Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the notorious attack of 4th of May 1886 at a workers rally in Chicago when somebody threw a bomb that killed a policeman, Mathias J. Degan. The chaotic shooting that followed left more people dead and sent shockwaves across America and Europe. This was in Haymarket Square at a protest for an eight hour working day following a call for a general strike and the police killing of striking workers the day before, at a time when labour relations in America were marked by violent conflict. The bomber was never identified but two of the speakers at the rally, both of then anarchists and six of their supporters were accused of inciting murder. Four of them, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons, and August Spies were hanged on 11th November 1887 only to be pardoned in the following years while a fifth, Louis Ling, had killed himself after he was convicted. The May International Workers Day was created in their memory. With Ruth Kinna Professor of Political Theory at Loughborough University Christopher Phelps Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Nottingham And Gary Gerstle Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton University Press, 1984) Henry David, The History of the Haymarket Affair (Collier Books, 1963) James Green, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America (Pantheon, 2006) Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), especially 'Haymarket and the Rise of Syndicalism' by Kenyon Zimmer Franklin Rosemont and David Roediger, Haymarket Scrapbook: 125th Anniversary Edition (AK Press, 2012) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
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On the 4th of May 1886, at a workers rally in Chicago, somebody threw a bomb that killed a policeman and the chaotic shooting that followed left more people dead and sent shockwaves across America and Europe.
This was in Haymarket Square at a protest for an 8 hour working day following a call for a general strike.
The bomber was never identified, but two of the speakers at the rally, anarchists, and six of their supporters were blamed as inciting murder and four of them were hanged.
The May International Workers Day was created in their memory.
With me to discuss the Haymarket affair are Ruth Kinner, professor of Political Theory at Loughborough University, Christopher Phelps, Associate professor of American Studies at the University of Nottingham, and Gary Gerstel, Paul Mellon, professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge.
Gary, there have been tensions growing in America between workers and industry for some time.
Can you highlight how it had arrived at the point it talking about?
Well, the 19th century was the century of industrialization led by Britain and the world.
America began that century on the periphery.
But during and after the Civil War began to industrialize at a ferocious rate.
Capitalist development was unregulated, it was raw, it was rapid.
And if you leave capitalists and their industries to their own devices, you get a cycle of boom and bust.
Inequality is spreading.