Years of Hard Labour’

A CRITICAL REVIEW |

By BRUCE MAGNUSON

Years of Hard Labour, by
Morden Lazarus, is a 120-page
paperback purporting to be “an
account of the Canadian work-
ingman, his erganizations and _
tribulations over a period of
more than a: hundred years”. It
omits any reference to working
women, a rather substantial and
growing part of the labor force
and of the trade union move-
ment. The book is published by
the Ontario Federation of Labor
and sells for $1.50.

Organized labor has rightly
criticized our educational:system
for its dismal failure to teach
the truth about the role of labor
and its trade unions. The latest
of such criticism was voiced on
Labor Day this year by Joe
Morris, president of the Cana-
dian Labor Congress. However,
Years of Hard Labor contributes
only scanty information to. help
correct this void for students of
labor and labor history.

On the other hand, this book

contains much that can only
confuse those who read it. The
OFL claims the book ‘‘concen-
trates on the important informa-
tion, leaving biases and empty
rhetoric to other writers who
have a position to sell,” that “it
is a basic text on the theoretical
_aspects of the labor scene as
well as an unbiased dgcumen-
tation of the facts of the last
hundred years or so.” That i
simply not true. ;

No rational person will expect
a pamphlet of this size to give
any great and comprehensive
description in every detail of
the glorious and often bitter
struggles of the Canadian work-
ing class over, the past century.
Indeed the’ author himself ad-
mits his purpose to be a “‘mod-
est one — to sketch the broad
outlines of the development of
Canada’s trade union movement.
Necessarily in such a brief ac-
count, many events have been
omitted...” :

But omissions are only part
of the problem. Even more
serious are the sins of commis-
sion, of outright misrepresenta-
tion and falsification of the true
history of labor. Apart from
such staunch labor men and
friends of the common people as
Sam Lawrence of Hamilton and
John W. Buckley of Toronto, the
pictures and thumb-nail biogra-
phies scattered throughout this
book are those of the most con-
servative union leaders and
rightwing social democrats,
members of the old CCF and of
the New Democratic Party. It is
the latter who appear as the
heroes of the labor movement
in the eyes of the author.

Compare this with the slimy
way in which the author intro-
duces the Communist Party as a
“divisive force in the ranks of
organized labor” and appearing
suddenly on page 34 as a foreign
import under the mysterious and
spurious title of “Commie Lin-
ers”. The organization of the
unorganized and the unemploy-
ed, which the Communists un-
dertook in the Workers’ Unity

League is quickly disposed of in
a few choice paragraphs as an
“obedient” tool of the Commun-

‘ist Party which quickly dis- -

solved itself in 1935 on orders
from the Comintern (Commun-
ist International) . :

The truth of the nature and
function of the WUL and of who
called the shots was revealed in
a Nov. 10, 1935 newspaper re-
port on the WUL’s third natio-
nal convention in Toronto at
which the keynote was, One In-
dustry-— One Union! A resolu-
tion passed unanimously there
resolved that “in view of the
need for unification of the trade
unions in Canada for the main:
tenance and improvement of the
daily needs of the Canadian
workers, in the defense against
the rising tide of reaction, to
keep Canada at peace and to de-
feat the growing menace of
company unionism, that this
convention call upon the natio-
nal council to speedily develop
the widest campaign for the
achievement to trade union
unity in Canada and that the na-
tional council be authorized to
seek the cooperation and assis-
tance of the Trades and Labor
Congress, the All-Canadian Con-
gress of Labor, the Catholic
unions, as well as independent
unions, to achieve this end.”

The resolution resolved furth-
er “that each affiliated union to
the WUL-.be called upon to
take up the question of unity in
its own industry and on the
basis of the concrete conditions
prevailing in each _ industry,
strive to establish one union of
all workers in such industry.”

