#canadian labour movement

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"LABOR SITUATION IS WORSE TRADES CONGRESS DECLARES," Toronto Star. September 3, 1943. Page 3. --- Says 'Good Intentions' Voiced by Ottawa 'Are Seldom Realized --- SOME BENEFITS ---- Quebec, Sept. 3 - (CP) - The Trades and Labor Congress of Canada yesterday approved a report of the committee on legislative activities which said the "labor situation" has progressively deteriorated.

"As on former occasions," the report said, "The prime minister, on behalf of the government, expressed a cordial good will towards labor and the Trades and Labor Congress. These good intentions, however, are seldom realized.

"It will augur ill for our war effort, as well as for the morale of our people as a whole," the committee's report continued, "when there comes the bitter disillusionment and understanding that the government's unwillingness even to begin to fulfill the promises for a better world, may be taken as the blueprint of its intentions for the post-war period."

"The report noted with approval that, "arising out of the program presented by the congress," there had been beneficial changes in legislation dealing with unemployment insurance, old age pensions, income tax, and physical fitness."

Two delegates from an A.F.L. affiliated union told the convention they were not consulted when two international representatives of their union left the hall Wednesday as J. L. Cohen, K.C., member of the national war labor board, was about to address the meeting.

J. H. Higgins of Toronto, spoke also for Sam Finlay of Toronto, said they "strenuously disapprove of the action taken," and that the matter would be referred to the international officers of the union.

Delegates argued at length, without definite decision, on the degree of co-operation advisable with C.I.O. unions affiliated with the Canadian Congress of Labor, in order to further "unity" in organized labor.

Arthur Martel of Montreal said he "learned with astonishment that we should be hand in hand with the rivals." There were other ways of bringing about unity, he added.

J. H. Higgins said he wondered why the executive worked with "individuals who put a knife in our back and give it a twist."

"I wonder what the thousands of boys from the A.F.L. and the C.C.L., who are fighting together side by side, would think if they were present and listened to the arguments here," a New Westminster delegate commented.

A resolution to give "entire support to the organizing campaign now being carried on by the A.FL. unions in the aluminum industry," was adopted.

[fickle-minded]

The Nine Hour Movement

The Nine Hour Movement

Understanding the workers’ protests that paved the way for the creation of unions to advocate for workers’ rights.

[whencyclopedia]

D-Day was 80 years ago today!

D-Day was the first day of Operation Overlord, the Allied attack on German-occupied Western Europe, which began on the beaches of Normandy, France, on 6 June 1944. Primarily US, British, and Canadian troops, with naval and air support, attacked five beaches, landing some 135,000 men in a day widely considered to have changed history.

Where to Attack?

Operation Overlord, which sought to attack occupied Europe starting with an amphibious landing in northwest France, Belgium, or the Netherlands, had been in the planning since January 1943 when Allied leaders agreed to the build-up of British and US troops in Britain. The Allies were unsure where exactly to land, but the requirements were simple: as short a sea crossing as possible and within range of Allied fighter cover. A third requirement was to have a major port nearby, which could be captured and used to land further troops and equipment. The best fit seemed to be Normandy with its flat beaches and port of Cherbourg.

The Atlantic Wall

The leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), called his western line of defences the Atlantic Wall. It had gaps but presented an impressive string of fortifications along the coast from Spain to the Netherlands. Construction of gun batteries, bunker networks, and observation posts began as early as 1942.

Many of the German divisions were not crack troops but inexperienced soldiers, who were spending more time building defences than in vital military training. There was a woeful lack of materials for Hitler's dream of the Atlantic Wall, really something of a Swiss cheese, with some strong areas, but many holes. The German army was not provided with sufficient mines, explosives, concrete, or labourers to better protect the coastline. At least one-third of gun positions still had no casement protection. Many installations were not bomb-proof. Another serious weakness was naval and air support. The navy had a mere 4 destroyers available and 39 E-boats while the Luftwaffe's (German Air Force's) contribution was equally paltry with only 319 planes operating in the skies when the invasion took place (rising to 1,000) in the second week.

Neptune to Normandy

Preparation for Overlord occurred right through April and May of 1940 when the Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Air Force (USAAF) relentlessly bombed communications and transportation systems in France as well as coastal defences, airfields, industrial targets, and military installations. In total, over 200,000 missions were conducted to weaken as much as possible the Nazi defences ready for the infantry troops about to be involved in the largest troop movement in history. The French Resistance also played their part in preparing the way by blowing up train lines and communication systems that would ensure the defenders could not effectively respond to the invasion.

The Allied fleet of 7,000 vessels of all kinds departed from English south-coast ports such as Falmouth, Plymouth, Poole, Portsmouth, Newhaven, and Harwich. In an operation code-named Neptune, the ships gathered off Portsmouth in a zone called 'Piccadilly Circus' after the busy London road junction, and then made their way to Normandy and the assault areas. At the same time, gliders and planes flew to the Cherbourg peninsula in the west and Ouistreham on the eastern edge of the planned landing. Paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st US Airborne Division attacked in the west to try and cut off Cherbourg. At the eastern extremity of the operation, paratroopers of the 6th British Airborne Division aimed to secure Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal. Other tasks of the paratrooper and glider units were to destroy bridges to impede the enemy, hold others necessary for the invasion to progress, destroy gun emplacements, secure the beach exits, and protect the invasion's flanks.

