Bill Bailey's Life Before Spain - INFO FROM 2 VISITS

I listened to John Gerassi's interview with union activist and Abraham Lincoln Brigade member Bill Bailey. Bailey describes his life in great detail, as he emerges from a poor, working-class family and becomes a union activist.

Bailey was one of thirteen children in an Irish/English family. His parents came over in the 1890s, and Bailey was born and grew up in Jersey City. Seven of his siblings died before age one. Bailey went to school through the fifth grade, but then dropped out to begin working. He bounced from job to job, finding whatever labor he could.

As a sailor on a ship making deliveries between London and the US, he met an Indian stowaway whom he took a liking to. He managed to get the fellow blankets, and generally watched out for him during the journey. When the boat arrives in London, the stowaway waves goodbye to Bill and heads out to catch a boat to India because his mother is dying. Later on, the Indian meet Bill Bailey again, this time in tears, telling of how the British ships refuse to take him to India and even are forcing him to return to the US. His story saddens Bill Bailey, but the Indian gets back on Bill's boat returning to the US. One night, however, during a heavy storm, the Indian jumps overboard to his death. He was wearing a life jacket, so it is unclear whether it was suicide or something else. Bailey was so struck with the iniquity and sadness of this man's story that he sought to make life more fair to the worker and fight what he saw as injustice. He found his avenue for this with labor unions.

After describing what inspired him to work for people's rights, Bailey goes into a humorous account of the first strike he attempted, aboard the Mun Dixie ship. The Marine Workers Industrial Union put him up to the task. He began by placing union pamphlets in conspicuous spots like toilet stalls, but no one read them. Then he came up with the devious idea to hide all the books on the ship, including sailors' personal collections as well as the ship's library. After the deed, with the seamen deprived of their reading and going crazy, he offered them union pamphlets to read. The sailors all read the pamphlets because there was no other reading options. This is how he ensnared the crew. When the ship made port in Baltimore, the sailors went on strike for better working conditions, but were soon arrested and replaced by scabs. His first strike was a failure.

In 1935, the arrest of the left wing activist Lauren Simpson by the German Gestapo created a big stir. Simpson had been caught distributing anti-Nazi literature on the "Manhattan" ship bound for Germany. Once the boat reached port in Germany, the Gestapo police stormed the ship, beat him up, and found some anti-Nazi buttons in his locker. This was enough to imprison him, and likely for execution later on.

This cause ignited anti-Nazi ferver, and Bailey and his mates decided they needed to make a statement. The plan was to sneak onto a German ship called the Bremen when it was in port, tear down the Swastika flag, and burn it. While this was going on, thousands of protestors would gather to condemn the Nazis. The plan did not work out as planned, however.

Bailey brought a razorblade in his pocket to slice the flag free from the flagpost. But being nervous, he kept sticking his hand in his pocket to see if it was still there, cutting himself each time. By the end of the night, the pocket with the razorblade was filled with blood from his hand. Second, the Nazi sailors, instead of being below deck, were on deck because it was a beautiful night. After a while, Bailey realized the plan would not work, but he and his friends still would not leave the ship without making a statement. They decided to get to the flag and rip them down, regardless of the repercussions. Bailey and three others fought their way toward the flagpost. Bailey climbed up, ripped one flag down, and when he went into his pocket to retrieve his razorblade, he realized it had slipped out the bottom and was lost. Luckily, a fellow Nazi protestor, Aaron Duffie, was nearby, and sliced the flag with his own razorblade. The Swastikas on the flags floated down into the ocean. The crowd was screaming by this time, either Nazi supporters out of horror, or anti-Nazi protestors out of excitement. Bailey was taken down by the Nazis, and carted off to jail, but the statement had been made.