Conclusion
The story of Les McDonald’s early life in Canada, intrinsically meshed as it is with the evolution of IBEW Local 213 and the Lenkurt Electric strike, could be considered both an inspiring and a cautionary tale. It is an inspiring tale in that Les McDonald’s career as a mover and shaker among Vancouver electrical workers can be compared to a briefly glimpsed meteor streaking across the larger labour firmament in British Columbia. McDonald came to Vancouver in the mid-1950s with virtually nothing. He became an accomplished athlete, worked hard at becoming an effective labour activist through Local 213 of the IBEW, and motivated those around him to work toward a common goal so that ordinary working people could get a better deal in life. That he championed labour’s cause through the Communist Party for a decade was uncommon but not that unusual in British Columbia’s trade union movement of the time, though the party’s galvanizing effect was much less pronounced than in earlier decades. That he left behind enough evidence to allow historians to view some of the intricate interplay between himself, his local union, the Communist Party, and employers is not that unique either, though it certainly is in the building trades.1 McDonald had a number of notable contributions: first, his high risk and evidently rookie attempt in 1960 at improving conditions in Castlegar; second, the factual and argumentative focus he gave Local 213’s negotiators in reducing the work week for the inside wiremen in 1964; third, his participation in, and photographic record-keeping of, the successful Squamish wobble in 1965; fourth, the relentless democratic and politically progressive pressure he and Bill Stewart were able to exert by co-ordinating the efforts of the left faction behind the scenes and from the floor of Local 213’s union meetings; and fifth, his combative and contributory role in trying to stave off defeat during the 1966 Lenkurt Electric strike. It all adds up to a laudable résumé for a decidedly imperfect, initially penniless, British immigrant to Canada. The cautionary aspect of his personal tale is that it was perilous to be a union activist while at the same time belonging to the Communist Party. Fellow workers, while viscerally supportive of a variety of strategies for better wages and working conditions, were also leery in the post–World War II anti-Soviet era of any tactics proposed by Communists. Convincing workers of any, and all, political stripes to follow the lead of party activists was seldom easy or straightforward, even when the McCarthy period had supposedly come to an end by the 1960s.
What facilitated matters for the growing and increasingly influential left faction were the several strikes and/or lockout defensive strategies in which the appointed anti-Communist executive board engaged during the latter part of the 1950s. The members of the politically tainted executive board wanted to be successful when biennial elections were once again permitted by the IBEW’s International Office in June and July of 1958; in the meantime, the appointees were out to prove themselves to a skeptical rank-and-file.2 While not attractive or spectacular in any special or innovative way—the one exception might have been the St. Eloi incident—the subsequent strike and lockout scenarios played right into the hands of the left.3 Suitably combative language and strike precedents were henceforth set by the local’s right-wing leaders, and space had unwittingly been created for other kinds of jobsite militancy and work stoppages. Neither should it be overlooked that when elections were once again permitted, initially conservative business managers like Art O’Keeffe might not have been unsympathetic to mid-contract illegal walkouts. He did not have the time to be involved in constant legal disputations with employers, nor was he inclined to play the role of a trade union counterpart to that of popular television lawyer, the fictional Perry Mason. O’Keeffe could clearly use the occasional wobble to promote both his own leadership qualities with the electrical workers and to police to immediate effect Local 213’s collective agreements. Forcing chiselling and recalcitrant employers to do the right thing and to comply with the spirit and specific, agreed-upon written requirements previously agreed upon contractually, was much easier if immediate job action took place. That a brief wobble might even be quietly promoted by one of his very own assistant business managers, Tom Constable, to get the attention of management at Lenkurt Electric, speaks volumes about its acceptability in certain cases as a tactical ploy.
Even though mid-contract walkouts were expressly forbidden by provincial labour law and in the IBEW constitution, the bureaucratic red tape and delays involved in proceeding with official grievance procedures could be effectively short-circuited by an organized and motivated group of rank-and-file members in Local 213. For the vanguard-infused left faction, as ever, wobbles could immediately impart a heightened sense of class consciousness on the participating workers. As in Squamish or with the oil workers in 1965, these worksite confrontations might then potentially grow into something more; given fortuitous circumstances combined with elements of foresight and detailed planning, mid-contract walkouts could win not only immediate improvements in wages or working conditions but also focus attention on the importance of political power. On the other hand, as with events at Lenkurt, a wobble might go irredeemably sideways if the balance of forces at play was not carefully weighed before walking out, or if there was not the flexibility and accompanying discipline to retreat and temporarily head back to work.
Whether these impromptu actions were “legal” or not, of course, quickly became the issue for law-and-order business unionists in the IBEW. While everyone in Local 213 conceded that militancy was necessary to set up picket lines and shut down company operations during legal strike situations, the crucial point is that the more conservative elements in the union’s hierarchy were on high alert, looking for potential rebels and revolutionaries they suspected might be lurking in the midst of these—and any other type—of class conflict scenarios with employers. Indeed, although Joseph McCarthy had lost all political influence south of the border by the time Bill Stewart and Les McDonald appeared on the scene, the periodic collusion between employers and top IBEW officials was visible to all interested observers. Corporate interests might have been forced by law to recognize and negotiate with unions, but they did so reluctantly and only if the latter were able to control its rebellious and revolutionary elements. The fundamentals of class relations, it seemed, had not really changed all that much.
Within Local 213’s sphere of influence, the dynamic of constant internal strife among members of the leadership group was dangerous to critics, Communist or not; woe betide anyone who might publicly vilify the wrong person on the executive board! But the history of personal enmity within this leadership group also presented opportunities for the left faction. Art O’Keeffe was living proof that intelligent activism, combined with the dynamic of bold and impressive personalities, could successfully create wedges and bridgeheads, such that it eventually produced mutual understanding and sometimes outright co-operation from a former opponent. Without doubt people can change—and be changed—to become more progressive in outlook, and leadership is seldom a stagnant, straightforward proposition. However, the reverse, that trade union leaders go the other way and in time become more conservative, is the usual scenario. Being forced by necessity to try and develop stable relationships with aggressive, profit-motivated employers, while at the same time arriving at fundamental understandings with a business union hierarchy, tends to produce a pliant, equally conservative leadership at the local level. This far more common process might best be illustrated by Cliff Rundgren’s enduring career as business manager in the decades following the tumultuous events in Burnaby.
