Chapter 4. 4 Local 213 and Red Trade Unionism

The 1966 Lenkurt Electric strike erupted in the decade following the transition of labour from the more militant Communist-controlled Old Left in the BC Federation of Labour (BCFL) to a more ameliorative, social democratic left. To say the least, this was not a smooth transition. During World War II the Communist Party of Canada had gained control of BCFL affiliates to the Canadian Congress of Labour and by 1948 the state of politics within this CIO version of the BCFL has trenchantly been described as “Moscow on the Fraser.”1 Several of the leading industrial unions, particularly the IWA in British Columbia’s massive forest industry, had been organized, and indeed were run, by some of the leading lights of the party out on the west coast. But as the anti-communist shadow of McCarthyism moved steadily northwards from the United States, union leaders with Communist affiliations, or even simply “red” reputations, found themselves ousted from leading and commanding positions within their organizations. Having done all the hard slogging during the challenging years of the open shop in the 1930s, then to win union recognition and the first enforceable collective agreements from employers in the early 1940s, appeared to be of no avail. Conservative factions—the “white bloc” in the case of the IWA—were able to forge, or arguably re-forge, an unholy oppositional alliance beginning in the late 1940s in Canada that was able to oust the reds from leadership functions in their respective unions. In this highly focused endeavour, they were supported by union members belonging to the Communist Party’s main trade union rival, the CCF, in addition to the International headquarters of the union (meaning their American headquarters), the state, and employers.2

George Gee was in many ways representative of the evolution of Depression-era young men in Canada. He was also to become the first of several human lightning-rods in the Communist issue in IBEW Local 213. Born in 1908 in Virden, Manitoba, he was the youngest of ten children whose father had died when he was only nine months old. The family hung on until the early 1920s, when, unable to meet rising mortgage payments, the small farm they had homesteaded was foreclosed. In the family breakup that followed, brothers and sisters scattered across Canada, while a teenage George went to work at any job he could find. After a stint as a labourer for the Manitoba Power Commission in 1926 and 1927, he became a lineman, repairing wires and climbing poles. The stock market crash of 1929 then cast George into the swelling ranks of the unemployed. Since he had two brothers raising horses near Princeton, BC, he set out with a friend to rejoin them in 1930. He was to call Princeton home during the next five years, occasionally joining the thousands then riding the rails across the country in search of work.

While in Princeton, George Gee increasingly came under the influence of one of his older brothers, Bill, who had joined the Communist Party in 1932. He was also exposed to the dynamic leadership of well-known Communist organizer, Arthur “Slim” Evans, when asked to help in the Tulameen coal miners’ strike of 1932–33.3 In 1935, the younger Gee left Princeton when a sleet storm knocked power lines down all along the Fraser Valley. Rushing into Vancouver with his lineman’s tools, George found temporary employment with Peterson Electric, that is, Peterson Electrical Construction, a well-known line contracting company. Laid off again and fed up with the Depression and the way the country was being run, he joined the Communist Party himself later that same year. In 1936 he headed south of the border to secure another lineman’s job in Washington State. Gee worked steadily in the Pacific Northwest for about a year, in the process joining IBEW Local 77 in the gritty working-class mill-town of Everett, north of Seattle. He then returned to Vancouver in 1937 as he had heard that work was picking up again with the BC Electric Company and its major subcontractors. That’s when he started his career in Local 213, working first on permit, then being officially inducted as a member on August 4, 1939.

Upon his return to Vancouver, George Gee found that there was already a small Communist activist grouping organized in Local 213. He spearheaded the campaign to elect fellow comrade, Jack Ross, as business manager of Local 213 in 1939 and was publicly lauded for his ability to raise crucially required war bonds for Canada’s Second World War effort. When Ross was elevated to the position of an IBEW International representative in 1947, Gee ran for the now-vacant post of business manager and won.4

George Gee soon garnered well-deserved acclaim as a popular and shrewd union negotiator, a potentially budding northern version of Harry Van Arsdale Jr. The provincial economy was booming, Local 213 grew from a membership base of about 700 in 1946 to over 2,000 by 1953, and Gee was able to sign steadily improving collective agreements on behalf of Vancouver electrical workers. Wages increased on a regular basis and the construction contractors in the early 1950s were coerced into paying the full cost of an employee welfare plan, a first for IBEW inside wiremen in Canada.5 Additionally, improved provisions were made with all unionized electrical contractors, covering both electricians and linemen, one of the key changes being to ensure that the ratio of apprentices to journeymen not exceed one apprentice to two journeymen. This effectively limited the previous ability of employers from stacking their job sites and balance sheets with lower-paid apprentices.6 One of Gee’s principal critics, Angus MacDonald, was forced to admit: “It was right after the war and the world was open for good contracts. And George was a good business manager and won good contracts.”7 Under Gee’s leadership, Local 213 grew from having three units to having six, reproducing a parallel organization and structure to faraway New York’s hybridized Local 3. By 1955, the six Vancouver units were Utilities, Line Contractors, Marine, Gas, Manufacturing, and Inside Wiremen.8 George Gee thus won four successive elections as business manager of Local 213 by over 80 percent of the votes cast.9

