Ambush at Keystone, Final Part: The Bullets of Hidden Gunmen
Posted by Mike E on July 26, 2009
Kasama is publishing a five part series on communist political work in the miners’ strike wave of the 1970s. We will be posting one piece a day over the next few days.
Ambush at Keystone:
Inside the Coalminers’ Great Gas Protest of 1974
Part 5: The Bullets of Hidden Gunmen
By Mike Ely
Two days later, the picket meeting was very small. Charles and I volunteered to go over Gary Mountain, south to Bishop on the Virginia state line – where, according to a rumor, some miners were threatening to scab. A crew from Pinnacle Creek went to picket Keystone No. 1. And that was about all our picket movement was capable of that night.
It was a long drive over that mountain. Charlie and I hid my VW bug on a side road, and walked to Bishop’s mine entrance. We stood there for an hour at shift change. No one came or went. Perhaps the rumors were wrong.
As we were about to leave, a man walked up. He whispered quickly that he was the son of a local sheriff. And he warned us that we were going to be tailed after leaving. A roadblock was planned for us on the lonely stretch to Gary.
They planned to beat us hard before taking us to jail. We thanked him (as you can imagine).
As soon as he left, two cop cars pulled up across from us and turned off their lights.
Charles and I exchanged glances and eased toward our car. As we drove off, the cop cars fell in behind us. Up ahead was a fork in the road. Left led back over Gary Mountain toward Welch. I had no intention of going there. Right turned east, over the farmland of Virginia.
I pulled wheel hard to the right, turned east, and roared across that state line into Virginia — as fast as a little VW could go. To our relief, we saw the headlights of the West Virginia cops fade behind us. We were jubilant – and drove east, and then north toward Bluefield. We would return home through a huge loop.
Waiting in Virginia
Our excitement stopped cold about forty minutes later, when we ran straight into a massive roadblock outside Bluefield. The Virginia State Police had been called out, and they were waiting for us.
We stopped, and they pulled us out of our car.
Within minutes they had taken the car apart – removing seats, emptying the trunk — obviously looking for guns. The West Virginia States had sent out a message that we were “armed and dangerous” – and the guns were supposed to be the grounds for our arrest in Virginia.
But by then during the strike, the danger of police search was so intense, that few pickets carried guns anymore.
When those Virginia cops couldn’t find any guns on us, they didn’t know what to do. So they put the car seats back in and let us go.
Relieved, we drove that last hour from Bluefield into the heart of McDowell.
As we passed through Keystone I saw the hillside completely lit up by flashing blue police lights. Something had gone down at the mine. But Charlie and I just drove home anyway and I fell into the sleep of the exhausted.
Ambush from Company Property
Someone banged on my door early. There had been a shooting at Keystone that night, and the details quickly came out.
At Keystone pickets gather on the road, just below the mine parking lot, in front of an old church. As five pickets stood there that night, under the glare of the town’s streetlight, someone opened fire. The shots came from company property, from a service road above the church. They came from a repeating rifle (or perhaps two) shooting into the crowd. Jerry J, a young heavyset mine committeeman from the west of Welch, went down hard. As the other pickets scattered for cover, hiding behind a church wall, the assassins started pumping bullets into Jerry, slowly, one after another. The shots tore up his intestine from several sides. Blood started to pool up below him, and run to the side of the road. He would have died there on the ground, if Roger D had not jumped out of cover, under fire, and dragged Jerry’s limp body to safety.
By the next day, I heard a new report: Apparently someone in Keystone was worried that the assassins would be identified, named, arrested or perhaps hunted down. So the word went out that if anything happened to them, someone among the strikers would die. My name was the one mentioned. I was by then the best-known supporter of the strike at Keystone mine, and I guess they figured they’d know where to find me. [14]
There were also rumors that Pinnacle Creek crew had stopped in the Keystone pool hall before picketing, and that they had acted with bravado there. But Roger denied it and I was never able to confirm what the truth was.
“Let Him Die”
The shooting stopped everything cold. It was as if the whole county dropped into a deep freeze.