In retrospect, Les McDonald and the Lenkurt activists had very little chance of success during the strike episode itself. The presence of a police mole—or several moles—within the electrical workers’ union who reported to the RCMP’s intelligence branch meant that Les McDonald’s every move and utterance at the union hall on Dunsmuir Street was known almost immediately by RCMP commanding officers in British Columbia.4 The ensuing near-certainty of the interaction and co-ordination between these police commanders with BC Attorney General Robert Bonner and possibly also Lenkurt president, Chuck Hunter, would help explain the unusually large and intimidating police presence on the picket lines in Burnaby. The result was that uniformed and undercover plainclothes police officers were there en masse during the most acute days of the physical confrontations that took place on May 11 and 12, 1966. Unnerving to middle-of-the-road trade union officials in the BCFL, the sight of uniformed policemen assisting scabs across violent picket lines—with the additional provocations of undercover agents—explains in large part the sudden retreat of the labour movement from the increasingly intense encounters taking place on the ground. From this perspective, and right from the start of the Lenkurt quandary, the possibility of Les McDonald pulling off a “win” in this troubling strike scenario was thus highly unlikely. Some PWM supporters argued that stacking the picket lines with yet more labour supporters should have been the preferred option, though the possibility of continuing and selective arrests, along with union-crippling fines, would have been a predictable and damaging worse-case scenario for all concerned. Or would the Social Credit government of the day and Chuck Hunter have backed down? The recent victory a year earlier in the oil workers’ dispute cannot be ignored when considering denser picket lines from this angle. The only possible answer is a loud and resounding “maybe.” In hindsight, somehow coming up with a cautious and face-saving retreat right at the beginning of the walkout, while quietly planning and co-ordinating more effective tactics, might undoubtedly have been preferred. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, these are ideas to be chewed over with labour strategists, keeping in mind that none of these hypothetical scenarios is of course what actually happened.
Deeply disturbing, though not altogether surprising, the resources and financial costs expended to watch, listen, and inform on Communists and other left-wingers within the labour movement must have been—continues to be (?)—enormous.5 It also reveals much about the Canadian state’s close monitoring of labour activists and their subsequent strategic manoeuvrings, either politically or on the jobsite. Though the Communist Party was perfectly legal in Canada, Les McDonald and his supporters in Local 213’s left faction were evidently considered and designated carriers and disseminators of “Dangerous New Ideas”—though they were hardly either—to be monitored and countered whenever possible.6 The labour movement in general, and its left-wingers in particular, were forced to act within a predictable and limited range of behaviour. Going beyond established boundaries could result in swift and foreseeable punishment. Within the IBEW itself, the Soviet-associated Marxist class struggle was to be derided, brushed aside, and replaced with the more easily understood cash struggle. Militant tactics might indeed need to be deployed, but more was simply better. Getting to “the good life,” repeatedly propounded during a 1968 provincial election campaign by long-standing BC premier, W. A. C. Bennett, was surely just around the corner.7 If this basic and simplistic outlook was not well and truly absorbed, the courts and legal system might need to be invoked, in addition to internal trade union disciplinary measures.
The latter could often appear to be as equally as severe as the former. Ed Finn, a Newfoundlander and top official of the CLC in the 1960s, was a keen observer of the political machinations within the top echelons of organized labour. He commented several years later that the leadership’s “conservatism is appalling,” yet the reformist goals of the labour movement were admirable, “and its function of redistributing the nation’s wealth indispensable.” Caught up in a gigantic and continually evolving scenario of seemingly inevitable class antagonisms—outwardly apparent during strike and lockout episodes, often less visible between contracts—unions in Canada in either case behaved “like a nation at war; they expected blind obedience within their ranks to their policies and decisions.” Concluding with a compelling medieval imagery, Finn declared: “Its sentries patrol the ramparts of Fortress Labor, ready to repel invaders armed with Dangerous New Ideas. Inside, its ‘Holy Office’ keeps a vigilant eye on suspected heretics, ready to send them to Coventry if they deviate too far from official dogma.”8
Looking forward from the defeat at Lenkurt, it is evident that this short but violent episode in BC labour history was part of a serious pushback by organized labour against employer-initiated ex parte injunctions. Minor as it might have been considered in the big picture, the Lenkurt strike was an important event in the struggle by the BCFL against the systematic abuse by employers of this judicial weapon during labour disputes. Probably the best-known of union opposition in the province against these injunctions came from the Fishermen’s union. Editor George North was cited for contempt of court and jailed for three months in 1959 for having written an editorial in his union newspaper, The Fisherman.9 Then, the year after Lenkurt, Homer Stevens (secretary-treasurer) and Steve Stavenes (president) of the UFAWU, spent an entire year in jail for defying a BC Supreme Court injunction in the Prince Rupert Fishermen’s Co-op strike of 1967.10 Their fate prompted a declaration by Roy Smith of the ILWU that “injunctions are used more extensively in B.C. than anywhere else in the world, and . . . the sentences now imposed constitute a new record for the Commonwealth.” Echoing the words of CLC president Claude Jodoin in 1966, he called for a Canada-wide battle against court-issued injunctions outlawing the right to strike and being able to picket an employer’s premises.11 Simply put, ex parte injunctions in labour disputes would have to be challenged to be withdrawn as a weapon used by employers and to be exposed for what they represented: a distinct trend toward the recriminalization of the hard-won right to picket. Ben Isitt framed the ensuing issue arising out of the Lenkurt dispute, along with other union battles at the time, as a “crisis of legal legitimacy.” Contrary to the IBEW’s articulated approval of existing labour laws, no matter how unjust they appeared to be, several industrial unions in British Columbia explicitly disagreed with the conservative leadership of the electrical workers; these left-leaning unions very quickly anchored themselves to the “widespread belief that it was ethically sound to defy the court’s authority.”12 Isitt goes on to give examples of how, in “a tangible way, the judiciary intervened to legally delineate the spaces around workplaces as employers’ property—demonstrating the contestation of space in relation to protest.”13 He might have simplified his arguments by frankly stating that barring memorable labour struggles, lengthy legal battles, and accompanying noteworthy political exceptions, “they who have the gold make the rules.” As stated earlier, the first NDP government of 1972–1975 broke the cycle of employer-initiated ex parte injunctions on picketing in the province, though contemporary events make it appear it might only have been a temporary reprieve.
