The Reddest Rose: Harvey Murphy Stood at the Barricades 

of Many Labour Struggles in BC

Ron Verzuh

A brief study of the very active life of the man who called himself the “reddest rose
 in the garden of Labour,” Harvey Murphy, suggests that he merited more than a 
few paragraphs or a few pages in scholarly works dedicated to a study of labour’s past. 
And yet Murphy, who stood at the barricades of many labour struggles throughout 
an era of radical union and left politics, seldom receives more than footnote-length 
treatment.
Hated by some labour leaders, he was long deemed a workers’ friend by Alberta
 and BC mine and smelter workers. He was at the clamorous forefront of the
 struggle for union and worker rights in Canada’s West for more than a decade. 
Why then has so little attention been paid to a man that BC historian 
Allen Seager called “the most influential communist in the Canadian trade-union 
movement in the 1940s”?

Ron Verzuh

Simon Fraser University

Graduate Student

Ron Verzuh is a Canadian writer, historian, photographer and documentary filmmaker. He holds a PhD in history from Simon Fraser University.His doctoral dissertation is entitled “Divided Loyalties: A Study of a Communist-led Trade Union in Trail, British Columbia, 1943-1955.” He has published many essays and articles on subjects ranging from the labour movement to travel, literature, news media, film, food, and politics. Many of his works can be seen at www.ronverzuh.ca. He is married and currently lives in Eugene, Oregon