Red International of Labor Unions
The success of strikes in many cases depends upon the organization of the picket lines and the ability of the strikers to meet the attacks of the gangsters and the strikebreakers in the pay of the employers. In this regard the organization of picketing and workers’ defense corps assumes an especially important role. The strike or lockout committee must do the following:
1. Absolutely all workers, no matter what their beliefs and affiliations, must be drawn into the picket line, in such a manner as to have the experienced, militant comrades working together with the unorganized workers, the social-democrats, catholics, etc.
2. The leading pickets should be carefully chosen, utilizing not only the young workers, but also the older workers, men and women, and especially workers’ wives.
3. The very broadest circle of workers must be drawn into the picket line (mass picketing) in order to engage the largest possible number of workers in active work during the strike.
4. Special demonstrations of strikers’ wives and children against the strikebreakers and the police force defending the strikebreakers, is very effective.
5. Picketing must be obligatory upon all strikers. No worker can refuse to carry out this definite duty during the strike.
6. In countries having a fascist regime (Italy, Poland) or those having organized employers and reformist strikebreakers (United States, England, Roumania, Bulgaria,) it is necessary from the very inception of the strike to commence organizing defense corps, drawing into these corps the most active groups of workers.
7. It is especially desirable to draw into the picketline and into the workers’ defense corps, members of workers’ sport organizations, members of proletarian women’s organizations, etc. These can play a very important role during the strike.
8. It is necessary to teach not only the pickets, but all the strikers to draw the proper conclusions from the conflicts between the pickets and the state authorities, pointing out to them the elementary fact—the connection existing between the employers and the bourgeois government.
9. Especial attention should be given the fight against various police and private detective organizations (factory militia, detectives, shop spies, stool pigeons, fire brigades which are part of the police force, etc.)