However, unlike Harry Van Arsdale Jr. and International President Daniel Tracy, George Gee was not a devout Roman Catholic; as already mentioned he was a member of the Communist Party of Canada, known from 1943 to 1959 as the Labor-Progressive Party (LPP). Given the strident anti-Communist political climate that erupted in the immediate postwar era, Gee understandably held his personal political cards close. A newspaper reporter of the period described him as “an effective, intelligent person with a likeable way about him. He conducts himself in a suave manner, if with somewhat ungrammatical language, and is a genius at meeting technique. He is never caught mouthing the tiresome phrases of the Marxist front-man.” On the other hand, it was clear that Gee, the head of a Trades and Labour Congress-affiliated local, was “an interesting example of depression-born radicalism . . . a hard-hitting ex-lineman [who] has a long memory of bitter days.”10

But the political winds were shifting. During the pervasive anti-left obsessions of the McCarthy period, George Gee’s formative experience absorbed during the Great Depression was increasingly deemed a handicap by his critics, not an asset. Cognizant of both the anti-Communist sentiment in Canada and in an attempt to mitigate official IBEW scrutiny, Gee sent a letter in 1948 to the International Office officially announcing his resignation from the LPP.11 Gee’s resignation was also a response to the Taft-Hartley Act, which officially demanded that each and every trade union official, from International president to local executive board member, file a sworn affidavit “disclaiming Communist membership or proscribed beliefs.”12 In the United States, if even one elected officer refused to file an affidavit, the entire union could lose its ability to rely on the certification framework overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). As several Communist-influenced unions south of the border were to discover to their dismay, this meant they had great difficulty in defending themselves in the face of ensuing membership raids from more conservative-led organizations.13 Though certain aspects of Taft-Hartley were thoroughly criticized by IBEW officials, the International’s executive board had no compunction signing anti-Communist affidavits. Investigations into local union administration followed, even in Canada, where American law supposedly did not apply. Though the anti-Communist affidavits were eventually declared unconstitutional in 1965, several provisions of Taft-Hartley remain on the books to this day in the United States.14 It quickly became a foundation stone for sustained right-wing attacks within the labour movement, but a millstone around the neck for anyone even remotely associated with the Communist Party. The American legislation made it difficult for Vancouver electrical workers espousing a “progressive” angle at Local 213’s union meetings to manoeuvre, or to publish cogent articles critical of capitalism in the local labour press, since that might be construed as identifiably overlapping with Communist-LPP positions.

George Gee’s official resignation from the Communist Party did not change the way he viewed the world or the way he interacted with others within it. He continued to fulfill his functions as business manager of IBEW Local 213 in much the same way as he did before. It was most likely a fake resignation, designed to disarm his enemies in both the trade union movement and the corporate sector. Bill White of the Boilermakers’ union in North Vancouver’s Burrard Dry Dock, at the time a member of the Communist Party, certainly thought so. In Howard White’s A Hard Man to Beat: The Story of Bill White, Labour Leader, Historian, Shipyard Worker, Raconteur, he says Gee was part of the BC LPP-trade union brain trust of the period, helping to design and direct ensuing sectoral tactics for bargaining in the province.15 Following very much in the footsteps of others at the time in Canada who denied their political affiliation—UE’s C. S. (Jack) Jackson or the steelworkers’ Tom McClure in Ontario spring to mind—Gee admitted as much when he once declared in an interview: “Now I never worked any different when I was in the Party, or whether I was climbing poles. A communist is not something different from the bloody working class—they [sic] are the working class!”16