More importantly, the events at Lenkurt beg the question as to whether or not ex parte injunctions were, in fact, successful in intimidating unions and their workers, to the point that the latter would return to the jobsite and be as productive as before the dispute. In the case of the Lenkurt Electric Company, the defeat of the strikers meant that production of electronic equipment could continue as before according to company requirements, but henceforth with a much more compliant workforce. The Fisherman’s George North was perhaps too optimistic. Despite occasional violence and the necessary imprisonment of union leaders and their hard-core militant supporters, employers became reliant on ex parte injunctions precisely because they worked. As Les McDonald aptly declared during a public panel discussion in Vancouver in October 1966, “Injunctions are being used to clobber the labor movement. It used to be the police, armed forces, goons or scabs, now it’s injunctions.”14 It took an exceptionally spirited campaign from left-wing sections of organized labour and its legal and political allies, to put a stop “to the system of free-wheeling injunctions.”15
Yet even though the BCFL had quickly pivoted to focus on the evils of ex parte injunctions and the way this legal weapon was systematically abused by employers in labour disputes, the Lenkurt strike and its aftermath was just as much about settling old scores. Conservative forces in the IBEW were determined not to let Communist electrical workers and their supporters gain a foothold once again within Local 213. They were also not going to allow business manager Art O’Keeffe to be increasingly on the same side as Party activists during internal trade union debates. Most importantly, they did not want someone like O’Keeffe to allow criticism of Jack Ross, the IBEW’s veteran International representative in Vancouver, to erupt from the floor of general meetings or for him to be embarrassed in such visible and public forums as the BC Supreme Court. The walkout at Lenkurt provided the union hierarchy with an unexpected opportunity to eradicate much of the work done by Bill Stewart, Les McDonald, and the comrades in rebuilding the left faction among the electrical workers. When this political lens is applied to the internal crisis that gripped the electrical workers’ local in the mid-1960s, it becomes evident that the shop-floor struggle by the Lenkurt women to win wage parity with their male counterparts, to stop the imposition of arbitrary overtime, and be treated as equals within the IBEW, quickly became a catalyst that triggered a series of events that were much larger in scope. On one side of the proverbial coin, Lenkurt provided a fortuitous reason for the subsequent intervention of the IBEW’s International Office; on the other, once the strike was defeated and punishments meted out, it provided the launching pad for the rebirth of efforts to build an independent and democratic Canadian trade union movement. This mostly involved younger workers who were fed up with the controlling and often class-collaborationist values of the old guard ensconced in the upper echelons of the IBEW; at the same time, they were not prepared to toe the line of the Communist Party of Canada on the trade union question. The nascent grouping within the leadership of the CEWU contained political elements of Trotskyism, Maoism, and trade union labourites with strong Canadian nationalist leanings. It could reasonably be argued that a left-nationalist formation from within organized labour had emerged from the ranks of the electrical workers. It was not the “New Left,” in the sense that the sectarianism so visibly on display in different student groupings of the time often led to bitter in-fighting, isolation, and their eventual collapse.16 The hard-working and tenacious Jess Succamore made sure that the political views of this nascent leadership group were either completely abandoned or tightly reigned in. Despite the schismatic accusations of the Communist Party at its founding, the prime focus of the CEWU—and later on CAIMAW and the CCU—was complete and total independence from American-controlled “international” unions. For this group at least it was no longer acceptable to be submissive, to be either a distant offshoot of the fast-fading British identity, or to take lying down George Grant’s memorable 1965 lament that “the Canadian ruling class looks across the border for its final authority in both politics and culture.”17 Meanwhile, while not entirely forsaken, the fate of the Lenkurt shop-floor women workers very quickly faded from view. A sad indictment of everyone involved, it would foreshadow a similar dispute a year later in Peterborough, Ontario. As in Burnaby, the epilogue of the Tilco battle against ex parte injunctions was such that “the strike went from being a just struggle of women against their employer to a heroic war of men sent to jail for their principles.”18
Historically important even if it was only to last three years as a separate entity before joining CAIMAW, the founding of the CEWU on November 6, 1966, was symbolically preceded by a notable trilogy of baptismal violence that heralded its uneasy birth: serious physical confrontations with police on the picket lines, an old-fashion punch-up in the executive board meeting room at the union hall, and the jailing for several months each of four of the leading trade unionists in the BC labour movement. The CEWU preceded the foundation of FIPOE in Québec by only a handful of years, and these several episodes of physical confrontations meant that the CEWU was born tough, its nationalist and democratic argumentation proving to be resilient and longer-lasting than even its most vocal critics might have expected. Their similar beginnings underscore the often-unfortunate requirement of physical violence continuing into this time period as an apparently necessary handmaiden of fundamental political and social change in the trade union movement.19 Physical confrontations, it seemed, were required to escape from the clutches of the IBEW elsewhere in Canada, too. Opening a brief hypothetical parenthesis, even if events in Vancouver and Montréal had somehow wondrously been synchronized to happen at precisely the same time, profound differences in language and culture would have been compounded by the country’s vast geography. In the era before the internet it meant that the tiny manufacturing-oriented CEWU would probably have been unable to successfully link up with the larger breakaway and dominant French-speaking electricians, linemen, and cable workers who left the IBEW to join the FIPOE. It is highly improbable, in any case, that Louis Laberge would have contemplated for more than an instant supporting the departure of the construction unions in the Quebec Federation of Labour from American-dominated outfits, only to turn around and join forces with “les maudits anglais,” the traditional exploiters of the French-Canadian working class. Not that a potential compact ever crossed their minds—it did not—but in this regard it would have been equally impossible for George Brown, Jess Succamore, or their allies to overlook the disquieting profiles of several of the new construction unions in Québec, including an unproven FIPOE. As with the early years of New York Local 3’s existence, it is disturbing to note how easily trade union politics can descend into a bottomless pit of corruption and a violence-tinged culture.20
Given the critical body blows delivered to Local 213 via the crucible of the Lenkurt strike, informed observers might also have legitimately paraphrased Abraham Lincoln: how could a union so divided against itself still stand? On at least three occasions during the first part of the twentieth century, the underlying contradictions endemic to the functioning of the Vancouver electrical workers’ union exploded to the surface for all to see. Was the troubled evolution of Local 213 merely an accident of history? Something completely out of the ordinary as compared to the vast majority of locals in the IBEW? While the reply to these last two questions is probably a qualified “yes,” much more comparative research is required before clear and incontrovertible answers can be proposed. As could only be expected, Jess Succamore, lead figure in the founding of the Canadian Electrical Workers’ Union, would have immediately advanced a preliminary and necessary step as a way out of these problems: the complete abandonment of the IBEW by rank-and-file Canadian electrical workers, and to replace the American-focused union with the thoroughly democratic and Canada-only CEWU.21 Succamore and his companions took this decisive breakaway decision in the electrical manufacturing sector despite serious disagreements from within the ranks of Local 213 itself; influential critics like Jack Cody were quick to point out the predictable negative outcomes of trade union nationalism being applied as a solution to the ills of IBEW business unionism. As already pointed out, Cody’s argumentation was not just a lonely voice crying in the wilderness. The BC labour movement’s still-influential Communist Party persuaded lead activists like Les McDonald to backtrack from their original pronouncements, which meant that a nationalist membership movement out of international unions—and yet another potential crisis—was avoided in British Columbia’s construction sector.
As with the hostility and hatred that family disputes can generate and leave in their wake, it makes healing painstakingly difficult. Those in charge must pay special attention to the fires that fuelled these conflicts in the first place, as they continue to smoulder away invisibly underground, waiting to be reignited by fresh doses of oxygen. In this regard, the IBEW did little to resolve the repeated internal crises that erupted in its troubled Vancouver local amicably, preferring instead to intervene in heavy-handed ways to crush the dissenters. Following the unilateral replacement of a defiant business manager, then multiple internal trials and suspensions, the preferred solution the year after Lenkurt was to split up Local 213 into more manageable parts, isolating from each other the inside wiremen, hydro and contract linemen, and the agitated manufacturing unit. The International Office could now focus on each of these groups separately, rather than having to deal with a seemingly inevitable alliance of opponents, melded together at monthly general meetings via the left faction, or any other oppositional aspect of the militant minority. In this, the IBEW might have finally been at least somewhat successful: alongside the elimination of general meetings and the parallel collapse of the Communist Party, there appears—outwardly at least—to have been a marked decrease these past few decades in the traditional internal tensions that have historically characterized the union and Vancouver electrical workers. Forced upon him or not, Cliff Rundgren’s successful manipulation of the dispatching office to suppress the use of the wobble as a left faction guerrilla tactic has also seemingly been remarkably effective; there are no longer multiple newspaper-worthy mid-contract walkouts featuring Local 213 on union construction sites in British Columbia.
