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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 16, 17 April 1950, pp. 1 & 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Truman administration won another battle last week in its war on civil liberties when a federal jury declared Harry Bridges, president of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, guilty of perjury and conspiracy. On Monday, April 10, the court sentenced him to prison for five years, two of his associates to two years each, and the government is asking for the revocation of his citizenship in order to obtain his deportation.
The government has wanted to “get” Bridges neause he is and has been a follower of the Communist Party line for many years. It is anxious to rid the waterfront of the influence of the Stalinists as part of the cold war. So it hauled him up on the charge that when he was naturalized in 1945 he falsely swore that he had never been a member of the CP.
The charge of perjury is simply the hook by .which the government hopes to hang Bridges. In the course of the 85-day trial Bridges’ attorneys were able to prove that more than one of the men who testified against him had perjured himself also. But no one is fool enough to think that the government is going to haul its own witnesses up for the same offense for which it is trying to deport Bridges.
This trial was a political trial, from start to finish. And the whole history of the government’s proceedings against Bridges proves it.
Bridges’ own policies have tacked and veered over the years with the policies of the American Stalinists. When they were supporting F.D. Roosevelt, Bridges did too. When they turned against FDR during the period of Stalin’s pact with Hitler, Bridges supported Willkie. When Hitler attacked Russia, Bridges and the CP became the most ardent supporters of the no-strike pledge and of the government. When the cold war started, Bridges went right down the Stalinist line.
And the government’s attitude toward Bridges changed as Bridges’ attitude toward the government changed. We have documented this in detail in Labor Action of July 11, 1949. And now, ill the midst of the loyalty purge hysteria, The government has finally been able to get a conviction against him which, in all probability, will be made to stick.
But why, if this is really an attempt to get rid of a Stalinist, should Labor Action, which has opposed Stalinism as a reactionary anti-labor movement which serves the interests of the Kremlin slaveholders, describe it as an attack on civil liberties?
Because that is what it is. Stalinism is a political movement in the United States. It is a movement which misleads the workers who adhere to it or follow its leadership. It is a movement which seeks to impose on American workers and American society the kind of totalitarianism which prevails in Russia. That is why we fight it tooth and nail.
But to illegalize it, to place it outside the law, is to deny the rights of civil and politicar democracy to its members and followers, which means to deny political democracy even to its enemies.
The Bridges trial is a political weapon of intimidation against all who oppose capitalist exploitation. It is a signal to the FBI and the rest of the government and non-government machinery to go full steam ahead with the loyalty purge and the whole witchhunt hysteria.
Twice before the government has held extensive deportation hearings against Bridges. Both times it was finally held that no proof had been adduced that he was or had been an actual member of the CP. It seemed that his case was closed after he was naturalized. But by taking up the whole matter once more under the perjury charge, the government wants to make it clear to all that, in the war against Stalinism, anything does; and that every legal technicality will be employed to the utmost to deprive the. Stalinists of the remnants of their civil liberties.
There is another aspect to the Bridges case, and it is an important one. Bridges is the president of a great union. At the last election he was re-elected by an overwhelming vote of the membership. His record of following the CP line for years was known to all who could read or hear. The membership of that union is not Stalinist, but it re-elected him.
Independent socialists believe they made a mistake, but as people who firmly believe in workers’ democracy we also believe they had a RIGHT to make that mistake. That union and all other unions will only be rid of Stalinism in a healthy and progressive and DEMOCRATIC manner when the workers themselves decide they have had enough of the Stalinist hacks and take the unions back info their own hands. That job cannot be done for them by the government DEMOCRATICALLY any more than a nation can be governed DEMOCRATICALLY by a dictator, be he benevolent or otherwise.
The higher courts have yet to be heard from but in the present witchhunt atmosphere we doubt that they will reverse the verdict. If Bridges is thrown into jail or deported it will not be because he perjured himself, but because he is a political opponent of the government.
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