The Beaches

The amphibious attack was set for dawn on 5 June, daylight being a requirement for the necessary air and naval support. Bad weather led to a postponement of 24 hours. Shortly after midnight, the first waves of 23,000 British and American paratroopers landed in France. US paratroopers who dropped near Ste-Mère-Église ensured this was the first French town to be liberated. From 3.00 a.m., air and naval bombardment of the Normandy coast began, letting up just 15 minutes before the first infantry troops landed on the beaches at 6.30 a.m.

The beaches selected for the landings were divided into zones, each given a code name. US troops attacked two, the British army another two, and the Canadian force the fifth. These beaches and the troops assigned to them were (west to east):

Utah Beach - 4th US Infantry Division, 7th US Corps (1st US Army commanded by Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley)

Omaha Beach - 1st US Infantry Division, 5th US Corps (1st US Army)

Gold Beach - 50th British Infantry Division, 30th British Corps (2nd British Army commanded by Lieutenant-General Miles C. Dempsey)

Juno Beach - 3rd Canadian Infantry Division (2nd British Army)

Sword Beach - 3rd British Infantry Division, 1st British Corps (2nd British Army)

In addition, the 2nd US Rangers were to attack the well-defended Pointe du Hoc between Utah and Omaha (although it turned out the guns had never been installed there), while Royal Marine Commando units attacked targets on Gold, Juno, and Sword.

The RAF and USAAF continued to protect the invasion fleet and ensure any enemy ground-based counterattack faced air attack. As the Allies could put in the air 12,000 aircraft at this stage, the Luftwaffe's aerial fightback was pitifully inadequate. On D-Day alone, the Allied air forces flew 15,000 sorties compared to the Luftwaffe's 100. Not one single Allied aircraft was lost to enemy fire on D-Day.

Packing Normandy

By the end of D-Day, 135,000 men had been landed and relatively few casualties were sustained – some 5,000 men. There were some serious cock-ups, notably the hopeless dispersal of the paratroopers (only 4% of the US 101st Air Division were dropped at the intended target zone), but, if anything, this caused even more confusion amongst the German commanders on the ground as it seemed the Allies were attacking everywhere. The defenders, overcoming the initial handicap that many area commanders were at a strategy conference in Rennes, did eventually organise themselves into a counterattack, deploying their reserves and pulling in troops from other parts of France. This is when French resistance and aerial bombing became crucial, seriously hampering the German army's effort to reinforce the coastal areas of Normandy. The German field commanders wanted to withdraw, regroup and attack in force, but, on 11 June, Hitler ordered there be no retreat.

All of the original invasion beaches were linked as the Allies pushed inland. To aid thousands more troops following up the initial attack, two artificial floating harbours were built. Code-named Mulberries, these were located off Omaha and Gold beaches and were built from 200 prefabricated units. A storm hit on 20 June, destroying the Mulberry Harbour off Omaha, but the one at Gold was still serviceable, allowing some 11,000 tons of material to be landed every 24 hours. The other problem for the Allies was how to supply thousands of vehicles with the fuel they needed. The short-term solution, code-named Tombola, was to have tanker ships pump fuel to storage tanks on shore, using buoyed pipelines. The longer-term solution was code-named Pluto (Pipeline Under the Ocean), a pipeline under the Channel to Cherbourg through which fuel could be pumped. Cherbourg was taken on 27 June and was used to ship in more troops and supplies, although the defenders had sunk ships to block the harbour and these took some six weeks to fully clear.

Operation Neptune officially ended on 30 June. Around 850,000 men, 148,800 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of stores and equipment had been landed since D-Day. The next phase of Overlord was to push the occupiers out of Normandy. The defenders were not only having logistical problems but also command issues as Hitler replaced Rundstedt with Field Marshal Günther von Kluge (1882-1944) and formally warned Rommel not to be defeatist.

Aftermath: The Normandy Campaign

By early July, the Allies, having not got further south than around 20 miles (32 km) from the coast, were behind schedule. Poor weather was limiting the role of aircraft in the advance. The German forces were using the countryside well to slow the Allied advance – countless small fields enclosed with trees and hedgerows which limited visibility and made tanks vulnerable to ambush. Caen was staunchly defended and required Allied bombers to obliterate the city on 7 July. The German troops withdrew but still held one-half of the city. The Allies lost around 500 tanks trying to take Caen, vital to any push further south. The advance to Avranches was equally tortuous, and 40,000 men were lost in two weeks of heavy fighting. By the end of July, the Allies had taken Caen, Avranches, and the vital bridge at Pontaubault. From 1 August, Patton and the US Third Army were punching south at the western side of the offensive, and the Brittany ports of St. Malo, Brest, and Lorient were taken.

