July 30, 2012: Harry Bridges Day

[Starry Messenger]

http://www.longshoreshippingnews.com/2012/07/july-30-2012-harry-bridges-day-2/



“Labor cannot stand still. It must not retreat.
It must go on, or go under.”

– Harry Bridges
July 28, 1901–March 30, 1990

http://www.peoplesworld.org/harry-bridges-and-the-ilwu-from-wharf-rats-to-lords-of-the-docks/

Harry Bridges and the ILWU From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks

The consistent progressive, anti-fascist policies of the ILWU, and its example of militant, democratic unionism under the leadership of Harry Bridges, aroused the fierce enmity and hatred of the ruling circles in the U.S. Beginning in 1940 there were four separate deportation trials of Bridges, all of which failed in their mission to remove Bridges as head of the ILWU and send him back to Australia.

After one of the unsuccessful trials, which had gone to the U.S. Supreme Court, the opinion of Justice Frank Murphy, speaking for the majority, said, “Seldom, if ever, in the history of this nation, has there been such a concentrated, relentless crusade to deport an individual simply because he dared to exercise the freedoms guaranteed to him by the Constitution.”

Despite the massive pressure to accommodate and make his peace with the system, Bridges never compromised his basic beliefs. “My thinking” said Bridges, “is Marxist. And the basic thing about this lousy capitalist system is that the workers create the wealth, but those who own it – the rich – keep getting richer and the poor get poorer.”

[Starry Messenger]

1. Harry Bridges Ballad - BY ILWU Local 94 Foremen's Union

http://www.ilwu19.com/history/biography.htm

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To Harry Bridges, it was obvious that the Communist Party would not only cooperate wholeheartedly and effectively with the maritime workers, but could also give invaluable advice on the conduct and development of the strike. In addition, the rank and file of the waterfront unions found that the Communist workers were the most militant, the most self-sacrificing, and the most consistent elements in their ranks. The membership of the various unions adopted the Western Worker, official Communist Party USA organ, as the official newspaper of the strikers. Such direct acceptance of Communist assistance and advice naturally gave rise to the owners' cry that the strike was "Moscow-made," that it was supported by "Red gold," that it was dominated by the Communist Party and aimed at revolution. The answer, in the strikers' minds, was simple. The gold was not forthcoming, and no one from Moscow told them what to do.

More important, while the Communist Party gave guidance, every policy had to be voted upon by the membership of the unions, who selected the most logical and most efficient methods of all those proposed and discussed. If the Communists gave the best advice, then, the men asked, why not benefit by it? It was ridiculous to claim that the Communists "dominated" the strike, since the rank and file had the final say in every policy. But the Communist Party did influence their tactics and their understanding of the strike, and the men were frank in admitting the influence. That the aim of the strike was revolutionary seemed to them ludicrous: the aim was to establish the rights of thousands of men to strike, to picket, to control their own organization, to protect their unions, to raise wages and improve working conditions. The Communist "plot" was revolutionary only in the eyes of the owners whose stranglehold was menaced.

The docks lay idle. Frantically, the employers called on the San Francisco Industrial Association for assistance. Composed of the largest, most ruthless, and most reactionary interests in the West, the Industrial Association counseled violence, and demanded that the police "open the port" forcibly. On July 5, "Bloody Thursday," the police charged the workers' lines, gassed pickets, shot into the ranks of unarmed men. Over one hundred fell wounded, two men lay dead. That same evening, the national guard marched into San Francisco and Governor Merriam - whose campaign chest was immediately enriched by a $30,000 "voluntary" contribution from the ship owners - declared martial law along the Embarcadero. The two murdered strikers, one of them a Communist, lay in state in the ILA hall one black from the waterfront. For seventy-two hours, a double line of workers shuffled past the biers (a stand on which a coffin sits before burial).

On the fourth day following the killings, with troops patrolling the docks, the workers of San Francisco and their sympathizer gathered to bury the dead. Bareheaded, jamming the street for five blocks, they listened to the funeral oration thunder from the amplifiers above the doorway on the union hall. "You have been killed because of your activity in the labor movement. Your death will guide us to our final victory. Your killing has been inspired by the Industrial Association and the Chamber of Commerce. But organized labor will answer that deed many-fold throughout the land." The two coffins were carried to the street, placed reverently on the waiting trucks. As they moved slowly into Market Street, the procession of workers formed - forty thousand tense, silent, bitter men, women, and children. Chief of Police Quinn had "forbidden" the funeral. But when the ominously quiet tide of marchers flowed into the streets behind the trucks and muffled drums, the police disappeared. All that long July afternoon the cortege tramped through the city, through walls of hushed spectators massed on the sidewalks."

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