Preface to a Free Market Anti-Capitalist Manifesto?

I originally posted this June 30th 2006. It basically puts together a repost from the blog of Nanaimo-based Evolutionary Anarchist Larry Gambone and some quotes and arguments used by David Korten. Nothing very original, unless one is tied to the belief that corporations = free market.

Recently I read Dan Hind’s ‘The Threat to Reason: How the Enlightenment was hijacked and how we can reclaim it’ (2008: Verso). There are a couple of good quotes in it about corporations. One is from the Georgia Supreme Court in 1929 (p.76):

‘freed as such bodies [corporations] are, from the sure bounds to the schemes of individuals- the grave- they are able to add field to field, and power to power, until they become entirely too strong for that society which is made up of those whose plans are limited to a single life.’

Hind also quotes 18th Cebtury British lawyer and politician Lord Thurlow who said if corporations (p.77):

‘they have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like.’

Anyhow, back five years this month…

This from Larry Gambone…Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Withdraw Corporate Life Support

It isn’t necessary to control corporate capitalism with legislation that restricts its harmful aspects. Simply pull the plug on it – abolish corporate law, patents, eliminate all forms of government assistance, no more state as capitalist goon squad, repeal all anti-worker legislation.

What about corporate law? Limited liability shifts the burden of debt away from the officers of a corporation to the corporation itself. If a corporation with limited liability goes belly-up, you can’t grab the CEO’s personal bank account and mansion. Small shareholders might lose everything, and the workers their jobs and pension funds, but not the bosses.

Limited liability creates a situation like a gambling addict with a rich parent who funds the addiction. When the gambler loses, the parent pays, when the gambler wins, he keeps his winnings. Corporate officers have a free hand to speculate with other people’s money. Such speculation can lose, but it can also win big. Such “big wins” inflate the market share and size of a corporation, furthering the process of concentration and centralization. Put another way, without limited liability, corporate officers would be very conservative with other people’s money and high-risk speculation would not exist. Corporations would tend to be a lot smaller and many would not exist at all.

Eliminating the fraud known as the corporation as the “fictitious individual” would have far-reaching effects. Rights and freedoms were meant for INDIVIDUALS, not corporations. In order to give corporations these rights they invented the lie that a corporation is an individual. Thus, attempts to control corporate advertising and Korporate Krap Kulture are met with loud shrieks of censorship, and since the corporation has the rights of an individual, it cannot be touched. With rights reserved only for living, breathing people, changes might occur within corporate media. If a corporation is no longer an individual, and thus no longer has rights, corporate media can no longer directly censor the editorial staff. The real living individuals working for them could then demand THEIR freedom of speech.

Patents are harmful because they allow the patent holder a monopoly. With a monopoly they can gouge customers through artificially high prices or inferior goods. Patents waste a lot of energy as people invent procedures to get around the patent. A royalty system, like that of song-writing, would allow inventors a good return without these harmful effects. Patents made Bill Gates the richest man in the world. Without patents, he would still be rich, but not anywhere near the same extent.

Government assistance to Big Business comes in a host of ways; tax breaks, cheap loans, free land, government paid R and D, corporate-aiding infrastructure. The right-wingers want to cut government expense, well start here. The fact remains, that without the state hog trough, many corporations wouldn’t exist at all.

Stop the state from acting as a goon squad for the corporations. No more injunctions, no more rubbish about ‘illegal’ strikes. Yes, the government can mediate if it wishes, but quit taking sides with the corporations. No more using the police to break up picket lines or bully demonstrators. The police should only intervene if an actual crime is being committed, and then only with the individual doing it. One person smashing a window should not be an excuse for beating and arresting 50 people. The procedure for union recognition is absurd and only helps the bosses. The moment the majority in a shop are signed up, they become the union, period. No dragging it out for months allowing the boss time to bully the employees.

Freed from state restrictions on striking and union recognition, free from state thuggery, the labor movement would begin to seriously challenge the corporations.

