The Red Scare on the Waterfront: A Transnational Assessment of the Suppression of International Maritime Solidarity, 1950-1955
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Strathclyde
Department Name: Faculty of Humanities and Social Science
Abstract
Examine how suppression of radical American, Australian, and British maritime unions, during the post-war Red Scare, has contributed to modern social and economic issues. It focusses on the US Magnuson Act of 1950, and how this suppressive legislation and the transnational impulses of which it was symptomatic, negatively affected several causes, including independence movements, and civil and gay rights. This work will analyse the critical role that trade unions can play in society by advocating for minority groups.
-What did the Magnuson Act reveal about the Red Scare's effect on civil and gay rights?
-Was the Magnuson Act part of a broader effort by western, liberal democracies to suppress maritime solidarity networks during the Marshall Plan and Korean War?
-Can transnational anti-communism and questions of race and gay rights be examined through the prism of maritime workers and their unions in US, British, and Australian contexts?
-How did anti-communist measures aimed at British and Australian maritime unions impede anti-colonialist movements?
No other section of American society was more affected by the Red Scare than maritime workers and yet the Magnuson Act remains a peculiar historical blind-spot, despite its added impacts on American civil and gay rights. (The statute's last, comprehensive analysis, in the Yale Law Review, led to sporadic, subsequent examinations.) The legislation coincided with pressure exerted by the British and Australian governments on communist-dominated maritime unions, links have not previously been explored. The project will examine how the post-war suppression of radical maritime unionism contributed to long-term social inequalities in the Anglophone world of the kind that prompted the Black Lives Matter movement.
The legislation initiated the largest blacklisting of workers in US history, yet historians have not fully examined how the government, unions, and civil rights organisations embraced the Magnuson Act as a mechanism by which to remove minority groups from maritime employment. The purging of allegedly subversive maritime workers constituted a pragmatic response to an uncertain international situation. The lack of research on the act's effects means that the Red Scare's scope has not been fully evaluated; nor have international factors been appraised. This project will address this by showing how the legislation connected to Anglophone suppression of radical maritime unions, and the effects on domestic and international social movements.
Allen will re-examine Hofstadter's assertion that the Red Scare was something visited upon the left by a paranoid right. All available documentation will be scrutinised to establish the extent to which seemingly left-wing organisations used the Red Scare for internal and factional purposes. (The Theory of Collective Abdication may explain how organisations might marginalise minorities, in ways contrary to their ambitions.) Red Scare inhibition of civil liberties, despite earlier links between left-wing maritime unions and gay rights, demonstrate that the suppression of radical unions negatively impacted the organisation and activity of minority rights. The analysis will provide a new perspective on the Red Scare, looking beyond state persecution of minorities by examining how groups can be persecuted by organisations established to protect them. The project will be the Magnuson Act's first in-depth study and the first transnational examination of the ongoing impact on the suppression of left-wing maritime unionism.
-What did the Magnuson Act reveal about the Red Scare's effect on civil and gay rights?
-Was the Magnuson Act part of a broader effort by western, liberal democracies to suppress maritime solidarity networks during the Marshall Plan and Korean War?
-Can transnational anti-communism and questions of race and gay rights be examined through the prism of maritime workers and their unions in US, British, and Australian contexts?
-How did anti-communist measures aimed at British and Australian maritime unions impede anti-colonialist movements?
No other section of American society was more affected by the Red Scare than maritime workers and yet the Magnuson Act remains a peculiar historical blind-spot, despite its added impacts on American civil and gay rights. (The statute's last, comprehensive analysis, in the Yale Law Review, led to sporadic, subsequent examinations.) The legislation coincided with pressure exerted by the British and Australian governments on communist-dominated maritime unions, links have not previously been explored. The project will examine how the post-war suppression of radical maritime unionism contributed to long-term social inequalities in the Anglophone world of the kind that prompted the Black Lives Matter movement.
The legislation initiated the largest blacklisting of workers in US history, yet historians have not fully examined how the government, unions, and civil rights organisations embraced the Magnuson Act as a mechanism by which to remove minority groups from maritime employment. The purging of allegedly subversive maritime workers constituted a pragmatic response to an uncertain international situation. The lack of research on the act's effects means that the Red Scare's scope has not been fully evaluated; nor have international factors been appraised. This project will address this by showing how the legislation connected to Anglophone suppression of radical maritime unions, and the effects on domestic and international social movements.
Allen will re-examine Hofstadter's assertion that the Red Scare was something visited upon the left by a paranoid right. All available documentation will be scrutinised to establish the extent to which seemingly left-wing organisations used the Red Scare for internal and factional purposes. (The Theory of Collective Abdication may explain how organisations might marginalise minorities, in ways contrary to their ambitions.) Red Scare inhibition of civil liberties, despite earlier links between left-wing maritime unions and gay rights, demonstrate that the suppression of radical unions negatively impacted the organisation and activity of minority rights. The analysis will provide a new perspective on the Red Scare, looking beyond state persecution of minorities by examining how groups can be persecuted by organisations established to protect them. The project will be the Magnuson Act's first in-depth study and the first transnational examination of the ongoing impact on the suppression of left-wing maritime unionism.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Arthur McIvor (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Dominic Allen (Student) |