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Class Warrior: On the Vancouver Island Miners’ Strike. 1913

Class Warrior
On the Vancouver Island Miners’ Strike. 1913

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table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Foreword
  3. Introduction
  4. Part I: Selected Writings of E. T. Kingsley
    1. 1900   On Washington State’s Primary Law
    2. 1903   On Political Action
      1. On Reformism and Electoral “Fusion”
      2. On Trade Unions
    3. 1905   On the Single Tax
      1. On a Journey to Seattle
    4. 1906   On the Arrest of US Labour Leaders and State Power
    5. 1908   On the Socialist Movement and Travels across Canada
    6. 1909   On War
      1. On the Vancouver Free Speech Fight
    7. 1911   On Property
      1. On the Workers’ Awakening
      2. On Economic Organization
      3. On the Capitalist State
    8. 1914   On the Causes of the First World War
    9. 1916   On Carnage
    10. 1917   On Slavery and War
      1. On War Finance
      2. On the War Effort
    11. 1918   On the Bolshevik Revolution
      1. On Capitalism Getting Rich Quick
    12. 1919   On Control of the State by the Working Class
      1. On Reconstruction
      2. On Collaboration between Labour and Capital
      3. On Wealth
      4. On Gold
      5. On Class War
      6. On the Paris Peace Conference
      7. On Capitalist Civilization
    13. 1921   On the 1921 Canadian Parliamentary Election
  5. Part II: Selected Speeches of E. T. Kingsley
    1. 1895   On the Aims of Socialism
    2. 1896   On Socialism and the Economy
    3. 1899   On American Imperialism in Cuba and the Philippines
    4. 1903   On the Labour Problem
      1. On the Political Organization of Miners in Cumberland
      2. On Stirring the Emotions of His Audience
      3. On Wages, Profit, and Capital
      4. On the 1903 British Columbia Election
    5. 1905   On the 1905 Russian Revolution
      1. On Workers and Rockefeller
      2. On the Mission of the Working Class
    6. 1906   On the Paris Commune
    7. 1908   On Labour and Its Economies
      1. On the Working Class Using Clubs If Necessary
      2. On Working-Class Political Power
    8. 1912   On the Vancouver Free Speech Fight
    9. 1913   On the Vancouver Island Miners’ Strike
    10. 1914   On the Komagata Maru Incident
    11. 1917   On Conscription
      1. On Working-Class Opposition to Conscription
      2. On Conscription and Wiping Out Ruling-Class Laws
      3. On the 1917 Conscription Election
    12. 1918   On the Formation of the Federated Labor Party
      1. On Laws
      2. On Reconstruction
      3. On the Armistice and Postwar Moment
      4. On Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
    13. 1919   On Lenin and Trotsky
      1. On the Belfast General Strike, Unemployment, and the Postwar Challenge to Capitalism
      2. On the Bolshevik Revolution
      3. On the One Big Union
      4. On the Class Struggle
      5. On the Machine
      6. On Capitalism
      7. On the Defeat of the Winnipeg General Strike
      8. On the Machinery of Slavery
      9. On Civilization
    14. 1920   On Mechanization of Production
      1. On the Paris Commune
      2. On the Collapse of Civilization
      3. On the Bankruptcy of the Capitalist System
  6. Part III: The Genesis and Evolution of Slavery
    1. 1916   The Genesis and Evolution of Slavery: Showing How the Chattel Slaves of Pagan Times Have Been Transformed into the Capitalist Property of To-day
  7. Part IV: On the World Situation
    1. 1919   On the World Situation
  8. Appendix
  9. Kingsley’s Speeches
  10. Index

On the Vancouver Island Miners’ Strike 1913

Comments by Kingsley at a mass meeting held in Vancouver’s Horse Show Building on 8 December 1913, organized under the auspices of the Miners’ Liberation League to protest the arrest and jailing of more than two hundred Vancouver Island coal miners during the dispute over recognition of the United Mine Workers’ union in the Island coalfield and deployment of one thousand militiamen to aid the mine owners.

“The B.C. Miners’ Liberation League”

E. T. Kingsley, of the Socialist Party of Canada, said it was not much good to protest so far as getting the dominant class to change its mind was concerned. Such treatment dealt out to the miners had been dealt out to the slave class of old. A movement of this kind will not down. He hoped that the working class would arise some day and knock the “block” off every ruler that lived. The militia and police are the counterpart of the slave class. Slavery and militancy were born together and lived together all down the pages of history. He held no brief for Bowser and McBride. They have been tried in the balance and found no wanting, for they represented the ruling class. A mistake was made by electing them. The two classes have nothing in common. He compared the “working plug” to a balking horse. When he refused to do his master’s bidding he was beat up and locked up in jail for intimidation and various other charges. The speaker had been mixed up in many strikes. Corporation tools and thugs were always on hand to suppress slaves in rebellion. The ruling class had always humbugged the workers. People on the outside of the working class were becoming disgusted with the militia. “We can’t get along without the miner, but we can without the other fellows,” he said. There were many who heard him that did not know where to get the next meal. He referred to the state of trade, and instanced a case where the telephone company had complained of a man who had been in business 16 years jumping without paying his bill, and added that “things were going on the bum.” (Laughter.) The end of the modern system of production was a reasonable distance of ending. (Applause.)

—“The B.C. Miners’ Liberation League,” British Columbia Federationist (Vancouver), 12 Dec. 1913, 3.

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