Bisbee 17 by Robert Houston, Writers and Readers, 1979, Hbk 15.95 Why do they mount this gatling A thousand miles from ocean, Where hostile fleet could never run - ain't that a funny notion?
If you don't know the reason why just strike for better wages, And then my friends You'll sing this song for ages.
THIS verse from murdered Joe Hill introduces and sets the scene tor a remarkable story about events in the border town of Bisbee, during the jingoist period that swept America in 1917. It covers only a few days in June and July, as America entered the war, but I imagine it was one of the most eventful periods in the history of working class America.
The Industrial Workers of (Wobblies) organised Bisbee and • miners In closed the mine with a strike. 2,000 their leaders arrested. Then most of them were kidnapped, crowded into wagons and taken across the state line. Bawdy The author's grandfather was a Wobbly and the book shows us the rough, bawdy company My family, , there would be no town without says 'Mr Big' Douglass) and the class struggle that climaxed there.
Houston tells the introducing each character separately •gun if you don't dieArizona the the then WELC cattle with the love-making scenes.
town WELCOM Walter working class point of view.
The working class giants, SLUL Y by 1Iww, are all inere JOE HILL was the most prolific of the Wobbly songsters and their most famous martyr. He joined the IWW in 1911 and spent the next three years as a migrant worker and IWW organiser.
In 1914 he was framed on a murder charge, sentenced to death and despite a worldwide campaign was shot by firing squad in 1915. On the eve of his execution he wrote to Big Bill Haywood, general secretary of the IWW saying: 'Don't waste time mourning. Organise.' and attempting to show us events! through the thoughts that they might have held. He takes a bit of licence as mentioned.
The book is a novel — a political but it is based on real to events that have been well-researched but still told with feeling. And from a leaders of the period and organised in the For example examines class. Elizabeth Gurney Flynn, and Big Bill Haywood come to life again, Others, like John Reed and Jack London are The class enemy show themselves ruthless bunch, organised as the state machine that they control.
They are organised inside as well outside the working class movement. ducatnerous spy posei as a working class leader the secret of this person's identity remains a mystery until the end of the book.
An excellent passage in the book Quatermass Phk 95p IF YOU are eagerly awaiting the defeat of the ITV bosses so you can tune into the promised new sci-fi serial Quatermass Conclusion', it Judging by the book of samb Nigel Kneale, Bernard Quatermass thrilking TV audiences on the BBC in the fifties with encounters with assorted aliens, is a decidedly fascist outlook. on life in 1990s Britain The younger Quatermass, screened in the days of CND, fought the Military for a civilian rocket programme geared to scientific and human needs. OK, so we were all naive then.
are "The then forget the conclusion technology, reaches, understana are some private 'Remember the oil?' Relativity.
with the world than better and UNSUCCeSS theory.
bird but weaDons' who Scientific research and its consequences important socialists to understand at least in outline.
Not even David Yaffe, I suspect, would insist that everyone must fully understand why E=Mc? before they can'overthrow capitalism but we should be aware of such things. The mandarins of capitalism as well as Pol Pot would like to make obedient yahoos of us all.
It is important that we continually pry into the arcane mysteries that lurk in the physics labs. Even the most abstract theories can eventually lead to sometimes potentially lethal as with nuclear power and the profits -make capitalist's hands at best clumsy, at Einstein's theories on relativity are so far innocent of such implications but Schwartz and McGuiness physics is not what most people discuss on the bus and its language is very Very few people are in a position to appreciate the haiku-like beauty which must be contained in some scientific The first half of this book is by far the best. Here the authors set the scene Perhaps a bit mechanicaliy, how eve the abstract world of physics is related particular case the needs of the growing Germany at the turn of the century.
The gripe I would have about the cartoons is that they tend to depict foreigners as quaint eccentrics, the sort who would come up with such weird theories as Einstein's Special Theory of However, the second section I think fails. After doing quite severe damage to my brain I felt cheated. The cartoons are more of a hindrance than the help they should be and there is too much reliance in the text on mathematical equations. Other books have done this Only the Special Theory is dealt there nothing about Einstein's more exciting work - • the General Theory of Relativity and his attempt at a unified Einstein was a socialist, a very rare practising . natural scientists, but it tended to be of a rather passive variety, if only because his life's work was elsewhere. However, when he was called upon to intervene he failed.
Finally, what I now know from this
----- pull-quotes -----
and plain old strikebreakers
Green and pleasant land