WOBBLIES OF THE WORLD i Wildcat: Workers’ Movements and Global Capitalism Series Editors: Peter Alexander (University of Johannesburg) Immanuel Ness (City University of New York) Tim Pringle (SOAS, University of London) Malehoko Tshoaedi (University of Pretoria) Workers’ movements are a common and recurring feature in contemporary capitalism. The same militancy that inspired the mass labour movements of the twentieth century continues to define worker struggles that proliferate throughout the world today. For more than a century labour unions have mobilised to represent the political- economic interests of workers by uncovering the abuses of capitalism, establishing wage standards, improving oppressive working conditions, and bargaining with em- ployers and the state. Since the 1970s, organised labour has declined in size and influ- ence as the global power and influence of capital has expanded dramatically. The world over, existing unions are in a condition of fracture and turbulence in response to ne- oliberalism, financialisation, and the reappearance of rapacious forms of imperialism. New and modernised unions are adapting to conditions and creating class-conscious workers’ movement rooted in militancy and solidarity. Ironically, while the power of organised labour contracts, working-class militancy and resistance persists and is growing in the Global South. Wildcat publishes ambitious and innovative works on the history and political econ- omy of workers’ movements and is a forum for debate on pivotal movements and la- bour struggles. The series applies a broad definition of the labour movement to include workers in and out of unions, and seeks works that examine proletarianisation and class formation; mass production; gender, affective and reproductive labour; imperialism and workers; syndicalism and independent unions, and labour and Leftist social and political movements. Also available: Just Work? Migrant Workers’ Struggles Today Edited by Aziz Choudry and Mondli Hlatshwayo Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class Immanuel Ness The Spirit of Marikana: The Rise of Insurgent Trade Unionism in South Africa Luke Sinwell with Siphiwe Mbatha Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres Jamie Woodcock Wobblies of the World A Global History of the IWW Edited by Peter Cole, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer First published 2017 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Peter Cole, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer 2017 The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 9960 7 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 9959 1 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7868 0151 7 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0153 1 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0152 4 EPUB eBook This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. Typeset by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich, England Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Part I: Transnational Influences on the iww 27 1 “A Cosmopolitan Crowd”: Transnational Anarchists, the iww, and the American Radical Press 29 Kenyon Zimmer 2 Sabotage, the iww, and Repression: How the American Reinterpretation of a French Concept Gave Rise to a New International Conception of Sabotage 44 Dominique Pinsolle 3 Living Social Dynamite: Early Twentieth-Century iww– South Asia Connections 59 Tariq Khan 4 iww Internationalism and Interracial Organizing in the Southwestern United States 74 David M. Struthers 5 Spanish Anarchists and Maritime Workers in the iww 89 Bieito Alonso Part II: The iww in the Wider World 103 6 The iww and the Dilemmas of Labor Internationalism 105 Wayne Thorpe 7 The iww in Tampico: Anarchism, Internationalism, and Solidarity Unionism in a Mexican Port 124 Kevan Antonio Aguilar 8 The Wobblies of the North Woods: Finnish Labor Radicalism and the iww in Northern Ontario 140 Saku Pinta 9 “We Must Do Away with Racial Prejudice and Imaginary Boundary Lines”: British Columbia’s Wobblies before the First World War 156 Mark Leier v contents 10 Wobblies Down Under: The iww in Australia 168 Verity Burgmann 11 Ki Nga Kaimahi Maori (“To All Maori Workers”): The New Zealand iww and the Maori 186 Mark Derby 12 Patrick Hodgens Hickey and the iww: A Transnational Relationship 204 Peter Clayworth 13 “The Cause of the Workers Who Are Fighting in Spain Is Yours”: The Marine Transport Workers and the Spanish Civil War 212 Matthew White 14 Edith Frenette: A Transnational Radical Life 228 Heather Mayer Part III: Beyond the Union: The iww’s Influence and Legacies 237 15 Jim Larkin, James Connolly, and the Dublin Lockout of 1913: The Transnational Path of Global Syndicalism 239 Marjorie Murphy 16 Tom Barker and Revolutionary Europe 253 Paula de Angelis 17 P. J. Welinder and “American Syndicalism” in Interwar Sweden 262 Johan Pries 18 “All Workers Regardless Of Craft, Race Or Color”: The First Wave of iww Activity and Influence in South Africa 271 Lucien van der Walt 19 Tramp, Tramp, Tramp: The Songs of Joe Hill Around the World 288 Bucky Halker Index 301 vi Acknowledgments Like many great ideas, this book was born while drinking beers with friends. The three of us were presenting papers on our different research projects during the 2008 conference of the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association. Dave and Kenyon already were friends and met Peter, for the first time, that rainy weekend in Vancouver. We vaguely discussed putting together a book on the history of the Wobblies around the world, but promptly forgot about our idea—like many such grand alcohol-fueled notions. Over the next few years, we emailed each other intermittently, and even organized a panel on the topic at the 2012 meeting of the American Historical Association, but all of us were busy with various other work and life commitments. Eventually, in 2015, our lives converged, windows opened, the sun shone, and we finally undertook this project. From there, it moved surprisingly fast. We already knew many other folks, around the world, who shared our interest in—or rather, fascination with—the Wobblies. We reached out to many of them and put out a “call for papers” to make sure we reached a wider network of scholars, both in the academy and outside of it, who studied the iww. We would like to thank every contributor to the book who (for the most part) submitted drafts on time, and all of whom were passionate about the project. We are proud of this book and trust everyone else involved is, too. We also thank one of the Wildcat series editors, Manny Ness, for his stead- fast and enthusiastic support from the get-go, as well as the six anonymous reviewers who commented on the project. Thanks, also, to David Shulman at Pluto Press and the incredible team of committed, skilled workers who help this global publishing house spread the word about the Wobs and so many other important subjects, past and present. Peter Cole thanks his partner, Wendy Pearlman, who listened to count- less tales about the Wobblies (some of them even true), and provided moral and intellectual support; he also thanks his co-conspirators (um, co-editors) for their friendship and thoughtfulness. Dave Struthers thanks his wife Irina Shklovski for listening to him talk about the past, his daughter Freya for taking him to the skatepark, Devra Weber for first introducing him to the iww in a labor history seminar, his co-plotters for making this collabo- ration a pleasure, and the contributors for keeping him excited every time he sat down to read drafts. Kenyon Zimmer thanks his wife Rafia Mirza vii acknowledgments for her support throughout, Salvatore Salerno for first introducing him to the hidden anarchist connections to the iww, Robert Helms for taking time out of a visit to the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam to scan rare documents for him, and his co-editors for their hard work, patience, and humor. Finally, we would like to thank all of those, dead and alive, who keep the Wobbly flames burning. We know that Wobblies and fellow travelers are committed to a more just and equitable world. So are we—that’s why we imagined and, now, helped create this book. Thanks for reading! viii Introduction Peter Cole, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer This book proudly proclaims itself the first-ever global history of the Industrial Workers of the World (iww, or Wobblies). In this collection of essays, 20 scholars from around the world begin a long-overdue con- versation about the iww as a global phenomenon. Although the union’s official membership never was numerically as large as mainstream unions, its influence during its early years—1905 into the 1920s—was enormous in the United States, where it was founded, and worldwide. The iww was part of a global upsurge of anarchism and syndicalism, which in the early twentieth century, before the Russian Revolution and birth of the Soviet Union, arguably occupied the central positions among the global Left as the dominant anti-capitalist ideologies. Subsequent scholarship focusing on western Europe and those leftist currents that fed into social democratic state structures has obscured