For twenty-nine issues, Alexander Berkman edited The Blast. This revolutionary labor biweekly opposed the Great War, capitalism, and colonialism. While "Sasha" Berkman's companion Emma Goldman gains a greater share of commemoration, her fickle lover and devoted comrade merits attention as the Easter Rising and this paper's centennial coincide.
Needing a break from
"Red Emma's" own Mother
Earth, with its literary, intellectual, and theoretical bent, Sasha with
Emma’s permission decamped from New York City to San Francisco to fire up The Blast as a politically incendiary
publication. (Avrich 252) He began 1916 at 569 Dolores Street in the Mission District. There
he and Mary Eleanor Fitzgerald, who had also worked for Mother Earth, set up the press
and their domestic partnership. "Fitzi" had fallen in love with that
Russian immigrant and notorious would-be assassin, after she left behind her
Ohio upbringing as the daughter of an Irish Catholic emigrant and conscientious
objector during the Civil War, and an Adventist mother from pioneer stock. (Avrich 215)
Together, Sasha and Fitzi entered a city no less calm than
Manhattan when it came to unrest. San Francisco's homegrown, Jewish, and especially
Italian anarchists welcomed Berkman's arrival, and fundraisers enabled The Blast to print. As its anthologist
puts it, "social change was tantalizingly near." (Pateman 5). As a Goldman-Berkman expert
commends it: "A sense of absolute emergency pervades almost every
column." (Richard Drinnon, qtd. back
cover Pateman).
For its first sixteen issues,
“McDevitt’s Book Omnorium” advertises “Radical Literature of All Kinds” at two
locations, renting out “all sorts” at a nickel a week, and with “no censorship.”
On November 12th 1916, “socialist teacher” William McDevitt
alongside Berkman, war correspondent-cartoonist Robert Minor, and Mexican
anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón would be slated among the orators on the 29th
anniversary of eight Haymarket “martyrs.” (178)
Such leftist lineups cheered The Blast’s launch. Introducing its debut, Berkman announces:
"Blind rebellion stalks upon highway and byway. To fire it with the sparks
of Hope, to kindle it with the light of vision, and to turn pale discontent
into conscious social action--that is the crying problem of the hour." (10) This January 15th edition
included Fenian felon turned journalist John Boyle O'Reilly's poem conjuring up
"spectres" of revolutionaries rising, a fitting portent for haunted
months ahead. (13)
For its May Day issue offered unsigned
"reflections" on "The Revolt in Ireland." (102)
The Rising,
as far as distant Californians surmised, was ongoing, although it had spanned
the 24th to the 29th of April. The writer welcomed the rebellion, but reminded
readers of the true enemy. Rather than England, "the Lords of Land and
Life" loomed. Rather than a struggle for land and liberty, the nationalist
character meant only a change of masters. "The club of an Irish Republican
policeman upon a Dublin citizen's head will hurt no less than the nightstick of
an English bobby." Better to lash out than stay passive, but freedom from
"agrarian and industrial slavery" comes only, the columnist warned,
from "making common cause with the disinherited of all countries, in a
social revolution against the Universal Plunderbund whatever its international
composition." This heated, sassy style echoes Sasha's even if it lacks a
byline. After all, one of his pseudonyms for The
Blast was "R.E.
Bell." (Avrich 254)
Rebellion returned to the headlines of May 15th. Lydia
Gibson's cover, over the slogan "The Champion of Freedom and
Democracy," featured a jackbooted colossus, a towering soldier (a stand-in
for smoky caricatures of a helmeted Hun) brandishing a pistol labelled "Conscription"
in his right hand aimed at England, while he straddled the sea, threatening
Ireland with a smoking long-handled pistol in his sinister left hand. Both
nations bear weight of this formidable foe, together downtrodden.
Page two presents Berkman's fullest expression of the
anarchist argument against the Rising's target. "The Only Hope of
Ireland" is absent from the compilation of Berkman's many publications,
and only surfaces on a few activist websites. Yet, it fuels a counter-blast to
James Connolly's prescient warning about switching the Union Jack but for a
green flag over a capitalist-run Dublin Castle.
