History of the L.W.A.

Continued from page seventeen

who later spent thirty years as an J.W.A.
staffer:

“The Blubber Bay strike 1938-39 was the
Sirst and most bitter strike fought by the
newly-formed IWA. With the possible excep-
tion of the Nanaimo miners’ strike of 1912,
it was a fight waged against the most brutal
police and company tyrants known in
British Columbia. It stirred the whole trade
union movement into action and roused
public opinion to the need for legislative pro-
tection of legitimate trade union activity.

I know. I was there. I stayed at the home
of Bob Gardner, who was beaten by the po-
lice within an inch of his life, and later died
- murdered. Bob was Vice-President of the
Local, a quiet, mild-mannered man, who
had worked for the company fourteen years.
Bob and his bonny wife had built a charm-
ing home, off the company property, and
overlooking a quiet bay on Texada Island. It
is sad to recall that their happy home was
wrecked by order of a rapacious New York
company.

I was with the Abercrombie family when
they were evicted from a company house,
and attempted to establish themselves in
makeshift quarters at Vananda, some miles
distant, in order to stay on the Island and
Sight company tyranny. I well remember
Mrs. Abercrombie Sr., who in poor health,
nevertheless stood by her men, and tried so
bravely to “make do” with what could be sal-
vaged from the home she had patiently built
around her in Blubber Bay throughout 14
years.

Stan. Abercrombie (Local 1-80) and I have
often agreed that the full story of Blubber
Bay should be written and placed on the IWA
records before its survivors pass from the
scene. But mere words are inadequate to
pay tribute to the quiet courage of the men
and women who fought that battle, for they
displayed the highest qualities of physical
and moral bravery.

I nominate Bob and Mrs. Gardner, Mrs.
Abercrombie Sr., Joe Eng of the Chinese
workers of Blubber Bay, and many others to
the IWA Hall of Fame.

The quarry workers of Blubber Bay had
been organized 100 per cent by the Lumber
and Sawmill Workers Union. Later they af-

filiated with the IWA as Local 163.

In July, 1937, the Pacific Lime Co. re-
fused to negotiate with the employees, who
had a long list of outstanding grievances,
many of which concerned the needless and
extreme hazards of the job. One hundred and
Sifty employees struck in July, 1937, where-
upon the Company attempted to organize a
company union of scabs. The Manager
claimed that both the AFL and the CIO were
Communist-led. The fact was that the plant
had been fully organized on an industrial
union basis. The Vancouver Sun described
the strike as a fight between the AFL and the
CIO. Shipments from Blubber Bay were boy-
cotted by the Maritime Federation.

The first strike at Blubber Bay ended
when the Company agreed, under pres-
sure of the boycott, to parley and
promised the workers a 3 1/2-cent an
hour wage increase. This brought their
pay to 50 cents an hour, with 75 cents an
hour for overtime. Union members were
forbidden to affiliate with any outside
union. Like other agreements of that
day, its terms were vague and 80 men re-
mained unemployed. Both white and
Chinese workers stood shoulder to
shoulder against all forms of racial dis-
crimination practiced by the Company.
Finally company “stooges” were used to
undermine the Local’s solidarity. The
company union was defeated and the
“finks” were ousted. In February, 1938,
the workers requested a Conciliation Board
under the new ICA Act but the Company ig-
nored all the legalities. It took a five-day
strike, March 1938, after the employees voted
Sor the same, 87-30, to bring the Company to
the bargaining table. Mr. Justice MacIntosh
was named Chairman of an Arbitration

Board; Harold Winch, MLA, undertook the
presentation of the Union's case. The award
did not approve collective bargaining, but
proposed that company-controlled commit-
tees be set up. A wage rate of 75 cents an
hour was recommended, with time and one
half for overtime. The employees rejected the
award, as not offering a genuine union
agreement. In any event, the Company re-
fused to accept the award, and a strike was
called on June 2, 1938.

The situation quickly deteriorated
into one of violence. Terrorist tactics
were employed by Company officials
and their goons, dressed up in Provin-
cial Police uniforms. The Chinese work-
ers were evicted from the quarters under
threat of clubs and tear gas. All white
workers were evicted from company-
owned houses, and in many instances
their personal belongings disappeared.

All the IWA could do was establish a mili-
tant picket line on the Blubber Bay docks, re-
inforced by IWA members from Vancouver
and the Pulp and Sulphite workers from
Powell River, across the strait. Trade union-
ists everywhere scoured the countryside for
food to sustain the strikers who were scat-
tered through small outlying communities

Blubber Bay was under a police dictator-
ship. Colin Cameron, MLA, was held in po-
lice custody because he protested on behalf of
the Chinese workers whose plight was piti-
Sul. I was then a member of the House of
Commons, but I was not allowed to move in
the area, to the post office, to the telegraph
office or to the phone without a police escort
of two acting as a Gestapo for one of.the
“dangerous reds.”

The men on the picket line on the docks
contrived some clever parodies of popular
songs with which they taunted the police sta-
tioned in the vicinity. Finally, the police lost
patience and pickets were singled out and
arrested. The gaps were quickly filled by the
Union from Vancouver. Singing rude songs
was the worst offense on a well-disciplined
picket line, whose members had to use row-
boats from adjacent points on the island to
take their stations.