In one of his last interviews, Jess Succamore ruminated on the impact of the Lenkurt Electric strike. If nothing else, it was a classic example of how a breakdown in the collective bargaining process can subsequently shape the political life of its participants.22 Succamore is emphatic in arguing that in the post–World War II era the unanticipated walkout, with all of its encompassing conflicts, trials, tribulations, and outcomes, “might have been one of the most important events in BC labour history.”23 Not to quibble too much with his assessment, but the 1948 split in the British Columbia IWA, precipitated by its Communist leadership, and Operation Solidarity in 1983 might vie for the title of “most important.” However, during the turbulent decade of the 1960s, Lenkurt truly was important, even if abandoned Mine-Mill supporters in Trail in 1967, or jailed UFAWU representatives George North, Steve Stavenes, and Homer Stevens, might understandably disagree. But for Succamore himself, Lenkurt certainly was significant as the moment that initiated his consequent peregrination through a new form of trade union movement that he joined, then helped personally to influence and guide. His comment is also well worth considering in the context of the larger picture of the evolution of labour representation and class conflict in British Columbia.
The most problematic issue arising out of a synopsis of Les McDonald’s activist career as an electrical worker is assessing the role of the Communist Party within Local 213. Creating a vanguard of the working class to lead the electrical workers was never going to be a simple task as an unholy trinity of employers, the state, and conservative union officials would work, seemingly hand-in-hand, to oppose even the hint of a Communist agenda at play. But in case the evidence is not yet clear enough, at one level—a visible level—the Communist Party’s impact within the local union in the 1950s and 1960s was not as a “revolutionary vanguard of the working class.” Over the decades the party in Canada had drifted away from the revolutionary aspect of its program and, within the trade union bureaucracy at least, had become a “reformist vanguard” of the working class. Norman Penner, in his valuable insights into the internal dynamic of the party, has even argued that Communist trade unionists who won elected positions in unions across the country “were accorded those offices not as revolutionaries but for their excellence in trade union functions, which are, by their very nature in capitalist society, reformist.”24 Harvey Murphy, the western representative of the Mine-Mill union, and Local 213’s very own George Gee offer classic examples of fine Communist trade union leaders with democratic mindsets who won good collective agreements. Like most Communist second-tier leaders, they undoubtedly discussed exploring alternative options and viewed their stellar trade union work as part of a larger effort to establish a socialist society. Murphy, who arguably elevated his struggles and prominence to untouchable status in the Communist Party—he was once described as “lord over all he surveys”—also visibly tried to do things differently from the security of Trail, his West Kootenay industrial citadel straddling the Columbia River.25 Boldly venturing out, his successful staging of the four famous and successive Paul Robeson Peace Arch concerts starting in 1952 is a prime example, as was his union’s well-publicized showing of blacklisted Salt of the Earth at the Castle Theatre in nearby Castlegar. But Communist trade union leaders were limited by the very real constraints of 1950s Canada, McCarthyism, the Cold War, and the restrictive bonds of trade unionism itself. On the surface, what largely differentiated Communist trade union officials from those with other left-leaning political affiliations was their commitment to rank-and-file democracy and an unswerving loyalty to the Soviet Union. With all the noise in the discussions within Mine-Mill and Local 213 about workplace grievances and trade union politics, this unquestioned loyalty to the Soviet Union often quickly receded to the background. Yet it is clear that the democratic and reformist measures championed by the Communist Party were important to the electrical workers and cannot be ignored. Activists within the Communist Party were certainly and measurably present within Local 213: as already described, they worked tirelessly to bring democracy and membership control back to the local union after the George Gee expulsion and subsequent suspensions and trusteeship; and Party members did play important roles in numerous conflicts, both external and internal, that afflicted the Vancouver electrical workers’ union. The influence in this respect of the generation of Communist electrical workers whose outlook had been forged in the Great Depression and World War II—or at least its remnants—Bill Stewart, Sid Sheard, Bill Gee, Jack Gillett, and others, cannot be ignored. While the majority for the most part was still suspended due to the 1955 George Gee debacle and thus unable to attend union meetings, they were nevertheless dispatched to various job sites by Local 213 to earn a living. It is not too far of a stretch to imagine their influence during lunchtime conversations initiated with their fellow workers on the inequities of capitalist society and the sometimes-duplicitous role of the IBEW within it. The left faction was arguably even on the verge of winning back some measure of direct executive board influence when the unanticipated Lenkurt Electric strike broke out. This pivotal event dashed any possibility of the party—through Les McDonald—having key individuals elected on the proposed “unity” slate in 1966; though, even if the entire slate had been elected, the eventual long-term impact on the life of the local would undoubtedly make for a lively series of discussions.