Why the surprise, Sasha asks, at the treatment of Sinn
Féin's rebels in the Irish American press? As in India, South Africa, and Egypt,
so in Ireland. Colonial policy crushes, whether as Berkman cites under the
British Raj, or against English workers. Conscription wields the clout of the
ruling class. Whether kaiser, czar, or president, these foes comprise a cabal
tainted by imperial greed. "Government is but the shadow the ruling class
of a country casts upon the political life of a given nation." (108)
Make no mistake, this attempted murderer of Carnegie
Steel's anti-union manager Henry Clay Frick cautions: "the only safe rebel
is a dead rebel" as far as the Crown cares. Beyond embittering the Irish
people, the American Irish who protest collide with the Church and state which
support Britain. To ensure the safekeeping of Sinn Féin captives in the
motherland, her exiled discontents might pluck up hostages from among His
Majesty's representatives stationed in America.
Sasha suggests: "A British Consul ornamenting a lamp
post in San Francisco or New York would quickly secure the attention of the
British Lion." Far more effective than petitions and rallies in Irish
America, such strategies would hasten freedom for those imprisoned. Finally,
Berkman blames "the Redmonds and the Carsons." The pluralizing of
these surnames extends this anti-colonial critique to complicit politicians
under Home Rule as well as Unionist perpetuation. Loyalist condemnation and
Nationalist cowardice unite in alienating support for the uprising "in and
out of Ireland," as well as having "encouraged the English government
to use the most drastic methods in opposing the revolt."
Ireland's labor leaders serve as lackeys for their
landlords. As in "The Revolt in Ireland" two weeks before, "The
Only Hope" concludes by urging the Irish to expand their radical
aspirations beyond a clatter of weapons. Outside "the boundaries of the
Emerald Isle," Berkman assures, a global response to imperialism and for
liberation will occur, one that erases all despots and opens all borders, at
last.
The essay's last sentence evokes imagery reminiscent of the
Fenian sunburst flag. It recalls that mythic motif, unconsciously or not, while
typifying the trumpeting tone of The
Blast. True to the anarchist
chant of neither god nor masters, the names of God and nation vanish from this
tribute. Rejecting monster meetings or petitions for clemency, Berkman
rallies to a cause that transcends any renegade tricolor.
The precious blood shed in the unsuccessful revolution will not have been in vain if the tears of their great tragedy will clarify the vision of the sons and daughters of Erin and make them see beyond the empty shell of national aspirations toward the rising sun of the international brotherhood of the exploited in all countries and climes combined in a solidaric struggle for emancipation from every form of slavery, political and economic.
Matching the Proclamation by appealing to the men and women
of Ireland, it rises above the Republic’s territorial aspirations.
Instead, The Blast praises global
emancipation.
For the next issue on June 1st, Emma Goldman, visiting Los
Angeles, receives promotion for a week's series of lectures at Burbank Hall. On
the 13th, she spoke on "Art and Revolution: The Irish Uprising." (122) In July 15th''s
"Preparedness for What?" Connolly elicited celebration within Edward
Gammons' anti-conscription piece, which encouraged readers: "Let us
emulate the Irish rebels." (134) An editorial, "Vampires of
Memory," contrasts current clerical collections for widows and orphans of
1916’s dead with the Vatican's prior condemnation of that rebellion and the
indifference of the Catholic authorities to the "slaughter of Pearse,
Connolly, and their comrades." (135)
These castigations faded, as another violent act attributed
to Irish surnames erupted in a downtown far closer than Dublin. When July
22nd's Preparedness Day parade in anticipation of entry into the war was
bombed, ten San Franciscans died and forty were wounded. The authorities
rounded up socialists and anarchists. Tom Mooney, the son of Irish immigrants,
and IWW associate Warren Billings were arrested. The Blast found in their
case, and those of other defendants, a home front cause célèbre.
