The General Strike

by Ralph Chaplin

Introduction

Thousands of thoughtful and class-conscious workers in years past have looked to the General Strike for deliverance from wage slavery. Today their hopes are stronger than ever. Their number has been increased with additional thousands who are confident that the General Strike, and the General Strike alone, can save Humanity from the torture and degradation of the continuation of capitalism and the misery and privation of its recurrent wars and depressions.

The General Strike is the child of the Labor Movement. It is Labor's natural reaction to a system of society based upon the private ownership of the machinery of production. It is Labor's ultimate attitude in the class struggle. It is Labor's answer to the problem of economic disorganization.

Direct Action – July 1st 1914

FREE SPEECH

A Fight to the Finish

I.W.W. Men Jailed at Port Pirie.

The Following is from the Sydney “Sun” of June 25th

PORT PIRIE, Thursday.. “A serious position has arisen over members of the Industrial Workers of the World claiming the right to hold meetings in the public street.Charles Reeves, the organiser, was recently sentenced to 10 days imprisonment for refusing to move on when requested to do so by a constable. Since then members of the organisation have defied the police by holding a meeting in the street every night. Five of their number were on Wednesday sentenced to 21 days, and they told the magistrate that they intended speaking again when released.

Members of the I.W.W. have arrived from Broken Hill and Adelaide to continue the free speech campaign, and a wire received from the Barrier last night states that another large crowd from that city will arrive here to-morrow by train. Speakers are also coming from Sydney, Melbourne and other parts of the Commonwealth. At a meeting last night the crowd collided with the foot police, and mounted troopers were called out. If it had not been for the leaders appealing to the crowd to keep their heads a serious disturbance would have taken place. The police several times broke the mob up, but eventually had to let the meeting proceed owing to being outnumbered. Police reinforcements will probably arrive from Adelaide to-morrow.

Since the campaign started the police have taken the names of about 20 speakers, who will all appear at the police court. Violent and inflammatory speeches were made at last nights meeting, and the police were bitterly attacked, on man, referring to the constable’s job as being “the lowest which a man would take.” “The police are so low and degraded,” continued the speaker, “that when they die they will need to climb a ladder to reach Hell.” A Russian member gave an address in his own language; another speaker said the rulers of Port Pirie were the most damnable mob that ever lived in any town in Australia. Members of the I.W.W. had all come to Port Pirie quite prepared to be gaoled for advocating their cause; but none of them minded, and the authorities would soon find that the gaols were not large enough to hold them. They already had comrades coming from all over Australia to carry on the fight, and, if necessary, they would come from America. He himself was concerned, he said, in a similar fight in America, and there the members of the organisation killed a policeman for every member of the I.W.W. who was shot by the police. When the authorities were up against the I.W.W. they would find they were up against a tough proposition. Until additional police are sent here it is probable that the meetings will be allowed to occur without intervention..

Reeve informed the magistrate that he would continue with I.W.W. propaganda, gaol or no, whereupon the Beak threatened to commit him for contempt of Court. “Direct Action here and now wishes to inform the Beak in particular, and the judicial vampires of capitalism in general that the I.W.W. never did have anything but contempt of the most radical kind for the legal institutions of the capitalist class. We wish further to intimate that before this fight is through the Bosses round Pirie way will have reason to regret the day their hireling prostitutes interfered with the Freedom of Speech.

...

The fight is by no means only in these chance encounters with police authority. In Sydney and other towns recently the authorities have hampered the I.W.W. in its propaganda work as far as they dared, and there is every reason to believe that, now that our principles are permeating the minds of the working class throughout Australia, a conspiracy as afoot to crush the organisation. Well go to it, you legal pimps and judicial parasites. We defy your laws, your courts, and your gaols. You have awakened too late. You may gaol individuals: principles and ideas still remain, and before you can now stop I.W.W. propaganda you will have to put your dishonoured and filthy claws on thousands of workers throughout the Commonwealth. And then some. Before twelve months have elapsed we will not alone have Free Speech in Port Pirie, but in every industrial centre in Australia.

We call upon all rebels and lovers of freedom to rally to the cause of Free Speech. Salvation Army ranters and fanatical sky pilots are allowed to make the night hideous in the streets of the city, because their teaching of the cowardly Christian “virtue” of meekness and servility is calculated to keep the workers in bondage. But discussion on industrial and economic subjects, according to the magisterial abortion who is handing out justice in Port Pirie, is an interference with the principles of freedom. Contempt of the Court! Bah! We spit upon you.

Meantime rebels at the scene of action: REMEMBER THE WOODEN SHOE. Never mind hitting the police. Hit the boss in his heart and soul.

Direct Action: July 15th 1914

I.W.W. VICTORY IN PORT PIRIE

The fight for free speech waged by the I.W.W. in Port Pirie has been won. The “authorities” who set the law in motion were for once compelled to recognise an authority and a power greater than themselves, the power of working class solidarity. The fighting spirit and the unswerving devotion to principle which characterises members of the I.W.W. the world over, were something that the “powers that be” had not estimated in their calculations.

The following letter, written from Port Pirie in the thick of the fight is illustrative of the spirit, the joyful enthusiasm, with which members of the organisation enter into conflict of this kind:- “We are having a hell of a grand fight in this town. When the fellow workers of Port Pirie sent out their “S.O.S.” for help. We came by rail and boat, and bikes, tired legs and blistered feet, to show to the world that our solidarity was not a vain empty boast, and to demonstrate by precept and example that an injury to one was an injury to all.

At our next meeting the police tried to ride us down with their horses, but we beat them every time accompanied by roars of applause from the three thousand workers who constituted our audience. When those who were summoned appeared in the “sacred” court of justice they refused to kiss the dirty old book of capitalism. Chunks of I.W.W.ism were heaved at the j. P. on the bench, and his call for silence greeted with an hilarious and hearty laugh. Law and Order has got hell here this week. We flout their law, slang the police and tell the working-class that the Law is the Boss and the workers are the “ordered”. If they organise on I.W.W. lines we will soon alter the old order of things.

The police took six more names last night, but they won’t damp our spirits. They can gaol us or trample our faces in the dirty streets of Port Pirie, but they can never take from us the militant spirit that permeates the breast of every member of the Industrial Workers of the World. We will win this fight with passionate devotion to our principles, and we mean to win, irrespective of the sacrifices to be made.

We are hoboes and scamps and tired tramps,

The indignity of working-for-a-living is well-known to anyone who ever has. Democracy, the great principle on which our society is supposedly founded, is thrown out the window as soon as we punch the time clock at work. With no say over what we produce, or how that production is organised, and with only a small portion of that product's value finding its way into our paychecks, we have every right to be pissed off at our bosses.