The Molly Maguires CINEMA

whitewashes the period when the methods of labour spies and gangsters, frame-up and légal lynchings, were first systematically used by American capitalism — against the miners of the Pennsylvania anthracite regions in the 1870s.

While this Technicolor version is plastered across the screens of Europe, here is a briet account ot What really happened:

The business crisis of September 1873, starting in New York, produced a terrible depression in the whole American economy, which lasted for six years.

At least a fifth of the working class was unemployed during this time. Men wandered the country in search of work, living off scraps from rubbish heaps.

For those still in employment wage cuts were enforced with the threat of the sack, while every report of work available brought crowds of hundreds.

Yet the working class was forced back only when it could fight no longer.

A massive demonstration in Chicago against unemployment was attacked by the police, and the movement only broken by jailing the leaders and sending agents into the organization to sow confusion.

Everywhere employers tried to take advantage of the depression to break organizations, cut wages and hunt out militant leaders.

Nowhere did they set out on this task with greater brutality than in the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania.

Most of the miners were Irish Catholic immigrants. The owners had been forced, after an attempt at a wage-cut in 1869, to recognize the Workingmen's Benevolent Association.

This was the largest union, led then by John Siney, an Irish immigrant who had worked in the English mines and been part of the Chartist movement.

The early leaders were very moderate men. Believing in the harmonious co-operation of labour and capital, they wanted to guarantée that 'our stock is always worth its par value. Accordingly they signed an agreement for a sliding scale of pay, based on the price of coal.

The informal backbone of the trade unions was the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a sociéty for mutual aid and protection which organized many of the Irish immigrants.

It was the descendant of the society of the same name in Ireland, which in turn grew out of the revolutionary struggles against the British oppressors.

The AOH united many of the militants who pushed the union leaders into action and organized the miners in the pits, in which British capitalism held important shares.

The miner-owners prepared At the pit head-Jack Kehoe (SEAN CONNERY) centre.

Richard Harris James McParlan the witness who sent most of the victims to their deaths, later became notorious when he tried to frame Big Bill Haywood, then leader of the Western Federation of Miners, for blowing up the ex-Governor of Idaho.

ing, the owners broke all open resistance.

Wages were cut, all leadérs sacked, weight - checking was abolished.

Armed thugs of the employers redoubled their assaults on miners and their families and the owners exulted in their victory.

The miners, their union destroyed, turned to the Ancient Order of Hibernians. It became a semi-secret society, organizing defence and mutual help, and retaliation against the mine bosses and supervisors.

The employers, led by Gowen, sent in spies and agents provocateurs to procure the framing of militants. They witch-hunted the miners as 'murderers' and 'térrorists' in the press all over the United States.

SEAN CONNERY, SAMA RICHARD HARRIS. Directed by Martin Ritt.

Employers, Church, police and judges conspired with James McParlan, an employee of the notorious Pinkerton's strikebreaking organization, to send 19 men to the gallows in the years 18/7 to 1812, and murder many others 'unoficially'.

There was never any organization calling itself the Molly Maguires'-the name was given by the press to the Ancient Order of Hibernians to add fuel to the witch-hunt.

James McParlan, the witness who sent most of the victims to their deaths, later became notorious when he tried to frame Big Bill Haywood, then leader of the for blowing dep the ex-Governs, of Idaho.

The miners picked out for execution were tried by juries selécted from the small farmers who depended on the mines for their living.

"CONSPIRACY'

The judges of Pennsylvania had already sentenced men to jail for 'conspiracy' in forming a union. The courts were guarded by the 'Coal and Iron Police'.

The accused were convicted on the word of men who 'admitted' their part in the crimes, but turned State's evidence, usually with support from McParlan.

The main prosecuting lawyers were Gowen himself and General Albright, legal adviser to the Wilkes-Barre Coal Company.

The prosécution evidence was riddled with contradictions.

Yet, although support and protest came from other sections of the American working class, in the conditions after the deleat of the Long Strike' the coal owners not only carried out their murders, but made 'Molly Maguirism' a synonym for the violence and thuggery of which organized labour was to be accused in a whole series of struggles.