What bothered his critics more than anything else was that George Gee appeared to allow Local 213’s membership rolls to become a safe haven for well-known but unemployed Communists, or reputed close collaborators of the party, some of whom were blacklisted from other industries for their previous union activism. Employers could easily point to a handful of newly sworn-in members of Local 213, such as former IWA organizers Ed Simpson, Al Parkin, and John McCuish; or a colourful assortment of workers from other sectors of the economy, such as Alex Dorland, Dusty Greenwell, Carl Rush, and Tom and Stan Forkin. In a family connection appearing to promote literal brotherhood, not just the trade union variety, the business manager’s very own siblings, Bill and Robert (Ed) Gee, were also admitted as members of Local 213. Even though most of them originated from among the secondary and rank-and-file cadre of left-wing labour organizers in British Columbia, employers did not appreciate the prospect of having some of these controversial figures on their job sites, potentially fomenting grievances or work stoppages and exerting an unwanted critical influence on their fellow workers. Henry Ayling, for instance, personnel manager for BC Bridge and Dredging, had expressed his concerns to Jack Ross, the Vancouver-based representative of the IBEW’s International Office. In 1951, Ayling asserted that there “seems to be a definite Communistic trend” in Local 213 and complained specifically about a clearance given to Al Parkin, formerly active in the red bloc of the IWA. Well aware of Parkin’s militant reputation and political preferences, Ayling “sent him back to the Local and informed them that I could not possibly hire a man with such a record as he has.”17 Anti-Communist electricians within Local 213 itself also commented on the new members. Decidedly not impressed, one of them declared that some of the newly inducted electrical workers “are of such poor calibre that they . . . are continually being sent back as soon as the foreman sees, either, that he can’t do the work, or won’t give a reasonable 8 hrs work for a day’s pay.”18 Such an assessment probably needed to be taken with a grain of salt, but reflected the pressure the Communist Party put on George Gee to accept unqualified party members in need of employment.

The distrust and denunciations then turned to become focused on one of Gee’s assistants, the militant and outspoken Don Wilson. Disliked by several employers for his strict policing of collective agreements and accused of being a Communist, Wilson defended himself by asserting that the first point meant that he was just doing his job well; as for the second accusation, he claimed that he “was not and never had been” a member of the party.19 The denial was hard to believe, given Wilson’s close working relationship and friendship with the head business manager. Suspicions sufficiently aroused, Jack Ross wrote in 1954 to John Raymond, vice-president of the Canadian district of the IBEW, headquartered in Toronto, to ask whether he had information on Wilson. By way of confirming Ross’s suspicions, Raymond replied that their files showed he was a paid-up member of the Communist Party in 1951. “We have not been able to get anything in the way of definite proof that he has paid dues since that time,” he added. “This should be sufficient for your needs.”20

The International Office of the IBEW disliked Don Wilson not only for his Communist links, but also for his brazen outspokenness. The assistant business manager, responsible for the contract linemen, pulled no punches in criticizing his own organization if he felt the situation warranted a public chastisement. Given subsequent events, this was undoubtedly unwise. George Gee recalled a speech Wilson had made at the August 1954 TLC convention in Regina as a delegate from Local 213:

Don blasted away there at the International and their role in regards to the telephone workers. They’d sat on their backside doing absolutely nothing, and we’d spent quite a bit of money trying to organize the telephone workers. They were in a company union at the time. So Don blasted the IBEW for signing yellow dog contracts and what have you. That was the main reason they wanted him dumped.

On top of that he threatened to pull a strike at Revelstoke that I needed like a hole in the head. I didn’t know the bloody thing was almost out until I received a phone call from the mayor [of Revelstoke] one morning. Don hadn’t told me. He was thinking of pulling the guys off the job. Anyway, they wanted me to fire him and I said no bloody way. When he did something I didn’t agree with, then I might.21

There was little doubt within and without the electrical workers that George Gee was promoting party activism and building up support for a left-wing outlook within Local 213.22 As with other Communist-influenced unions like UE or Mine-Mill at the time, this was largely channelled through a re-orientation toward rank-and-file participation in the decision-making process surrounding Local 213’s policies. The most important of these new democratic measures concerned the rotation of work among the inside wiremen. A representative committee decided that laid-off electricians would have to go to the bottom of Local 213’s unemployed list and wait their turn for a new job to be offered from the union’s dispatching office. Despite massive support for the new strategy, complaints immediately ensued from a previously privileged minority, as “it means we lose all seniority we have with the shops we have worked for, some of us for over 20 years.”23 Important reforms such as these were intermittently combined at meetings with Local 213’s support for ostensibly left-wing issues, such as its periodic $5 to $25 contributions to the Pacific Tribune, the Vancouver-based weekly Communist Party newspaper; the Stockholm Appeal for Peace; demands that the United States government free the “framed up” Rosenberg couple; or that the expelled Canadian Seaman’s Union (CSU) and the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union (UFAWU) be readmitted to the TLC. Though these measures could hardly be considered revolutionary and were soft-pedalled by appearing sporadically from the floor under “New Business” at the local’s monthly membership meetings, some inside wiremen, like Charles E. Sumpton, believed that the insertion of these issues constituted an unappealing and unwanted political slant. Sumpton would subsequently write to Jack Ross regarding his perception that “there were too many ‘Reds’ . . . in key positions with ‘Red’ ideas.”24 The ensuing political atmosphere became so poisonous that it even affected workers on a number of job sites. Dave Clark, a former BC Electric employee and LPP member, recalled:

The top shop stewards [in Local 213], the good shop stewards, were all Party people. But at that time it was getting so that there was too much pressure on anybody that was a left-winger. So the Party people would not always take the lead. They would organize, set it up, and let the other guys get the cream. They did this by telling them how to go about it. Then no one could nail that guy for being a Communist because he wasn’t. But we still got condemnation from everybody. We still got accused of being “god-damned left-wingers” and stuff like this, you know.25

