The Haymarket Affair

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.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Ruth Kinna 3 episodes
  Professor of Political Theory at Loughborough University
• Christopher Phelps 2 episodes
  Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Nottingham
• Gary Gerstle No other episodes
  Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge

Reading list

• The Haymarket Tragedy
  Paul Avrich (Princeton University Press, 1984) Google Books →
• The History of the Haymarket Affair
  Henry David (Collier Books, 1963) Google Books →
• Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America
  James Green (Pantheon, 2006) Google Books →
• The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism
  Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams (eds.) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) Google Books →
• Haymarket Scrapbook: 125th Anniversary Edition
  Franklin Rosemont and David Roediger (AK Press, 2012) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m0023gm2

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0023gm2

Auto-category: 331.88 (Labor movements)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. On the 4th of May 1886, at a workers' rally in Chicago, somebody threw a bomb that killed a policeman and the chaotic shooting that followed left more people dead and sent shockwaves across America and Europe.