| International Labor Defense (ILD) | |
| Predecessor: | Comintern's International Red Aid |
| Merged: | with National Federation for Constitutional Liberties and National Negro Congress |
| Successor: | Civil Rights Congress |
| Formation: | June 28, 1925 |
| Founder: | James P. Cannon, William D. Haywood |
| Merger: | April 28, 1947 |
| Vat Id: | (for European organizations) --> |
| Purpose: | Promote world peace |
| Location: | New York City |
| Services: | defend rights of political prisoners |
| Membership: | ~ 300,000 |
| Membership Year: | circa 1939 |
| Language: | English |
| Owners: | --> |
| Affiliations: | American League for Peace and Democracy, American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born |
The International Labor Defense (ILD) (1925–1947) was a legal advocacy organization established in 1925 in the United States as the American section of the Comintern's International Red Aid network. The ILD defended Sacco and Vanzetti, was active in the anti-lynching, movements for civil rights, and prominently participated in the defense and legal appeals in the cause célèbre of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s. Its work contributed to the appeal of the Communist Party among African Americans in the South. In addition to fundraising for defense and assisting in defense strategies, from January 1926 it published Labor Defender, a monthly illustrated magazine that achieved wide circulation. In 1946 the ILD was merged with the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties to form the Civil Rights Congress, which served as the new legal defense organization of the Communist Party USA. It intended to expand its appeal, especially to African Americans in the South. In several prominent cases in which blacks had been sentenced to death in the South, the CRC campaigned on behalf of black defendants. It had some conflict with former allies, such as the NAACP, and became increasingly isolated. Because of federal government pressure against organizations it considered subversive, such as the CRC, it became less useful in representing defendants in criminal justice cases. The CRC was dissolved in 1956. At the same time, in this period, black leaders were expanding the activities and reach of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1954, in a case managed by the NAACP, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.
Ever since the birth of the organized labor movement, economic disputes have been contested in the legal system. In some cases, an employer or government has gone to court to achieve termination of strike actions, or to seek prosecution for alleged malefactors for physical violence or property damage resulting from such turmoil. The use of the injunction by employers to prohibit specific actions and its enforcement by the courts occasionally resulted in groups of defendants being embroiled in the costly legal system for union activities. The Pullman Strike of 1894, which brought about the trial and imprisonment of the officers of the American Railway Union, is but one example.[1]
The syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World was subject to particularly intense legal pressure, framed at times as "free speech" actions, and in other situations less ambiguously as legal actions against union organizers and activists for their economic activities. To defend its core activists and their activities from what was systematic legal attack, the IWW established a legal advocacy organization called the General Defense Committee (GDC). It raised funds and coordinated the union's legal defense efforts.
Government efforts to silence and jail conscientious objectors and anti-militarist political opponents of World War I in 1917 and 1918 resulted in more than 2,000 prosecutions.[2] These cases led to the formation of a legal defense organization for these defendants called the Civil Liberties Bureau, continued today as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The fledgling American Communist movement which emerged in the summer of 1919 quickly was subject to systemic legal attack as part of the First Red Scare. On November 7 and 8, 1919 New York state authorities, at the behest of the Lusk Committee of the New York state legislature, conducted coordinated raids upon headquarters and about 70 meeting places of the Communist Party of America (CPA).[2]
This effort was expanded and intensified on the night of January 2/3, 1920 in a mass dragnet by the Bureau of Investigation of the Justice Department, coordinated by the newly appointed J. Edgar Hoover, 24-year-old assistant to the Attorney General of the United States, and remembered in history as the Palmer Raids. This followed a series of strikes and bombings in 1919, including one against US Attorney General Palmer. An estimated 10,000 arrests and detentions resulted from the latter operation, with hundreds held for possible deportation from the United States for alleged violation of immigration laws caused by their purported "anarchist" political activity.[2]