The 'Molly Maguires' were some of the first of many martyrs of the American labour moveTheir real 'crime' was explained in the coal-owners' on the day after the execution:

'What did they do? Whenever prices of labour did not suit them they organized and proclaimed a strike.' Only a month after the first hangings, America was shaken by a nationwide wave of rail strikes, starting with the resistance to a wage cut in Pennsylvania.

When 20 workers were killed by militiamen tens of thousands of workers took over the centre of Pittsburgh.

The New York press called for the 'mob' to be shot down, but the employers were forced to retreat, withdrawing the wage cuts.

In the aftermath the One cheer for democracy THE TORIES will not be short of canvassers this election.

The Police Federation spent a jolly time by the sea last week rooting for 'law and order' and generally conducting themselves in a manner befitting the Scottish Tories.

While Callaghan's former buddies were adding the possibility of shooting to the Scottish Tories' extensive list-including caning, birching and electrocution-of things they would like to do to 'trouble makers', another 750 troops--this time commandos--were packing their bags for the Emerald Isle to ensure that justice will be done in the forthcoming Ulster polling.

According to the Ministry of Defence, 7,000 troops are now in Northern Ireland because of 'the possibility of increased political activity'—obviously something to be avoided like the plague during an election (and preferably at all other times as well)!

Well to the fore in the electoral preparations--while keeping out of sight-are the civilian commandos of the various Special Branches, who no doubt find the whole business rather tiresome.

However, their contribution to the campaign has already been considerable.

It seems that while some chaps were running for Parliament in the North, others were gun-running for Parliament in the South and this was just not on. Kissing babies, shaking hands and generally renewing acquaintances with your constituents is one thing but, well. ...

So three cabinet ministers in the Dail were replaced.

What appears to be worrying Westminster, however, is the fact that while the Foreign Office has always encouraged the Irish government to strengthen its 'legitimate', above-ground sources of information and contact in Ulster, they now know some fu netionaries of rish inter. ligence have not been playing the game and have been indulging in underground activity in Ulster. Very sneaky!

Even worse, this could lead to some extremely embarrassing situations.

After all, with the American capitalists established the strong state and national militia which they have used ever since to break strikes and terrorize workers.

IT'S an unpleasant duty to review "The Molly Maguires'.

The struggles I've described are distorted into a film which is half gangster story and half "psychological' melodrama.

'MOLLIES'

The 'Mollies' organize muggings and murders simply in protest against conditions in the mines.

They are criminals on behalf of their class, separated from it. Long, colour-stutted scenes convey to us that 'Life in the mines behind THE NEWS and Ulster intelligence forces all working to make the election a success along with the 7,000 visible troops, some terrible mistakes could be made. Perhaps we shall see a headline appear in the press in the near future of the following description:

'Anarchist shot dead in Ulster rioting.' (While the real story, in triplicate will make its confidential way to London in another form: 'AnyAnswers' - Prague REGULAR listeners to BBC radio will no doubt have heard the programmes 'Any Questions' and 'Any Answers' in which mainly old Tory women from the industrial complexes of Little Chipping-in-the-Mould and Greater Bumbleton open their hearts for the edification of the general public.

The reactionary. views that issue forth from these quarters are usually very much in line with current Tory thinking on every subject and in particular what to do about those nasty people who won't get their noses down to the grindstone and show some enthusiasm about working their guts out in a factory for whatever wages the employer is kind enough to offer.

Apart from striking for more money and against the attempts of the employers to impose the latest techniques of speed up, workers will insist on exercising their bodily functions during daylight hours and even indulge in smoking (perish the thought).

Here is a letter to Prague radio sent in by a listener of no mean standing, though definitely not an old Tory woman.

It is from President Frantisek Bartonik of the industrial building enterprise in Gottwaldov and has obviously • been chosen at random from 'Bureaucrats' Postbag'.

