Leonard spoke on the topic of “War and the Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialism: Some Experiences from World War II and the Korean War.” The special forum was attended by some 100 people. Many took part in the meeting after spending the day petitioning to put the Socialist Workers Party candidates on the ballot in New York City.

He noted that these questions were not simply of historical interest, but crucial for militant workers and farmers seeking a way forward in today’s world.

“One of the first things I learned when joining the Socialist Workers Party was its immense confidence in the historical role of the world’s working people,” Leonard said.

He described his experiences as a radicalizing young worker who joined the merchant marine in 1943 during the second imperialist world war. Leonard said many of the soldiers and workers he met were influenced by the class battles fought by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) during the 1930s labor upsurge.  
 
Maritime union militants
On his first ship, the SS William Paige, he was approached by a union committee of two older seamen. “They sat me on a bunk and began to explain to me the facts of union life aboard ship,” Leonard said. “That discussion included a recent union history, especially about the series of waterfront strikes of the mid- and late 1930s, of which they were very proud.”

Leonard related how his experiences aboard ship, where he served as a union delegate from the age of 18, showed how trade union resistance unfolded as the war went on. The National Maritime Union, for example, grew from 4,000 to 55,000 members before the war was over. In this period the SWP had an active and growing fraction of members in the maritime unions.

Among the battles he described was “a tenacious struggle for job equality waged by Black seamen in an increasing fight against war time Jim Crow practices aboard many ships.”

Between the end of World War II and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Leonard shipped to the Pacific, with experiences in Korea, China, and the Philippines. There he got a glimpse of life for Asian working people and of the anticolonial struggles in the region.

He came to know a Korean longshore union militant in Pusan, in U.S.-occupied southern Korea, and learned that the Pusan longshore union had been smashed at the outset of the war. “I was told by an MP [military police] assigned to my ship that Korean union members were executed on the docks as traitors for allegedly aiding the enemy,” Leonard said.

Leonard explained how he met members of the Socialist Workers Party in the maritime industry. These experiences led Leonard in 1951 to join the party.

Answering questions during the discussion period, he spoke about the SWP’s role in backing the March on Washington movement as part of the emerging civil rights struggles, and efforts to counteract moves by the Stalinized Communist Party to subordinate labor and Black rights battles to “unity” in support of the imperialist war effort.

Leonard also described the powerful Bring Us Home movement that sprang up among U.S. soldiers in late 1945 to oppose Washington’s plans use them in the Pacific to fight against the Chinese revolution.

He also gave examples of the work by seamen SWP members to link up with revolutionary co-thinkers in other countries the party had been separated from during the war.

Leonard applauded those in the audience who had spent the day working to put the socialist candidates on the ballot. He related how in 1952 one of his first party assignments was to join a petitioning team to put Farrell Dobbs, SWP candidate for president, on the ballot in New York.  
 
 
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