No one dared picket. No one dared talk about working. The state police didn’t dare patrol off the main road. As each of the following nights closed in, the roads were simply deserted.
During the days, we were all down at the Keystone hospital, where Jerry J hung between life and death. In an ugly scene, one of the nurses had refused to treat Jerry as he came in. “Let him die,” she had said. That nurse was said to be the wife of Jack P. – safety committeeman at Keystone #1. Alarmed we organized a round-the-clock guard for Jerry J, haunting the halls of the hospital, talking in subdued tones about what to do next.
Suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, the announcement came:
Governor Moore had withdrawn his rationing order. The state police were going to be pulled out. If the gunmen had intended to break the strike, they had failed terribly.
We had won. It was bewildering. Is this what victory looks like? Is that how it happens?
When you study military history, you realize there is often a moment in many major battles, when the generals of both sides think they are losing. They are each receiving awful reports – about shattered units, exhausted reserves, buckling flanks – and they are rarely seeing the same kinds of reports on the other side. Often each general thinks he is the one on the brink of collapse.
And to us, in this battle, sitting in that hospital corridor, things looked bad. Our militants were exhausted, and some felt like we were being beaten. But then, we were not reading the grim reports that were stacking up on the governor‘s desk.
In my own primitive linear thinking, I always thought of a strike as an economic squeeze – we would stop production until the coal operators started screaming for coal and profit. But this moment revealed the powerful independent role of politics within class struggle. In the final analysis, the governor’s retreat had not mainly come from an economic calculation, but from the realization that events were now careening in completely unpredictable directions — while his army of state police sat, hated and vulnerable, right at the frontlines.
Among us miners, there was immediately talk of returning to work in triumph on Sunday night. But there was one problem: Court hearings were scheduled for that Monday. Large numbers of men were required to be in the Welch Courthouse. In a Kafkaesque touch, the only judge willing (and corrupt enough) to do this dirty work was the county’s divorce judge. He was the one holding court.
Springing the Jailhouse Doors
As we gathered in the courthouse that Monday, we heard that some of the Gary mines had already started working late Sunday night. The courtroom was packed, and one by one, the pickets were called before the old bastard.
It was a farce. Miners stood up to give their explanations.
“I was not there, the police must have made a mistake.”
“I was not picketing, I was fishing on the bridge that day.”
“I live on the bottom land by the mine, I was returning home when I was arrested.”
Several of the workers had brought their fishing poles as “evidence.”
The judge was having none of it. The gimmicks were all thrown out of court. And one by one the sentences came down – guilty with sizable jail time. These guys were obviously going to be jailed, then fired , then blacklisted – since they would be unable to return to work this week.
The group included many of our most solid militants – including DD and the heart of his crew.
Fifty of us met outside on the courthouse steps. The mood was hard, even grim. “We meet at the bypass tonight.” Some left on the spot to start pulling Gary’s mines. Gina and I volunteered to write a flyer explaining what had just happened. We drove home and typed up a draft.
It was late afternoon as we rolled back through Welch, heading north to meet with our comrades, and mimeograph the announcement.
As we passed through northern Welch, we suddenly noticed a huge crowd of cars crammed in at the main burger drive-in. We pulled into the parking lot. There, sitting in the window, was DD and his boys – roaring with laughter and celebrating.
Someone high up in the state or in the coal corporations – had heard that these jailings were reigniting the strike. And they had simply ordered the judge’s decisions be reversed. I have no idea exactly how that reversal happened – I don’t know what laws were bent, or money exchanged hands. But it is clear that our threats had kicked open the jailhouse doors.
The Gas Protest of 1974 was over – a rare victory for a completely illegal strike.
And yet….
Afterward
Mao writes that to know the pear you must taste the pear.
Returning to work, after three weeks of strike, my mind was spinning with unanswered questions. I was trying to understand some truly writhing contradictions that had revealed themselves.
Clearly the struggle “the workers themselves are beginning to wage” had a more complex relationship with class consciousness than I had understood.
