One Big Union of All the Workers by John Newsinger

Author:John Newsinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910885581
Publisher: Bookmarks

9

To fan the flames of discontent

Song played a vital part in the struggles and campaigns of the IWW. On the picket line, at meetings, during the Free Speech campaigns, around campfires and in the prison cell, the Wobblies, men and women, sang their defiance.

In 1908 James Wilson reported from Spokane that the local Wobblies had been livening up their “agitational meetings” with “a few songs by some of the fellow workers”. He went on: “It is really surprising how soon a crowd will form in the street to hear a song in the interest of the working class”. The following year a Wobbly song card was produced which sold for 5 cents and this grew into the Big Red Songbook. The inspiration behind this was the IWW organiser J H Walsh, one of the leaders of the 1909 Spokane Free Speech campaign. The jail was filled with Wobbly prisoners, abused and brutalised, but still defiantly singing “The Red Flag” and other revolutionary songs.

From 1909 the Big Red Songbook, which the cover subtitle proclaimed was intended “To Fan the Flames of Discontent”, was a permanent fixture of Wobbly campaigning and organising. One historian has described it as “their Bible”. It was reprinted every year with cartoons and poems alongside the songs.

As far as the IWW was concerned the Big Red Songbook was not just a book of songs but a vital propagandist and educational tool. The songs taught the realities of class society, satirised the bosses and their lackeys and preached the need for solidarity and the role of the One Big Union in achieving liberation. As Joe Hill argued, a political pamphlet “no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over again”. If you could put “a few cold, commonsense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humour” you would reach more workers than with the written word.

There were many Wobbly songwriters but by far the most popular was Joe Hill. A Swedish immigrant, originally named Joel Haaglund, he had arrived in the United States in 1902, changing his name to Joseph Hillstrom, which he soon shortened to Joe Hill. He travelled the country, earning a living as a migratory worker and eventually joined the IWW in Portland, Oregon, in 1908. He was active in the IWW local in San Pedro, California, in 1910 and was part of the Wobbly volunteer contingent that fought in the Mexican Revolution. He was to be badly beaten during the 1912 San Diego Free Speech campaign. His great contribution to the struggle, however, was his songs.

His first known song was “Casey Jones—the Union Scab” which he wrote in 1911 to support strikers on the South Pacific railway. It was a tremendous success. Probably his most famous song though was “The Preacher and the Slave”. One of the problems the IWW faced when organising migratory workers was the activity of religious groups such as the Salvation Army, or the “Starvation Army” as the Wobblies called it.

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