During
his strenuous efforts to fend off what was at first a death sentence for Mooney
and Billings, later commuted to life imprisonment after considerable abuse within
the police and judicial system, Sasha contributed to a collective statement in
the August 15th issue, printed as a circular in 50,000 copies. "Down with
the Anarchists!" includes Russian revolutionaries, Italian Republicans,
Fenians and Sinn Féiners. These are not anarchists, however, but similarly
desperate people, all "driven by desperate circumstances into this
terrible form of revolt." (144) The writers follow Sasha and
Emma's attitude at that time to terrorism. They explain the "propaganda of the deed” as the last
resort of those who have exhausted any hope of achieving their ideals by
peaceful means. Berkman and Goldman ease off denunciation. This reply, as with
the couple's rejection of conscription, and Emma's embrace of contraception,
angered Federal authorities, who in 1919 deported both to Russia.
Meanwhile, the pair and their allies fought back. The night
before the New Year 1917's issue appeared, a private detective for the United
Railroads and the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, accompanied by the
Assistant D.A. and two of his detectives, raided the office of The Blast. Mary Eleanor Fitzgerald reported
in "The Daylight Burglary" how vile their behavior compared to that
of "Phadraig Pearse. Jim Connelly, Tom Clarke and the other gallant Irish
rebels." (197) Within the raiders’ ranks numbered a
Brennan and a Burke, she adds. Implicitly juxtaposing Hibernian heroes and
touts here, Fitzi was also questioned after Preparedness Day along with Sasha
the summer before that New Year’s Eve home invasion. In five hours of
interrogation at police headquarters, she had to explain why "such a nice
sweet lady with such a good Irish name" consorted with Sasha and his
insurgent ilk. (Avrich 253) Some still dispute the
identity of the bombers, but the joint biographer of Berkman and Goldman points
to San Francisco anti-militarist members of the Gruppo Anarchico Volonta. (Avrich 265)
That scholar draws from deportation testimony of an Italian
anarchist who denied Mooney bore any blame for the bombing. As the Red Scare
threatened, the hunt quickened. Scattered mentions of Irish involvement in the
movement speckle The Blast on February
15th. They mirror the sub rosa speculations, the whispers traded as
Palmer Raids loomed. "Will You Be Man Enough to Come Forward?" reprints
"speaking from memory" a note from a Clan na Gael initiate given to
Jim Larkin after an address at San Francisco's Dreamland Rink the year before
on June 27th. This confides that the local police had framed Tom Mooney, Ed
Nolan (a Machinist's Union member) "and another, named Sheehan, a
sailor." (214) Communist organizer and American newcomer
Jim Larkin's seditious paper The Irish Warrior gains publicity in the same issue, as
do Edward Gammons' recollections of how Queen Victoria blocked Turkish aid to
relieve the Famine, as despicable as British methods employed against its
Indian subjects. (216) Last of all, the humorist Finley Peter
Dunne's inimitable creation Mr. Dooley appears amidst the classifieds.
"I'll niver go down again to see sojers off to th' war. But ye'll see me
at th' depot whin th' men that causes war starts fr' th' scene iv
carnage." (218)
Roundups against supposed or real "Reds"
accelerated after America entered the war in April. The trajectory of the fiery
newspaper weakened after a May Day retreat to Emma and
Harlem. Only five issues appeared in 1917, ending as June began. Irish
concerns diminished as Berkman, Goldman, and 247 fellow-travelers with the far
left faced forcible removal back to the countries of their birth. By the end of
1919, detained on Ellis Island, they were exiled from the America whose
immigrants they had joined, and whose traditions they admired and challenged.
Larkin, jailed in Sing Sing, would be pardoned, then deported, in 1923 by Al
Smith. Big Jim’s fate intersects with Irish rebels who escaped after the failed
Rising to America, but who likely less often than Larkin and his like lashed
out with such radical furor and fervent dissent against injustices they found
in their second homeland and new refuge. Anarchism barely registered back in
Ireland, amid red-baiting and moral panic. Reformist or conciliatory methods
endured, as demonstrated by Larkin’s drift to the Labour Party in the Free
State. Compromises characterized too the partitioned Irish Republic, testimony
to class-based divisions on the island and beyond, past 2016.
Works Cited:
Avrich, Paul, and Avrich, Karen. Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma
Goldman. Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2012.
Pateman, Barry, intro. The
Blast. Edinburgh, London, Oakland: AK Press, 2005.
The article is now reprinted at the valuable Irish Anarchist History archive: San Francisco's Anarchist Responses to the Rising"
ReplyDelete