[R-G] BC labour strife flows from deep vein - Vancouver Sun

[shniad at sfu.ca]

The Vancouver Sun			   Saturday, February 2, 2002

Labour strife flows from deep vein

     Rioting shut down Vancouver in the summer of 1918 when a complex 
     struggle involving class, conscription and economics culminated in 	
    North America's first general strike

     By Stephen Hume

Survey Point - It was one of those sultry, oppressive days when even the
mightiest Douglas fir seems to droop, the logging camps are silent because
of the extreme fire hazard and only the high-pitched drone of insects
interrupts the silent shadows.

Not far from here, where the cold, swift and remote Cruickshank River carves
its way toward Comox Lake, a slight, freckle-faced fugitive with red hair
and a Yorkshire accent made his way down a steep trail.

Moments later, a soft-nosed rifle bullet fired by a special constable of the
Dominion Police -- three years later that agency would merge with the RCMP,
becoming its counter-intelligence service -- caromed off the redhead's
raised forearm and tore a gaping wound in his throat.

It was July 27, 1918, and Albert Goodwin's killing would trigger Canada's
first general strike, a violent, epoch-marking event which took place not in
Winnipeg, but in Vancouver.

If the air today suddenly seems ripe with testosterone as the Liberal
government and the B.C. Federation of Labour paw the ground, it's worth
remembering that this bellicose behaviour pulses out of a deep vein in
B.C.'s troubled history which put Vancouver at the cusp of events
transforming the world.

When regular officers arrived, Goodwin still trembled where he lay dying on
the trail. While they stood over the body, Dan Campbell said he had fired in
self-defence. Others said Goodwin wasn't armed and had been bushwhacked.

Goodwin's body was left in the bush to rot, but coal miners from Cumberland
retrieved it so a proper inquest could be held.

Campbell was a professional tracker of dubious background recruited to help
hunt down the fugitive as part of a special squad led by a former police
chief from Trail.

And Trail was precisely where the former vice-president of the B.C.
Federation of Labour had been most active as a union organizer and
politician -- Goodwin was a candidate in the 1916 provincial election.

Campbell, too, had a past. He'd been a cop before -- a dirty one, cashiered
for extorting money from prostitutes. At a preliminary inquiry which found
enough evidence to support charging Campbell with murder, witnesses
testified he'd bragged he would kill the labour leader.

Goodwin was a conscientious objector. He failed to report when a draft board
from Trail suddenly revoked the medical exemption that found him unfit for
any for military service.

But why was he, among the 24,000 other draft evaders who took to the woods
that summer, singled out? Conspiracy theorists argue it's not coincidence
that the decision to revoke Goodwin's exempt status and hunt him down came
in the aftershock of a bitter strike he had organized at the smelter in
Trail during the dismal winter of 1917.

Canada had lost more than 15,000 men at Passchendaele and, of the 40,000
British Columbians who had enlisted, 24,000 were casualties.

Ottawa had promised Britain an additional 100,000 men, but barely 2,000
responded to a call for volunteers. Conscription was ordered.

British artillery batteries were using 200,000 shells per day and the Trail
smelter provided crucial materiel for shell casings. So Goodwin's strike
outraged authorities. When it failed, he fled to the bush behind Comox Lake.


Campbell's unit tracked him and he was shot just days before Ottawa granted
an amnesty to defaulters. Campbell was charged with murder but released
following an unusual closed court at which he entered no plea, no verdict
was rendered and evidence was heard from unnamed witnesses.

The shooting and the general strike that followed represented a nexus in a
complex struggle involving class, politics and economics that had swept
across the western landscape as a self-educated industrial working class
flexed its muscle against robber-baron capitalism.

Industrial sites seethed with paid informers, Pinkerton agents and
undercover police.

The Seaforth Highlanders took machine guns to subdue strikers in Ladysmith.
In Everett, Wash., five died when labour fought a pitched battle with police
on the docks.

It was against this backdrop that Goodwin was slain. Demonized by
authorities, he became both a martyr and an instant rallying point for
labour. Six days later, Vancouver's Metal Trades Council called for a
24-hour "holiday" as a protest starting at noon on Friday, Aug. 2.

The Vancouver Trades and Labour Council backed it and soon longshoremen,
trolleymen, construction workers and service unions joined. Printers and
Teamsters declined, but activity in the city still came to a halt.

Vancouver's major dailies denounced the event as a Bolshevik plot by German
sympathizers and inflammatory editorials added to the tension. 

By 3:30 that afternoon, city business leaders had organized 300 returned
soldiers who prepared a retaliatory raid on the Vancouver Labour Temple.

Not all soldiers agreed. One veteran warned the unions from his bed in
Shaughnessy Hospital, giving time for an orderly evacuation before the mob
arrived. It proceeded to sack the building, break windows, smash doors and
destroy documents.

Trades and Labour Council secretary Vic Midgley and a Longshoremen's Union
delegate named Thomas were caught by the mob, forced to kiss the flag and
then severely beaten.

That night, recently elected Mayor R.H. Gale and prominent business backers
held a mass meeting at the Empress Theatre. They whipped up the crowd with
demands that Ottawa conscript all the labour leaders.

The next day, another anti-union mob marched on the Longshoremen's Hall, but
this time the dockworkers fought back and riots broke out. When calm was
restored, civic authorities called upon union members to oust their leaders.
But when a vote was held, the leaders were re-elected.

Six months later, taking their cue from Vancouver, a general strike was
called in Seattle. It was the first in U.S. history. And not until May would
Winnipeg have its famous general strike.

These three general strikes ushered in a new era which saw massive
national-scale job action shut down the steel, coal and meat packing
industries and begin a transformation in the North American workplace.

The epicentre was in Vancouver, which perhaps helps explain that whiff of
testosterone, which seems to permanently scent the air in Lotusland.

Today's rumblings as tension mounts between government and trade unions are
just aftershocks of that long ago general strike which set fault lines in
our social bedrock and continues to bedevil us.

Surely it must be evident to all leaders in society that the way forward is
to build bridges, not widen the gulf. Their moral task is to seek a middle
road and end the destructive pendulum of polarization. 


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