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Reviews

Saga of
liberation
fight from

famous red

diaper baby’

TIES OF BLOOD. By Gillian
_ Slovo. Headline Books, 1990. 789

~ Pages. $7.95. At the People’s Co-
op Bookstore.

Ties of Blood is a riveting neve] by

‘one of the most famous red diaper ~

~ babies in the world. In the acknow-
ledgemeénts; Gillian Slovo thanks her
father — South African Communist
Party leader Joe Slovo — and others
involved in the struggle for liberation
and socialism in South Africa, and one
can occasionally see her and other real
figures shadowed in the text.

The story line spans four genera-
tions of black and white South Afri-
cans who enter the struggle for libera-
tion at different times and in different
manners. The whites trace their line-
age back to Lithuanian Jews in. the
“shetl;” the blacks from defeated
royal ancestors. All central characters
in the book become exiles, even when

- living in their own land.

The African National Congress
and the South African Communist
Party are the organizations to which
Slovo’s characters belong. This ele-
ment of realism makes Ties of Blood
a much easier novel to find one’s way
through politically than Nadine Gor-
dimer’s Sport of Nature for example.
Like Gordimer though, Slovo’s pro-
tagonists are very strong women who
ultimately succeed in gaining intro-
spective .knowledge of themselves
and their loved ones. As for the men,
there’s one memorable line from a Joe
Slovo-like figure who concedes that
revolutions are sometimes easier to
understand than families. The author
does not by any means write men out,
but consistently endeavours to give

women’s experiences in the liberation...

movements their overdue exposure.

There is plenty of action and path-
os in the novel. Chapters on the clan-
destine development of the Freedom
Charter are especially engrossing.

If the novel has any flaw, it is that
it is too long. Yet even within its al-
most 800 pages certain characters are
written out quickly. Hundreds of
pages after the Amold and Swiece
families have made their way to Lon-

~don:, following banning, the .wiee
Communist Party accountant, grand-
father Harold, suddenly reappears for
a couple of lines with emphysema,
and then dies a few pages later. This
method of arranging character exits is
perhaps a stylistic carry-over from
Slovo’s successful murder mysteries,
but is unsuited for a hybrid historical
romance-political realist work such as
this.

Ties of Blood concludes with the
kangaroo trial of soldiers from Um-
khonto We Siswe. Third generation
liberation fighter Nathaniel is of
course condemned to death, but raises
his clenched fist in the court to shout
“Amandla!” There is no turning back;
victory within our lifetimes is the
spirit which permeates this book, and
indeed the struggle in South Africa
itself.

— Doug Meggison

Histo

10 « Pacific Tribune, September 24, 1990

of IWW in B.C. details

Wobblies’ theory and practice

WHERE THE FRASER RIVER
FLOWS: The Industrial Workers of
the Word in British Columbia. By
Mark Leier. New Star Books, Van-
couver, 1990. $14.95 paperback, 138
pages. Available at the People’s Co-op
Bookstore.

At 10 a.m. on June 27, 1905, when Wil-

diam D. (Big Bill) Haywood rose to address

the founding convention of the Industrial
Workers of the World (the “Continental

Congress of the Working Class”), Vladimir

Utyenoy (Lenin) was just another obscure
Russian €x%s.and Josef Djugashvili (Stalin)
merely a budding venk robber. Haywood,
also an avowed revolutiOney. was a hard
rock miner already bloodied “In—North
America’s industrial wars. As secretary 0f
the Western Federation of Miners, he had
helped to lead some of the bitterest strikes in
the continent’s history. Unfortunately, the
fact that it was Haywood who died an exile
in Ulyanov’s Bolshevik Moscow has tended.
to obscure the contribution he and his fellow
workers made to revolutionary socialist
thought.

This is a mistake which Mark Leier goee
a long way to correct in his book, Where the
Fraser River Flows: The Industrial Workers
of the World in British Columbia. It is an
important, well written book which deserves
a much wider audience than it is likely to
receive. Outside this province, books on
B.C.’s labour history are seldom read by
anyone save history professors and their stu-
dents.

This is unfortunate, because Where the
Fraser River Flows is the best work on the

why and wherefore of the Wobblies —IWW
members — I have read since Brissenden’s
The IWW: A Study in Syndicalism, which
was published in 1919. A good grasp of the
theory and practice of the TWW has always
been auseful tool. Itis especially useful now,
when so much of North America’s left is
either in confusion or in bed with social
democracy.

Of course, it is the duty of reviewers to
cavil, and I shall perform this duty by point-
ing out that this book began as an MA thesis,
and some traces of its origin remain evident.

’ There are a few occasions on which fellow-

worker Leier seems not only to labour, but
to belabour the point.

