It must be one of the best-known and most inspiring anthems of the international labour movement.

We all know I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night. It is still sung whenever and wherever workers are involved in struggle.

Even Labour leader Ed Miliband chose the song as one of his Desert Island Discs recently - although I'm sure Joe Hill would have hated Miliband's attempts to drive a wedge between trade unions and the Labour Party.

The subject of the song was arrested on a trumped-up murder charge exactly 100 years ago precisely to stop him becoming an inspiration to working people. It was a cruel plot, but it failed.

The Utah copper bosses, like so many employers in the US, were both vicious and vindictive and were terrified of Hill and the ideas he represented.

They took two years to convict him and then their private firing squad cut him down.

They and their political thugs, private police forces, strike-breakers and scabs are long forgotten, but Hill's name still echoes around the globe.

He would have loved the fact that he is best remembered in song, because as well as being a great organiser and a shrewd communist politician, Hill was first and foremost a balladeer for the working class.

His most famous songs include The Preacher And The Slave, The Tramp, There Is Power In A Union, and Casey Jones - the Union Scab and 100 more. Some are still being sung today.

His last song, The Rebel Girl, celebrated his comrade and friend Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, hero of the Bread and Roses strike and long-time chairwoman of the Communist Party USA. It was first sung at Hill's funeral.

So who was Joe Hill? He was born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Sweden in 1879.

In 1902, when 23, he and his brother Paul sailed to the United States in search of work.

Joe Hill learnt English and joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), better known as the Wobblies.

This new militant union had been founded in 1905 for previously unorganised groups of workers. Its aim was to build "one big union."

Hill started to earn his reputation as an IWW stalwart and travelled all over, organising workers under the IWW banner.

He wrote and sang political songs, penned satirical poems and great cartoons as well as making inspiring speeches.

His songs frequently borrowed familiar melodies from popular songs and hymns. He coined the phrase "pie in the sky," which appeared in his song The Preacher And The Slave, a parody of the hymn In The Sweet By-and-By.

As his fame spread, to avoid blacklisting, he changed his name, first to Joseph Hillström and then to Joe Hill.

By 1911, Hill was in Tijuana, Mexico, along with several hundred hoboes and radicals to help Mexicans trying to overthrow the dictator Diaz.

The following year he was in San Diego with Wobblies, socialists, suffragettes and trade unionists to protest against the police banning all street meetings.

In British Columbia he helped to organise a railroad construction crew strike. In San Pedro, Los Angeles, he lent his support to a strike of Italian dockworkers. This led to Hill's first imprisonment - 30 days for vagrancy.

Hill became a legend, not just to his political comrades but also to the vicious bosses of mills, factories and mines - and that was dangerous.

The copper bosses in Utah hatched their plans to teach a lesson to this uppity communist.

Early in 1914 a Salt Lake City former policeman and his son were shot and killed by two men. The men, faces covered by red bandanas, couldn't be identified.

That same evening, Hill arrived at a doctor's office with a gunshot wound. He said he got the wound in a fight over a woman but would say no more.

Later research suggests that he and another Swede, Otto Appelquist, were rivals for the attention of 20-year-old Hilda Erickson. Appelquist had shot Hill, apparently out of jealousy.

A red bandana was found in Hill's room. The local police, in the pay of local mine owners, realised this was a chance to good to miss. They arrested Hill.

The prosecution dug up a dozen eyewitnesses who said that the killer resembled Hill.

One was 13-year-old Merlin Morrison, the victims' son. On first seeing Hill, Morrison told police: "That's not him at all," but after a little coaching he positively identified Hill as the murderer.

The carefully selected jury took just a few hours to find Hill guilty of murder.

An appeal failed. Hill's lawyer Orrin N Hilton, summed it up.

"The main thing the state had on Hill was that he was an IWW and therefore sure to be guilty."

In an article for a radical socialist newspaper Hill gave his own opinion.

He wrote: "There had to be a scapegoat and the undersigned being, as they thought, a friendless tramp, a Swede and worst of all an IWW had no right to live."

A huge campaign demanded Hill's freedom but in vain. Hill was executed by firing squad on November 19 1915.

Just prior to his execution, Hill had written to Bill Haywood, another IWW and communist leader, who himself would later be victim to another trumped-up murder charge.

Hill's letter said: "Goodbye, Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organise... Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don't want to be found dead in Utah."