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Tuesday, January 07, 2014
Monday, January 06, 2014
HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG,
LIEBKNECHT-Honor An Historic Leader Of The
American Labor Movement-“Big Bill Haywood
EVERY JANUARY WE
HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY
AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. DURING THE MONTH
WE ALSO HONOR OTHER HISTORIC LEADERS AS WELL ON THIS SITE.
Book Review
Big Bill Haywood, Melvyn Dubofsky, Manchester University Press, Manchester England, 1987
Big Bill Haywood, Melvyn Dubofsky, Manchester University Press, Manchester England, 1987
If you are sitting around today
wondering, as I occasionally do, what a modern day radical labor leader should
look like then one need go no further than to observe the career, warts and
all, of the legendary Bill Haywood. To previous generations of radicals that
name would draw an automatic response. Today’s radicals, and others interested
in social solutions to the pressing problems that have been bestowed on us by
the continuation of the capitalist mode of production, may not be familiar with
the man and his program for working class power. Professor Dubofsky’s little
biographical sketch is thus just the cure for those who need a primer on this
hero of the working class.
The good professor goes into some
detail, despite limited accessibility, about Haywood’s early life out in the
Western United States in the late 19th century. Those hard scrabble experiences
made a huge imprint on the young Haywood as he tramped from mining camp to
mining camp and tried to make ends mean, any way he could. Haywood, moreover,
is the perfect example of the fact that working class political consciousness
is not innate but gained through the hard experiences of life under the
capitalist system. Thus, Haywood moved from itinerant miner to become a leading
member of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and moved leftward along the
political spectrum along the way. Not a small part in that was due to his trial
on trumped up charges in Idaho for murder as part of a labor crackdown against
the WFM by the mine owners and their political allies there.
As virtually all working class
militants did at the turn of the 20th century, Big Bill became involved with
the early American socialist movement and followed the lead of the sainted
Eugene V. Debs. As part of the ferment of labor agitation during this period
the organization that Haywood is most closely associated with was formed-The
Industrial Workers of the World (hereafter IWW, also known as Wobblies). This
organization- part union, part political party- was the most radical expression
(far more radical than the rather tepid socialist organizations) of the
American labor movement in the period before World War I.
The bulk of Professor Dubofsky’s
book centers, as it should, on Haywood’s exploits as a leader of the IWW. Big
Bill’s ups and downs mirrored the ups and downs of the organization. The
professor goes into the various labor fights that Haywood led highlighted by
the great 1912 Lawrence strike (of bread and roses fame), the various free
speech fights but also the draconian Wilsonian policy toward the IWW after
America declared war in 1917. That governmental policy essentially crushed the
IWW as a mass working class organization. Moreover, as a leader Haywood
personally felt the full wrath of the capitalist government. Facing extended
jail time Haywood eventually fled to the young Soviet republic where he died in
lonely exile in 1928.
The professor adequately tackles the problem of the
political and moral consequences of that escape to Russia for the IWW and to
his still imprisoned comrades so I will not address it here. However, there are
two points noted by Dubofsky that warrant comment. First, he notes that Big
Bill was a first rate organizer in both the WFM and the IWW. Those of us who
are Marxists sometimes tend to place more emphasis of the fact that labor
leaders need to be “tribunes of the people” that we sometimes neglect the
important “trade union secretary” part of the formula. Haywood seems to have
had it all. Secondly, Haywood’s and the IWW’s experience with government repression
during World War I, repeated in the “Red Scare” experience of the 1950’s
against Communists and then later against the Black Panthers in the 1960’s
should be etched into the brain of every militant today. When the deal goes
down the capitalists and their hangers-on will do anything to keep their
system. Anything. That said, read this Haywood primer. It is an important
contribution to the study of American labor history.
From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-The Aylesbury By-election of 1938
...it is always a good idea when possible (in times of some class struggle upsurge, a particularly worthy issue to highlight, etc.) for left-wing militants to get their feet wet (a little) in election campaigns, election campaigns that are principled. Principled meaning in radical circles using the fight for office, the non-executive offices of the capitalist state, as a platform to put before the working-class public their programs. And of course to use that platform if elected as Lenin said to be a "tribune of the people...
Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff.
********
This article first appeared in the form of a paper read to the Conference for the Study of Leon Trotsky and the History of the Revolutionary Movement which took place in London on 20 September 1980, and is reproduced here by kind permission of the author.
Martin Upham gathered the material for this article in the course of the research for his PhD, The History of British Trotskyism to 1949, which was accepted by the University of Hull in 1981. He is a member of the Labour Party, on whose behalf he fought the general elections of 1983 and 1987 in the constituencies of Market Harborough and Enfield North respectively.
The activities of the Stalinists during the Aylesbury by-election were raised in the context of the recent factional disputes within the Communist Party of Great Britain after theoretician Erie Hobsbawm made his well-publicised call just prior to the 1987 general election for tactical voting for the Liberal/Social Democratic Alliance. Both George Matthews, on behalf of the Eurocommunist party executive committee, and Bert Ramelson, for the old-fashioned traditionalists, whilst disagreeing on the relevance of the tactics of the 1930s for today, nonetheless agreed that their party’s conduct during the Aylesbury by-election was perfectly in order. See their letters in 7 Days, 2, 16 and 23 May 1987.
From 1936 the Communist Party of Great Britain and most of the Labour left favoured a Popular Front of all organisations and individuals opposed to Fascism and war. This was a reversal of an earlier view held by the Labour left: their principal policy had been for a Labour government, with a majority, to implement the full socialist programme. Alliances with those outside the working class movement were rejected since they would involve watering the programme down. [1] The CPGB had by 1934 moved from its sectarian policy of the ‘United Front from Below’ to advocacy of a United Front without this qualification. The Seventh Congress of the Communist International in July 1935 confirmed a change which had already occurred. In 1936 the Communists of France and Spain were the most enthusiastic protagonists of Popular Front governments. These represented an alliance of working class parties with those outside the labour movement who, it was suggested, had a common interest with them.
In Britain this argument took the form of the thesis that the widest possible unity was required to defeat a National Government which was soft on Hitler. Specifically it was denied that Labour could hope to build a majority for its programme by the time the next general election was due in 1940. [2] This was the motor force behind the Unity Campaign of the Socialist League, the CPGB and the Independent Labour Party, which was launched with great optimism in January 1937 but had collapsed by the middle of the year, The right wing of the Labour Party, led by those most likely to hold the leading ministerial positions if it was elected with a majority, people who had not made the running when the Socialist League’s influence was at its peak in 1932-34, now presented themselves as the guardians of Labour’s Socialist integrity. [3] They rejected alliances and pacts especially with the Communists, and called for maximum effort to be placed behind putting Labour in with a majority for the implementation of Labour’s Immediate Programme. [4]
In the early 1930s the left (and principally the Socialist League) had urged that Labour should not take power except with a majority and should then carry out the most radical Socialist measures to win popular support. This was in response to the MacDonald betrayal of 1931. But by 1937 many of the same people, before and after the May 1937 dissolution of the Socialist League, had lost faith in Labour winning a majority and were prepared for an alliance across parties. The right wing, including some who had served with MacDonald and had even sought to follow him [5], now had to hand the plausible argument of Socialist fundamentalism with which to stem the growing Communist influence on the Labour Party. The convenient guise of single-minded crusaders for the Socialist commonwealth well suited their intention to remain in unchallenged control of the labour movement. [6]
Trotskyists in Britain had always favoured a United Front of working class organisations [7] They derived their inspiration from Trotsky’s speech to the Executive Committee of the CI on the subject in 1922. [8] The United Front was a tactic for those countries where the working class was split in its allegiances. It was a limited agreement openly concluded between mass organisations. They retained their own separate programmes and the right to criticise each other. [9] In 1932, when organised Trotskyism first emerged in public in Britain, its advocacy of the united front was criticised by the CPGB as a betrayal. By 1937, when Trotskyists of all factions opposed the phoney front of the Unity Campaign in the name of a genuine United Front, they were attacked by the CPGB as splitters, disrupters and people with the same ends as the National Government.