There was also a cultural and political resonance to Gee’s leadership efforts. Tremendously popular hockey, soccer, softball, and bowling teams were established, with the local also organizing impressive turnouts at annual May Day and Labour Day parades. Speakers’ workshops were also successfully promoted under Gee, to the extent that some applicants were turned away on the grounds that “attendance in these is at the maximum number allowed.”26

Among other issues, the Vancouver business manager had also been keen to help Mine-Mill’s Harvey Murphy in the organization of his outdoor Peace Arch concerts featuring the famous African-American bass baritone, Paul Robeson. Gee sent out volunteer electricians to wire the flatbed sound truck from which Robeson, a self-proclaimed Communist sympathizer, was to sing at Peace Arch Park on the Canada-United States border.27 Much more disturbing to Gee’s opponents was that an “Electrical Club” had been established that caucused before Local 213’s union meetings to strategize on the main issues of the day. Communist Party members were also in key positions, and the electrical workers’ leader was able to convey a regular analysis of events through the founding of the local’s monthly newspaper, Live Wire, which published its first issue in 1949.28 Under the editorship of the tremendously capable and similarly minded Tom Forkin, the newspaper covered everything from the signing of new agreements to the latest results of the local’s newly founded sport and recreation clubs. The monthly newspaper provided a healthy combination of political commentary, historical analysis, and personal anecdotes—all interlaced with Forkin’s wry sense of humour. It went without saying that the contents continually warned the electrical workers to be on their guard, because even “if a bit of give and take on the job is always necessary . . . if you start giving away on clauses in your agreement, pretty soon you’re doing all the giving and the boss is doing all the taking.”29

But there was far from unanimous support within Local 213 for these easily noticeable changes. An unsympathetic Fred Allison, who at one time had been elected shop steward at one of BC Electric’s multiple dam projects on the Bridge River, recalled in an interview that a close analysis of the local’s internal functioning brought to light what he believed were extremely disturbing practices:

Local 213 was a very well run organization. It was run by the Communist Party, no question of doubt about that. If you went to a meeting, everything was sort of programmed. They had an Electrical Club that used to hold pre-meetings before they had the union meeting to decide on policy and what was going to be debated, what was going to be talked about. If you were a maverick, or a lone wolf, they had everything covered. If you got up to speak, three would get up to speak behind you, maybe four. You know, it doesn’t take very many people to dominate a local union. It takes only a fairly small group who are willing to talk and to contribute.30

Complicating the political landscape within the Vancouver electrical workers’ local was the fact that IBEW’s International representative for British Columbia, Jack Ross, had re-oriented his opinions in line with his new responsibilities, which consisted of watching, reporting, helping British Columbia locals in negotiating collective agreements, and intervening if necessary on behalf of the union’s American headquarters. Within union circles, he soon became known as a watchful and meddlesome anti-Communist. A key and important figure in the postwar history of Local 213, Jack Noble Ross was born in 1905 in Aberdeen, Scotland, and had immigrated to Saskatchewan with his parents as a teenager. Following numerous adventures working odd jobs while wandering the Canadian west, he became a lineman in his early twenties near Cranbrook, British Columbia. Eventually settling in Vancouver during the Great Depression, he joined the Communist Party in 1934 and teamed up with George Gee inside Local 213 to defeat long-time business manager Teddy Morrison in the pivotal executive board elections of 1939. Owing to serious disagreements over Soviet foreign policy in connection with the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the USSR signed in August 1939, Ross left the Communist Party.31 Involving himself in the political manoeuvring of the upper echelons of the IBEW immediately following World War II, Ross backed the efforts of the winning anti-Communist presidential candidate, Daniel Tracy, and in 1947 was rewarded with his appointment as the International representative for British Columbia.

Rid of his political affiliation with the party, he could now keep an eye on the growing influence of the Communists within Local 213, centred around George Gee. His subsequent estrangement from his former comrade—working in the same building, they were understandably wary of one another—meant that Ross was detested on the left as a trade union and political turncoat. All the same, he was well acquainted with the political platforms and tactics used by key labour activists from BC’s Communist Party.

For the IBEW’s International Office, Ross had the ideal background to carry out his duties. Don Wilson, former assistant to Gee, believed that Ross conveniently left behind his working-class roots and the harsh lessons learned in Canada during the Great Depression. When Ross moved up to the post of business manager of Local 213 at the start of World War II and then to International representative in 1947, “his trade unionism sunk.” Instead, “the Constitution became his Bible.”32 In the 1950s and 1960s, Ross shared an office with Les Crampton, business manager of Prince Rupert Local 344, upstairs in the Dunsmuir Street union hall, where they worked together on providing union clearance for electrical workers applying for out-of-town jobs.

