Since the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), songs have played a large part in spreading the message of the One Big Union. The songs are preserved in the Little Red Songbook.
Since the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), songs have played a large part in spreading the message of the One Big Union. The songs are preserved in the Little Red Songbook.
The Little Red Songbook (1909), also known as I.W.W. Songs or Songs of the Industrial Workers of the World, subtitled (in some editions) Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent, is a compilation of tunes, hymns, and songs used by the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) to help build morale, promote solidarity, and lift the spirits of the working-class during the Labor Movement.
The Little Red Songbook was first published by a committee of Spokane, Washington IWW members in 1909. [1] [2] It was originally called Songs of the Workers, on the Road, in the Jungles, and in the Shops—Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent. [3] It includes songs written by Joe Hill, Harry McClintock (Spellbinder), Ralph Chaplin, T-Bone Slim, and others. The early editions contain many of the most well-known labor songs, such as "The Red Flag," "The Internationale," "The Preacher and the Slave," and "Solidarity Forever." Thirty-six editions were published between 1909 and 1995.
A Canadian I.W.W. Songbook, compiled and edited by Jerzy (George) Dymny, featuring 41 songs with a Canadian slant, was published in 1990.
An edition commemorating the centennial of the IWW's founding in 1905 was published in 2005. The latest edition of the Little Red Songbook was printed in 2010.
The 190 different songs included in the Little Red Songbook between 1909 and 1973 are collected and annotated in The Big Red Songbook , edited by Archie Green, David Roediger, and Franklin Rosemont and published in 2007.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements.
Franklin Rosemont (1943–2009) was an American poet, artist, historian, street speaker, and co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group. Over four decades, Franklin produced a body of work, of declarations, manifestos, poetry, collage, hidden histories, and other interventions.
Charles Radcliffe was an English cultural critic, political activist and theorist known for his association with the Situationist movement.
Penelope Rosemont is a visual artist, writer, publisher, and social activist who attended Lake Forest College. She has been a participant in the Surrealist Movement since 1965. With Franklin Rosemont, Bernard Marszalek, Robert Green and Tor Faegre, she established the Chicago Surrealist Group in 1966. She was in 1964-1966 a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), commonly known as the Wobblies, and was part of the national staff of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1967-68. Her influences include Andre Breton and Guy Debord of the Situationist International, Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons.
"Solidarity Forever", written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915, is a popular trade union anthem. It is sung to the tune of "John Brown's Body" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". Although it was written as a song for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), other union movements, such as the AFL–CIO, have adopted the song as their own. The song has been performed by musicians such as Utah Phillips, Pete Seeger, Leonard Cohen, and Seth Staton Watkins. It was redone by Emcee Lynx and The Nightwatchman. It is still commonly sung at union meetings and rallies in the United States, Australia and Canada, and has also been sung at conferences of the Australian Labor Party and the Canadian New Democratic Party. This may have also inspired the hymn of the consumer cooperative movement, "The Battle Hymn of Cooperation", which is sung to the same tune.
The Anderson Valley Advertiser is a small weekly tabloid published in Anderson Valley, California. It was founded in 1955 as a local, community-based paper. The AVA's masthead features mottoes borrowed from the French Revolution and the Industrial Workers of the World:
Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent is the second full-length album by Swedish hardcore punk band Refused. It was released in 1996 through Victory Records, Startrec and We Bite on CD, tape and 12" vinyl; and reissued by Burning Heart Records and Victory in 1997. A remastered version of the album was released in 2004.
The Industrial Worker, "the voice of revolutionary industrial unionism", is the magazine of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). It is currently released quarterly. The publication is printed and edited by union labor, and is frequently distributed at radical bookstores, demonstrations, strikes and labor rallies. It covers industrial conditions, strikes, workplace organizing experiences, and features on labor history. It used to be released as a newspaper.
Matti Valentin Huhta, better known by his pen name T-Bone Slim, was an American humorist, poet, songwriter, hobo, and labor activist, who played a prominent role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
Mr. Block is an American comics character, created by Ernest Riebe in 1912 and commemorated in a song written by Joe Hill. He is the protagonist of an eponymous satirical comics series which appeared in left-wing publications to sympathize with the common worker. Decades later Mr. Block gained historical importance for being a predecessor to underground comix.
The Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company is an American publishing company. The company was established in Chicago, Illinois, in 1886 as Charles H. Kerr & Co. by Charles Hope Kerr, originally to promote his Unitarian views. As Kerr's personal interests moved from religion to populism to Marxism and he became interested in the labor movement, the company's publications took a similar turn. During the 1920s Kerr ceded control of the firm to the Proletarian Party of America, which continued the imprint as its official publishing house throughout its four decades of organized existence.
David R. Roediger is the Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Kansas, where he has been since the fall of 2014. Previously, he was an American Kendrick C. Babcock Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research interests include the construction of racial identity, class structures, labor studies, and the history of American radicalism. He writes from a Marxist theoretical framework.
Archie Green was an American folklorist specializing in laborlore and American folk music. Devoted to understanding vernacular culture, he gathered and commented upon the speech, stories, songs, emblems, rituals, art, artifacts, memorials, and landmarks which constitute laborlore. He is credited with winning Congressional support for passage of the American Folklife Preservation Act of 1976, which established the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress.
Free speech fights are struggles over free speech, and especially those struggles which involved the Industrial Workers of the World and their attempts to gain awareness for labor issues by organizing workers and urging them to use their collective voice. During the World War I period in the United States, the IWW members, engaged in free speech fights over labor issues which were closely connected to the developing industrial world as well as the Socialist Party. The Wobblies, along with other radical groups, were often met with opposition from local governments and especially business leaders, in their free speech fights.
"Union Maid" is a union song, with lyrics written by Woody Guthrie in response to a request for a union song from a female point of view. The melody is the 1907 standard "Red Wing" by Kerry Mills, which was in turn adapted from Robert Schumann's piano composition "The Happy Farmer, Returning From Work" in his 1848 Album for the Young, Opus 68.
The Big Red Songbook is a collection of Wobbly songs compiled by folklorist Archie Green. The 2016 edition was co-edited by Green, labor historian David Roediger, Franklin Rosemount, and Salvatore Solerno. It features an introduction by Tom Morello, and an afterword by Utah Phillips.
"The Red Flag" is a socialist song, emphasising the sacrifices and solidarity of the international labour movement. It is the anthem of the British Labour Party, the Northern Irish Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Irish Labour Party. It was formerly used by the New Zealand Labour Party until the late 1940s. The song is traditionally sung at the close of each party's national conference.
"The Rebel Girl" is a song written or completed by Joe Hill in 1915. The song was published in the Little Red Songbook of the Industrial Workers of the World, and as sheet music in 1915. It is said that Hill wrote the song for IWW orator Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, claimed and proven by Gurley Flynn herself in her memoir.
Ernest Riebe was a German-American cartoonist and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), who was known for the slapstick humor he used in his comic strips. He is best remembered for his comics series Mr. Block.
Frederick Willard Thompson was a Canadian-American labor organizer and historian. A member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for 65 years, he was first elected to the General Executive Board in 1928. He served in various capacities for the organization, including as the General Secretary-Treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World from March 1936 to February 1937 and as editor of the IWW's primary newspaper, the Industrial Worker. In a 1987 obituary published by Labour/Le Travail, scholar and poet Franklin Rosemont described Thompson as "the most influential Wobbly since the 1930s."
