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Remember the Pentonville Five, when workers' solidarity shook the system
ROGER SUTTON reflects on the mass action that freed imprisoned dockers on this day in 1972, which is to be commemorated later this year in an event drawing parallels with the struggles of workers today
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IN the blazing of summer of 1972 mass working-class action forced the release of the five docker shop stewards.
In the last week of July, the action being taken by workers reached its highest point and, as a massive march reached Pentonville prison in north London on July 26, the gates of the grim Victorian jail were opened and let out the five.
Workers had been walking off jobs across the country. Solid strike action had turned over the ruling-class attempt to smash unions.
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ROGER SUTTON highlights the significance of May Day for working people and argues that here in Britain May 1 ought to be a bank holiday, as it is in many places around the world
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Our unbroken tradition of marching from Clerkenwell Green on May 1 is a testament to the unity and resolve that is needed to fight the class struggle, writes ROGER SUTTON
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Today is a day for emphasising our unity, not our divisions, writes ROGER SUTTON, organiser of the London May Day Organising Committee
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Roger Sutton remembers a stevedore and a class fighter, jailed for picketing — then released after a mass working-class campaign
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The Star publishes the Karl Marx Graveside Oration delivered by Lord JOHN HENDY KC at Highgate Cemetery on Sunday, on behalf of the Marx Memorial Library
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LORD JOHN HENDY KC explains how the events of ’84-5 were an ideological assault unleashed on the working class in revenge for gains of the ’70s