On this day on 27th January

On this day in 1847 Henry Scott Holland was born at Ledbury, Herefordshire. Henry's father, George Holland, was extremely wealthy and could afford to send his son to Eton. Henry was not an outstanding student and he initially failed his entrance exam at Oxford University. He tried again in 1866 and this time he was successful.

Holland struggled academically until he came under the influence of Thomas Hill Green, the senior tutor in philosophy at Balliol. Holland was inspired by Green's ideas on religion and social reform and he eventually obtained a "First in Greats", one of the highest academic honours at Oxford.

Impressed by his academic achievements, Holland was offered the post of lecturer in philosophy at Christ Church College. As well as teaching Holland found time to publish several books and articles including The Duties of the Parochial Clergy Toward Some Forms of Modern Thought (1873). Holland also began visiting industrial slums in Britain. He was deeply shocked by what he discovered and began to argue for Mission Houses to be built that would serve as a point of contact between the "academic community and the deprived classes".

In 1884 Holland left Oxford University and became a canon at St. Paul's Cathedral. Holland's experience of social problems in London convinced him that the Church of England needed to change. In his controversial book Lux Mundi (1889) Holland argued that Christianity was to be experienced, not contemplated. He suggested that the Church needed to reject the "old truths" and to "enter into an understanding of the new social and intellectual movements of the present". Holland pointed out that the "streets of London reek with human misery" and the Church could no longer afford to ignore this suffering. Holland advocated radical reform, or what he called, the "Christianization of the social structure whereby all men live in accordance with the principles of divine justice and human brotherhood".

Henry Scott Holland formed a group called PESEK (Politics, Economics, Socialism, Ethics and Christianity). Members of the group investigated social problems and came to the conclusion that the plight of the urban poor was due to the way capitalists "exploited the working classes". In one report Holland declared that "Powerless! that is what the workers bitterly experience. They have been enfranchised only to find themselves powerless to determine how they will live their own lives."

In Holland's opinion modern capitalist companies had no conscience and were therefore acting immorally. According to Holland, capital and labour should be cooperating forces, sharing a common objective, but the system had turned them into unequal rivals. Holland's solution to the problem was state regulation. Only the state was powerful enough to "evoke, to direct, to supervise, to empower, and to regulate the actions" of capital and labour. The role of the Anglican Church declared Holland should be to convince society that "duty to God and duty to man are the same thing."

In 1889 Holland formed the Christian Social Union (CSU) to provide direction to this new social gospel. The stated purpose of the CSU was to "investigate areas in which moral truth and Christian principles could bring relief to the social and economic disorder of society". Local chapters of the CSU were established throughout Britain.

The Christian Social Union also published a journal, Commonwealth, that provided a forum for discussions on religion and social reform. The journal and upset the leaders of the Liberal Party in 1897 when he claimed that the party had failed to protect labour from capitalism. Holland suggested that wealthy Liberals who showed no sympathy for the poor should be ousted from the party.

The Commonwealth also carried out an investigation into the injustices of bad housing, pollution and low wages. It also campaigned strongly against the Poor Law that forced people into the workhouse. The Christian Social Union also published a large number of pamphlets and booklets that suggested solutions to social problems. This included a minimum wage and state benefits for the unemployed.

In 1910 Holland returned to Oxford University as Regius Professor of Divinity. Holland's health deteriorated after 1914 and he was restricted in the work that he could do. Henry Scott Holland died on 17th March, 1918.

On this day in 1855 Mary Seacole leaves from London on her journey to the Crimean War. Mary Seacole's application to join Florence Nightingale's team had been rejected. Mary, who had become a successful business woman in Jamaica, decided to travel to the Crimea at her own expense. She visited Florence Nightingale at her hospital at Scutari. Unwilling to accept defeat, Mary started up a business called the British Hotel but others referred to as “Mrs Seacole’s hut” a few miles from the battlefront. Here she sold food and drink to the British officers and a canteen for the soldiers.

Alan Palmer has argued: "Her independent status ensured a freedom of movement denied the formal nursing service; by June she was a familiar figure at the battle-front, riding forward with two mules in attendance, one carrying medicaments and the other food and wine. She brought medical comfort to the maimed and dying after the assault on the Redan, in which a quarter of the British force was killed or wounded, and she tended Italian, French, and Russian casualties at the Chernaya two months later."

Lady Alicia Blackwood wrote in A Narrative of Personal Experiences and Impressions during a Residence on the Bosphorous throughout the Crimean War (1881): "She (Mary Seacole) had, during the time of battle, and in the time of fearful distress, personally spared no pains and no exertion to visit the field of woe, and minister with her own hands such things as she could comfort, or alleviate the sufferings of those around her; freely giving to such as could not pay, and to many whose eyes were closing in death, from whom payment could never be expected."

On this day in 1866 Alice Marshall, the daughter of William Marshall, a railway engineer, was born in Derby on 27th January, 1866. After leaving school she worked as a domestic servant.

In 1886 Alice married William Wheeldon, a widowed engine fitter some fourteen years her senior, at the Register office in West Derby. The couple moved to 87 Marsh Lane, Bootle. Over the next few years Alice Wheeldon gave birth to Nellie (1888), Hettie (1891), William (1892) and Winnie (1893).

In 1901 Alice and her family moved to 91 Stanhope Street, Derby. William Wheeldon was now working as a commercial traveller whereas Alice Wheeldon ran a second-hand clothes shop at 12 Pear Tree Road. The Derby & District Directory records that she bought and sold the contents of people's wardrobes.

Alice Wheeldon became active in politics. She was a socialist and a member of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) . She was also active in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Her daughters, Hettie Wheeldon and Winnie Wheeldon, shared her feminist political views.

The outbreak of the First World War caused conflict between Alice and the WSPU. Alice was a pacifist and disagreed with the WSPU's strong support for the war. Sylvia Pankhurst and Charlotte Despard established the Women's Peace Army, an organisation that demanded a negotiated peace. Alice, Hettie Wheeldon and Winnie Wheeldon, all joined this new political group. Other members included Helena Swanwick and Olive Schreiner.

Alice and her daughters also joined the No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF). Other members included Clifford Allen, Fenner Brockway, Bertrand Russell, Philip Snowden, Bruce Glasier, Robert Smillie, C. H. Norman and Rev. John Clifford.

In 1915 Alice's daughter, Winnie, married Alfred Mason. The couple moved to Southampton, where Mason worked as a chemist and continued to be involved in the socialist and anti-war movement. Alice's son, William Wheeldon, was also active in the cause. On 31st August 1916, he appeared before Derby Borough Police Court charged with "wilfully obstructing police officers in the execution of their duty." The previous week he had attempted to stop the police move five conscientious objectors from the prison to the railway station. William was found guilty and sentenced to a month imprisonment.

Over 3,000,000 men volunteered to serve in the British Armed Forces during the first two years of the First World War. Due to heavy losses at the Western Front the government decided to introduce conscription (compulsory enrollment) by passing the Military Service Act. The NCF mounted a vigorous campaign against the punishment and imprisonment of conscientious objectors. About 16,000 men refused to fight. Most of these men were pacifists, who believed that even during wartime it was wrong to kill another human being.

Alice Wheeldon, Willie Paul, John S. Clarke and Arthur McManus, established a network in Derby to help those conscientious objectors on the run or in jail. This included her son, William Wheeldon, who was secretly living with his sister, Winnie Mason, in Southampton.

On 27th December 1916, Alex Gordon arrived at Alice's house claiming to be a conscientious objectors on the run from the police. Alice arranged for him to spend the night at the home of Lydia Robinson. a couple of days later Gordon returned to Alice's home with Herbert Booth, another man who he said was a member of the anti-war movement. In fact, both Gordon and Booth were undercover agents working for MI5 via the Ministry of Munitions. According to Alice, Gordon and Booth both told her that dogs now guarded the camps in which conscientious objectors were held; and that they had suggested to her that poison would be necessary to eliminate the animals, in order that the men could escape.

