FEATURE REVIEW

Bienfait: The Saskatchewan

Miners’ Struggle of ‘31
by Stephen L. Endicott

University of Toronto Press, 2002
Reviewed by Norman Garcia

IN THE SOUTEASTERN corer of
Saskatchewan, in the small commu-
nity of Estevan, one of the most hor-
tific episodes in Canada labour histo-
ty took place 73 years ago. With excep-
tion to perhaps, USWA Local 1-184
members who work at Shelter Regent
Industries in Estevan and other
USWA members in the prairie
province, not many of us are aware of
what went on in 1931.

It is know that three coal miners
(Peter Markunas, Nick Nargan, and
Julian Gryshko), members of Local 27
of the Mine Worker Union (MWU) of
Canada were gunned down by RCMP
(and scores were wounded) but what is
less known is the buildup to that fateful
day, on September 29, 1931 when the
peaceful motorcade left from the near-
by coal mining community of Bienfait
(east of Estevan on Route 18), to hold a
tally to protest against horrible working
conditions that existed in the mines
and communities.

At the dawn of the Great

Depression the lands of the lignite
coalmines in the Souris River basin
provided immigrants from England,
Scotland, the Ukraine, Germany,
Scandinavia, Lithunia and continental
European countries with little more
than subsistance living. Many sur-
vived on what few vegetables and
small farm animals they could raise.
Some would squat and surface mine
small quantites of coal in what were
known as “gopher holes.” Those for-
tunate to find work at a number of
underground seam mines, owned by
miserly industrialists, were paid
wages as low as less than $50 per
month.

In 1931, as record heat hit Bienfait
and disastrous crop failures multi-
plied the misery, workers faced coal
operators who wanted a 10-15% cut in
wages. The only viable way to fight
back was to join with organizers from
the Workers Unity League who
brought in the MWU. As they were
doing across Canada, the WUL was
organizing and going where no other
group of organizers would go.

Although Canadian Prime
Minister R.B. Bennett tried to discred-
it activities of unions and attributed all
social unrest to foreign agitators,
WUL organizers viewed the repres-
sion of union formation as simply
another form of class warfare.

Canada’s PM was categorically
against an unemployment insurance
scheme: “Never will I, or any govern-
ment of which I ama part of, puta pre-

mium on idleness” said Bennett.
_ The WUL sent organizers in,
including Sam Carr, Joe Forkin, Sam
Scarlett and Annie Buller. The es
aign began on August 18, 1931. Ata
a, picnic, 1200 people heard a
g speech from Sam

= In 1931 Workers’ Unity League organizer Annie Buller addressed a rally in
Bienfait, two days prior to the fateful motorcade to Estevan.

Scarlett. The Scottish immigrant and
former member of the Industrial
Workers of the World, knew what res-
onated with all of the miners, especially
the inside workers who had to work in
the worst conditions and were most vul-
nerable. The

BIENEAIT | coal diggers
eet atecr sian ||.were the
strongest
MWU - sup-
porters. Many
of them
worked as
their families
barely survived
(in Bienfait
two-thirds of
families were
on Relief). One mine owner, Robert
Hassard from Brodies Mine, said it was
proper not to treat the men and their
families well. “I'll be wanting a lot of
cheap labour in the fall,” he said. “Starve
them a bit so I can get them for 20 cents
an hour.”

Workers were not being paid for the
“slack” (coal blast) which was about 30
per cent of their production. They were
also cheated on the weigh scales. In
addition, they lived at the mercy of the
“pit bosses.”

A consortium of companies offered
company housing that was unsanitary,
leaked, and overcrowded. Nonetheless,
many took borders in just to survive.

Bienfait had six deep seam collieries
that belonged to the South
Saskatchewan Coal = Operators
Association. James Sloan, president of
the MWU, tried to negotiate with the
association but there was no use. As a
strike deadline approached, a local
RCMP sergeant, William Mulhall, was
removed from Estevan. The associa-
tion’s president, the wealthy C.C.
Morfit, viewed him a sympathetic to the
strikers. Said Morfit: “If this was in the
United States, it would soon be set-
tled...the strikers would be mowed
down with machine guns if they carried
on the way they do up here.”

The WUL, rallied support from
Saskatoon to Port Arthur (where one of
the IWA’s predecessor unions, the
Lumber Workers Industrial Union of
Canada) sent money and dry goods.

