Labour's martyrs: the story of Sacco and Vanzetti: Workers' Liberty 3/53

Who can save Sacco and Vanzetti? By James P Cannon, Labor Defender January 1927 The Sacco-Vanzetti case is at a turning point. Legally speaking, it now rests on another appeal to the Massachusetts State Supreme Court from the latest decision of Judge Thayer refusing a new trial. But speaking from a more fundamental standpoint, that is, from the standpoint of the class struggle, the issue really hangs on developments taking place within the Sacco-Vanzetti movement which embraces many workers of various views. Within this movement lately a certain indecision and hesitation has been noticeable...

The working-class victims of bourgeois repression and deliberate murder are legion. The murder of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were burned alive in the electric chair in Massachusetts, on August 23, 1927, was a cold-blooded crime committed by the American capitalist class in the full sharp glare of world wide attention and protest. Mass demonstrations were organised in every city in the world where Communist and Socialist movements existed. Protests and demands for clemency were made by many well known writers and politicians. These included British working-class leader George...

This is the famous last speech of Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the class-war prisoner who, alongside Nicola Sacco, both of them anarchists, died in the electric chair in August 1927, framed by the US authorities. This speech, despite its broken English, is so beautiful and moving that it falls naturally into verse form. No-one has ever expressed more splendidly and with such stirring, simple language the aspirations and hopes of all those who fight for a better world. Once read, these words form part of every socialist’s heritage. This typographical arrangement of Vanzetti’s speech first appeared in...

1920 MAY 5—Nicola Sacco and Bartolmeo Vanzetti are arrested on a streetcar while going from West Bridgewater to Brockton, Massachusetts, AUGUST 16—Vanzetti is charged with attempting to rob a cashier in Bridgewater on December 24, 1919, and is sentenced to prison for from 12 to 15 years by Judge Thayer in Plymouth. SEPTEMBER 11—Sacco and Vanzetti are accused of being the chief participants in the murder that occurred in South Braintree on April 15, 1920, where, near the shoe factory of Slater Morrill Company, Ferdinand Parcenter and his guard, Alexander Beradelli, were killed. The $15,000...

THE United States government is on its trial for murder. The indictment is that in order to conceal the secret murder by its police of an Italian worker, Andrea Salsedo, it is now judicially murdering two other Italian workers, Nicola Sacco and Hartolomeo Vanzetti. First of all, the facts. In the spring of 1920 war passion and panic that had been worked up to even a higher pitch in America than elsewhere, and had not there worked itself off in war exhaustion, was diverted by the German collapse and the Russian revolution from the "Boche" to the "Bolshie." And the cruel hounding of pacifists or...

Click here to download as pdf Click here to download as mobi Click here to download as epub Or read online here: The Palmer Raids The death of Andrea Salsedo Who were Sacco and Vanzetti? Vanzetti's first trial The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti Sacco is also identified The hnourable and virtuous prosecution witnesses "Consciousness of guilt" The working class organizes its protest Court motions and mass movements The case gets a "new complexion" The Department of Justice is caught redhanded The Madeiros confession The militants demand a protest movement Thayer replies to the protests Governor...