There was a massive need for legal defense on the part of those arrested in connection with these official operations against the communist political movement. In 1920 the Communist Party established its first legal defense organization, the National Defense Committee (NDC), to raise funds and provide legal services for its adherents in legal trouble with criminal or immigration authorities.[2] A number of leading communist activists, including political leaders Max Bedacht and L.E. Katterfeld of the Communist Labor Party (CLP) and C.E. Ruthenberg of the CPA, as well as attorney I.E. Ferguson, served on the governing Executive Committee of the NDC. CLP member Edgar Owens acted as Secretary-Treasurer.[2] A number of prominent liberal and radical attorneys were employed by the group, including Swinburne Hale, Walter Nelles, Charles Recht, and Joseph R. Brodsky.[2]
The NDC maintained headquarters in Chicago and coordinated its work with another radical legal defense organization based in the East called the Workers Defense Committee (WDC).[2] The efforts of these groups to defend those arrested in the Palmer Raids was largely successful, with the result that ultimately fewer than 10% of those arrested in Hoover's January 1920 raids suffered deportation.[2]
In August 1922 another legal crisis arose for the American Communist movement when its 1922 National Convention at Bridgman, Michigan was raided by state and federal authorities, resulting in the arrest of dozens of leading party activists, headed by top trade union official William Z. Foster and CPA Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg. The latter had only recently been released from Sing Sing prison after a conviction for criminal anarchy under New York state law. A new legal defense organization called the Labor Defense Council (LDC) was established to raise funds and coordinate defense efforts for this new group of defendants.[2]
Costs associated with the Bridgman case were high, with prominent labor lawyer Frank P. Walsh demanding a fee of $50,000 in the case.[2] Another $90,000 was tied up in bail from supporters. The LDC contributed mightily to this effort, raising more than $100,000 from party supporters and concerned trade unionists in the interest of the case.[3]
Although established by the Communist Party, the LDC included a number of prominent non-Communists among its formal Executive Committee, including Eugene V. Debs, recently freed Socialist Party orator and writer, and Max S. Hayes, a Cleveland, Ohio trade unionist and journalist.[3] This broad base of support strengthened fundraising activities of the organization among those who would be less inclined to support a purely Communist organization. Control of the organization and its funds remained firmly in Communist Party hands.[3]
The Bridgman case ended in a protracted stalemate. The initial test case against William Z. Foster resulted in a hung jury. A second case against C.E. Ruthenberg resulted in a conviction, but a series of appeals that reached the United States Supreme Court extended the process for years. Ruthenberg died of acute appendicitis shortly after his appeals were exhausted but before he could be shepherded to prison. Tens of thousands of dollars remained tied up on bail well into the 1930s, but no further cases were tried against those indicted in association with the 1922 Bridgman conclave.
See main article: International Red Aid. In the spring of 1922 "Big Bill" Haywood, former Wobbly leader turned bail-jumper and defector to Soviet Russia, made a proposal in Moscow to establish a new entity dedicated to the legal defense of political prisoners in the United States, given its level of activity.[2] Representatives of the Communist Party of Poland in Soviet Russia had a similar need, and sought organized support for their jailed comrades in Poland.[2] The Russian Society of Old Bolsheviks and Former Political Exiles and Prisoners, a group whose members had previously raised funds for the support of political prisoners in Tsarist times, acted upon these suggestions late in the summer of 1922. They passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a new international organization for the legal and economic support of left-wing political prisoners.[2]
This organization was established first in Soviet Russia as the International Society for the Aid of Revolutionary Fighters (MOPR). Outside Soviet Russia the organization was known as International Red Aid (IRA), although the MOPR acronym was also used as an abbreviation for the international organization.[3]
IRA was formally launched on an international basis in conjunction with the 4th World Congress of the Comintern, held in Moscow from November 5 to December 5, 1922.[4] Although professing to be a "non-party, mass organization of the working class", the IRA emphasized its organic connection to the Comintern during its first five years.[4]
In its initial phase, IRA conducted activities on behalf of jailed Communists only, rather than non-party labor activists and members of other political organizations.[4] The Russian national section, MOPR, was responsible for providing some 98% of the funds gathered in 1923, of which more than 70% were spent on the defense and support of jailed revolutionaries in Germany and Bulgaria alone — two countries in which there were failed Communist uprisings in that year.[4] While other funds were no doubt collected outside Soviet Russia by national affiliates of IRA and spent locally,[4]