BBC2, Wednesdays 9pm HEAR THE word McCarthyism and you'll probably think of Hollywood stars being black-listed or Bertold Brecht playing cat-and-mouse with his inquisitors.
But, as the BBC Timewatch series shows, the 1950s witch hunt hit thousands of working people. Communists got up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 dollar fine (an enormous sum then), simply for their political beliefs, as anti-red hysteria swept the country.
In 1951 Steve Nelson, chair of the CP in Pittsburgh, got twenty years. Fourteen hundred lawyers refused to take his case, and he was forced to defend himself. During his trial, one of dozens of anti-Communist films was on show in Pittsburgh - and the main character was transparently supposed to be Nelson himself, a man who in the movie orders executions and sabotage.
Some Communists went underground; others had their children put in care. Many leftists of foreign origin were deported. The last imprisoned Communists were not released until 1962, and the threat of deportation run ove some ate mous hese prosecutions took place under the notorious Smith Act; this was the law used to imprison James P. Cannon and other leaders of the Trotskyist SWP during the second world war.
The Un-Americans vividly highlights the injustices done and the personal toll it took. It alse shows, through the testimony of ex-Communists how the CPUSA was vulnerable to the charge that it was 'an agent of a foreign power' - with its unwavering loyalty to Stalin.
But, at least in the first programme, the reasons for the witchhunt are little explained.
The witch hunt was not just a product of the dawn of the cold war and the outbreak of war in Korea. It was first and foremost a result of the domestic class struggle, and it started with anti-union laws and a campaign against industrial militants.
After the second world war the US experienced the greatest labour upsurge in its history, far bigger than the famous battles of the 1930s. In 1945 six and a half million workers took part in strike action, in 1946 four and a half million. This compares with a maximum of two million during the great truckers', coal yard and other battles in the mid-1930s.
But as the post-war economy stabilised and the strikers were sold out, the strike wave rapidly declined; in effect it was over by the spring of 1947. The ruling class now moved in to try to crush the unions.
The fight against industrial militancy combined with the turn in the world situation; as the cold war started and Berlin was blockaded by the Soviet Union, anti-red hysteria developed.
Communist Parties worldwide temporarily abandoned the popular front and took a left adventurist turn, a mini-repetition of third period 'storm in the streets'.
US newspapers published long lists of the names and addresses of union activists, effectively driving many out of work. Gangs of rightwing workers roamed factories, lookina for listed' workers to beat up. This of course hit the union fractions of the Trotskyist SWP, as well as the CPUSA.
Nonetheless, the Communist Party was by far the bigger organisaWORLDS HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING tion and the main target; in the early 1950s is still had 43,000 members. But its ability to defend itself was compromised by its politics, and its defensive approach sharply contrasted to that of the SWP.
The CP was deeply unpopular with much of the left and with many militants because of its 'patrioteering' anti-strike line during the second world war. And during the witch hunt, it judged that the US was on the verge of fascism, sending many of its second-rank cadres underground for long periods.
By contrast the Trotskyists determined to use every legal opportunity to defend themselves, to use even the smallest opportunities to build a united front, not to run in the face of the witch hunt and not to go underground.
219% like the Their most famous campaign was that in defence of the 'legless veteran' James Kutchner, fired from his government job with his pension revoked for the 'crime' of member.. ship of the SWP.
This period of US history is full of lessons for socialists. Its shows that generalised witch hunts start from periods of sharp decline in the class struggle, and that attacks on union rights prepare the basis for sustained attacks on all democratic rights - a point of obvious relevance today.
Capitalist democracy is quite compatible with selective and draconian repression of the left. And all the witch hunts in the workplace, and those perpetrated by the labour bureaucracy itself, prepare the basis for generalised hysteria against the 'enemy within'.
National Rally 75 years of the Russian revolution