The Haymarket Affair

Now, this is one I shall listen to with great interest.

1886 engraving was the most widely reproduced image of the event

It is this weeks offering from radio 4's In Our Time, and is a subject I know very little about.*

"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"

Picture; The Haymarket Riot, 15 May 1886, Harper's Weekly, taken from The Haymarket Affair, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

*The Haymarket Affair, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0023gm2