From One Woman to Another - Open Letter:
"Adela Peace at any Price Walsh"
Just a few lines to you, and a few in which I am bursting to tell you what I think of the scabby tactics of you and your renegade husband (Judas Walsh). Oh yes it is indeed a strange world, and one filled with many strange people. You, of course, take your place prominently because of your adoption to the tactics peculiar to the ranks of scabbery. Adela Pankhurst, one time rebel speaker for workers rights, and now hireling of the master class and defender of the filth of Capitalism. No, perhaps I am wrong in saying the hireling of the master class. It would be more true to say that you and your fellow scab Walsh aspire to be hirelings. Surely you have shown the working class where you stand, and having done so it is incredible to think that even the boss has any time for amateur renegades. Now you stand in a queer position. Exposed in your true light before the workers. Unwanted by the boss, and if your cowardly conscience is capable of feeling the pricks of your treachery to the workers. Then time may be the healer, and as Tom the Twister may have to join a pick and shovel gang "whilst you take to the wash tub" it may be that the pair of you will forget. However, be as it may, we who live to fight against Judas and his mate Adela. Have you such a short memory that you forget the dirty work of the master class against the small band of rebels that fought in Melbourne against the conscription campaign? You of all people who saw the length they were prepared to go in defence of capitalism, and now you turn upon these comrades, who were true, and seeking perhaps a little better economic position, you offer your mentality in an attempt to justify a rotten system. I admit at one time I admired you in the fight, and even sang praises on your behalf. That was in the old days before you took Tom the Twister in marriage. Now events have moved rapidly, and you stand outside the pale of my friendship. I do regret that such is the case, and wish it were the same as of yore. Well, you have chosen your crocked path, and therefore, must vie with your present company. That you have earned my contempt is all I can say. In conclusion remember that ours is the winning side, even if we fall in the fight. It is better such than to be as you - a traitor, and coward.
Still in the fight - I am,
Violet Clarke. (Direct Action 6 September 1928)
Note: Adela Pankhurst was a key figure in radical circles during the first world war being involved in the Women’s Peace Army and in the Victorian Socialist Party. She was much admired by IWW members for her radicalism and militancy in the fight against conscription although even then a careful reading of her speeches revealed an underlying racism. Between the wars she married the seaman’s union leader Tom Walsh, helped found the Australian Communist Party with him and started a slow drift to the right. From promotion of peace between the nations she undertook to promote peace between the classes (which is what got up Violet’s nose here). During the Second World War she was interned for her pro-Japanese sympathies. (miek)