Bob Gardner was arrested on a flimsy
charge at 3 a.m. when roused from sleep,
over the protests of Mrs. Gardner, who
extracted from the police officers the
promise that Bob would be fairly treat-
ed. He was taken to the temporary po-
lice station and so cruelly beaten by
Constable Williamson that on the follow-
ing day he was hospitalized in Powell
River. While still weak from his injuries,
he was sentenced to four months in
Oakalla. When he was serving his sen-
tence, the Union discovered that he was
seriously ill, and induced the authorities
to place him in the General Hospital un-
der police custody. Some time later he
died in Nanaimo as a result - the first
IWA labour martyr.

The Union brought Williamson to trial,
and with ironclad evidence, saw him sen-
tenced to six months for his brutal assault
on Bob Gardner. Twenty-seven other mem-
bers of the police and scabs were brought to
trial by the Union, but were acquitted on
questionable evidence. Fifteen strikers were
charged with rioting and unlawful assembly
and were given a total of 49 months in
Oakalla. It is ironical to recall in 1971 that
most of them served with distinction in the
war which broke out soon after.

The strikers were charged and found
guilty in the Vancouver Assizes. Under the
section of the Criminal Code dealing with
unlawful assembly, it was only necessary to
prove that three or more persons had caused
fear in the minds of those in the vicinity. A
row of company houses, occupied by scabs
and their wives, overlooked the docks where
the pickets were stationed. In court, these
wives quite readily testified that they were
scared by the singing on the picket line, and
on this evidence men went to jail.

Colin Cameron returned to the Legislature
to assail Attorney-General Gordon Wismer
Sor the illegal brutality of police tactics. It
was my privilege to tell the story in the next
session of the House of Commons, and move

an amendment to the Criminal Code which
would prevent the use of the “unlawful as-
sembly” section of the Criminal Code to
break strikes. The Bill, which won some sup-
port from lawyers in the House, was “talked
out” by the Hon. Mr. Lapointe, then Minister
of Justice, who promised that its obvious in-
justice would be corrected. But the section of
the Code still stands.

(From Special Issue of the Lumber-
worker, January, 1971.)

MORE TROUBLES

Blubber Bay was not the only obstacle for
the Canadian I.W.A. For various reasons, in-
cluding the severe economic downturn of
1938, the dues-paying membership (readers
will recall that there was then no such thing
as the automatic check-off. Dues had to be
collected by delegates who issued stamps, )
declined rapidly from over 2000 in the sum-
mer of 1937 to only 226 early in 1939.

Probably contributing to the decline was
the shift in leadership away from the immi-
grant loggers who had built the organization.
Hjalmar Bergren succeeded Jack Brown as
District President in 1938, but Nigel Morgan,
listed in the 1939 Convention proceedings as
a delegate from Victoria, highly thought of by
Communist Party leadership, was rising rapid-
ly through the union. By the time of the 1940
Convention, he was acting secretary of the
District, International Board member, and del-
egate to the founding convention of the Cana-
dian Congress of Labour.

When Harold Pritchett, unable to remain in
the U.S. (see below), returned to Canada and
took over as President of the District, the
shift away from the Scandinavian logger-orga-
nizers was more pronounced, and though it
ever came to the surface, there was consider-
able resentment among veterans like Arne
Johnson and Bergren. Hjalmar was especially
angered by the decision to run Morgan
against Mosher as President at the Founding
Convention of the C.C.L. “Well, it was so god
damn ridiculous. A school boy! Challenging a
man who had been in the labour movement
for fifty years....And who in the hell said he
was the leader of the B.C. woodworkers?”®

WAR OR PEACE?

Another issue that vexed the union’s C.P.
leadership, and probably contributed to the
difficulty of sustaining dues paying members,
was the question of how to respond to the Eu-
ropean War which Canada entered in Septem-
ber of 1939.

It will be recalled that after the Nazis took
power in Germany in 1933, Communists de-
clared that Fascism had taken the place of So-
cial Democracy as the immediate threat, and
called upon all its forces throughout the
world to unite with socialists and liberals, in-
cluding conservative labour organizations in
North America and Britain where revolution-
ary unions were only a small fraction of the
labour movements, to counter that threat.

In line with that policy, Canadian party
members played a leading and honourable
roll in the Spanish Civil War, fighting with Re-
publicans against Spanish Fascists. Ted
Gunerad, who had done yeoman service orga-
nizing loggers on the West Coast and in North-
ern Ontario, served in Spain with the Canadi-
an “Mac-Paps,” and was rightly proud of it.

But on August 21, 1939, the Soviets and
Nazi Germany concluded a non-aggression
pact. The Soviets, and communist parties
throughout the world, then announced that
the European war was only “...a continuation
of years of imperialist rivalry within the capi-
talist camp...an unjust, reactionary, imperialist
war.” Party and union members were urged to
have nothing to do with it.”

-At first, this played not too badly in the
U.S., where President Roosevelt was pledging
to do everything possible to keep Americans
out of the war, and C.1.0. leader John L. Lewis
thundered against any suggestion of U.S. par-
ticipation.

Then on June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a
massive invasion of the Soviet Union, and
communist parties had to make a massive
overnight change, declaring the war to be, af-
ter all, against fascism and in defense of so-
cialism, demanding participation to the limit
by its members and supporters, including “no-

Continued on page nineteen

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