Alice Wheeldon agreed to ask her son-in-law, Alfred Mason, who was a chemist in Southampton, to obtain the poison, as long as Gordon helped her with her plan to get her son to the United States: "Being a businesswoman I made a bargain with him (Gordon) that if I could assist him in getting his friends from a concentration camp by getting rid of the dogs, he would, in his turn, see to the three boys, my son, Mason and a young man named MacDonald, whom I have kept, get away."

On 31st January 1917, Alice Wheeldon, Hettie Wheeldon, Winnie Mason and Alfred Mason were arrested and charged with plotting to murder the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Arthur Henderson, the leader of the Labour Party.

At Alice's home they found Alexander Macdonald of the Sherwood Foresters who had been absent without leave since December 1916. When arrested Alice claimed: "I think it is a such a trumped-up charge to punish me for my lad being a conscientious objector... you punished him through me while you had him in prison... you brought up an unfounded charge that he went to prison for and now he has gone out of the way you think you will punish him through me and you will do it."

Sir Frederick Smith, the Attorney-General, was appointed as prosecutor of Alice Wheeldon. Smith, the MP for Liverpool Walton, had previously been in charge of the government's War Office Press Bureau, which had been responsible for newspaper censorship and the pro-war propaganda campaign.

The case was tried at the Old Bailey instead of in Derby. According to friends of the accused, the change of venue took advantage of the recent Zeppelin attacks on London. As Nicola Rippon pointed out in her book, The Plot to Kill Lloyd George (2009): "It made for a prospective jury that was likely to be both frightened of the enemy and sound in their determination to win the war."

The trial began on 6th March 1917. Alice Wheeldon selected Saiyid Haidan Riza as her defence counsel. He had only recently qualified as a lawyer and it would seem that he was chosen because of his involvement in the socialist movement.

In his opening statement Sir Frederick Smith argued that the "Wheeldon women were in the habit of employing, habitually, language which would be disgusting and obscene in the mouth of the lowest class of criminal." He went on to claim that the main evidence against the defendants was from the testimony of the two undercover agents. However, it was disclosed that Alex Gordon would not be appearing in court to give his evidence.

Basil Thomson, the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, argued in his book, The Story of Scotland Yard (1935) that Gordon was an agent who "was a person with a criminal history, or he had invented the whole story to get money and credit from his employer."

Herbert Booth said in court that Alice Wheeldon had confessed to him that she and her daughters had taken part in the arson campaign when they were members of the Women's Social and Political Union. According to Booth, Alice claimed that she used petrol to set fire to the 900-year-old church of All Saints at Breadsall on 5th June 1914. She added: "You know the Breadsall job? We were nearly copped but we bloody well beat them!"

Booth also claimed on another occasion, when speaking about David Lloyd George and Arthur Henderson she remarked: "I hope the buggers will soon be dead." Alice added that Lloyd George had been "the cause of millions of innocent lives being sacrificed, the bugger shall be killed to stop it... and as for that other bugger Henderson, he is a traitor to his people." Booth also claimed that Alice made a death-threat to Herbert Asquith who she described as "the bloody brains of the business."

Herbert Booth testified that he asked Alice what the best method was to kill David Lloyd George. She replied: "We (the WSPU) had a plan before when we spent £300 in trying to poison him... to get a position in a hotel where he stayed and to drive a nail through his boot that had been dipped in the poison, but he went to France, the bugger."

Sir Frederick Smith argued that the plan was to use this method to kill the prime minister. He then produced letters in court that showed that Alice had contacted Alfred Mason and obtained four glass phials of poison that she gave to Booth. They were marked A, B, C and D. Later scientific evidence revealed the contents of two phials to be forms of strychnine, the others types of curare. However, the leading expert in poisons, Dr. Bernard Spilsbury, under cross-examination, admitted that he did not know of a single example "in scientific literature" of curate being administered by a dart.

Major William Lauriston Melville Lee, the head of the PMS2, who employed Herbert Booth and Alex Gordon, gave evidence in court. He was asked by Saiyid Haidan Riza if Gordon had a criminal record. He refused to answer this question and instead replied: "I have already already explained to you that I do not know the man. I cannot answer questions on matters beyond my own knowledge." He admitted he had instructed Booth to "get in touch with people who might be likely to commit sabotage".

Alice turned the jury against her when she refused to swear on the Bible. The judge responded by commenting: "You say that an affirmation will be the only power binding upon your conscience?" The implication being that the witness, by refusing to swear to God, would be more likely to be untruthful in their testimony." This was a common assumption held at the time. However, to Alice, by openly stating that she was an atheist, was her way of expressing her commitment to the truth.

Alice Wheeldon admitted that she had asked Alfred Mason to obtain poison to use on dogs guarding the camps in which conscientious objectors were held. This was supported by the letter sent by Mason that had been intercepted by the police. It included the following: "All four (glass phials) will probably leave a trace but if the bloke who owns it does suspect it will be a job to prove it. As long as you have a chance to get at the dog I pity it. Dead in 20 sec. Powder A on meat or bread is ok."

She insisted that Gordon's plan involved the killing of the guard dogs. He had told her that he knew of at least thirty COs who had escaped to America and that he was particularly interested in "five Yiddish still in the concentration camp." Gordon also claimed he had helped two other Jewish COs escape from imprisonment.

Alice Wheeldon admitted that she had told Alex Gordon that she hoped David Lloyd George and Arthur Henderson would soon be dead as she regarded them as "a traitor to the labouring classes?" However, she was certain that she had not said this when she handed over the poison to Gordon.

When Hettie Wheeldon gave evidence she claimed that It was Gordon and Booth who suggested that they assassinate the prime minister. She replied: "I said I thought assassination was ridiculous. The only thing to be done was to organise the men in the work-shops against compulsory military service. I said assassination was ridiculous because if you killed one you would have to kill another and so it would go on."

Hettie said that she was immediately suspicious of her mother's new friends: "I thought Gordon and Booth were police spies. I told my mother of my suspicions on 28 December. By the following Monday I was satisfied they were spies. I said to my mother: "You can do what you like, but I am having nothing to do with it."

In court Winnie Mason admitted having helped her mother to obtain poison, but insisted that it was for "some dogs" and was "part of the scheme for liberating prisoners for internment". Her husband, Alfred Mason, explained why he would not have supplied strychnine to kill a man as it was "too bitter and easily detected by any intended victim". He added that curare would not kill anything bigger than a dog.

Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the Women's Social and Political Union, told the court: "We (the WSPU) declare that there is no life more valuable to the nation than that of Mr Lloyd George. We would endanger our own lives rather than his should suffer."

Saiyid Haidan Riza argued that this was the first trial in English legal history to rely on the evidence of a secret agent. As Nicola Rippon pointed out in her book, The Plot to Kill Lloyd George (2009): "Riza declared that much of the weight of evidence against his clients was based on the words and actions of a man who had not even stood before the court to face examination." Riza argued: "I challenge the prosecution to produce Gordon. I demand that the prosecution shall produce him, so that he may be subjected to cross-examination. It is only in those parts of the world where secret agents are introduced that the most atrocious crimes are committed. I say that Gordon ought to be produced in the interest of public safety. If this method of the prosecution goes unchallenged, it augurs ill for England."

The judge disagreed with the objection to the use of secret agents. "Without them it would be impossible to detect crimes of this kind." However, he admitted that if the jury did not believe the evidence of Herbert Booth, then the case "to a large extent fails". Apparently, the jury did believe the testimony of Booth and after less than half-an-hour of deliberation, they found Alice Wheeldon, Winnie Mason and Alfred Mason guilty of conspiracy to murder. Alice was sentenced to ten years in prison. Alfred got seven years whereas Winnie received "five years' penal servitude."

The Derby Mercury reported: "It was a lamentable case, lamentable to see a whole family in the dock; it was sad to see women, apparently of education, using language which would be foul in the mouths of the lowest women. Two of the accused were teachers of the young; their habitual use of bad language made one hesitate in thinking whether education was the blessing we had all hoped."

On 13th March, three days after the conviction, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, published an open letter to the Home Secretary that included the following: "We demand that the Police Spies, on whose evidence the Wheeldon family is being tried, be put in the Witness Box, believing that in the event of this being done fresh evidence will be forthcoming which will put a different complexion on the case."

