Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster by English T. J

Author:English, T. J. [English, T. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9780060590024
Goodreads: 898028
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

The Waterfront Commission

The circumstances surrounding the sensational trial and execution of Cockeye and Squint proved to be the beginning of the end for Boss Joe Ryan. The rank-and-file had never been more dissatisfied with Ryan’s leadership, and, in 1951, longshoremen in New York did something they had never attempted before: They staged an unauthorized wild cat strike by walking off the job in defiance of Boss Joe. The strike was costly. It lasted twenty-five days and shut down 118 piers. Thirty thousand men went without pay for almost a month. But in the larger scheme of things, calling attention to corrupt practices within the longshoreman’s union was worth every penny.

The man behind the strike was not a longshoreman at all. He was a stubborn, courageous man of the cloth who had made the waterfront his personal parish. Father John Corridan was the child of Irish immigrants. Born in Harlem, he was the eldest son of a New York policeman who died when John was just ten years old. After fifteen years of theological study, he was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1944. One year later, at the age of thirty-four, he was assigned to the Xavier Labor School on West Sixteenth Street, just a few blocks from the Chelsea and Greenwich Village piers. The labor school was an adjunct of the Catholic university system. With courses taught by both priests and lay instructors, the curriculum was designed to teach the use of Christian principles in dealing with labor management problems.

Corridan was a chain-smoking, no-nonsense man, comfortable in the profane and muscular world of the waterfront. He became friendly with the many longshoremen who attended Xavier Church, adjacent to the school. These men saw in Father John a kindred spirit, and they told him things about how the waterfront really operated—things they would never have told any other outsider. Corridan began to compile index files on the waterfront’s key players and went on walking tours of many piers to inspect working conditions. He attended union meetings, listened to complaints and accusations on all sides. It didn’t take long for the priest to see that the waterfront was a violent universe, fueled by intimidation and exploitation. Clearly, at the heart of the problem was a collusive arrangement between the New York Shipping Association and the mob-dominated ILA, with the common laborer getting the shaft.

Corridan set out to call attention to corrupt labor conditions in the Port of New York. In his quest to expose injustice, he was not afraid to utilize the press. One of his more notable contacts was reporter Malcolm Johnson, who in 1950 published a series of articles in the New York Sun entitled “Crime on the Waterfront.” The series, which eventually won Johnson a Pulitzer Prize, was a revelation; it named names and spelled out operating procedures within the ILA that had been hidden for years.

The explosive series in the Sun happened to appear in print around the same time that the celebrated Kefauver Committee arrived in town.

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