Most descriptions of Jack Ross were uniformly negative, to the point of being reprehensible. But they were shared at the time by many of the politically active and straight-shooting electrical workers. Like most workingmen, they did not pussyfoot around in their use of language. One of them recalled: “He used to sit in that office upstairs with Les Crampton from Local 344 and they used to look like some old mafia dons. They had shifty eyes; they would never look at you directly . . . I just knew what a bloody slime-ball Jack Ross was.”33

During the 1940s and early 1950s Ross had fed his superiors in Washington a constant stream of documentation on Communist influence inside the electrical workers’ local. These documents included newspaper clippings, reports on declarations and votes made at labour conventions by Local 213’s delegates, employer complaints about red-leaning electrical workers, the close relationship business manager George Gee had with well-known Communist labour leaders such as Mine-Mill leader Harvey Murphy from Trail (who rented an office for about three years in the union hall) or general unease at the control Gee and his supporters appeared to exert within Local 213.34 Having been a lineman like Gee, even doing line repairs as a partner with him on several occasions when they “worked the tools,” former soul-mate Ross had similarly been forced to tough it out to survive the Great Depression. His circumstances growing up would serve him well as a long-lasting officer in the IBEW; allied with a rasping, gravely voice that demanded attention whenever he spoke, he too was endowed with an impressively acute political compass. He thus became a constant shadow tracking Local 213’s political ins and outs and was often the focal point of the black clouds of division that seemed to hover persistently over the Vancouver electrical workers.

Unlike Harvey Murphy who was protected at the time within a larger left-wing organization, the International Mine-Mill union, George Gee was isolated in the conservative IBEW. Within the four walls of his very own union building, he was more than cognizant that the union’s International representative was increasingly hostile, though he was also aware that his former Comrade had no real authority in terms of the day-to-day functioning of Local 213. This reality did not stop Ross from relaying his growing concerns about the increasing influence of the Communist Party inside the electrical workers’ union to his superiors in Washington, DC. One surviving letter was sent to J. Scott Milne, at the time International Secretary of the IBEW. A Canadian originally from the Vancouver area, Milne was naturally interested in and curious about unfolding events in Local 213. But Ross was worried:

Day after day, they and their party members are gaining complete control of this once conservative and respected organization. To-day, the I.B.E.W. name is treated with justifiable suspicion. From every quarter I run into open hostility when endeavouring to conduct I.B.E.W. business . . . Rats breed dam fast when they are in a warm protected nest, and if the breeding is allowed to go on much longer, it will be a big job even for a Pied Piper from Washington.35

The catalyst that served to precipitate George Gee’s eventual lifetime expulsion from the IBEW were his attempts over several years to bring in BC Electric’s 250 gas workers into the fold of Local 213. As might be suspected, the company did not want the gas workers in Local 213 for easy-to-understand financial reasons. Larry Jack, former general secretary with BC Electric, recalled that it was really all “very simple.” The small size of Gas Workers Federal Union, Local 225, meant that they “just didn’t have the resources to bargain as effectively as the IBEW . . . There were so few of them paying dues that they couldn’t afford the required help. They managed to reach settlements that, comparatively speaking, were advantageous to the company for quite a long time.”36

As part of several public denunciations that took place during the first few months of 1954, BC Electric’s opening salvo directed at George Gee occurred in early January when H. L. (Henry) Purdy, BC Electric’s vice-president, accused the local’s left-wing leader of being “closely connected with Communist organizations and it has been the company’s sad experience that, since he became Business Agent . . . of the local which represents the company’s electrical workers, our relations with those workers have deteriorated.” In this front-page newspaper story, Purdy went on to say that he did not think it was appropriate that Local 213 continue in its historical direction of behaving more like an industrial, rather than a strict and exclusionary craft union. He let it be known to the press that he did “not think it desirable” that workers who were not employed at BC Electric “should take part in decisions of the local that affect us directly, or that our employees should, by being members of the same local, become involved in any disputes which those other members may have with their own employees.”37 While corporate executives like Purdy were obviously not in agreement with the direction of Local 213’s political and economic outlook, it should be noted that throughout his tenure as business manager of Local 213, George Gee never once led the BC Electric workers out on strike against the company. Like a number of other Communist trade union representatives in the province at the time, he had a reputation for being a skillful negotiator; the problem was that his political underpinnings, combined with occasional threats to pull workers from the job at the giant utility, eventually got under the skin of his conservative counterparts at the bargaining table.38 At the same time, as Bert Marcuse ironically asked in a letter to a Vancouver-based newspaper reporter, aren’t all union leaders “reds at negotiation time?”39 Gee had won leadership in a local union with a troubled past, and to the employers’ dismay he was more than capable of keeping pace with ambitious business unionists in winning substantial improvements in collective agreements. What perturbed employers even more than his negotiation skills was that Gee appeared to be trying to steer Local 213 in the direction of a hybridized industrial union with a red-hued twist.

