Resolutions from the founding convention of International Labor Defense in 1925. Originally a non-partisan defense organization initiated by the Communist Party, the I.L.D. was a central force in campaigns around Sacco and Vanzetti, Scottsboro, Tom Mooney, and many others. A membership organization, it had local chapters in many working class communities and provided relief for political prisoners. By the early 30s it has become a more explicit appendage of the Party and changed with it; its magazine, the essential ‘Labor Defender’ becoming ‘Equal Justice’ in 1937, until it formally dissolved into the Civil Rights Congress in 1947.

‘Resolutions Adopted by the International Labor Defense First National Conference’ from International Labor Defense, Chicago, 1925.

Unanimously adopted by the National Defense Conference, Ashland Auditorium, Chicago, June 28, 1925.

1. The Fight for Release of Class War Prisoners.

The fight for the release of the imprisoned fighters for the cause of labor is one of the most important problems on the agenda of the American Labor. Movement. Every worker in prison for the “crime” of loyalty to his class represents a victory for the capitalist exploiters and an injury to the workers. The continued confinement of so large a number of the most conscious elements of the working-class without any real protest against it, is of itself a sign of weakness in the labor movement. The indifference and neglect which characterizes too large a section of the labor movement in regard to this burning question is a greater danger to the movement as a whole. It encourages the exploiters of labor and their subverted “legal” and “illegal” agencies of persecution to go ever farther with their methods of terror, while, at the same time, it weakens the morale of the workers.

It must be recorded to the shame of the labor movement that Mooney and Billings, victims of the most atrocious frame-up in all labor history, still languish m prison. Sacco and Vanzetti, courageous fighters for the working class, still stand in the shadow of the gallows. Rangel and Cline and their comrades who went into Texas prisons in the best years of their youth have already spent more than twelve years there. Ford and Suhr, intrepid leaders of the Wheatland hop-pickers’ strike have already paid for their courage and devotion to the workers with a dozen years of imprisonment. The I.W.W. men who defended their union hall in Centralia, Washington, deserve the gratitude of the whole labor movement, but their rewards are long terms of imprisonment. Scores of workers in California have been thrown into San Quentin and Folsom prisons for the crime of being I.W.W.’s.

Crouch and Trumbull, soldiers in the United States army, expressed their sympathy with the cause of the colonial workers in Hawaii and declared their solidarity with the revolutionary workers’ movement. It cost them court martial and sentence to military prison.

In West Virginia, 137 union miners were made to stand trial only recently for picketing mines against scabs. In Maine, Ohio and other states, workers and groups of workers are expiating behind bars the crime of activity in the ranks of labor that won for them frame-ups and perversions of justice.

In addition to these workers already convicted, prosecutions are now pending against many others. The action of the Supreme Court in sustaining the conviction of Benj. Gitlow, confronts Foster, Ruthenberg and thirty others in the Michigan cases with the danger of prison terms. Fred Merrick and nine other communists are facing trial in Pennsylvania on the charge of “sedition” for circulating working-class literature.

The labor movement must be awakened from its slumber and must be roused to the menacing significance of the attempt of the capitalists to break the morale of the working-class by imprisoning its best fighters. The workers must not be allowed to forget those who lie in prison for them, but must be stirred into action in their defense.

Systematic and widespread publicity must be conducted in regard to the situation in general and each specific case must be made known to the masses of workers. Agitation must be commenced in all labor organizations in behalf of class- war prisoners and preparations made for great mass protests against their continued imprisonment. General and special campaigns must be organized and carried on with ever-increasing energy and momentum.

The International Labor Defense will take the initiative to organize a wide-spread campaign for the unconditional release of imprisoned fighters of the class struggle and will endeavor to unite all the forces of conscious and militant labor for this fight.

2. Against Injunctions and Anti-Labor Legislation.

The campaign of the exploiters to crush and terrorize the organizations of the workers includes, among its most effective weapons, special anti-labor legislation and the arbitrary use of court injunctions against workers in the midst of the struggle. Criminal syndicalism laws of an almost uniform type are now on the statute books of thirty-five states and serve as the most handy “legal” weapons at the disposal of the bosses. These laws are supplemented by lesser statutes, such as anti-picketing laws, and by decisions of the highest courts in the several states and the union, designed to close every door to the legality, of the labor movement. The use of autocratic injunctions in labor disputes turns over to corporation hirelings on the bench virtual control over the activities of workers’ organizations and shuts them off from all means of legal redress.