On 24 April 1937 the Mid-Buckinghamshire Divisional Labour Party [10] selected Reg Groves as its prospective parliamentary candidate. [11] By chance the Conservative member for the constituency resigned two months later, making a by-election certain. There was a delay in moving the writ and polling day was only fixed for 19 May 1938. By this time the Aylesbury by-election and the presence of Groves, a Trotskyist, as the Labour candidate, had assumed considerable importance. The principal reason for this was the enhanced fear of war following the Anschluss of March 1938 whereby Austria was annexed to Germany, and the call for a ‘peace alliance’ by Walter Elliott, the editor of Reynolds News on 19 March which revived the flagging forces of the Popular Front. Pressure mounted for the standing of the single candidate most likely to win at by-elections against the National Government’s candidates. 12
In Mid-Bucks, where the Liberals had always held second place to the Conservatives, a Progressive Alliance Group was formed with the object of obtaining the strongest possible anti-government protest in the form of votes for the Liberal candidate, T. Atholl Robertson. Its founding resolution, which was signed by prominent local Labour members including Christopher Addison, called on Groves to stand down. [13] The South Bucks Unity Committee made the same demand. [14]
To the positive desire for an alliance was added distaste for Groves as a Trotskyist. Groves himself had the chance to reach beyond propaganda and demonstrate in practice the fallacy of Popular Front thinking. [15] He encountered opposition within the leading bodies of the constituency.[16] George Shepherd, Labour’s national agent, also initially sought both his withdrawal and a candidate more congenial to Transport House. Support on the executive for his candidature fell, but he still had a majority behind him. [17]
Groves resisted these rumblings and began to campaign. By 6 May he had held 30 meetings and other functions. [18] The Daily Herald loyally supported him.[19] The Daily Worker followed the Peace Alliance argument but went further in its vituperation against Groves. [20] The first leaflet of the local Communists, while it called for unity, did not attack Groves and the Aylesbury party. When the Daily Herald made a pointed comparison between the Liberal Party platform and Labour’s Immediate Programme, the CPGB pressed a different argument:
One important event on 12 May was the announcement by the Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruction that both Liberal and Labour candidates had answered its questions satisfactorily and that it would therefore play no part in the election. [22] This surprising eventuality was commented on by other Trotskyists after polling day. [23]
From mid-May Groves mounted a strong offensive against Robertson. He challenged the Liberal to substantiate his claims of Labour support. [24] The Daily Worker, his bitterest enemy among the press, grew more abusive [25], but he had strong support from Labour papers. [26] One of the remarkable features of the campaign was the appearance on Groves’ platform of Harold Laski, Ellen Wilkinson and even D.N. Pritt, all of whom favoured a Popular Front. Even Reynolds News respected the decision of the local party. It was a reward for standing firm. [27] New branches of the Labour Party were established in the division, the Attlee meeting was held and support came from the ILP. [28] On the eve of the poll his backers and opponents clashed in their expectations. [29]
Aylesbury voted on 19 May 1938. The Tory candidate won with more than twice the vote of Robertson, who came second. Each had lost around 3,000 votes over their parties’ polls in 1935. Groves was the first Labour candidate in Aylesbury not to lose his deposit and had raised his vote by 3,560. [30] He was also the only candidate to raise his share of the poll, which he did in spite of a reduced turnout. [31] The swing against the Tories was greater than the average of all pre-Munich by-election results. He also surpassed the anti-Tory swing of the Munich by-elections at Oxford and Bridgwater. [32]
Groves was jubilant: ‘We have delivered the death-blow to Liberalism in this division.’ [33] The Daily Herald echoed his delight. [34] The New Statesman and Nation was surprised [35] though the News Chronicle affected not to be. [36] The Daily Worker was the bitterest of all. [37] Groves argued that Labour was being built in Aylesbury against Liberalism as well as against Toryism. A pact, he suggested, would have led to the loss of support. He thought that support for the Popular Front lay ‘among the middle class element; the university socialists, the “week-enders” who had never done a day’s work for the local party, and the social élite of the Left Book Club’. [38] Frederick Warburg congratulated him (‘magnificent work’) [39] as did J.P. Millar, who announced he had ‘no faith whatever in the Popular Front’. [40] The New Leader was equally enthusiastic. [41]
But pressure for an alliance against the government did not relent. Later in the year a reluctant Patrick Gordon Walker stood down as the Labour candidate in favour of a ‘progressive’ candidate, A.D. Lindsay, who still failed to win Oxford on 27 October. United support did, however, permit Vernon Bartlett to win Bridgwater from the National Government candidate on 17 November.
The Trotskyist movement held an ambivalent attitude towards the Aylesbury result. The Workers International League thought it showed that a revolutionary approach by the Labour Party would meet with success and that the campaign was part of the experience through which ‘the broad masses become aware of the treachery’ of the labour bureaucracy. It believed, however, that a truly Marxist programme would never have received the approval of the ‘reactionary’ Councils of Action. The Revolutionary Socialist League congratulated Groves on doubling the Labour vote and taking a progressive stand against the Popular Front but firmly declared that the Fourth International could not tolerate within its ranks anyone who, like Groves, could give the Council of Action replies indistinguishable from those offered by the Liberal candidate. [42]
Martin Upham
2. G.D.H. Cole doubted Labour’s ability even to equal its 1929 result. The extra votes needed to get there would not be won on a Socialist programme, he argued. Indeed, no government of the left would be achieved “if we merely wait for the Labour Party to win a majority in Parliament by continuing its present methods of appeal”. Labour, he concluded, was “not even in sight of an independent majority”. (G.D.H. Cole, The Peoples Front, 1937, p.275)
3. Attlee did not reject an alliance in the face of an imminent world crisis (and indeed was to make one in 1940) but to the proposition that Labour should drop its nationalisation policy to gain Liberal support and a majority, he replied, “I am convinced that it would be fatal for the Labour Party to form a Popular Front on any such terms”. (C. Attlee, The Labour Party in Perspective, 1937, p.130)
4. The Communists in Bethnal Green, near Herbert Morrison’s base, had called for an anti-Fascist alliance with the Liberals. Morrison rejected it arguing that the CPGB favoured unity to its right but not to its left. “Would Mr Pollitt appear on a platform with Socialist, Working Class Trotsky? He would not, he declared and demanded: ‘Who says the Communists are on the left? This Labour Party is more of a left party than the Communist Party.’”(Labour Party Conference Report, 1937, pp.l61-4)
5. Attlee and Morrison had been junior ministers in 1929-31. Morrison entertained hopes of joining the National Government in August 1931, but was dissuaded by MacDonald, who told him not to ruin his career. (B. Donaghue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison, Portrait of a Politician, 1973, pp.162-70)
6. C.F. Brand, The British Labour Party, 1965.
7. “To reach the wide masses of workers organised under the banner of reformism, the Communist Party needs to apply correctly the tactic of the United Front. It is only by the wise and determined use of the United Front policy that the party can break down its isolation and win a foothold in the trade unions and factories.” (The Red Flag, June 1933)
8. L. Trotsky, On the United Front, The First Five Years of the Communist International, Volume 2, London 1974 pp.91-107.
9. “In the blind panic that followed the German catastrophe, the CI swept over to offering terms to the reformists which cannot be justified under any conditions. The offer to suspend criticism is in direct opposition to the United Front policy laid down by Lenin in 1921.” (The Red Flag, June 1933)
10. Mid-Bucks had been the base of the leading Socialist Leaguer E.F. Wise who represented it at party conferences. After his death his widow was nominated for the League national committee and was also sent as a delegate to the party conference. (Socialist League, Second Annual Conference, Final Agenda, 1935; LPCR, 1935)
11. Groves’ motives for taking up the position remain obscure. His selection occurred on the eve of the dissolution of the SL and some months after the Marxist League had failed to prevent it from participating in the Unity Campaign. There is no evidence that it was a considered move by the League, and Groves’ handwritten notes of the time strongly convey his disenchantment with factional warfare. (Warwick MSS 172/ LP.A)
12. Labour had lost in a straight fight against the Conservatives at Ipswich on 16 February and against a National Liberal at Lichfield on 5 May. Between these two there had only been a tiny Liberal vote at West Fulham on 6 April. (C. Cook and J. Ramsden (eds.), By-Elections in British Politics, 1973 p371)
13. “The greatest service he could render to the cause of democracy and peace would be to withdraw from the contest and lend his support to the candidate who had in comparably the better chance of defeating the representative of the National Government.” (Progressive Alliance in Action, handbill, n.d.)