German forces counterattacked to try and retake Avranches, but Allied air power was decisive. Through August 1940, the Allies swept southwards to the Loire River from St. Nazaire to Orléans. On 15 August, a major landing took place on the southwest coast of France (French Riviera landings) and Marseille was captured on 28 August. In northern France, the Allies captured enough territory, ports, and airfields for a massive increase in material support. On 25 August, Paris was liberated. By mid-September, the Allied troops in the north and south of France had linked up and the campaign front expanded eastwards pushing on to the borders of Germany. There would be setbacks like Operation Market Garden of September and a brief fightback at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, but the direction of the war and ultimate Allied victory was now a question of not if but when.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Palestine solidarity activists across Canada co-ordinated blockades at the offices of several arms manufacturers this week and renewed calls for an immediate embargo on all military exports to Israel. The Maple was on the ground in Toronto and Calgary at the protest actions that took place in those cities. Other blockades also took place in Vancouver, Quebec City, Peterborough, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Victoria this week. More than 200 workers, union members and other activists from across the Greater Toronto Area set up picket lines and blocked the morning shift of the TTM Technologies facility on Monday morning. The action included activists from World Beyond War Canada (WBW), Labour for Palestine (LFP), Jews Say No To Genocide, Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), and trade unions.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[forsythiajo]

Vivian Silver (d. 7 October 2023) was born on this day, February 2, in 1949. Silver was a Canadian-Israeli peace activist.

Silver, born and raised in Manitoba, became involved in activism as a college student in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and organized the first National Conference of Jewish Women with Shifra Bronznick in 1973. She immigrated to Israel in 1974 as part of the labour Zionist movement, and became a member of a kibbutz, a communal agricultural community. Her early activism there focused on women's rights and gender disparities in Israeli society.

In 1990, she and her family moved to Be'eri, a kibbutz near the Gaza border. In Be'eri, she became better acquainted with both Gazans and local Bedouins, and her activism shifted to improving relations between the communities. This included organzing job trainings for Gazans, and ensuring that Gazan workers employed in the kibbutz were paid family. She became executive director of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPED), a non-profit that works with Israeli and Palestinian communities to "promote peace and development through education, training, and community projects". She also worked closely with Bedouin activist Amal Elsana Alh'jooj on NISPED programs to benefit Bedouin communities.

From the early 2000s until 2014, Silver worked with a variety of human rights and peace organizations, inclding B'Tselem and Alliance for Middle East Peace. After her retirement in 2014, she volunteered to drive Gazan patients to hospitals in Jerusalem, and founded Women Wage Peace, an interfaith movement which seeks a peaceful and mutually agreed-upon end to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Silver remained involved with Women Wage Peace until her death.

Silver was killed in Be'eri on 7 October, 2023. Her remains were not identified until 13 November. Her funeral attracted around 1,500 people: both Jewish Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, politicians, and religious leaders.

[oleworm]

Recently I saw a post with very racist comments, about some changes in Canadian immigration law that had affected international students attempting to legally settle in Canada.

Some of the comments were quite mean, but I think the worst were those that said it was a good thing that the changes were being implemented because companies had been hiring temporary foreign workers in order not to pay appropriate wages to Canadian citizens, who would demand more.

Wouldn't it be more just to have equal wages for all, provided they are doing the same type of work, and employ a person according to their ability?

Especially with how well-documented these strategies are, employers taking advantage of nativist and racist sentiments to break up workers' movements or never allow them to form, or cut deals directly with other governments to import foreign workers like any other commodity, who would have little to no legal recourse to protest abusive working conditions, to cut costs and depress the wages of the local workforce.

This is information that is readily available, I could easily find it online and read a book that had a whole chapter about it. The one I read, back in 2020, was Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans by Ronald Takaki, but there are many more cases all over the world. Immigration and labour laws need to be reformed everywhere, not only in wealthy countries. I remember when several years ago the first wave of Venezuelan refugees arrived to my country. Locals blamed migrants for depressed wages and not the local business owners who saw desperate people in desperate situations and decided to take advantage of them instead of paying them the same amount that, until then, had been paid to everyone. It's easy to feel self-satisfied when you think you're better than someone else, and it's extremely hard to influence policy but Come on. At least be aware!

[scotianostra]

19th February 1972 saw the death of John Grierson, the Scottish film director and producer.

One of the founding members of the Documentary Movement, Grierson is seen by many as Scotland's most important filmmaker.

Grierson was born in the old schoolhouse in Deanston, near Doune, Scotland, to schoolmaster Robert Morrison Grierson from Boddam, near Peterhead, and Jane Anthony, a teacher from Ayrshire.His mother, a suffragette and ardent Labour Party activist, often took the chair at Tom Johnston's election meetings Johnston being the driving force behind our Hydro-electric scheme.

The family moved to Cambusbarron, Stirling, in 1900, when the children were still young, after Grierson's father was appointed headmaster of Cambusbarron school.

After serving on minesweepers during World War 1, he graduated from Glasgow University and served a Rockefeller fellowship in the USA, where he developed an interest in mass communications and spent some time in Hollywood. On his return to Britain, he became Assistant Films Officer at the Empire Marketing Board and was commissioned to make Drifters, a documentary about the North Sea herring fleet. In 1933 Grierson became Films Officer at the General Post Office film unit, and in both these capacities he played what has later been argued to be a pivotal role in British film culture.