Basil Thomson, the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was also unconvinced by the guilt of Alice Wheeldon and her family. Thomson later said that he had "an uneasy feeling that he himself might have acted as what the French call an agent provocateur - an inciting agent - by putting the idea into the woman's head, or, if the idea was already there, by offering to act as the dart-thrower."

Alice was sent to Aylesbury Prison where she began a campaign of non-cooperation with intermittent hunger strikes. One of the doctors at the prison reported that many prisoners were genuinely frightened of Alice who seemed to "have a devil" within her. However, the same doctor reported that she also had many admirers and had converted several prisoners to her revolutionary political ideas.

Some members of the public objected to Alice Weeldon being forced to eat. Mary Bullar wrote to Herbert Samuel, the Home Secretary and argued: "Could you not bring in a Bill at once simply to say that forcible feeding was to be abandoned - that all prisoners alike would be given their meals regularly and that it rested with them to eat them or not as they chose - it was the forcible feeding that made the outcry so there could hardly be one at giving it up!"

Alice was moved to Holloway Prison. As she was now separated from her daughter, Winnie Mason, she decided to go on another hunger strike. On 27th December 1917, Dr Wilfred Sass, the deputy medical officer at Holloway, reported that Alice's condition was rapidly declining: "Her pulse is becoming rather more rapid... of poor volume and rather collapsing... the heart sounds are rapid... at the apex of the heart." It was also reported that she said she was "going to die and that there would be a great row and a revolution as the result."

Winnie Mason wrote to her mother asking her to give up the hunger strike: "Oh Mam, please don't die - that's all that matters... you were always a fighter but this fight isn't worth your death... Oh Mam, for one kiss from you! Oh do get better please do, live for us all again."

On 29th December David Lloyd George sent a message to the Home Office that he had "received several applications on behalf of Mrs Wheeldon, and that he thought on no account should she be allowed to die in prison." Herbert Samuel was reluctant to take action but according to the official papers: "He (Lloyd George) evidently felt that, from the point of view of the government, and in view especially of the fact that he was the person whom she conspired to murder, it was very undesirable that she should die in prison."

Alice was told she was to be released from prison because of the intervention of the prime minister. She replied: "It was very magnanimous of him... he has proven himself to be a man." On 31st December, Hettie Wheeldon took her mother back to Derby.

Sylvia Pankhurst, writing in the Workers' Dreadnought, claimed that Alice was "mothering half a dozen other comrades with warm hospitality in a delightful old-fashioned household, where comfort was secured by hard work and thrifty management." She added that Alice was forced to close her shop but had "made the best of the situation by using her shop window for growing tomatoes."

The campaign continued to get Winnie Mason and Alfred Mason released from prison. On 26th January 1919 it was announced that the pair had be allowed out on licence at the request of Premier Lloyd George."

Alice Wheeldon's health never recovered from her time in prison. She died of influenza on 21st February 1919. At Alice's funeral, her friend John S. Clarke, made a speech that included the following: "She was a socialist and was enemy, particularly, of the deepest incarnation of inhumanity at present in Great Britain - that spirit which is incarnated in the person whose name I shall not insult the dead by mentioning. He was the one, who in the midst of high affairs of State, stepped out of his way to pursue a poor obscure family into the dungeon and into the grave... We are giving to the eternal keeping of Mother Earth, the mortal dust of a poor and innocent victim of a judicial murder."

On this day in 1891 Ilya Ehrenburg was born in Russia. As a young man he became a follower of Lenin. He went into exile where he became a poet. After the successful Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Ehrenburg returned to Russia.

Ehrenburg was a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. He also worked for Izvestia and between 1936 and 1939 reported on the Spanish Civil War. As well as writing for the newspaper he also collected information on the Popular Front government for the NKVD.

After the war he edited The Black Book that was made up accounts by Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and Poland.

Ilya Ehrenburg died of prostate and bladder cancer on 31st August 1967 and was interred in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. The gravestone includes a reproduction of his portrait drawn by his friend Pablo Picasso.

On this day in 1897 Richard Stokes, the fifth of the eight children of Philip Folliott Scott Stokes (1853–1922), a barrister, was born on 27th January 1897. His parents were wealthy, largely through his mother's family's ownership of the Ipswich engineering firm Ransomes and Rapier.

A devout Roman Catholic, he was educated at Downside School between 1906 and 1915, before attending the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. During the First World War he served on the Western Front with the Royal Artillery and won the Military Cross in 1917. Promoted to the rank of major in 1917, Stokes won the Croix de Guerre during the conflict.

Stokes was a strong critic of the Russian Revolution and became a passionate anti-communist. According to his biographer, Robert Crowcroft: "His experiences left him with a deep abhorrence of war, yet also a fierce patriotism in the face of the fresh threat posed by the new Bolshevik regime in Russia."

After the war Stokes studied engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge, before joining the family business of Ransomes and Rapier, of which he became chairman and managing director. Under his leadership the company were enlightened employers, introducing in the 1930s a profit-sharing scheme, paid holidays, and a forty-five hour working week (with no loss of output).

Stokes became a Christian Socialist and became a member of the Labour Party in 1934. He had been influenced by the ideas of Henry George and during an interview he gave to The Times in January 1938 he argued that unemployment and poverty were caused by the "private stranglehold" over land ownership, and favoured a land tax to force landowners to put their holdings to the most productive use.

Stokes unsuccessfully contested Glasgow Central in 1935. He was then adopted as the Labour Party candidate for Ipswich and entered the House of Commons after defeating Henry Willink, a supporter of the National Government, in February 1938.

In 1939 Stokes set up the Parliamentary Peace Aims Group to "urge the Government, while still there might be some hope of a settlement before war with all its horrors broke over Europe, to explore possibilities for the calling of a Conference prior to a negotiated peace." Other members included Neil Maclean and Sydney Silverman.

Stokes supported appeasement towards Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and argued that Neville Chamberlain and his government should concentrate on the threat posed by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. According to Robert Crowcroft, during this period Stokes "flirted with fascism during the 1930s". This included membership of the antisemitic Militant Christian Patriots, the Council for a Christian Settlement in Europe, and the Kinship in Husbandry group.

Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War Stokes published What is Happening in Europe? (January 1940). Stokes argued that Hitler had been forced into its actions by the behaviour of others, and called for the revision of the Versailles Treaty and a redistribution of borders to be imposed on Poland and Czechoslovakia in Germany's favour. As Robert Crowcroft points out: "Germany was to be allowed domination of the continent in return for acting as a bulwark against the Soviet Union... Suggesting that war would lead to the hammer and sickle ascendant from the North Sea to the Pacific, he tried to persuade the former prime minister, David Lloyd George, to lead the campaign in favour of a negotiated peace with Germany."

Stokes was an opponent of bombing urban areas in Nazi Germany and joined forces with Alfred Salter and Bishop George Bell in condemning this strategy. As Salter pointed out: "All this is founded on the great and terrible fallacy that ends justify means. They never do. Is there no pity in the whole world? Are all our hearts hardened and coarsened by events?"

Stokes was also a supporter of Vera Brittain and her Letters to Peace Lovers. Stokes was particularly critical of the bombing of Dresden in 13th February 1945. Soon after the war came to an end he turned his attention to the dangers posed by the Soviet Union and argued that "another war is certain".

It has recently been revealed that Stokes worked closely with MI6 between 1945 and 1950 "to stir up ethnic strife in the Soviet Union through groups of exiles based in London and run by eastern European fascists, including Intermarium, the Promethean League, and the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. Through the British League for European Freedom he campaigned for former Nazis and their eastern European collaborators to be brought to Britain as intelligence assets in the nascent cold war."

Stokes warned Stafford Cripps and then Hugh Gaitskell, not to impose high taxation on the middle-class voters who could become the mainstay of the Labour Party. He also campaigned about Labour government's education policy, that he argued discriminated against Roman Catholic schools and their religious practices.

Herbert Morrison shared Stokes' anti-communism and he successfully persuaded Clement Attlee to appoint him as Minister of Works (February 1950 - April 1951) and Minister of Materials (July - October 1951). Winston Churchill gained power after the 1951 General Election and in opposition, Stokes became the Labour Party spokesman on Defence.

