학술논문

11 ‘The brilliant sun of revolt’ rising in the East: Solidarity in Britain with the uprising in Pakistan of 1968-69
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Book
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Source
Transnational solidarity: Anticolonialism in the global sixties. :232-254
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Abstract
‘London, Paris, Rome, Berlin: We will fight we will win’ was the battle cry of a generation of radicals located in those cities and has come to symbolise the revolutionary spirit of ’68. Yet while Europe was certainly exploding with political foment, perhaps the greatest victory of ’68 came in Pakistan where an enormous wave of protests erupted across cities towards the end of the year, part of a flourishing popular democracy from below that brought down a military dictatorship. Pakistani workers, peasants and students took centre stage in challenging old ideas and linking their struggles to other movements in the Global South and in the West. In this endeavour they received support and solidarity from some sections of the South Asian community in the UK, particularly Pakistani students, the Indian Workers Association and radical socialist currents. The experience of Pakistan throughout the 1960s destabilises the notion of this era as a site of radicalism that is specifically ‘Western’ and contributes towards a transnational perspective of this seminal decade. This chapter will chart this landmark movement in Pakistan itself and the transnational solidarity forged in Britain with Pakistani students, peasants and workers.
This book excavates forgotten histories of solidarity which were vital to radical political imaginaries during the ‘long sixties’. It decentres the conventional Western focus of this critical historical moment by foregrounding transnational solidarity with, and across, anticolonial and anti-imperialist liberation struggles. It traces the ways in which solidarity was conceived, imagined and enacted in the border-crossings – of nation, race and class identifications – of grassroots activists.Exiled revolutionaries in Uruguay, postcolonial migrants in Britain, and Greek communist refugees in East Germany campaigned for their respective causes from afar while identifying and linking up with liberation struggles in Vietnam and the Gulf and with civil rights movements elsewhere. Meanwhile, Arab migrants in France, Pakistani volunteers and Iraqi artists found a myriad of ways to express solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Neglected archives also reveal Tricontinental Cuban-based genealogies of artistic militancy, as well as stories of anticolonial activist networks and meetings in North America, Italy, the Netherlands and Sudan, forging connections with those freedom fighters attempting to overthrow Portuguese colonial rule in Africa. These entwined routes of the 1960s chart a complex map of transnational political recognition and radical interconnections.Bringing together original research with contributions from veteran activists and artists, this interdisciplinary volume explores how transnational solidarity was expressed in and carried through the itineraries of migrants and revolutionaries, film and print cultures, art and sport, political campaigns and armed struggle. It presents a novel perspective on radical politics of the global sixties which remains crucial to understanding anti-racist solidarity today.

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