legacy from Joe Hill Songs and class spirit that will never die
By KEITH WHITE SEVENTY years ago this coming November 19, one of the most famous labour movement poets and songwriters of all time was murdered by the state of Utah, USA.
Joe Hill was no armchair songwriter; his verses sprung from the need to find "a path to the masses" , a path he himself trod as an organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World (perhaps better known to millions of American workers as "the Wobblies").
Founded in 1905 at a convention held in Chicago, the IWW held that
"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things in life. Between these two classes, a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system.
Against the narrow craft unionism of the American Federation of Labour the IWW sought to build one big union. As Joe Hill put it:
"We want the sailor and the tailor and the lumberjacks. And all the cooks and laundry girls. We want the guy that dives for pearls The pretty maid that's making curls And the baker and the staker and the chimney sweep We want the man that's slinging hash. The child that works for little cash In one Union grand."
Joe Hill (born Joseph Hillstrom in Sweden 1879) went to the US in 1902 and joined the IWW in 1910. As a migrant worker amongst migrant workers, he was in an excellent position to understand the people he was trying to reach,
contributed significantly to the "Little Red Songbook". considered by many at the time to be the most important Wobbly publication.
Radicals of all kinds had a hard time putting forward their ideas and organising against the established order. Strikes were bloody affairs with state backed scabs and company thugs given free reign to do what they liked to striking workers.
Joe Hill's first song for the Wobblies was "Casey Jones - the Union Scab", a parody of a popular song of the day, written to help Southern Pacific railroad strikers. "The workers on the SP line to strike sent out a call. But Casey Jones the engineer, he wouldn't strike at
all. His boiler it was leaking and its drivers on the bum And his engine and its hearings. they were all out of plumb. Casey Jones kept his junk pile running: Casey Jones was working double time: Casey Jones got a wooden medal. For being good and faithful on the SP line.
Having died the scab continued his scabbing:... When Casey Jones got up to heaven to the Pearly
Gate. He said Tm Casey Jones, the guy that pulled the SP
freight." You're just the man,/ said Peter, 'our musicians
went on strike: You can get a job a-scabbing any time you like!" Casey lones got a job in heaven: Casey Jones was doing mighty fine: Casey Jones went scabbing on the angel Just like he did to workers on the SP line. The angels got together, and they said it wasn't fair For Casey Jones to go around a-scabbing
everywhere. The Angels Union No. 23. they sure were there. And they promptly fired Casey down the Golden
Stair. Casey lones went to hell a-flying 'Casey Jones.' the Devil said. "Oh fine': Casey Jones, get busy shovelling sulpher That's what you get for scabbing on the SP line.'
The song became immensely popular, was printed up on small cards and sold in order to raise funds for the strikers.
Fighting to organise against the employers meant fighting tor the right to say anything at all in public. A central feature of IWW activity was the free speech fight. Wobbly activists would stand up in public and preach their policies. As they were arrested and jailed others would take their place.
Sometimes, hundreds would be arrested in the campaign for the right to free speech. The idea was to fill the jails, where further singing, shouting and resistance would go on until embarrassed county officials would allow free speech in the streets.
Wobblies from all over the US travelled thousands of miles in response to calls for "Good men needed to fill the jails" of some Western town where the IWW was seeking to organise the downtrodden migrant workers. Streefcar strike, Seattle 1903 Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986, Page 23
The Leit still needs to organise and campaign more efficiently and raise the level of political discussion in order to prepare to take control locally. At the moment we tend to react only against the lateut cuts or Insanities of the Labour Group.
To aid this process, Socialist Viewpoint supporters locally produce a 6-page duplicated bulletin which we give out free.
This forces us to seek out and to discuss amongst ourselves the key events and issues and to relate them to our national and international. perspectives. bulietin also stimulates discussion with our readers which helps us to develop our politics.
In order to increase political discussion, we have encouraged one ропетя, Dave Spencer, a West Midlands County Councillor, to go forward for arliamentary selection for the North Eas CLP. This has involved him speaking or our politics at a number of meetings to Trade Union and Labour Party branches.
As far as campaigns are concerned, our supporters were involved in the occupation of Bell Green Primary School which was due to be closed by the Although unable to prevent heir school, the Bell Green Action Group used its experience to help build a citywide organisation of defence committees when a further B schools were threatened with diosure. The bullding organisations, the encouragement of mass action, is central to the renewal of the labour movement.
We have also been part of a Housing survey and campaign in the same Bell Green/Wood End Council Estate. these we have set up informal political education groups in peoples houses, which have been very successful.
We have helped build an END group locally which held a large peace rally on VE Day with some Hiroshima survivors and a speaker from the Philippines Support Group.
We hope here to use the international symbolism of Coventry's destruction and its town twinning policy (with 31 separate towns at the last count) to raise political debate on CND, Nuclear Free Zones and international policies.