As another aside and for argument’s sake, these discussions might have included the very plausible scenario that the defeated conservative group would now have been on the outside looking in, and would have simply demanded more from an oppositional point of view: traditionally, from them, it was limited to amicable relations with employers whenever possible, better contracts, internal financial accountability, and political neutrality. Eventually there might have been an electoral alternation of groups, the “left” sometimes in, then sometimes out; Local 213 would in some years wear a red trade union tuque, in other years a blue trade union tuque. As Art O’Keeffe—followed by Jim Kinnaird, and even Cliff Rundgren—were to exemplify throughout their tenures as business managers, despite their valiant efforts to garner more autonomy for Canadian IBEW locals, it arguably wouldn’t have changed much of anything at all as Local 213 would still be wearing its traditional trade union tuque. The structural root of the problem was that being a cog in the wheel of an American-based international business union had historically been their entire “raison d’être.” Was there the potential for something different? For something more than a pure and simple business union engaged in repeated acts of militancy as required? Yes, definitely. This, of course, is an enormous theoretical and political minefield of hotly contested terrain. Henri Gagnon, the Québécois electrical worker and (intermittent) Communist, had once written a warning about expecting too much from left-controlled unions. In an echo of similar critiques, he remarked:
In some cases, our work will be limited to winning certain strategic posts to then reign by decree on specific branches of working-class movements. In other cases, the discussion of problems and the taking of decisions will limit themselves to the office and to the executive of the union, then be transmitted by decree to the industrial groups. Put another way, if there is no concerted struggle against economism, it means a slide towards bureaucratic trade unionism.26
Suffice it to say that the left faction attempted at times during informal discussions to untangle this Gordian knot of competing ideas. Looking back, at the very least its activists were searching for ways to reconnect electrical workers with the symbiotic relationship of the early trade union movement and socialism. They would have completely rejected the controlling labour aristocracy entrenched in the IBEW’s International Office, an orthodox and seemingly unchanging group, almost impossible to be recalled by the membership. Instead, they would have searched for ways to move toward a less hierarchical trade union movement, one oriented much more toward class solidarity and real, substantive rank-and-file democracy, in an effort to enhance the lives of all working people. They were visibly trying to think their way out of the restrictive framework of collective bargaining only. Looking forward, and despite being a card-carrying Communist, Les McDonald would have been sympathetic toward a left-syndicalist approach, whereby trade unions participate directly in the management of state-owned companies involved in construction. Though he refrained from publicly articulating these strongly held views later on in life, he most likely would not have disagreed with Harry Bridges, the well-known and outspoken leader of the west coast longshoremen in both Canada and the United States. As president of the ILWU, an international union with a distinctly different form and outlook—as with several Communist-influenced unions, his salary was no more than that of the highest-paid worker in the industry—and while giving a speech during the late 1930s at the University of Washington, Bridges had once memorably argued:
We take the stand that we as workers have nothing in common with the employers. We are in a class struggle, and we subscribe to the belief that if the employer is not in business his products will still be necessary and we still will be providing them when there is no employing class. We frankly believe that day is coming.27
As critics have pointed out about the former Soviet bloc of countries, if a socialist society in Canada were to appear magically in place overnight, might a trade union such as Local 213 have risked being transformed into a mere conveyor belt for Communist Party directives, a sort of red company union as in the former USSR? If so, Les would have fought long and hard against any such notion. Provoked, he would have been more than capable of quoting Lenin himself, who wrote in 1919:
We must ever more broaden the participation of the workers themselves in the direction of the economy . . . if we fail to convert the trade unions into organs educating the masses, on a scale ten times larger than at present, for the immediate participation in the direction of the state, then we shall not achieve our objective in building communism.28
At the same time, the indefatigable McDonald would have reminded his audience that regardless of the nature of the boss and type of society in which we live, workers will forever have to wake up early during dark and chilly winter mornings, get to the jobsite on time, and be productive come what may. Dreaming for a moment of what might be, whom workers toil away for—and why—would obviously be key motivating factors in a utopian worker-guided society.
In this context, it would have been fascinating to listen in one evening on a hypothetical discussion in the early 1970s between Harry Van Arsdale Jr. and Les McDonald. Neither one of them lived within the context of a society on the verge of revolutionary upheaval, though the Great Depression of the 1930s they both experienced at different stages in their lives arguably held some potential for cataclysmic change. Afterwards, as the economy soared with the spending stimulus initially provided by World War II, could Van Arsdale Jr. not honestly have asked if his piloting of Local 3’s undeniable success was not the limit of what was possible? That in North America in a post–McCarthyist era, where the traditional left had effectively been neutralized, were they not heading ineluctably toward an ideological trap of sorts, soon to be touted as a TINA environment—There Is No Alternative? Why go down the communist path, when internationally the only living examples meant the oppression of the Soviet Union or Mao’s China? Moreover, at home, such an outlook led only to defeat, misery, and a foreseeable dead end. Les McDonald’s reply might have taken some time, starting perhaps with the retort that the supposed “dead end” of an activist left-wing approach to trade union politics in North America was in no small part due to a reactionary trade union leadership that, as in the IBEW, was mostly unable, or unwilling—outside of New York’s exceptional Local 3—to permit the exploration of anything off the beaten path.29 There had to be more to life than higher wages and the philosophy of accumulating “more”; that’s why he’d willingly been part of a vanguard that he believed existed to push the limits of the possible. Allied to intelligent, passionate struggle, the impossible was not unachievable; with the right leadership and organizational structures, nothing in life was irreversible or inevitable.
Les might have conceded the point on the USSR and China, though he could then have fallen back on the classic defence of former Communists, in that the path to Western socialism did not have to mean Marx–Lenin–Stalin/Mao. He could also have cited the fastest growing Gross Domestic Product in the world over several decades in those two countries during the twentieth century, astonishingly raising in record time the standard of living of hundreds of millions of generations of previously poverty-stricken, illiterate peasants. As well, North American wealth had not been attained without first removing by disease, starvation, or bullets, millions of Indigenous people who stood in the way of a systematic industrial assault upon the continent’s resources. Nor could the massive exploitation of millions of enslaved Black people in mostly southern states, or of the ground-down immigrant women, children, and working-class families that followed, be ignored in the loudly trumpeted “success story” of North American capitalism. His main point, however, would have been about who took the lead on the job or at union meetings whenever there was an issue at work; as far as his personal experience told him, it was mostly the party guys. As with the generation before him, you couldn’t trust anyone else to speak up and actually do something, especially champions of social democratic and parliamentary gradualism, the so-called “liberals in a hurry.”30 And, frankly, as far as he was concerned, that made all the difference! In addition, under capitalism, there were constant eruptions of working-class revolts and experiments in trying to do things differently. He might have cited working-class surges across Canada and the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and elsewhere around the world, such as the massive strikes in Italy, particularly at car-maker FIAT in Turin; a worker-led takeover of the Lip watch-manufacturing factory in Besançon, France; the nine months “work-in” by Clyde-side shipbuilders in Glasgow led by Jimmy Reid that attempted to do the same; or perhaps even an example of working-class diligence and stability, the long-term and still-existing giant Mondragon manufacturing co-op in Spain’s Basque region (today it has over 74,000 worker-owners). Les might then have pointed at the Joint Industrial Board in New York City or the Council on Industrial Relations in Washington as examples of existing structures, already in place, that could potentially be transformed; with local union and democratic rank-and-file participation, the society of the future could be built within the ashes of the old.
