COMMUNISTS?

[Stanley]

COMMUNISTS?

24 April 2006

Name dropping here. I saw a reference to my hero Paul Robeson. I met Pete Seeger, another singer and friend of Robeson at a local concert he gave in New Jersey in support of his efforts to clean up pollution in the Hudson and amongst other things asked him whether the story about the rocks thrown at him at the ‘Peekskil Massacre’ was true. He said it was but there were only enough to build the fireplace.
Shortly after Peekskil Paul Robeson issued an LP called “Songs for Free Men” which included songs about the Russian struggle, the early concentration camps in Germany, the Spanish Civil War and most memorably for me, ‘Joe Hill’, a song about a famous trades union activist who was shot in Utah and became (perhaps slightly undeservedly) a hero of the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World. If you’ve never come across the Wobblies get hold of “We Shall Be All” by Melvyn Dubofsky and have a good read. (I wonder if Blair has any knowledge of it?) Because of the propaganda against Robeson and all he stood for many of the copies of Songs for Free Men were destroyed but I was lucky enough, twenty years ago, to get hold of a copy and tape it. I’ve been listening to it while I write this. It is now available on CD. One more thing that I didn’t know until last night; Robeson made a film in Wales in the early 1950s in which he played a black miner and this led to a record being made “Freedom Train and the Transatlantic Concert” in which he sang with the Treorchy male voice choir. I’ve ordered it this morning!
So, if like me you lean a tad to the left and want an emotional and instructive experience read We Shall be All and listen to Robeson at the same time. I once gave a copy of the tape to my mate Steve Constantine who taught me at Lancaster. He said that it cut his work rate down when marking papers because he had to stop when Robeson started singing.

24 April 2006