14. Members of the Labour and Liberal Parties sat on this committee which covered a neighbouring constituency.
15. W.G. Hanton, a former Communist Leaguer, arrived in Aylesbury for the campaign. Groves was not pleased to see him, portraying him in his private notes as dour and dogmatic. No other Trotskyists are recorded as having visited Aylesbury. Fight, the journal of the Revolutionary Socialist League, of which most of Groves’ former comrades from the Marxist League days were members, reviewed his study of Chartism, But We Shall Rise Again, in May but did not mention his candidature.
16. Groves suspected at least one EC member of being a covert Communist. At one meeting, Kneeshaw, an opponent of his candidature, protested “how will Attlee feel on the same platform as Reg Groves?”, another delegate enquired “how will Reg Groves feel on the same platform as Attlee?”.
17. On 23 April the EC backed him 21 to 8. A week later, in Shepherd’s presence, it stayed behind him but by 15 to 10. (News Chronicle, 9 May 1938)
18. The Star, 6 May 1938. On 7 May The Star described Groves’s campaign as “hopeless” and called for a fourth condemnation of the government (following Ipswich, Fulham, and Lichfield) behind a united opposition candidate. That same day the News Chronicle also recalled these earlier by-elections and advised “the lesson of Lichfield ought not to be lost on Aylesbury”.
19. The Herald drew special comfort from the large audiences Groves was drawing to his meetings. (A.J. McWhinnie, Why Labour will Fight Mid-Bucks, Daily Herald, 9 May 1938)
20. Harry Pollitt wrote, “Aylesbury has become the testing ground of the struggle between the forces of reaction, backed by the Cliveden set and the Trotskyists”. He appealed to local Labour Parties to protest against “this cynical attempt to hand over a seat to Chamberlain and his Fascist friends”. (Daily Worker, 9 May 1938) The next day the paper repeated a call for withdrawal from the Taunton Left Book Club which stated “peace and democracy anxiously await a decision” (viz. a withdrawal).
21. Daily Worker, 11 May 1938. The article concluded that Labour support for a Liberal who called for arms for Spain, defence of democratic liberties and the economic and social advance of the people would be a big step on the path for socialism.
22. Two of the questions asked (and to which the Council expected a positive response) concerned support for action by the League of Nations. Groves’ success was therefore puzzling. (Daily Worker, 14 May 1938) In his manifesto Groves declared “a successful League of Nations is not possible until the people are able to express and enforce effectively their will to peace”.
23. A full appreciation of the campaign cannot be achieved without reading the close and often verbatim reports of speeches in the local press, the Bucks Herald, the Bucks Advertiser, and the Bucks Examiner. For comments on the campaign see H. Dewar, Communist Politics in Britain, 1976, pp.l26, 153.
24. In reply to Robertson’s claims, the Divisional Labour Party claimed that all but four of its members were working loyally for Groves. (Manchester Guardian, 14 May 1938).
25. It insisted that only the defeat of Chamberlain mattered, accused Groves of “sailing under the false colours of a Labour candidate” and of being “a Trotskyist agent to carry out the same disruptive policy in Mid-Bucks” as in France, Spain, China and the USSR. (Daily Worker, 13 May 1938) This article was circulated in Aylesbury as a Communist Party leaflet.
26. The Daily Record and Mail for 13 May must have raised eyebrows with its declaration that Groves had ‘no more connection with Trotsky than Mr Attlee or Mr Herbert Morrison’, but it was on strong ground in recalling earlier Communist hostility to orthodox capitalist parties and Liberal hostility to socialism which threatened a repeat of the 1929-31 experience.
27. Despite its misgivings, Reynolds News reports were accurate and fair. On 15 May 36. it wrote: “Mr Reg Groves, the Labour candidate, is putting up a splendid fight, He is appealing to the electors on a clear-cut Socialist platform and declares that there an be nothing in common between Labour and Liberal policy.” Pritt's behaviour could occasionally be quixotic. He had declined a Transport House suggestion to stand against Fenner Brockway at Norwich. (F. Brockway, Towards Tomorrow, 1977, p.115)
28. On 16 May Groves received a letter from Fenner Brockway pledging NAC support and declaring “we need an alliance to oppose the National Government. But it must be an alliance not of workers and capitalists, but of workers and workers.” (New Leader, 13 May 1938)
29. The Daily Herald, which had reported the establishment of new town branches of the party in the area, predicted on 16 May “a greatly increased Labour vote”. Two days later the Manchester Guardian predicted he would come third and complained:
31. The turn-out fell from 70.2 per cent to 63.1 per cent between 1935 and 1938. Groves raised his share from 11 percent to 19. 1 per cent but the Tory’s share fell by 3.3 per cent and the Liberal’s by 4.8 per cent. (Cook and Ramsden, op. cit., p371)
32. The swing against the Tories is put by different measures at 5.8, 10.1 and 5.3 per cent. (Ibid.) The peak anti-government swing at the time of Munich was 4.1 per cent. (I. McLean, Oxford and Bridgwater, in ibid., pp.l4O-64)
33. Manchester Guardian, 21 May 1938.
34. “Congratulations, Mr Groves and Goodbye, Popular Front” (Daily Herald, 21 May 1938)
35. It favoured local electoral pacts and complained that all of Labour’s counter-arguments were aimed against national alliances, see issues of 14 May and 11 June 1938.
36. It believed Groves had attacked the Liberals more strongly than he had the Conservatives and concluded that a victory for the latter was inevitable in these circumstances.
37. It complained of “the money that was poured out” against a Peace Alliance and spoke darkly of cheers in “certain rooms” at Transport House. (Daily Worker, 21 May 1938)
38. How we Fought the Liberal-Communist Alliance, Forward, 28 May 1938.
39. F. Warburg to Groves, 31 May 1938; J.P. Millar to Groves, 7 June 1938.
40. Wilfred Wigham, who had acted as Groves’ driver for the duration, thought Groves had thrust the Labour Party back to Socialism and put the case for turning out the whole working class: “Thanks to the Liberal-Communist challenge, he has been backed even by moderate Labour elements”. (New Leader, 20 May 1938)
41. The Lesson of Aylesbury, Workers International News, June 1938.
42. Fight, June 1938. However, Stuart Purkis, who had left the Communist League in 1934 but had supported the Trotsky Defence Committee, examined Groves’ submissions to the Council (Fight claimed he had not) and declared them sound. (Fight, August 1938.)
...it is always a good idea when possible (in times of some class struggle upsurge, a particularly worthy issue to highlight, etc.) for left-wing militants to get their feet wet (a little) in election campaigns, election campaigns that are principled. Principled meaning in radical circles using the fight for office, the non-executive offices of the capitalist state, as a platform to put before the working-class public their programs. And of course to use that platform if elected as Lenin said to be a "tribune of the people...
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff.
********
The Aylesbury By-election of 1938
As we announced briefly in our second issue, the pioneer British Trotskyist Reg Groves died on 17 May of this year. Apart from his contribution to establishing Trotskyism in these islands and his many valuable books on revolutionary history, in Groves the British labour movement lost a courageous defender. As a reminder of this and in tribute to his memory, we print the following account of his finest campaign for the independence of the working class-the Aylesbury by-election of 1938.This article first appeared in the form of a paper read to the Conference for the Study of Leon Trotsky and the History of the Revolutionary Movement which took place in London on 20 September 1980, and is reproduced here by kind permission of the author.
Martin Upham gathered the material for this article in the course of the research for his PhD, The History of British Trotskyism to 1949, which was accepted by the University of Hull in 1981. He is a member of the Labour Party, on whose behalf he fought the general elections of 1983 and 1987 in the constituencies of Market Harborough and Enfield North respectively.