Richard Stokes died on 3rd August 1957, from pulmonary embolism after fracturing ribs when his car overturned in floodwater, near Colchester, two weeks earlier.

On this day in 1905 Selina Cooper argues that the Labour Party should fully support women's suffrage. In 1900 Selina Cooper joined the North of England Society for Women's Suffrage. Other members at the time included Esther Roper, Eva Gore-Booth, Emmeline Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst. Cooper wrote at the time: "(a) That in the opinion of your petitioners the continued denial of the franchise to women is unjust and inexpedient. (b) In the home, their position is lowered by such an exclusion from the responsibilities of national life. (c) In the factory, their unrepresented condition places the regulation of their work in the hands of men who are often their rivals as well as their fellow workers."

Selina helped organize a petition that was signed by women working in the Lancashire cotton mills. Selina alone collected the signatures of 800 women from local textile factories. By spring 1901, 29,359 women from Lancashire had signed the petition in favour of women's suffrage and Selina was chosen as one of the delegates to present the petition to the House of Commons.

On this day in 1911 Grace Jardine resigned from the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) because of its arson campaign. Along with her friend Dora Marsden she now joined the Women's Freedom League (WFL), an organisation formed by Teresa Billington-Greig, Elizabeth How-Martyn, Margaret Nevinson and Charlotte Despard. Like the WSPU, the WFL was a militant organisation that was willing the break the law. As a result, over 100 of their members were sent to prison after being arrested on demonstrations or refusing to pay taxes. However, members of the WFL was a completely non-violent organisation and opposed the WSPU campaign of vandalism against private and commercial property.

On this day in 1916 war hero Harry Peulevé, the son of a French father and an English mother, was born in Worthing, Sussex on 27th January, 1916. He was educated in England and after attending Rye Grammar School studied electrical engineering in London. After graduating he was employed as a BBC cameraman at Alexander Palace.

On the outbreak of the Second World War there were only 7,000 people in Britain with television sets and so Alexander Palace was closed down. Peulevé then joined the British Army and was commissioned and sent to the recently formed Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

Peulevé's excellent French resulted in him being recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). While being trained to work as a special agent in France he met and befriended Violette Szabo.

On 30th July 1942, Peulevé and Claude de Baissac, were taken aboard a Halifax bomber and parachuted into France. Unfortunately they were dropped too low over Nimes and both men were badly injured. Peulevé had a broken leg and the French Resistance now had the problem of getting him back to England.

After Peulevé recovered Maurice Buckmaster arranged for him and Nicholas Bodington to be dropped in France on 15th August, 1943. Peulevé went to Correze where he worked with the Frances-Tireurs Partisans and sent regular messages back to the Special Operations Executive in London. The average active life of a radio operator in France was only six months and it was no surprise when Peulevé was arrested in August 1944.

While being interrogated by the Gestapo Peulevé was temporarily reunited with Violette Szabo. They were separated when Peulevé was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. Of the 43 SOE agents sent to this camp, Peulevé was one of only seven who were still alive when it was liberated in April 1945.

After the war Peulevé worked the Shell Oil Company. This was followed by the post of overseas manager of Handy Angles. Harry Peulevé died of a heart-attack on 18th March 1963.

On this day in 1940 writer Isaac Babel died. Babel, the son of a Jewish shopkeeper, was born in Odessa, Ukraine, on 13th July,1894. When he was a child he witnessed a pogrom and was deeply influenced by the experience.

After leaving school Babel moved to Kiev. He began writing but had no success with his work until he met Maxim Gorky in 1916. Soon afterwards Gorky printed two of his short stories in his Letopis. The Russian censors considered the stories to be obscene and Babel was charged under Article 1001 of the criminal code.

Babel joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and during the Civil War he served as a political commissar in the Red Army. A collection of his stories based on his war experiences, Red Cavalry was published in 1926. The following year he published Odessa Tales, a collection of stories about Jewish life in Russia. He also wrote two plays, Zakat (1928) and Mariya (1935).

Babel became increasingly critical of the rule of Joseph Stalin and found it increasingly difficult to get his work published. At the first meeting of the Soviet Writers' Union in 1934, Babel told the gathering that: "I have invented a new genre - the genre of silence".

In May, 1939, Babel was arrested and his work was confiscated. According to the Soviet government Isaac Babel died in a prison camp in Siberia. However, his family believe he was executed in 1940.

On this day in 1945 the Red Army liberated the remaining inmates of Auschwitz. As the Russians approached Auschwitz at the end of 1944, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria. When the soldiers entered the camp they found 7,500 prisoners and over 600 corpses left behind.

Auschwitz concentration camp was built 150 miles outside from Warsaw in May 1940. The commander was Rudolf Hoess and the camp was staffed by SS Death's Head units. At first it housed people from Poland but later large numbers of Jews and soldiers from the Red Army were also arrived in 1941.

In June, 1941, Heinrich Himmler ordered that Auschwitz be greatly increased in size and the following year it became an extermination camp. Bathhouses disguised as gas chambers were added. Hoess introduced Zyklon-B gas, that enabled the Nazis to kill 2,000 people at a time. Hess was promoted to Deputy Inspector General and took charge of the Schutzstaffel (SS) department that administered German concentration camps. In a SS report Hoess was described as "a true pioneer in this area because of his new ideas and educational methods."

Rudolf Vrba arrived at Auschwitz in 1942: "We marched into the commercial heart of Auschwitz, warehouses of the body-snachers where hundreds of prisoners worked frantically to sort, segregate and classify the clothes and the food and the valuables of those whose bodies were still burning, whose ashes would soon be used as a fertilizer. It was an incredible sight, an enormous rectangular yard with a watchtower at each corner and surrounded by barbed wire. There were several huge storerooms and a block of what seemed like offices with a square, open balcony at one corner. Yet what first struck me was a mountain of trunks, cases, rucksacks, kitbags and parcels stacked in the middle of the yard. Nearby was another mountain, of blankets this time, fifty thousand of them, maybe one hundred thousand. I was so staggered by the sight of these twin peaks of personal possessions that I never thought at that moment where their owners might be. In fact I did not have much time to think, for every step brought some new shock."

Inmates were used to provide medical care at Auschwitz. Gisella Perl was a Jewish doctor in the camp: "One of the basic Nazi aims was to demoralize, humiliate, ruin us, not only physically but also spiritually. They did everything in their power to push us into the bottomless depths of degradation. Their spies were constantly among us to keep them informed about every thought, every feeling, every reaction we had, and one never knew who was one of their agents. There was only one law in Auschwitz - the law of the jungle - the law of self-preservation. Women who in their former lives were decent self-respecting human beings now stole, lied, spied, beat the others and - if necessary - killed them, in order to save their miserable lives. Stealing became an art, a virtue, something to be proud of."

Hoess' biographer, Louis L. Snyder, has pointed out: "The personality and character of Hoess have fascinated students of abnormal psychology. He regarded himself as a perfectly normal man who led an uneventful family life while carrying out his orders to the best of his ability. Believing that he was more sensitive than most people, he tried to conceal this defect with an icy exterior. He felt that he had a difficult but necessary job to perform and that he had to undertake the assigned task without sympathy and without pity."

Rudolf Hoess admitted that members of the Red Army were routinely executed at the camp: "It was made known that these measures were taken because the Russians had been killing all German soldiers who were partly members or belonged to special sections of the NSDAP, especially members of the SS, and also because the political officials of the Red Army had been ordered, if taken prisoner, to create every kind of disturbance in the prisoner-of-war camps and their places of employment and to carry out sabotage wherever possible. The political officials of the Red Army thus identified were brought to Auschwitz for liquidation. The first, smaller transports of them were executed by firing squads."

Hoess later admitted: "I must admit that the gassing process had a calming effect on me. I always had a horror of the shootings, thinking of the number of people, the women and children. I was relieved that we were spared these blood baths.... We tried to fool the victims into believing that they were going through a delousing process. Of course, at times they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties. Frequently women would hide their children under their clothes, but we found them and we sent the children to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy, but the foul and nauseating stench from the continued burning of bodies permeated the whole area and all the people living around Auschwitz knew what was going on."

