carefully thought out views on the question of conscription,
as embodied in the resolutions of 1915 and 1916, still, under
our representative form of government, it is not deemed
either right, patriotic or in the interests of the dominion or
of the labor classes, to say or do aught that might prevent
the powers that be from obtaining all the results that they
anticipate from the enforcement of such law.”

In face of strong opposition to conscription among the
delegates, the committee on officers’ reports recommended
substitution of a paragraph that lengthened the statement
without changing its meaning. The new paragraph read:

“Still, under our present form of government we do not
deem it right, patriotic or in the interests of the labor move-
ment or the Dominion of Canada to say or do anything that
might prevent the government of Canada from obtaining the
result they anticipate in the raising of reinforcements for
the C.E. forces by enforcement of the law. This congress is
emphatically opposed to any development in the enforce-
ment of this legislation which will make for industrial con-
scription, or for interference with the trade union movement
in the taking care of tee interests of the workers of the
dominion.”

The substitute paragraph was approved by 136 votes to
106 after two amendments and a substitute motion had been
defeated, but at the conclusion of the discussion when dele-
gates demanded a straight vote for or against conscription,
only 10 delegates voted in favor of conscription.

Commenting on the convention’s decision in its Septem-
ber 28 issue, the B.C. Federationist wrote: “ . .. Never has
a convention of alleged labor representatives registered a more
complete and abject surrender to the sinister and baneful
influences of political chicanery and reaction.”

$3 Bos bos

Following its Revelstoke convention in January, 1917, the
B.C. Federation of Labor conducted a referendum on the
question: “Are you in favor of the Federation entering the
political field?” The vote was inconclusive, 19 unions voting
for and 10 against with the total vote 878 for and 956
against, But with the approval of its Vancouver convention
in September of the same year, the B.C. Federation of Labor
carried its anti-conscription campaign into the 1917 federal
election by nominating six candidates: V. R. Midgley in Van-
couver-Burrard, J. H. McVety in Vancouver South, J, Taylor
in Nanaimo, A. S. Wells in Victoria, Thomas Biggs in East
Kootenay and Ald. A. I, Austin, who had represented labor
on Nelson City Council for six years, in West Kootenay. By
agreement with the Socialist party, which had nominated W.
A. Pritchard, no candidate was entered in Vancouver Centre.
The labor platform had four planks: Abolition of profit-mak-
ing; no conscription, military or industrial; decent payments
to soldiers and dependents; no profiteering in war supplies.

None of the labor candidates was elected but all polled
substantial votes that encouraged the trend to political action.
One month after the election, at its convention -in January,
1918, delegates voted 82 to 11 to form a working class politi-
cal organisation and the Federated Labor party, “organised for
the purpose of securing industrial legislation and the collective
ownership and democratic operation of the means of wealth
production,” came into being, with Gordon J. Kelly as its
president, W. R. Trotter as its secretary and Helena Gut-
teridge, later to become Vancouver’s first woman alderman,
as its treasurer.

Even while the new party was being formed, the B.C.
Federation of Labor fought its first successful election in
Newcastle, the only Socialist seat retained in the 1916 pro-
vincial election. [The seat had remained vacant since Parker
Williams’ appointment to the new Workmen’s Compensation
Board by the Brewster Liberal government in January, 1917,
an appointment bitterly assailed by the unions, whose own
nominees had been ignored, and described by the B.C. Feder-
ationist as “‘a slap in the face for organised labor.”

To contest the traditional Socialist stronghold when the
byelection was called in January, 1918, Hawthornthwaite
returned as a Labor candidate. For a time it appeared that he
might have to face his erstwhile colleague running as a Liberal,
but after Williams received what the B.C. Federationist called
“a chilly reception” at Ladysmith, the Liberals nominated
G. H. Cavin. In a straight fight Hawthornthwaite regained
the seat, 931 votes to 448, and Cavin lost his deposit.

% 3 i

The event that ignited all the opposition to conscription
and the war smouldering in the labor movement -was the
murder of Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, a former vice-president
of the B.C. Federation of Labor and a member of the Socialist
party,

Goodwin, secretary of the Western Federation of Miners
local at Trail, had been leading a strike for extension of

the eight-hour day, when he was called up for re-examination
under the Military Service Act and his classification changed
from Class D to Class A. Instead of reporting for military
service, he left Trail and made his way to Cumberland where
the coal miners knew him as a man who had stood with them
throughout the long strike of 1912-14. The labor movement
heard no more of him until the report that he had been shot
and killed at the head of Comox Lake by a special policeman
named Dan Campbell evoked its unprecedented protest.

“Ginger” Goodwin was buried at Cumberland on August
2, with the entire population of the mining town following
the funeral procession, 'At noon that day, a Friday, Vancouver
was brought virtually to a standstill as every trade unionist
quit work in a 24-hour protest strike.