Grierson's specific achievement as a director is not easy to assess, as the documentary movement took a collaborative approach to production. Grierson is only credited as directing Drifters; however, he exerted significant influence on the talented team of young filmmakers he attracted around him. Drifters contains many of the traits that would later characterise the documentary movement's output, notably an emphasis on the social interaction and everyday routine of the fishermen at sea, and on the economic importance of the fishing industry, and some technically innovative 'underwater' shots achieved at the Plymouth Marine Biological Research Station. The new montage style of Soviet cinema and the poetical style of Robert Flaherty were clear influences on Grierson.

In June 1937 Grierson resigned from the GPO and formed Film Centre, an advisory and co-ordinating body for the documentary film movement. It was this kind of supervisory capacity that characterised Grierson's role and influence on factual film, with him also acting as production advisor to Films of Scotland, and, throughout the war, serving as Film Commissioner at the National Film Board of Canada.

After a brief and fairly fruitless period in New York, Grierson returned to the UK in 1946. In February 1948 he was appointed to the Films Division of the Central Office of Information. Over the next two years he attempted to re-establish a major programme of government documentary production, but was repeatedly frustrated by political opposition and public sector spending cuts provoked by the post-war economic crisis. In the 1950s, Grierson acted as joint head of Group 3, the production arm of the National Film Finance Corporation, spent several years in independent television, before finishing his career teaching at a Canadian university.

Critical opinions regarding the impact and influence of Grierson on British film are sharply polarised, possibly more so than with any other prominent British filmmaker. His supporters claim that he single-handedly established the principle of public service filmmaking, analogous to Reith at the BBC. His detractors believe that the legacy of Grierson is more modest, that the documentary movement films reached limited audiences and their cultural impact has been exaggerated. Because so much of his vision was expressed through managing the work of others rather than by direct involvement in making specific films, his legacy as a director per se is in many ways a side-issue.

Grierson went into hospital for a health check-up in January 1972; he was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer and was given months to live.During his time in hospital he spent time dictating letters to his wife, Margaret, and received visitors; however, he fell unconscious on 18th February and died on the 19th. In his wishes for his funeral he had detailed his desire to be cremated. Also according to his wishes, his urn was placed in the sea off the Old Head in Kinsale, and his brother Anthony, who had died in August 1971, had his ashes placed at the same time. A small flotilla followed the Able Seaman, which carried the ashes, and when the urns were lowered into the water, the fishing boats sounded their sirens.

[yetisidelblog]

Why we need to put people before profit

Right now, there are millions of people all over the world being forced to work to produce goods that we use every single day. But we can help change this by requiring big businesses and governments to act.

The private and public sectors are rarely held to account for extractive, exploitative practices that fuel human trafficking and forced labor. Most companies ultimately fail to root out modern slavery from their supply chains and leave victims without the opportunity to receive justice.

Some countries have passed national and state laws asking the private and public sectors to report on modern slavery risks in their supply chains. However, most legislation does not actually require firms or public procurement to do anything to stop modern slavery and other human rights abuses from occurring in their supply chains.

They do not face any financial, civil, or criminal penalties when environmental or rights abuses are exposed. Make no mistake, recent legislation on corporate responsibility – provisions within the landmark UK Modern Slavery Act1, the Australian Modern Slavery Act, the Dutch Child Labor Due Diligence Act, the French Corporate Vigilance Law, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, and the Canadian Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act—are crucial steps, but to achieve corporate accountability, companies should be held liable and victims of human rights abuses in their supply chains should be able to seek redress.  Furthermore, as public procurement is estimated to account for 15-20% of global gross domestic product, it is essential that governments uphold human rights and environmental protections in their own sourcing. 

Laws to put people before profit

There is a growing, global movement for governments to pass mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation, and it needs more power. If successful, companies and governments would be required to enact preventative measures, conduct robust risk analyses, and face punishments for failing to prevent all human rights violations—including human trafficking and forced labor—in their supply chains.

Today we are setting our sights on building power to help push forward promising efforts in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, among other jurisdictions, partnering with the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) and the Corporate Justice Coalition (CJC). Together, these markets make up almost half of the world’s economy,3meaning the impact these measures could have on exploitation and forced labor globally is potentially huge.

In 1977, the United States Congress, despite the objection of many business leaders at the time, passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), forbidding corporations or their employees, officers, directors or agents from bribing foreign officials. It changed the standard for global business and now enjoys broad bipartisan support among government and business leaders alike.

ICAR has developed a bill that would expand the FCPA to cover corporate violations of human rights throughout corporate supply chains, including the federal crimes of forced labor and human trafficking. Crucially, this includes administrative, civil, and criminal penalties for companies that wilfully violate the law, and requires all companies to submit annual reports on human rights due diligence.

“It used to be that bribery was considered a cost of doing business. The FCPA changed that.  This bill could similarly move human trafficking to its rightful place—as a crime with no place in modern markets,” said Alison Friedman, Executive Director at the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable.

