After a couple of years as secretary of the New Zealand Socialist Party Tom Barker realised he “didn’t have a parliamentary mind”. He left the party and joined the Industrial Workers of the World.
It was in the year of 1913 and the workers in New Zealand were struggling desperately against unemployment, low pay and bad working conditions. A lockout on the wharves in Wellington led to a general strike and the government recruited farmers to help break it. Tom was jailed for sedition for his part in that dispute and when he got out he decided to try his luck in Australia.
But, of course, fighting for workers rights in Australia turned out to be just as dangerous as it had been in Wellington and before long he was in jail again! He spent a week in Long Bay for selling Direct Action, the IWW’s newspaper.
Soon after this, the first world war started and the IWW were in the forefront of a successful anti-conscription campaign. Tom was convicted of “prejudicing recruiting in 1915 and went to jail once more – this time for three months.
Following the suppression of the IWW he was then deported. As with some other Wobs residing in Australia the government put him on a boat for Chile. Some found the going there very hard but Tom got work as a union organiser in several South American countries before eventually making it back to Europe in 1921.
A visit to post-revolutionary Russia as adelegate from the Argentine Labour Federation led him to the United States where he worked for five years recruiting skilled workers for the Soviet Union.
