History: William F Pepper's book on the assassination of Martin Luther King is intriguing says Ruairí Quinn, and while the legal section is tightly presented, the philosophical context that accompanies it is unconvincing.
Martin Luther King was murdered by the US security/army infrastructure on April 4th, 1968. Some of the personnel who were connected with the foul deed were also involved in the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963. In addition, Vice President Lyndon Johnston, according to his mistress Madeleine Brown, mother of his only son, Steven, was given to understand, at a social function on the eve of November 22nd, that something dramatic would happen to JFK the next day.
Notwithstanding the original trial and many subsequent official enquiries and investigations, James Earl Ray was not the assassin of Dr King. He was a petty criminal who was used by the security forces as a patsy to take the rap for the state-inspired crime.
However, after more than 20 years of struggle and legal action, a court in Tennessee found that Loyd Jowers participated, with others including governmental agencies, in a conspiracy to do harm to Martin Luther King, The action taken on behalf of James Earl Ray awarded total damages to the plaintiffs of $100 and apportioned liability as 30% to Loyd Jowers and 70% to all other conspirators.
These are the factual claims of the author, William F. Pepper. Hence the title of this book, which is disturbing in its conclusions. The evidence, background material and significant but uncorroborated evidence of collusion reveals criminality and the trampling of human rights in an organised and systematic way over a period of 20 years by government agencies at Federal State and local level.
This is the thrust of the assertions made in the first part of this book. Taken together, they infer a continuous conspiracy by government security forces and some elements of big business and the mob. The target of this conspiracy appears to be not just Dr King, but any serious advocate of radical social change within the US. It seems to be the opinion of the author that actions taken on behalf of the conspirators are independent of elected politicians.
Given the enormity of these documented claims, why has there been such a silence from public opinion in the United States? This is a question posed by the author, who is a human rights lawyer, a citizen of the United States and living in Britain since 1981.
William Pepper claims the reason Dr King was murdered was because he had moved from a civil rights issue, non-racial discrimination, whose time had already come, to the wider political issue of the war in Vietnam. In 1967, he announced his opposition to that war. He had also begun to organise a wider campaign on the issue of social and economic rights which was to culminate with the Poor Peoples' march upon Washington DC,
According to the author, civil rights could reluctantly be conceded by the establishment to the black minority, but the economic and political challenges, which King was about to launch with the strength of his charismatic personality and widespread popular support, were unacceptable. Accordingly, his death became an inevitability.
The book goes on to give a historical exposition of how Dr King arrived at his anti-war position, influenced, in part, by an article entitled 'The Children of Vietnam', which the author had written in late 1966. Pepper reaches back to Mohandas Gandhi and John Ruskin, the Victorian critic and commentator, to lay out the philosophy that informed Martin Luther King.
This section of the book is in marked contrast to the precise and turgid style of the exposition of the legal case. By comparison, Pepper is on weak and shaky ground. His indictment of American society is flawed. It implies that there are no successful social model versions of capitalism elsewhere existing to replace the large gap between rich and poor in the US. He makes no reference, notwithstanding his residence in the UK, of the consolidation of the European Social Model based upon social democratic and, in part, christian democratic values.
In contrast to Pepper's tight and repetitive description of the trial process, his departure into the realm of political economy and social philosophy is superficial and unconvincing. He fails to recognise that there are, particularly in Europe, models of society based upon market economies that have produced very satisfactory socially balanced outcomes, such as Sweden. While his text makes reference to a range of different individuals as political personalities, he deliberately does not mention socialism or social democracy as a means to achieving the objectives aspired to by Martin Luther King.
His epilogue is weak and poorly argued. Linking the martyrdom of Martin Luther King to a modern opposition to globalisation does not convince. In a speech in Memphis, before he was murdered, King gave a concise recommendation to a large group of black supporters of the striking sanitation workers of how precisely they could use their market weight, in terms of purchasing power, to achieve not just civil rights but social justice. To borrow a phrase from the French socialist Lionel Jospin, King was saying "yes to a market economy but no to a market society"
He suggests that, in reality, what is needed is a destruction of the system, which is beyond reform, so that a more constructive system could be built in its place. This is, in my view, a tired Trotkyist analysis that I do not share.
This is an intriguing book. The legal section, clearly based upon detailed notes, is tightly presented if pedantically argued. The philosophical context that accompanies it is unconvincing. The consequential lack of a public response to the murder of Martin Luther King, from the United States, is perhaps self-explanatory.
Ruairí Quinn, TD is the Labour Deputy for Dublin South-East and former leader of the Labour Party and Minister in a number of governments
An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. By William F. Pepper. Verso, 272 pp. £17