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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.

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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