On the Belfast General Strike, Unemployment, and the Postwar Challenge to Capitalism 1919

The Federated Labor Party Held One Meeting Last Sunday. Kingsley and Curry Dealt with Many Vital Matters.

A rousing meeting was hold in the Dominion Hall on Sunday evening under the auspices of the Federated Labor party; the theatres in which they had been accustomed to meet being closed, owing, it was said, to rumors of threatened disturbance, in which returned soldiers were to be used as the catspaws of the reactionary interests.

Chairman W. R. Trotter opened the proceedings promptly at 8 o’clock, the large hall being already packed, though people still continued to throng into the gallery and finally blocked up even the entrance hall for lack of other accommodation. On the street below, a few score men stood about—small businessmen, plain-clothes officers and the like—awaiting developments. Near the door were a couple of burly constables and a police inspector; and in a doorway opposite was an imposing-looking military officer in uniform. Otherwise uniform of any kind was conspicuously absent, apart from half a score of young boys of the machine-gun section, who were evidently only “out on a lark,” and who disappeared after standing a few minutes on the street corner.

Another chorus was now sung while a collection of $70.50 was taken up; then the chairman remarked, “We’ll let the old man get started.” The “old man” was of course E. T. Kingsley; and during the next hour he was a grander old man than ever. “I insist,” he said, “that the censorship does not apply to me; and I intend to stick to that.” It was pretty near time the people of this town did the same as the people of Belfast. (Loud applause.) The papers allowed that Belfast was never more orderly than it was now. Similarly it had been testified that never was Paris so orderly, never so free from vice and crime, as when the Red Flag of labor floated over the Hotel de Ville. (Renewed applause.) In Russia they had got rid of the czar and done “as you in Canada and every other country must do before you can look yourselves in the face and say you are free.” (More applause.) As to destroying property, he declared: “We do not want to destroy property rights in human beings,” the only kind of property there was. The boys were coming back from the front to the same conditions as before—possibly worse. The government was double-crossing them right now, being itself on the verge of bankruptcy. As to accumulated wealth, there was no such thing possible. “If you’ve got Liberty Bonds and all that kind of junk, you’ll have to take a wheel-barrowful of it down town to got two bits for it.” (Much laughter and applause.)

After a brief reference to revolutionary doings in France and now in Russia, the speaker expressed the hope that such things might never be necessary in Canada; but he added: “That form of government will probably go down and out by something more drastic than merely by voting at the polls.” As to the unwillingness of the Allies to treat with the Bolsheviki, he said, “They’ve got to come to it, not only in Europe, but right here in Canada and in the United States of America.” (Still more applause.)

On the unemployment question, the speaker quoted the decision of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ council at New York: “We want work—but not at the expense of any man who is at present holding a job.” He hoped they would say so here—“and I don’t care where the poor sucker was born either.” Tremendous applause again broke out when he added, “If you soldiers will do that I assure you that all the workers in the province will rally to your support.” It was not true that people were our enemies just because they were born in other lands. They came over here to escape tyrannies they couldn’t any longer stand in Europe. Somebody here remarked: “Some of ’em;” and Kingsley declared that “all who were traitors were still tied officially with the rulers of the German Empire.” The forebears of the English people came from what was now Schleswig-Holstein (a voice, “That’s right”), and there were “some rulers” who traced their way back “by a much shorter lineage” to that German land (hear, hear). He did not point the finger of scorn at them for that.

The only approach to an “incident” occurred at the close of the meeting, when the chairman called for the Marseillaise. A lone voice in the audience at once demanded “God Save the King,” and a young man with black hair and a very white face stepped on the platform. Here he encountered the gentle but firm resistance of a young woman; and so he stepped down again assumed the peculiarly interesting posture known us “attention”—a kind of hypnotic stunt, apparently, in which the subject becomes suddenly as rigid and lifeless as a mummy, leans forward over his toes as far as he possibly can without toppling over on his nose, and concentrates on the all-important necessity of keeping his thumb-knuckles glued to the side-seams of his pants. Of course, nobody ridiculed the poor fellow or molested him in any way, the impression being that he had been “gassed.” During the singing, the kindly ministrations of another little woman apparently restored him to sanity, and he withdrew. But it must be confessed that, while he stood at “attention” to the Marseillaise, his attitude was ludicrously suggestive of those stiff little wooden soldiers that Santa Claus used to bring—marked “Made in Germany.”

It was noticeable that a considerable number of men in khaki were sprinkled among the audience, seemingly heart and soul in the business of the meeting.