The activities of the Stalinists during the Aylesbury by-election were raised in the context of the recent factional disputes within the Communist Party of Great Britain after theoretician Erie Hobsbawm made his well-publicised call just prior to the 1987 general election for tactical voting for the Liberal/Social Democratic Alliance. Both George Matthews, on behalf of the Eurocommunist party executive committee, and Bert Ramelson, for the old-fashioned traditionalists, whilst disagreeing on the relevance of the tactics of the 1930s for today, nonetheless agreed that their party’s conduct during the Aylesbury by-election was perfectly in order. See their letters in 7 Days, 2, 16 and 23 May 1987.
From 1936 the Communist Party of Great Britain and most of the Labour left favoured a Popular Front of all organisations and individuals opposed to Fascism and war. This was a reversal of an earlier view held by the Labour left: their principal policy had been for a Labour government, with a majority, to implement the full socialist programme. Alliances with those outside the working class movement were rejected since they would involve watering the programme down. [1] The CPGB had by 1934 moved from its sectarian policy of the ‘United Front from Below’ to advocacy of a United Front without this qualification. The Seventh Congress of the Communist International in July 1935 confirmed a change which had already occurred. In 1936 the Communists of France and Spain were the most enthusiastic protagonists of Popular Front governments. These represented an alliance of working class parties with those outside the labour movement who, it was suggested, had a common interest with them.
In Britain this argument took the form of the thesis that the widest possible unity was required to defeat a National Government which was soft on Hitler. Specifically it was denied that Labour could hope to build a majority for its programme by the time the next general election was due in 1940. [2] This was the motor force behind the Unity Campaign of the Socialist League, the CPGB and the Independent Labour Party, which was launched with great optimism in January 1937 but had collapsed by the middle of the year, The right wing of the Labour Party, led by those most likely to hold the leading ministerial positions if it was elected with a majority, people who had not made the running when the Socialist League’s influence was at its peak in 1932-34, now presented themselves as the guardians of Labour’s Socialist integrity. [3] They rejected alliances and pacts especially with the Communists, and called for maximum effort to be placed behind putting Labour in with a majority for the implementation of Labour’s Immediate Programme. [4]
In the early 1930s the left (and principally the Socialist League) had urged that Labour should not take power except with a majority and should then carry out the most radical Socialist measures to win popular support. This was in response to the MacDonald betrayal of 1931. But by 1937 many of the same people, before and after the May 1937 dissolution of the Socialist League, had lost faith in Labour winning a majority and were prepared for an alliance across parties. The right wing, including some who had served with MacDonald and had even sought to follow him [5], now had to hand the plausible argument of Socialist fundamentalism with which to stem the growing Communist influence on the Labour Party. The convenient guise of single-minded crusaders for the Socialist commonwealth well suited their intention to remain in unchallenged control of the labour movement. [6]
Trotskyists in Britain had always favoured a United Front of working class organisations [7] They derived their inspiration from Trotsky’s speech to the Executive Committee of the CI on the subject in 1922. [8] The United Front was a tactic for those countries where the working class was split in its allegiances. It was a limited agreement openly concluded between mass organisations. They retained their own separate programmes and the right to criticise each other. [9] In 1932, when organised Trotskyism first emerged in public in Britain, its advocacy of the united front was criticised by the CPGB as a betrayal. By 1937, when Trotskyists of all factions opposed the phoney front of the Unity Campaign in the name of a genuine United Front, they were attacked by the CPGB as splitters, disrupters and people with the same ends as the National Government.
On 24 April 1937 the Mid-Buckinghamshire Divisional Labour Party [10] selected Reg Groves as its prospective parliamentary candidate. [11] By chance the Conservative member for the constituency resigned two months later, making a by-election certain. There was a delay in moving the writ and polling day was only fixed for 19 May 1938. By this time the Aylesbury by-election and the presence of Groves, a Trotskyist, as the Labour candidate, had assumed considerable importance. The principal reason for this was the enhanced fear of war following the Anschluss of March 1938 whereby Austria was annexed to Germany, and the call for a ‘peace alliance’ by Walter Elliott, the editor of Reynolds News on 19 March which revived the flagging forces of the Popular Front. Pressure mounted for the standing of the single candidate most likely to win at by-elections against the National Government’s candidates. 12
In Mid-Bucks, where the Liberals had always held second place to the Conservatives, a Progressive Alliance Group was formed with the object of obtaining the strongest possible anti-government protest in the form of votes for the Liberal candidate, T. Atholl Robertson. Its founding resolution, which was signed by prominent local Labour members including Christopher Addison, called on Groves to stand down. [13] The South Bucks Unity Committee made the same demand. [14]
To the positive desire for an alliance was added distaste for Groves as a Trotskyist. Groves himself had the chance to reach beyond propaganda and demonstrate in practice the fallacy of Popular Front thinking. [15] He encountered opposition within the leading bodies of the constituency.[16] George Shepherd, Labour’s national agent, also initially sought both his withdrawal and a candidate more congenial to Transport House. Support on the executive for his candidature fell, but he still had a majority behind him. [17]
Groves resisted these rumblings and began to campaign. By 6 May he had held 30 meetings and other functions. [18] The Daily Herald loyally supported him.[19] The Daily Worker followed the Peace Alliance argument but went further in its vituperation against Groves. [20] The first leaflet of the local Communists, while it called for unity, did not attack Groves and the Aylesbury party. When the Daily Herald made a pointed comparison between the Liberal Party platform and Labour’s Immediate Programme, the CPGB pressed a different argument:
It would, of course, be splendid if Labour had a chance of winning the seat, although even then it would need a candidate who would strengthen Labour's fight against reaction instead of a Trotskyist, the effect of whose policy would be the break-up of the Labour movement from within. [21]The more prestigious Manchester Guardian wondered on 12 May ‘how small an increase in the Labour vote here will be held to have justified the decision’ to stand and predicted that not only was a rise unlikely but that it was more probable that Groves would lose his deposit.
One important event on 12 May was the announcement by the Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruction that both Liberal and Labour candidates had answered its questions satisfactorily and that it would therefore play no part in the election. [22] This surprising eventuality was commented on by other Trotskyists after polling day. [23]
From mid-May Groves mounted a strong offensive against Robertson. He challenged the Liberal to substantiate his claims of Labour support. [24] The Daily Worker, his bitterest enemy among the press, grew more abusive [25], but he had strong support from Labour papers. [26] One of the remarkable features of the campaign was the appearance on Groves’ platform of Harold Laski, Ellen Wilkinson and even D.N. Pritt, all of whom favoured a Popular Front. Even Reynolds News respected the decision of the local party. It was a reward for standing firm. [27] New branches of the Labour Party were established in the division, the Attlee meeting was held and support came from the ILP. [28] On the eve of the poll his backers and opponents clashed in their expectations. [29]
Aylesbury voted on 19 May 1938. The Tory candidate won with more than twice the vote of Robertson, who came second. Each had lost around 3,000 votes over their parties’ polls in 1935. Groves was the first Labour candidate in Aylesbury not to lose his deposit and had raised his vote by 3,560. [30] He was also the only candidate to raise his share of the poll, which he did in spite of a reduced turnout. [31] The swing against the Tories was greater than the average of all pre-Munich by-election results. He also surpassed the anti-Tory swing of the Munich by-elections at Oxford and Bridgwater. [32]
Groves was jubilant: ‘We have delivered the death-blow to Liberalism in this division.’ [33] The Daily Herald echoed his delight. [34] The New Statesman and Nation was surprised [35] though the News Chronicle affected not to be. [36] The Daily Worker was the bitterest of all. [37] Groves argued that Labour was being built in Aylesbury against Liberalism as well as against Toryism. A pact, he suggested, would have led to the loss of support. He thought that support for the Popular Front lay ‘among the middle class element; the university socialists, the “week-enders” who had never done a day’s work for the local party, and the social élite of the Left Book Club’. [38] Frederick Warburg congratulated him (‘magnificent work’) [39] as did J.P. Millar, who announced he had ‘no faith whatever in the Popular Front’. [40] The New Leader was equally enthusiastic. [41]
But pressure for an alliance against the government did not relent. Later in the year a reluctant Patrick Gordon Walker stood down as the Labour candidate in favour of a ‘progressive’ candidate, A.D. Lindsay, who still failed to win Oxford on 27 October. United support did, however, permit Vernon Bartlett to win Bridgwater from the National Government candidate on 17 November.
