Western labour radicalism and the One Big Union: Myths and realities

Western labour radicalism and the One Big Union: myths and realities* DAVID J. BERCUSON "Be careful lest you lose hold of the substance in reaching out for the shadow." With these words David Rees, vice-president of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, official of the United Mine Workers of America and convener of the Western Labor Conference of March, 1919, warned Canadian uriion members of the destructive potential of the new One Big Union. 1 Rees was a devoted advocate of the idea that militant westerners ought to combine with progressive easterners to crush the conservative establishment of the Trades and Labour Congress, but his beliefs have been buried in the confusion of events surrounding the birth of the One Big Union. There is, nevertheless , reason to believe that he and his supporters represented the mainstream of western labour radicalism while the OBU which he opposed was an abberation which did not reflect the special needs or desires of western workers. Historians of the Canadian labour movement have never quite decided what to make of the One Big Union. They have even had difficultly defining it: the most common description compares the OBU with the American -based Industrial Workers of the World. D. C. Masters, in his study of the Winnipeg general strike, wrote that the main differences between the OBU and the IWW were organizational since, in reality, the One Big Union was " ...a conspiracy to secure control of the country...." 2 Stuart Jamieson, in a brief survey of Canadian labour history observed that the OBU " ...proclaimed a doctrine of revolutionary unionism similar in some respects to that of the IWW and *This paper was originally read at the 1972 Weste:n ~anadian Studies Conference and Is Included in The Twenties in Western Canada, S. Trofimenkoff (ed.), a pub'.ication of the History Division, National Museum of Man, National Museums ot Canada. Journal of Canadian Studies launched a program to organize workers by industries rather than by trade."3 H. A. Logan described the OBU in his chapter on organizations dedicated to violent overthrow of the government as " ...an outstanding example of revolutionary unionism..." similar in some respects to the old Knights of Labour.4 Recently Professor Martin Robin has disputed these interpretations and written of the OBU that it was not revolutionary in its final form and that its leaders had ceased to threaten mass action by the time of the founding convention in June 1919. Its constitution, he noted, did not contain " ...the typical syndicalist reference to the trade union as the instrument of administration in the new society."5 The dry facts of the OBU's sudden appearance and just as sudden demise are well known and a brief summary should suffice here. In March 1919, at a conference of western trade unionists called for the purpose of forming a left-wing caucus within the Trades and Labour Congress, the idea of secession, pushed by several key militants, swept all before it. Attending delegates decided to opt for withdrawal from the American Federation of Labor and the Trades and Labour Congress and to create an infrastructure for a new radical organization predicated upon a Marxian analysis of society and designed to unite all workers in Canada into a single union. Three months later, at the beginning of June, their work reached fruition with the founding of the One Big Union.6 From the instant of its birth the OBU expanded rapidly across the west but made almost no progress east of the Lakehead. Lodges, trades councils and provincial federations from Thunder Bay to Vancouver Island withdrew from the International Unions and threw their lot in with the OBU. By the end of the year the OBU's membership hovered around the fifty thousand mark. Alarmed AFL/TLC forces undertook a serious campaign to recapture western Canada for the exclusivist and conservative principles of 3 Gompersism, Internationalism and craft unionism.7 The effort, aided by the active assistance of coal mine owners in the Crow's Nest Pass area who concluded de facto closed shop agreements with the AFL/TLC unions8 was further enhanced by public officials who believed the OBU was about to " ...kick...