The Untold Story of Cuban Railway Workers and the Struggle against Batista

When researching the biographical details of working class women, we are not only faced with that "enormous condescension of history" which EP Thompson criticized when writing about the history of working class movements, we also find that working class women are doubly "hidden from history" by the assumption that organised labour is male. However in Cuba in the 1950s, there were many important strikes which were initiated and sustained by women workers. When a group of office workers from the central Cuban town of Camagüey, the principal hub of the railway network covering the eastern part of the island, first heard of their employers' intention to impose wage cuts and redundancies, these women launched a wave of resistance by picketing the train drivers and maintenance engineers. The story of the railway women of Camagüey encourages us to look more closely into other working class struggles to seek the contributions made by women. The paper will examine the part played by working class women in the fight against the Batista dictatorship for, in addition to the women of Camagüey, we can find examples of militant activity from shop workers who started at least two town-wide general strikes and female office workers in the electrical supply industry who led demonstrations in a fight over trade union democracy. Sugar and dock workers' families organised vital solidarity action in the face of police violence, while women frequently took over picketing when their menfolk had to go into hiding to avoid being forced to return to work at gunpoint. The paper will argue that women workers, while only 10 percent of the Cuban workforce in the 1950s, played a part in the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship out of all proportion to their numbers

The 1941 miners' strike in northern France: from a dispute over soap to armed resistance

In Northern France in 1941, while under German military occupation, 100,000 miners went on strike from the 27th May to the 9th June. This strike not only cost the German war machine half a million tonnes of coal, but also had long-term consequences for the development of the Resistance in the area. Starting from a dispute with their employers over working conditions, the reality of living under Nazi occupation soon gave the struggle a political dimension, convincing the miners that their social aspirations were inextricably linked to the outcome of the war, thereby preparing the ground for what was to arguably become the most active underground resistance movement in wartime France. In organising a strike to resist the employers' offensive in the mines, rather as they might have done in times of peace, the miners showed everyone, themselves included, that the defeat of Nazi Germany was an essential prerequisite for any social progress. They thereby started a process that built a Resistance movement in the region that everyone had to recognise as second to none. Given the overwhelming level of collaboration amongst the French employing class and the way they used the German authorities to repress their employees, rather in the same way as other groups of employers elsewhere used their own native fascist organisations, the social question cannot be disentangled from the national question. Those who would keep the analysis of the Second World War restricted to a conventional war between two rival power blocks have only understood half the problem. The question of democracy and the struggle against fascism cannot be forgotten as a Nazi German victory would have meant the smashing of all working class organisation and this gave workers on the continent another motivation to resist and also gives the analysis of the war another complication. The collaboration of the employing class gave the Second World War an element of civil war which many commentators wish to forget. The strike gives valuable insights into the process whereby workers in struggle under repressive regimes move from industrial action to the armed struggle and parallels miners' actions in the Ludlow and Harlan County strikes in the USA, the Asturian Miners in 1934 and the Bolivian miners in the 1950s

Las reclamaciones de James J. O'Kelly al parlamento británico por la fuga de José Maceo hacia Gibraltar

In 1882, José Maceo, one of the leaders of the rebel side in the first Cuban War of Independence, known as the "10 Years War" (1868-1878), along with two comrades had managed to escape from incarceration in Cadiz, fled to Tangier in North Africa and there boarded a steamer for Gibraltar on route to the United States. However, once landed in Gibraltar, then a British colony, they were brought before the Chief of Police who, despite their protestations that they were political prisoners and in contravention of British law and international treaties, handed them over to the Guardia Civil. All three were subsequently re-imprisoned. This injustice, which was to cause a great deal of embarrassment to the Liberal government of William Gladstone, would probably have been quickly forgotten if it were not for the persistence of an Irish Nationalist Member of Parliament, James Joseph O'Kelly. O'Kelly, a member of the Fenian Brotherhood, had worked as a journalist in Cuba during the 10 Years War and had narrowly escaped being hanged by the Spanish colonists who accused him of fighting for the rebels. He saw parallels between the Spanish occupation of Cuba and the British in Ireland and used his campaign to obtain justice for the rebel General to attack what he saw as his main enemy, the British Empire. This chapter, based on material from the British National Archives, examines James Joseph O'Kelly's intervention in this episode in Cuban history and will discuss the wider implications of international solidarity in the face of nineteenth century imperialis

La perspectiva británica sobre el régimen de Batista

La correspondencia diplomática británica de los años mil novecientos cincuenta nos muestra el apoyo que el gobierno inglés dio a la dictadura de Batista, pero también pone en evidencia un cambio de posición muy rápido después de la victoria de la revolución