“TI freely acknowledge my per-
sonal bias,” writes Mr. Lazarus
in the preface to his. book. This
deep-rooted anti-Communist pre-
judice goes so far as to attribute
ulterior motives to the Commun-
ists who organized the Relief
Camp Workers Union of the
WUL when everyone else, in-

cluding the Trades and Labor ~

Congress, failed to help the un-
employed. The struggle for the:

abolition of the slave camp sys-

tem resulted in the On-to-Otta-
wa trek of the unemployed to
make a personal presentation of
their grievances to then Prime
Minister R. B. (Iron-heel) Ben-
nett. .

This trek got only as far as
Regina, where it was brutally
broken up on Dominion Day,
1935. The story of this episode
is characteristically culled from
some “Reminiscences” of M. J.
Coldwell. But of Arthur Evans,
the Communist who led the un-
employed -struggle, and at one
point gained a face-to-face inter-
view with the iron-heel Prime
Minister in his Ottawa office
there is not a word.

The great industrial union up-
surge in the middle Thirties, in
which the Communists played
the key organizing role, and the
birth of the CIO for which their
great and self-sacrificing work
and battle for unity laid the
basis for more than a decade, is
quickly disposed of in a few
superficial paragraphs under the

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1974—Page 6

heading “The Magic of CIO”.
Almost equal space is devoted
to the U.M.W. Convention in
Truro, Nova Scotia, in 1938
which voted for affiliation to the
CCE: : 3
Again, the two-year struggle
for unity within the Trades and
Labor Congress led by Commun-
ists and a majority of the TLC
membership after the AFL had
expelled the CIO south of the
border in 1937, and later forced
through at the executive level on
orders of AFL President Green,
is all but ignored except for a
brief reference to the opposition
to this move by Secretary P. M.
Draper and John W. Buckley.
The period of the Second
World War and the subsequent
cold war is introduced under the
heading “Battling the ‘Commie-
Liners’ — Stage 2.” The role of
Communists in this period is
termed by the author as “pesky
and divisive’. The B.C. labor
movement is singled out by the
author as being, until 1948, “al-

_ most a personal fiefdom of the

Communist Party’. This was
prior to the cold war purges
against Communists carried out
by rightwing splitters under
orders from union headquarters
in the United States. ©

It is worth quoting here from
an article by Bob Davis, review-
ing four recent books on Cana-
dian social and working class
history, carried in the October
edition of Books in Canada,

Volume 3, No. 6. Mr. Davis
writes: . :

_ “ss one of the worst distor-
tions by the moderates is the

“
.

combination of slandering and
underplaying the role of the

Communist Party. All the organ- -

izing in Canada between 1930
and 1935 — a period sloughed
over in.standard texts — was
done under the Workers’ Unity
League by the Communist Party;
most of the organizers: in the
CIO drives of the late 1930s and
1940s were Communists. Before
the purge a decade later, they
were a leading force in central
and eastern Canada and the do-
minant force in British Colum-
bia. And my reading of why the
Communists were purged is that
they. wanted to fight tougher
than their social democratic
counterparts. Finally, there is
the allegiance of the moderates
to the American union cause, a
loyalty that in-many periods of
our history (but especially to-
day) has helped, not the working
people, but the American and
the Canadian corporations”,
There are many examples to
show anti-Communism as the
“pesky and divisive” force play-
ing into the hands of the ene-
mies of labor. But space is run-
ning out. Suffice to mention the
criminal and shameless destruc-
tion of the Canadian Seamen’s
Union, a democratic union led
by Communists. It was smashed
by rightwing-labor, management
and Government collaboration,
at the same time as Canada’s
Merchant Marine was being

the sun.”

Beset ten thousand times ...

“Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled
and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seit
by the throat and choked into insensibility; enjoined by
courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by militia,
regulars, traduced by the press, frowned. upon
opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repu-
diated by;,renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested
spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bl |
leeches, and sold out by leaders, but nothwithstanding @
this, and all these, it is today the most vital potential powel”
this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of ne |
cipating the workers of the world from the thralldom of 1 57)
ages is as certain of ‘ultimate realization as the setting °

Eugene V. Debs
“The: Metal Worker”,

shot down by
by public

led by |

May 1904 |

scuttled and Canada as well as
the CSU was betrayed from
both within and from without
by the cold war onslaught of
the U.S. monopolies. The Hal
Banks episode and the role
played by the AFL’s Seafarers’
International Union continues to
be an embarrassment for those
who brought these criminals to
Canada, and a curse and disaster
for Canadian labor.

