DON’T SHOOT BROTHERS! PICTURE CAPTION SUGGESTIONS WELCOME
Fred Bower’s Open Letter to British Soldiers – a Docker confronts Soldiers during Liverpool General Strike
Ron Noone recalls a dramatic but largely forgotten episode from Larkin’s stormy career involving Larkin’s life long friend, Anarchist Stone Mason Fred Bower
Fred’s “Open Letter to British soldiers” was sponsored by Jim Larkin. A month before the Liverpool General Transport Strike broke out in August 1911 Bower was visited by Larkin to be told “write me something for my paper”! The “request” by the editor of the recently formed Irish Worker could not be refused and “so I got my writing tackle and wrote an ‘Open Letter to British Soldiers’.” The Liverpool strikers distributed copies of the letter and a new newspaper, The Syndicalist printed it in its first issue. It caused considerable controversy and commotion and “in the prosecutions that followed on its publication, it was quoted in the courts, and printed verbatim in most of the papers of the day”! What was the outcome? Fred describes how “the editor of that paper (Guy Bowman), the printers (two brothers named Buck), Tom Mann (the Secretary), and a young zealot named Fred Crowsley (who got hold of one of the leaflets, and thought so much of it that, at his own expense, he had hundreds of it reprinted, which he himself distributed), all got gaoled, from one to six months. I had offered to give myself up, but Tom Mann would not hear of it. ‘It will only mean one more victim for them’, he said, ‘so why do it’”?
“Men! Comrades! Brothers! You are in the army.
So are WE. YOU, in the army of Destruction. WE, in the Industrial, or Army of Construction.
WE work at mine, mill, forge, factory, or dock, producing and transporting all the goods, clothing, and stuffs which makes it possible for people to live.
YOU ARE WORKING MEN’S SONS.
When we go on Strike to better OUR lot, which is the lot also of YOUR FATHERS, MOTHERS, BROTHERS, and SISTERS, YOU are called upon by your officers to MURDER US.
Don’t do it!
You know how it happens. Always has happened. We stand out as long as we can. Then one of our (and your) irresponsible Brothers, goaded by the sight and thought of his and his loved ones’ misery and hunger, commits a crime on property. Immediately YOU are ordered to MURDER US, as YOU did at Mitchellstown, at Featherstone, at Belfast.
Don’t you know, that when YOU are out of the colours, and become a ‘Civvy’ again, that YOU, like US, may be on Strike, and YOU, like us, be liable to be MURDERED by other soldiers.
Boys, DON’T DO IT!
‘THOU SHALT NOT KILL’ says the Book.
DON’T FORGET THAT!
It does not say, ‘unless you have a uniform on’. NO! MURDER IS MURDER, whether committed in the heat of anger, on one who has wronged a loved one, or by pipe-clayed Tommies with a rifle.
BOYS, DON’T DO IT!
ACT THE MAN! ACT THE BROTHER! ACT THE HUMAN BEING!
Property can be replaced! Human life, never!
The Idle Rich Class, who own and order you about, own and order us about also. They, and their friends, own the land and means of life of Britain.
YOU DON’T! WE DON’T.
When we kick, they order YOU TO MURDER US. When YOU kick, you get
court-martialed and cells.
YOUR fight is OUR fight. Instead of fighting AGAINST each other, WE should be fighting WITH each other.
Out of our loins, OUR lives, OUR homes, YOU came. Don’t disgrace YOUR PARENTS, YOUR CLASS, by being the willing tools any longer of the MASTER CLASS.
You, like us, are of the SLAVE CLASS. When WE rise; when we fall, even by your bullets, YE fall also.
England with its fertile valleys and dells, its mineral resources, its sea harvests, is the heritage of ages to us.
YOU no doubt joined the army out of poverty.
WE work long hours, for small wages, at hard work, because of OUR poverty. And both YOUR poverty, and OURS, arises from the fact that Britain, with its resources belongs to only a few people. These few, owing Britain, own OUR jobs. Owning OUR jobs, they own OUR VERY LIVES. Comrades, have WE called in vain? Think things out and refuse any longer to MURDER YOUR KINDRED. Help US to win back BRITAIN for the BRITISH, and the WORLD for the WORKERS!”