Bill Bailey

William James Bailey (January 23, 1910 – February 27, 1995) was an Irish-American Communist Party labor activist who fought in the International Brigades of the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).

Early life Bailey was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on January 23, 1910 to an Irish-American Catholic family and grew up in the working class neighborhoods of Hoboken and Hell's Kitchen. He dropped out of school in the fifth grade and began sailing around the age of 15. He also worked briefly as a longshore worker in New York City. Bailey stated that he was initially drawn to sailing because he had grown up in poverty and the job guaranteed regular meals while he was growing.

Career and activism Bailey stated that his first exposure to radical ideas was when he met a Wobbly while sailing in Houston, Texas. Motivated by his desire to fight poverty, he joined the Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU) in 1932 and the Communist Party in the same period. After the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, the MWIU disbanded and Bailey joined the International Seamen's Union (ISU). In 1935, Bailey participated in an anti-Nazi demonstration against the SS Bremen in New York, tearing the Nazi flag from the jackstaff and tossing it into the Hudson River. He was expelled from the ISU for being a communist.

During World War II, Bailey served as a business agent for the Marine Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders Union (MFOW), before he joined the war effort during the invasion of the Philippines. He attended school to become a United States Merchant Marine. He became a third assistant engineer and served on liberty ships during the war, including the SS John Paul Jones, SS Samuel Gompers, and the SS George Powell, as well as the victory ship SS Laredo Victory. After talking to Louis Goldblatt, Bailey found work in longshoring first in Eureka, California, and later in San Francisco. He later became the vice president of ILWU, local 10.

Later life and death Bailey retired in 1975. The full text is available online.

Bailey was interviewed in 1981 by sociologist Howard Kimeldorf for his book Reds or Rackets?. The full interview is available on the Internet Archive.

Bailey was featured in the film documentaries Seeing Red (1983) and The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War (1984).

Bailey's story is told in "The Agitator: William Bailey and the First American Uprising against Nazism" by Peter Duffy (PublicAffairs, March 2019).