Needless to say, the conversation, morphing undoubtedly at one point into a monopolizing discourse from Les about what might accrue with a differently organized workplace—his close friends would knowingly smile at this point—would have continued long into the night. Though one was devoutly Roman Catholic in his outlook on the world and the other now an independent-minded socialist, they might have been able—just maybe—to come to some kind of mutual consensus, particularly as they had similarly been champions of the shorter workday and the necessity to harness technology for the benefit of workers. As Van Arsdale Jr. once shrewdly observed: “A labor union must go forward or it will slip backward—there’s no middle ground.”31 He added yet another motherhood and apple pie-type statement they both could have instantly agreed upon: “The electricians bring light to the world. Why shouldn’t we lead the way?”32 Aside from an overarching McDonald-imposed question of who, indeed, owns and controls the means of production in any given country, and everything that derives from this fundamental issue, they were perhaps not all that far apart. Author Gene Ruffini describes well why Van Arsdale Jr.’s view of the world and personality may have eventually meshed with Les McDonald’s: “Van Arsdale’s sense and practice of fraternity, his self-sacrifice, and his communal philosophies were in the best traditions of worker societies and guilds since their inception.”33 Elsewhere, Ruffini quotes another Van Arsdale quote that resonates: “He had great social vision which sometimes you didn’t quite realize until you knew him because he was a rough and ready fellow in many ways.”34
Not as fraught with controversy and in keeping with his athletic passions, Les McDonald would definitely have been keen to implement a portion of the Soviet model and of left-led labour organizations around the world, wherein cultural practices such as sport and leisure activities are part and parcel of the existential outreach to union members and their families. Sport and leisure quite obviously promote health and fitness and a better quality of life for masses of people. More applicable to his way of thinking, they also help mould a working-class culture and identity, which is part of the process of changing the very soul of a business union model like the IBEW. His wife, Monique, once remarked in this regard that “my husband always tended to be more active as a sportsman than as a Communist.”35 Les McDonald was never confronted with the reality of having to make decisions regarding these issues—surely not his only choices—so we will never know what political and cultural options he would have settled on. As with a few outspoken BC trade union activists in the Communist Party at the time, he believed that being part of something bigger than himself with a history of perceived successes around the world, gave him, in Homer Stevens’s words, “a longer-term perspective on the changing nature of the struggle against capitalism and what I hoped and expected would ultimately be the transition to socialism.”36
Back in the real world, if breaking away from the IBEW was not in the cards for Communist electrical workers and their allies in 1966, then affecting some sense of progressive change on even a part of the leadership structure in the International Office was unquestionably part of the desired end-goal for these left faction activists. But other than working in sometime innovative fashion during local class conflict scenarios and advocating for change at conventions, making even the slightest inroad into this deeply rooted, conservative, and American-based hierarchy was at best a task of herculean proportions. Being geographically and politically isolated on the Canadian west coast certainly didn’t help matters. The Lenkurt strike then precipitated a serious schism in the oppositional left within Local 213. A small nationalist and necessarily secessionist union was created, the Canadian Electrical Workers’ Union, which took with it other emerging political activists from the IBEW. That the Communist Party opposed the creation of an independent Canadian electrical workers’ union spoke both to its own internationalist perspective and its earlier unsuccessful venture in parting ways with the IWA in 1948. Arguably, however, times were changing: not supporting the creation of the CEWU in 1966 might have been an opportunity lost.37 It also meant there would be a minimum fifteen-year hiatus for the “Red Baron” from being directly involved in Local 213’s politics again. Agreeing to toe the party line on the breakaway CEWU ironically signalled the beginning of the end of Les McDonald’s trade union political career.38 More significantly, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 created yet another crisis within the Communist Party of Canada, one important side-effect being that organized Party influence within Local 213 virtually disappeared from the scene by the early 1970s. Along with its disappearance went an easily identifiable section of the militant minority within the Vancouver electrical local.39 In hindsight it also brought about a seismic break with the political and activist tradition that had long been a hallmark of IBEW Local 213.
Did the Communist Party play a positive role in the history of Local 213 and in the lives of ordinary electrical workers? Despite its steadfast devotion to the Soviet Union and its own top-down style of leadership, given the historical evidence surrounding its activists, the short answer is “yes.” Other BC historians have already written sympathetically on this important question in terms of its role in the province’s unions.40 Again, Les McDonald’s notable contribution in successfully promoting the historic shorter work week in 1964 on behalf of the inside wiremen, is convincing evidence that Communists were interacting with the electrical workers’ union and its rank and file in a positive way. The educational role that Party activists played both at jobsite interactions and at union meetings was also crucial from a historical perspective. Even though they might have been skeptical as to the endgame of the Communist Party of Canada, young electrical workers such as Les McDonald, Jim Kinnaird, George Angus, Jess Succamore, or Tom Constable indubitably benefited from myriad explanations of the labour theory of surplus value, exposés on the inherent predatory behaviour of monopoly capitalism, and analyses linking Canadian foreign policy to the violent military interventions of American imperialism. An important measure of the self-confidence in their heightened intellectual acumen was that several of these activists would later venture out from the familiar confines of their local union, competing successfully for office in other spheres of public and trade union endeavour.41 Jack Ross, the sharp-eyed and veteran observer of Communist tactics amid the electrical workers, once perceptively complained that “there was too much emphasis on politics” within Local 213.42 He was almost certainly right. At another very important level, one that is barely visible level for most historians as there is normally very little documentation, rank-and-file workers also benefited from learning how to stage effective workplace resistance in opposition to avaricious employers from Communist veterans like Sid Sheard, Bob Towle, Jack Gillett, or even a young and audacious Les McDonald himself.43 But it was not the all-out embodiment of a vanguard-led revolutionary program. It couldn’t be in the first place as the Communist Party’s program did not call for a revolutionary plan of action.44 In the second place, though in a growth period within IBEW Local 213 and increasingly impactful, the vanguard itself was still too small and couldn’t yet influence enough electrical workers to embrace more effective strategies. Instead, these were limited class struggle retaliatory manoeuvres, akin to tactical skirmishes.
That the Communist Party was intrinsically involved in leading a tactically innovative and successful workplace wobble in Squamish, a very minor dress-rehearsal of sorts for what Party members probably envisioned as good practice for larger scale vanguard-led scenarios, is instructive—even useful—when compared to the spontaneous start to the Lenkurt Electric strike. In the Burnaby scenario there was no Communist Party involvement in planning or directing effective job action “at the point-of-production.” This lack of effective cohesion among the Lenkurt workers—even though their actions were partly quarterbacked by Shop Steward George Brown, a former Communist Party activist in Britain who, it was to be hoped, was well-schooled in successful workplace tactics—ultimately led to their defeat and the firing of seventy-six of the company’s most militant workers. That a cohesive and disciplined vanguard was not in place to direct effective job action—by patiently staying at work, refusing to work overtime, and slowing down production, as in Brown’s initial plan—arguably cost the Lenkurt strikers any chance of victory. Lacking the discipline and unwilling to go back to work after their parking lot “study session” at the beginning of the strike became crucial in the face of what might have been a deliberately staged crisis by the employer. Brian Bethel’s impressions on listening to Chuck Hunter, president of Lenkurt, at a meeting early in the cycle of workplace confrontation, has probably more merit than first impressions might convey. Bethel might have been correct: the whole of the debacle was deliberately staged by the company for beneficial financial reasons. Getting “sucked in” to staging a walkout the employer wanted in the first place was not going to end well.