As the strike broke out, James Sloan
said the Moscow-based Red
International of Labour Unions was
solidly behind the strikers with enor-
mous resources. This fanned the

flames of fear as the association and
politicians decried “bolshevism.” The
MWU kept up effective pickets. Soon
the strikers were infiltrated with RCMP
stoolpigeons, informers and paid wit-
nesses. As a self-style right wing group
calling itself the “Canadian Defenders”
planned to bring strikebreakers to
Bienfait from Calgary. Buta WUL orga-
nizer, knowing his communication
would be intercepted by the cops, asked
the LWIU in Port Arthur to send in 500
reinforcements to bolster the miners’
picket lines. The scabs stayed in Alberta.

At nearby Taylorton, the MWU stood
off scabs. A 28 year-old preacher named
Tommy Douglas, a member of the
Independent Labour Party, made an
open-air speech to the miners — an event
regarded by some as a pivotal moment
after which Douglas left the pulpit for a
life in politics.

On August 27, 1931, two days before
the motorcade to Estevan, Annie Buller
pumped up the crowd and stirred spir-
its of the strikers. It was planned that
the motorcade would proceed to the
Estevan Town Hall where there would
be a public rally of 500. The RCMP cut
off the main drag of town (Fourth
Street) and the miners were diverted a
block north where men and women, in
the lines faced rifled fire.

A day after the killing and injuring,
the RCMP stormed Bienfait and set up
machine gun nests across from a
miner’s boarding house and the
Ukrainian Farm Labour Temple,
where the miners would gather. A
police posse terrorized the community
and dragged out men who were in their
sleep.

Although the MWU was not recog-
nized, a royal commission was struck.
The workers did win recognition of pit
commitees and the miners were to be
paid portal to portal.

However, it would take many more
years, and by sucessor unions in 1939
and 1945 (the United Mineworkers of
America) for a signed agreement in
some mines,

There is much, much more to this
book, including the famous trials of the
strikers, Sam Scarlett and Annie
Buller. This reviewer recommends this
book to every Steelworker and other
trade unionist. The author did a great
research job and tell us things that we
all should know. And it didn’t happen
that long ago.

FILM REVIEW

Farenheit 9/11
by Michael Moore
Allance Atlantis 2004

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IF YOU ARE CONVINCED that U.S.
president George Bush is a wreckless,
incompetent, disingenuous, right-wing
extremist, who has steered his country
into a quagmire in Iraq for false rea-
sons you'll love this movie. If you
don't, and want to see a cleverly-craft-
ed work of propaganda (which some-
times poses as a satire - but doesn’t
evoke much laughter) you should also
check it out. Anti-Bush advocate and
activist filmaker Michael Moore, a for-
mer auto worker from Flint Michigan,
has ignited controvery worldwide with
Faherenheit 9/11, offering viewers a
consolidated look at the Bush adminis-
tration — one you can't get elsewhere
except from a mixture of mainstream
and alternative media sources.

Much has been written and said
about this blockbuster exposé. For
ordinary working people, the film’s
messages are ominous: Bush and pro-
Republican U.S. Supreme Court
judges halted the Florida ballot
recount in 2000, shut out thousands of |
working-class voters and awarded the
presidency to Bush; Bush ignored
intelligence briefings from top security |
aides prior the 9/11 airline high-jack- |
ings, possibly contributing the deaths
of thousands of Americans; both
Republican and Democratic
Congressmen, without even so much
as reading the legislation, approved
the Patriot Act in the 9/11 aftermath,
which allows for potentially unprece-
dented violations of civil rights; the
U.S. (and Britain) misled a “coalition of
the willing” into a Middle-Eastern
debacle based on dubious and falsely-
documented information presented to
the United Nations ~ sparking an inva-
sion and occupation with no end in
sight, murdering tens of thousands of
Iraqi civilians and sacrificing now over
one thousand American troops, mainly
from working class families. In the film
we see U.S. Marine recruiters gal-
mourizing the military as they prey on
youngsters in Flint, Michigan, a high
unemployment zone. The documented
winners are munitions manufacturers
and friends of Bush and vice-president
Dick Cheney, who are awarded lucra-
tive, no-bid, military contracts to
rebuild, with taxpayer money, a coun-
try destroyed by an illegal invasion

despite no imminent threat to the U.S.
or its allies.

- review by Norman Garcia

SEPTEMBER 2004

THE ALLIED WORKER | 23