A year later McCarthyism as a live, visible, and interventionist force caught up to Local 213. Codifying long-standing leadership beliefs held south of the border, a new preamble to the IBEW constitution was approved at the union’s September 1954 Chicago convention. One of its articles pointedly noted: “This Brotherhood will continue to oppose communism, Nazism or any other subversive ’ism.’”40 Decisive action quickly followed this broad philosophical declaration, though at first it was made to appear that the effort to oust Gee from Local 213 genuinely came from within the ranks of concerned electrical workers. Seven anti-Communist members of the executive board had previously posted a letter south to request a meeting with IBEW International President Milne in Chicago. George Gee and Don Wilson, who had also been elected to represent the interests of Local 213 at the convention, were conveniently absent from the Windy City as they had been refused entry into the United States by American border officials; whether by accident or by design during the McCarthy period, this was a convenient occurrence enforced on numerous occasions by border authorities against several Communist-inclined representatives of international unions, particularly those of the more “notorious” industrial unions like the IWA, UE, Mine-Mill, and the ILWU. As their plans could now not be derailed by either left-winger, Angus MacDonald recounts what took place at this crucial conclave:

We were an innocent group of people that wanted to clean up 213 in the best way we could and the best way we thought. . . . There was no flag waving, it was quiet, clear, and what I would consider a very mature meeting. We discussed whether we should do this or whether we shouldn’t, because none of us really wanted to do what we did, but we couldn’t see any other way of stopping what we considered the Communist tide coming into 213 . . . Looking back on it now, we were reacting to George being too loyal to people we thought were not doing him or 213 any good, people like Alex Dorland, Don Wilson, Sid Sheard, and Harvey Murphy.41

The concerned delegates in attendance from Local 213—John (Jack) Waplington, Angus MacDonald, Bill Daley, Jack McSorley, and Art O’Keeffe—then affirmed that they were indeed five of the seven electrical workers from Vancouver who had affixed their names to charges incriminating George Gee and stated that he was unfit for union office. In particular they declared that George Gee was a Communist Party member working “in the interest and direction of Soviet Russia,” which was “against the interest and welfare of all members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers throughout Canada.”42

In January 1955, the international headquarters of the IBEW sent out International Representatives Alfred Terry and Andrew Johnson to Vancouver to clean up the thorny issue of one of its locals with a growing red reputation. The gun-packing and intimidating IBEW representatives were evidently well-practiced and did their job well—Terry in particular gained a reputation for using “more than his voice to be persuasive.”43 On the appointed day—Monday, January 17, 1955—approximately 1,200 electrical workers jammed themselves into their union hall to learn more of what they had read in the weekend’s newspapers, namely that George Gee had been expelled by the IBEW for “working in behalf of Communist causes.”44 Missing from their usual places were business manager George Gee and his assistants, Don Wilson and a newly appointed Art Goy, a likeable and a reliable trade union figure who had doubtless been appointed by Gee precisely because he was not a member of the Communist Party; Gee was increasingly aware that he needed to prove he did not surround himself solely with appointed party advocates. Seemingly replacing the three were a pair of strangers, large and tough-looking individuals both, one of whom—according to some observers—had a noticeable bulge under the left side of his overcoat.45

Acting chairman Art O’Keeffe started the meeting by taking a roll call of Local 213’s executive board. The assembly thus learned that the two strangers were none other than Alfred Terry and Andrew Johnson, International representatives for the IBEW (commonly known as “roadmen”), that Bob Woodward and Cec McEwen had both resigned their positions, and that Bert Marcuse had been fired from his job.46 O’Keeffe then granted the traditional opening motion, duly seconded and carried unanimously, that the minutes from the previous meeting be accepted as read.

Events then occurred in rapid succession. Don Wilson was asked to come up to the platform from the back of the Hall and was told by Alfred Terry that “as he, Bro. Wilson, was suspended, he could not attend this meeting.”47 Wilson responded by asking that Terry show his credentials from the IBEW. When the Roadman complied, Wilson spoke up and read to the packed throng the letter from Terry suspending him “from attendance at Local Union meetings or representing Local 213 in any official capacity pending the completion of [a] hearing and [a] decision . . . on charges.” He said that he had been suspended “in accordance with Article 4, section 4 of the I.B.E.W. Constitution” and informed the meeting that George Gee had been suspended under identical charges.48 He then left the meeting, a rising tide of applause and shouts of encouragement ringing in his ears.49

