‘Wobbly’ legacy
in new anthology

REBEL VOICES*An IWW An-
thology. Edited, with intré@uctions,
by Joyce L. Kornbluh. Ann Harbor,
Mich, University of Michigan
Press. Available at People’s Co-op
Bookstore, 341 W. Pender. Price
about $15.

t is a custom in bourgeois

society, Lenin once ob-
Served, to attempt the canoniza-
tion of dead revolutionaries who,
in their lifetime, were vilified,
Persecuted, slandered,

As with individuals, so with
Organizations; the Industrial
Workers of the World has been
the object of such flattery, A
good deal of sentimentalization in
Organs of the Establishment will
be occasioned by Joyce L, Korn-
bluh’s impressive and handsome-

ly produced anthology of IWW
work,

Once more the IWW will be
extolled, above all, for its true
blue, native, indigenous, 100%
Americanism (for the purposes
of invidious comparison with “un-
American” radicalism), although
in its prime, the fathers of the
Sons who now praise the IWW
Stereotyped its members as
Speaking “in the heavy rolling
voices and accent of the foreign-

ers” (San Diego Union, March 11,
1912),

And during World War I the
Charge that the Wobblies were
German agents, paid with German
gold, was employed to justify
atrocities—legal and extra-legal
—committed against them,

Most certainly the once vital
IWW is not responsible for the
effluvia that might greet Mrs.
Kornbluh’s book, but she solicits
it with such passages as “Fight-
mg capitalism and Soviet com-
munism , , , the Wobblies awak-
ened the idealism and stirred the

imagination of millions of work-
ers.”

The passage is historically
Wrong on two counts, First, some
of the most vibrant personalities
in the anthology did not fight
communism, but embraced it.
Second, when what was left of
the IWW joined the fight against
communism the organization was
on the wane; its millions-stirring
days were gone, To present the
IWW’s latter day anti-commun-
ism as a ‘source of its vitality is
to muddle the record,

Such fault as may be found with
this and other critical judgments
(or lack of them) is mitigated be-
Cause what Mrs, Kornbluh has
to say about the Wobblies is much
less important that what they
have to say for themselves,

And she has painstakingly com-
Piled a representative collection
of their utterances, which is
virtue enough for one volume.
Someone else will have to do the
definitive critique,

a

Shaw play at Metro

George BernardShaw’s play,
Arms and the Man, will be
Presented by the Emerald
Players at the MetroTheatre,
ae Marine Drive, February

-13,

Directed by Sam Payne, this
comedy by Shaw is a satire on
war and the professional fight-
ing man, It is one of the most
Prominent plays by Shaw pro-

duced on the repertory stage.

Here are songs of Joe Hill,
poems of Ralph Chaplin and Ar-
turo  Giovannitti, oratory of
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Wil-
lima (“Big Bill”) Haywood (who
is also represented with several
reportorial articles); the writ-
ings and drawings of dozens of
others, some better known but
most representative of the rank

_and file that was the IWW,

Indeed, in category only the
epigram is missing, which is a
pity because the IWW was good
with it—e.g., “Say, Mr. Meek,
how much of the earth have you
inherited so far?” or Haywood’s
“A Christian Socialist is one
who is drunk on religious fanati-
cism and is trying to sober up
on economic truth,”

* * *

Here is some ofthe raw record
of Lawrence and Paterson, ofthe
Everett massacre, of life and
struggle in lumber camps and
agricultural fields, of the Wob-
blies in the mines and on the
streets for freedom of speech,
of battles in the courts, and of
the fight that went on behind
prison bars,

Here is rich source material
of 20th century American labor
history.

It isn't all pageant, though, Any
authentic IWW anthology would
tend, of necessity, to be as mixed
as a jungle stew. Syndicalist
chestnuts and saucy sectarianism
are mixed in with the heroism,
the audacity, the integrity, the
idealism and the magnificent
elan,

The legend of Joe Hill, such
songs as “Solidarity Forever”
and “Hold the Fort,” the message
of industrial unionism, the rebel

_ militancy, techniques in strikes

and free speech fights, with fierce
class identity that went with the
adaptation of the Communist
Manifesto in the opening sentence
of the IWW Preamble, “The work-
ing class and the employing class
have nothing in common,” the
vision of a socialist society, the
irreverent humor andthe authen-
tic folk idiom—all this and more
is the imperishable IWW lagacy.

This will live; the theoretical
vagaries will wither,
—Al Richmond,

People’s Worid

‘GUNS OF BATASI’
Veiled attack on Africa’s

A common fallacy of so-called
“unbiased” thinking is the
middleman approach, This puts
out the phoney idea that there
are two extremes to every ques-
tion, and that “truth,” like the
jam in the sandwich, is spread
neatly between,

In Guns at Batasi the jam is
used to devious ends, Behind its
middling “some of my _ best
friends are Africans” liberal
pretence is an inflammatory poli-
tical attack on Africans and their
national aspirations,

Fred Zinneman’s Behold a Pale
Horse is of quite a different color,
Leaning over backwards to be
“fair,” it inadvertently falls into
the middleman trap,

