Bridges, Harry (Alfred Renton Bridges), 1901–90, American labor leader, b. Melbourne, Australia. Arriving (1920) as an immigrant seaman in San Francisco, he became a longshoreman and militant labor organizer. Bridges led (1934) the West Coast maritime workers' strike, which expanded into an abortive general strike, and in 1937 he set up the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), and became West Coast director of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Proceedings in 1939 to deport him as a Communist alien ended when he was officially absolved of Communist affiliation. The U.S. House of Representatives passed (1940) a bill to deport him, but it was ruled (1945) illegal by the Supreme Court. He became a citizen in 1945. His support of Henry A. Wallace for President in 1948 resulted in his ouster as CIO regional head. He was convicted and sentenced (1950) to a five-year prison term for swearing falsely at his 1945 naturalization hearing that he had never been a member of the Communist party. In 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the indictment for perjury against Bridges, thus voiding his prison sentence. He was reindicted on similar charges, but in 1955 a federal district judge ruled that the government had failed to prove that he was a Communist or that he had concealed that fact when he was naturalized. Shortly thereafter the U.S. Justice Dept. announced it had given up its long fight to deport Bridges. In 1958 he was granted a U.S. passport. In 1971 and 1972 Bridges led the ILWU in a strike that tied up the West Coast waterfront for several weeks.

Bibliography

See study by C. P. Larrowe (1972).

Bridges, Harry

orig. Alfred Bryant Renton

(born July 28, 1901, Kensington, near Melbourne, Vic., Austl.—died March 30, 1990, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.) Australian-born U.S. labour leader. He arrived in the U.S. as a seaman in 1920, and he soon settled in San Francisco and became active in the local branch of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). In 1937 he led the Pacific Coast division out of the ILA and reconstituted it as the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), affiliated with the CIO (see AFL-CIO). His aggressive labour tactics and Communist Party connections led the CIO to expel the ILWU in 1950 during a purge of allegedly communist-dominated unions, and opponents tried unsuccessfully to have Bridges deported. He retired as president of the ILWU in 1977.

Bridges, Harry (Alfred Renton) (1901–90) labor leader; born in Kensington, Australia. He went to sea at age 16 and entered the U.S.A. after jumping ship in 1920. He knocked about the Mexican oil fields, returned to the sea, then settled down as a longshoreman and waterfront labor organizer in San Francisco. He founded the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union in 1933 and led a major dock strike the following year. During the 1940s the federal government repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to deport him as a Communist sympathizer. Although expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1950, his union remained a powerful force on the West Coast docks through the 1950s.