Following Wilson’s departure, O’Keeffe attempted to proceed with regular business and announced that a meeting of unemployed brothers would be held at 7:00 p.m. the following night. Other union members, however, had different ideas. Someone angrily presented a motion, quickly seconded, of non-concurrence in a yet-to-be-read report from the executive board detailing the changes in the local union’s personnel. O’Keeffe would not accept the motion and ruled it out of order amid much hooting and hollering. Jack Waplington, president of Local 213, then stood up to address the angry throng. He stated he was doing so “in the temporary position of Business Manager, maybe for two weeks, until the Bro. Gee case is cleared up.” But he was shouted down, and again non-concurrence was moved and seconded only to be ruled out of order once more by O’Keeffe. Conscious of the vehemence building up against those sitting on the platform, brother Vern Shuttleworth then announced that he was resigning from his appointed position on the executive board. Loud cheers greeted his decision, turning to jeers when brother Edward Moore was appointed to take his place temporarily.

At long last International Representative Alfred Terry got up to address the crowd. He was met by a swelling chorus of boos and shouts of “Go back to the States, you McCarthyites!” and “Yankee go home!” but brazenly stood his ground and told the electrical workers that “he had been assigned to come to Vancouver by J. Scott Milne, president of IBEW International, to clear up the situation that existed in Local 213 of the IBEW.” He added that President Milne had “great affection for . . . and is anxious to do everything possible to assist our Bros. in Canada. [But] he is presently very much concerned [about] Local 213.” Before introducing his assistant, Andrew Johnson (the one with the bulge), Terry assured the meeting that the two of them would “do a good job in clearing up the situation . . . and nobody would be unfairly dealt with.” Johnson then attempted to make a short speech, repeating much of what Terry had said. But someone shouted, “Let’s take the meeting over!” and several electrical workers started toward the stage area to take control of the microphone. Brother Vern Bigelow then got into a shoving match at the back of the platform, and other scuffles also broke out in the aisles between the seats. Present in the Dunsmuir union hall that night was Tom Forkin, editor of Live Wire, who remembered what happened quite vividly:

Suffering cats! It came as close as anything to a bloody insurrection at that meeting . . . But we advised the men on the floor who were ready to fight to keep their god-damned shirts on and to attack this thing in a mature and moderate fashion. Of course the backbone of this unruly element was the line department. They were ready to fight and they were gonna clean the clocks of the international representatives.50

Forkin and others were heard, saner heads prevailed, and a sense of order was momentarily re-established, particularly once the stage was cleared of rank-and-file electrical workers. Brother Bill Turner then jumped up and loudly proclaimed that he was a member of the Labor-Progressive Party. Others quickly followed. Amid attempts by O’Keeffe to pursue another line of business and filibuster the time remaining, the turmoil spread again. Brothers Jack Gillett and Herbie Welch then announced that they, too, were members of the LPP, the first-named adding “and proud of it!” In an atmosphere of bedlam, just before adjourning at 11 p.m., the executive board suspended another twenty-two members in addition to Wilson, Gee, and Goy.51 But they agreed, in a show of apparent clemency and understanding, “that nothing will be released to the press that will be detrimental, or harmful to the Bro’s. Cases.” Then apart from Terry and Johnson who walked in seemingly accustomed, measured paces, those present on the platform hurriedly made their way to a back door leading to the comparative safety of the union offices.

Jack Waplington’s declaration that the Gee case would take only two weeks to clear up proved to be wishful thinking. Local 213 was initially placed into trusteeship for what would prove to be five very onerous and troublesome years, as all executive board members, office staff, and delegates representing the local to city, provincial, or national trade union bodies had to be approved beforehand by the International Office. In addition, although its individual trade units could meet separately, the 2,400-member Vancouver-based local learned that general meetings would be suspended during the same time period.52 Eighteen electrical workers were eventually handed suspensions ranging from ten to thirty years, while Local 213’s business manager, George Gee, was expelled for life.53 Moreover, four out of the thirteen members of Local 213’s executive board resigned rather than serve under the dictatorial rule of the International Office, and seven of the local’s office staff were either fired or quit.54 Eventually, as the dust from the intervention settled and the numbers became better known, the suspended electrical workers labelled themselves the “21 Club” after the New York club of the same name, an infamous upscale former prohibition-era speakeasy.55 Coincidence perhaps, but in left-led Mine-Mill, the organization’s entire constitution was upended later that same year to provide complete autonomy to its Canadian membership.56 This provided a barrier of protection for its Communist-led locals in Canada from the very real possibility of unilateral intervention, particularly if its international leadership in the United States was ousted and replaced with more conservative, business union types.

