After taking down the May 1941 progressive movement, the British army forces completed their military occupation of Baghdad for the second time, till newspapers, magazines, all correspondence and printing presses were subjected to intense military control.

Public freedoms were restricted hundreds of leaders, thinkers and the press were imprisoned, dozens of them were removed from important positions, and life got worse after several newspapers stopped publishing and printer’s workers became unemployment.

People’s living crisis got worse after about a hundred thousand British soldiers entered Baghdad in June and camped on the western side of it “in Karkh”.

British officers occupied most of the modern homes near to their camp, so the prices of goods rose highly, it was impossible for the poor and middle classes to live in al-Karkh, for the record this problem still exists in al-Karkh side in Baghdad.

As a result, life became harder than ever as in freedom of opinion, despite the small number of printing press workers, most of them read and wrote there.

A number of printing press workers played a great and influential role in finding a solution to this problem.

Their presence in the popular areas of Baghdad allowed them to hold meetings and discuss the necessity of putting an end to their hard economic life, so they made several cafes in Baghdad as headquarters for meetings , such as “Yassin Café on Abi Nawas Street”, another in “Salhiya”, a third on the “Rusafa side”, near the government press, and the cafes of ” Al-Mutanabi Street and Al-Midan”, in addition to making the house of one of the famous poets in Baghdad as a headquarters for professional union meetings, They turn to it whenever there is violence from the criminal investigation police.

On Friday, October 29, 1942, some printing press workers from different national and class backgrounds gathered to discuss about putting an end to their low economic conditions.

As a result of the quick discussions, they organized a statement, It included some demands, they were, increase their salaries no less than 25%, that the working hours in all private printing must be 8 hours, paying the allowances for overtime, giving them sick & ordinary leave, and applying Labor Law No. 72 of 1936.

The authorities were informed that if these demands are not met, there will be a huge strike.

Because the authorities didn’t care of their demands!

On Monday 2^nd of Nov. 1942, was the day when the printing press workers announced their strike.

Most of them sit-in their homes, while the other gathered the workers for the demonstrations.

The authorities, especially the crime police, did everything in their hands to break the strike, pursued printers workers and progressive journalists, fearing that the strike would continue, the Minister of Social Affairs, “Ahmed Mukhtar Baban”, asked “Mr. Mustafa Jawad”, who was an observer in the ministry, and “Mr. Hashem Jawad”, some workers in order to hook him up with the striking workers through the strike committee.

Indeed, a group of workers had an appointment with the minister, they agreed to issue the following statement, “which said that the Ministry of Social Affairs on 10/26/1942 agreed to increase workers’ wages, which had been agreed between the ministries and owners of newspapers and printing presses, they will receive a cost-of-living allowance of 25 %, all the provisions of the Labor Law will be applied.

The mentioned statement was printed and distributed to all workers and owners of printing houses that night.

And that was the first strike in the history of press and printers in Iraq.

Visit us on Instagram