The infamous Daugherty injunction issued by Judge Wilkerson practically outlawed the great railroad shopmen’s strike of 1922 and paralyzed its activity in all parts of the country. The notorious Busick injunction in California condemned members of the I.W.W. to prison without the right of trial. Practically every industrial dispute in recent years has brought with it the issuance of injunctions calculated to break down the resistance of fighting workers.

Criminal syndicalist laws and injunctions are aimed not only against the revolutionary sections of the working class. The whole organized labor movement is menaced by this legislative and judicial tyranny. The persecutions of the more radical workers by these means are only experiments in preparation for their wholesale use against all sections of the labor movement which show any disposition to fight for the interests of the workers. There is already abundant evidence of the intentions of the capitalists in this regard.

It is a matter of the greatest urgency to make the organized workers generally understand that the Persecution of the I W. W. members in California and other Western states and the railroading of Communists m Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York are rehearsals for wholesale campaigns of the same character against wider sections of the labor movement.

The defense of the I.W.W. and the Communists m these cases is the concern of the whole organized labor movement. The fight against criminal syndicalism laws and the use of injunctions is the fight of the working class as a whole.

The International Labor Defense will undertake as one of its principle activities the organization of a campaign throughout the whole labor movement against criminal syndicalist and other anti-labor laws and injunctions.

3. Legal Aid.

Inadequate and incompetent legal defense has eased the way for the framing up and railroading of many workers. Able defense counsel and widespread attendant publicity are obligations which the labor movement owes to every worker who is put on trial for his activities in the class struggle. The employment of qualified attorneys is necessary not only from the standpoint of legal technique and procedure. The correct policy is to secure the services of competent lawyers and, by combining their work in the court room with organized publicity and protest, to transform court trials of workers into propaganda demonstrations in which the capitalist persecutors are put on trial before the working class.

An important item in the pages of workers persecution is long confinement of defendants awaiting trial. A substantial bail fund must be provided to ensure the liberty of persecuted workers pending trial.

These projects require large sums of money which must be raised by workers in defense of their persecuted brothers A great defense treasury to be expended in procuring the best possible court actions for workers on trial for their activity must be created. A large national bail fund, established thru loans from workers and individuals and organizations sympathetic to their cause, must be ready to secure the release of workers pending trial.

The International Labor Defense calls upon all class-conscious workers and all sympathizers of the labor movement to do their full share toward providing the funds necessary for this work.

4. Information and Publicity.

The labor movement is not generally informed of the facts of labor persecution and perversions of justice in labor cases. Conspiracies against labor are frequently carried out in secret. Many an obscure worker has been railroaded to the penitentiary without its being known publicly. Those Cases that cannot be kept secret very often do not receive the interest they require and deserve. Labor spy systems flourish, foreign-born workers are deported, class-war prisoners are maltreated and workers are flagrantly deprived of constitutional rights without the knowledge or protest of the labor movement as a whole.

These matters are of vital concern to the masses of the workers. Every unprotested persecution engenders more. Unacquaintance with the methods of frame-up, ignorance of the extent of perverted class- justice and lack of knowledge generally of the conditions of labor persecution involves the danger of unpreparedness. Silence concerning their excesses encourages the labor-baiters to more violent ones.

Widespread, systematic and organized publicity must be created to throw glaring search lights upon all of these crimes against the workers. Not a single instance of labor baiting should be allowed to escape the attention of the labor movement.

It is the aim of International Labor Defense to develop publicity toward this end in all its forms. Regular press service, public meetings, motion pictures, books, pamphlets, leaflets, stickers and posters shall be utilized for extending to every corner of the labor movement the exact news and data about all cases of working class persecution. In addition to these, the National Conference is of the opinion that an illustrated monthly magazine devoted to the cause of Labor Defense should be published as soon as a sufficient organizational base is established to assure its success.