A final appraisal of the activism of Communist Party members within Local 213 is that it led to healthy discussions and a heightened sense of class consciousness within the local union. During a rebellious, but non-revolutionary decade, arguably this was the Communist Party’s most important contribution to the culture of Vancouver-based electrical workers. Local 213 was justly renowned for its ability to produce outstanding delegates to various labour bodies and annual conventions. It was certainly not an accident of history. On the contrary, it was one of the logical outcomes of the critical debates that Communists generated within the local union.45 Chris Locke, an integral part of the Rundgren Team and long-time chief administrator of Local 213’s Welfare and Pension Plans (1980–2005) has commented that “the union was quite the training ground.”46 And it wasn’t just at meetings; bold and persuasive figures like Les McDonald could, on occasion, help precipitate forms of jobsite initiatives and direct action tactics that were informed by theory but that, in turn, were shaped by creative practice at the ground level. In this regard, McDonald personified initiative from below and was not just trying to interpret the world around him; when he could, he was also trying to change it.47 There is no question this Marxist dialectic in action proved attractive to a significant minority of Vancouver electrical workers—Local 213’s militant minority—and had an important impact on their political outlook within the local union. That Les McDonald was tentatively searching for an alternative, less hierarchical and less traditional form of trade unionism, is clearly apparent. But the events at Lenkurt derailed everything. As Jim MacFarlan mused years later,
The lessons of Lenkurt, which the general labour movement probably has not learned, is that the strike—for all its militancy—was the antithesis of what Les believed should have been done. Strikes are like armies going into battle. Understand the relative strength of both sides; who are potential allies; what are the objectives, and what is the fallback position. Armies need leaders. The whole regiment can’t be the leader. . . . Ranged against that knowledge was his gut working-class instinct to fight regardless, to defend the defenceless, in this case poorly paid, overworked female workers.48
In his introduction to the autobiography of long-time Canadian Communist, Jack Scott, historian Bryan D. Palmer points to how, on the one hand, the Stalinism of the Canadian party “squandered so much human material” and “subverted the course of revolutionary communism.” On the other hand, Palmer emphasizes that the party played a positive role in that it “provided the formative political experience for so many class-conscious workers who managed to find their way out of the trap that the C.P. had become.”49 This latter description is very much Les McDonald’s story. Put another way, the tragedy that became the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Canada did not necessarily mean that Les McDonald’s trajectory through the party was also completely tragic. He was able to jettison most of his negative experiences yet retain a critical Marxist lens through which to view the world, a perspective he never relinquished.50
Of the several related political lessons to be learned through the medium of this history, perhaps one of the more impactful ones is that despite its many failings, the Communist Party and the handful of activists within it, left behind a model and a legacy that should not be ignored. In the period under consideration, the party consistently embodied a central issue within any analysis of trade union history throughout much of the twentieth century; that is, how best to deal with the complicated and often intractable question of dealing with competing political interests on the left.51 Regardless of what had taken place in earlier decades, Communist-led CIO unions in both the United States and Canada by the late 1930s were often pointed to as models of trade union democracy, especially as compared to their business union rivals. They found common ground when they could with potential left-leaning rivals, and forged unity around new or predictable concerns.52 It is what explains in no small part their remarkable successes and post–World War II longevity in notable unions like UE, Mine-Mill, the ILWU, or the UFAWU, though their every move and utterance was critically dissected by opponents under an analytical microscope. Within the Vancouver electrical workers’ union, Bill Stewart and Les McDonald were visibly working toward this increasingly attainable goal of left-wing unity, such that it might effectively challenge the conservative stranglehold on Local 213’s power structure. Even during the dramatic events of the union meeting May 14, when the stage was taken over by rank-and-file electrical workers, the intervenors from the floor precipitating some of these more sensational moments appear to have included Lenkurt’s chief shop steward, George Brown, as part of the larger wiremen’s left faction. If it was planned beforehand, as it probably was, they were all still on the same page. Yet, one of the unintended results of the defeated strike and its aftermath is that it brought this epoch’s version of the binary oppositional relationship between left and right to a screeching halt. Problematic as it might be, anyone interested in advancing the cause of labour in this troubled day and age needs to pick up the pieces left behind and wrestle with its conflicted contributions.
For a former view from the trenches, from one of the grizzled veterans in IBEW Local 213 throughout much of the epoch covered in this research, Bill Stewart’s perspective on what is required to organize and contribute to labour’s vitality—he might even argue, to safeguard its very existence as a viable entity—is worth noting. On the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, Stewart had sent a letter of thanks and reminiscences to Les McDonald. The latter had written a series of anecdotes for the celebration recounting some of Stewart’s more impactful contributions to the Vancouver electrical workers’ local. Considered a thoughtful rank-and-file strategist whenever he was able to contribute, and a discerning observer generally, Stewart artfully asks a chicken-and-egg question on the disappearance of a crucial organizational element in the modern-day labour movement: an educated, disciplined, and well-organized leadership of a vanguard of workers, structured to creatively channel rank-and-file dissent and ensure measurable trade union progress. The parallel attempts of this left-led vanguard seeking to transform electrical workers as a proletarian class “in itself” into one that was “for itself” is obvious. As with Les McDonald, his former associate and comrade, Stewart evidently did not believe in relying solely on executive board members to resolve the problems that seem to crop up on every jobsite. Indeed, Les and Bill would have instantly agreed that distant and self-important representatives too often have the tendency to get fat while sipping coffee in the comfortable surroundings of a heated and air-conditioned union office. Nor, in the IBEW at least, was a powerless shop steward generally able to make much of a difference if he was left to his own devices without meaningful support. Bill Stewart began his letter with a brief synopsis of his near-decade-long period of collaboration and friendship with McDonald. He writes briefly of the late 1950s and the first half of the 1960s in British Columbia and then poses a critical question regarding the present landscape:
The workers were really on the move. Lay them off, and they would show up a week later in demonstrations of the unemployed or lobbies to Victoria. Chisel on the contract, and they would shut the job down. Pick on a good shop steward, and down she’d go again . . . more often than not, led by communists. Hard to see that comparison between that and today’s labour movement. Which raises an interesting question . . . Is the labour movement so acquiescent because of the lack of communists, or is the lack of communists due to the acquiescent labour movement?
