Heed This Appeal

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 5, 1 June 1913, Page 1

Heed This Appeal

The workers of Sweden have issued a manifesto to the World’s Workers, calling for help. It concerns all toilers, but more particularly those coming in contact with Swedish ships and Swedish goods.

In 1908 the workers in most of the industries of Sweden were involved in a bitter struggle for better conditions. The watersiders were particularly solid and militant* and they had every prospect of victory. The Swedish employers, who, like the employers of England, America, Australia, New Zealand and of all other countries, always prate of their patriotism, imported the scum of the English waterfront into Sweden to scab on the strikers.

“ Under the protection of police and military these vile strikebreakers took the bread out of the mouths of starving Swedish proletarians and their families, who were treated with the utmost brutality. On the night of the 12th of July a bomb was exploded on the Amalthea, a vessel on which some of the strike-breakers were being housed and fed.

“ One was killed and some others wounded. The bomb was not thrown to kill, but only to scare. In fact, the English strike-break-ers immediately demanded to be taken instantly out of the country.

‘ ‘ Our fellow worker Anton Nilsson was the man who placed the bomb, Algot Rosberg and Alfred Stern were his associates. Nilsson and Rosberg were condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, a punishment which was also meted out to Stern. Nearly five years have elapsed and our comrades are stfil in prison . . they are now being brutally beaten and maltreated by the vindictive tools of our masters, and the prospects are that such treatment will continue 1 until their hairs are gray’ or their bodies rest in the grave.

“ Shall we allow this to continue ? No, not if International Solidarity is anything but a mere phrase. AVe have started a powerful agitation for the liberation of our comrades. We* the Swedish workers, are not strongly enough organised . . . and it will be many years before we shall have succeeded in enlightening and organising our class for common action. But with International aid

we can force the prison doors open. “ WILL YOU HELP US f “ All we ask is that you immediately boycott all Swedish goods and that you BOYCOTT AND ‘ BLOCKADE ’ all vessels carrying goods from and to Sweden, so that you strangle Swedish foreign trade, until Rosberg, Nilsson and Stern are again free men. . . . AYherever you see the blue flag with the yellow cross steer clear of it ! It is the emblem of the Swedish master class. It stands for oppression, poverty and misery for our class. The Swedish workers have no country and recognise only two nations—the capitalist class and the working class. Comrades and fellow workers of the whole world: Pleed our appeal! ’ ’

If, as we have been told so often in New Zealand and Australia lately, many thousands of workers have endorsed the I.W.W. preamble, there must be a fairly wide recognition of the Class Struggle. Those who endorse that preamble and claim to be revolutionary industrial unionists cannot ignore this appeal.

AYho was it remarked “ Sabotage the goods?”