Without its state provided life support systems, corporate capitalism would gradually disappear, in the same way the Mom and Pop hamburger joint faded away thanks to MacDonalds. Only this time the evolution would be in the opposite direction. Nature abhors a vacuum, with the state’s vicious pets dying off, small businesses, small farms and local production would return. I suspect many new ventures would be cooperatives. With a high level of local production and local consumption the vagaries of the corporate created world market would lessen and we could evolve into a ‘steady state economy’ rather than the ecological insanity of ‘growth as God.’

Hey Greens, Hey NDP, are ya listening?

A book I had heard a lot about over the past decade but never actually got around to buying/reading until a couple of months back is David C. Korten’s When Corporations Rule the World (1999 [1995 original edition], Earthscan Books, London). What follows is not so much a review (‘It’s good- read it yourself!‘) as taking various facts/quotes/arguments in it which others may find of use/interest. I wouldn’t call the Korten’s work a free market anti-capitalist tract, as Korten in one of many on ‘the Left’ who confuses ‘corporate capitalism’ with ‘the free market’. He calls those who support corporate capitalism ‘corporate libertarians’; clearly no genuine libertarian should be apologising for the corporations! This caveat aside, Korten recognises that the vision of a market economy proposed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo is the antithesis of the racket run by the corporate behemoths who now bestride the globe.

Anyway, here’s some Adam Smithisms Korten cites (page numbers from When Corporations…):

‘It is to prevent this reduction of price and consequently of wages and profit, by restraining that free competition which would most certainly occasion it, that all corporations, and the greater part of corporation laws, have been established.’- Wealth of Nations (p.56.)

Smith believed that trade secrets confer a monopoly advantage and are contrary to the principles of a free market (p.74).

‘Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.’ Wealth of Nations (p.75).

‘By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he [the entrepreneur] intends only his own security, and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand, to promote an endwhich was no part of his intention.’ Wealth of Nations (p.77). Note that the ‘invisible hand’ for Smith only works for the benefit of society at the level of the domestic, national economy. To say such an ‘invisible hand’ works through the vehicle of transnational corporations operating on a global scale is a complete travesty of Smith’s arguments.

‘People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.’ Wealth of Nations (p.222).

It seems clear from Korten’s work that Adam Smith would hardly be a fan of Actual Existing Capitalism. Neither does it appear that David Ricardo would be enthusiastic about it. As Korten shows (p.78), Ricardo writing in 1817 said that three conditions were needed for free trade between two countries to work for the benefit of the people in both:

(1) capital must not be allowed to cross national borders from a high-wage to a low-wage country;
(2) trade between the participating countries must be balanced; &
(3) each country must have full employment.

Are there any examples of these three criteria for free trade existing under Actual Existing Capitalism?

Korten also shows that the rise of the corporation took place during the Nineteenth Century . He identifies the American Civil War as the period when corporations in the USA started to dominate the economy and quotes Abraham Lincoln in evidence (p.58):

‘Corporations have been enthroned….An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavour to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people…until wealth is aggregated in a few hands…and the Republic is destroyed.’

Korten identifies the moment when the corporations took their modern form as 1886 (p.59). This was the year that the US Supreme Court ruled in the Santa Clara County V Southern Pacific Railroad case that a private corporation is a natural person under the US Constitution. Consequently a corporation is entitled to protection under the Bill of Rights, including the right to free speech and other constitutional protections extended to individuals.

Over a century later, Korten argues, we are living in a world dominated by the corporations. Furthermore, the corporations will fail, Kortern asserts, due to their similarity to the so-called Marxist regimes failed in Eastern Europe (p.89):

‘Both lead to the concentration of economic power in unaccountable centralised institutions- the state in the case of Marxism, and the transnational corporation in the case of capitalism.
‘Both create economic systems that destroy the living systems of the earth in the name of economic progress.
‘Both produce a disempowering dependence on mega-institutions that erodes the social capital on which the efficient function of markets, government, and society depends.
‘Both take a narrow economistic view of human needs that undermines…the community of life that is essential to maintaining the moral fabric of society.’

