More essential background to today’s reality from Mandatory-era left reporting.

‘France Exploits Syria for Its Wool and Cotton’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 4 No. 65. March 30, 1927.

PARIS. France is trying to convert Syria into one of its colonies, Syria is to be a screw in the colonial machinery of France, the source of raw wool, cotton and other industrial products for the home country. The French manufacturers are ruining the national industry of Syria; first the customs privileges which they enjoy make it possible for them to compete successfully with the goods produced by native industries.

Then the system of French taxation in Syria forces the whole population to surrender the lion’s share of their earnings. Finally, compulsory French currency has been introduced in order to wrest the gold reserves from the population. The numbers emigrating from Syria bear eloquent. witness to the present situation in the country: in 1926 36,000 people were forced to emigrate.

Syria Broken Up.

From the time of the occupation of the country in 1919 the French authorities under the protection of the occupational army of 70,000 have been exercising a severe colonial regime. Syria was broken up into a series of tiny states. This enabled France to maintain internecine strife and religious dissension among the native population to keep back the economic development of the country. According to a decree of 1920 Great Livan was declared an autonomous state. Desiring to win the support of the christian population in Syria, France artificially increased the influence of christian Livan by enlarging its frontiers and adding to it purely Musulman territory.

Spread Thru Country.

This regime of French democracy evoked in Syria a wide protest. The revolutionary movement is expanding. The Syrian nation has now been struggling several years for its independence. The last eruption of the national movement occurred in 1925 in the form of a local rising in the Djhebel-Druze mountains, which despite the barriers set up by the French government, spread to the other parts of Syria. During 1926 the uprising spread from the south to the north. The French occupation forces used all means for suppressing the rising. In the summer of 1926 the whole world rang with the barbarous cruelties of the French authorities. To the repeated peace proposals made by the Syrians the valiant French commissars replied by bombarding peaceful towns, firing on the peaceful populations, ruining whole quarters in towns, smashing up whole villages. The French policy evoked the hatred and denunciation of the whole Musulman world. The Syrian war had a toll of 15,000 killed and the losses caused to the population are reckoned at 5,000,000 lire, the war costing France 3 milliard francs and 11,000 killed (including 10,000 colored soldiers). But repression was quite powerless to suppress the national movement. More and more sections of the Syrian population had been drawn into the fight against French imperialism. This movement is also participated in by the toiling masses, who, for the first time in the history of Syria, appeared upon the arena of the social struggle.

Together with the peasantry the workers bear the full brunt of imperialist oppression.

Great Strike Wave.

The regime of terror, the abrupt fall of the currency in 1926 and the rise of the cost of living caused a great strike wave to sweep over Syria. In the summer of 1926 the tramway workers in the town of Beirut went on strike. The movement spread to the workers in other branches of labor: the printing industry, the woodworking, the tobacco and others. The movement then began to spread to other towns. Two thousand textile workers downed tools in Damascus. Here a committee for organizing the trade unions was formed. It appealed to the workers of other cities to support the strikers. Strikes are also proceeding in Homs, Aleppo and elsewhere. The movement is everywhere accompanied by a campaign for the organization of trade unions. Together with economic demands, the freedom to form unions is being demanded.

The labor movement is being born in the throes of the struggle. The French authorities are attacking this second front of the labor movement, which goes shoulder to shoulder with the national-emancipatory movement. By order of the high commissioner many active workers are being placed under trial and deported. The police keeping an eagle eye on the movement, and participating in all conflicts, is disintegrating its forces, But the French military clique will be powerless to stem the historical course of events: The Syrian workers and peasants already understand their problems, forming a united front with the nationalist movement, the workers and peasants of Syria will fight to their bitterest end in order to free themselves and the whole country from capitalist oppression.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1927/1927-ny/v04-n065-NY-mar-30-1927-DW-LOC.pdf