Anti-fascist action and defense in Boston during the 1930s.

‘Building the I.L.D. in Boston’ by Donald Burke from Labor Defender. Vol. 10 No. 4. April, 1934.

(District Sec’y I.L.D.)

The time to throw our energy into the fight against fascism is right now. The American working-class must learn that lesson from the Austrian and German working-class, must rouse themselves, smash every effort to take away their rights, expose the role of the Socialist leaders and Liberals, who pave the road for fascism.

In Eastern New England District we have had several experiences which show that our district, as well as every other district, must be conscious of this danger, bring it to the organized and unorganized workers, point out the real meaning of fascism, expose the murderous Hitler, Dollfuss, Mussolini, and other fascist agents of world-imperialism.

We must show the workers, patiently, concretely how fascism was helped, nourished, protected and born out of the treacherous policies of those who pose as the leaders of the working-class, the social-fascists. This becomes a special task for the I.L.D. districts, for we go before the workers as the American section of the International Red Aid, the workers revolutionary world wide defense organization, fighting everywhere against capitalist terror.

The I.L.D. has prestige. It has fought militantly and well against the jailing and torture of strikers, unemployed, foreign-born, and the Negro people. We have won many of these fights, and while the workers may know of some of these victories, there must be more popularization of our victories. The methods of struggle, self-defense, exposure of the police and courts, protests, meetings, demonstrations, stoppages and strikes–these methods of defense must be taught to the workers. This must not be the property of I.L.D. functionaries, limited in number and contact with the masses, but brought into the mass organizations and into the factories, among the unemployed, and the Negro masses.

In our district we have a large number of independent unions. The workers in these unions are ready to listen to us, they have tasted capitalist terror. Our job is to show them what has happened in Germany, how fascism has smashed the unions, outlawed strikes, slashed wages, brutally murdered thousands of militant workers and working-class leaders. At the same time we must expose the day-by-day process of the development of fascism thru injunctions, compulsory arbitration, the interference of the NRA Labor Boards, the statements of Johnson, and of Roosevelt, and the actual terror against workers under the NRA.

We of the I.L.D. must not fail at the same time to make clear to the workers in these unions, the role of the social-fascist elements in their own ranks, and especially their leaders, in blinding them to the growth of fascism. We must expose such fakers as Walsh and Boyle who sold out the Norwood strike, and have prevented militant protest of the Ford Hull Forum with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union, under the slogan of “free speech”, invited a Nazi agent to speak under their auspices. Five thousand Boston workers answered by demonstrating in front of the hall. Five were arrested, arrested, sentenced by Judge Carr to serve three months in jail. The I.L.D. answered by the Public Trial of Fascism and its Agents in Boston. We indicted the liberals, the police, the court and the fascists, showing step by step the role the liberals and the agents. of “Democracy” were playing. The result–case nolle prossed on appeal! The exposure, plus preparations for self- defense and carrying the struggle against fascism into the court, forced their release.

Other victories in self and mass defense, such as the release of the 12 workers arrested picketing against job discrimination, must be used to make it a mass organization, by building branches of individual members, and at the same time draw in as affiliates, large numbers of trade unions and other workers organizations. Join and build the I.L.D.

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. Not only were these among the most successful campaigns by Communists, they were among the most important of the period and the urgency and activity is duly reflected in its pages. 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://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1934/v10n04-apr-1934-orig-LD.pdf