5. Prison Relief

It is not to the credit of the labor movement that its fighters who are in jail for their activities in the class-struggle are frequently neglected and deprived of the ordinary comforts of tobacco, books and other necessities that help to mitigate in some degree the horrors of confinement Shut out from the world and from the movement for which they are sacrificing their liberty, these fighters are deserving of all the material comforts that can be supplied them. And, what is equally important, they must be kept in communication with the movement by means of frequent and regular letters from those outside. Such letters from all parts of the country from members of the workers’ movement, sealing the bonds of solidarity and expressing fraternal remembrance of the imprisoned fighters, keeps up the morale of these captives of capitalism and strengthens their will and courage to face their prison burdens. At the same time, the letters in return from the class-war prisoners, serve as constant reminders to those outside of their duty.

International Labor Defense will devote special attention to the organization of this work. It will undertake to institute all the necessary arrangements required to establish extensive communication between those outside and those confined and raise special funds for the maintenance of systematic provision of material comforts and necessaries of life to class-war prisoners.

6. Relief for Dependents of Imprisoned Fighters in The Class War.

The weakest spot in the armor of the revolutionary working-class fighter is concern for his dependents and the fear that they will be neglected while he is confined in prison and powerless to protect them. It must be recorded to the shame of the labor movement that poverty, hardship and neglect have too often been the fate of dependent families and the consciousness of it eats into the very hearts of those in prison.

This is so only because defense work is not properly organized and because the workers are allowed too soon to forget those who fought for them. The heart of the working class is warm and sound. The workers will respond readily to an organized appeal which reminds them of their duty to the dependent families of their imprisoned fighters.

The conference appeals to all workers to respond liberally to a special fund to be set up by the International Labor Defense for the purpose of relieving the hardships of the mothers, wives and children of the soldiers of the class war who sacrifice their lives or liberty for the cause of labor. The International Labor Defense feels it a first duty of the labor movement to provide regular material and financial aid to the dependents of class war prisoners.

7. The White Terror in Other Capitalist Countries.

In almost every capitalist country in the world white terror is raging against the workers. The imperialist masters of the world, and particularly in Europe, are attempting to exterminate the revolutionary movement of the exploited working class by wholesale murders, jailing and tortures.

In the Balkan countries, the labor movement has lost all semblance of legal rights. In Roumania, Bulgaria and Jugo-Slavia, labor unions and organizations of farmers are outlawed. The slightest protest from the workers and poor farmers calls forth the most bloody campaigns of murder and persecution. In Bulgaria alone, no less than four thousand workers and peasants have been murdered by the black reactionary Zankov government. In Poland the white terror rages with the greatest fury and claims thousands of victims. In Hungary, Italy and the Baltic states, the fascist tools of foreign imperialists have murdered workers and jailed them in great numbers. In Germany and the rest of Western Europe thousands of workers lie in prison for their resistance against intolerable economic exploitation and ruthless political tyranny.

This is of the most vital concern to American workers whose fate is indissolubly bound up with the fate of workers in other lands. The class struggle is an international struggle and demands the international solidarity of the workers of all countries.

This conference declares itself heart and soul for the cause of internationalism and reaches out fraternal hands to oppressed workers and exploited peoples in all lands who fight and suffer under the iron heel of capitalism.

The conference dedicates the International Labor Defense to whole-hearted support of the victims of the white terror in other lands. It sends fraternal greetings to the Labor Defense organizations thruout the world and pledges its co-operation in the work of aiding class war prisoners in all capitalist countries.

8. Co-operation and Unity of Defense Forces.

The defense of persecuted fighters for the cause of labor and the fraternal support of their dependents is a common platform upon which all sincere workers who be-activity is the concern of every class conscious worker and merits the full support of all sections of the workers’ movement and all those sympathetic to the cause of labor.

The International Labor Defense is dedicated to the principle of unity in the common fight and will endeavor to weld together into one body all the forces of the labor movement for the struggle against working class persecution and for the defense and support of persecuted fighters and their families.

Where special circumstances create the necessity for separate independent defense bodies, the International Labor Defense will strive to co-ordinate its activities with theirs in such a way as to ensure the maximum of defense endeavors on the basis of fraternal unity in the fight for common aims. The primary duty of the International Labor Defense will be to rally all possible support in defense of workers persecuted for their activities m the class struggle, without exception.

Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.

PDF of full issue:https://archive.org/download/LaborDefenseManifestoResolutionsConstitutionAdoptedByTheFirst/ILD.pdf