The following remarks were made by Howard Keylor, a long-time ILWU militant and
International Bolshevik Tendency supporter, during the discussion period following Jack
Heyman’s presentation.
The Trotskyist League [Canadian affiliate of the Spartacist
League/U.S.] has tended to denigrate the motivation of the longshoremen who carried out
that one-day strike against the war because it wasn’t perfectly anti-imperialist. Let me
tell you something: no it wasn’t perfectly anti-imperialist. We’ll only get to that point
probably shortly before the revolution. But it was profoundly against what the government
has been doing…They’re angry about what the government has been doing to the
country, to the society, to their future, to the ecology, to everything. There was a
profound anger that rose up from the rank and file and expressed itself with the approval
of this resolution and its implementation.
The second point I want to make is that we have to re-emphasize that the strike was
illegal. It was “illegal” under Taft-Hartley. The Taft-Hartley law is
this draconic law [passed in 1947] that makes almost anything workers do to defend
themselves, or other workers, “illegal.” And it has prevailed now for lo these
many, many decades. This was a case in which the workers actually defied the law and got
away with it. Now that’s a profound victory.
[applause]
That in itself perhaps was even more important than the strike. You can carry out
actions that are “illegal” [against things] that strangle the union and
workers, and get away with it if you’re strong enough, and tough enough, and have
enough support. This whole question of carrying out actions that are “illegal”
under Taft-Hartley has a history in longshore. For a long period of time it didn’t
happen.
I spent some 15 years in longshore pedagogically telling workers you can do this, you
must do it and actually it can happen. Jack actually wasn’t on the waterfront
when the first case happened, I think in about 1983 when the employers tried to use
non-longshoremen to load a ship in Richmond [in the San Francisco Bay Area]. In violation
of the contract and the law, the longshoremen, clerks, etc. shut down the entire Bay Area
[waterfront]. It took 1,200 workers there to lock the gate and stop the operation.
Strictly “illegal.” The arbitrators ruled against us, the union
leadership—top leadership—immediately joined the employers…but we got
away with it. [See “Bay Area ILWU Strike: Defensive Victory or Sellout?,” Bulletin of the External Tendency of the
iSt, No. 1, August 1983.]
The 1984 longshore boycott—11 days for South African cargo. It was
“illegal” and we got away with it. And incidentally, that boycott was actually
ended with the issuance of a temporary restraining order by a federal court in which
Exhibit No. 1, with which the employers justified their [legal] action, was a leaflet
issued by your [Spartacist League] supporter in the union telling exactly what went on at
a private, closed union meeting. You blew the whistle, you gave information to the
government—don’t ever deny that.
Anyway, the whole question is that workers build self-confidence by winning. There is a
different climate. Even though the longshoremen have now accepted what I consider a bad
six–year contract, there is a different consciousness now: “We did something
that no one else did and we got away with it! How about next year!”