The significance of the Anyuan Road Miners’ Strike

The purpose of the strike struggle is to "unite the proletariat, develop the latent power of the proletariat to dominate society," and ultimately transform society into a society without class oppression and with publicly owned industries. The main slogan of the Anyuan Road miners' strike, "I used to be a cow and a horse, now I want to be a human being" fully embodies this guiding ideology. Anyuan workers' repeated resistances over the past 20 years have all failed, but the victory of this strike has made workers deeply aware of the importance of united struggle and greatly improved their class consciousness and organization. Soon after the victory of the strike, the membership of the workers' club soared from more than 700 before the strike to more than 12,000. All workers in the road and mine united to form a class team with the Communist Party of China as the leadership core and the workers' club as the public organizational form. On this basis, the Anyuan Workers Club and the Guangdong-Han Railway workers jointly established the Guangdong-Han Railway Federation, initiated the establishment of the Hunan Provincial Trade Union Federation and the Hanyeping Federation of Trade Unions, and cooperated with the Hubei Provincial Trade Union Federation A connection was made. Finally, the railway unions united to form the National Railway Union Preparatory Committee, which greatly promoted the national unity of the working class. The Anyuan Road Mine Workers' Strike had a far-reaching impact and became a famous strike event in the history of the Chinese labor movement.

Regarding this strike and its victory, Liu Shaoqi and Zhu Shaolian made the following comments in the "A Brief History of the Anyuan Road Miners' Club" co-authored in August 1923: "This general strike, *** The strike was scheduled to last for 5 days. The order was excellent, the organization was extremely strict, and the workers were able to obey the orders very well. The club paid more than 120 yuan, no one was injured, and no one was defeated. It was really naive to achieve a complete victory. A unique thing in China’s labor movement.”