Working class hero

Published November 25, 2015
mahir.dawn@gmail.com
mahir.dawn@gmail.com

“I DREAMED I saw Joe Hill last night/ Alive as you or me,” goes the old song. “Says I, ‘But Joe, you’re 10 years dead.’/ ‘I never died,’ says he.” Many of those familiar with these words are likely to have only a vague inkling of who Joe Hill was or what he represented.

Sure, the verses do offer a hint of the man behind the legend, but without sufficient substance to build up a coherent image. The song figured prominently in Paul Robeson’s repertoire, but the largest live audience to have heard it was at Woodstock in 1969, when Joan Baez introduced it as an “organising song”.

That’s not by any means an inaccurate description of the song or the spirit behind it, but it might have left some people wondering whether the deathless character invoked was mythical or real.

Not only was Joe Hill real enough, he briefly became something of a cause célèbre in his adopted homeland in the months before he faced a firing squad in Salt Lake City 100 years ago. The thousands of pleas for clemency, postponement or retrial that the state of Utah disregarded in carrying out the death sentence included more than one from US president Woodrow Wilson.


Joe Hill brought a talent that was widely appreciated.


Even to those who knew him best, Joe Hill was something of a man of mystery. His aversion to talking about himself persisted until the end, and many of the known facts about his life were gathered posthumously.

He was born Joel Hagglund in Sweden in 1879 and emigrated to the US in 1902, finding sporadic employment as an itinerant worker from New York to California. It wasn’t difficult, under the circumstances, to develop a heightened sense of indignation about the exploitation of the working poor, who back then had hardly any legal rights and were completely at the mercy of their employers. They, in turn, invariably operated in cahoots with the repressive machinery of the state.

Perhaps not all that much has changed in the past century. But the class struggle was considerably more visceral back then, with the law-and-order machinery resorting far more readily to violence in defence of the established order than would be considered acceptable today. And immigrant workers inevitably bore the brunt of the class war, even though American capitalism desperately required their input.

Various organisations sprang up to defend the proletariat, and the one that Hagglund — who had by then changed his name to Joseph Hillstrom, which was abbreviated to Joe Hill by his workmates — opted for in the early years of the 20th century was among the most militant. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) aimed for the overthrow of capitalism. In the meantime, it was determined to do all it could to curb the excesses of exploitation through picketing and strikes — which naturally did not go down well with the bosses.

Joe Hill, meanwhile, brought a talent to its ranks that was widely appreciated: he had a knack for parodying the popular songs of the day with injections of humour and topical commentary, knowing full well that a singable verse or three could serve as a far more potent means of fanning the flames of discontent than a turgid pamphlet.

He proved to be a roaring success in this capacity, and some of his best songs — notably The Preacher and the Slave, in which he coined the phrase ‘pie in the sky’ — are still sung in labour circles.

While working in the copper mines in Utah, Joe Hill was arrested in January 1914 after a grocer and his son were shot in Salt Lake City during an attempted robbery. Joe Hill had received a bullet wound the same day: he claimed it was an injury from a rival for the affections of a young woman, but doggedly refused to name either her or the perpetrator. The evidence against him was unconvincingly circumstantial, and it is widely accepted that his fate was effectively sealed once the state authorities — under the thumb of the copper bosses and the Mormon church — discovered he was a stalwart of the IWW.

Shortly before he was shot dead on Nov 19, 1915, Joe Hill wrote to IWW leader ‘Big Bill’ Haywood saying he did not wish to be “caught dead” in Utah and requesting to be cremated across the state line. Some 30,000 people turned up for his funeral in Chicago. And, in keeping with his wishes, Joe Hill’s ashes were scattered in every state of the union (excepting Utah) and in scores of countries around the world, including India.

His spirit is being commemorated this month in concerts in various corners of the globe, but there’s certainly scope for honouring this working class hero’s memory in more effective ways as inequalities grow and rights conceded under capitalism after long, painful and often bloody struggles are steadily eroded. As Joe Hill famously cautioned in one of his last messages to fellow workers: “Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organise.”

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2015

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