Breaking In (1989)

In The Electric Mist (2009)

Return of the Secaucus 7 (1979)

Radical Film Forum - 'Matewan'

Matewan

Sunday 15th November at 6pm 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North)

John Sayles's 1987 classic drama ". . . illustrating the events of a coal mine-workers' strike and attempt to unionize in 1920 in Matewan, a small town in the hills of West Virginia."

From John Sayles's book, 'Thinking in Pictures: the making of the movie Matewan (1987)

Why Matewan?

There's no place in America like the hills of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. There'll be a river, usually fast running and not too wide, and on the flatland along its banks a railroad track and maybe a little town, only two or three streets deep before the land starts rising up steep all around you. You've got to look straight up to see the sky and often there's a soft mist shrouding the holler. The hills hug around you - stay inside of them for a while and a flat horizon seems cold and unwelcoming. It's always been a hard life there, with not enough bottomland to farm and no easy way to get manufactured goods in or out of the area. The cash crops had to be torn out from the ground, first timber and then coal. It's a land that doesn't yield anything easily.

In the late sixties I hitchhiked through the area several times and most of the people who gave me rides were coal miners or people with mining in their families. They spoke with a mixture of pride and resignation about the mining - resignation about how dark and dirty and cold and wet and dangerous it was and pride that they were the people to do it, to do it well. The United Mine Workers were going through heavy times then. Their president, Tony Boyle, was accused of having his election opponent, Jock Yablonski, murdered. The coal companies and most of the political machinery that fed on them and even the UAW hierarchy denied even the existence of black lung disease and refused any compensation for it. All this was added to the usual mine accidents and disasters and wild fluctuations in coal prices. But every miner I talked to would shake his head and say, "Buddy, this ain't nothin compared to what used to go on. I could tell you some stories." The stories would be about their grandfathers and uncles and fathers and mothers, and the older men would tell their own stories from when they were young. The stories had a lot of Old West to them, only set in those embracing hills and coffinlike seams of three-foot coal. It was a whole hunk of our history I'd never heard of, that a lot of people had never heard of.

In 1977 I wrote a novel called Union Dues that begins in West Virginia coal country and moves to Boston. Before I wrote it I did a lot of reading in labor history, especially about the coal fields, and that was when I came across the story of the Matewan Massacre. In a book about the Hatfield and McCoy feud in Mingo County, there was a mention of a distant cousin of the Hatfields named Sid, chief of police of the town of Matewan, who was involved in a bloody shoot-out in 1920, during the mine wars of the era. It got me interested, but accounts of the incident were few and highly prejudiced. The rhetoric of both the company-controlled newspapers of the day and their counterparts on the political left was rich in lurid metaphor but short on eyewitness testimony. But a few characters stuck in my head - Sid Hatfield; the mayor, Cabell Testerman, who wouldn't be bought at a time when the coal companies routinely paid the salaries of public officials and expected their strike breakers to be deputized and aided in busting the union; a man known only as Few Clothes, a giant black miner who joined the strikers and was rumored to have fought in the Spanish-American War; and C.E. Lively, a company spy so skilled he was once elected president of a UMW local. Aspects and details of other union showdowns in the area also began to accumulate - and transportations of blacks from Alabama and European immigrants just off the boat to scab against the strikers; the life of the coal camp and company store; the feudal system of mine guards and "Baldwin thugs" that enforced the near slavery the miners and their families lived in. All the elements and principles involved seemed basic to the idea of what America has become and what it should be. Individualism versus collectivism, the personal and political legacy of racism, the immigrant dream and the reality that greeted it, monopoly capitalism, at its most extreme versus American populism at its most violent, plus a lawman with two guns strapped on walking to the centre of town to face a bunch of armed enforcers - what more could you ask for in a story? And yet it was a story unknown to most Americans, untold on film but for a silent short financed by the UMW in the aftermath of the massacre. The movie was called Smilin' Sid and the only known print was stolen by coal company agents and never seen again.