The Trotskyist movement held an ambivalent attitude towards the Aylesbury result. The Workers International League thought it showed that a revolutionary approach by the Labour Party would meet with success and that the campaign was part of the experience through which ‘the broad masses become aware of the treachery’ of the labour bureaucracy. It believed, however, that a truly Marxist programme would never have received the approval of the ‘reactionary’ Councils of Action. The Revolutionary Socialist League congratulated Groves on doubling the Labour vote and taking a progressive stand against the Popular Front but firmly declared that the Fourth International could not tolerate within its ranks anyone who, like Groves, could give the Council of Action replies indistinguishable from those offered by the Liberal candidate. [42]
Martin Upham
NOTES
1. When Lloyd George complained to the National Trade Union Club in 1935 about doctrinaires in the labour movement who opposed a Liberal alliance, Harold Laski rebuked him and argued for a firm Labour commitment to a socialist programme. He warned that in such an alliance “you give up all that you have been fighting for to secure the victory of unity”. (The Siren Voice of Mr Lloyd George, Forward, 24 August 1935)2. G.D.H. Cole doubted Labour’s ability even to equal its 1929 result. The extra votes needed to get there would not be won on a Socialist programme, he argued. Indeed, no government of the left would be achieved “if we merely wait for the Labour Party to win a majority in Parliament by continuing its present methods of appeal”. Labour, he concluded, was “not even in sight of an independent majority”. (G.D.H. Cole, The Peoples Front, 1937, p.275)
3. Attlee did not reject an alliance in the face of an imminent world crisis (and indeed was to make one in 1940) but to the proposition that Labour should drop its nationalisation policy to gain Liberal support and a majority, he replied, “I am convinced that it would be fatal for the Labour Party to form a Popular Front on any such terms”. (C. Attlee, The Labour Party in Perspective, 1937, p.130)
4. The Communists in Bethnal Green, near Herbert Morrison’s base, had called for an anti-Fascist alliance with the Liberals. Morrison rejected it arguing that the CPGB favoured unity to its right but not to its left. “Would Mr Pollitt appear on a platform with Socialist, Working Class Trotsky? He would not, he declared and demanded: ‘Who says the Communists are on the left? This Labour Party is more of a left party than the Communist Party.’”(Labour Party Conference Report, 1937, pp.l61-4)
5. Attlee and Morrison had been junior ministers in 1929-31. Morrison entertained hopes of joining the National Government in August 1931, but was dissuaded by MacDonald, who told him not to ruin his career. (B. Donaghue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison, Portrait of a Politician, 1973, pp.162-70)
6. C.F. Brand, The British Labour Party, 1965.
7. “To reach the wide masses of workers organised under the banner of reformism, the Communist Party needs to apply correctly the tactic of the United Front. It is only by the wise and determined use of the United Front policy that the party can break down its isolation and win a foothold in the trade unions and factories.” (The Red Flag, June 1933)
8. L. Trotsky, On the United Front, The First Five Years of the Communist International, Volume 2, London 1974 pp.91-107.
9. “In the blind panic that followed the German catastrophe, the CI swept over to offering terms to the reformists which cannot be justified under any conditions. The offer to suspend criticism is in direct opposition to the United Front policy laid down by Lenin in 1921.” (The Red Flag, June 1933)
10. Mid-Bucks had been the base of the leading Socialist Leaguer E.F. Wise who represented it at party conferences. After his death his widow was nominated for the League national committee and was also sent as a delegate to the party conference. (Socialist League, Second Annual Conference, Final Agenda, 1935; LPCR, 1935)
11. Groves’ motives for taking up the position remain obscure. His selection occurred on the eve of the dissolution of the SL and some months after the Marxist League had failed to prevent it from participating in the Unity Campaign. There is no evidence that it was a considered move by the League, and Groves’ handwritten notes of the time strongly convey his disenchantment with factional warfare. (Warwick MSS 172/ LP.A)
12. Labour had lost in a straight fight against the Conservatives at Ipswich on 16 February and against a National Liberal at Lichfield on 5 May. Between these two there had only been a tiny Liberal vote at West Fulham on 6 April. (C. Cook and J. Ramsden (eds.), By-Elections in British Politics, 1973 p371)
13. “The greatest service he could render to the cause of democracy and peace would be to withdraw from the contest and lend his support to the candidate who had in comparably the better chance of defeating the representative of the National Government.” (Progressive Alliance in Action, handbill, n.d.)
14. Members of the Labour and Liberal Parties sat on this committee which covered a neighbouring constituency.
15. W.G. Hanton, a former Communist Leaguer, arrived in Aylesbury for the campaign. Groves was not pleased to see him, portraying him in his private notes as dour and dogmatic. No other Trotskyists are recorded as having visited Aylesbury. Fight, the journal of the Revolutionary Socialist League, of which most of Groves’ former comrades from the Marxist League days were members, reviewed his study of Chartism, But We Shall Rise Again, in May but did not mention his candidature.
16. Groves suspected at least one EC member of being a covert Communist. At one meeting, Kneeshaw, an opponent of his candidature, protested “how will Attlee feel on the same platform as Reg Groves?”, another delegate enquired “how will Reg Groves feel on the same platform as Attlee?”.
17. On 23 April the EC backed him 21 to 8. A week later, in Shepherd’s presence, it stayed behind him but by 15 to 10. (News Chronicle, 9 May 1938)
18. The Star, 6 May 1938. On 7 May The Star described Groves’s campaign as “hopeless” and called for a fourth condemnation of the government (following Ipswich, Fulham, and Lichfield) behind a united opposition candidate. That same day the News Chronicle also recalled these earlier by-elections and advised “the lesson of Lichfield ought not to be lost on Aylesbury”.
19. The Herald drew special comfort from the large audiences Groves was drawing to his meetings. (A.J. McWhinnie, Why Labour will Fight Mid-Bucks, Daily Herald, 9 May 1938)
20. Harry Pollitt wrote, “Aylesbury has become the testing ground of the struggle between the forces of reaction, backed by the Cliveden set and the Trotskyists”. He appealed to local Labour Parties to protest against “this cynical attempt to hand over a seat to Chamberlain and his Fascist friends”. (Daily Worker, 9 May 1938) The next day the paper repeated a call for withdrawal from the Taunton Left Book Club which stated “peace and democracy anxiously await a decision” (viz. a withdrawal).
21. Daily Worker, 11 May 1938. The article concluded that Labour support for a Liberal who called for arms for Spain, defence of democratic liberties and the economic and social advance of the people would be a big step on the path for socialism.
22. Two of the questions asked (and to which the Council expected a positive response) concerned support for action by the League of Nations. Groves’ success was therefore puzzling. (Daily Worker, 14 May 1938) In his manifesto Groves declared “a successful League of Nations is not possible until the people are able to express and enforce effectively their will to peace”.
23. A full appreciation of the campaign cannot be achieved without reading the close and often verbatim reports of speeches in the local press, the Bucks Herald, the Bucks Advertiser, and the Bucks Examiner. For comments on the campaign see H. Dewar, Communist Politics in Britain, 1976, pp.l26, 153.
24. In reply to Robertson’s claims, the Divisional Labour Party claimed that all but four of its members were working loyally for Groves. (Manchester Guardian, 14 May 1938).
25. It insisted that only the defeat of Chamberlain mattered, accused Groves of “sailing under the false colours of a Labour candidate” and of being “a Trotskyist agent to carry out the same disruptive policy in Mid-Bucks” as in France, Spain, China and the USSR. (Daily Worker, 13 May 1938) This article was circulated in Aylesbury as a Communist Party leaflet.
26. The Daily Record and Mail for 13 May must have raised eyebrows with its declaration that Groves had ‘no more connection with Trotsky than Mr Attlee or Mr Herbert Morrison’, but it was on strong ground in recalling earlier Communist hostility to orthodox capitalist parties and Liberal hostility to socialism which threatened a repeat of the 1929-31 experience.