In their Trade Unions our supporters are variously involved in the redundancies at GEC and against cuts in the Health Service.
Alongside other union activists, our supporters were responsible for the recent successful campaign to persuade GEC to organise cervical cancer screening. action (featured in Channel 4's World uncovered a number of women who required treatment.
Throughout the miners' strike we maintained a regular presence in the local Sup port Committee and on the picket lines at Coventry Colliery. We carried out consistent support work, collecting money and food.
All four Coventry CLP: passed resolutions calling for amnesty and ment for all sacked miners and 2 of them chose this as their Annual Conference resolutions.
This was in part due to SV supporters who initiated the appeal sent by the Support Committee to local trade unions and
abour Parly branches, in 3 of the 4 CEPs it was SV supporters who moved the amnesty and reinstatement resolutions.
Since the end of the strike, Support Contie a street Adopt Prisoner campaign and through Coventry South West CLP the on ly continuing street collection in the city.
monthly The of our sup- shortlisting Council on June 11 by the nar- Council. rowest of margins, i.e. the Lord closure of Mayor's casting vote, Coventry Campaign Closures went to the courts to try to get th decision overturned. of such "consultation" Council's Choices bul bear known as No Future, laughably No Choice", was inadequate. Anyone who had been to one of the From sultation" meetings would have been fore. ed to agree. It was obvious that the leader- ship of the Labour decided on Just a sham they refused to give the relevant informa- tion on the schools concerned so that alter- how they were going to implement the plan to close the secondary schools. How do you run a temporary split site school with anything up to 2,000 pupils? school, took action in the courts before everyone else, because they wanted to tight against stop the Council voting on June 11 on clos- ing the school by judice. After June I1 the rest of the Action Groups in the Campaign decided to follow suit and try to get a joint case with This Union given the chance to hang themselves with their own rope and they took it. The cuts 'consultation" replies from people and organisations; on- ly 43 (less than 5%) were in lavour of clas- ing anything. case* precedent and we argued that the Council had tailed to consult properly, falled to listen to the wishes of the people reinstate- of Coventry and failed to justify closures. However, between threatened schools, so we had to hire a barrister to attend the preliminary hearing for the St Michael's case. On September 23, atter 4 days, the judge ruled that there was no case for the Council to answer. In Future No Choice was a load of rubbish, SV sup- inadequately documented and costed; but the "consultation" as a whole was satisfac- Adopt a tory because of the number of meetings organised held. Quantity, but not quality the difficulty of getting hold of information
Coventry schools: Judge puts Labour Group "top of the class" By MATTHEW JONES AFTER losing the vote in the nervetholand the closures be had the duce The Against School state Our case rested on the fact that the Labour(?) on the cuts "Future titled As it is, Council's "con- The Group had already cuts and the meetings were and a cover up. In addition Closures, To cap it all they hadn't a clue about same One school, St Michael's C of E primary action This was important: the Council were Our litigation was based on the Brent we failed to get a joint case St Michael's and the rest of the statement he agreed that No to close two In reply to the parents' evidence about Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986. Page 22
nerve to say that they had managed to pro-
excellent documentation and counter arguments to the Council (all of wheh the Council then ignored!).
case has its political lessons, besides the obvious one about the nature of the capitalist courts. There is also the comparison of the politics of a highly paid
functionary and Coventry's Council. If he had ruled in favour of St Michael's it could have been said that he showed mote concern for Coventry's people than the Labour Group.
Coventry's Labour Group has shown that it has roughly the same degree of socialist politics as a High Court Judge!
School Action Groups which together with NUPE and the NUT make up the Coventyry Campaign Against School
Ware determined to light on. On Tuesday October 8, 45 people attended a Campaign meeting. This is roughly the
number who came to the first meeting on March 19.
After 7 months people who were new to political action at the start have learnt a lot about the methods of the Council and the
needed to combat them. The meeting decided to drop the court action and mount a political campaign against
The real key to success in this campaign lies in a joint fight by Action Groups, the Labour Party and the Council unions. With the government's privatisation plana in the ofting, all jobs are at risk. delegated representatives to the Cam-
Othe rest of the Council unions paign should be started to inform every union member of the situation and ask for closures and against privatisation.
Whether this will happen or another question. The attitude of most of the manual unions varies over sweetheart
On the teaching and clerical besides NUT and NUPE, NAS/UWT has problems with its national leadership and NALGO's local leadership can't carry its membership against the management. The
months will see whether we *Brent case: Brought and won by Breat parents against Brent Council for trying
comprehensives without proper consultation.
Our legacy from Joe Hill Songs and class spirit that will never die
By KEITH WHITE
SEVENTY years ago this corning November 19, one
of the most famous labour movement poets and
songwriters of all time was murdered by the state of
Utah, USA.