Moving forward in Europe

Similarly, in the U.K., we’re joining campaigners calling for a new ‘failure to prevent’ law for human rights and the environment, introducing a requirement to undertake mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence. British parliamentarians have also called for such a law, modeled on the U.K.’s pioneering Bribery Act 2010, which introduced a failure to prevent bribery offenses for corporations with due diligence measures on bribery. Together, our call is that: we need a new law to hold business and the public sector to account when they fail to prevent supply chain human rights abuses and environmental harms.

The European Union underwent a years-long political discussion to introduce a mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence framework. The final votes to pass the law in question, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), are underway. After the European Council and Parliament agreed on a final text in December 2023, Germany announced in January 2024 that it would abstain from the vote, threatening the law’s passing. The European institutions went back into discussions, which led to a new, significantly watered–down, version of the legislative text. In May 2024, this new test was passed into law, and member states now have two years to harmonize the legislation into their national laws. 

We have been and are working hard not to let these efforts fail. We’ve already witnessed some European countries—including Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland—advance domestic laws embedding elements of human rights due diligence.5Germany’s Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations in Supply Chains (Lieferkettengesetz) came into force in January 2023, requires companies to actively monitor their international supply chains to uphold human rights and environmental standards, mitigating risks such as forced labor and environmental harm. It applies to to companies with at least 1,000 employees in Germany.6In 2020, we witnessed the narrow defeat of the Swiss Responsible Business Initiative by public vote, which shows just how important it is that we all understand, share, and build public support for mandatory human rights due diligence.

If we make our expectations clear, we can further build on these steps to achieve robust and comprehensive legislation that helps ensure businesses do not conduct at the expense of human rights violations and the exploitation of workers. We know several major companies and investors – with assets over US 4.2 trillion – publicly back mandatory human rights due diligence. 

As one survivor-activist explained, “We’ll never be free as long as the existence of forced labor continues to be treated as an unfortunate reality of globalization.” “My life matters more than the shoes I made. My fellow survivors matter more than the phones, chocolate, clothing, and steel they produce. But the law doesn’t insist on that now. When the law doesn’t insist, the lure of the quick and cheap takes over.”

Now is the time to act. 

Sign our petition in support of strong, mandatory human rights due diligence legislation in the U.S., U.K., and E.U. As large markets for the global industry, their passage will help address human rights and environmental violations around the world, sending a clear signal to the private and public sectors that they will be held accountable for failing to prevent modern slavery and human rights abuses in their supply chains.

Join the Justice is Everybody’s Business campaign to call for a strong E.U. law that holds businesses accountable for rights abuses and environmental destruction. If you’re outside the E.U., sign our petition for all governments to pass mandatory human rights due diligence laws to put people before profit.

@upontheshelfreviews

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[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Police commissioner Perry decided to invite three of the “Revolutionary Socialists” to a secret meeting to get a sense of their intentions. Victor Midgley, Bill Pritchard, and Jack Kavanagh were all stalwarts of the Socialist Party of Canada from British Columbia. Midgley was the union official beaten by veterans during the sympathetic strike in Vancouver the previous August. He was one of the main organizers of the Calgary conference, which named him secretary of the One Big Union central committee. Pritchard joined him on the central committee. With his spectacles and a quiff, he had more the appearance of a mild-mannered school teacher than a longshoreman on the Vancouver waterfront. But Pritchard was a fire-and-brimstone orator who had played a pivotal role planning the Calgary conference, then guiding its debate. He would later serve a year in prison as one of the convicted leaders of the Winnipeg General Strike. Kavanagh, also a longshoreman and newly installed as the president of the BC Federation of Labour, was in charge of the committee that was meant to proselytize in favour of the One Big Union [OBU] in British Columbia.

In the report of the meeting that Perry made to his superiors, he described the trio of Reds as “intelligent, well-read men.” “They are tireless in pursuit of their objects,” he wrote, “and have all the fervour of fanatics.” He did not think they were plotting a violent overthrow of the government, but he feared them nonetheless.

I am not prepared to say that they are aiming at a revolution in the ordinary sense of that word, but I do say that they are influencing a section of labour in the West and unchaining forces which, even if they so desire, some day they will be unable to control. Here is grave danger to the peace and security of the country.

Even so, Perry urged caution. He feared that repressive measures would simply radicalize the more moderate members of the labour movement. Returning to the subject of armed revolution, he observed that “it can only succeed if a considerable number of returned soldiers join the movement.” The Reds knew this and were doing their best to court the veterans. He urged the government, therefore, to promote full employment and whatever other policies it could to placate the grievances of the soldiers.

Another crucial document influencing government thinking about the labour situation was a “Memo on Revolutionary Tendencies in Western Canada” prepared in early April by C.F. Hamilton. Hamilton was a former journalist (he covered the Boer War for the Toronto Globe) and wartime press censor. He had been assistant comptroller of the Mounted Police before the war and rejoined the Mounties afterward as an intelligence officer. He was a highly influential official within the force who reported directly to the commissioner. In his thirteen-page memo, Hamilton argued that there was a small but active band of revolutionaries at work in western Canada attempting to subvert the Canadian government.

Their openly avowed aim is to procure the establishment of a Soviet government, with its concomitants of the disappearance of parliamentary government, the subversion of the rule of the majority, the abolition of private ownership of property, and the destruction of the other institutions upon which society is founded.

