REVIEWS

THE COMPANY STORE: James Bry-
son McLachlan and the Cape Breton
Coalminers, 1900-1925 by John Mellor.
Doubleday Canada, 1983. 352 pp.

The history of Canada is the story of
our people; the native people who have
populated this land for thousands of years,
and the immigrants from Europe, Asia
and Africa who have been drawn here
during the last two centuries. It is the story
of factory workers, lumber workers, min-
ers, fishermen and farmers. It is a story
which still has not been fully uncovered.

Kitchener author John Mellor has con-
tributed to the telling of this story with a
book focusing on the Cape Breton coal
miners and their colorful and courageous
leader, J.B. McLachlan. The miners’
struggle against the tyranny of the British
Empire Steel Corporation (BESCO), later
to become the Dominion Steel and Coal
Corporation (DOSCO), is a compelling
story of hardship and heroism, tragedy
and triumph.

At the turn of the century, the coal
miners had nothing but their labor power
and their pride. Living in company
houses, shopping at company stores, they
were kept in total servitude by the coal
corporations. Wages, working and living

Miners’ history compelling but flawed

{i

relief programs were unheard of. By strik-
ing to improve wages or working condi-
tions, miners and their families invited
eviction, refusal of credit at the company
Store, starvation, sickness and death.

They did strike, and suffer these hard-
ships, in 1904, 1906, 1909, 1922, 1923,
1934, and 1935. All too often, they were
forced back to work by starvation and
bayonets. Through these struggles, the
miners slowly won improvements in
wages, working and living conditions.

The struggle by workers against wage
concessions is also not a new pheno-
menon. After receiving a wage increase in
1920, the miners were for the next decade
and a half faced with constant corporate
demands for wage cuts, demands which
were unsuccessfully resisted by the miners.
In fact, it took them until 1941 to push
ion wages up to the level they were in

Mellor described the lives of the miners,

Books

conditions were abominable. Government

their struggles, their defeats and their vic-
tories in a vivid and compelling manner.
The only drawback to the book is the
way it deals with the role played by the
Communist Party of Canada in the min-
ers’ struggle. Mellor does not attempt to
hide or downplay McLachlan’s role as a
leading Communist in the first decade and
a half of the party’s existence, but neither
does he seem to really understand it.
When dealing with the activity of the
Communist Party, he suddenly takes a
rather conspiratorial view of history. He
sees leaders of the party dashing off to
Comintern meetings to receive instruc-
tions from their Moscow masters. He sees
McLachlan being brought to central
committee meetings in Toronto to receive
instructions from his party bosses. One
senses that Mellor breathed a deep sigh of
relief when McLachlan, near the end of his
long and fruitful life, decided to withdraw
from the Communist Party rather than
support the building of the CIO, which
had his arch-enemy John L. Lewis, as

‘CIO, and the militancy with which they

chairman. Here again, though, Mellor
does not appear to fully understand what
happened, or why. Consequently,
reader is left in something of a vacuum.
_ McLachlan’s refusal to support
CIO and his subsequent resignation from
the Communist party was a subjective a
based upon a well-founded, justifiab
hatred of Lewis. It was also compl Z
inconsistent with his lifetime record
objectively assessing workers’ needs
their ability and preparedness to enter inl
struggle. :
Had he not been so obsessed with
Lewis, had Lewis not betrayed him 8°
viciously, McLachlan may well have d
ized that the character of the CIO wo!
be determined not by its chairman, but by
the masses of industrial workers WhO
would organize it, build it and fight fort.
Had he lived a few years longer, he wov
have seen the eagerness with which
workers in the auto, steel, rubber, elect
cal and other industries embraced the

battled against corporate power. It 8
probable that McLachlan would thet”
have realized the correctness of the deci-
sion to close the workers’ ranks behind the

clo.
— Alan Pickersgill.

McCarthyism
examined in
CBC programs

Anti-communism in 1950s Canada,
the life and songs of Woody Guthrie,
and a series of visiting topical and ethnic
singers to Vancouver make March the
month to be tuned in to media offerings.

On Mar. 6, and for three consecutive
Tuesdays following, CBC radio will air
its four-part series, the Cold War in Can-
ada. Featured on CBC’s Ideas program
(8 p.m.), Cold War deals with McCarthy-
ism as it was practiced by the courts,
governments and trade unions.

But the series, which interviews a var-
iety of individuals from former Labor
Progressive Party organizer and former
Ontario MPP J.B. Salsberg to the late
ex-prime minister John Diefenbaker,
also reveals to a post-war generation the -
intensely pro-Soviet, international solid-
arity mood during World War II with
the Mar. 6 opening program, “Respecta-
ble Communists: The Wartime Alliance.”
The other programs in the series
include “The Cold War in Ottawa” (Mar.
13), “Purging the Unions: A Question of.
Loyalty” (Mar. 20) and “Un-Canadian
Activities” (Mar. 27) which centres on
peace work and artistic endeavors, both
right-wing and progressive.

