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Nervous, quick, wary, intolerant, Harry Bridges is scornful of the press, both Right and Left. Even when cornered for an interview, he ignores any questions which he does not choose to answer, punctuates his own points with jerks of his knotted longshoreman's arms. He used to have a pronounced Australian accent (an exaggerated Cockney) but has now lost most of it, speaking in a soft, low, emphatic voice. On the platform he is restrained, though he sometimes stops, tosses back his brown hair, pushing his beak forward as if into the wind at sea on lookout. He demonstrated his spellbinding platform power at a Madison Square Garden rally last year when, near the end of a long program, he held a tired crowd of 15,000 for a full hour extemporaneously. His suspicious, self-assured attitude comes naturally, for despite the publicity value of attacks made on him, Harry Bridges has had to endure what is pretty close to persecution. Innumerable attempts have been made to have him deported, although his immigration status cannot be challenged. Like many another resident alien, he filed first papers for citizenship, then let them lapse. As soon as the waiting period is up on his third set of first papers he may apply for citizenship. Government authorities have dutifully checked charges of false identity, of subversive activities, of a criminal record in Australia—and have given Harry Bridges a clean bill of health. Ship owners have even asked the Department of Labor to deport him on general principles. Occasionally Mr. Bridges loses patience, as he did this spring when he sued the Portland Oregon Journal for $100,000 damages. Without naming Bridges the Oregon Journal editorialized favorably on a reader's suggestion that "alien provocateurs of revolution" be run out of the country forthwith.
Harry Bridges denies that he is a communist. He is not a member of the Communist Party. He simply says communists make good unionists. The speech most used against him was made last spring at the University of Washington: "We take the stand that we as workers have nothing in common with the employers. We are in a class struggle, and we subscribe to the belief that if the employer is not in business his products still will be necessary and we still will be providing them when there is no employing class. We frankly believe that day is coming."