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Cape Breton and Class Struggle
In February of this year unemployed unionized construction workers in
Sydney, Nova Scotia, the capital of Cape Breton Island, set fire to and
destroyed a fifty one unit complex built by non- union labour. When a
local priest was asked why, he replied "partly because they were angry,
partly because they were out of control." A few days after this incident
striking ambulance workers in nearby Glace Bay, Nova Scotia formed a human
chain across a hospital driveway to prevent an off island ambulance from
picking up a patient. The strikers were eventually removed by police.
Two seemingly random events in this island community, although most might
be surprised by the steps that were taken by men who saw their livelihood
being threatened. Yet in this working class community, indeed throughout the
Maritimes, men and women are not strangers to militant class struggle or to
the hardships and tragedies that capitalism can inflict. Five years ago at
the Westray Coal Mine near New Glasgow on mainland Nova Scotia, the town
was rocked by an explosion at the local mine that robbed twenty-six workers
of their lives. To date, despite a series of judicial inquiries and
mistrials, no one has been convicted of a single incidence of wrongdoing,
even though it was an open secret in the community that the mine was unsafe;
however in a region wracked by chronic unemployment, the need to put food on
the table often overcomes the fear of dangerous working conditions. Between
1986 and 1995 5,400 people between the ages of 18 and 24 left Cape Breton
in search of work. A compelling economic draft.
Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton in particular, have long been the source of
militant struggle by working people. Although Quebec and British Columbia
are often considered to have the most radical working populations in
Canada, Nova Scotia has a long and proud tradition dating back to the early
nineteenth century. Capitalism came first to the maritime provinces of
Canada as did class struggle. Nova Scotia passed the earliest anti-union
laws in Canada in 1816 in an attempt to stop organizing efforts by
dockworkers in Halifax. This effort by the government to regulate class
struggle continues to this day through interventions like the Michelin Bill,
which helped the tire giant to resist unionization and a two-year old law
which allows the construction industry to hire non-union labour in areas
traditionally reserved for unionized workers.
In Cape Breton capitalist economics developed around resource based
industries. In addition to fishing and forestry, coal mining was a major
employer. Coal mines on Cape Breton employed over twelve thousand men in the
early twentieth. And to these industries came industrial organization. In
the late nineteenth miners in Cape Breton were organized under the banner of
Provincial Workers Association, but by the first decade of the twentieth
century a movement had begun for affiliation to the militant United
Mineworkers of America. The clash between the two unions led to a bitter
decade long struggle that was eventually decided in favour of the UMA. Nova
Scotia was recognized as District 26.
Yet the affiliation to the UMA was a mixed blessings. If John L. Lewis was
to gain a reputation as a labour militant in the nineteen-thirties, a decade
and a half earlier he was a conservative union bureaucrat. On Sunday July
1st 1923, in the midst of a steel strike, mounted police attacked and
brutally beat members of the Whitney Pier community as they returned from
church. The response of Cape Breton miners was to stage a sympathy strike.
Despite the fact the strike was supported throughout District 26, and other
sections of the UMA, Lewis was furious. On July 18th he suspended the
union's charter. Miners' leader like James McLaughlen and "Red" Dan
Livingstone who spoke against the suspension and in favour of the strike at
public rallies were arrested and charged with sedition. Both were convicted
and spent time in jail. Soon afterward the miners' sympathy strike and the
steelworkers strike were defeated.
In 1925 when another strike in the Cape Breton mines began, J.E. McClurg,
VP of the British Empire Steel Company (Besco) sneered that the miners will
come crawling back: "THEY CAN"T STAND THE GAFF." Though it was hard , the
miners proved they could stand the gaff. They even improvised tactics. In
nearby New Waterford strikers seized and operated the local power plant for
themselves and the town, but not for the corporation. Besco's private police
force retook the power plant on June 4th but a week later a mass meeting of
miners marched to Waterford Lake. They were met by a massive police force,
some on horseback, who attacked the demonstration with clubs. One miner,
William Davis was shot and killed by the mounted assassins. That evening
parts of the mine were torched. Despite the fact those charged with Davis'
death were eventually exonerated "killed by a stray bullet"), no miner has
worker on June 11th since. It is hard to imagine the bitterness of feeling
engendered by these events.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in the period following
Confederation to the Second World War, Cape Breton was in a state of civil
war with the civilian authorities and the employer class. From 1867 to 1933
the military came to the aid of the civil authorities on at least one
hundred and thirty three occasions! Bitter struggle continued throughout the
twenties and the memories linger. It is not difficult to find those who can
recall with anger the hated company store and miners who dug thirty three
tonnes of coal only to find that because of checkoffs they owed money to the
company.
Time, the Canadian government's decision to develop industry in Ontario and
Quebec at the expense of the Maritimes and the changing nature of capitalism
itself have taken a heavy toll on Cape Breton's working class. Poverty and
oppression does not produce militancy, it produces dependence. Having little
many try to preserve that little by adopting a conservative philosophy. Yet
by the above events it would be wrong to dismiss the islanders as a beaten
people. Why has this sense of militancy and struggle survived, if only
intermittently? A similar question might be asked of the working class in
general, which does not at all times rise up against capitalist economic
relations. If that were so socialism would have been established long ago.
Cape Breton is no different from many working class regions throughout North
America: On the surface apparently quiescent, but underneath... One observer
commented on the burning of the construction site, "people often felt like
they are being treated like a third world country within their own
province." Some said enough.
(
geocities.com/CapitolHill)