By and large, however, he has success-
fully avoided the crudities of academic
prose, with the result being as full and as
interestin?~an_account of the TWW in this
province as wer€ are ever likely to have. As
Leier shows, there was ‘much more to the
Wobblies in B.C. than a couple~of free-
speech fights and the 1912 CN/GTP strike:
Here as elsewhere, it was a combination of
their revolutionary theory and fighting prac-
tice which made them successful. Here as
elsewhere, these same factors led to their
defeat. It is Leier’s “anelysis_of how both
success and defeat could spring from_a
single course which makes his book so valu-
able. ; :

The IWW was born ata time when em-
ployers were engaged in the decisive battle
for control not only over the workplace but
over how work should be done. “Scientific
management” or Taylorism was to succeed
in no small part because the American Fed-

eration of Labour, and its successors and
cohorts in the Congress of Industrial Or-
ganizations and Canadian labour federa-
tions refused even to consider fighting back.
In AFL founder Samuel Gompers’ phrase,
they were content with simply “more.” The
result has been the complete degradation

and deskilling of work — assembly-line —

methods now used in enterprises as varied
as McDonald’s and hospitals.

The Wobblies did not want “more,” they
wanted it all. As Leier demonstrates, one of
the major reasons for their appeal among
workers was their willingness to fight Tay-
lorism, as well as racism, sexism, and lousy
wages and conditions. Yet by posing the
question of who should control the means
and the processes of production, they placed
themselves in a position carefully avoi
by what they called the “misleaders of
labour.” They would not compromise, and
they did not win. But as Leier shows, It
would be a mistake to equate their defeat

. with failure in the way most left wingers are

accustomed to:

After all, the history of socialism in Can-

ada, whether seen from the [WW, the Com-

munist Party, or the CCF-NDP perspective,
is the history of losers. And like it or not, the
reasons for this history of defeat are still with
us: Leier uses his history of the [WW to B.C.
to provide one of the most cogent, lucid
analyses of these reasons.I have seen. He
may not provide a solution, but by providing
us with a better understanding, he helps us
in our groping towards one.

—Mark Warrior

Fringe environment
play at La Quena;
Bethune film at
_Vancouver festival

Fund-raiser: Vancouver Persons With
AIDS society sponsors the fourth annual
Walk for Life on Sunday, Sept. 30. The
walk around Stanley Park seawall begins
at 11 a.m., and the day’s events aim to raise
more than $100,000 in pledges for support
programs for AIDS sufferers.

Included are concerts and a celebrity
barbecue in the aftemoon: Opening cere-
monies and a light breakfast begin prior to

the-walk at 9 a.m. in adjacent Ceperely
~ Park. The society can be reached at 683-
3381.

aR

Concert: The Andean group, Ancient
Cultures, plays at La Quena Coffee
House, 1111 Commercial Dr. in Van-
couver on Saturday, Sept.

29, 8 p.m. Admission is $7.

oho
Play: A Fringe Festival holdover,
Ruckus in the Rain Forest, a humourous
plea for the environment, runs at La
Quena Coffee House in Vancouver on
Tuesday, Sept. 25, 8 p.m. Admissionis $5
and $3.

RK
Film: A reminder that The Vancouver
International Film Festival begins Sept.
28, running until Oct. 14, at five theatres
in the city. A noteworthy entry is director
Philip Boros’ film, Bethune: The Mak-

Donald Sutherland in Bethune: The making of a hero.

ing of a Hero, the story of Dr. Norman
Bethune and starring Donald Sutherland.

Among the other 19 Canadian films are -
The Company of Strangers, Five Fem-
inist Minutes, Archangel, and The
Spirit Within. There is also a line-up of
Soviet films, including This Is No Way to
Live, Taxi Blues and the highly acclaimed
Soviet-Canadian-American-Swedish co-
production, Swan Lake, The Zone.

The festival can be reached at 685-
0260 or 685-0266. Check local listings for

_ place, date and time.

aR AR

T.V.: KCTS, U.S. public television,
airs, on Great Performances, a dram-
atization of Colombian author Gabriel
Garcia Marquez’ short story, ““Miracle in
Rome.” It concerns a father’s attempts to
have his daughter canonized. In Spanish

- recruited by a Jesuit priest who perform in

with English subtitles, Friday, Oct. 12, 10
p.m. for 90 minutes.

The huge hole in the ozone layer over
Antarctica, as well as theories about the
frozen continent’s origins, are examined
in Irresistible Forces, on Wednesday,
Oct. 10, 7 p.m. for one hour.

As part of its Hispanic Heritage Month
series, KCTS presents “‘Teatro!’’, on the
experiences of Teatro La Fragua (The
Forge Theatre), a company of teenagers

villages and banana camps plays that in-
clude subjects like the California grape
and lettuce strikes. It airs Sunday, Oct. 14,
10 a.m. Also on is Elvia: A Fight for
Land and Liberty, concerning Elvia Al-
varado, a Honduran peasant organizer and
land reform advocate. It’s on the same
date, at 11:30 a.m. p