Bill Bailey (Spanish Civil War veteran)

William James Bailey (January 23, 1910 – February 27, 1995)[1] was an Irish-American Communist Party labor activist who fought in the Republican forces of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).[2]

Career

As a merchant seaman, Bailey stole the swastika flag that flew from the bow of the German ship Bremen docked in Manhattan in 1935. The Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels issued an angry statement, so New York's mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, sent ten detectives to the German consulate. These were all Jewish detectives - with names the like of Goldfarb and Ginsburg. Goebbels thought this was the biggest insult. He said, "We don't want these inferior bastards to guard any of our people."

Bailey, who was a Communist Party member from the working-class neighborhoods of Hoboken and Hell's Kitchen, went on to fight fascism during the Spanish Civil War. He joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American contingent of the International Brigades.[3]

During World War II, he served as a business agent for the Marine Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders Union (MFOW), before he himself joined the war effort during the invasion of the Philippines. He was expelled from the MFOW during the McCarthy era, and briefly edited The Black Gang News before moving to longshore work.[4]

Bailey later lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Personal and death

On February 27, 1995, he died of a long-lasting pulmonary condition caused by asbestos exposure during his work as a seaman.[4]

Works

His autobiography, The Kid from Hoboken, was written with Lynn Damme and published in San Francisco by Circus Lithographic Prepress in 1993.[5] Its full text is available online.[6]

Bill Bailey was featured in the film documentaries Seeing Red (1983) and The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War (1984).

Bailey's story is told in "The Agitator: William Bailey and the First American Uprising against Nazism" by Peter Duffy (PublicAffairs, March 2019).

gollark: I also disagree with the people saying they should teach stuff like doing taxes; there are entirely too many random "life skills" and they change lots. They should probably teach stuff like the ability to look this up on the internet on demand, and to usefully work from this information, rather than specific things.
gollark: How DARE I not have done some particular hobby you like. I will fetch my time machine and immediately rectify this.
gollark: No.
gollark: They did earlier.
gollark: Denied.

See also

References
  1. "Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Spanish Civil War History and Education: William James Bailey". www.alba-valb.org.
  2. Peter N Carroll The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, pages 180-183 and passim, Stanford University Press (1994) ISBN 0-8047-2277-3
  3. "Alternative America" (Ed Rampell interview of Studs Terkel), Socialist Review, April 2006
  4. "Bill Bailey (1911-1995)". Ireland and the Spanish Civil War. 28 Feb 2007. Archived from the original on October 28, 2009. Retrieved 2 June 2014.
  5. "The Kid from Hoboken". www.larkspring.com.
  6. Bailey, Bill (1993). Damme, Lynne (ed.). "The Kid from Hoboken". Larkspring Productions. Retrieved January 6, 2016.


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