SYDNEY'S BURNING
(essay)
There is no doubt that some members of the IWW were incendiarists or would-be incendiarists. Tom Barker says as much in his recently published reminiscences: warehouses and big places did go up in fire. It was very easy for anyone who got in with the stuff. After all, there was nothing new about fire-dope. It was just a mixture of phosphorus and calcium [sic] bi-supplied. It was a well-known method of making fire, wrapping these components together in a wet rag and then, by and by, when it dried out, the phosphorus set up spontaneous combustion. There was no secret about it. It had a long history behind it in Ireland, where they called it "Fenian fire". It had been used in Australia by shearers over many generations to get rid of faulty accommodation. If the owner wouldn't put in decent buildings and sleeping quarters, when the boys left to go onto the next station they took some of this stuff, rolled it up in wet newspaper or cloth, and about two days after they had gone something happened. When they came back next year there were brand new buildings waiting for them. That was a method of cajoling the cocky into doing what the law required him to do. p> We had many little groups amongst us who were doing various things, and those things were deadly secret and they kept them to themselves, so that you might be God Almighty in the organization, but you wouldn't know half a dozen things that were going on. There was a chemist, Scully, who ratted on the IWW, who made the mixture. Others, there was no doubt at all about it, had some knowledge of it.
This was known to the labour movement at the time. The People , the paper of the Socialist Labor Party, wrote on December 14, 1916, immediately after the conviction of the Twelve: "Once more the tactics of the Chicago faction of the IWW has led the members of the working class to jail. " Yet the labour movement came to the defence of the Twelve - at first only a minority, but gradually the defence campaign came to embrace the whole movement.
It was partly the belief that, as the People said, "Even admitting that these men were guilty of the act of which they were convicted, the penalties imposed were out of all proportion to the deeds alleged to be committed ... It was partly that the labour movement believed that the Twelve had been prejudged by "certain sections of the Public, Press, Pulpit, and especially Politicians ", and crucified by war hysteria and the propaganda needs of the conscription campaign.
And it was partly the belief that the case against the Twelve was a frame. p> Of this last, there can be little doubt. But how was the frame accomplished? And precisely who was framed? p> Firstly, who was framed? In one sense every one of the Twelve, for, as Henry Boote wrote: "the evidence on which these men were convicted was rotten through and through ". But some of them were involved in incendiarism, or at least in preparation for incendiarism.
If we take the confessions of Scully and Davis Goldstein to Judd as bearing some relation to the truth, this is the picture: Grant: exonerated by Scully and Goldstein. Larkin: exonerated by Scully and Goldstein. King: exonerated by Scully and Goldstein. Moore: exonerated by Scully and Goldstein. Reeve: exonerated by Scully and Goldstein. Besant: exonerated by Scully and Goldstein. McPherson exonerated by Goldstein. Beatty: exonerated by Goldstein. Glynn: exonerated by Scully. Fagin: incriminated by Scully. Teen: incriminated by Scully. Hamilton: incriminated by Scully.
(Goldstein's statutory declaration named only those whom he believed to be "absolutely innocent of the crimes upon which they are convicted". The presumption was that he believed the others - that is, Fagin, Teen, Hamilton, and Glynn, against all of whom he had given evidence - to be guilty. Scully's statement to Mutch and Connolly exonerated the six listed above and incriminated Fagin, Teen, Hamilton, Besant, and "Morgan [probably Mahony], and the others". However, Besant was included in Scully's list of those who "did it" in error, as Scully later pointed out; it is probable that the name should be Beatty, against whom he did give evidence. Whether Scully's "others" was meant to include McPherson is unexplained, but it seems unlikely, in view of his comments about the way in which the evidence against McPherson was rigged.)
That leaves a hard core of Fagin, Teen, and Hamilton, and the possibility of some degree of participation or knowledge on the part of Beatty, Glynn and McPherson. The others are definitely out. And now we are getting closer to the truth.
How was the frame-up organised? I believe what happened was this. Detective Moore was the police expert on subversive activities. In July, he hired Joe Brown to spy on the IWW for him; ea...