Though there were familiar Western elements to the story, it had a unique character because of its setting. The hills of West Virginia, the people and the music have a mood and rhythm to them that need to be seen and heard to be felt completely. There is a cyclical sense of time there, a feeling of inescapable fate that in the story resists the optimism and progressive collectivism of the 1920s workers' movement. Politics are always at the mercy of human nature and custom, and the coal wars of the twenties were so personal that they make ideology accessible in a story, make it immediate and emotional. It was this emotional immediacy that made me think of making a movie about the events in Matewan.

If storytelling has a positive function it's to put us in touch with other people's lives, to help us connect and draw strength or knowledge from people we'll never meet, to help us see beyond our own experience. The people I read about in the history books and people I met in the hills of Kentucky and West Virginia had important stories to tell and I wanted to find a way to pass them on.

Waiting For Goldman

"We used to have it at the New Yorker Hotel before the Korean and his Jesus children moved in. You see them on the streets peddling flowers, big smiles, cheeks glowing like Hitler Youth. High on the Opiate of the People. Used to be the New Yorker had its dopers, its musicians, its sad sacks and marginal types. We felt at home there." ['The Anarchists' Convention' by John Sayles]

The second annual NYC Anarchist Bookfair is happening this weekend. Should be an interesting event. It's being held in the same venue as last year, and it was jam packed then. I'm guessing that there will be an even bigger turn out this year. I mean, anarchism is still in fashion the last time I looked. Better remember to bring a water bottle and to wear some light clothing 'cos it was bastard roasting in the main hall last year.

Surprising to think that it took NYC this long to have an Anarchist Bookfair, when you think that the daddy of them all, the London Anarchist Bookfair, kickstarted it all off in the early eighties. I'm guessing that there must have been similar type events in the past in the NYC, but even the international anarchist movement isn't immune to such things as franchising and I guess when you've got a successful product like the London Anarchist Bookfair, then you should run with it. And it is a product. The AK Press stall will be raking it in. How else can they print that glossy catalogue every year listing all those books that they don't currently have in stock?

Interesting to note that amongst 'the tablers' will be the Anarchist Federation. Not a moment too soon. If I'm not missing Marmite on toast and Sunday morning repeats of Grange Hill (the Gripper Stebson years), it's the AF's magazine, 'Organise'.*

Varied collection of *cough* 'tablers' setting up for the event, but the one listed that has really caught my eye is 'Carl Slienger- Recovering Printed Expression of the Working-Class'. You can't find bugger all about Carl Slienger on the internet, but s/he or it - who knows, hopefully I can find out on Saturday - was the person or persons who reprinted Martov's State and the Socialist Revolution in the mid-seventies, amongst other pamphlets. I'm trying to rack my brains but I think 'Carl Slienger' also reprinted a pamphlet by Rosa Luxemburg and, maybe, Max Nettlau at the same time. Bugger the light clothing, I'll have my leftist anorak zipped up to my nose when salivating over that particular table.

There's also an interesting selection of meetings and workshops taking place during the course of the weekend . . . not somehing you could always say about the London Anarchist Bookfair. The meetings that have caught my eye are 'Anarchism Is The Only Hope: Lessons from the Durriti Column of The Spanish Civil War', where the speaker is George Sossenko, "an 88-year old veteran of the Spanish Civil War"; 'Anarchy in the USA: The Love-Hate Relationship with Presidential Elections'; and 'Building a Movement Against Capitalism through Thinking of Its Alternatives'.

The last meeting is another one of those 'synthesising anarchism and marxism' meetings. I attended one at the recent Left Forum as well. Not sure if it's the same personnel behind both meetings, but it's interesting to note that there are people out there who are carrying on in the spirit of the 'Mancunian Subvertists'. Expect fireworks and snottiness in equal measure if a stray New York Leninist strays into the meeting and makes an 'intervention'. The short odds says it will be an ICCer but, feeling a bit adventurous, I'll predict that it'll be an IBTer who makes a contribution from the floor before he's put on the floor.

