Vincent R. Dunne

Vincent Raymond Dunne (17 April 1889 – 17 February 1970), also known as Vincent R. Dunne or Ray Dunne, was an American Trotskyist, teamster, lumberjack, and union organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He is notable for his leading role in the 1934 Minneapolis general strike,

By fourteen, Dunne had left home to work at lumber camps throughout Minnesota, in conditions he found deplorable. Moving further west the next year, he harvested grain in North Dakota. In 1905, he went further west to Montana, where he encountered the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in lumber camps. Dunne was immediately struck by the difference in conditions between the union lumber camps and the non-union camps back in Minnesota, In 1928 he became a victim of the "Factional War" when Party members who opposed Joseph Stalin, and supported the theses of Leon Trotsky, were purged. Unfazed, Dunne and his comrades formed the Communist League of America (later renamed the Socialist Workers Party) in alignment with Trotsky's Left Opposition to Stalinism. Dunne was a vocal critic of the Communist Party after the expulsion of the Left Opposition, especially regarding the Party's "raids" on Communist League-controlled front organizations and co-operative businesses.

International Brotherhood of Teamsters

By 1934, Dunne had been organizing teamsters in Minneapolis for twenty-five years; Trotsky called him "the most effective labor leader in America". During the strike, he and his brothers dealt with espionage from police and private detectives, as well as personal attacks from local newspapers. Nevertheless, the strike eventually succeeded and Teamster membership in Minneapolis grew rapidly. Dunne and the other SWP leaders were found guilty, and in 1943 he was sent to Sandstone federal prison along with prominent Trotskyists such as James P. Cannon. Dunne served sixteen months. His last years were marked by his fierce opposition to the Vietnam War. He died on February 17, 1970, at age 80.