Rudolf Hoess claimed that he had been brought up to believe that anti-Semitism was a form of "pest control". He explained: "When in the summer of 1941 he (Hitler) gave me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz where mass exterminations could take place, and personally to carry out these exterminations, I did not have the slightest idea of their scale or consequences. It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless the reasons behind the extermination programme seemed to me right. I did not reflect on it at the time: I had been given an order, and I had to carry it out. Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not was something on which I could not allow myself to form an opinion, for I lacked the necessary breadth of view."

Armin Hertz arrived in Auschwitz in October, 1942: "When we got to Auschwitz, the train stopped and they opened up the cars. Everybody had to get out. Right away they separated the women and the children to one side and the men had to go to the other side. Then we saw some men trying to whisper to us who were working around the train with striped uniforms on and their hair shaved off. They were saying, Walk! We couldn't figure out what that meant, but we soon found out. The camp was a short distance away. Anyone who was tired or felt that he couldn't walk was to go to the other side and supposedly there would be trucks that would pick them up and bring them to the camp. The people that were able to walk were to march. We got the message and we lined up to march to the camp. The other people that could not walk, or didn't want to, we never saw again. They went straight to the gas chamber."

Armin Hertz later described what happened when they got to the camp. "In Auschwitz they had brick barracks. Two floors, a ground floor that held about four hundred people and six hundred people upstairs. Then came the barbers and they shaved our hair off. Then they put numbers on our arm - I had number 72552. All that put us in shock because nobody would expect that. They took everything away from us. We got these pajama-like uniforms and wooden shoes like those Dutch shoes, very uncomfortable to work with. And then we got a big speech from a man who was in charge of the block. He said, You are going to work here. This is a work camp. There is no escape from here. The only way you can get out of here is through the chimney."

Alfried Krupp the industrialist, made use of inmates from Auschwitz to produce goods for his company. On 19th May, 1944 he received the following report: "At Auschwitz the families were separated, those unable to work gassed, and the remainder singled out for conscription. The girls were shaved bald and tattooed with camp numbers. Their possessions, including clothing and shoes, were taken away and replaced by prison uniform and shoes. The dress was in one piece, made of grey material, with a red cross on the back and the yellow Jew-patch on the sleeve."

Gisella Perl later provided information on the activities of Dr. Josef Mengele in Auschwitz. Nadine Brozan has argued: "As one of five doctors and four nurses chosen by Dr. Mengele to operate a hospital ward that had no beds, no bandages, no drugs and no instruments, she tended to every disease wrought by torture, starvation, filth, lice and rats, to every bone broken or head cracked open by beating. She performed surgery, without anesthesia, on women whose breasts had been lacerated by whips and become infected." Gisella admitted: ''I treated patients with my voice, telling them beautiful stories, telling them that one day we would have birthdays again, that one day we would sing again. I didn't know when it was Rosh ha-Shanah, but I had a sense of it when the weather turned cool. So I made a party with the bread, margarine and dirty pieces of sausage we received for meals. I said tonight will be the New Year, tomorrow a better year will come.''

Gisella later admitted: "Dr. Mengele told me that it was my duty to report every pregnant woman to him. He said that they would go to another camp for better nutrition, even for milk. So women began to run directly to him, telling him, 'I am pregnant.' I learned that they were all taken to the research block to be used as guinea pigs, and then two lives would be thrown into the crematorium. I decided that never again would there be a pregnant woman in Auschwitz... No one will ever know what it meant to me to destroy those babies, but if I had not done it, both mother and child would have been cruelly murdered.''

Anne S. Reamey has suggested that Gisella Perl made a controversial decision to deal with Mengele's experiments: "After Dr. Perl's startling realization of the fates of the pregnant women discovered by Dr. Mengele, she began to perform surgeries that before the war she would have believed herself incapable of - abortions. In spite of her professional and religious beliefs as a doctor and an observant Jew, Dr. Perl began performing abortions on the dirty floors and bunks of the barracks in Auschwitz 'using only my dirty hands'. Without any medical instruments or anesthesia, and often in the cramped and filthy bunks within the women's barracks, Dr. Perl ended the lives of the fetuses in their mothers' womb (estimated at around 3,000) in the hopes that the mother would survive and later, perhaps, be able to bear children. In some instances, the pregnancy was too far along to be able to perform an abortion. In these cases Dr. Perl broke the amnionic sac and manually dilated the cervix to induce labor. In these cases, the premature infant (not yet completely developed), died almost instantly. Without the threat of their pregnancy being discovered, women were able to work without interruption, gaining them a temporary reprieve from their death sentences."

Rudolf Vrba escaped from Auschwitz in April 1944 and reported to the Allies: "The crematorium contains a large hall, a gas chamber and a furnace. People are assembled in the hall, which holds 2,000. They have to undress and are given a piece of soap and a towel as if they were going to the baths. Then they are crowded into the gas chamber which is hermetically sealed. Several SS men in gas masks then pour into the gas chamber through three openings in the ceiling a preparation of the poison gas maga-cyclon. At the end of three minutes all the persons are dead. The dead bodies are then taken away in carts to the furnace to be burnt."

In April, 1945, Germany surrendered. Rudolf Hoess managed to avoid capture and worked on a farm. He was eventually captured and at his trial admitted: "I commanded Auschwitz up to 1st December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were killed and disposed of there by gassing and burning; at least a further half million died of starvation and illness, which makes a total of 3,000,000 dead. The number represents about 70 or 80 per cent of all the people who were sent to Auschwitz as prisoners. Very young children, being incapable of working, were killed as a matter of principle."

On this day in 1971 Jacobo Árbenz drowned in his bathtub in Mexico City. Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the son of a Swiss immigrant, was born in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, on 14th September, 1913. His father committed suicide when Arbenz was still very young and was raised by his Guatemalan mother.

Arbenz joined the army and in 1935 graduated as sub-lieutenant. He joined the Guatemalan Military Academy in 1937 and became a teacher of science and history.

In 1939 Arbenz met and fell in love with Maria Cristina Vilanova. They were married soon afterwards. Maria was a socialist and soon converted her husband to this political philosophy. During this period Maria developed a strong friendship with the Chilean Communist leader Virginia Bravo and the Salvadorian Communist exile Matilde Elena Lopez. These three women organized regular political discussions at the Arbenz family home.

Arbenz became a secret opponent of Guatemalan dictator, Jorge Ubico. In the 1930s Sam Zemurray aligned United Fruit Company closely with the government of President Jorge Ubico. The company received import duty and real estate tax exemptions from Ubico. He also gave them hundreds of square miles of land. United Fruit controlled more land than any other individual or group. It also owned the railway, the electric utilities, telegraph, and the country's only port at Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic coast.

In June, 1944, teachers in Guatemala went on strike for higher pay. Other professions joined the teachers in street demonstrations. Ubico sent in the army and over 200 protesters were killed. This included Maria Chinchilla, the leader of the teachers' union movement.

A few days later, a group of over 300 teachers, lawyers, doctors, and businessmen handed a petition to Ubico in which demanded that the demonstrators' actions were legitimate. At this stage, the United States withdrew its support of Ubico. General Francisco Ponce became Guatemala's new dictator. In an attempt to gain public support, Ponce announced democratic elections. He choose himself as presidential candidate, while the opposition picked the former teacher, Juan Jose Arevalo, who was living in exile in Argentina. Afraid that he would lose the election, Ponce ordered Arevalo's arrest as soon as he arrived back in Guatemala.

Appalled by the actions of Ponce, Arbenz and a fellow junior officer, Major Francisco Arana, organized a military rebellion. They were quickly joined by other officers and attacked the pro-Ponce military and police forces. Ponce and Ubico were forced to abandon the country and Arbenz and Arana created a provisional junta with businessman, Jorge Toriello, and promised free and democratic elections.

Arbenz and Arana introduced a new constitution. Censorship was brought to an end, men and women were declared equal before the law, racial discrimination was declared a crime, higher education was free of governmental control, private monopolies were banned, workers were assured a forty-hour week, payment in coupons was forbidden, and labour unions were legalized.

