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British Columbia :
the people’s story

11 - THE SOCIALIST TRADITION |

By HAL GRIFFIN

ITHIN a few months of the Kamloops convention: of
local Socialist parties, Labor parties and trade. unions
from which it was launched in April 1902, the Provincial
Progressive party fell apart. Its president, Christopher Foley,
contested a federal byelection in Vancouver-Burrard in Feb-
ruary 1903, running as a Labor candidate, and came within
123 votes of defeating the successful Liberal, Ra G. Macpher-
son. But before the provincial election of October 1903, the
first to be conducted on open party lines, the new party had
redivided into what henceforth would be the two contending
currents in the working class movement—those who stood for
the reform of capitalism, no matter what socialist. guise they
gave their arguments, and those who stood for the ending of
capitalism and the building of a new socialist system.

The right-wing labor leaders who had striven at the
Kamloops convention to prevent the Socialists from winning
a majority of positions in the new party, soon showed a
greater affinity for the Liberals than for.the Socialists, who
frankly stood for the ending of capitalism. On paper, the
reforms they sought through the Provincial Progressive party
were often the reforms advocated by the Liberals, who were
making a strong bid for labor support and seeking labor

The Socialists, impatient and often inflexible, tended to
look upon reforms as likely’ to blur their socialist perspective,
an attitude that was reflected in the resolution adopted. at the
convention of Socialist groups held in 1903 from which the
Socialist party was launched. Proclaiming a disdain for the
workers’ immediate struggles, the resolution stated:

“This convention places itself on record as opposed to
the introduction of palliatives or immediate demands in pro-
paganda work as being liable to retard the achievement of
our final aims and that the Socialist Party of British Columbia
henceforth stands firmly upon the one issue of the abolition
of the present system of wage slavery as the basis for all
political propaganda.”

The Socialist party platform on which its candidates
campaigned in the 1903 provincial election opened with the
statement that “labor produces aH wealth and to labor it
should justly belong.” It called for the transformation of
capitalist property—factories, mills, railways and the like—
into “the collective property of the workingmen” and for
democratic organisation and management by the workers. Its
purpose, it said, was the gradual establishment of production
for use and not for profit and “the conduct of all public
affairs in such a manner as to promote the interests of the
working class alone,” :

This was Marxism as the members of the Socialist party
understood it and true to their belief that the workers must
be “educated” before any social change could be wrought,

some of the most able leaders the labor movement had yet .

produced stumped the industrial centres of the province,
speaking and organising—J. H. Hawthornthwaite, W. A. L.
Griffiths, E. T. Kingsley, R. Parm Pettipiece, J. C. Mortimer,
Parker Williams and J. W. Bennet.

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In the 1903 provincial election the Socialist party entered
eight candidates under its own banner: E, Mills (Green-
wood), J. Riordan (Grand Forks), J. H. Hawthornthwaite

(Nanaimo), Parker Williams (Newcastle), J. W. Bennet
(Revelstoke), W. A. L. Griffiths and J. C. Mortimer (Van-

couver) and J. C. Watters (Victoria), A ninth candidate,
William Davidson, contested Slocan on a Labor platform.

The results of the election showed the new party to bea
major force in provincial politics. Hawthornthwaite was
returned in Nanaimo and Williams won Newcastle, both by
substantial majorities. Davidson was elected in Slocan in a
straight fight with W. Hunter, his Conservative opponent,
and Mills was only nine votes behind J. R. Brown, who won
Greenwood for the Liberals, Only in Victoria and Vancou-
ver, where three Labor candidates, J. McLaren, A. G. Perry
and Francis Williams, polled a big vote, did the Socialist
candidates trail the field.

Richard McBride (he had not yet been knighted) was
returned to office as the head of a succession of Conservative
governments that were to remain in power until the 1916
election closed their scandal-ridden record. But the govern-
ment had only a majority of five over the Liberal opposition,
giving the two Socialists and one Labor member a certain
balance of power. For all their disdain of immediate demands,
they used it to good effect,

In 1905, Hawthornthwaite introduced a bill amending
the Coal Mines Regulations Act to give the miners the eight-
hour day for underground work.