'Lately... I wondered whether anybody had yet ascertained or calculated how many hours of statutory working time are wasted through smoking, he muses.

'Every day it hits me in the eye how groups of smokers stand around talking in the corridors, lavatories or in rooms specially set aside.

"These employees shorten their working time by offering lights is that the works"" the trouble to one another . . tolerates this rule, because the was really hell!', but the chief Molly (Sean Connery) manages to preserve a healthy suntan beneath his powdering of greasepaint coal.

As backdrop to him and his fellow Mollies hundreds of similarly decorated extras trudge to work, fill the bar, sleep between shifts.

The producers see the working class as nothing more than a lot of people who work. owners focus of the film is the closely based on the real-life McParlan.

We are invited to join him in chewing over the moral 'dilémma' of his own success versus his sympathy for the miners.

Loyalty and justice are Another 750 troops have been added to the 7,000strong army already in NIreland 'because of the possibility of increased political activity'-as the General Election nears!

'Agent 001 of British Intelligence was unfortunately shot and killed in Ulster yesterday by British troops while attempting to intervene in a minor disturbance involving two other men. These have since been identified as members of Irish Intelligence and Ulster Intelligence respectively. ..?)

Capitalist democracy is a wonderful institution, if hazardous!

style management itself wastes the biggest amount of time smoking' Bartonik goes on to estimate that, if 10-15 cigarettes are smoked each day, the loss of smoker's working time can be put at 100 to 120 minutes. ...

'In other words, in many places smokers waste at least one hour a day which they sacrifice to personal enjoyment?

What to do about this disgusting state of affairs?

Bartonik adds that in a number of 'highly-developed countries' (read capitalist Europe and . the United States) is not permitted working hours and suggests that such measures should be implemented in Czechoslovakia also.

Smoking should be restricted to breaks in between working hours and works management should not acquiesce in émployees' hanging around in corridors and making apparent their lack of interest in problems of work in so provocative a fashion (!).

I do believe, however, that the whole issue is somewhat wider,' he goes on. 'Experience has shown that utilization of working hours depends to a large extent upon the standards set by executives. It is not without reason that in the highly-developed countries, the principle holds good that morale depends on what the man in charge is like, and ... where working discipline declines, it is not competent employees who are dismissed but the executives.' Bartonik, of course, does not speak solely for himself.

The drive for higher different concepts, you knowl there con of these a rat ot intense and unambiguous virtue, in the person of a miner's daughter (Samantha Eggar).

ESCAPE She wants nothing more than to escape from the coalfields to the Philadelphic gentility of the middle class, and conducts a (highly restrained) affair with McParlan-Harris in the hope of doing so.

But she can't stomach it when he convicts Connery of murder.

These are the horizons of the film. They are filled in with realistic violence, a sound-track of saccharine music, lashings of tivity in the factories throughout E Europe and the Soviet Union is now stepping up in the face of growing economic problems. While the purges continue against all those who express in any way opposition to the bureaucracies, there is no way to solve these problems within the confines of the workers' statés themselves.

One thing is from Bar- clear tonik's plaintive plea. Fill in the form below and send to NATIONAL SECRETARY, SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE, 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, LONDON SW4.

Name Address Guest reviewer Irish whimsy and a reptilian Welsh policeman (Frank Finlay).

A subject which goes right back to the heart of American history, and capitalism turns it into a windy roustabout, blotting out the class heroism of the Pennsylvanian miners and absolving those who murdered them for greater profits. ... Why?

Because they are terrified of the class history of America.

They know that when that history is understood it will put an end to their profits, their murders, their wars and their lies.

When the last tame scriptwriter is gagged with the entrails of the last cinema mogul, then will Americans be able to make the films of their own history.

The counter-revolutionary elements who endanger the continued existence of the nationalized property relations in E Europe are not the victims of the purges, but those who now carry them out and continue to maintain their grip over the economic life of these countries, while wistfully looking towards the metropolitan capitalist nations for the last word in labour discipline' would like information bout the SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

PAGE FOUR May 26,