Juan Jose Arevalo won the first elections and attempted to begin an age of reforms in Guatemala. Arevalo described himself as a "spiritual socialist". He implemented sweeping reforms by passing new laws that gave workers the right to form unions. This included the 40,000 Guatemalans who worked for the United Fruit Company.

Sam Zemurray feared that Arevalo would also nationalize the land owned by United Fruit in Guatemala. He asked the political lobbyist Tommy Corcoran to express his fears to senior political figures in Washington. Corcoran began talks with key people in the government agencies and departments that shaped U.S. policy in Central America. He argued that the U.S. should use United Fruit as an American beachhead against communism in the region.

In July, 1949, with the backing of the CIA and the United Fruit Company, Francisco Arana presented Juan Jose Arevalo“with an ultimatum demanding that he surrender power to the Army and fill out the remainder of his term as a civilian figure-head for a military regime.”

Arevalo realized that Guatemala’s experiment with democracy was in grave danger. He therefore appealed to Arbenz, who was still committed to the democratic system, to defend his elected government. Arbenz supplied Arevalo with the names of young officers who he knew to be loyal to the idea of democracy. Arevalo then ordered these officers to arrest Arana. Caught crossing a bridge, Arana resisted arrest, and during the resulting gunfight, Arana and several others were killed.

Juan Jose Arevalo then made the mistake of not telling the country about the attempted coup. Instead he claimed that Arana had been killed by unknown assassins. The CIA immediately spread the rumour that Arevalo and Arbenz had used communists to kill Arana. This resulted in another coup attempt by army officers loyal to Arana and the United Fruit Company. However, some members of the armed forces remained loyal to Arevalo. So did the trade unions that had originally overthrown the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. Arana’s supporters were defeated and Arevalo remained in power.

Once again Jacobo Árbenz had become a national hero and his election to the presidency was ensured. The following year Arbenz defeated Manuel Ygidoras to become Guatemala's new president. Arbenz, who obtained 65% of the votes cast, took power on 15th March, 1951. Tommy Corcoran then recruited Robert La Follette to work for United Fruit.

In the spring of 1950, Corcoran went to see Thomas C. Mann, the director of the State Department’s Office of Inter-American Affairs. Corcoran asked Mann if he had any plans to prevent Arbenz from being elected. Mann replied: “That is for the people of that country to decide.” Unhappy with this reply, Corcoran paid a call on the Allen Dulles, the deputy director of the CIA. Dulles, who represented United Fruit in the 1930s, was far more interested in Corcoran’s ideas. “During their meeting Dulles explained to Corcoran that while the CIA was sympathetic to United Fruit, he could not authorize any assistance without the support of the State Department. Dulles assured Corcoran, however, that whoever was elected as the next president of Guatemala would not be allowed to nationalize the operations of United Fruit.”

Arbenz's first action was to order the construction of a government run port to compete with United Fruit's Puerto Barrios. He also attempted to break the International Railways of Central America's (IRCA) transportation monopoly by building a new highway to the Atlantic. Another measure was to build a national hydroelectric plant to offer a cheaper energy alternative different from the American controlled electricity monopoly. Arbenz also proposed a new system of progressive income tax.

Tommy Corcoran then recruited Robert La Follette to work for United Fruit. Corcoran arranged for La Follette to lobby liberal members of Congress. The message was that Arbenz was not a liberal but a dangerous left-wing radical. This strategy was successful and Congress was duly alarmed when on 17 th June, 1952, Arbenz announced a new Agrarian Reform program. He said that the country needed "an agrarian reform which puts an end to the latifundios and the semi-feudal practices, giving the land to thousands of peasants, raising their purchasing power and creating a great internal market favorable to the development of domestic industry."

This included expropriating idle land on government and private estates and redistributed to peasants in lots of 8 to 33 acres. The Agrarian Reform program managed to give 1.5 million acres to around 100,000 families for which the government paid $8,345,545 in bonds. Among the expropriated landowners was Arbenz himself, who had become into a landowner with the dowry of his wealthy wife. Around 46 farms were given to groups of peasants who organized themselves in cooperatives.

Arbenz's agrarian reform was approved in 1952. This empowered the government to expropriate uncultivated portions of large plantations. Farms smaller than 223 acres were not subject to this law. The expropriated lands would be distributed only to landless peasants in plots not bigger of 42.5 acres each, and the new owners were not allowed to sell them or gain profits through speculation. The new owners would pay to the government a rental fee of 5% the value of the food produced.

The Agrarian Reform managed to give 1.5 million acres to around 100,000 families for which the government paid $8,345,545 in bonds. Among the expropriated landowners was Arbenz himself, who had become into a landowner with the dowry of his wealthy wife. Around 46 farms were given to groups of peasants who organized themselves in cooperatives. The main opponent to Arbenz's reforms were the United Fruit Company. The company owned 550,000 acres on the Atlantic coast, 85% of which was not cultivated.

In March 1953, 209,842 acres of United Fruit Company's uncultivated land was taken by the government which offered compensation of $525,000. The company wanted $16 million for the land. While the Guatemalan government valued $2.99 per acre, the American government valued it at $75 per acre. As David McKean has pointed out: This figure was “in line with the company’s own valuation of the property, at least for tax purposes”. However, the company wanted $16 million for the land. While the Guatemalan government valued it at $2.99 per acre, the company now valued it at $75 per acre.

United Fruit main shareholder, Sam Zemurray, United Fruit Company's largest shareholder, organized an anti-Arbenz campaign in the American media. This included the claim that Guatemala was the beginning of "Soviet expansion in the Americas".

Tommy Corcoran contacted President Anastasio Somoza and warned him that the Guatemalan revolution might spread to Nicaragua. Somoza now made representations to Harry S. Truman about what was happening in Guatemala. After discussions with Walter Bedell Smith, director of the CIA, a secret plan to overthrow Arbenz (Operation Fortune) was developed. Part of this plan involved Tommy Corcoran arranging for small arms and ammunition to be loaded on a United Fruit freighter and shipped to Guatemala, where the weapons would be distributed to dissidents. When the Secretary of State Dean Acheson discovered details of Operation Fortune, he had a meeting with Truman where he vigorously protested about the involvement of United Fruit and the CIA in the attempted overthrow of the democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz. As a result of Acheson’s protests, Truman ordered the postponement of Operation Fortune.

Tommy Corcoran’s work was made easier by the election of Dwight Eisenhower in November, 1952. Eisenhower’s personal secretary was Anne Whitman, the wife of Edmund Whitman, United Fruit’s public relations director. Eisenhower appointed John Peurifoy as ambassador to Guatemala. He soon made it clear that he believed that the Arbenz government posed a threat to the America’s campaign against communism.

Corcoran also arranged for Whiting Willauer, his friend and partner in Civil Air Transport, to become U. S. ambassador to Honduras. As Willauer pointed out in a letter to Claire Lee Chennault, he worked day and night to arrange training sites and instructors plus air crews for the rebel air force, and to keep the Honduran government “in line so they would allow the revolutionary activity to continue.”

Eisenhower also replaced Dean Acheson with John Foster Dulles. His brother, Allen Dulles became director of the CIA. The Dulles brothers “had sat on the board of United Fruit’s partner in the banana monopoly, the Schroder Banking Corporation” whereas “U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge was a stockholder and had been a strong defender of United Fruit while a U.S. senator.”

Walter Bedell Smith was moved to the State Department. Smith told Corcoran he would do all he could to help in the overthrow of Arbenz. He added that he would like to work for United Fruit once he retired from government office. This request was granted and Bedell Smith was later to become a director of United Fruit. According to John Prados (Presidents' Secret War), Corcoran’s meeting with “Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith that summer and that conversation is recalled by CIA officers as the clear starting point of that plan.” Evan Thomas (The Very Best Men) has added that: “With his usual energy and skill, Corcoran beseeched the U. S. government to overthrow Arbenz”.