To combat the corporations, Korten recognises the need for a new anti-corporate, anti-big government political movement (p.116):

‘The time is ripe for a realignment of political alliances, which is likely to come into full flower only when the true populists [of ‘the Right?] realise that their enemy is not only big central government but also the giant corporations that owe no allegiance to place, people, or the human interest.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Capitalism Creates Global Warming

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Capitalism Creates Global Warming:
I FIRST PUBLISHED THIS IN 2007 NOTHING HAS CHANGED THIS IS THE INTRODUCTION IT IS A LONG READ

I don't often agree with the right wing flat earth society of climate change and global warming deniers, but in this case I will.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), report issued today in Paris is a prime example of deliberate obfustication of the real source of global warming.

"Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations," it says.

Like the flat earthers I find it presumptuous to blame humanity for a problem that is not created by people per se but by the political economy we have created.

For tens of thousands of years, humanity has existed, slowly changing our natural environment and ecology to meet our needs. However it is with the ascendancy of industrial based capitalism in the period of one hundred years that global warming has increased.

It is not people,"humanity", to blame for this, it is not a "man made" crisis , as if we as a society had consciously created this problem, it is the political economy of capitalism that has produced the climactic, environmental and ecological crisis we now face.

Headlines like this, and generalizations that say humanity is impacting the climate avoids laying the blames squarely where it belongs with the political economic system of capitalism.

Which is exactly what the flat earthers say, they too know that the science and politics of climate change expose capitalism as a zero sum game when it comes to the ecological and environmental crisis we face. Which is why they label all climate science as left wing.
But it is not what the scientists say. They still hide behind euphemisms like "man made", "human activities", than to say what we all know is true. The environmental crisis is the ultimate crisis of Capitalism. But unlike the previous economic crises of Capitalism this is not one it can solve.

Thus the scientists give cover to the capitalists and their state claiming that we as individuals are to blame for the crisis. You can see it in the campaigns to make us all responsible for our part in helping solve this problem. By consuming of course. Green cars, environmentally friendly light bulbs, solar heating, blah, blah. 

Conservatism – Dead as a Dodo

MY PAL LARRY GAMBONE PUBLISHED THIS ARTICLE ABOUT CONSERVATISM AND ALBERTA POLITICS ON HIS PORCUPINE BLOG

Conservatism – Dead as a Dodo

Conservatism in its true sense is an extinct ideology. What it has been replaced with is an extreme, and in many aspects, sociopathic ideology which is called "neoliberalism." Conservatism was suspicious of extreme ideologies, and capitalism. It also had a concept of the common good, lacking in today's korporation uber alles right-wing. Below you will find excerpts from two documents. One is by a 1930s fundamentalist preacher, William Aberhart, and the other is by Pope Leo 13. Today, both men would be sneered at as "socialists" by the fake conservative neoliberal right.

1. THE SOCIAL CREDIT MANUAL by Wm. Aberhart 1935

Our Basic Premise.

It is the duty of the State through its Government to organize its economic structure in such a way that no bona fide citizen, man, woman, or child, shall be allowed to suffer for lack of the bare necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, in the midst of plenty or abundance.

The Province of Alberta is Wealthy Enough to Carry Out This Proposal.

The Canada Year Book, 1933, page 870, gives Alberta the next to the highest place with regard to her wealth pe€r capita. Her total estimated potential wealth is $2, 406, 000, 000 or that is, $3518 per person. British Columbia leads with $4012 per person. Ontario, the wealthiest province with the greatest population has $3188 per person. Nova. Scotia, the weakest of the provinces has $1769 per person.

If Alberta can not provide for the bare necessities of her people, what can the other provinces, especially Nova Scotia, do? Alberta cannot ask Ontario or Saskatchewan or Quebec to provide for her people. .That would be unreasonable. They have all they can do to provide for their own.

So the claim must be admitted, Alberta can and must feed, clothe, and shelter her own people, or they must suffer. No one else can be expected to do that which she must accomplish for herself.

In Alberta last year the total market value of all the raw products, grain, fruit, fodder... was $152, 878, 863 which is about 6% of our total estimated wealth. It is, therefore, evident that we do raise enough to care for our people. . We must not forget, however two facts about these figures: First, the value is figured .at present-day, low market prices. Two, the amount stated is for the raw products, which are often processed, increasing their value from three to fifteen or twenty times that of the raw product...

