February 21, 2000
Britain should get its troops, cops, and secret police out of Ireland now. That should be the demand of every working person, union member and farmer, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The mobilizations over the past two weeks, as well as the actions by working farmers across the entire country, are an indication of the ways working people and those standing up for a united Ireland are finding to press forward the struggle. The growing confidence of tens of thousands in these actions is a bad sign for London and the unionist parties in the north.
Their actions strengthen the hand of working people throughout the (not so) United Kingdom. Organizing in the coming weeks to show solidarity with the fight for a united, democratic Ireland is crucial as the British rulers ratchet up the pressure on the struggle.
February 21, 1975
In January 1912 the wages of the textile workers in Lawrence, Mass., were cut. As the pay envelopes were passed around the workers — primarily Polish women — sat at the machines, refused to work, and finally walked out of the plant. By the next day the fury had spread from mill to mill and the Battle of Lawrence had begun under the cry, “Better to starve fighting than to starve working.”
The Italian Socialist Federation in New York decided to relieve some of the burden by bringing the Lawrence children into homes in other cities for the duration of the strike.
The “children’s crusade,” along with the inability of the companies to break the strike, caused the companies to surrender. A meeting of 15,000 workers on March 14 ratified pay increases of 5 to 21 percent, time and a quarter for overtime and a pledge to reinstate strikers.
February 20, 1950
Whatever the outcome of the mine struggle, President Truman has already exposed himself fully as the deadly foe of organized labor.
Truman’s anti-labor role is demonstrated by the fact that this Democratic president, who promised so loudly before elections to secure repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, has personally invoked it not less than eight times now, while his NLRB Counsel has employed it not less than 61 times. This is what the pro-capitalist union leaders have brought on labor because they have opposed the formation of labor’s own party and supported so-called “friends of labor.”
Truman’s assault on the miners is first of all a political lesson, a clarion call to the American labor movement: Build your own independent party of the working class! Dependence on capitalist parties and politicians is a one way street to disaster.