Today in Labor History August 4, 1792: Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born. He promoted freedom of speech, ending aristocratic and clerical privilege, and equal distribution of income and wealth. He was also a vegetarian, advocate for free love and an atheist, who wrote about the link between organized religion and social repression. His poems and political writings were admired by Marx, Gandhi and others. His poem The Mask of Anarchy (1819) was the first modern work to support nonviolent protest. It was recited by students at the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and by protesters in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution of 2011. Shelley wrote The Mask of Anarchy following the Peterloo Massacre (8/16/1819), when the British cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand political representation, killing 13. He was married to, Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein.

The Mask of Anarchy:

Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!

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