НАУЧНАЯ БИБЛИОТЕКА - РЕФЕРАТЫ - Sydney burning

Sydney burning

SYDNEY'S BURNING

(essay)

There is no doubt that some members of the IWW were incendiarists or would-be incendiarists. Tom Barker says as much in his recently published reminiscences: warehouses and big places did go up in fire. It was very easy for anyone who got in with the stuff. After all, there was nothing new about fire-dope. It was just a mixture of phosphorus and calcium [sic] bi-supplied. It was a well-known method of making fire, wrapping these components together in a wet rag and then, by and by, when it dried out, the phosphorus set up spontaneous combustion. There was no secret about it. It had a long history behind it in Ireland, where they called it "Fenian fire". It had been used in Australia by shearers over many generations to get rid of faulty accommodation. If the owner wouldn't put in decent buildings and sleeping quarters, when the boys left to go onto the next station they took some of this stuff, rolled it up in wet newspaper or cloth, and about two days after they had gone something happened. When they came back next year there were brand new buildings waiting for them. That was a method of cajoling the cocky into doing what the law required him to do.

We had many little groups amongst us who were doing various things, and those things were deadly secret and they kept them to themselves, so that you might be God Almighty in the organization, but you wouldn't know half a dozen things that were going on. There was a chemist, Scully, who ratted on the IWW, who made the mixture. Others, there was no doubt at all about it, had some knowledge of it.

This was known to the labour movement at the time. The People, the paper of the Socialist Labor Party, wrote on December 14, 1916, immediately after the conviction of the Twelve: "Once more the tactics of the Chicago faction of the IWW has led the members of the working class to jail." Yet the labour movement came to the defence of the Twelve -- at first only a minority, but gradually the defence campaign came to embrace the whole movement.

It was partly the belief that, as the People said, "Even admitting that these men were guilty of the act of which they were convicted, the penalties imposed were out of all proportion to the deeds alleged to be committed ... It was partly that the labour movement believed that the Twelve had been prejudged by "certain sections of the Public, Press, Pulpit, and especially Politicians", and crucified by war hysteria and