Hamilton admitted that armed insurrection seemed unlikely in Canada, but he argued that there were circumstances in which it could occur. The key was the troubled labour situation, he said, and he sketched out a plausible scenario for the “would-be revolutionists.”

What they aim at is an intense conflict between labour and capital, embittered by riots and bloodshed; they calculate on a general dislocation of the industrial system, passing into an uprising of the working classes, probably reinforced by masses of discontented returned soldiers. The whole project turns upon the propagation of bad temper and mutual hate between classes …

Despite his dire prognosis, Hamilton did not believe that direct repression was the correct response. Instead, he called for a campaign of counter-propaganda highlighting the failure of Bolshevism to bring social peace and prosperity to Russia.

As alarmist reports piled up on the desks of senior ministers in Ottawa, the acting prime minister, Sir William Thomas White, panicked. White, a Montreal financier who had won his seat in Parliament in the 1911 election as an opponent of freer trade with the United States and had been rewarded with the finance portfolio in cabinet, was filling in for Prime Minister Borden who was still away at the peace negotiations in Europe. He cabled the absent prime minister in mid-April with the news that Bolshevism was rampant in Canada among soldiers and workers, especially in British Columbia. There was a revolution brewing, White reported, and he wanted Borden to ask the British government to dispatch one of its warships to Vancouver where “the presence of such ship and crew would have steadying influence.” Borden was in Paris hobnobbing with heads of state, making the world safe for democracy. He was impatient at White’s bothering him with what no doubt seemed like petty, and exaggerated, domestic problems. “I would very much like to reply, For Heaven’s Sake, let me alone,” he peevishly confided to his diary. Instead he advised White to do the best he could with the armed forces at his disposal. There would be no request for British help."

- Daniel Francis, Seeing Reds: the Red Scare of 1918-1919, Canada’s First War on Terror. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. p. 82-84.

[puddlellama]

Decided to put all my stuff in one post at the top of the blog so I don't have to repeat things.

My name is PuddleLlama, or just Llama if you're short on time. I'm a panromantic abrosexual, non-binary person from the UK. they/it/ey pronouns. Right off the bat. if you are discriminatory on the basis of gender (as assigned at birth, or through identification as transgender in any way), race, sexual or romantic orientation (or lack thereof. Aphobes, you aren't welcome here), gender non-comformity, physical or mental impairment, religious practice, system, or hobby: leave right now. I will not put up with you. I will not debate you. you will be blocked and reported. I do not have the patience to deal with your bullshit. I am active here and on Discord, and have an inactive Reddit account. if people want to get in touch with me through Discord send me a message here and I'll send you my Discord name. I believe in peace and empathy. I would consider myself to be a pacifist, but pacifism only gets you so far. In cases where peaceful protest has failed, I support the use of careful force, avoiding as much collateral damage as possible. I will treat a person as a person, and I do not have the patience to coddle you if you cannot do this. Militarists, fuck off. I believe in the climate crisis, and disavow any environmental fuckery. Flat Earthers, fuck off. Climate deniers, fuck off.

I believe in modern medicine, including psychiatry and medical transition techniques. However, when a proven natural remedy can be approximately as effective as synthesised drugs, the natural remedy is superior. Anti-vaxxers, fuck off. Transmedicalists, fuck off. Essential oil pyramid scheme fuckers, fuck off.

I do not believe in the right of any person to claim ownership over a land or a people group. People deserve to travel freely and safely, with restrictions only serving to protect others. Restrictions should only serve to protect others and the individual freedoms of someone who acquired the rights to ownership over their land. Nationalists, fuck off. Zionists, fuck off. Monarchists, fuck off. Anti-democracy idiots, fuck off.

I do not believe in capitalism. I view capitalism as a system designed to squeeze profit from the people and funnel it into the hands of the elite, to the detriment of the people. Throughout my life, I have seen my family and people around me suffer as a result of capitalism, and I cannot in good conscience support its continued existence. Capitalists, fuck off.

I disavow the right-wing of the political spectrum. This includes British Conservatives and Labour, American Republicans, the Polish PiS, Canadian Tories, German AFD, and any others. I disavow religion as a dominant power in any area: religious-run parties are unacceptable to me, no matter their placement in the political spectrum. I especially disavow far-right movements such as authoritarianism, fascism, neo-Nazism, racial supremacy, and supporters of ethnostates. If you belong to any of these groups, seriously fuck off.

I do not tolerate exclusion of "fringe" communities, such as the furry community, the plurality community, the ASD community, communities of those with mental health issues. so long as your community is good-faith, you are welcome here. exclusionists of these communities, fuck off.

Pedophiles, fuck off. Zoophiles, fuck off. Groomers and manipulators, fuck off.

[daywalkers-fic]

12. why the 1880s?

something about this decade really sings to me. I find in particular, nearing the end of the nineteenth century, so much was happening on around the world in terms of arts, politics, technology, colonization. world events and global news don’t personally reach the day-to-day lives of the everyday folk, but they are an important part in gauging what life, thought, and society was about—what things were important then and now?

basically for myself, reminding me of notable things that occured during the 1880s—some thematic, some of relevance to context and characters, and the rest just ?? interesting and/or wild?

cocaine is a hot new cure for everything and anything. perscribed, sold in foods and more. heroine introduced as a lesser-addictive substitute for morphine…

lots of developments in fields of psychology; many experiments and happenings; Freud starts his work 1886.