Leading the opposition to the bill, W. W. B. MacInnes,
one of the Liberal members for Victoria, used an argument
that has since acquired a familiar ring. He claimed that it
might affect the ability of Vancouver Island coal mines to

compete with mines in the state of Washington., In any case,
he contended, ‘“‘conditions of labor in the coal mines of the
Island are excellent,” although figures published only three
years earlier showed the death rate to be the second highest
in the world, 4.5 annually for Nova Scotia and 3.32 for British
Columbia. Replying, Hawthornthwaite disposed of MacInnes’
arguments by describing James Dunsmuir’s manager as “an
ordinary thin-lipped labor skinner,’ and commenting that he
doubted if Dunsmuir would close his mines if the bill passed,
as it did.

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The rise of the socialist movement in British Columbia had
a parallel in the growth of industrial unionism and the develop-
ment of a syndicalist trend which found its strongest ex-
pression in the Industrial Workers of the World.

In the closing decade of the last century, two newly or-
ganised industrial unions in the United States, the American
Railway Union and the Western Federation of Miners, reached
into the province and began organising among the railroad
workers and miners, both hard-rock and coal.

The two unions had their origin in discontent over the
failure of the craft unions to adapt their structure and policies
to the structural changes in capitalism itself through the
development of the great monopolies. The American Railway
Union was organised by Eugene V. Debs, the American Social-
ist leader, after a switchmen’s strike at Buffalo was defeated
while other railroad unions stood aloof. By 1894 it included
two B.C. locals, at Vancouver and Revelstoke, among its 465
locals embracing 150,000 railroad workers. The Western
Federation of Miners was also formed in 1893 after a miners’
strike at Coeur de’Alene, Idaho, was smashed by federal troops.
Two years later, in 1895, it established its first B.C. local at
Rossland, centre of a bitter struggle in 1901 when 1,000 miners
remained on strike for six months to win their demand for
union recognition. :

Concluded on next page

f
Potters Guild, the BG: um

B.C. crafts |
go on tour |

N THIS Centennial Yeu ;
i 1958, British Columbia @ bs
and crafts are newly come
age. ee

The expanding western crt
movement, with its ski
potters, weavers and mite
other types of craftsmeh™ |
both amateur and profe
sional, - Native Indian
white — has already ©

the support and .recogniti? ‘i
our art galleries and edu it
tional institutions, and ae
is being giyen additional a |
phasis through the medi)
another of the B.C. Center
Committee”’s special |
tion pirojects. This 38 eo |
Crafts Caravan currently —
tour through the provinc®

ant
ped
pot

f
7)
The caravan will Wie

sembled ~ fior _ prese? a :
under the guidance of Bl, J
Pearce and the Extensioh ~) |
partment of the Univers e
British Columbia, with #4
operation of the viel

Handweavers Guild, thé

a
ers Guild, the B.C. A rH al

Crafts Centre, Mrs.
Woodward and Pandl

Assooh
ates of Vancouver. ,

Exhibits range from Wy
carving, lacework and © of
ful ceramics in a variely
materials to numerous a!¥°
in wool, straw, linen a
well as samples of bea
and mosaic and nu :
miscellaneous exhibits se
silk screen and  lith0Bhig
greeting cards. There 4© oe
unusual examples of ims ine ‘
tive jewellery design ™ oo
form of such items as ete
and silver cuff links, strat 4
metal brooches and so 0

weave |

Thirteen -potters,
and jewellers are pictul™ ip |
a display panel depictine iy |
interesting variety of De
ground and achieve™
which characterizes cn ost
orary B.C. craft work:
talented practicing Cl” jf
are typical of dozens throu
out the province.

fp

e

According to the cataloe
accompanying the cara of
this Centennial collection 4s
handicrafts includes P}© eft
showing a high develoP Ne
of old traditions (eith@ i)
tive Indian or ae

i

as well as “indigenous omit
of gifted. untaught ® ate
artists. Still other exhibits iy
a “creative synthesis i? ,
national style.” J
For the next three wee
the caravan will be iD ee of
ern B.C., at Prince Rup gg |
June 21 and Prince Genre iy
June 28 and ‘again OP | jf
5. Hours are from 2 1 oi
the afternoon and 7 % :
the evening.

June 13, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE *

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