27. Despite its misgivings, Reynolds News reports were accurate and fair. On 15 May 36. it wrote: “Mr Reg Groves, the Labour candidate, is putting up a splendid fight, He is appealing to the electors on a clear-cut Socialist platform and declares that there an be nothing in common between Labour and Liberal policy.” Pritt's behaviour could occasionally be quixotic. He had declined a Transport House suggestion to stand against Fenner Brockway at Norwich. (F. Brockway, Towards Tomorrow, 1977, p.115)
28. On 16 May Groves received a letter from Fenner Brockway pledging NAC support and declaring “we need an alliance to oppose the National Government. But it must be an alliance not of workers and capitalists, but of workers and workers.” (New Leader, 13 May 1938)
29. The Daily Herald, which had reported the establishment of new town branches of the party in the area, predicted on 16 May “a greatly increased Labour vote”. Two days later the Manchester Guardian predicted he would come third and complained:
… he is preaching the entire Socialist doctrine, and that, in a short campaign, is more likely to confuse possible recruits than to convert them.30. The result, with 1935 votes in brackets, was:
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line: Revolutionary History
| Sir Stanley Read (Conservative) | 21,695 | (24,728) |
| T. Atholl Robertson (Liberal) | 10,751 | (13,622) |
| Reginald Groves (Labour) | 7,666 | (4,106) |
32. The swing against the Tories is put by different measures at 5.8, 10.1 and 5.3 per cent. (Ibid.) The peak anti-government swing at the time of Munich was 4.1 per cent. (I. McLean, Oxford and Bridgwater, in ibid., pp.l4O-64)
33. Manchester Guardian, 21 May 1938.
34. “Congratulations, Mr Groves and Goodbye, Popular Front” (Daily Herald, 21 May 1938)
35. It favoured local electoral pacts and complained that all of Labour’s counter-arguments were aimed against national alliances, see issues of 14 May and 11 June 1938.
36. It believed Groves had attacked the Liberals more strongly than he had the Conservatives and concluded that a victory for the latter was inevitable in these circumstances.
37. It complained of “the money that was poured out” against a Peace Alliance and spoke darkly of cheers in “certain rooms” at Transport House. (Daily Worker, 21 May 1938)
38. How we Fought the Liberal-Communist Alliance, Forward, 28 May 1938.
39. F. Warburg to Groves, 31 May 1938; J.P. Millar to Groves, 7 June 1938.
40. Wilfred Wigham, who had acted as Groves’ driver for the duration, thought Groves had thrust the Labour Party back to Socialism and put the case for turning out the whole working class: “Thanks to the Liberal-Communist challenge, he has been backed even by moderate Labour elements”. (New Leader, 20 May 1938)
41. The Lesson of Aylesbury, Workers International News, June 1938.
42. Fight, June 1938. However, Stuart Purkis, who had left the Communist League in 1934 but had supported the Trotsky Defence Committee, examined Groves’ submissions to the Council (Fight claimed he had not) and declared them sound. (Fight, August 1938.)
Globalization
and People's Movements – from Bangladesh to Colombia
A
discussion with
Aviva
Chomsky, Anu Muhammad, Ed Childs
Saturday
January 11, 2014 3 PM
MIT – Room
4-237
77 Mass Ave
Cambridge, MA
Free
and Open to the
Public77 Mass Ave
Cambridge, MA
In
the global South workers and peasants fight starvation wages and plunder of
natural resources; in the North austerity for workers and bailout for
capitalists have become a dominant phenomenon. As most nation states continue to
collude with global capital, people's movements grow for a just and sustainable
world. The speakers will review recent examples in Bangladesh, Colombia and the
US and the prospects for real democracy and global solidarity.
Aviva
Chomsky is
a historian, author and activist. She teaches at Salem State University in
Massachusetts and her activism and academic work include the development of the
global working class, immigration in US and mining in Colombia.
Anu
Muhammad is
an activist and professor of economics at Jahangirnagar University in
Bangladesh. His research work and activism includes globalization and energy,
specifically mining and garment workers issues in Bangladesh.
Ed Childs is an activist and leader in UNITE HERE! and International Action Center, a cook at Harvard and participant of Occupy Boston. UNITE HERE represents workers throughout the U.S. and Canada who work in the hotel, food service, manufacturing, textile, laundry, and airport industries.
Sponsors:
Alliance for
a Secular and Democratic South Asia ( www.SouthAsiaAlliance.org )
Bangladesh Workers Solidarity Network ( www.BangladeshWorkersSolidarityNetwork.org )
Mass Global Action (www.massglobalaction.org )
MIT Western Hemisphere Project (http://web.mit.edu/hemisphere/ )
Bangladesh Workers Solidarity Network ( www.BangladeshWorkersSolidarityNetwork.org )
Mass Global Action (www.massglobalaction.org )
MIT Western Hemisphere Project (http://web.mit.edu/hemisphere/ )
***The Roots Is The
Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…
…funny,
he had to laugh, laugh to himself since if he had laughed out loud the seven
other guys in his tent, his makeshift tent which had served as his “home” for
the past few weeks of basic training down here in godforsaken Fort Dix, would
have raised holy hell (and worse) for disturbing their “beauty” sleep, about
what she had said that first night they met. Or really re-met since they had
been in class together senior year over at North Adamsville High School. They had “met” at a USO dance held in order to
boost morale for returning servicemen, those awaiting the troop ships out, and
those like him whose number been called where she had volunteered as a hostess and he
had fronted on a few numbers for Lester Mann and the Band before he in turn was
to be inducted the next week. He had been the top singer at school, a budding
crooner in the Sinatra mold, and was attending music school when his number
came up. But naturally he had to do what was right, do what lots of guys had already
done.
He
had spied her, a known face among a crowd of strangers, went up and introduced
himself, they talked for a while and then he out of nowhere mentioned that he wished
that he had talked to her more in school. Wished he had had the courage to talk
to her since there was something about her that was appealing in a fresh breeze
way (he hadn’t put it that way but she knew what he meant, or at least said she
did). Just then Lester called him to the stage and he sang, sang one song, I’ll Never Smile Again aimed directly at
her, with feeling.
Later,
as he walked her home, she asked him if it was true that he would not smile
again if she was not his girl. He had blurted out a quick uncompromising “yes”.
They both laughed, laughed at how he just blurted it out. And so they had a
whirlwind week before he had to leave, she had seen him off at the train
station, and here he was thinking about her while the other guys were snoring
away. Yeah, he laughed to himself again, he guessed that he really would never
smile again if she was not his girl…
***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator The Strange Death
You know one thing in this wicked old world, once you have been around the block a couple of times, have seen or done a couple of things, had some high moments and defeats, regrets too, and that is never to be surprised at what people will do for dough. For serous dough like some gold-digger marrying a millionaire (or now maybe a billionaire is the only way to spark interest), or some cheap jack-roll in some dark alley or some three- card Monte trick under the Midway it does not matter. Michael Philip Marlin, or just Marlin like everybody except his mother and one old flame lady love called him, knew better since not only had he been around that block a couple of time, had become long in the tooth during that time and if no wiser than when he was young not as prone to jump in head first, but trying to figure out people’s screwy antics was his business. Or you could say like the title of a book I read once by a guy, I think his name was Chandler, yeah Raymond Chandler you might have heard of him, who made it his business to write detective stories about screwy crime stuff about a guy named Philip Marlowe, trouble was his business.
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Those who have been following this series about the exploits of the famous Ocean City (located just south of Los Angeles then now incorporated into the county) private detective Michael Philip Marlin (hereafter just Marlin the way everybody, except a few lady friends who called him Philip and his late mother who called him Michael Philip, called him when he became famous after the Galton case out on the coast) and his contemporaries in the private detection business like Freddy Vance, Charles Nicolas (okay, okay Clara too), Sam Archer, Miles Spade, Johnny Spain, know that he related many of these stories to his son, Tyrone Fallon, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Tyrone later, in the 1970s, related these stories at his request to the journalist Joshua Lawrence Breslin who uncovered the relationship, a friend of my boyhood friend, Peter Paul Markin, who in turn related them to me over several weeks in the late 1980s. Despite that circuitous route I believe that I have been faithful to what Marlin presented to his son. In any case I take full responsibility for what follows.
