The [Brentford] Trico women went out on strike ... After twenty-one weeks with production lines at a standstill Trico gave in. Dominic Sandbrook, The 70s III: Goodbye Great Britain 75-77, BBC 2012
The Day of Action was extended into weeks of action – dustmen, ambulance drivers, caretakers, bus drivers, road-gritters and many more began a series of rolling strikes that caused total chaos. Dominic Sandbrook, The 70s IV: The Winner Takes It All 77-79
It’s a fight we knew all too well in Flint, Michigan. For it was here that my uncle and his fellow workers first brought down the mighty corporate interest that dominated their lives. It was the day before New Year’s Eve 1936 and hundreds of men and women took over the GM factories in Flint and occupied them for forty-four days. They were the first union that beat an industrial corporation, and their actions eventually resulted in the creation of a middle class. Michael Moore, Capitalism: A Love Story
My uncle Vern was in something called the Great Flint sit-down strike. Just hours before the year’s end in 1936 he and thousands of other GM workers took over the Flint factories and barricaded themselves inside refusing to budge for forty-four days. The National Guard was called in. Michael Moore, Roger & Me, 1989
The owners of Bryant and May threatened the girls with instant dismissal if they didn’t sign a document repudiating the article [White Slavery in London] and the journalists ... A strike committee was formed ... George Bernard Shaw volunteered as the cashier of the strike fund ... Annie Besant and the girls were triumphant. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s3e2: Victoria and Her Sisters, BBC 2002
The miners are not broken – they continue to fight; their destiny is in your hands. An embargo on blackleg coal and a levy on all workers must be adopted to save the miners from defeat.
And to the miners who are fighting I say: Every honest worker in the world admires your courage and loyalty in the fight which was forced upon you by the rapacious mine-owners, who have at their service the banks, the press and the resources of the press. A J Cook, foreword to The Miners Struggle and the Big Five Banks
You know as well as I do the terrible conditions in the coalfields, and the suffering of the women and children. I have been compelled to do the most unpleasant tasks of begging for food, money, boots, and cast-off clothing. Practically every day young men, stranded, call for food, clothing and shelter at my office. I have done my best for them. Every day the post brings letters to me and Mrs Cook begging for help, especially from expectant mothers, terrible epistles of agony and despair.
I have heard their cry for help, and have done all I can to give assistance. I have helped all I can, begged all I can, till I have been almost demented and in despair, because I hate charity and reliefs which make us all beggars ...
I now want remedies instead of relief. The more poverty increases, the more our people sink into despair and become the hopeless prey of all the most reactionary influences and movements. A J Cook, open letter to Arthur Horner
Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America. John L Lewis
We have come too far – struggled too long – sacrificed too much and have too much left to do to allow that which we have achieved for the good of all to be swept away without a fight. And we have not forgotten how to fight. Lane Kirkland
The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings. Albert Schweitzer
Solidarity was the movement that turned the direction of history. Jeane Kirkpatrick
Solidarity was the best thing which happened in the 20th century. Mikheil Saakashvili
Comradeship, dignity, amorosity, love, solidarity, fraternity, friendship, ethics: all these names stand in contrast to the commodified, monetised relations of capitalism, all describe relations developed in struggles against capitalism and which can be seen as anticipating or creating a society beyond capitalism. John Holloway, Crack Capitalism
United we stand, divided we fall. Late 18th century proverb
The laboring man ... ought to remember that all who labor are their brothers, and that all women who labor are their sisters, and whenever one class of workingmen or workingwomen is oppressed all other laborers ought to stand by the oppressed class. Robert Ingersoll, essay 1890, ‘Eight Hours Must Come’
There may be a tomorrow or there may not, but there were and are those moments when we come together and put ourselves beyond the reach of self and acknowledge that we are all one. Michael P Kaehler, Saint Cloud MN Area Local APWU
Organize, and stand together. Claim something together, and at once; let the nation hear a united demand from the laboring voice, and then, when you have got that, go on after another; but get something. Wendell Phillips
There is no power in the world that can stop the forward march of free men and women when they are joined in the solidarity of human brotherhood. Walter Reuther
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. Aboriginal activists group, Queensland 1970s
This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century – solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others. Elie Wiesel
One love, one heart ...
Let’s get together and feel all right. Bob Marley
The Destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees. T H White
I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action. Theodore Roosevelt
He that commends me to mine own content
Commends me to the thing I cannot get.
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself:
So I, to find a mother and a brother,
In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself. William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors I ii
Where there is unity there is always victory. Publilius Syrus
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Any unity which doesn’t have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny. Blaise Pascal
We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end. Woodrow T Wilson
Even the weak become strong when they are united. Friedrich Schiller, 1759-1805
In my time we was beaten, rotten egged, cussed, threatened, tarred and feathered and blackballed from other jobs. Hurt in so many different ways. But at our meetings our advice to the men and women that was hurt, we would just say to them what the good book says – the Lord will not put more upon you than you can bear, at least none of us lost our lives like some did in the early 30s. Thank God! W M Jack Anderson, first president UAW local 645 TX
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
The unity is brought about by force. Karl Marx
All that destroys social unity is worthless; all institutions that set man in contradiction to himself are worthless. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The pivotal struggle which must be waged in the ranks of the working class is consequently the open, unreserved battle against entrenched racism. The white worker must become conscious of the threads which bind him to a James Johnson, Black auto worker, member of UAW, and a political prisoner presently facing charges for the killings of two foremen and a job setter. The merciless proliferation of the power of monopoly capital may ultimately push him inexorably down the very same path of desperation. No potential victim of the fascist terror should be without the knowledge that the greatest menace to racism and fascism is unity! Angela Davis, If They Come in the Morning, 1971