Years of Hard Labour by Mor-
den Lazarus does not help put
the historical record straight. It
only helps to preserve the pre-
judices and distort the facts at
a time when labor needs clarity
about historical events to avoid
costly and disastrous mistakes.
It needs clarity of perspective to
get away from _ one-sidedness
and simplistic concepts, and to

. tackle objective reality of class-

society in all its multiform as-
pects. This calls for co-operation
of Communists and non-Com-
munists alike
organizations to combat the real
enemy — the extortionist forces
of monopoly capital and their
hangers-on among the politi
cians and in governments.
Finally, the struggle against
inflation, unemployment, social
and economic insecurity and all
the evils of monopoly capitalism,
calls for working class and
democratic unity on the broad-
est basis against monopoly pow-

Tata

LONDON — Prime Minister
Harold Wilson is living in cloud-
cuckoo-land if he really thinks
that workers are going to stand
by and see their real wages cut
by soaring prices while profits
are rocketing, said Bert Ramel-
son, national industrial organ-
izer of the Communist Party of
Great Britain, commenting on
Mr. Wilson’s radio speech : of.
Oct. 14, :

Prime Minister Wilson made
urgent appeals for “national
unity”, and said that many
planks in the Labour Party elec-
tion manifesto would be set
aside for the moment in order
to achieve such aims.

Most of the programmatic
points to be dropped, said Wil-
‘son, would be those insisted
upon by the left wing of the
Labour Party, especially on_na-
tionalization. _

In his radio speech, the prime
minister also.called upon Bri-
tain’s trade union movement to
modify its ‘excessive’ demands
in the “national interests of
combatting inflation.” —

Big Business Happy

Continuing with his remarks,
Mr. Ramelson said that now that
the election was over, big busi-
ness spokesmen were making it
“clearer every day that, far from
being disappointed at the elec-
tion results, a Labour govern-
ment with a water-thin majority
was the most satisfactory out-
come.” ne ‘

in trade union ,

er and exploitation; both forel
and domestic. In this str :
the-trade unions must asl
key-role in uniting all the W
in class and democratic fof
for extended democracy; « ea
genuine Canadian indepen ey 2

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years of hard
labour by _
MP Morden Lazarus.

for a-policy of detente, aie

ment and peace, for a ne aa
tional policy taking our co ‘
on ‘the path towards its S07 gad
future. For after all is sal ’
done, monopoly capitalism ™ 4
obstacle standing in the a
humanity’s advance. Eve?
it must give away tO
socialist society,.
can assure a future of P
human happiness for ma

nkin'

*

It is up to the labor move” iN
in Britain to ensure that ele
promises made in Labour §
tion manifesto, especially
dealing with curbing the
of big business through on
ures such as nationalizal™
kept. This places great © oa
sibility on the trade union ©
ment, said the Communist if

“The movement must wis, 7
mand that the Labour 8 cede
ment adopt the policies ® pov
to change the balance of Pi,
and wealth away from
ards the many,” say
munists,

Communist CampalB? ge

“Despite the campaign cand!
by the Communist Party “(os
dates and their helpers OV
Communist votes were ele
Even more than in previoW ou

tions many who agreed ms
policies nevertheless vot
our., We did not convin¢ rau
of the need to vote Com nt
- as a contribution to the 9°”
a new policy.” - ; te
The Pamtoniet Rabe stf
ment emphasized tha
situation is grave. But ie
out is not by trucking k,
business. Now more tha
only the united fight for”
wages, a freeze on prit wi
rents, a cut in profits, -
drawal from the Commo?
ket, a reduction in arms ip
diture and improvements
social services can save
and the British people. —

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