*******You know one thing in this wicked old world, once you have been around the block a couple of times, have seen or done a couple of things, had some high moments and defeats, regrets too, and that is never to be surprised at what people will do for dough. For serous dough like some gold-digger marrying a millionaire (or now maybe a billionaire is the only way to spark interest), or some cheap jack-roll in some dark alley or some three- card Monte trick under the Midway it does not matter. Michael Philip Marlin, or just Marlin like everybody except his mother and one old flame lady love called him, knew better since not only had he been around that block a couple of time, had become long in the tooth during that time and if no wiser than when he was young not as prone to jump in head first, but trying to figure out people’s screwy antics was his business. Or you could say like the title of a book I read once by a guy, I think his name was Chandler, yeah Raymond Chandler you might have heard of him, who made it his business to write detective stories about screwy crime stuff about a guy named Philip Marlowe, trouble was his business.
So, yeah, like Marlowe in the Chandler stories Marlin was a gumshoe, shamus, private dick, private eye, or whatever you call a guy who takes on someone’s private sorrows for dough. He didn’t get offended by those names but he preferred to be called an operative. And Marlin, at times, when cases were few and far between and the landlords were screaming for long overdue room and office rent, worked not as a lone wolf like old-fashioned Marlowe for the International Operations Organization. But like Marlowe with his tipped soft hat, Marlin worked just as hard as him sometimes when the bullets and fists flew. Marlin worked for the IOO out of Frisco town so you know he saw plenty of action, plenty of stuff out along that fragile coastline begging to be used for every nasty purpose. Especially a few years after the war (World War I for anybody asking) and Prohibition came in and that town was wide open, anything went. So when I said what I said above about his knowing “what was what” you can take it to the bank.
Take the Morse case. This guy Morse, an older guy, was in the employ of a local high-end San Francisco antique jewelry dealer of some prominence, Benny Gergen. Most of the business at that level is some rich family wanting say the Hope diamond and Gergen would broker the deal if the find worked out, if the item could be purchased and while maybe the Hope diamond was out of range he had been able to get pretty much what most clients wanted. So this was no starry-eyes into the showroom, pick out some cheapjack, overpriced trinket, then arrange for convenient weekly payments on the layaway plan. Also at that level any purchased items were personally delivered. And busy clients expected such service for they had no time to be running to Frisco when tennis or golf beckoned.
Morse had been the courier on most deliveries but he was also friend and longtime associate. So one day Gergen sent Morse out with a serious piece of jewelry to a buyer down in Los Angeles in exchange for twenty-five thousand dollars. (As it turned out later the piece was not antique and worth maybe a thousand dollars but since that is not important to the story I’ll let it pass.) The whole transaction went without a hitch, the buyer was satisfied and forked over the cash (on these high-end deals cash is the coin of realm both for buying and selling so Uncle Sam doesn’t get his cut). Morse was supposed to get back to Frisco by train on a Sunday night in order to meet Gergen at the Bank of America branch over on Mission come that Monday morning.
The problem for Gergen, and how Marlin’s services came into the case, was that this Morse never showed, couldn’t show because he was dead, very dead. Dead by foul play and found in a room in the Francis Drake Hotel with two holes in his chest by a housekeeper late that Monday morning (and yes she screamed like any normal person would, especially a woman, who walked into a set-up with a blood-drenched dead man on the floor but that is not germane to the story so that too shall pass). Naturally there was no dough, nothing in the room. So Benny Gergen hired the Organization to see about what was what, see what had happened to the dough, and, oh yeah, his pal Morse.
Marlin grabbed the case and went out to see Gergen at his shop. He knew Gergen by sight from various charity things he did around town where Marlin did security for the event or was hired by some dame with a ton of jewelry on, real if you can believe that, who needed protection from the riff-raff, or the swells it was never clear. While in the shop Gergen introduced Marlin to his wife, Lola, a wife whom he at first thought was Gergen’s daughter. She was maybe twenty years old tops and something of a scatterbrain as the young ones are but a looker, no question. A looker who had that come hither look, and that fragrance, that essence of some luscious tropical plant or something, which would drive guys, young and old guys, crazy.
That hard fact, that come- hither- giving- off- that- gardenia- fragrance fact, was what cracked the case, or at least satisfied Benny Gergen, if not the police. Here is the lay. This Benny Gergen was no much of a looker, no way, but any gold-digger would aim her arrows right at a guy like that since he was vain, could be led by the nose, and had plenty of dough, mostly that last part. Marlin figured, having seen the late Mister Morse, an older guy but with movie star looks, that this dame was two-timing Gergen with him and so that was where he took his paces.
Sure enough the pieces came together. Lola and Morse had been having an affair, something Marlin got out of her after some serious grilling. Morse had come back to Frisco early, registered at the Drake, and had waited for Lola to show up for a little off-hand tryst before meeting Gergen on Monday morning at the bank. The problem was that Lola was getting a little tired off older men, or tired of being cooped up with their boring routine party and country club crowds, and wanted to split. So she hired a friend, an ex-con named Pee-Wee Dugan, to rob Morse of that dough at the Drake. Problem was Drake put up a fight and drew two slugs for his efforts.
A bigger problem was that Marlin never did find Pee-Wee and the Organization and the District Attorney’s office never had enough on Lola to go to trial with. Guess why. Old sap Benny Gergen refused to cooperate, refused to let his two-timing gold-digging Lola take the fall (especially when that missing jewelry turned up at a pawnshop and the reduced value became known). Yeah, Gergen pulled out all the stops to make sure she was not tried. And so that was that. The last Marlin had heard Lola had flown the coop though, had taken a fistful of antique jewelry, real stuff, and left the Gergen mansion on Nob Hill for points unknown. Jesus.
Sunday, January 05, 2014
***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator - The October Of The Red-Eyed Moon
Don’t tangle with, don’t mess with, don’t, well don’t okay with red-headed dames, just move on, move on just as quickly as your two feet will carry you. This is not some shop-worn advice from some scolding mother looking out for her Johnnie or Jimmie, like mothers have been doing since Eve, maybe before, but straight from a guy who knows, a guy who almost tangled with, almost messed with a red-headed dame. A guy named Michael Philip Marlin. Marlin, a well-known Ocean City (just outside Los Angeles then, incorporated into the city now) gumshoe who had been around starlets, around their beds too, and movie people should have known from that first look she threw at him at Mindy’s Bar over on Wiltshire right over the line from Ocean City in Los Angeles one October night that she was poison. Should have known to walk away.
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman with kudos to Raymond Chandler
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As those who have followed this series know, and for those who don’t here is the skinny, these sketches are based on conversations that Joshua Lawrence Breslin, the old-time journalist for the East Bay Eye and half the other, mainly unread, radical journals and newspapers in this country, had with the late well-known Los Angeles private detective Michael Philip Marlin’s son, Tyrone Fallon, a while back. Mr. Fallon, who also is the private detection business, decided after a great deal of cajoling by Joshua to provide him with some of the stories that his father had told him as he was growing up in the 1950s about cases that he, or in some cases other well-known detectives, had been involved in. Marlin’s idea was to give his son some of the do’s and don’ts of the business in case he ever decided to try his hand at it. Joshua then told them to me over a long period when we met, usually at a bar when both of us were misty-eyed for some old time stories, and I have kind of run with them in my own way.
Most of the stories stand on their own but this one, The October of The Red-Eyed Moon, requires some explanation since it involved Marlin warning Tyrone away from red-headed women, period. The odd part of that is that Tyrone’s mother, the famous 1940s femme fatale roles actress Fiona Fallon, who may or may not have married Marlin but who had this love child with him, was nothing but a flaming red-head who passed on that characteristic to her son. So I am not sure, and perhaps you are not as well, about taking Marlin’s advice on this one. Read on.
********Don’t tangle with, don’t mess with, don’t, well don’t okay with red-headed dames, just move on, move on just as quickly as your two feet will carry you. This is not some shop-worn advice from some scolding mother looking out for her Johnnie or Jimmie, like mothers have been doing since Eve, maybe before, but straight from a guy who knows, a guy who almost tangled with, almost messed with a red-headed dame. A guy named Michael Philip Marlin. Marlin, a well-known Ocean City (just outside Los Angeles then, incorporated into the city now) gumshoe who had been around starlets, around their beds too, and movie people should have known from that first look she threw at him at Mindy’s Bar over on Wiltshire right over the line from Ocean City in Los Angeles one October night that she was poison. Should have known to walk away.