This would become even more clear when, shortly afterwards, a strike broke out around Charleston inspired by the religious right. Conservative fundamentalist preachers in patriotic three-cornered hats began pulling out mines – in a protest over the use of progressive textbooks in Kanawha County schools. The inclusion of radical Black authors and sex education outraged some, and confused others. And suddenly we communists found ourselves, not joining the next wildcat strike, but uniting with a community organization of Black Viet veterans to expose the racism of this Textbook Protest and actively stop it from spreading to the whole state.
What emerged over the next years, and what remains to be fully summed up, was a real gap between our ability to lead militant strike activity, and our plans to develop a foothold for socialist, revolutionary politics.
In some ways “the crown lay in the gutter” in the coalfields – the miners were fighting hard for their future, generally using their own local trade union structures as their organization – and yet were desperately looking for uncorrupted, militant leadership, as an alternative to the betrayals of their salaried union apparatus. A small serous group like the RU ‘s Miners Right to Strike Committee could emerge as a welcome vehicle and rallying point within that.
And yet, at the same time, our attempts at more politically radical activity — organizing of revolutionary May First celebrations, support for African liberation struggles, support for the 1979 Iranian revolution, informational work around socialist revolution and capitalist restoration in China, the work of our revolutionary newspaper, attempting to recruit into the Revolutionary Communist Party and more – all that landed on considerably less fertile ground, and often found its smaller audiences outside the ranks of the active miners.
Those two spheres of work – leading militant strike struggles and promoting revolutionary political campaigns – developed extremely different dynamics despite our many efforts to fuse them, to bring a section of the miners over to a consciously revolutionary pole. Instead of complementing each other – those different initiatives started to pull our work pulled apart at a very basic level.
It proved inevitable that “one aspect will eat up the other” (as Maoists say). [15]
As the 1974 Gas Protest ended, many of those experiences – including the escalating Cointelpro attacks and waves of anti-communist hysteria – lay in the future. So did the biggest strikes, of 1975 and 1976, where the Miners Right to Strike Committee played its role, and helped this miners upsurge take the stage in an exceptionally powerful way. The discussion and summation of all that is yet to come.
Notes
[14] BT chose to put out a simplistic explanation of this shooting: He said this had almost certainly been a hit job organized by U.S. Steel, because Roger and most of the militants on that road were from U.S. Steel’s brand new Pinnacle Creek #50 mine. I thought that explanation was overly tidy – especially since there was no evidence other than BT’s hunch. In fact, it was whispered that the trigger men that night were workers from Keystone #1 – and two specific, very hard men were sometimes mentioned.
I don’t know precisely what motivated them to shoot, and I don’t know who was really behind it – and I never pushed hard to dig out the answers to those questions.
But on my return to work, I made a point of seeking those men out – and giving them a chance to know me, as a person and as an active communist. After all, I had to drive past that church wall, in front of that clump of woods every day, week after week, for years. One of them, at least, became, over the next years, a regular reader of revolutionary literature, and someone, I believe, who had my back.
[15] Some parts of this dilemma have been explored in an initial way in letter 2 of 9 Letters to Our Comrades, by Mike Ely
Adrienne said
Mike,
These pieces have been extremely interesting to read, and the further comments you’ve added to these accounts of your work and life at the mines within the thread On Communist Work: That Feeling of Stage Diving in the Dark added incredibly valuable insights as well, in my opinion.
Have you thought at all about turning this bit of history and your first hand experiences surrounding it into a book?
Just wanted to express my appreciation of this series and say thanks for sharing.
Radical Eyes said
Thanks, Mike, for passing on this article on organizing in the coal fields. And for taking the time and energy to write this in the first place.
I have read the article with interest and enjoyment. I then passed it onto my father (who was a founding member of RU, and a member of the Party until 1977-8…I think I mentioned this to you already.) He enjoyed it too.
Anyway, we both had a number of thoughts on the piece that we wanted to share.
I will just sketch the first of them here, as I am rather short on time. (I have five or six more such points to come!)
