A chara, - On a trip to West Cork on Sunday, September 3rd, I came upon the unveiling of the Henry Ford monument in Ballinascarthy. Up to a dozen speakers, including an MEP, TDs, county councillors and community leaders, addressed the gathering. All were full of praise for Henry Ford, the descendant of a local man who had to emigrate to the US during the Famine. He was referred to as "one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th Century" and as a man who looked after his workers.
However, no mention was made of the real Henry Ford: the man whose anti-Jewish writings were published in Nazi Germany and who received the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle" from the German vice-consul in 1938. The man who was so opposed to his employees joining a trade union that he organised a private army, the Ford Service Department, made up of gangsters, prize-fighters and bouncers, to run his River Rouge plant in Detroit with a fist of iron. This group of thugs meted out physical violence to any employee suspected of being a union member.
The National Labor Relations Board said: "The River Rouge plant has taken on many aspects of a community in which martial law has been declared, and in which a huge military organisation has been superimposed upon the civil authorities."
This force brutally attacked union officials in what became known as The Battle of the Overpass, on May 26th, 1937, which resulted in the death of one of the trade unionists, J.J. Kennedy.
When 1,000 Ford workers, members of the United Automobile Workers, marched in the 1937 Detroit Labor Day parade, they all wore masks to conceal their identities.
This is just a brief overview of the reign of terror imposed on the workers of Detroit by Henry Ford.
I feel that if we are to honour famous emigrants or their descendants, we should examine their lives critically to ensure that men like Henry Ford are given no place of honour here. - Is mise,
Joe Moore, President, Cork Council of Trade Unions, North Main Street, Cork.