guerrilla history

For May Day — I give you Big Bill Haywood

Happy May Day, Comrades. Remember back when Red States had nothing do to with Republicans and May Day had nothing to do with trees and birds and saving the environment? Red meant RED, as in communist or socialist, and May Day was for Revolution.

Ninety years ago today, on May Day 1919, Socialists staged Red Flag marches in every major American city. It was American socialism was at its peak. Almost a million American workers went on strike against The Capitalist Enemy, led by radicals like William Z. Foster and Louis Fraina. Bolsheviks had just taken power in Russia, and Eugene Debs would soon win almost a million votes for President in 1920 running from a prison cell on the Socialist ticket. The Red Scare was at its peak, and Emma Goldman was still scaring the socks off complacent American bourgoisie.

And of all the prominent lefties, the emblemmatic leader was Big Bill Haywood, president of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) — the biggest, baddest, toughest, roughest leftiest labor leader of them all.

Haywood wanted his IWW to be “One Big Union” for the entire American working class to battle the Corporate Plutocrats of J.P. Morgan’s Gilded Age. IWW organizers often faced lynching or murder by company detectives. Strikers back them faced beatings, blacklists, and trumped-up prosecutions. But Haywood — a former cowpoke and miner — didn’t shy away from pushing back, using sabotage or strong-arm tactics where needed. In 1905, the murder of Idaho governer Frank Steunenberg after a bitter strike set the stage for one of the great American courtroom dramas. Idaho prosecutors, backed by Pinkerton detectives, fingered Haywood for murder, and famed Chicago lawyer Clarance Darrow traveled to Idaho to fight the charges. He won Haywood an acquittal.

During the World War I, Federal agents under direction of President Woodrow Wilson launched a sweeping crackdown of the IWW. His Justice Department arrested over 100 IWWs and in 1918 tried them en masse for Espionage. Haywood, convicted and facing prison, fled to Bolshevik Russia for his final years.

So this May Day, forget the flowers and trees. Forget the Red States and Blue States. Let’s all wear Red, sing The Internationale, shake our fists at the Power Structure, and toast Big Bill Haywood, a socialist’s socialist, a radical’s radical, a Red’s Red — as American as apple pie.

The best book on Bill Haywood is his own autobiogrpahy, pubished in 1929. Click here for the link to Amazon.com .