With these figures in mind it is plainly evident that we could feed, and clothe and shelter our people and still have many million dollars worth for those who are capable of earning through individual enterprise.

This should convince our readers that Social Credit is not based on any confiscation scheme by which we take the wealth of the rich or well-to-do to give to the poor. Social Credit recognizes individual enterprise and individual ownership, but it prevents wildcat exploitation of the consumer through the medium of enormously excessive spreads in price for the purpose of giving exorbitant profits or paying high dividends on pyramids of watered stock...

It is understood by those who have examined the case, that unemployment is a permanent disability of the modern state.

Social Credit points out the three great poisons at the root of our trouble:

(a) There is a Iack of purchasing power in the hands of the consumer. If one man does the work of three men for the same pay, then the two men displaced will have no purchasing power. ff a machine does the work of twenty men, at the pay of one man, then the twenty men displaced will have no purchasing power.

As the people have no purchasing power, they cannot get the goods that are piled high in the factories and warehouses. Thus there is no need to produce more, and the great factories become silent and there is much less purchasing power. So the disease becomes very bad, for we have fallen into the vicious circle.

(b) Besides this the price spread has shown by investigation, that wildcat speculation is going on. This intensifies the trouble by making the purchasing power less efficient. The dollar will not secure as much goods as it formerly did.

(c) Finally, the investment of surplus funds leaves the reaim of commerce, where huge profits are the aim, and enters the realm of bond investments where interest is the main consideration.

Thus the flow of credit is retarded so that a high rate of interest may be maintained. Today about fifty-one cents out.of every dollar taxes collected is required for the payment of interest on bonded debt. The whole country is gradually sinking into a morass of debt out of which it will be difficult to recover itself. Some are now forced to borrow to pay interest on the debt that they have already accumulated..

Social Credit As A Remedy

To understand .the Social Credit philosophy it is necessary for the individual to get the language used in Social Credit:

1. Cultural Heritage. This is the inheritance that falls to the right of the individual citizen living within the bounds of the province. The pioneering work of our forefathers and the inventive genius of scientists and others have enabled mankind to harness the solar energy and produce machinery that will do the work that was formerly done by mankind. The great wealth of our natural resources has, by this means, been brought to the very door of the individual consumer. Social Credit claims that each of these consumers has a right to a share in the production from the natural resources of the province. At the present time this great wealth is being selfishly manipulated and controlled by one or more men known as the "Fifty Big Shots of Canada." Social Credit claims that this cultural heritage is the property of the. individuals who are bona fide citizens of our province, and should ne€ver be allowed to go entirely to the control of any small group of men. We call this heritage cultural because it gives the individual an opportunity to develop his individuality.

The cultural heritage is made operative by the regular issuance of dividends from month to month sufficient to secure for the ind.individual citizen the bare necessities of food, clothing and shelter. Social Credit claims that this is the least that could be offered to .any citizen. It is wholly unreasonable to expect any person or group of persons in a province as wealthy as Alberta to exist without the bare necessities of food, clothing and.shelter. To enable each citizen to secure these bare necessities, each of them will receive a pass-book in which at the beginning of each month will. be entered the basic dividend for that month, say $25.00. This is supposed to provide for the bare necessities of food., clothing and shelter for every bona fide citizen, whether he works or does not work, and he shall not be required to pay it back or work it out. The only stipulation will be that the recipient must co-operate in every way possible. Those who work will be given their salaries, wages, or commissions over and above the basic dividends. This would at once remove all relief and dole from our land and. recover the morale of our people. Our bona fide consumers will at once have purchasing power amounting to $10,000,000 dividends, and probably in addition $20,000,000 salary, wages, and commission.

Basic dividend credit wiII be used by means of non- negotiable certificates issued in blank to each consumer.

3. Non-negotiable Certificates.

These are blank forms issued to each bona fide citizen to enable him to fiIl in the amount and signature, also the name of the recipient to whom he is transfers the credit. As it is non-negotiable, the person receiving the certificate must of necessity deposit it in the bank

or Provincial Credit House. When this is done the issuer is debited in his account and the recipient is credited in his account. The recipient, therefore, is able to issue another non-negotiable certificate of his own to pay his debts, and thus-the circulation of the credit is possible.