1880-1914 had +twenty million immigrants to the United States: Germany, Ireland, England, China had the most arrivals.

William Dorsey Swann, the first self-proclaimed drag queen, organizes a series of drag balls in Washington, D.C. 1880-1890s.

Jack the Ripper claims his “first” victim in 1888 White Chapel, London. big scare.

Sherlock Holmes first appears in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study In Scarlet as part of the British magazine’s Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887.

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is published in 1886. Gothic fiction, drawing from emerging fields of science and psychology. & Treasure Island was published earlier in 1883 by him too!

Mark Twain drops The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).

Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant’s second novel is published in 1885. about a man who seduces and manipulates high society French women in the French colonies for power and wealth. MOVIE WAS ADAPTED IN 2012 STARTING ROBERT PATTINSON LOL

western European art movements very romantic and swirly and pretty: Monet, Debussy xoxo.

meanwhile, African American ragtime music becomes the “pop” music across the pond here.

North Dakota (1889), South Dakota (1889), Montana (1889), Washington (1889) become states.

train segregation laws flag beginning of Jim Crow; Civil Rights Movement of 1875 voided, making discrimination in private is not illegal, and prohibiting state intervention to personal or commercial segregation. l*nching continues throughout the south. slavery may be over on paper, but indentured labour is legal.

1882 infamous O.K Corral gunfight.

Gold Rush continues, all over the world—South Africa, to British Columbia, to California, to Argentina, to Russia-China borders.

centuries of American “Indian” wars continue.

American Dawes Act of 1887 granted American government authorization to regulate indigenous lands, including creating and assigning and enforcing reservations.

Sitting Bull’s 1883 speech of the atrocities experienced at the hands of white American settler colonists.

Canadian Pacific Railway 1881-1885. foreign labourers were hired to do a lot of heavy, dangerous, unwanted work. in America, more than 100,000km of tracks were laid by majority Chinese, Irish, Scandinavian workers.

America’s Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Canada’s Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 was officiated, enforcing law of a Head Tax to be paid for every Chinese person entering North America. over the course of the next couple of decades, the fee of $1,500 was doubled to $5,000 was increased 500% to $25,000 in today’s currency—per person. this had devastating and lasting impacts on generations and societies of Chinese living both overseas and already in North America. propaganda at this time created many racist myths that persist today: there are too many Asians, they are taking our jobs, (the men) are gross and effeminate and a threat to (white) women, they shady and scheming people. these were the first and only major federal legislation to explicitly suspend immigration for a specific nationality in American and Canadian history. (I study Asian Canadian history, I can go on about this all day)

Tong Wars (1883-1913) had Chinatown gangs and factions in violent street wars across America, San Fransisco to New York.

large, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting (pogorm) and antisemitism rampant throughout Imperial Russia, 1881-1882 had more than two hundred anti-Jewish events alone. Jews continue to be racialized and othered.

fuck ton of colonization happening in Africa and the Middle East, Southeast Asia. Berlin conference 1884-1885 literally chopped up Africa to distribute to European powers.

Irish nationalist efforts to push forth Home Rule bill of sovereignty is defeated in British Parliament. Irish are not “white”, they are “othered” in Europe and in Americas.

use of photographic film pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing film. his first camera (Kodak) was ready for sale in 1888.

Thomas Edison gets lit in New York 1883 with first electrical power station. next several year sees major cities being lit up with street lamps and public lighting with the science and works of a Nikolas Tesla (1886-1893).

hell of a lot more inventions in the works and patents being claimed. Hertz and radiowaves, Bell for telephone services.

“Between the years of 1850–1900, women were placed in mental institutions for behaving in ways the male society did not agree with”

way too much history to cram, obviously. here are some keywords for further research oki

prison industry / spiritualism / opium epidemic / irregular and uneven “modernizations” in rural vs. urban areas / class and poverty gaps / morality scares, checks, comparisons, gaps / new businesses and gadgets, products, tech to help with anything / fascination of the (colonial) Other; side shows, “freak shows” and other human zoos

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Canadian Labour Congress has launched an emergency task force to address escalating anti-2SLGBTQ+ hate as unions across Canada begin mobilizing to defend queer and trans people in workplaces and beyond.

Unionized workplaces, such as libraries and schools, have become battlegrounds in far-right attacks against queer and trans people across the country.

Gina McKay, president of CUPE Manitoba and CLC equity vice president for 2SLGBTQ+ workers, said she’s seen hate affect workers at many levels, from hostile parents to anti-drag protests to book bans.

But the role of unions goes beyond protecting individual workers facing this hate in the workplace. The labour movement has the power to mobilize on-the-ground support, something the 2SLGBTQ+ community needs right now, McKay explained.