But it is rescued by its own
innate sincerity in the end,

The basic situation is signifi-
cant and important—a personal
sequel to the Spanish Civil War,
20 years after its tragic end, ~

The conflict is between two old
enemies—a ruthlessly efficient
Spanish chief of police (Anthony
Quinn) and an ex-guerilla leader
(Gregory ‘Peck) in despondent
exile in France,

The police officer, living for
the day when he can wreak ven-
geance on Manuel, the ex-gueril-
la, seizes his chance when Manu-
el’s mother lies dying,

He sets a trap round the hos-
pital, knowing that the son will
attempt a secret and illegal visit,

Manuel, doubting his own cour-
age as he gets older, must decide
which of the conflicting messages
about his mother is true before
risking the danger,

Throughout this first part Zin-
neman’s deep concern for people
shines like a beacon, You can
feel it in the presentation of

“character, in the modest camera

movements andin the crisp, clear
photography, It grips you with
anxiety,

But then along comes the
middleman — a Spanish priest,
played by handsome Omar Sharif
of the huge and soulful eyes,
spreading “ifs” and “buts” like
a blanket of neutralism all over
the film.

What does he represent? Not,
for sure, the Spanish Church,
notorious supporter ofthe fascist
regime, Not, I would think, the
growing body of dissenting
priests, for this one is an inno-
cent, working in cloistered isola-
tion.

eo PK

Glamorized as no other char-
acter in the film is, he seems
not a man, but an idea—the bogus
idea of the “jam” of truth in the
middle,

In a long night of discussion
between Manuel and the priest,
many of the film’s most incisive
lines of thought get .overshad-
owed, and its sense of urgencyis
destroyed, (This, too, is where
the camera gets a bit over-
tricky.)

national freedom struggle

Film now playing in Vancouver shows life-and death struggle of African
peoples through the eyes of the “white-skinned chappies” in a sergeants’
mess. Richard Attenborough, above, plays the part of Sgt.-Major Lauders-

dale. :

Even Manuel’s final suicidal
gesture is robbed of its full im-
pact. In any case, his dilemma—
how to go on fighting for a cause
that is lost—is not a true one in
this context, unless you believe
that the cause ofSpanish freedom
is lost,

Zinneman clearly doesn’t, or
he wouldn’t have chosen this
story, 4

Whatever the shortcomings of
the development, the policeman’s
final empty victory, together with
the last long-shot of the Spanish
crowd, makes a splendid ending
to a courageous and difficult film,

* * *

There are lots of middlemen in
“Guns at Batasi.” They stand
vaguely between the old-style
regimental sergeant - major

(Richard Attenborough), battling

— away for Queen and country in a

new African State, and a new-
type African officer (Errol John),

Famous Artists Ltd.

QUEEN ELIZABETH THEATRE
Feb. 11th at-8:30

ANOTHER of RUSSIAS
FOREMOST PIANISTS

First Time in
North America

YAKOV
ZAK

THE CRITICS WRITE—

GERMANY — ‘One of those out-
standing virtuovos on a world-scale
in which the Soviet Union is so
enviably rich!”

HUNGARY—‘‘Undoubtedly one of
the best pianists of the world and
among Soviet pianists on the scale
of Richter!”

S WITZERLAND—‘‘Yakov Zak, the
Russian pianist, undoubterly be-
longs to the small circle of artists
of the highest order. He possesses
exceptional possibilities, an impres-
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of a poet!”

$4.00, 3.25, 2.50, 1.75

Tickets in the Hudson’s Bay
Co. Main Floor
MUtual 1-3351

Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

a leader of a revolt for true Afri-
can freedom instead of the pup-
pet kind.

There’s a middle-woman, too,
a visiting M,P, (Flora Robson)
who starts off Left Wing and

_ sympathetic to the revolution,

and ends up dead centre, plaguing
both houses,

The contrived scriptis soclut-
tered up with self-cancelling
safety-lines you can make it mean
anything you like.

It is not the words that matter,
however, but their underlying
meaning,

What it really puts over is that
there are “good” and “bad” Afri-
cans,

The “good” ones are those who
do what the British tell them,
They are civilized and brave,

The “bad” ones are those who
won’t accept anything less than
real freedom—and they are ruth-
less, vengeful and savage,

Somewhere in between, it wants
you to believe, are the poor
open-mouthed innocents, whose
nationalism turns to putty at the
mere Sight of a smartly-dressed
British R,S,M,

The film is trickiest in the way
it presents the R,S,M, We all
know that Warrant Officers were
begotten without fathers, This one
is the most fatherless of them all,

But this meddlesome, ignorant,
cruel intruder is viewed, with the
help of Attenborough’s brilliant
virtuoso performance, withsym-
pathy and humor,

Yet the rebel officer, acting on
behalf of his own people in his
own country, is never shown
without a menacing scowl.

We're asked to look at the
R,S.M, as a sadanachronism who
has done his duty bravely if a
pit misguidedly,

In the year 1964 it is insuf-
ferable that the life-and-death
struggles of the African peoples
should be shown to British audi-
ences through the eyes ofthe jolly
joking, white-skinned chappies in
a sergeants’ mess,

And what a mess!

—Nina Hibbin,
British Worker

ee = January 29, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9

eh