PINKERTON: THE ANTI-UNION

In the course of the case against the blacking of container depots by dockers, it was revealed that private detectives had been obtaining evidence, posing as lorry drivers and talking to pickets' families.

This is not something new in this country. But only in the United States has it taken place on a large scale.

The US labour movement has had a more explosive and violent history than that of Britain. When the Civil War cleared the way for the expansion of US capital, the ruthless drive of the newly-formed monopolies for profit took the most brutal forms.

On the other side, the immigrants who streamed across the Atlantic to be thrown into the seething cauldron of US industry produced equally vigorous actions in resisting the attacks of capital.

ENEMY The use of private agencies as hired armies and intelligence units against trade unionism grew out of this situation. And it is associated with one name above all: Pinkerton's.

Allan Pinkerton was the son of Glasgow policeman. Apprenticed as a cooper, he was in his young days a radical supporter of the Chartist movement. In Scored to seek his fortune in America. found not making barrels, but as a detective. In place of his former radicalism, he became an enemy of every form of organization of the working class.

In 1850, ( Pinkerton became Chicago's first city detective. At the same time, he set up a rivate agency, later famous as Pinkerton's | National Detective Agency. After the Civil War, he firm prospered. But by • the arly 1870s it hit hard times (Devotees of the western will recall its worst setback: failure to smash the Jesse James gang.)

Then, in 1873, Pinkerton arranged a meeting with Franklin B. Gowen, president of the hiladelphia and Reading Rail road Company and of itsyanba anthracite coalfield.

The company was anxious to break up the beginnings of trade unionism the miners. In particular, Gowen was worried about of Irish miners, operating within the secret society, the nowa as the Mole Manures this group was thought to b responsible for actions against company property, agents and scabs.

Are AOH was a descenda the societies like the Whit boys, which had fought British land. In appaling condi rule and landlordism in tions in which the immigrants were forced to work in the tendencies to terrorist methods were inevitable.

Pinkerton was enthusiastic te thi Maguires. ( And Send trailind agents in to the cena trained acens lines to infiltrate the organiz ons of Irish miners. The mos important of these was James McParlan.

McParlan posing ost the SOH former member and calling himself McKenna wormed his way into the inne ircles of the Order in the coalfield. He was already well intrenched when, in 1875, Top: Hibernian House, headquarters of the Mollie Maguires. Allan Pinkerton, detective. Right: Franklin B. Gowen. Gowen forced the trade union, the Workingmen's Benevolent Association, into a strike by threatening a drastic wage-cut.

The strike dragged on for six months before the union was smashed and the men driven back to work. Pinkerton forces were to the fore in armed action against marching miners_ trying to stop blacklegs. Pinkerton spies were Above:

McParlan knew of all its actions, took part in the planning of some, and may well have instigated many. At the same time, Pinkerton men pushed forward the setting up of vigilante committees to organize public-spirited citizens to murder militant miners and their families.

Then Gowen swooped.

In all, 20 men were hanged or crimes attributed to 'Mollie Maguire', ten of them on one ay in 1877. Some protested heir innocence to the last.

The Philadelphia and Read2g was victorious, and paid 'inkerton's for their work to he tune of several hundred housand dollars.

From then on, Pinkertoa's irospered," their name hailed ly every • union-hating bossnd execrated by every worker. In n 1877, the national rail trike brought near-insurrecinnarv conditions throughout he USA. In his book, Strikrs, Communists, Tramps and ›etectives', Pinkerton boasts hat the Philadelphia and Reading was the best-prepared if railways, owing to the dvance information obtained ›y Gowen from Pinkerton pies among the locomen.

Private armies of thugs got warning, and a battle ensued, in which seven strikers and three Pinkerton's were killed, Finally, the surviving Pinkerton's were captured and handed over to the local sherifi.

In the end, however, the strike was defeated. Carnegie the 'philanthropist' telegraphed from his Scottish castle: 'Life is worth living again. Congratulations all round.' In 1907, McParlan was once more in the news. The Governor of Idaho, Frank Steunenberg, was hated for his use of state troops against striking miners led by the Western Federation of Miners. This union had as its secretary Bill Haywood, a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World-the 'Wobblies'.

Then Steunenberg was killed by dynamite, and one Harry Orchard was arrested. McParlan was called in to interview the prisoner. Two days later, he had confessed to nearly every crime committed in the area for years—all carried out, he swore, at the instigation of the WFM.

Haywood, together with Charles Moyer and George Pettibone, was arrested. (The arrest was carried out illegally, the three miners' leaders being kidnapped in Kansas and shipped into Idaho.)

Clarence Darrow was called in to defend them against the Pinkerton frame-up. He smashed through Orchard's 'confession' in one of his most famous speeches. The union men were freed.