1) I wonder if you might have offered more analysis of the (in my view, seemingly rather mixed) political line around which this mining protest/strike came to unite from the very beginning…
That is: “No Gas? No Coal”…At the very least this line exists it seems to me in considerable tension with the notion of “self-determination of people/nation’s to their natural resources,” a principle which you briefly allude to your mentioning in the very first community-worker meeting that you attend. Your treatment here leaves me wanting more…:
For instance, how did the people that you encountered respond to your assertion–then or later–of the oil-producing nations’ right to control–and thus, to slow or halt–the flow of petroleum, a position that seems at least at first glance to clash with the (at times arrogantly asserted American) notion that “we” have the god-given right to unlimited access to fuel for our cars…(I’m not saying that you can reduce the situation of highly exploited mine-workers starving for gas to get to work to this kind of ideology alone, but…) You see where I am going with this…
Obviously later on you dig into the broader question of how a revolutionary ought to relate to workers struggles whose “advanced” political nature are very much in question. But I think that this earlier section provides an equally valuable opportunity to develop and to foreground this theme/question from the get-go.
Ka Frank said
I look forward to reading the next installment, focusing on the work of the Miner’s Right to Strike Committee. Clearly one of the key points will be exploring the great tension between basing work in militant economic struggle and doing work around key political fault lines in society.
As Mike has noted, two of the key factors in creating a gap between these arenas of struggle were the geographic isolation of the coalfields from the major urban centers, and the unusually large proportion of white workers in this basic industry. Looking towards the future, it is more likely that areas of militant economic struggle–kicked off a capitalist economy in crisis–will be centered among concentrations of immigrant workers in or closer to urban centers.
Mike E said
Radical Eyes wrote:
Sorry this reply took a while. I have been (as you can imagine) submerged in the “Revolutionary Work in Our Times” conference for the last two weeks. So did not have a chance to dig into your thoughts (in a way they deserved). So, I’m a bit more free to do so now….
The Gas Protest was, essentially, an economic strike — with very specific and rather simple demands: stop the rationing of gas in West Virginia and give the people gas to get to-and-from work (and to live our lives in this rural area).
It was aimed at the governor (who imposed the gas rationing), though, obviously, striking was intended to affect the coal monopolies (and their corporate customers) — with the implicit understanding that they, somehow ultimately, stood behind this governor. And it was a demand on behalf of the larger people (i.e. it was not a narrow demand that the miners should get gas — through some special exceptional arrangement.)
It was an example of economic struggle developing some elements of political demands — since these were not demands aimed at a particular employer, but rather at the state. And so there was an aspect of a general demand (by coalminers) on behalf of the people generally, against a policy of the state. And in those ways it was similar to the earlier 1969 national wildcat strike over Black Lung (which was also an economic demand for recognision of Black Lung disease and compensation for the disabled miners, made against the federal government by striking the mines).
I have to say that I don’t remember this demand (“No Gas? No Coal.”) being “in considerable tension with the notion of ‘self-determination of people/nation’s to their natural resources.’”
The strike and the miners leading it really did not take up much discussion of the international embargo that triggered the gas shortage. There was not (that I remember) much sense of the miners supporting or opposing the OPEC embargo one way or another. I don’t remember miners saying “The Arabs are depriving us of oil.” It was a sense that they thought this shortage was manufactured, that they assumed the gas was there somewhere, and that the particular policy of rationing was intolerable.
This itself reflects the political level of their movement — and the sense of isolation among the miners. In other words, in many ways, they lived in a world of “miners and coal operators” — and if they were suddenly deprived of the means to travel, they felt this was an unacceptable assault on the very basic rights of freedom. Setting aside important (and more recent) questions about cars and internal combustion engines generally — the fact is that the increasing ownership of cars in the coalfields were key in the breakup of the prison-like “company town” system in the 1950s. Without cars, miners were confined to the environs of “their” mine, and trapped under the constant eye of company spies and enforcers. And the rationing of gas (and the stories of miners “sleeping at the mine”) raised the specter of a return to thos awful confinements in company towns.
I do see where you are going.
I think that the car culture of rural America objectively rests on empire — and specifically on the post-WW2 expansion of U.S. influence into the Middle East (at the expense of Britain, Germany and France.) And that inevitably gets reflected in the outlook of people in the U.S. (including working people involved in struggle.)