It is very evident to anyone who follows this thus far that this issuance of free dividends in order to prevent the province from continuously getting into debt, must be recovered in some scientific manner without introducing a hugh tax scheme. This leads us to the fourth term.

4. The Unearned Increment.

This expression means exactly what it says. There is an increment or increase in price, and this increase is not earned by the owner or the producer of the goods. The term is well known to those who have dealt in the buying or selling of land. ff a man sells a piece of property for more than he pays for it the Government claims rightly that he has an unearned increment and they proceed at once to tax him.

A Coal Mine situated far from civilization or without transportation would be of little value to anyone except in so far as it could be used for his personal needs. If ten people lived near it, it would be more valuable. If a thousand people were within reach of it, there would be that much greater demand for the coal, and, therefore it would be a greater price. Thus the price of the coal above.the cost of production is largely dependent upon the demand caused by the association of individuals in its immediate vicinity. Neither the owner nor the miner are responsible for this increased price. It is an unearne increment which accrues fronr the association of the people withiin the bounds of the Iand controlled by them.

!t sometimes goes by the name of price spread.

2. RERUM NOVARUM by Pope Leo 13

The foremost duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth, shall be such as of themselves to realize public well-being and private prosperity. This is the proper scope of wise statesmanship and is the work of the rulers. Now a State chiefly prospers and thrives through moral rule, well-regulated family life, respect for religion and justice, the moderation and fair imposing of public taxes, the progress of the arts and of trade, the abundant yield of the land-through everything, in fact, which makes the citizens better and happier. Hereby, then, it lies in the power of a ruler to benefit every class in the State, and amongst the rest to promote to the utmost the interests of the poor; and this in virtue of his office, and without being open to suspicion of undue interference - since it is the province of the commonwealth to serve the common good. And the more that is done for the benefit of the working classes by the general laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek for special means to relieve them...

The members of the working classes are citizens by nature and by the same right as the rich; they are real parts, living the life which makes up, through the family, the body of the commonwealth; and it need hardly be said that they are in every city very largely in the majority. It would be irrational to neglect one portion of the citizens and favor another, and therefore the public administration must duly and solicitously provide for the welfare and the comfort of the working classes; otherwise, that law of justice will be violated which ordains that each man shall have his due. To cite the wise words of St. Thomas Aquinas: "As the part and the whole are in a certain sense identical, so that which belongs to the whole in a sense belongs to the part."(27) Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would do their best for the people, the first and chief is to act with strict justice - with that justice which is called distributive - toward each and every class alike...

Indeed, their co-operation is in this respect so important that it may be truly said that it is only by the labor of working men that States grow rich. Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they create-that being housed, clothed, and bodily fit, they may find their life less hard and more endurable. It follows that whatever shall appear to prove conducive to the well-being of those who work should obtain favorable consideration. There is no fear that solicitude of this kind will be harmful to any interest; on the contrary, it will be to the advantage of all, for it cannot but be good for the commonwealth to shield from misery those on whom it so largely depends for the things that it needs...

Rights must be religiously respected wherever they exist, and it is the duty of the public authority to prevent and to punish injury, and to protect every one in the possession of his own. Still, when there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly off have a claim to especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State. And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government...

Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice. In these and similar questions, however - such as, for example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, etc. - in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to societies or boards such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of safeguarding the interests of the wage-earners; the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection...

The most important of all are workingmen's unions, for these virtually include all the rest. History attests what excellent results were brought about by the artificers' guilds of olden times. They were the means of affording not only many advantages to the workmen, but in no small degree of promoting the advancement of art, as numerous monuments remain to bear witness. Such unions should be suited to the requirements of this our age - an age of wider education, of different habits, and of far more numerous requirements in daily life. It is gratifying to know that there are actually in existence not a few associations of this nature, consisting either of workmen alone, or of workmen and employers together, but it were greatly to be desired that they should become more numerous and more efficient. We have spoken of them more than once, yet it will be well to explain here how notably they are needed, to show that they exist of their own right, and what should be their organization and their mode of action.

