Soviet Princeton: Slim Evans and the 1932–33 Miners’ Strike by Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat (review)

this extraordinary story of a coal miners’ strike in the small British Columbia town of Princeton in the midst of the Great Depression shows both the strengths and weaknesses of a local approach to history. The main strength is the story itself. Strikers and communists stand up to the provincial government and police, who are allied with local business leaders. And the Ku Klux Klan (kkk) puts in a cameo appearance.

If we went searching for grand themes of what the poet W.H. Auden called “a low dishonest decade,” we’d certainly come face to face with most of the dramatis personae found in Soviet Princeton. Place them into the context of a devastating economic collapse played out in a town struggling to hold onto its one thousand residents, throw in class conflict, communism and elements of fascism. Princeton was the drama of the 1930s writ small.

The Communist Party of Canada (cpc) didn’t go looking for trouble in rural south-western British Columbia. Instead the battle was thrust upon the party. The initiative came from some 140 coal miners determined to force the Tulameen Coal Mines Ltd. to return the 10 per cent wage cut it had imposed in the spring of 1932 and to recognize a union. Facing a hostile employer and a business elite backed up by the provincial government, the Tulameen workers – augmented by 45 miners from the Pleasant Valley Mines – put out a call for assistance from the Workers’ Unity League (wul). The miners saw the wul – the trade union umbrella organization created by the cpc – as a means to supplement their own meagre numbers and institutional weakness. Since they had no union of their own, they looked to the wul and Communist Party activist Slim Evans – sent out from Vancouver – as their organizational guide.

No one contemplating the challenge faced by Evans and the miners – standing up to a reinforced 30-strong BC Provincial Police detachment that at times led Cossack-style horse-back charges on demonstrations by miners and their families – can doubt their courage. Compounding the physical threat, many of the miners were of Yugoslavian origin. Not being citizens, they were subject to arrest and arbitrary deportation, the fate of tens of thousands of Canadian residents in that decade.

Since Princeton was unincorporated and had no town council, local business owners took on the task of defending the Tulameen corporation and what they perceived to be the reputation and survival of their town. Percy Gregory, with a hand in several enterprises, and Princeton Star editor Dave Taylor were two of the most vociferous.

The arrival of the BC Provincial Police reinforcements within days of the launch of the strike brought down a reign of repression onto the town. For example, a striker was arrested and fined for “singing a song on the King’s Highway.” (24) Strike leaders were charged with creating a disturbance after police on horses charged their picket line.

But the strikers and Evans had their allies as well. Most powerful were the unemployed workers in Relief Camp No. 25, one of the network of work camps set up under the administration of Prime Minister R.B. (popularly known as Iron Heel) Bennett. Living under strict discipline and earning just 20 cents a day, the young men in the camp were actively enrolled by wul activists, and at times scores of them left the camp to join striking comrades in Princeton, two kilometers away.

As the confrontation grew hotter, the Ku Klux Klan, a vigilante group not usually seen as significant in Canada, made its presence known in Princeton. The first of several cross burnings occurred on 18 December 1932, and strike leaders were soon receiving anonymous letters warning that the “Klan will take you for a ride.” (49) It was no idle threat. Late on 27 April 1933, after addressing a meeting of strikers, Evans was kidnapped by a mob of 25 men...