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 <A. MacLean, a real estate agent, to stand against and defeat R. H. Alexander, antilabor manager of the Hastings Mill. But without their own party, their own candidates pledged to their own plat- form, the gains they made through their economic struggles could more easily be stripped from them and their economic unity politically divided against itself to thwart their demands.

To contest the provincial election of 1886 the Knights of Labor assemblies on Vancouver Island formed the Working- men’s party, nominating John M. Duval, editor of the Industrial |News, and A. J. Smith in Victoria, and James Lewis and §. H. Myers in Nanaimo. The Workingmen’s platform was one of immediate demands, It called for the nine-hour day, for legislation to protect the coal miners and amendment of the existing workmen’s lien law, which was little better than a farce. And it struck Out vigorously against the Smithe government’s giveaway policies, All public lands, it declared, should be reserved for actual settlers and land speculators should be taxed out of existence. The one point on which it agreed with government and Opposition. candidates alike was in demanding the exclusion of Chinese, a demand that, in one form or another, was to retard, divide and disgrace the labor movement for half a century,

The Smithe government rode out the storm of criticism by claiming that its giveaways were essential to development of the province. Few of its Opponents were elected and none of the Workingmen’s candidates came within striking distance of election. A few months. after the election the Industrial News ceased publication. and the Workingmen’s party went out of existence. But the seed of labor political action it had sown continued to flourish and grow.

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Within a few months of its formation in 1889, Van- couver Trades and Labor Council was nominating and endorsing candidates for Provincial and municipal office.

The council's founding resolution, adopted at a confer- ence of craft and Knights of Labor unions,. was formulated around the need “of all classes of labor that nine hours should constitute the working day ,. . that the best means to accom-

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: : : SS Omineca in Big Cay? on the Skeena River

Story of the Skeent

b- S was to be expected, PU

lishers are seeking 1 ploit the interest in our a past evoked by the British lumbia centennial celebra¥! through a spate of boos 19: various aspects of our ee

That Canadian publi ia have finally discovered BU a Columbia should _ itself oe sion some satisfaction tO a, of us who live here. It 38 ned fortunate that having rer ae the Pacific 165 years after ined couver and Mackenzie ug have not been more thor? in their work. Fi,

Most of the books publi ie so far suffer from supe ped ality. They gild stereoly of journalistic presentation® our history with the ™ false romance that ware curse of so many. “POP at’ books on our Arctic until ley Mowat bared the truth his People of the Deef- ate

Among the better efforts ©) a few regional histories as a ed as projects by soe in tennial committees. Wha ey they may lack in style are a contribution 1? knowledge of ourselves tant our province and will 5” 4

when the books desist > 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&

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