Mickleburgh’s take on BC unions

April 29th, 2019

The notion that workers should collectivize to support one another and prevent exploitation is increasingly viewed as arcane in the Age of Tweets. The Winnipeg General Strike happened 100 years—and few Canadians can tell you what it was, and what happened.

Society barely bats an eye as unionization of the workplace declines, and more and more workers are hired under contract with no job security and few benefits. Rights and conditions workers fought for years to achieve – some gave their lives – are being steadily being eroded.

Hence judges selected Rod Mickleburgh’s On the Line: A History of the British Columbia Labour Movement (Harbour $44.95) as the 2019 winner of the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness.

The two runners-up were Chelene Knight for her second book, Dear Current Occupant (Book Thug) and Sarah Cox for Breaching the Peace: The Site C Dam and a Valley’s Stand Against Big Hydro (On Point Press).

Rod Mickleburgh accepts George Ryga Award

Mickleburgh, formerly a labour reporter for both the Vancouver Sun and Province and a senior writer for The Globe and Mail, has documented the broad historical sweep of what has been Canada’s most volatile and progressive provincial labour force, re-educating British Columbians to why unions are essential for a progressive society.

The story begins back in 1849 when Scottish labourers went on strike to protest barbaric working conditions at B.C.’s first coal mine at Fort Rupert on Vancouver Island and continues into the second decade of the 21st century to recount the successful campaign led by the B.C. Teacher’s Federation (BCTF) to improve classroom conditions and class sizes.

The Ryga Award was presented to Rod Mickleburgh in Victoria—on Saturday, April 27th—at the James Bay Library branch, 385 Menzies Street. The City of Vancouver also declared Author Appreciation Day in his honour.

Here is Rod Mickleburgh’s acceptance speech.

*

It’s hard to put into words how honoured and pleased I am to receive this year’s George Ryga Award for Social Awareness.  But I guess words are my business, so here goes.

I’m honoured, first of all, because this award carries the name of George Ryga. In addition to being such a celebrated BC writer, he takes me back to my long-lost youth. I am old enough to have seen the storied Vancouver Playhouse production of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, George Ryga’s powerful play about the plight of an indigenous woman in the big city. There had never been anything like it in the then tame landscape of Canadian theatre and it broke the hearts of all who saw it.

A year later, in 1969, when I began my so-called brilliant career as sports editor of the mighty Penticton Herald, I discovered the famous man lived just up the road in Summerland. A guy on the paper kept regaling me about the rambunctious, wine-enhanced gatherings he went to at George Ryga’s place, a place that welcomed anyone who aspired to write. I remember being so jealous. As a lowly sports guy writing about the local junior hockey team, I felt too intimidated to think I would fit in.

Now, irony of irony, here I am accepting the George Ryga Award. It’s a funny old world.

George Ryga

I can’t resist adding one more example of George Ryga and me. I noticed on Wikipedia yesterday, that as a young man, he attended the World Assembly for Peace in Helsinki in 1955. My father was at the very same conference.

More importantly, I am also deeply honoured and pleased that this is the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness, something that was fundamental to Ryga’s own writing. Given the way unions and their contributions to society are so often marginalized, social awareness is not something one might normally associate with a history of the BC labour movement, however well done it is. (smile).

But when you look at all those things we take for granted today – the eight-hour day, the five-day work week, paid vacations, overtime, sick leave, pensions, safe working conditions, maternity leave, pay equity and on and on – where did that come from? How did that happen? Not one was granted voluntarily by benevolent, Nice Guy employers. Each and every breakthrough had to be fought for by workers and their unions. And it was never easy, especially in the days when unions had no rights and bosses could pretty well do as they pleased, backed all the way by governments and police.

As someone who spent 15 years as a labour reporter, in the days when there WERE labour reporters, I thought I knew something about the sacrifices of those early union members and the heroic struggles of the past. I had no idea. What I didn’t know, until I began researching for this book, and this came as a total surprise, was that until World War Two when legislation finally compelled employers to bargain with their unions, just about every single major strike was lost. Time after time, from the 1870s onward, workers would take on unscrupulous employers, wanting only a decent wage and working hours, a safe workplace and recognition of their union, but the deck was always stacked against them.

