The Other Side of
Life
The other night I was
in a room with a few other members of Clydeside Industrial Workersof the World, watching films, uploaded from Youtube about
Blair Mountain.
No the mountain
isn't the cash Tony Blair has accumulated for himself as a stooge to
the U.S. War machine. Blair Mountain is in the Appalachians in West
Virginia. In 1921 it was the scene of an armed confrontation between
miners wearing red bandanna – nickname “red-necks” -
seeking to organise
throughout the State, and a reactionary militia mobilised by
the authoritarian regime in Logan County. It resulted in the intervention
of thousands of federal troops sent in to halt and disarm the biggest
clash on U.S. Soil since the Civil War. Years later it was dramatised
in the film, Matewan.
On page 3 of
Industrial Worker, the story is brought up to date by the battle to preserve the
historical site and environment of forests, against current
mine companies engaged in devastating open cast mining. A hidden
agenda is to physically obliterate any record of the miners struggle
which saw 20,000 mobilised to defend and to organise those suffering
terrible exploitation and working conditions in company towns.
Looking at such
a video brings it home to you just how tough life was back then. In
USA, the “land of the free”, the owners regularly turned to
“Pinkerton” type agencies to assassinate workers involved in
strike action, recruit desperate scabs & evict strikers from
“company provided” housing.
There is a wealth of
material in the internet now from the IWW and radical union sites,
determined not to forget our history.
Despite all the
knowledge that can be accessed, the authorities prefer the mass of
people to stay as passive consumers, lulled into a “social
amnesia”, where a diet of pap, glosses over a history based on
class violence & subjugation. So many valiant efforts by workers
and radicals are wiped from consciousness & memory, as new
generations are bombarded with the propaganda of our rulers. In the
USA it has a subtle twist, with all the nonsense of religious
fundamentalism, a racket by manipulators & money makers to feed
off the human need for group solidarity, common cause and to be
uplifted “spiritually”.
Jim McFarlane,
hereandnowscot@gmail.com
Some of Glasgow's working class HERE.
