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Interview recounts father's labor activism, 'Christian communist' label and local union action in Missoula
Summary
The narrator describes a father who adopted left-leaning politics, ran as a progressive, and helped form local labor efforts that challenged the Chamber of Commerce in Clinton and Missoula-area job actions.
An interviewee described her father's political identity as a working-class activist who pursued labor organizing in the Missoula area, ran for local office as a progressive and embraced the label "Christian communist."
The account situates local labor activity as a practical response to employment instability: when jobs were scarce the narrator's parents helped organize labor for work in Clinton and Missoula, and the narrator recalled union intervention that challenged local business interests.
The narrator said of her father: "By this time, he called himself a Christian communist." She described a local labor effort: "This man in Clinton with no jobs, and they were bringing men up from Missoula to work on the jobs…My mother and dad formed that in. My mother and dad. The labor army." The interview also recalled the labor union confronting the Chamber of Commerce: "The labor union had stepped in and gave the COC a kick in the chin."
The interview mentions political connections: "During the twenties, my dad's brother Senator James Murray from Montana, and helped raise money to send guns to the Irish Free State…" The narrator also said her father ran for re-election as a progressive and lost in a conservative area.
These recollections document local labor organizing and partisan identity in early-to-mid 20th century Missoula-area politics from the speaker's perspective.