I would promise to write up the notes of any meeting I attend, but I never did get round to writing up the notes of the meetings I attended at the Left Forum, so I won't bullshit you this time.

And finally, first things last: 2008 NYC Anarchist Film Festival takes place today. The piccie below is the poster for the event. The film on Sacco and Vanzetti looks interesting. I need to be mug up in the history of US radicalism, so I'll probably pop along. And on that note, this is when I usually write: 'Gone Fishing'.

* Turns out that the latest issue of 'Organise' has a wee reprise of an AF'er attending last year's NYC Anarchist Bookfair. Call me a cynical armchair abstract propaganist, but I bet the 'latest issue' of Organise was published just in time for last year's London Anarchist Bookfair. Maybe I'll be able to read the AF's report of this year's NYC Anarchist Bookfair in the forthcoming issue of Organise which will be published . . . . when's this year's London Anarchist Bookfair?

"Very superstitious, the devil's on his way"

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (37)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 37th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1202 friends!

Recent blogs:

What are your wages?

The Socialist Gene

Danger: capitalism at work

This week's top quote:

"The Prince of Darkness is upon the land. Now in the Bible his name is Beezlebub, Lord of the Flies. Right now on Earth today his name is Bolshevist! Socialist! Communist! Union man! Lord of untruth, sower of evil seed, enemy of all that is good and pure and this creature walks among us. What are we going to do about it? " The Hardshell Preacher in John Sayles' Matewan, 1987.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

For God and Country

Q: I would like to go back to the first incident, when the survivor asked why did you kill his brother. Was that the incident that pushed you over the edge, as you put it?

A: Oh, yeah. Later on I found out that was a typical day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me and says: "Are you OK?" I said: "No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians." He goes: "No, today was a good day." And when he said that, I said "Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?"

Reading the excellent Whiskey Bar blog, I stumbled across an interview with Marine Staff Sergeant, Jimmy Massey, that originally appeared in the local American newspaper, The Sacramento Bee, and from which the quote above is an extract from.

In the interview, Massey explains how he, a soldier who served twelve years in the US Marine Corps, went from being someone who unquestioningly went to war in Iraq, believing the official line of it being a pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein's attempts to build up a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, to someone who felt:"I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing."

Reading Massey's interview reminded me of the oft-quoted statement from Smedley D. Butler, a former Major-General of the Marine Corps:

"There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its 'finger men' (to point out enemies) its 'muscle men' (to destroy enemies) its 'brain guys' (to plan war preparations) and a 'Big Boss' (supernationalistic capitalism).

"It may seem odd for me, a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to do so. 1 spent 33 years and 4 months in active military service as a member of our country's most agile military force - the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to major-general. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

"I suspected I was just a part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession, I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

"Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped to make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that the Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

"During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals and promotions. Looking back on it, I feel that I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. I operated on three continents." (Quoted in the Western Socialist, November, 1961).

As indicated above, this forty year old quote from Butler is quoted from the Western Socialist, the old journal of the World Socialist Party of the United States It's a quote I read many years ago and the initial surprise and shock of reading such candour from someone who knows how and why the capitalist strings are pulled have diminished over the years through nothing more than over familiarity with the quote. However, it regained its contemporary relevance because, despite the impact of reading Massey's interview, where he discloses what was really happening to the 'grunts' on the ground and how it went against everything one read in the mainstream press at the time (admittedly there were exceptions amongst the press), and how he now understood that he served in a war fought for reasons that he neither understood nor supported, it is the case that his objections to the war are laid squarely at the door of George W. Bush and his administration. The 'Great Man of History' and its counterpart, the 'Great Villain of History' idea is something that socialists should always warn against and, from his quote, it is self-evident that Butler saw the bigger picture if only because of the length of time that he served, and because of the more senior position that he held, with the American Military - therefore being able to have the greater overview of American Foreign Policy.