The new CIA plan to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz was called Operation Success. Allen Dulles became the executive agent and arranged for Tracey Barnes and Richard Bissell to plan and execute the operation. Bissell later claimed that he had been aware of the problem since reading a document published by the State Department that claimed: “The communists already exercise in Guatemala a political influence far out of proportion to their small numerical strength. This influence will probably continue to grow during 1952. The political situation in Guatemala adversely effects U. S. interests and constitutes a potential threat to U.S. security.” Bissell does not point out that the source of this information was Tommy Corcoran and the United Fruit Company.

John Prados argues that it was Barnes and Bissell who “coordinated the Washington end of the planning and logistics for the Guatemala operation.” As Deputy Director for Plans, it was Frank Wisner’s responsibility to select the field commander for Operation Success. Kim Roosevelt was first choice but he turned it down and instead the job went to Albert Hanley, the CIA station Chief in Korea.

Tracey Barnes brought in David Atlee Phillips to run a “black” propaganda radio station. According to Phillips, he was reluctant to take part in the overthrow of a democratically elected president. Barnes replied: “It’s not a question of Arbenz. Nor of Guatemala. We have solid intelligence that the Soviets intended to throw substantial support to Arbenz… Guatemala is bordered by Honduras, British Honduras, Salvador and Mexico. It’s unacceptable to have a Commie running Guatemala.” Barnes also appointed E. Howard Hunt as chief of political action.

Albert Hanley brought in Rip Robertson to take charge of the paramilitary side of the operation. Robertson had been Hanley’s deputy in Korea and had “enjoyed going along on the behind-the-lines missions with the CIA guerrillas, in violation of standing orders from Washington.” One of those who worked with Robertson in Operation Success was David Morales. Also in the team was Henry Hecksher, who operated under cover in Guatemala to supply front-line reports.

John Foster Dulles decided that he “needed a civilian adviser to the State Department team to help expediate Operation Success. Dulles chose a friend of Corcoran’s, William Pawley, a Miami-based millionaire”. David McKean goes on to point out that Pawley had worked with Corcoran, Chennault and Willauer in helping to set up the Flying Tigers and in transforming Civil Air Transport into a CIA airline. McKean adds that his most important qualification for the job was his “long association with right-wing Latin America dictators.”

The rebel “liberation army” was formed and trained in Nicaragua. This was not a problem as President Anastasio Somoza and been warning the United States government since 1952 that that the Guatemalan revolution might spread to Nicaragua. The rebel army of 150 men were trained by Rip Robertson. Their commander was a disaffected Guatemalan army officer, Carlos Castillo Armas.

It was clear that a 150 man army was unlikely to be able to overthrow the Guatemalan government. Tracey Barnes believed that if the rebels could gain control of the skies and bomb Guatemala City, they could create panic and Arbenz might be fooled into accepting defeat.

According to Richard Bissell, Somoza was willing to provide cover for this covert operation. However, this was on the understanding that these aircraft would be provided by the United States. Dwight Eisenhower agreed to supply Somoza with a “small pirate air force to bomb Arbenz into submission”. To fly these planes, the CIA recruited American mercenaries like Jerry DeLarm.

Before the bombing of Guatemala City, the rebel army was moved to Honduras where Tommy Corcoran’s business partner, Whiting Willauer, was ambassador. The plan was for them to pretend to be the “vanguard of a much larger army seeking to liberate their homeland from the Marxists”.

Arbenz became aware of this CIA plot to overthrow him. Guatemalan police made several arrests. In his memoirs, Eisenhower described these arrests as a “reign of terror” and falsely claimed that “agents of international Communism in Guatemala continued their efforts to penetrate and subvert their neighboring Central American states, using consular agents for their political purposes and fomenting political assassinations and strikes."

Sydney Gruson of the New York Times began to investigate this story. Journalists working for Time Magazine also tried to write about these attempts to destabilize Arbenz’s government. Frank Wisner, head of Operation Mockingbird, asked Allen Dulles to make sure that the American public never discovered the plot to overthrow Arbenz. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, agreed to stop Gruson from writing the story. Henry Luce was also willing to arrange for the Time Magazine reports to be rewritten at the editorial offices in New York.

The CIA propaganda campaign included the distribution of 100,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled Chronology of Communism in Guatemala . They also produced three films on Guatemala for showing free in cinemas. Faked photographs were distributed that claimed to show the mutilated bodies of opponents of Arbenz.

David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt were responsible for running the CIA's Voice of Liberation radio station. Broadcasts began on 1 st May, 1954. They also arranged for the distribution of posters and pamphlets. Over 200 articles based on information provided by the CIA were placed in newspapers and magazines by the United States Information Agency.

The Voice of Liberation reported massive defections from Arbenz’s army. According to Phillips the radio station “broadcast that two columns of rebel soldiers were converging on Guatemala City. In fact, Castillo Armas and his makeshift army were still encamped six miles inside the border, far from the capital.” As Phillips later admitted, the “highways were crowded, but with frightened citizens fleeing Guatemala City and not with soldiers approaching it.”

One CIA memo has Raymond Leddy saying: "It may be necessary to take more deadly plans might need development... The best way to bring about the fall of the Arbenz government would be to eliminate 15-20 of its leaders with Trujillo's trained pistoleros."

As E. Howard Hunt pointed out, “our powerful transmitter overrode the Guatemalan national radio, broadcasting messages to confuse and divide the population from its military overlords.” There was no popular uprising. On 20th June, the CIA reported to Dwight Eisenhower that Castillo Armas had not been able to take his assigned objective, Zacapa. His seaborne force had also failed to capture Puerto Barrios.

According to John Prados, it all now depended on “Whiting Willauer’s rebel air force”. However, that was not going to plan and on 27th June, Winston Churchill, the British prime minister berated Eisenhower when a CIA plane sank a British merchant vessel heading for Guatemala. The bombing had been ordered by Rip Robertson without first gaining permission from the CIA or Eisenhower. Robertson had been convinced that the Springfjord was a “Czech arms carrying freighter”. In reality it had been carrying only coffee and cotton. Frank Wisner had to make a personal apology for the incident and the CIA later quietly reimbursed Lloyd’s of London, insurers of the Springfjord , the $1.5 million they had paid out on the ship.

The Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Guillermo Toriello, asked the United Nations for help against the covert activities of the United States. Toriello accused the United States government of categorizing "as communism every manifestation of nationalism or economic independence, any desire for social progress, any intellectual curiosity, and any interest in progressive liberal reforms."

President Dwight Eisenhower responded by claiming that Guatemala had a "communist dictatorship.. had established... an outpost on this continent to the detriment of all the American nations". Secretary of State John Foster Dulles added that the Guatemala people were living under a "communist type of terrorism".

Jacobo Árbenz had been convinced by the Voice of Liberation reports that his army was deserting. Richard Bissell believes that this is when Arbenz made his main mistake. Arbenz decided to distribute weapons to the “people’s organizations and the political parties”. As Bissell later explained: “The conservative men who constituted the leadership of Guatemala’s army viewed this action as the final unacceptable leftward lurch, and they told Arbenz they would no longer support him.”

The CIA was also busy bribing Arbenz's military commanders. It was later discovered that one commander accepted $60,000 to surrender his troops. Ernesto Guevara attempted to organize some civil militias but senior army officers blocked the distribution of weapons. Arbenz now believed he stood little chance of preventing Castillo gaining power. Accepting that further resistance would only bring more deaths he announced his resignation over the radio.

Castillo's new government was immediately recognised by President Dwight Eisenhower. Castillo now reversed the Arbenz reforms. In July 19, 1954, he created the National Committee of Defense Against Communism and decreed the Preventive Penal Law Against Communism to fight against those who supported Arbenz when he was in power. Over the next few weeks thousands were arrested on suspicion of communist activity. A large number of these prisoners were tortured or killed.

The new government disenfranchised three-quarters of Guatemala's voters by barring illiterates from the electoral rolls. Castillo also outlawed all political parties, trade unions and peasant organizations. Opposition newspapers were closed down and "subversive" books were banned and existing copies were burnt in the streets.

Arbenz and his family found it difficult to find a country willing to grant him sanctuary. He lived for short periods in Mexico, Switzerland, France, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Uruguay. In 1960 Fidel Castro invited him to live in Cuba. Ten years later, Arbenz and his wife moved to Mexico.

