TOM McEWEN WRITES FINE BIOGRAPHY OF SOCIALIST PIONEER Bill Bennett's life woven into B.C. labor. history WHEN “oP Bill” Bennett died, on December 31, 1949. two thousand people attended‘ the .Simple funeral services held in Vancouver’s Pender Auditori- um. Working people, they came from every ‘generation, from the fragile old women and toil- worn old men whose years ex-: ceed Ql!’ Bill’s own sixty-eight Summers ,to youngsters who had still to learn the full truth of the things Ol’ Bill had taught them. It was an impressive demonstration of the loss felt by these working people at the passing of the grand old man of British Columbia labor. What was it about Bill Ben- nett that his death should bring such sorrow into hundreds of households across the land as at the passing of an old and dear friend? He was not fam- ous, as the daily press deter- mines fame by its headlines, yet he possessed qualities that made him truly great. He was a writer,-a labor journalist, counting his readers by the tens where his contemporaries of the daily press counted theirs ‘by hundreds, yet his writings would be read and his name live in history long after theirs had been forgotten. It cannot be said that his name was entirely unknown in the palatial homes along Van- ‘couver’s Southwest Marine Drive and indeed, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police pos- _ sessed a lengthy if doubtless not too accurate a biography of him. But he was best known along Vancouver’s East Cor- dova and East Hastings streets, the area fittingly called the _ Skidroad; in the coal mining _ltowns of Nanaimo and Cumber- land, in the smelter city of Trail and in a thousand farm. homes throughout the Fraser Valley and the Okanagan. Along the Skidroad almost everyone knew him and for _ that reason accompanying him the length of its few blocks was a trying experienca for any one in a hurry, as Ol’ Bill himself rarely was, and a political les- son for any one understanding, as Ol Bill understood, that without people nothing can be accomplished. In his last years, when he was not listening to one of his old- timers in his office or talking - down on the Skidroad with any one of the hundreds of miners and loggers he called by their. first names, he could. often be found in the vicinity of the courthouse at Howe and Geor- gia streets, a place he despised for the quality of its justice, loathed for ' ugliness and valued alone for its gardens. “I like to see the flowers— and the people,” he would ex- plain. And he would add, “Peo- ple and flowers are a lot alike. _ Give them a chance to grow and you can see the! beauty.. ” Tt’s harder to find when they’re trampled down. Man creates the conditions for the flowers ~ to grow in. Here, he’s still _ trying to create the conditions for his own growth.” 53 be * _ BILL BENNETT loved peo- ple. And it is of people—a life- _ time filled with people, moved by people and devoted to peo- ple, the working people—that Tom McEwen writes in his fine biography, He Wrote For Us: The Story of Bill Bennett, Pioneer Socialist Journalist.* Illustrating his story with anec- dotes, reinforcing it with quota- its architectural - tions from the Marxist classics, ne has given us an account of Ol’ Bill’s fifty years in the labor movement that is both biog- raphy and history—history be- cause there was no worthwhile movement of the working peo- ple of ‘this province in which Ol Bill did not play some part. ‘OL’ BILL’ BENNETT He lives again for the future JI’ Bill himself left only his writings in* perhaps a ‘dozen labor weeklies published over the past 30-odd years since ‘he made his first contributions to the Federationist — those, and one slim volume of history now out of print, Builders of British Columbia. He wrote a lot about’ other ‘people but very little about ‘himself. The stories he might have told are known only to a dwindling number of old- timers who came up with him in the labor movement and shar- ed his memories as those of a later generation could never do. ‘Out of a labor that must have entailed painstaking research and extensive correspondence, ‘McEwen has succeeded in creating at once a convincing portrait of Ol’ Bill, an inspiring story of his times as seen through his own eyes as par- ticipant. and observer, and a political evaluation of some of labor’s struggles over the past half-century that merits the at- tention of every progressive. Skilfully he has extracted the best of Ol’ Bill’s writings and woven them into the fuller fab- ric of the times so that the true ‘measure of Ol’ Bill’s contribu- tion becomes apparent. McEwen recognizes that, ‘even in his lifetime, Ol’ Bill had become almost a legendary figure among the workers of British Columbia who, as work- ers do everywhere, preserve their own history in their