This is no slight against Massey's experience and the account recounted in his interview: Just the recognition that unfortunately the majority of the material and arguments against this war are still limited within the scope of attributing its cause to the work of a particular partisan section of the political elite and their own personal motives.

Reading the Massey interview, and previously watching the news footage surrounding the scandal of what happened at Abu Ghraib jail, where especial interest was focused on Lynndie England, one of the American soldiers that was implicated in the abuse of Iraqi detainees in the jail, and how by all accounts she signed up to the American army as much for economic reasons as for reasons of patriotism it reminded me of the following dialogue from Lone Star, written and directed by the brilliant John Sayles I don't have the necessary eloquence to explain why this excerpt is so powerful - John Sayles dialogue is eloquence enough - but I think it says so much for why so many men and women do sign up for 'God and Country' ('Queen and Country' for the tea drinkers reading). It is to the credit of Sayles as a writer that the dialogue of the two characters in the scene is not simply put in place to make a cheap point against people who serve in the military, and to his further credit that these two characters, as the case with all the characters in his films, are something much more than ciphers in the film. People always have their reasons.

INT. DEL'S OFFICE -- DAY

Athena stands at attention as Del sits at his desk, reviewing her record. He lets her stand for a long time before speaking--

DEL- Private Johnson, are you unhappy in the Army?

ATHENA - No, sir--

DEL - Then how would you explain the fact that out of one hundred twenty people we tested, you're the only one who came up positive for drugs?

ATHENA - I'm sorry, sir.

DEL - When you were given the opportunity to enlist, a kind of contract was agreed upon. I think the Army has honored its part of that agreement.

ATHENA - Yes, sir--

DEL - Do you believe in what we're doing here, Private Johnson?

ATHENA - I-I can do the job, sir.

DEL - You don't sound too enthusiastic.

ATHENA - I am, sir.

DEL - What exactly do you think your job is, Private?

ATHENA - Follow orders. Do whatever they say.

DEL- Who's "they"?

ATHENA - The--the officers.

DEL - And that's the job? Nothing about serving your country?

Athena is confused, hesitates to speak--

DEL - These aren't trick questions, Private. You'll be given an Article 15 and be going into the ADCAP Program one way or the other. What happens after that is up to you. I'm just trying to understand how somebody like you thinks.

Silence--

DEL - Well?

ATHENA - (Hesitant) You really want to know, sir?

DEL - Please.

ATHENA - It's their country. This is one of the best deals they offer.

Del knows he asked for it, but doesn't like the answer--

DEL - How do you think I got to be a colonel?

ATHENA - Work hard, be good at your job. Sir. Do whatever they tell you.

DEL - Do whatever they tell you--

ATHENA - I mean, follow orders, sir.

DEL - With your attitude, Private, I'm surprised you want to stay in the service.

ATHENA - I do, sir.

DEL - Because it's a job?

ATHENA - (Struggling) Outside it's--it's such a mess--it's--

DEL - Chaos.

Athena is sure she's overstepped her rank--

DEL - Why do you think they let us in on the "deal"?

ATHENA - They got people to fight. Arabs, yellow people, whatever. Might as well use us.

DEL - Do you think you've been discriminated against on this post?

ATHENA - No, sir. Not at all.

DEL - Any serious problems with your sergeant or your fellow soldiers?

ATHENA - No, sir. They all been real straight with me.

Del stands, thinking, trying not to bullshit her--

DEL - It works like this, Private--every soldier in a war doesn't have to believe in what he's fighting for. Most of them fight just to back up the soldiers in their squad--you try not to get them killed, try not to get them extra duty, try not to embarrass yourself in front of them.

He is right in her face now--

DEL - Why don't you start with that?

ATHENA - Yes, sir.

DEL - You're dismissed, Private.

ATHENA - Thank you, sir.

Athena salutes, steps out. Del looks out the window, troubled by the encounter.