Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
From Joe Hill to Hollywood — the rediscovery of Alfred Hayes
NICK MATTHEWS looks at the life of the communist who wrote the famous working-class poem I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night and finds a talented screenwriter and novelist

MANY readers of the Morning Star will know by heart the words of Alfred Hayes’s most famous poem, although they could be more familiar with it as set to music by Earl Robinson and as song by left luminaries like Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson or Joan Baez.

That great celebration of the state-murdered IWW activist, I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night, was originally a poem by Hayes.

Hayes was born in Whitechapel on April 11 1911 to working-class, left-wing Jewish family who moved to New York when he was three.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
flynn
Book Review / 18 July 2025
18 July 2025

RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators

Mo Chara and Moglai Bap of Kneecap performing on the West Holts Stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset, June 28, 2025
Features / 11 July 2025
11 July 2025

From sexual innuendo about Blackpool Rock to Bob Dylan’s ‘God-almighty world,’ the corporation’s classist moral custodianship of pop music has created a roll call of censored artists anyone would feel honoured to join, writes NICK MATTHEWS

boix
Letters from Latin America / 6 May 2025
6 May 2025

A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis

SEEING EYE TO EYE: US President Meeting with Pope John Paul
Book Review / 13 February 2025
13 February 2025
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by an account of the long history of Catholic Church’s involvement in espionage