Meanwhile, Seattle’s public television
station, KCTS (Channel 9) will pay trib-
ute to the late American singer and
songwriter, Woody Guthrie. Hosted by
Guthrie’s son Arlo, the 90-minute pro-
duction features personal interviews,
archival material and renditions of
Guthrie’s most noted songs by Joan
Baez, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert and
several others.

The show will be aired twice, on Sat-
urday, Mar. 3 at 8 p.m., and again on
Mar. 10 at 2:30 p.m.

Those who like their music live will
appreciate the concert sponsored by the
Vancouver Folk Music Festival. Leon
Rosselson, the British political song-
writer will perform at the Vancouver
East Cultural Centre, 1895 Venables St.,
at 8 p.m. Mar. 18. Tickets are $8.

Soviet children more hopeful

of stopping

This article appeared in the U.S. New Age
Journal in December, 1983.

Even while ABC-TV was still debating
whether to air The Day After, the film had
provoked intense debate among parents,
teachers, and community groups. “Is it
fair,” many people questioned, “to burden
children with the facts about nuclear war?”

Interestingly, the brouhaha coincided
with the release of data on Soviet children’s
thoughts about nuclear war. Last summer
three American psychiatrists were allowed
into the USSR to ask Soviet children how
much they know about the effects of
nuclear explosions, whether they believe
there will be nuclear war in their lifetime,
and whether they think nuclear war can be
prevented.

Although the psychiatrists had been told
that the Soviet government withholds
information about nuclear weapons from
children, they in fact discovered that Soviet
children are better informed than American
children.

“By the time they’re eight years old,” Dr.
John Mack reports, “they have been
exposed to detailed information about the
effects of nuclear explosions. Through
classroom instruction, and the news media,
especially television, they obtain detailed,
accurate information about the effects of
blast, fire, and radiation on living things and
the physical environment.”

During their stay in the USSR, The
American psychiatrists visited two Pioneer
camps, videotaped ‘fifty interviews with
Soviet children and administered question-
naires to three hundred others, using the
same questions that American children had
been asked in earlier studies. Thanks to the
International Physicians for the Prevention
of Nuclear War (the organization which
organized and co-sponsored the study), the
American researchers were given an unus-
ual degree of freedom to carry out their
study. They used their own translator and
interviewed the children with out the super-
vision of Soviet adults. And they were
allowed to bring all of their unedited video-
tapes back to the United States.

Their results, though preliminary (because
of the small size of the sample), are thought-
provoking: 98.6 per cent of the Soviet child-
ren are “worried” or “very worried” about

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 29, 1984

ee SP a
aE eee

&

about peace than U.S. counterparts.

nuclear war, compared to 58.2 per cent of
the American children. The Soviet children
seem better able than American children to
imagine the consequences of nuclear war.
‘When asked “If there were a nuclear war,
do you think that you and your family
would survive?,” 80.7 per cent of Soviet
children said no (compared to 41.5 per cent
of the American children).

“You couldn’t survive a nuclear strike,”
one 13-year-old boy told the researchers.
“The nuclear radioactivity remains for a
very long time. Even if a person goes under-
ground, no matter how much he wants to
live, he wouldn’t.”

And yet, despite their intense fear —

perhaps because of it? — Soviet children’

are generally more hopeful that nuclear war
can be prevented (93.3 per cent believe that
nuclear war can be prevented, compared to
only 65 per cent of the American children
surveyed). The American research team
finds this seeming contradiction difficult to
explain; however, they suspect that it can be
attributed to the children’s participation in
state-sponsored peace activities, such as
meetings, petitions, drives, and writing
cards to the United States.

“There is this sense of working together
on the problem — state controlled, to be
sure, yet together,” Dr. Macklin explains.

war, doctors find —

SOVIET CHILDREN AT PIONEER CAMP. . .more a

od

ware of nuclear danger, more optimisti¢

He also notes that “the information is pr
ented to the children in a coherent, struc
tured way. When teachers and parents t
about the threat of nuclear war with
ren, the information is not presented 4
totally overwhelming and one-sided.”
Recent studies in the U.S. show that 40
70 per cent of American children, ages 13-
18, believe that nuclear war in their lifetime
is inevitable. Most feel powerless to change
the situation and isolated with their fear and
anger. As one 14-year-old girl explains,
“My parents drive me to my peace club
meetings, but they won’t talk to me aboutit,
and they don’t listen. So Iam on my own. I
get upset when their attitude is ‘Forget it.
Perhaps we have something to learn from
the Soviet example. The Soviets teach theif
children that there can be no meanin
survival after a nuclear war. But they also
encourage their children to be optimistic.
During her interview with the American
psychiatrists, one 13-year-old Soviet gitl
gave them as message to relay on to children
in America. “I would like to wish American
children,” she said, “that they’d struggle
and fight against nuclear war and that they
don’t believe that it will happen. And that if
in some event it does happen, that we will
very hard to stop it.”
Shah — Laurie Kahn-Leavitt