David Lester has depicted the “Battle of Ballantyne Pier” when locked-out waterfront workers fought police in Vancouver in 1935.

The moment a union went on strike, the company would hire strike-breakers, protected by private security goons, police and sometimes even the militia. If the strikers tried to stop the scabs, guess who went to jail? As well, workers who went on strike were regularly blacklisted, meaning they could never return to their old jobs. With strike-breakers maintaining normal production and companies, under no requirement to bargain, supported by governments, police, the media and hysterical law-and-order citizens, there was virtually no way for a union to win. Yet, in spite of defeat after defeat, workers kept fighting back.

While most of us probably have this general awareness that unions had a tough time in the old days, it’s only when you examine events in individual dispute after individual dispute that you realize just how terrible the injustices were and what workers and their unions went through. What they sacrificed for rights and benefits that we enjoy today is truly remarkable. Some paid with their lives. Ginger Goodwin you probably know, but lest we forget, Frank Rogers, shot dead on the Vancouver waterfront in 1903 by a CPR security guy and, incidentally one of the subjects of Geoff Meggs’ recent book, Strange New Country, Joseph Mairs, a young coal miner and cyclist arrested for virtually nothing during the valiant TWO YEAR STRIKE by Vancouver Island coal miners who died in Oakalla, Bob Gardner, savagely beaten by a rogue cop during the fierce union Battle of Blubber Bay on Texada Island in 1938. He never recovered from the four broken ribs he suffered and died, like Joseph Mairs, in Oakalla.

Hundreds, if not thousands of other workers, were clubbed, beaten, jailed, fined, blacklisted, red-baited, and deported – all for the great crime of fighting for decent wages and working conditions and the right to form a union. It’s really a shocking history.

But over time, by fighting back, those basic gains were won that benefited all British Columbians, not just those in a union. We owe them so much.

So I applaud and thank the judges for recognizing On the Line, a history of the BC labour movement, for bringing to light unions’ contributions to society and enhancing our social awareness. And, dare we hope, perhaps ever inspire people to renew the fight for better lives in this debilitating gig economy.

Ellyn Goodwin’s graphic novel.

It’s mystifying why these courageous early trade unionists are not more known today. Some are true heroes. We now celebrate the suffragettes and other women activists, activists of colour, First Nations leaders, Louis Riel, and so on, as we should. But try and find a union leader on a stamp, on our money, on a street sign or even in the histories we teach in the schools. With the notable exception of Ginger Goodwin, it’s as if they never existed.

We now have Ginger Goodwin Way again, up near Cumberland, and hopefully this time it will be left in place, and not taken down by the next non-NDP government.

Otherwise, we have streets and landmarks named after politicians, ruthless anti-union capitalists (hello there, Robert Dunsmuir) and the likes of the notorious Joseph Trutch, who was responsible for reducing the size of BC First Nations reserves by more than 90 per cent in the 19th century. Why not union leaders. It’s time.

At this point, I should point out that On the Line covers 150 years of labour history, not just the bad old, head-bashing days. It’s a top to bottom chronicle that carries on right up the landmark Supreme Court of Canada in late 2016 that delivered victory to BC teachers after 14 years of fighting the stripping of their contracts by the Campbell government in 2002.

Uphill Amber Ale went on sale in 2017.

Oh, and it also manages to work in the recent unveiling of the Tom Uphill Amber Ale by a Victoria brewery, in honour of one of those great labour characters we should all know more about. In fact, maybe after this is over, we can all go and quaff a few.

Despite my extolling unions and those many heroes of the past. I don’t want to give the impression that On the Line is some sort of one-note pro-union propaganda screed. Unions and their leaders, like everything else, are not perfect and never have been.  This is reflected in the book. The Red-baiting, the bitter internal divisions and the racism directed against Asian immigrants that characterized the labour movement for years, an attitude shared by most of the white population in BC, are all addressed. This is a warts-and-all history.

