Allan Pinkerton, creator of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the private cops that murdered dozens of labor organizers and activists, that tried to frame Big Bill Haywood for murder, that provided the perjured testimony and bogus evidence that got 20 innocent Irish American miners executed as Molly Maguires only immigrated to the U.S. to avoid a stiff prison term in Britain, where he was wanted for armed insurrection. Yes, America’s first celebrity cop had been an arsonist, vandal and violent soldier in the radical Chartist movement, before fleeing to the U.S. with his 15-year-old wife.
If you think the were just a nightmare from America’s labor and activist history, think again. They are still at it today, undermining labor organizing at Amazon, Apple and Google, among other.
"Anywhere but Schuylkill" by Michael Dunn - coming soon from Historium Press! Check it out!! http://wix.to/M9gMx11
“Michael Dunn has created the characters that bring the 19th Century's Mine Wars to life for today's readers. Anywhere but Schuylkill will remind readers of John Sayles and Tillie Olsen and the best in the long tradition of labor literature.”
—James Tracy, co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing
Today in Labor History June 16, 1836: The London Working Men's Association was formed, launching the Chartist movement. The Chartists took their name from the People's Charter, which demanded universal suffrage for men, regardless of social class. The movement appealed to skilled workers, not the masses of unskilled laborers. They followed the utopian socialism of Robert Owen. The movement lasted from 1838 to 1857. America’s first cop, Allan Pinkerton, creator of the Secret Service & persecutor of the Molly Maguires, was a radical participant in the Chartist movement before becoming the bulldog of capitalists. While the Chartism was primarily a constitutional movement, there was a radical, insurrectionary wing. Pinkerton was a part of this wing. He fought cops, destroyed property and set fires.
Today in Labor History May 9, 1907: Big Bill Haywood went on trial for murder in the bombing death of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg. Clarence Darrow defended Haywood and got him acquitted. Steunenberg had brutally suppressed the state’s miners. Haywood had been framed by a Pinkerton agent provocateur named James McParland, the same man who infiltrated the Pennsylvania miners’ union in the 1870s and got 20 innocent men executed as Molly Maguires. You can read about that in my novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” which I hope to have out by end of summer.