Joe Hill was no armchair songwriter; his verses sprung
himself trod as an organiser for the Industrial Workers of from the need to find "a path to the masses". a path he
the World (perhaps better known to millions of American
workers as "the Wobblies").
Founded in 1905 at a convention held in Chicago, the
IWW held that
'The working class and the employing class have
nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as
hunger and want are found among millions of work-
ing people and the few, who make up the employing
class, have all the good things in life. Between these two classes. a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system.
Against the narrow craft unionism of the American Federation of Labour the IWW sought to build one big union. As Joe Hill put it:
"We want the sailor and the tailor and the lumberjacks. And all the cooks and laundry girls. We want the guy that dives for pearls The pretty maid that's making curls And the baker and the staker and the chimney sweep We want the man that's slinging hash. The child that works for little cash In one Union grand.".
Joe Hill (born Joseph Hillstrom In Sweden 1879) went to the US in 1902 and joined the IWW in 1910. As a migrant worker amongst migrant workers, he was in an excellent position to understand the people he was trying to reach, and contributed significantly to "Little Songbook* considered by many at the time to be the most important Wobbly publication.
Radicals of all kinds had a hard time putting forward their ideas and organising against the established order. Strikes were bloody affairs with state backed scabs and company thugs given free reign to do what they liked to striking workers.
Joe Hill's first song for the Wobblies was "Casey Jones day, written to help Southern Pacific railroad strikers. - the Union Scab" : a parody of a popular song of the "The workers on the SP line to strike sent out a call. But Casey Jones the engineer, he wouldn't strike at all. His boiler it was leaking and its drivers on the bum And his engine and its hearings, they were all out of plumb. Casey Jones kept his junk pile running: Casey Jones was working double time: Casey Jones got a wooden medal, For being good and faithful on the SP line.
Having died the scab continued his scabbing:...
When Casey Jones got up to heaven to the Pearly
Gate. He said I'm Casey Jones, the guy that pulled the SP
freight. 'You're just the man. said Peter, our musicians
went on strike: You can get a job a-scabbing any time you like!' Casey Jones got a job in heaven: Casey Jones was doing mighty fine:
Casey Jones went scabbing on the angels lust like he did to workers on the SP line The angels got together, and they said it wasn't fair For Casey Jones to go around a-scabbing
everywhere. The Angels Union No. 23, they sure were there, And they promptly fired Casey down the Golden
Stair. Casey Jones went to hell a-flying Casey Jones,' the Devil said, 'Oh fine': Casey Jones, get busy shovelling sulpher That's what you get for scabbing on the SP line:
The song became immensely popular, was printed up on small cards and sold in order to raise funds for the strikers.
Fighting to organise against the employers meant fighting for the right to say anything at all in public. A central feature of TWW activity was the free speech fight. Wobbly activists would stand up in public and preach their take their they were arrested and jailed other.
Sometimes, hundreds would be arrested in the campaign for the right to free speech. The idea was to fill the euld go untie barred county official mone where further singing, shouting and resistance allow free speech in the streets.
Wobblies from all over the US travelled thousands of miles in response to calls for "Good men needed to fill the jails" of some Western town where the IWW was seeking to organise the downtrodden migrent workers. Streefcar strike, Seattle 1903 Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986, Page 23
In the streets, theiWW often came up Salvation Army competing for hearts and minds, some Wobbly songs were sung to well-known hymn tunes. Perhaps the most famous of Joe Hill's songs The Poacher and the Slave" was a response to "The Sweet bye
"Long hair'd preachers come out every night Iry to tell you what's wrong and what's right But when asked about something to eat They will answer with voices so sweet:
You will eat by and by
In that glorious land in the sky
Work and pray: live on hay:
You'll get pie in the sky when you die. And the starvation army they play And they sing and they clap and they play Til they get all your coin on the drum, Then they tell you when you're on the bum: If you fight hard for children and wife Try to get something good in this life You're a sinner and bad man, they tell. When you die you will sure go to hell. Workingmen of all countries unite Side by side we for freedom will fight When the world and its wealth we have gained To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:
You will eat, bye and bye.
When you've learned how to cook and to fry.
Chop some wood. t'will do you good.
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye."
It Is fitting perhaps that it was in the victously reac tionary Mormon Church-dominated State of Utah where Joe Hill was murdered by the employing class.
In the few years before Joe Hill's arrest, trial and execution there had been a series of major class struggles in the miners and railroad construction. He himself had been working in a mine and helping to organise against
Governor Spry of Utah was well known for his total support for the employing class and revenge after some working class victories. This hatred for such organisations as the IWW was to play a role in Hill's death.
In January 1914, two masked assailants entered a grocery store and shot the owner and his son.