The city’s big business organisations had known the
strike was planned and they had prepared their counter-plan,
but the very effectiveness of the strike added to their hys-
teria. In the afternoon, several hundred war veterans raided
the Labor Temple at the corner of Dunsmuir and Homer
streets, smashing furniture and destroying records, At night,
a meeting in the Empress Theatre called upon organised labor,

which had struck almost to a man, to “oust the disloyal leader- .

ship of the Vancouver labor movement” for calling the strike.
On the Saturday, longshoremen who had refused to return to
work until Monday, fought off a second raid upon their hall
on West Pender street.

The daily newspapers broke into a rash of lurid head-
lines and inflammatory editorials: A Citizens’ Committee
demanded deportation of the strike leaders, among them E. E.
Winch, Jack Kavanagh and W..'A, Pritchard. But labor had
demonstrated its temper and the Citizens’ Committee’s clamor
against “disloyal labor leaders” failed before the understand-
ing of workers who equated loyalty to labor with the highest
loyalty to the country that labor had built.

Behind the employers’ fear of the organised workers,
behind the frenzied propaganda of the Canadian Chambers
of Commerce and Canadian Manufacturers Association and
behind the repressive measures of the federal government lay
a greater fear. Socialism was no longer only an idea, no longer
only a theory to be argued and debated in the struggle to
bring it about, with only the brief experience of the Paris
Commune of 1871 to attest its validity. Out of the carnage and
devastation of war, in the birth of the Soviet Union, the idea
had become a reality that would grow until it filled the world.
Already it was seizing the imagination of working people in
every country, in British Columbia as elsewhere.

“The hope of the world today is the Bolsheviki,” declared
J. H. Hawthornthwaite. “The Bolsheviki have made a noble
beginning and I believe that spirit is the hope of the civilised
world and sooner or later the spirit will sweep the whole
earth,’ said E. T. Kingsley; And throughout the socialist
movement of the province and the country some looked at
the new-born Soviet Union and seeing in it the promise of
their own socialist future, sprang to its defense against
imperialist intervention. Others looked and stood by, refusing
to recognise the truth of what they saw. But henceforth, as it
would affect all relationships and touch all lives, the attitude
toward the land and presently the lands where socialism was
being created would ultimately determine the course of the
socialist movement in Canada and every capitalist country.

Its impact upon the Socialist party of Canada was demon-
strated in 1921 when the majority of the national executive,
having reluctantly submitted a referendum on affiliation to
the Communist International at the insistence of the member-
ship, refused to recognise the membership’s overwhelming
mandate.

Out of that division a new party founded on Marxist
principles was born, the Workers party, within two years to
become the Communist Party of Canada, at a conference in
Toronto on December 11-12, 1921. That same month, in
Vancouver, a group of militant socialists, among them Wil-
liam Bennett representing the Socialist party and A. S. Wells
representing the Federated Labor party, met in Sullivan Hall
on West Cordova Street to establish the first British Columbia
branch of the new party.

The heritage of the pioneer miners of the Cariboo, of
Amor De Cosmos who predicted the triumph of the princi-
ples of the Paris Commune, had found worthy heirs in the
men and women who saw in the triumph of socialism in the
USSR the shape of their own country’s socialist future.

@ This concludes British Columbia: The People’s Story
which, with the addition of new material, will be pub-
lished in paperbound form as the Pacific Tribune’s
centennial project.

~ Canadian women

G
June 20, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—*

Folk art #
ey o,?
exhibition
An exhibition of vical
handicraft is now on OM
in downtown Vancouv®

one of the features " ;
coming Ukrainian Fest”

Exhibition Forum on Jul

Since the exhibition op
last week — it will c? A |
until Saturday, June gi
there has been a steady
of visitors to 386 West

ings street to view thé

dreds of articles of #0 4
from the Ukraine and Can

o

Many of the rare item
display have been Joan s
the Ukrainian Festive!
mittee by the Shevé if
Museum in Palermo, of oo
The list includes native gd
tume pieces, i
tapestries, shawls, et
towels, beadwork and
ics from the Ukraine
pe

There are also many ip? |

; ra
looms of pioneer Uk

women in Canada thi oul”

date immigration to this iP |

t

ae
try. Not a few of the © i
are by younger
from ot

+ ans
embroidery competitio®” jg

ducted two years pi
the Ivan Franko Mus
Winnipeg. é

je?”
Festival officials ae i
with the public resDy iy

far and invite all tho, if .

are interested to droP is
browse around. The hp
from 11 am. to 9:39,
daily. ;

§

951 EAST HASTING

Vancouver, B: ‘cE
QUALITY SER

if!
Beer

Castle Jewelel A
Watchmaker and Jem
Special Dis-

count to all
Tribune Read-
ers. Bring

r.
ye

guest

multi - Og}

this ad with

you. ti
152 Granville ed