‘No saviour from on high delivers’

Adding to the post below about the Middle East. The long story of winning democratic rights in Britain has given us a hard won experience – from the Chartists of the 1840’s to the struggle for women’s rights to vote at the beginning of the twentieth century. Liberation can only come from below – not from above. In 1864, the First International Workers Association declared in the opening lines of its founding statement ‘That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves’. This political reality was then widely recognised. A verse from the 19th century working class anthem the ‘internationale’ famously declares that ‘No saviour from on high delivers’. No saviour from on high – especially raining bombs down from the sky – can liberate the working people.

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