“That kind of organizing is exactly what we need because we know that the right is organized,” McKay told PressProgress. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada, @vague-humanoid

[racefortheironthrone]

Since you talk about labour issues a lot, do you have any tips or resources for organizing where there's little history of unions? For context, I work at a large-ish tech company (not a gigantic one or twitter, but one people would have heard of). I'm a SWE so I do okay for myself, but non-engineer coworkers do less so. I'm not sure what laws/orgs to look at because I'm in Canada working for an American corp. That's probably outside your expertise, but maybe you have suggestions where to look?

Sure! Before I give a list of recommendations, I do want to start by saying not to worry unduly about organizing in areas outside of those traditionally organized by labor unions; before the advent of industrial unionism, it was widely believed that the only workers who could be organized were skilled members of a craft, and that unskilled and semi-skilled immigrant factory workers couldn't be unionized. And the 1930s happened, and all of the sudden those exact workers became the bulk of the labor movement. After that, it was widely believed that public sector workforces, largely composed of women and racial minorities, could not be unionized - and the 1960s and 1970s happened, and all of the sudden those exact same workers became the bulk of the labor movement.

If you're working in Canada, Canadian labor law applies even to American corporations - but it's important to research the labor laws of your specific province or territory as well as the Federal code, because there are regional and industry-specific variations.

In terms of organizations to reach out to, you probably want to start with the Canadian Labour Congress, which is the main Canadian trade union federation. In terms of which Canadian unions have tech worker organizing projects, I know of CODE-CWA, and UFCW-Canada, but the CLC would know more than I do.

[tzifron]

In this singular firsthand account, a former migrant worker reveals a disturbing system of exploitation at the heart of Canada’s farm labour system.

When Gabriel Allahdua applied to the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program in Canada, he thought he would be leaving his home in St. Lucia to work in a country with a sterling human rights reputation and commitment to multiculturalism. Instead, breakneck quotas and a culture of fear dominated his four years in a mega-greenhouse in Ontario. This deeply personal memoir takes readers behind the scenes to see what life is really like for the people who produce Canada’s food.

Now, as a leading activist in the migrant justice movement in Canada, Allahdua is fighting back against the Canadian government to demand rights and respect for temporary foreign labourers. Harvesting Freedom shows Canada’s place in the long history of slavery, colonialism, and inequality that has linked the Caribbean to the wider world for half a millennium—but also the tireless determination of Caribbean people to fight for their freedom.

[comrademidnighty]

My first blog

Just a young Canadian who is a big fan of history, socialism, and cats

Hello my friends, it is yours truly... Midnight!

This blog is going to detail stuff in my life, the date is August 23, 2024 and I turned 18 a few days ago. This blog will detail parts of my life as I head onto university, not all of it because that would be impossible and not very desirable.

Unfortunately, during the pandemic I never really made any good hobbies that lasted (Piano, chess, cooking, etc.), but perhaps the worst of all of them did stick, and those are history and politics.

I like history but it is not a profitable hobby and is pretty high risk if you seek to be employed through it, and I "like" politics but more so just want to have some sort of understanding of how the world works outside this small box I call life.

I hope that by the time I can say that these blogs are finished that we can see some improvement in world, whether that is in form of combating the climate crisis, or perhaps a second 1917, it feels like without such things humanity is doomed to being wage slave (without any possibility to survive outside of capitalism) or a climate crisis destroys much of life as it is doing right now, or both. Don't get me started on the fascistic movements that are rising which were only countered by decades old labour movement which no longer exist thanks to neo-liberalism (Defunding of welfare, increased policing, and a belief in the supremacy of competition in everyday life with state intervention serving to further that goal).

On final notes for this thing... man the last part of pretty long, I suppose I just wanted to dump it somewhere, but until then.

Free Palestine! Democracy to Sudan! Safety to all minorities! Death to America! Long live international solidarity!

[probablyasocialecologist]

When Labour took office, far from regarding MI5 as any sort of threat, they saw the agency as ‘an important instrument of government’ and ‘fully appreciated MI5’s value’. The ‘Zinoviev Letter’ was very much in the past as far as Attlee and his colleagues were concerned. Indeed, the extent to which Attlee was personally comfortable with MI5 and its activities is perhaps best shown by the fact that he was the first Prime Minister to visit MI5 headquarters and actually wrote a ‘Preface’ to the memoirs, Cloak without Dagger, of MI5’s Director-General, Percy Sillitoe. Once in office, Attlee relied on MI5 to spy on those Labour MPs suspected of being ‘crypto-Communists’ as well as on CP activities in the trade unions. In November 1947, he was particularly worried about supposedly Communist-instigated strikes disrupting the Royal wedding and was considerably reassured when told that MI5 ‘had quite a number of agents in the Communist Party who were well placed’. By 1949, Attlee had been convinced by MI5 that the Communists were behind the increasing industrial unrest that the Labour government’s ‘Austerity’ regime was provoking and that they were trying ‘to overturn social democracy’. In July of that year, a general lockout on the London docks where dockers were refusing to unload two Canadian ships crewed by scabs saw the government send in over 12,000 troops to try and break this tremendous display of international solidarity which was predictably condemned as Communist-inspired. Bevan, of all people, condemned the dockers’ action as ‘a betrayal of the labour movement’ and the Transport and General Workers Union subsequently expelled or suspended the dockers’ unofficial leaders from the union.

John Newsinger, Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left