British Columbia : the people’s ‘story 10 RISE OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT By HAL GRIFFIN EARLY two decades before Sir Richard McBride formally introduced party government into provincial politics by forming the first Conservative government in 1903, the young trade union movement was contesting elections through its own candidates and under the banner of its own party. A brief report in the Victoria Colonist of June 28, 1882, that 75 workingmen had met in Victoria to select candidates for the forthcoming federal and provincial elections, records the first tentative step. Nothing apparently came of it, but it was a remarkable step because the working class was very small and its organised section still smaller, confined. to the city of Victoria, The population of the province was only 50,000 and of this Victoria had 6,000. The Victoria printers’ and shipwrights’ unions had been in existence for some 20 years, but the Knights of Labor was just beginning to organise in the city. ‘This first attempt to place labor candidates in the field coincided with and to some extent was prompted by the decline and final defeat of the series of governments headed by leaders of the pre-Confederation movement for responsible government and the coming to power of new governments under new leaders whose chief concern was to appropriate the natural wealth of the province for themselves and their supporters. In the provincial election of 1882, the government of Robert Beaven, who had been secretary of the Confederation League, was routed at the polls. Amid a clamor from the opposition for its resignation, it clung to office until the legislature met in 1883. Then the opposition could no longer be balked and William Smithe became premier. Arrival of the first transcontinental passenger train in Vancouver in May, 1887 Three years later, in 1886, when the Smithe government went to the people, its land giveaways to the Dunsmuir interests and the Canadian Pacific Railway and its connivance with the land speculators had become an open scandal, Con- versely, it had done nothing to satisfy labor’s demands for the nine-hour day or to strengthen what little labor legisla- tion, full of legal loopholes, was already on the statute books, Labor, now organised in four Knights of Labor assem- blies in New Westminster, Nanaimo and Victoria, in craft unions at Victoria, and with a paper, the Industrial News of Victoria, to speak for it, was in a stronger position to make its challenge. The viewpoint expressed by the Industrial News, reporting a speech made by a Knights of Labor leader, that “the time has come when the toiling masses should have representatives on the floor of the house of assembly,” reflected a gathering conviction among organised workers that they must have their own candidates to fight for their demands., Members of the legislature stood as individuals and were not governed by party lines as such, but whether or not they had: Conservative or Liberal affiliations, ‘their political sym- pathies were apparent when the vote was called in the legis- lature. The newly organised unions might prevail upon an individual member to present a bill. They might use their strength to influence the outcome of an election, as the Knights of Labor influenced the first Vancouver- mayoralty contest in 1886 by persuading Malcolm mainly to extract gain 2 the centennial celebration® forgotten. ? 7 One regional history, a ticular, is well worth rere” It is The Skeena: River of ‘e tiny by Richard Geddes L 0" (obtainable here at th “gag ple’s Co-op Bookstor& | West Pender Street, P $3.50). . As the foreword points a it is “an attempt to reco! he history of a portion ° a province that has bee? tot pletely neglected by ee ans.” Large tells the story with many an enlivenin& “ac dote, and handles his fo! with meticulous. respec’ 4. accuracy. His greatest § ne coming is that too ofté of fails to draw the conel pi to which these facts Leann JOHN G r § May 30, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PA4& RRQ