I met workers who were quite conscious that (for example) their military “service” in the Korean War was a means to guarantee a high U.S. perch in the world pecking order (and who were aware that this was not about “bringing freedom” to colonial people).
But I have to repeat that the contradiction (tension) that you assume was not as evident in the strike. I remember the embargo being debated in the local “letters to the editor” of the Welch Daily News, etc. And you can imagine the kinds of imperialist anti-Arab sentiments common in the media at that time (and therefore common in the discussions among workers).
But this strike was viewed as a fight against the Governor (Arch Moore), his rationing policy and the coal operators. And it was an example of people thinking “if there is a shortage of this gas, then the rationing can’t take the form of depriving us while the coal companies have lots of gas for their trucks and trains.” At many mines, the coal operators maintained private gas stations (for fueling their vehicles) — since the trucking of coal from smaller mines was a key part of their operations. and there was outrage that they seemed to have “plenty of gas” (and were secretly providing unlimited gas to mine superintendants and foremen), while the workers were driving “on empty” through the dark mountain roads to and from work.
I don’t remember any response to my continual agitation about the rights of third world peoples to control their resources — largely because it didn’t seem to collide (clearly or openly) with the general concerns or demands that motivated this movement. And there was (by the way) a general understanding among the workers of how the coal operators had “tricked” the original hillbilly inhabitants of this area out of zillions of dollars — buying their underground ‘mineral rights” for pennies in the early part of the 1900s, before anyone understood the massive wealth that would be flowing underground. (I.e. the hillybilly clans were led to sign away their rights to underground minerals in operations that echoed the ways earlier Indian peoples had been tricked into signing away their rights to large parts of land — though a mixture of petty payments, deceit and threat of violence.) And while certainly there were powerful patriotic and imperialist sentiments among coal miners — there was also a sense of how big corporations tricked poor people out of their resources.
I think we need to generally re-discuss the relationship of economic struggles to revolutionary movements. I think this Gas Protest was a just cause — in a pretty straight forward way. Among the communists involved there was some debate over whether it was an economic struggle, or whether it had become a political struggle (because the economic demands of the workers were now being pointed at the state rather than directly at immediate employers). But it was, in the final analysis, an economic struggle (that had gotten some “political character” because the rationing had been carried out through the state government.)
And economic struggles are just that economic struggles — they don’t generally challenge the property system. But they do sometimes bring broad numbers of workers into motion, political life and struggle — in ways that do have the potential to develop important forms of organization and experience. I think it is impossible to understand the upsurge of miners wildcats apart from the larger rebelliousness of the 1960s — and the ways that contagion spread into a conservative rural area with a strong trade union tradition.
Certainly such struggles are sometimes better conditions for communist work than the much more quiet hum-drum of life among workers in other industries. Many communists going into steel, or electronics telephone, etc workplaces had much less happen there, and found themselves trying to generate even the most basic manifestations of collective resistance.
Our experience in these miners strikes did, however, underscore Lenin’s “What is to be Done?” point — that economic struggles are not (inherently) the most favorable terrain for developing political consciousness.
I believe that there are other, larger faultlines in the system around which more explicitly political struggle emerges — and through which working people are much more likely to develop revolutionary political consciousness.
It was not accidental (I believe) that the workers most attracted to our communist politics had often developed much of their “broadness of mind” precisely through earlier personal involvement in the civil rights movement and in the California farmworkers struggles (which emerged largely from the faultlines of nationality and racism that were so active in the 1960s).
Economic struggles have their place — i.e. it is not “economist” for communists to participate in economic struggles, and it is hardly reactionary for the workers to raise demands to improve their conditions. The miners wildcats were very important movements among the working pepole — and it would (in fact) have been criminal for communists to stand aside from them. And they did (as lenin said) bring even the backward into struggle, and did (in great flashes) illuminate some important truths about class society and capitalism. And those things were important for communists to speak to, in a communist way, through our own independent work and analysis (what lenin calls “being tribunes of the people.”)
Bring it on.
Radical Eyes said
I appreciate your thoughtful and detailed response, Mike.
I’ll do my best to post the next couple of response “points” asap.