[Marxism] Re: anti-war at GE in 60s

[DLVinvest@xxxxxx]

In a message dated 3/27/04 7:11:52 PM Mountain Daylight Time, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx
writes:
> would have not been a bad idea for the antiwar movement getting involved
> with the GE strike. However, it is not clear if the official trade union
> leadership would have been interested in that. To my memory, the only
> electrical union that reached out to the antiwar movement was the UE

Thanks to successful red-baiting, even UE's old CP-sympathetic tradition was
largely confined to the national level by the 60s, with little support for the
left among rank-and-file in locals beyond wage-and-benefit "narrow
trade-union economism". And the UE leadership dismissed incipient new-left 
organizing
inside GE in late 60s-early 70s as an attempted usurpation by "ultra-leftists"
on vacation. At the huge GE plant in Erie, Pa., we found little support for
modest anti-war positions, more openly anti-imperialist arguments or socialism
even when advanced by those of us in SDS who had working-class family ties in
the local. Instead, when we tried to get jobs there, some of us were (correctly)
immediately fingered as reds and blacklisted. I would be interested in
hearing what others' experienced at other plants.

Douglas L. Vaughan, Jr.
Investigations
for Print, Film & Electronic Media
3140 W. 32nd Ave.
Denver CO 80211
303-455-9429
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