On this day in 1978 Margaret Thatcher made her "swamped by immigrants" speech. In a television interview in Thatcher, the leader of the opposition, played the race-card when she claimed "Some people have felt swamped by immigrants. They've seen the whole character of their neighbourhoods change." Bernard Levin, who was a supporter of Thatcher, warned that, "If you talk and behave as though black men were some kind of virus that must be kept out of the body politic then it is the shabbiest hypocrisy to preach racial harmony at the same time."

David Olusoga, points out in Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016): "Immigrants accounted for a mere 4 per cent of the British population in 1979. Yet, the word 'swamped' struck home with voters and shocked some commentators. Intentionally or not it was an echo of Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech... Thatcher's words were denounced by black British groups and by her political opponents, and criticised by some of her own party."

Thatcher's comments increased her popularity with the British public and it is believed it was a factor in her victory in the 1979 General Election: "Before her remarks, only 9 per cent of British citizens felt that there were too many immigrants; afterwards 21 per cent admitted they were worried. Thatcher's supporters argued that it was a politician's job to draw the public's attention to uncomfortable truths. Opponents suggested that such rhetoric was self-fulfilling. It was easy to forget that at this time immigrants amounted to 4 per cent of the population. Was it possible for so small a minority to 'swamp' a mighty imperial nation?"

This prepared the way for Thatcher's economic policies neo-liberal economic policies in order to control the power of trade union movement. Unemployment figures rose substantially over the next few years: 1980 (7.4%), 1981 (11.4%) and 1982 (13.0%). With high unemployment and with the encouragement of the politicians who have created the unemployment, people turn their hostility towards the people who are immigrants or who look like immigrants, who believe they have taken their jobs.

On this day in 2010 Howard Zinn died of a heart attack while swimming. Zinn, the son of Jewish immigrants, Edward Zinn, a waiter, and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn, a housewife, was born in Brooklyn in 1922. Zinn later recalled: “We moved a lot, one step ahead of the landlord. I lived in all of Brooklyn’s best slums.”

Zinn attended New York City public schools and after graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School he became a pipe fitter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard where he met his future wife, Roslyn Shechter.

Howard Zinn became very active in left-wing politics and in 1939 he attended a meeting organised by the American Communist Party. "Suddenly, I heard the sirens sound, and I looked around and saw the policemen on horses galloping into the crowd and beating people. I couldn't believe that. And then I was hit. I turned around and I was knocked unconscious. I woke up sometime later in a doorway, with Times Square quiet again, eerie, dreamlike, as if nothing had transpired. I was ferociously indignant... It was a very shocking lesson for me."

A strong opponent of fascism Zinn joined the United States Air Force in 1943. During the Second World War Zinn flew missions throughout Europe. He was awarded the Air Medal, and attained the rank of second lieutenant. In April 1945, he was involved in the bombing of German soldiers based in Royan. "Twelve hundred heavy bombers, and I was in one of them, flew over this little town of Royan and dropped napalm - first use of napalm in the European theater. And we don’t know how many people were killed or how many people were terribly burned as a result of what we did." This experience turned him into an anti-war campaigner.

After the war, Zinn worked at a series of menial jobs until entering New York University on the GI Bill in 1949. He received his bachelor’s degree from NYU, followed by master’s and doctoral degrees in history from Columbia University, where he studied under Henry Steele Commager and Richard Hofstadter. He obtained his PhD with a dissertation about the career of Fiorello LaGuardia. This became the subject of his first book, LaGuardia in Congress (1959). The book was well-received and won the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Prize.

In 1956, he became the chairmanship of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, an all-black women's school in Atlanta. Zinn made no attempt to hide his political views. One of his students, Alice Walker, remembers how in his first lecture he stated: “Well, I stand to the left of Mao Zedong.” As she pointed out: "It was such a moment, because the people couldn’t imagine anyone in Atlanta saying something like that, when at that time the Chinese and the Chinese Revolution just meant that, you know, people were on the planet who were just going straight ahead, a folk revolution. So he was saying he was to the left of that."

While teaching at the college he joined the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People and during the 1960s was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His political activities resulted in him losing his job at Spelman College. In 1963, Spelman fired him for "insubordination." Alice Walker argued: "He was thrown out because he loved us, and he showed that love by just being with us. He loved his students. He didn’t see why we should be second-class citizens. He didn’t see why we shouldn’t be able to eat where we wanted to and sleep where we wanted to and be with the people we wanted to be with. And so, he was with us. He didn’t stay back, you know, in his tower there at the school. And so, he was a subversive in that situation."

According to the Los Angeles Times: "During the civil rights movement, Zinn encouraged his students to request books from the segregated public libraries and helped coordinate sit-ins at downtown cafeterias. Zinn also published several articles, including a then-rare attack on the Kennedy administration for being too slow to protect blacks."

In 1964 Howard Zinn became Professor of History at Boston University. Soon afterwards he published his second book, SNCC: The New Abolitionists (1964). This was followed by The Southern Mystique (1964) and New Deal Thought (1966).

Zinn was also one of the leaders of the Anti-Vietnam War protests during the presidencies of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon. When Daniel Ellsberg, an administration official, came out against the war, he gave one copy of the Pentagon Papers Zinn and his wife, Roslyn. As a result of his political activities that he published Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal (1967) and Disobedience and Democracy (1968). Zinn travelled to Hanoi with Father Daniel Berrigan and successfully negotiated the release of three captured US airmen.

Zinn came into conflict with John Silber, the president of Boston University. Zinn twice helped lead faculty votes to oust Silber president, who in turn claimed that Zinn was a prime example of teachers "who poison the well of academe." Zinn was also co-chairman of the strike committee when university professors walked out in 1979. After the strike was settled, he and four colleagues were charged with violating their contract when they refused to cross a picket line of striking secretaries. The charges against "the Boston Five" were soon dropped.

George Binette was one of his students: "At first I found his lectures disorganised, bordering on the chaotic. But I soon came to appreciate that through subtly weaving considerable erudition with personal reminiscence, he was challenging the received and often cherished assumptions about US history among young people. In person Zinn frequently projected a Zen-like calm. He seemed to possess exceptional patience, both for naive admirers and stridently reactionary critics, though he never concealed a zealous passion against injustice. And in contrast to many left-leaning academics, he combined his classroom stance with practical action."

Other books by Zinn included The Politics of History (1970), Postwar America (1973), Justice in Everyday Life (1974). A People's History of the United States was published in 1980 with a first printing of 5,000. However, over the next twenty years it achieved sales of over a million copies. Traditional historians criticised the book but as Zinn pointed out: "There's no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete. My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times." Noam Chomsky has argued that the book had a tremendous impact on the public: "I can't think of anyone who had such a powerful and benign influence... His historical work changed the way millions of people saw the past."

The book was criticised by liberal and conservative historians. When reviewing the book for the New York Times, the historian, Eric Foner described it as "a deeply pessimistic vision of the American experience" and pointed out that "blacks, Indians, women and labourers appear either as rebels or as victims. Less dramatic but more typical lives - people struggling to survive with dignity in difficult circumstances - receive little attention."

Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton University, had mixed views on Zinn: “What Zinn did was bring history writing out of the academy, and he undid much of the frankly biased and prejudiced views that came before it. But he’s a popularizer, and his view of history is topsy-turvy, turning old villains into heroes, and after a while the glow gets unreal.”

As he wrote in his autobiography, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."

In 1988, Howard Zinn took early retirement to concentrate on writing. This including a play about the anarchist leader Emma Goldman. Other books by Zinn include: Declarations of Independence (1990), Zinn Reader (1997), Howard Zinn on History (2001), Zinn on War (2001), Terrorism and War (2002), Emma, a biography of Emma Goldman (2002), Disobedience and Democracy (2002), his autobiography, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (2002), A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (2006), A Young People's History of the United States (2007) and The Unraveling of the Bush Presidency (2007).

Zinn continued to be active in politics and was highly critical of US troops being used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Zinn argued: "Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it's been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn't just moan. They worked, they acted, they organised, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that's what we have to do today."