February 24, 1997
For the past 25 years the Socialist Workers Party has waged a fight to function in politics free from harassment by government and right-wing organizations and individuals.
A Federal Elections Commission ruling exempting the party from reporting the names of contributors expired at the end of 1996. Constitutional law attorney Michael Krinsky has filed a request to extend the ruling for another eight years.
The SWP has been running candidates for public office since 1938 and has fielded a candidate for U.S. president in every election since 1948. The party fields candidates in local, state, and federal elections across the country.
At the heart of the submission is documentation of 72 incidents since 1990 of harassment and intimidation against party candidates, socialist campaign supporters, and offices of the party’s election campaigns.
February 25, 1972
The strike of Britain’s 280,000 miners has entered its sixth week. It is Britain’s largest industrial crisis since World War II, and some say, since the general strike of 1926.
The miners walked off their jobs Jan. 9 demanding a wage increase. Their demand is for 25 percent, while the Coal Board offers only 12 percent. On Feb. 8 the Tory government invoked a “state of emergency,” which empowers the government to counter the effectiveness of the miners’ strike by cutting off electric power supplies. It also permits the use of British troops to disperse pickets so that scabs may transport coal.
Feb. 15 the New York Times quoted a 25-year-old miner, James Traynor, as saying: “The workers know that if the government and the bosses break us today, they’ll break someone else tomorrow. If we lose, the union movement losses.”
February 22, 1947
The tramp of marching feet in the streets of a Southern state capital on Feb. 13 sounded a clarion call for white and Negro labor unity in common struggle against the capitalist exploiters of all workers.
In Nashville, Tennessee, some 2,500 white and Negro workers, representing every union affiliation from all parts of the state, united in a march on the state capitol building to fight against a threatened open shop bill.
Tennessee unionists have given an example to the whole labor movement. From the South, with its traditions of anti-unionism and racial bigotry, has come a demonstration of labor militancy and solidarity that points the way for labor nationally. The march is a sign that a new progressive force is emerging right inside the strongest citadel of American reaction, the South. That force is the awakening Southern working class.