Librarians hit war drive

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International Viewpoint is a twice-monthly Marxist magazine providing current news analysis on international events. Recent issues have covered the coal miners' strike in Britain, the battle for a 35-hour workweek in West Germany, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Central American revoluWe offer a special introductory offer of three issues for $3. A six-month subscription is $22, and one-year of International Viewpoint is available for $42. For in-depth coverage of world events subscribe now! Write to Box 80B, 2520 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL 60614.

DALLAS-The membership of the American Library Association (ALA), on June 25, 1984, at its annual conference, passed a resolution urging the withdrawal of all American military personnel and the cessation of all military aid and covert intervention in Central America. The motion, sponsored by the Social Responsibilities Round Table of ALA and its Task Force on Peace Information Exchange, was passed without discussion by a close, but decisive vote.

The ALA, founded in 1876, is one of the oldest and largest professional associations in the country. The membership of nearly 38,000, is drawn from library workers at all levels.

Until the early 70s, the association maintained a strict neutrality on all political questions and took positions only on issues which could be shown to relate directly to its stated major objective of "promoting and improving library service and librarianship."

Responding io membership pressure, ALA showed signs of change in the Vietnam era, and passed a landmark resolution calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.

In recent years the association has passed resolutions supporting the Freeze movement and condemning the Ku Klux Klan, but the action clauses of the resolutions have been restricted to urging the dissemination of information on these issues.

Citing the Vietnam resolution as a precedent, the mover of the resolution 1 year ($42) • 6 month ($22)| trial subscription- 3 issues ($3)

tion. placed the Central American intervention in the context of the total proposed military budget of over $290 billion, and pointed to the diminution of human services, including library service, that always accompanies militarism on such a scale.

The library workers in attendance at the membership agreed. ALA has now gone on record as joining the growing protest against U.S. intervention in that region.

SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1984

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Auto worker strike in 1937. Cochran was a member of the leader of the SWP's trade union fraction during the 1930s. "The setback suffered by militants in the UAW was deeply felt by Cochran."

Bert Cochran, until 1953 a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party for 20 years, died in June at the age of 70. He became a Trotskyist in the early 1930s and after leading a group opposed to a majority of the party in the 1950s, organized about 100 people who left to publish "The American Socialist," a monthly magazine of commentary on political questions.

Cochran made his first contributions during the early days of the upsurge of the 1930s. He became an organizer of skilled workers in the auto industry in the Ohio-Michigan area who joined the Mechanics Educational Society of America, one of the new militant unions that arose in that period. He functioned in Cleveland, Toledo, and Detroit, and was responsible for bringing many workers into the union movement.

In Toledo he also helped the large Lucas County Unemployed League, which had played an outstanding role in the Auto-Lite strike in 1934. He showed the unemployed leaders how to put their organization on a more solid footing, with payment of dues, membership cards, an office of their own, secretary, stationery, a flag, banners, weekly membership meetings, and so on. Up until then the unemployed had few of these attributes of an ongoing organization.

Cochran was only 20 years old at this time, but he looked older as he was partly bald and was also very authoritative in his manner. But he was also knowledgeable about what to do.

In the early part of 1939 he came to New York to take the post of SWP local organizer. He was a member of the party's national committee and political committee and carried a good deal of authority because of his union work in the Midwest. At that time the SWP had a multiple-branch setup in New York with 10 or 12 branches.

During the long drawn-out factional fight in the SWP in 1939 and 1940 he was a leader of the majority caucus that was led by James P. Cannon, Vincent R. Dunne, and Farrell Dobbs, and supported by Leon Trotsky. He lost the post of New York local organizer when the opposition, led by Max Shachtman, James Burnham, and Martin Abern won a majority of the delegates at a city convention held in the fall of 1939. Abern replaced him as organizer.

After the April 1940 split in the party, Cochran played a more important role in the leadership. He was a member of the party's leading bodies and in October 1945 he became editor of Fourth International, the monthly theoretical magazine of the SWP. He held this post until January 1949, using the name E.R. Frank, both as editor and frequent contributor.

It was in the late 1940s, as the Cold War and witch-hunt were heating up, that Cochran began to change his thinking. Up to this time he had been an orthodox Marxist and Trotskyist and a noteworthy party leader. But the failure of the union movement to go forward from the post-World War II strike upsurge discouraged him.

He suffered additional disappointment in the United Automobile Workers Union from the victory of the Reuther forces over the previous leadership known as the Thomas-Addes caucus. The latter had been allied to the Stalinists in the union for years, but by 1947 was not close to them any longer. Reuther draped himself in the American flag and started to brand anyone and everyone who was opposed to his taking full control of the UAW a "communist control of the UAW a "commuThe Thomas-Addes group appointed Cochran editor of their caucus weekly newspaper which they called "FDR," after the late President Roosevelt. This was a crude effort to outpatriot the Reuther people. But it failed as Reuther had the backing of CIO President Philip Murray and other powerful support, and managed to oust the old leaders and take over full control of the union.

This setback suffered by the more militant elements in the UAW, plus many similar reverses in other unions, was deeply felt by Cochran. At the 1952 convention of the SWP, where he made the report on trade union work, Cochran began by telling the delegates that his administration of the post of national labor secretary had seen more SWP members ousted from union offices of various kinds than any of his predecessors. This was supposed to be a joke but, unfortunately, it was the truth as well.

The 1952 convention was peaceful as Cochran's faction and the majority had reached an agreement beforehand to cool down disputes within the party. These had flared up from time to time for about two years. But the convention had hardly adjourned when the fighting started again. The dispute was over the question of whether or not to build a party. Cochran favored giving up the party and just publishing a magazine. There were also important differences on international questions. The Cochran group thought that World War III was imminent while the majority did not think so.

Ultimately the differences led to a split when the Cochranite members of the party national committee were suspended at a plenum held in early November 1953. The Cochran group had committed a provocation by boycotting an SWP 25th anniversary meeting and conclusion of a New York mayorality campaign a few nights before the plenum. They made it a question of discipline for their members not to attend. Not one of their group came to the meeting as this writer can testify, as I was in New York at the time and present at the meeting.

At the next convention in 1954, the Cochranites were formally expelled from the party. One of the losses suffered by the SWP was the departure of a layer of party leaders who were of the generation next in line for top party leadership. Among them were Cochran, George Clarke, Harry Braverman, Joseph Andrews, Mike Bartell, Al Adler, and Ernest Mazey.

The main lesson to be drawn from the record of Bert Cochran in the revolutionary socialist movement is that even though he was a very talented person, other factors eventually worked to destroy his usefulness to the workers. For example, he stood high in the party leadership when the SWP leaders who had been convicted in the 1940 Minneapolis Trials had to go to prison.

The problem arose as to who should hold the post of acting national secretary of the party during their absence. Cannon told this writer more than once that on the basis of ability and experience, Cochran should have been chosen. But, Cannon said they decided to recommend Morris Stein for the post. Cannon said he and Vincent R. Dunne told Cochran privately why they were proposing Stein and not him. The reason was that he did not get along with many people, was too arbitrary, and so on. Cochran understood the criticism and took it with good grace. His relation with others improved after this incident.

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