Injecting immediacy into media logic: re(interpreting) the mediatizaton of politics on UK television newscasts 1991-2013

This study of UK evening newscasts (1991–2013) interprets the degree to which political news has become mediatised, drawing on the concept of journalistic interventionism to explore edited and live conventions. News examined generally offered little evidence of mediatisation. But when live news was isolated and interpreted over time the study found newscasts were injected with a logic of immediacy, adopting a level of interventionism apparent in instant and rolling news formats. To better understand the mediatisation of politics, future studies could experiment more by theorising different media logics and developing more format specific content indicators that reflect broader influences in journalism

Using public opinion to serve journalistic narratives: Rethinking vox pops and live two-way reporting in five UK election campaigns (2009-2017)

The news media are often accused of reporting politics in a too narrow and consensual way, excluding certain perspectives and issues that might better reflect the public’s agenda. This study lends weight to this argument by not only demonstrating the party political focus of UK election coverage but also in the misleading way public opinion was, at times, represented. Analysing 6647 items and/or stories in the largest ever content analysis study of 4613 sources across five first- and second-order election campaigns in the United Kingdom, it comprehensively tracks how citizens and journalists appear in television news, as well as developing a finely grained, qualitative assessment of how public opinion was represented during the 2017 election campaign. Overall, the study found that political parties received the most amount of airtime, but in some election campaigns members of the public appeared in coverage more often than politicians. However, they were mostly granted limited airtime to articulate their views in vox pops. During the 2017 election campaign, the study found the editorial construction of public opinion in vox pops and live journalistic two-ways was shaped by a relatively narrow set of assumptions made by political journalists about the public’s ideological views rather than consulting more objective measures of public opinion. So, for example, voters were portrayed as favouring more right- than left-wing policies despite evidence to the contrary. The use of citizens as sources is theorised as serving the pre-conceived narratives of journalists rather than reflecting a representative picture of public opinion. The study reinforces and advances academic debates about journalists and citizen-source interactions. More accurately engaging with people’s concerns, it is concluded, will help move broadcasters beyond the narrow set of assumptions that typically serve their narratives of political coverage

Think tanks, television news and impartiality: The ideological balance of sources in BBC programming

Is the use of think tanks ideologically balanced in BBC news and current affairs programming? This study empirically answers this question by establishing which think tanks are referenced in different BBC programming in 2009 and 2015, and then classifying them according to their ideological aims (either left, right, centrist or notpartisan). We draw on a sample size of over 30,000 BBC news and current affairs programmes in 2009 and 2015 to measure how often these think tanks were mentioned or quoted. Overall, BBC news reveals a clear preference for non-partisan or centrist think tanks. However, when Labour were in power in 2009, left and right-leaning think tanks received similar levels of coverage, but in 2015, when the Conservatives were in government, right-leaning think tanks outnumbered left-leaning think tanks by around two to one.. Overall, our findings add weight to a pattern emerging from a number of recent academic studies that show, despite its undoubted commitment to impartiality, BBC news programming has shifted its centre of gravity to the right. We argue that broadcasters need to be more independently aware of how stories emerge, and how issues and sources should be balanced and explained in an increasingly partisan news environment

Impartiality, statistical tit-for tats and the construction of balance: UK television news reporting of the 2016 EU referendum campaign

There has been greater news industry recognition in recent years that impartiality should not be translated into simply balancing the competing sides of a debate or issue. The binary nature of a referendum campaign represents a unique moment to consider whether broadcasters have put this into practice beyond routine political reporting. This study examines how impartiality was editorially interpreted in television news coverage during the United Kingdom’s 2016 European Union referendum. We carried out a systematic content analysis of the United Kingdom’s main evening bulletins over the 10-week campaign, examining the issues and sources shaping coverage, as well as all the statistical claims made by campaign actors. Our aim was to critically examine how notions of impartiality were constructed and interpreted, exploring any operational limits and political consequences. Overall, we found that news bulletins maintained a fairly strict adherence to a central binary balance between issues and actors during the campaign. But this binary was politically inflected, with a significant imbalance in party political perspectives, presenting us with a right-wing rather than a left-wing case for European Union membership. We also found that independent expert analysis and testimony was sucked into the partisan binary between leave and remain campaigners, while journalists were reluctant to challenge or contextualise claims and counter-claims. Journalists were, in this sense, constrained by the operational definition of impartiality adopted by broadcasters. We argue for a more evidence-driven approach to impartiality, where journalists independently explore the veracity of campaign claims and have the editorial freedom to challenge them. We also suggest that the reliance on claims and counter-claims by leading Conservative politicians did little to advance public understanding of the European Union, and helped perpetuate a series of long-standing negative associations the British media have been reporting for many decades