You know the look, that slinky dress, black, strap falling off the shoulder come hither look that red -flame hair falling off the other shoulder as was the fashion then, catching the eye of every man in the room. Saying without saying, “I need a man for some heavy lifting and you look like the type to handle it.” Something like that with the tag-line, the lure, “I will make it worth your while.” And it doesn’t take a real smart guy, a guy who has been around, hell all it takes is any guy over about twelve to know to know what that “make it worth your while” meant.
So Marlin tumbled, and maybe it was that dress or maybe it was that gardenia perfume of hers that hit him as she walked over to his stool at the bar, but he tumbled. And maybe you can’t blame the guy, any guy especially after a few drinks, a few scotches, but that tumble was a close thing too, a close thing, except the red-headed dame in question, Rita Alden, wound up dead, very dead on the bed in Marlin’s apartment and he laid very unconscious from a cold-cock blackjack on the floor beside her. Naturally the coppers, the public coppers, the Los Angeles coppers who had no love lost for keyhole peepers like Marlin had he ready for the big send-off, ready for Q if it came to that, when they arrived at that scene responding to an anonymous call. That too was a close call.
But we had better step back to a couple of days before that fatal October night to explain why Marlin, a strictly Ocean City denizen, a guy who had had nothing but trouble in previous encounters with the cops in Los Angeles, hell, with anybody connected with L.A. wound up talking to a red-headed dame at Mindy’s and thinking, or half- thinking, silky sheets thoughts about this Alden woman. See Rita’s husband, better ex-husband, Jack, a private-eye himself, kind of, a real bedroom peeper, doing divorce work, Hollywood bedroom stuff, for his coffee and cakes, hired Marlowe, knowing that what he had was too big for a window-peeper to handle.
And what Jack had, on tape hidden in a safe spot, was that he had overheard some very interesting conversations between Ocean City Police Chief Warren Holmes and one Max Webber, a well-known West Coast gangster (previously from the East Coast before his luck ran out there and he headed west, and found gold) about making that fair city wide open for gambling, booze, drugs, and loose women. All the Chief wanted was a big cut of the profits ( the request granted, although less than he asked for) and that Max keep the gunsels and shoot-outs out of town (not granted since Max needed to take care of guys and protect his turf from poachers, deadly gun-carrying poachers). And smart Jack, wise from all those peeps got the whole conversation on tape, and photographs too.
What Jack wanted Marlin to do was act as an emissary to the two parties, Holmes and Webber, wanted to have him feel them out about a big pay-off for keeping quiet. Marlin, not normally interested in such work, at that moment was well behind in his office rent, room rent too, and so he swallowed, swallowed hard and agreed to do the talking when Jack flashed five one- hundred dollar bills his way. That and a case of Jack Daniels to tie the bow. Problem, big problem was that somehow Max, the Chief, or both, got wind of what Jack had and before Marlin could make his pitch one Jack Alden was fished out of the bay with two slugs through his heart. (Ocean City, snotty Ocean City, unlike L.A. had few dealings with low-life private eyes and so it was easy to gather information when one of them hit town.)
Now you have to know Marlin a little like Jake Armor, former L.A. Detective Jake Armor, then the head of the Bunco squad in Ocean City did when Marlin was on the force back there in 1930, 1931, a guy full of the fight for some rough justice in this wicked old world to understand that he took Jack’s death, hell, murder personally. So, no Marlin was not going to take that dough Jack gave him and say good riddance. Marlin was not build that way. Jack was a client and so Marlin was going to stick his neck and his nose into this until somebody screamed uncle. And that was why he stepped into Mindy’s that red wind October night looking for a certain red-head, a red-head who had once been married to one Jack Alden.
See this Rita, ex-wife or not, was working the blackmail racket with her “ex” so she too would have a big pay-day and drift back east where she was from. So they met as previously described, Marlin bought her a couple of drinks, had a couple himself and she loosened up enough to kind of come on to him straight and hard. Now Rita wasn’t a looker, no way, in fact she was kind of plain of face except that flaming red hair (courtesy of Irish forbears) but she had a figure that made up for that, a figure that had had many a man talking to himself about how to get next to that. Frankly she knew what her appeal was, and also knew that to get anywhere in the world she would have to use every trick, every sexual trick in the book to get what she wanted. Marlin had her sized up as “easy,” that she had maybe spent some time doing street tricks and so she knew all the tricks. Still the scotch, the red wind night, her perfume, too much but working, had him thinking, no, what did I say before, half- thinking, bedroom thoughts as they talked about what she knew about Jack’s tapes and photographs. She, they agreed it would be better off to get out of Mindy’s and over to her place on Bayview in the city.
Like I said Ocean City was a small town and after they left Mindy’s and went to get Marlin’s car in the parking lot they were waylaid by two thugs. That was the last Marlin remembered before he came to with coppers, including Jake Armor, sprawled all over his room. The first cops on the scene, a couple of patrol car goofs, didn’t believe Marlin’s story, and neither did Jake when he got the call on the squat box after he arrived on the scene, about Jack Alden and his schemes. But they didn’t have enough to hold him and so Jake figured, figured right as it turned out, that that cold-cock bump would lead him into desperate pursuit of whoever did it to him, and to Rita. So off Marlin went the next day looking for knock down drag out revenge. That is where he got some help from a copper over there, a guy named Albert Pina, a detective who was a straight shooter and who was disgusted by Max Webber and his crowd making his town a cesspool of vice and corruption (he was unaware of his chief’s agreement with Max at that time, or so he told Marlin).
The first order of business was to find Rita’s killer and here Albert was a real asset. From his sources he found out that a free agent gunsel named Shorty Murphy had been seen around Rita’s apartment that dead night. Pina found out where Shorty hung out and they, he and Marlin, went to make the collar, and also find out, find out officially, who ordered the hit. They found Shorty hanging out at Jersey’s Pool Hall across the street from Ocean City Police Headquarters, Albert slammed him against the wall, cuffed him, and then placed him in his private automobile. Marlin thought that a little odd but said nothing as he got in the front passenger seat of Albert’s auto. Albert gunned the vehicle and headed for the far end, the secluded end of the Ocean City beach, around Squaw Rock, the local kids’ hangout during the day but quiet at night. He then proceeded to give Shorty the third-degree, and then some. Eventually Shorty cried uncle and named Max Webber as his man. He swore that on his mother’s grave. Then Albert just left Shorty there, left him to fend for himself, also a little odd.
With Shorty’s forced confession Albert and Marlin headed to Max Webber’s Kit-Kat Club, a watering hole and casino up in the hills above town. They entered the club and were stopped by the head bouncer. Albert showed his badge and asked for Max. They were led to a back office where Max was counting receipts. Albert, gun drawn, confronted Max. Max naturally denied Shorty’s story, said why would he bother with some cheapjack private eye or red-headed whore when he had the town sewed up, sewed up tight and had all the politician and cops bought and paid for. He flicked his wrist saying, “Get out of here and don’t bother me anymore about red-headed whores only good for street tricks and going down on high- school boys down at Squaw Rock for quarters.” Albert went crazy at that remark and fired a couple of shots in Max’s direction, one of them hitting him in the shoulder.
As Albert got ready to fire another shot it finally hit Marlin that Max was right. Why would he ruin his whole operation for some petty blackmail scheme. And that is when Marlin remembered something about that night Rita was killed, as he was coming out of his unconsciousness. The smell of a man’s shaving lotion, a smell that the perspiring Albert was giving off just then. He took out his gun, directed Albert to stop shooting and Albert turned around ready to shoot. Marlin put two slugs near the heart. Albert died on the way to the hospital.
It came out later that Albert had been a lover scorned. He had been Rita’s boyfriend in high school and they were to be married. Rita backed out went out and went west and Albert followed. She eventually married Jack, it didn’t take since he had no dough, she went back to Albert for a while then dumped him again. Albert kept tabs on her though. When Jack offered to cut her in on the blackmail angle Albert thought she was going back to him and he went crazy. He killed Jack. Then when he saw Marlin with Rita he flipped out again. He had intended to kill Marlin as well except Marlin was coming out of his coma. And you wonder why Marlin told Tyrone don’t tangle, don’t mess with red-heads. Especially in the October red-eyed moon night.
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