But what a history. It’s a rollicking tale, full of colourful, larger-than-life characters and compelling stories. I did my best to make On the Line a narrative, not an academic tract, And I think I succeeded. It’s a good read, he said modestly. And the workers deserved no less.

At the same time, On the Line focuses deliberately on more than just unions and strikes and the accomplishments of dead white guys, however heroic. Diversity is a strong part of the book, bringing to light the struggles of exploited immigrant workers, the role of women and particularly, the contribution of BC’s indigenous people to the province’s economy in the 19th century.

Not many know that BC’s first workers, and a majority of the population until 1890, were from the First Nations. They discovered coal on Vancouver Island and were the first miners. They were also loggers, early sawmills workers, longshoremen, labourers, farm hands, horse packers, sealers and of course, they were particularly dominant in the fishing industry, on the water and in the canneries. Without them, few economic wheels would have turned in 19th century British Columbia. They even formed a union or two. But, like trade unions, they, too, have been excluded from BC histories.

I am also proud of another feature of the book not normally part of labour histories. I pay a lot of attention to workplace health and safety and the role of the workers’ compensation board, subjects that rarely make headlines. But I believer they are more important to individual workers than any number of strikes or good contracts. What could be more basic than going to work and coming back safe and sound?

Jack Munro,1985. Craig Hodge photo.

I can’t thank the BC Labour Heritage Centre enough for choosing me to tell labour’s rich history. Jack Munro, the Heritage Centre’s founder, had a vision that the contribution of workers and their unions was shamefully unknown, and needed to be told. As someone who spent years covering labour, I couldn’t agree more. Really, the Labour Heritage Centre had me at hello.

I would also like to thank Howard White of Harbour Publishing who never lost faith in my ability to do the job, my forebearing editor Silas White, the tireless Ken Novakowski and Donna Sacuta of the Labour Heritage Centre, and the community savings credit union, without whose deep generous pockets, I would still be writing labour history on Twitter.

And a heartfelt thank you, with love, to my life partner, Lucie McNeill, who was so supportive of this disorganized, grumbling old codger throughout the close to three years this project consumed me, the basement and most of the dining room.

On behalf of those labour leaders, union members and ordinary workers who fought so long and sacrificed so much to make British Columbia a better place, I accept the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness.

A last postscript. For a number of reasons, unions today are not what they are. But they are far from a spent force, and they could be vital once again in combatting a new economy in which increasing numbers of workers are becoming virtual slaves to the gig economy – longer hours, short-term contracts, no job security, few benefits, part-time work as the new normal. It’s the next great challenge for unions. It won’t be easy, but then, when has it ever been easy for unions.

Solidarity, and thanks for coming out!

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Rod Mickleburgh. Lucie McNeill photo.

During his long career, Rod Mickleburgh has worked for the Penticton Herald, Prince George Citizen, Vernon News and CBC TV, in addition to the Sun, Provinceand Globe and Mail. In 1992, he was nominated for a National Newspaper Award; in 1993, he was a co-winner, with André Picard, of the Michener Award.

Mickleburgh’s first book was Rare Courage: Veterans of the Second World War Remember (M&S 2005), a collection of 20 memoirs profiling Canadian veterans of World War II (with Rudyard Griffiths, executive director of the Dominion Institute) and he earned the 2013 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize for The Art of the Impossible (Harbour 2012), co-authored with Geoff Meggs. It remains the definitive book on the early 1970s era of the NDP in British Columbia, in tandem with Dave Barrett’s autobiography, Barrett, A Passionate Political Life (Douglas & McIntyre, 1995), that was co-written with William Miller.

Judges for the Ryga Award were professor and author Trevor Carolan, Joe Fortes VPL branch manager Jane Curry and freelance writer and author Beverly Cramp.

*

Alan Twigg presents Rod Mickleburgh with a City of Vancouver proclamation in his honour.

“The eight-hour day, the five-day work week, paid vacations, overtime, sick leave, pensions, safe working conditions, maternity leave, pay equity and on and on – where did that come from? How did that happen? Not one was granted voluntarily by benevolent, Nice Guy employers” — Rod Mickleburgh

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