Having been trained as a sociologist, I assumed that it would be sufficient to read a dozen or so informative narrative accounts prepared by historians. Next came the process of collecting data. From the moment I encountered it, I was hooked.ĭeciding that this was a worthwhile topic to write about was the easy part.
It is, to be sure, an intriguing problem, this contrast between West Coast and East Coast longshoremen. This book attempts to explain how two groups of workers who have so much in common-they are based in the same industry,Ĭonfront many of the same shipping lines, and belong to the same occupation-came to embrace such different political orientations. Had Reagan been sailing to Europe instead of Hawaii forty years ago, New York's conservative longshoremen would have been standing in line for the privilege of handling his bags. But instead of targeting anticommunists, they have an equally long history of opposing leftist political initiatives here and pro-communist regimes abroad, beginning with their Cold War boycott of Soviet and Chinese shipping and continuing today in their refusal to load vessels bound for Vietnam and the Soviet Union. Longshoremen on the East Coast, particularly in New York, are committed to political action, too. In 1988, radical longshoremen on the Pacific are still at it, refusing to handle military cargo destined for South Africa, Chile, and El Salvador, three of President Reagan's most loyal client states. That incident occurred nearly forty years ago. He then went on to relate one of Reagan's favorite anecdotes, about the time he took a cruise ship to Hawaii, and West Coast longshoremen, denouncing him as "that anti-communist," refused to handle his baggage. Coming to the president's defense, an aide replied that Reagan had been "dealing with communism" for almost four decades. In the fall of 1985, as President Ronald Reagan was preparing for his first summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, questions were raised from many quarters about whether the president, with his lack of diplomatic experience, was really the best person to carry out such an important mission.
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