hearts and keep it alive among their class. As he says in ‘his opening chapter: “ « . OP Bill seemed. as permanent as the rugged mountains which stand guard , over his beloved province of British Columbia. “Along Vancouver’s ‘world- famous skidroad, at meetings in halls, parks and homes, wherever workers gathered _ PENDER AUDITORIUM (Marine Workers) 339 West Pender LARGE & SMALL HALLS FOR RENTALS Phone PA. 9481 to Bbcuee their daily prob- lems, to advance the cause of socialism, Ol’ Bill was there. Few affairs affecting the wellbeing of the common peo- ple ever took place without this stocky little man with the flowing walrus moustaches, alert twinkling eyes and hearty genial laugh, being somewhere in the assembly.” What McEwen has done is to shape this legend while the historic material of which it is fashioned is still fresh and make of it a weapon to be used in the struggle for the Socialist Canada that Ol’ Bill himself could not live to see. eae Se te at IN, TRACING Ol’ Bill’s life from the day, as a 16-year old lad, he joined tthe Scottish Labor party through his early years aS a young immi- grant to this country and a amember of the Socialist Party of Canada, McEwen enriches _our knowledge and understand- ing of the pioneer socialist movement of this province. and « the battles it fought, both with- in its own ranks over ‘theoreti- -cal questions and against the ruling class. When ‘the ‘Socialist Revolu- tion and the birth of the Soviet Union forced the Socialist party to take its stand on this living . issue of all socialist theory, Ol’ Bill was one of the Socialist leaders in this province who re- cognized the future and rose to defend it. He became one of the founders of the Workers’ Party of Canada which, in 1924. ‘became the Communist Party of Canada. The chapters Mc- Ewen devotes to these, years are among the most readable of a book distinguished for its readability. Other chapters are given over to an account, replete with Ol’ Bill’s own forthright comments, of the struggles of the coal miners, the lumberworkers and smelterworkers. Ol Bill was intimately acquainted with these industries through the hundreds of workers he knew and, ‘as every reader of. his “Short Jabs” column was aware, Canadian Collieries (Dunsmuir) Limited, the Mac- Millan lumber trust and the ‘Consolidated Mining and Smelt- ing Company were among his favorite targets.. Ol’ Bill knew the origin of these corporations and of the men who controlled them and, placed. in the broader perspective by McEwen, his comments acquire even sharper point than when he wrote them One chapter contains Ol’ Bill’s “Pageant of History,” a feature article written in 1937 for the People’s Advocate. In it Ol Bill sets out to prove that throughout history, since class society came into being, the oe class ‘has endeavored by war and massacre, torture and execution, to preserve ilts privi- leged position against the new class emerging to challenge its rule. It is not pleasant reading, but, as McEwen states: “Tt is a story that no one can read, in the sense of merely reading, without being moved to profound contemplation on the long and stern path that man, has traversed, and the ‘blood, suffering and sublime heroism that marks his trail as he comes up: out of the dark mists of ‘barbarism, striving for the mountain top of a classless society.” So too, it can be said of He Wrote For Us that no one can read it without being inspired by the constancy of purpose, the devotion to a cause, the practise of the high princples he set for himself, which mark- ed Ol’ Bill’s life. He died as the had lived all the years of his adult life, asking for the work- ing people everything that a- Socialist Canada will give them, and for himself, nothing more than a modest place in the great human undertaking he helped to pioneer. Now, through the pages of. McEwen’s: splendid biography he lives again for the future, teaching as he taught in life, inspiring by his own great ex: ample.—HAL GRIFFIN. * Obtainable from the pub- lishers, Tribune Publishing Company, litd., Room 6, 426 Main Street, or the People’s Co- operative Bookstore, 337 West Pender Street, Vancouver, B.C., at $1 for the regular paper-cov- ered edition, $3 for the specially beund library edition. PREMERA UE NEMS RTE MNS EEE MEUM ENS Se #R Castle Jewelers XMAS GIFTS WATCHES DIAMONDS \ JEWELRY NY RONSON PRAMAS AT LIGHTERS Etc. & Special discount to all Tribune® Readers. Bring ithis ad with # You. 752 Granville St. a GARNEAU UNL ENRLNPE RHR RENEE sai echcbsSAgaonic sonciccar a pen abokatocaocae a Zas FLAGG a SEASON’S GREETINGS 89 West Pender Street PACIFIC 2459 RAMA LMS PRMRAAB RA & (0. \ PADMA a Mai PDE RENE ME RENE ME URE NUE DE NEUE ES ME MEV ME NE ULE MEE De er 242 E. 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