War of words and terror no match for solidarity

1937 FLINT SIT-DOWN LABOR HISTORY SERIES
PARTS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Class war is a science. Working-class strategists learn to expect the unexpected—deep into a period of reaction a rebellion might break out under unlikely circumstances—and remain flexible in their tactics. Theorists on the side of capital, on the other hand, never tire of devising rigid formulas that leave them “greater than” the workers.

In vogue at the time of the Flint sit-down was the Mohawk Valley Formula, developed in 1936 by James H. Rand Jr., head of Remington Rand. Selling it as the master strikebreaking plan business had “hoped for, dreamed of and prayed for,” Rand won its adoption by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

Point one of the nine-point program was, “When a strike is threatened, label the union leaders as ‘agitators.’”

The LaFollette Committee of the U.S. Senate, formed to investigate companies’ illegal interference in union organizing, uncovered NAM’s extensive propaganda machine. NAM provided ready-made radio speeches, news cartoons, editorials, advertising and motion pictures to media all too willing to conceal its sponsorship. Twelve thousand local newspapers were given editorials equating unionism with communism, and some 2.5 million column inches of this drivel were published.

Rand did not, of course, invent red baiting. Communists were blamed for the 1934 San Francisco general strike; five Bay Area newspapers formed a council to coordinate anti-red propaganda while the police Crime Prevention Bureau became the Anti-Radical and Crime Prevention Bureau. Meanwhile the leaders of the Minneapolis Teamsters strike were denounced as radicals in editorials and full-page ads written by the employers.

The war of words alone did little to break the morale of strikers, hence the employment of point four: “Utilize local police, state police, vigilantes and special deputies.” In the years leading up to the sit-down strike, dozens of unionists had been murdered and countless numbers injured, harassed, fired and arrested. Really, Mohawk Valley merely codified a general consensus on tactics shared by the owners of industry.

General Motors followed the formula. They copied from Mohawk Valley the formation of a “Citizens’ Committee,” in this case the Flint Alliance. The Alliance, led by former Flint Mayor and Buick paymaster George Boysen, hired a New York public relations firm to disseminate propaganda stating that a “radical” minority sought to impose a “labor dictatorship” on an “American” citizenry.

“It sounds like Communist talk to me,” cried one Judge Black. He was referring to his inability to enforce an injunction against the sit-down strikers after the UAW revealed that his ownership of 3665 shares of GM stock created a conflict of interest.

When it came to the employment of vigilantes, the du Ponts—who along with the Morgans were the controlling stockholders and shared twelve of the fourteen seats on GM’s Finance Board—were specialists. Richard Sanders, writing on the du Ponts in the magazine Press for Conversion, states:

“In the 1930s, the du Pont and Morgan family empires dominated the American corporate elite and their representatives were central figures in organizing and funding the [fascist] American Liberty League. ...

“Du Pont’s General Motors Co. funded a vigilante/terrorist organization to stop unionization in its Midwestern factories. Called the ‘Black Legion,’ its members wore black robes decorated with a white skull and crossbones. Concealed behind their slitted hoods, this KKK-like network of white-supremacist thugs threw bombs into union halls, set fire to labor activists’ homes, tortured union organizers and killed at least 50 in Detroit alone. Many of their victims were Blacks lured North by tales of good auto plant jobs. One of their victims, Rev. Earl Little, was murdered in 1931. His son, later called Malcolm X, was then six. An earlier memory, his first, was a night-time raid in 1929 when the Legion burnt down their house. ...

“The du Pont Co., and particularly GM, was a major contributor to Nazi military efforts to wipe communism off the map of Europe. In 1929, GM bought Adam Opel, Germany’s largest car manufacturer. In 1974, a Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly heard evidence from researcher Bradford Snell proving that that in 1935, GM opened an Opel factory to supply the Nazi’s with “Blitz” military trucks. In appreciation, for this help, Adolf Hitler awarded GM’s chief executive for overseas operations, James Mooney, with the Order of the German Eagle (first class).” (http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/dupont.html)

Clearly, while claiming to protect its workers from a “labor dictatorship,” the company had no issues with dictatorship per se.

Point nine of the formula stated: “Close the publicity barrage on the theme that the plant is in full operation and the strikers are merely a minority attempting to interfere with the ‘right to work.’ With this, the campaign is over—the employer has broken the strike”

Like Bush’s failed “liberation” scenario in Iraq, this shallow mathematical formula did not calculate in the workers and oppressed. It omitted their humanity, not counting on their will to resist when conditions become intolerable.

Seeing the red baiting for what it was, looking to leadership that included socialists and communists of every stripe, on February 11, 1937, the workers emerged from the occupied plants triumphant.

Songwriters Lee Hays, Millard Lampell and Pete Seeger expressed these lessons in the 1947 song “Talkin’ Union”:

“That if you don’t let red-baiting break you up, If you don’t let stoolpigeons break you up, If you don’t let vigilantes break you up, and if you don’t let race hatred break you up—

You’ll win.”

1937 FLINT SIT-DOWN LABOR HISTORY SERIES
PARTS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10