Before he died, the son shot and wounded one of the attackers, who fled empty-handed. Joe Hill was picked up by the authorities a few days later after a doctor came forward to report he had treated Hill on the night of the robbery.
Hill denied involvement, claimed to have been shot in a dispute over a woman, and refused to name her or the man who had shot him.
The bullet had travelled right through his body; but no trace of it was ever found in the grocery store. The dead owner had warned his wife about a potential threat from two men living in the area: but this was ignored by the authorities as the two people were apparently "respectable citizens".
There is clearly no room here for a more detailed description of the process whereby Hill was tried. sentenced and executed. Suffice it to say that despite a major campaign, and an appeal for clemency from presi dent Woodrow Wilson, "right to revenge" by refusing to commute the sentence.
On November 19 1915, having been given the choice of the bullet or the rope, Joe Hill was shot. Defiant to the last, he called on his executioners to fire.
The IWW respected his wish that he "didn't want to be found dead in the state of Utah" and one year after a Chicago funeral attended by thousands of workers his ashes were divided into many small packets and dispatched for scattering in every State of the USA (except Utah) and many other countries of the world. Joe Hill's last will and testament, scribbled on a scrap of paper during the last visit from the press, summed up his revolutionary outlook:
MY LAST WILL and My will is easy to decide I would to ashes it reduce. Good luck to all of you Joe Hill Joe Hill song Alive as you and me: 1 never died / says he. Philip Foner. Vol. 4 - The JWW Communism. his desire for Governor Spry exercised his organisers. Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986. Page 24
TEDG For there is nothing to divide My kin don't need to fuss and moan - "Moss does not cling to a rolling stone. My body? - Oh. if I could choose. And let the merry breezes blow My dust to where some flowers grow. Perhaps some fading flower then Would come to life and bloom again This is my last and final will A telegram to WW leader "Big" Bill Haywood ended "...don't waste time mourning. Organise. In the last 70 years, Joe Hill's songs have been sung throughout the world and continue to inspire socialists How pleased Joe would have been to have experienced the recent miners' strike and the explosion of songs which accompanied it. Songs, written by participants of the strike, set to well known tunes, poems, and so on played an important part in maintaining and building morale. And in a number of miners songbooks and on tapes and records of the songs sung in the strike you wil find a How true are these words written in 1925 by Alfred Hayes and later set to music by Earl Robinson: I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night Says I. 'But Joe, you're ten years dead. For more details of the IWW and Joe Hill see: The case of Joe Hill. Philip Foner, The history of the US Working Class, Len de Caux, The Living Spirit of the Wobblies James P. Cannon, First Ten years of American Local N°7 : I.W.W. I-W-Wi bocal The Wobbly Hall was a centre of organisation for roving
English workers and the Irish struggle
IM GOING TO PUT A MISSILE ON EVERY SQUARE FOOT OF THE U.S. AND WESTERN By DAVID MOSS Last month the first article in this series looked at the period from the English Reformation to the Act of Union and the links between Irish revolutionaries and the emerging British workers' movement. EVEN before the end of the War with Napoleon, agitation for Parliamentary Reform and extension of the vote to working class men was gaining ground.
After the Peace in 1815 Radical Reform blossomed into a mass working class movement, fuelled partly by the post-war slump, but mainly as a protest against what many people, of all classes, saw as corrupt misgovernment which had waged necessary and costly war abroad and suppressed liberties at home.
After riots in London and an attempted march to London unemployed Manchester "The Blanketeers" , the Tory government, fearing insurrection, outlawed the Political Unions which formed the nuclei of organisation in towns and villages throughout the country.
"Seditious meetings" were banned, and the Habeas Corpus Act suspend-
GASP! HE'S A WARMONGER! EUROPE! OKAY, EVERY Jacobins. solution, tionary tion in June 1817. the following year. Reform had joyed especial veneration and villages ed themselves, an un- equipped with shillelaghs. by workers, The tain to "FELLOW began: *A system of misrepresentation has. turies detained
HE'S INSANE! HE'S Hil FUELING. THE RACE! OTHER SQLARE HOORAY! FOOT! HE'S RESTRAINED! HE'S FLEXIBLE! agitation underground, support for the Ultra- radicals, who advocated a revolu- as increased, was resulting in an attempted insurrec- Revelations about the role of a our government provocateur in this ris- ing swung much sympathy behind the defeated rebels and the Tories were forced to relax their legislation By 1819 the movement for Radical to turn under afflictions...* revived the popular leader Henry Hunt who en- amongst the workers and artisans of the towns around Manchester. same After attacks on him by Loyalists, as Tory government supporters describ- Lancashire some weavers formed themselves into his bodyguard and were on at least one occasion joined by Manchester Irish In London also the Radicals were seeking alliance with Irish