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Women's History Month Union Woman of the Day: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

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Submitted by LostClown on Tue, 03/15/2011 - 12:45am
Thread: 
Class Warfare
Tags: 
women
history
unions
women's history month
Labor Unions
IWW
labour unions
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
women's history

A brief intro to this series. Since it is union time with all this attack on unions and it is women's history month, and I am a Wobbly, I thought I would take the time to highlight some very important women from the history of the Wobblies. Enjoy.

220px-Elizabeth_Gurley_Flynn_point

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is one of the many women who stand out in the history of the IWW. She was just 17 years old when she shared the platform with a certain James Connolly, who she described as a “Short, rather stout, plain-looking man, [...] a scholar and an excellent writer [whose] speech was marred for American audiences by his thick North of Ireland accent.” Connolly thought very highly of her too:

“She started out as a pure utopian, but now she laughs at her former theories. Had she stuck by her first set of opinions she would have continued a persona grata with the Socialist Party crowd...but her advocacy of straight revolutionary socialism and industrial unionism alienated them and now they hate her.”

Shortly after becoming a socialist, Flynn began making speeches for the IWW and was expelled from high school in 1907. She then became a full-time organizer for the IWW, standing at the forefront of organizing support for the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, along with famous Wobblies Big Bill Haywood and Carlo Tresca. In the face of police brutality and hunger, the striking workers agreed to evacuate their children out of Lawrence. Flynn was in charge of this evacuation effort, though many of the children were subsequently arrested and beaten after they left town.
Flyn, Haywood and Tresca also grew involved in fanning the flames of the Paterson Silk Strike. Flynn held successful weekly meetings for women only and delivered powerful speeches to mass meet- ings throughout.

After the Lawrence Textile Strike and the Paterson Sil Strike, Flynn helped to organize campaigns among garment workers in Pennsylvania, silk weavers in New Jersey, restaurant workers in New York City, and miners in Minnesota. Flynn was arrested ten times during this period but was never convicted of any criminal activity. In 1915, Flynn visited Wobbly Joe Hill in his jail cell. Hill immediately composed a song in honor of Flynn— a sentimental tune that championed the women of the IWW, titled “The Rebel Girl.”

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn once fa- mously remarked, when responding to criticism of the IWW for using women as shields: “The IWW has been accused of putting the women in the front; the truth is: the IWW does not keep them at the back – and they go to the front.”

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Submitted by hipparchia on

this caught my eye:

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn once fa- mously remarked, when responding to criticism of the IWW for using women as shields: “The IWW has been accused of putting the women in the front; the truth is: the IWW does not keep them at the back – and they go to the front.”

i don't know enough about the history of the wobblies to know how true that might be [and am looking forward to learning more!]. it certainly sounds like she was a woman who was going to go to the front of anything, no matter what:

A founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920, Flynn was active in the campaign against the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti. Flynn was particularly concerned with women's rights, supporting birth control and women's suffrage. Flynn also criticized the leadership of trade unions for being male-dominated and not reflecting the needs of women.

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Submitted by LostClown on

talks about when she sent the women to defend a mine from scabs in one town armed with mops and brooms and how the women won the fight in that town chasing the scabs and the mules off by banging on dustpans and wielding mops and brooms.

Submitted by hipparchia on

that sounds like a much better use of mops and brooms and such...

Submitted by jm on

As a complement to this series I would recommend The Wobblies, a pretty good documentary, featuring interviews with surviving members, about the original IWW movement as it was experienced in the trenches. It's even available at Netflix.

The point that most struck me was that the IWW arose in response to the elitism of the already existing trade unions. It seems skilled labor wanted nothing to do with low-skill/unskilled workers who were often uneducated whites, immigrants or African Americans. So these folks struck out on their own (pun intended). Strategic hate management has a long and sorrowful history.

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Submitted by LostClown on

Also for further reading may I recommend the book that came out on our 100th anniversary The Industrial Workers of the World: Its First 100 Years.

Many histories have been written of the Industrial Workers of the World, often called the Wobblies. Founded in 1905 in hopes of uniting the working class into One Big Union, the IWW promoted industrial organization at a time when craft unionism was the established pattern. The IWW welcomed all workers, regardless of ethnicity, race or gender when other unions boasted of their exclusionary policies. Its reliance on direct action on the job generated much of the strategy and tactics of the modern labor movement. Often referred to as the singing union, Wobblies wrote hundreds of labor songs and published millions of copies of their Little Red Songbook. The IWW's theme song, 'Solidarity Forever,' became the anthem of the entire American labor movement.

The IWW: Its First 100 Years is the most comprehensive history of the union ever published. Written by two Wobblies who lived through many of the struggles they chronicle, it documents the famous struggles such as the Lawrence and Paterson strikes, the fight for decent conditions in the Pacific Northwest timber fields, the IWW's pioneering organizing among harvest hands in the 1910s and 1920s, and the wartime repression that sent thousands of IWW members to jail. But it is the only general history to give substantive attention to the IWW's successful organizing of African-American and immigrant dock workers on the Philadelphia waterfront, the international union of seamen the IWW built from 1913 through the 1930s, smaller job actions through which the IWW, Wobbly successes organizing in manufacturing in the 1930s and 1940s, and the union's recent resurgence. Extensive source notes provide guidance to readers wishing to explore particular campaigns in more depth. There is no better history for the reader looking for an overview of the history of the Industrial Workers of the World, and for an understanding of its ideas and tactics. Includes nearly 60 photographs and illustrations, and brief forward from Utah Phillips.