Flint Faces Civil War
BY CHARLES R. WALKER
Flint, February 8
Judge Gadola has issued his ouster Injunction and the tension
which may break into civil war has reached a new high. Only
cool heads in the union, plus superior numbers, plus
telephoned warnings from Governor Murphy to the forces of
"law and order," prevent the expected massacre.
"We'll stay
in till they carry us out on stretchers," is the message sent
out by the sitdowners in Fisher 2. "We'd rather die than give
up." But will the 400 special police, deputized from Flint
Alliance members, actually try to carry out the injunction at
the zero hour of three o'clock? Will the 4,200 tin hats of
the National Guard, equipped with howitzers, machine-guns,
rifles, bayonets, and tear gas, be ordered to enforce the
court order? The union does not know. But they mobilize
hastily to resist. A picket line of 3,000 forms around Fisher
2, 10,000 citizens gather across the street, and a stream of
cars from all over Michigan brings in automobile workers by
the hundreds to reinforce the picket line. The picket line
cheers while It marches, and when 500 women of the "Emergency
Brigade" with red berets and "E. B." armbands join the line,
the sitdowners at the windows of the huge plant go wild. What
will happen? By nightfall Judge Gadola announces that until
General Motors again goes to court to give evidence that the
court order has been held in contempt, there will be no
ouster. The sitdowners remain in possession. Flint breathes
again.
At midnight a new crisis comes. The Flint Alliance
people are furious; a mobilization of special police takes
place; the Mayor openly tells newspapermen, "We are going
down to the plants to shoot." The union mobilizes again on
the streets. Finally a conference between union heads and the
chief of police results in an agreement that if the chief
will demobilize the deputies, the union will send the pickets
home.
The pact lasts till the next day, when the police break
it by swearing in 600 new deputies, bringing the number to
1,000. The city's temperature rises, and General Motors gets
a writ from the court for the arrest of the union leaders.
Sheriff Wolcott frantically tries to telephone Governor
Murphy to ask that the National Guard be permitted to assist
him in ousting the sitdowners. The union sends word to the
sitdowners in all three plants: "Be calm, probably nothing
will happen, but be pre- pared." Wives, sweethearts, and
mothers hold a dance in a snow storm in front of Fisher 2.
I
try to take the temperature of opposing forces. A National
Guard captain says to me, "If the Governor doesn't let the
National Guard evict the strikers all government is at an
end! We are under terrific pressure." he says, "the 'good'
citizens of Flint can't be held under much longer." In a
drugstore I talk to three guardsmen. "We have faith in
Governor Murphy; he'll never order us to put out the
strikers. And if he does, we'll shoot over their heads; we're
automobile workers too." But in the big houses on Du Pont
Avenue there is plenty of pressure for military eviction.
George Boysen has just announced that Governor Murphy should
be impeached. The owner of the drugstore has another view.
"This whole block of stores," he announces proudly, "is solid
for the union. Hell," he says, "I never got anything out of
G. M. dividends; a union victory is better for my business."
In the three plants held by the sitdowners morale has been
high all week. In Plant 4 (Chevrolet) heat and electricity
have been turned on and off intermittently by the company in
an apparent effort "peacefully" to evacuate the plant. The
company sends foremen to the wives of sitdowners urging them
to send "come home" messages to their husbands. But only a
handful have left. In Fisher 2 the original Flint sitdowners
are thoroughly cheerful. Since their battle with vigilantes
on Monday food has been coming in regularly; the men have
three radios, and by knocking the bottoms out of two
wastebaskets and tying them to stanchions in a storeroom,
they have made themselves a basket-ball court. Both plants
are guarded by howitzers and machine-guns and detachments of
bayonet-armed guardsmen. In Fisher 1 I attend a night meeting
of all the sitdowners. They have organized themselves In
preparation for a siege. They declare that they are ready to
"get shot" if General Motors gives the signal for enforcing
the court order.
Unquestionably the distinguishing feature of
the Flint strike, apart from the heroic determination of the
sitdowners, is the almost military control and discipline
that prevail among the strikers in the whole area. Union
headquarters in-the Pengelly building are thoroughly
departmentalized into strike strategy, commissary, women's
auxiliary, transportation, publicity, and other committees.
Inside the plants a committee governs through a corps of
plant stewards with from twenty-five to fifty men under each.
Machinery in the plants is scrupulously protected, and the
whole plant is cleaned once a day. Internal police keep
order, and there are sentinels on the roof. A stream of
workers signs up daily with the union in the Pengelly
building. Since the first sitdowner sat, membership has
doubled in the Flint area. But there are still thousands of
non-unionists.
Through the endless negotiations it is Flint
which has been the chief threat to Knudsen's position, the
chief weapon in Lewis's arsenal, and incidentally the bomb on
which Governor Murphy has been manfully sitting for more than
a week. Will it explode?
Copyright: ©2002 Michigan State University.