The union that fought to overthrow capitalism 197, am oCean eye be me late, 3 miles coa,

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Drintino nf enriv IIS industrial struggles and IWW leaders Mall, London.

These two films are well worth seeing or hiring for meetings.

This is not because they are perfect either in their form or their politics, but because they raise questions and tell of things that should be known.

The Dawson J film is about the victimisation of a shop steward, and his struggle against management, union bureaucracy and media.

It uses the clever device of portraying the whole struggle through the eyes of police surveillance.

However, it does not show much of the struggle itself beyond stating the factors at work, introducing the main protagonists and showing the discussions in the front room of the victimised militant.

Mass media

The only theme discussed comparatively fully, though only through conversations is the attitude to the mass media.

Here we are given the arguments for having nothing to do with the capitalist press and TV.

The view we are left with is not so much that this is because the media act as ruling class agents but because their techniques and form make it impossible for them to present in a serious way the views of industrial militants.

"The Wobblies"

The other film is about a great movement of the proletariat of the United States in the early years of this century, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) alias the "Wobblies"

The IWW was a trade union that organised a million American workers from 1005 In the 1920s DUL 120 But it was a union with a difference. It aimed to overthrow capitalism.

The film chooses to tell this story largely around interviews with survivors of the movement, some now over 90. None of them regret the struggles they were in, and all of them remain socialists, or, as they would prefer, rebels'.

This particular film technique allows the story to be told in a very moving way. A militant stands against the backdrop of the ruined mill where he worked over sixty years ago, and tells how they brought the workers out on strike, how their local leaders were 'framed' and how the great Big Bill Haywood came to take over.

We see rather matronly old women talk of how at the age of 16 or 17 they went from factory to factory to organise workers into the IWW and how they fought for the overthrow of the capitalist system and for 'sabotage' , by which they apparently meant go-slow Limitations Yet the technique of the film also has its limitations.

Some of the incidents in the history of the IWW the old militants show themsleves well aware of the issues, there is little serious discussion of the political ideas of the IWW.

The Wobblies represented the first serious effort to organise the mass of American workers in the face of the craft exclusiveness and pro-capitalism of the old unions in the American Federation of Labour.

They organised many heroic battles against the textile monopolies, the big farmers and the port employers.

They restored dignity to members of every downtrodden section of American society, recent migrants, poor women, lumberjacks and blacks.

They made propaganda for socialism against the pretentions of the religious charlatans, the violence of the police and National Guard and the corruption of the capitalist politicians.

Yet they faded away under the impact of the First World War and the vicious repression that followed it.

The film tried to explain this decline, and the defeat of the Wobblies simply in

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WÖRKER THE terms of this repression and new internal divisions.

But there was more to it than that. Because the IWW thought that the unions themselves could overthrow capitalism, they were unable to provide a political perspective for their members.

Thus as the film points out, they took no attitude to the First World War.

The result was that their members did not know how to confront it.

One of the filmed militants actually joined the army, but he now sees it was 'stupid'.

UNE Because the IWW did not see the struggle politically they could not in the end fulfil the hopes they implanted, by challenging capitalism. Nor were they abli to maintain their organisat.un in the face of repression. But for all their limitations, the Wobblies were the heroes of their day. Every American mass struggle of the working class since refers back to them. It is the strength of this film that it shows their heroism, their heritage, andmakes it possible to consider their limitations and understand their defeat.

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