A. E. (Dal) Grauer, president of the BC Power Corporation, the parent entity of the BC Electric Company, would have approved of the IBEW’s house-cleaning efforts in Vancouver. A native British Columbian who strongly believed that “socialism was the major threat” to the province’s prosperity, he had flown a year earlier to Washington, DC, to talk directly with leading officers of the union.57 The specific reason for the unusual trip was to discuss his perception of a disturbing labour relations problem affecting the BC Electric Company. It was recorded in the minutes of meetings of their board of directors that Grauer had returned from Washington having been assured by the union’s International Office that “the left-wing leadership of Local 213, which has been the company’s objection all along,” was going to be changed to include representatives more to his liking. Continuing in the same vein, he reported to his board of directors that “there are now strong indications” that Gee and his left-wing assistants were “in the process of being replaced by men of more stable and responsible caliber.”58 J. Scott Milne, the new IBEW International president, would later confirm in a letter to Grauer that leadership changes would be forthcoming in Local 213, writing to his irritated counterpart at the BC Electric Company that “Mr. Al Terry, one of our International Representatives, will be in Vancouver in the early part of January in connection with the subject matter which we have discussed on several occasions. As I told you, we will put our house in order about the first of the year.”59 A meeting of minds had evidently taken place in Washington. Not surprisingly, as this was no longer required, the public attacks on George Gee in the local press literally stopped following Grauer’s return from Washington.

Don Wilson, Gee’s embattled assistant, recalled that the Electrical Club (later to be known as the “left faction”) considered a major fightback against the local’s trusteeship. But the idea was quickly abandoned:

The only way our opponents could tackle the union was with the communist bogey. And we knew we couldn’t fight that. Because if we had fought back, there would have been hundreds of guys who would have lost their jobs, been expelled, and got their heads beaten in. We had the example of the SIU, CSU, and IWA. There was just no way we could win that fight. Not at that time anyway.60

Others believed there should have been a major pushback and that it was a tactical mistake to focus everything on George Gee’s reinstatement to the IBEW. As events transpired, there did indeed appear to be a focus on George Gee throughout 1955 to the exclusion of the other suspended electrical workers in the 21 Club. According to Terry Simpson, the eldest son of suspended Communist Ed Simpson, one consequence of the singular focus on Gee was that “a number of people who had been the backbone of the union in fact drifted on a sort of current off to one side . . . and left the union wide open to all kinds of in-fighting and back-biting, which occurs when there’s a sudden power vacuum.”61

Amid this union turmoil in Vancouver, 1956 occurred. It was a fateful year for international relations involving the Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe. The Khrushchev revelations in February 1956, outlining the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, became public knowledge by June, followed in November by news of Soviet tanks rolling into Hungary. Remarkably, only a single IBEW commentator interviewed by the author referenced Soviet policies as a reason for their personal outlook on Local 213’s internal affairs: this was Jack Ross. All the same, these faraway international events must surely have had an effect on the willingness of ordinary Vancouver Communists, including Communist electrical workers, to stay the course and “fight the good fight.” Outside commentators like Grace Tickson, a long-time party stalwart from Vancouver Island, thought the events of 1956 “provided an excuse” for those already unhappy with the party’s fortunes in British Columbia and in Canada. “Some of them wanted to leave and they had an excuse,” she said. “They were wanting to go anyhow ’cause things weren’t going right.”62 So for some like Ed Simpson, who left the party, drifting away “on a sort of current off to one side,” global events involving the Soviet Union undoubtedly provided an essential reason to distance themselves from the Communist Party and Local 213’s internal trade union politics.63

In Vancouver, as elsewhere in the country, the party was becoming yet more fragmented, though this generally accepted assessment should not preclude the possibility that a few of the fragments might grow in size again. Nor should it be discounted that British Columbia might have been an outlier in Canada, having a significant percentage of Communist Party members who paid less serious attention than those elsewhere to these distant discordant calamities.64 The party’s Provincial Committee went one step further and made a decision not to distribute some of the damning evidence. An order went out to discreetly light a fire in an oil drum so as to destroy “the contentious [Canadian] Tribune supplement” reporting the official Khrushchev revelations.65 Though there were searing arguments back and forth among the leadership cadre, as Jack Scott, a member of the Labor-Progressive Party (as the Communist Party was known at the time), recalled, “Out here, it didn’t hit that hard.” Historian Karen Levine has since pointed out that “not one member left the Saskatchewan party in this period” and that out on the far west coast “similar loyalty was evident in British Columbia.”66

It is worth noting in this regard that in France and in Italy the massive electoral popularity of their respective Communist parties was hardly affected by the events of 1956. If, however, two hundred thousand Italian Communists “simply dropped affiliation with their Moscow-aligned political organization” and, a year later in Canada, almost “half of the National Executive Committee resigned from the Party,” in British Columbia, as in Saskatchewan and parts of western Europe, these tragic events seem, somewhat perplexingly, to have had less impact.67 Concurrent with all these unsettling national and international developments, Local 213 would have to find the human resources to revitalize itself, to find other ways to recommit to protecting and furthering the interests of Vancouver-based electrical workers.