Since 1951, when the Pennsylvania Loyalty Act was passed, this reactionary oath has been a danger to the political rights of every working person, to the union movement, and to defenders of free speech. Its demise is an aid to militant workers fighting to organize and strengthen the unions. It removes an obstacle to political activity by candidates like those on the Socialist Workers Party ticket who advocate revolutionary change: taking power from the handful of capitalist families in the United States and establishing a workers and farmers government.

The successful campaign over the past year by SWP candidates challenged the oath, both politically and legally, and helped explain the stakes in the fight.

Attorney general spokesperson William Frederiksen told the Militant that the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Communist Party of Indiana vs. Whitcomb, which declared the oath unconstitutional, was “very clear.” But evidently not clear enough to stop the state’s propertied rulers and government representatives from enforcing this thought-control measure for another 32 years!

Why did they keep it in place? Not as an anachronistic vestige of the past. They’ve been holding it in reserve for today and tomorrow, as they prepare to meet not only union resistance but independent working-class political opposition to assaults on our wages and conditions, and as they carry out imperialist wars abroad.

Now the employing class has one less weapon in its political arsenal. This victory shows that blows can be dealt to the capitalists’ efforts to attack the rights of working people—from organizing unions, to mobilizing opposition to anti-immigrant ordinances in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and other cities, and more.
 
 
Related articles:
Socialist Workers candidates in Iowa: ‘Israeli troops out of Lebanon and Gaza now!’
Socialists in Pennsylvania file for ballot status
Affirm victory against state ‘loyalty oath’
SWP launches California ticket  
 
 
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