14) UNITY AND MILITANCY: LABOUR STRUGGLES OF THE 1920s
During 2011, the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party of Canada, we will print a series of articles on prominent historical figures and struggles linked with the Party. This issue looks at the Trade Union Educational League, which played a critical role in working class resistance during the 1920s, and remains relevant to this day.
Since its origins, the Communist Party of Canada has grappled with a complex problem: how to strengthen both the militancy and the unity of the trade union movement. In 1918, the organized working class in English-speaking Canada was split between the radical syndicalist One Big Union (OBU) and the reformist-led Trades and Labour Congress (TLC). The OBU, closely linked to the labour upsurge around the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, considered "industrial unionism" as a form of labour organization superior to the "craft union" approach of the TLC.
The years following 1919 became a period of "disorderly retreat" and bitter disputes for the labour movement. Many prominent OBU leaders joined the Communist Party (known publicly as the Workers' Party until 1924) and supported its stand for wider working class unity. But others with an anarcho-syndicalist outlook rejected this position, reflecting the radical views widely held among sections of the working class in western Canada.
At the 1922 Workers' Party convention, this issue sparked a heated debate, ending with overwhelming endorsation of the call for broad trade union unity on the basis of industrial unionism and class struggle policies. While this led to antagonisms between Communist and anarcho-syndicalists, the eventual outcome was clear. By the end of the decade, the influence of anarcho-syndicalism had waned, and the OBU became a shadow of its original self.
Meanwhile, the communist trade unionists channelled their energies into building the Trade Union Educational League, an international formation which became active in Canada in April 1922. The TUEL was not a separate federation or union body, but instead carried out agitational and educational activities. The program of action adopted by the Canadian section of the TUEL included 12 key points:
1. Organize the Unorganized Workers for Higher Wages, Shorter Hours.
2. Organize a Powerful Minority Movement Within the Trade Unions.
3. Organize Shop Committees.
4. United Independent Labor Political Action.
5. Canadian Trade Union Autonomy.
6. Affiliation of Every Functioning Trade Union to the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada.
7. Affiliation of Every Local Union to the Local Trades and Labour Councils.
8. Build a Workers' Press.
9. Nationalization of Industry.
10. Amalgamate the Craft Unions.
11. International Trade Union Unity.
12. The Abolition of Capitalism.
To overcome the impact of the widespread split in labour, the Communist Party helped to persuade radical workers to support a "back‑to‑the‑unions" movement, countering the "mistaken worship of secession" among Canadian radicals. The party's early organizers were simultaneously the initiators of campaigns to organize the unorganized, and to reunite in one union workers who had become divided in the course of the class struggle.
Workers increasingly sought out the advice and assistance of the Communists. Party leaders like Tim Buck, Annie Buller, Beckie Buhay and Jeanne Corbin went into every mining camp in Nova Scotia, Northern Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.
The campaign to reunite the radicals with the masses of the workers in the old unions had important results. All over Canada, workers who had been on the sidelines returned to the TLC craft unions, winning support for militant policies. The newspaper published by the Canadian TUEL, The Left Wing, received support from local unions in every part of the country. Organizations representing one-third of the trade unionists in Canada endorsed the program of the TUEL.
When the convention of District 26, United Mine Workers of America, met at Truro, Nova Scotia, in June 1922, delegates unanimously endorsed the TUEL program. Scores of local unions of railway workers supported the TUEL, especially the idea of amalgamating their craft unions into one industrial union of railway workers. In Alberta, the return of the militants to the United Mine Workers of America led to the election of a slate of left-wing candidates to the district leadership, and a successful campaign to organize workers at open-shop mines in the province. In Montreal, Communists were elected to the executive of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, the largest needle trades union in the country.
Not surprisingly, the right-wing leaders of the craft unions in the TLC actively obstructed campaigns for amalgamation, Canadian autonomy, and militant policies. One response was the formation in 1927 of the All-Canadian Congress of Labour (ACCL), based mainly among independent Canadian industrial unions. In other cases, secessionist tendencies grew within the Canadian sections of unions affiliated to the American Federation of Labour.
Despite red-baiting and other attacks, left wing labour activists continued to struggle for unity. But the class collaborationist approach of the leaders of the TLC and even the ACCL finally compelled a change of tactics. In 1929, the TUEL was reorganized as the Workers' Unity League, with a mandate to organize the unorganized into powerful industrial unions under rank and file control. The stage was set for a new era in Canadian labour history.
(Continued in our Feb. 15-28 issue.)
(The above article is from the Feb. 1-14, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)