Carrying on with his thoughts, now looking into the future, the aging Stewart passed judgment on having inevitably to pass the torch to a new generation. He was hopeful that young people would not ignore or forget the enduring and compounding clues left behind indicating past struggles and tactics employed. It was part of the alternative narrative offered up for scrutiny by the so-called losers of history. He suggested that “what we put in the pot will be part of the stew the working class will cook up in defence of its needs, its country and socialism.”53
The fact that this type of fast-fading narrative has not been preserved or passed on in any meaningful way is deeply concerning, even for dispassionate observers. Yet it is intriguing to note how clusters of rank-and-file activists within local unions continue to sporadically appear, loaded with latent organizational talent and lashing out to challenge the status quo.54 Like mushrooms after several days of rain, these are often associated with significant movements of ordinary working people, unexpectedly popping up spontaneously in loosely defined, often ad-hoc organizations. Stewart and McDonald would both have immediately pointed out that the inherent instability surrounding the accumulation of capital creates repeated economic and social crises that cry out for a response. But the modern-day labour movement in North America does not yet appear to want to be involved as an organic part of these persistent historical phenomena to help direct spontaneous rank-and-file insurgencies or related social movements. From the perspective of organized labour, these potentially creative mass struggle allies are inherently unstable, agitating unpredictably, and moving in uncontrollable directions. The latter, in turn, do not easily accept labour’s inherent ability to provide consequential shape and leadership; the trade union movement’s mostly tamed, incorporated existence within market capitalism has meant it has been rendered largely ineffective against the impoverishing forces of a devastating neoliberal globalization. What might be missing in this awkward pas-de-deux is a coherent vision of an alternative society both groups could agree upon, a vision that, on the one hand, necessarily moves beyond defending and promoting yesterday’s oppressive statist program of “socialism in one country”; and, on the other hand—brief successes like New York City’s IBEW Local 3 notwithstanding—the failure to implement a widespread and durable vision of “social unionism” in visibly reluctant, yet previously accommodating, capitalist economies.55
While far from being the only reason for this absence of co-ordinated synergy, akin to trapping lightning in a bottle, the damage caused by suspicions of left-wing agendas in general, and anti-communism in particular, echoes down to the present day. Simple, yet related statistical comparisons through the decades, speak loudly: despite massive increases in the country’s overall wealth during the intervening decades, in 2023 the home ownership rate of 65.7 percent in the United States was almost precisely the same as it had been in 1960. Masking an identical home “ownership” rate were commensurate massive increases in the mortgage debt owed by individual American workers.56 Home ownership can be a misleading and problematic measurement on the transfer of wealth between capital and labour, but the nub of the matter is that the average American family has been unable to capture a larger piece of the economic pie for itself. A mostly consistently shrinking trade union movement has certainly not helped in this important financial matter.57 When combined with growing student college loans, car debt, credit card debt, and ongoing high medical costs, the average American working-class family unfortunately appears to have been headed in the wrong direction for quite some time.58 There are, of course, other equally damning sources on growing inequality in that country. Accompanying these telling statistics about the marked reduction in wealth transfers between capital and labour is the fact that union workforce density in the United States now persistently hovers at around 10 percent. In Canada, meanwhile, the situation appears to be only marginally better as home ownership in 2021 (the year of the last countrywide census) sat at 66.5 percent, accompanied by a much higher union penetration figure of 28.7 percent of the workforce. Disconcertingly, home ownership in Canada has statistically declined over the previous decade, from a high point of 69 percent of households in 2011. Both a record level of immigration and institutional investment in housing as a financial commodity appears to have upset the traditional balance of supply and demand in the succeeding decade.59 A more predominant Canadian trade union movement and an arguably more tolerant attitude toward the notion of “class” in the northern reaches of the continent, has evidently been unable in the short term to stop the erosion of working people being able to keep a larger piece of the home ownership pie.60
Returning the focus to south of the border, even non-aligned critics such as this author are forced to recognize that, with over 130 years of nurturing by the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions, organized labour’s persistent and decades-long fostering of a “working-class conservatism” has had serious and manifestly deleterious effects. Obsessive to the point of paranoia in safeguarding a careful and cautious approach to its existence, the central labour body has consistently fused its conservative outlook with long-standing anti-statism, anti-labour party entanglements, and what has artfully been described as “commonsense anti-communism.”61 Notwithstanding the descriptive niceties of this term, and recalling the pronouncement of early-twentieth-century historian Selig Perlman, the associated support for pragmatic business union practices was also decidedly capable of unleashing a vindictive form of anti-communist intervention that was deployed whenever and wherever it was deemed necessary. Entirely supportive of this systemic form of direct intervention and worn seemingly as a badge of honour, Joseph D. Keenan, the IBEW’s International Secretary from 1954 to 1976, was not shy about describing himself as being “anti-communist to my very bones.”62 In seeming lockstep with his declaration, the IBEW took every opportunity to demonstrate its reliability to employers, loudly proclaiming to anyone who might be interested in these issues what it was not.
From a business union’s perspective, this hard-won place of legitimacy within the prevailing economic system was one of the main underlying reasons accounting for the union’s survival and success. That employers might then turn on the “legitimate” trade union movement once the perceived threat of the radicals was removed did not appear to enter into their way of thinking. Like them or loathe them—they rarely left anyone indifferent—a serious conundrum soon emerged: with its core of organized left-wing activists either expunged or neutralized, who was available to do the heavy lifting? To volunteer to educate, create tactics, expose the off-shore movements of capital, take risks on the ground, build community support, and defend collective agreements? While certainly not the only reason, this naïveté, combined with a well-documented and successful corporate counter-offensive beginning in the mid-1970s, goes a long way in explaining the end of the period of exceptional growth in the American trade union movement.63
Up north in Canada, too, branch-plant affiliates of the AFL-CIO all had well-entrenched suspicions of any individual or organized group that tried to deviate too far from the beaten path. While militancy on occasion was deemed to be absolutely necessary—as in Local 213, part and parcel of any trade unionist’s array of requisite tactics—radical political groups or left-wing personalities who became too influential were tracked by the powers that be, viewed with distrust and misgivings, and dealt with mercilessly if circumstances required a response. Intrinsically tied through its international craft union connection to the conservative philosophical and political outlook of the IBEW’s American command structure, the Lenkurt Electric strike and its aftermath was but one briefly intense and significant variation on this deep-rooted historical theme. That it took place in the mid-1960s meant that this captivating event carried within it the contrasting cultural and political elements of that decade, in this specific instance highlighted by the struggle of a majority underpaid and exploited female workforce employed at the Lenkurt plant in Burnaby. It had important repercussions on the immediate trade union landscape in British Columbia, in particular with the emergence of the Canadian Electrical Workers’ Union, the well-known fight carried on against BC Supreme Court ex parte labour injunctions, and within the structure of IBEW Local 213 itself.
In the case of this author’s father, a working-class immigrant who was actively struggling toward achieving something beyond capitalism and business unionism, it also had a life-changing impact.64 In an essay on “Red Rebels and Red Baiters” early in his writing career, historian and former BC-based labour administrator Ron Verzuh was succinct on the persistent and long-term effects of the internal war the labour movement has long fought with itself. Though he was writing mostly about CIO-organized industrial unions in an earlier epoch during the Cold War, and especially on McCarthyism and its effects on the left within organized labour in British Columbia, the same ruins of division arguably held true for the decades that followed right across all trade union organizations: “The enduring cost is visible today in the wasteland of unorganized workers and the lost promise of a democratic labour movement that would embrace all working people.”65
Though he remained somewhat faithful to his British roots in terms of cultural and political developments, subscribed as he was for decades to the New Statesman and the Manchester Guardian, Les McDonald nevertheless had a wide-ranging appetite for news from any source. In this regard, he remained a subscriber for many years to the Vancouver Sun, the Pacific Tribune, and (with Monique) to the French-language weekly, the socialist-inclined Le Monde.66 Les also liked the more pointed historical commentaries that were connected to the United States and his union, the IBEW, in which he stayed as a member to the very end of his life. But he was certainly not what most critics would describe as an unthinking “loyal” member. On the contrary, he would have completely agreed with the highly respected Eugene Debs, five times the presidential candidate on behalf of the American Socialist Party. Debs, apparently, knew a whole slew of people like the Vancouver electrician:
If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions you would still be living in caves. You never would have emerged from the jungle. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation. I have taken my choice.67
The last word about Les McDonald, past member of Canada’s Communist Party in British Columbia, should probably go to his French-born wife, Monique. Though the two-part description of her husband was not as oppositional as she believed it to be—over the long term, and with bumps along the way, one meshed eventually with the other—she compared her husband the Communist and trade union activist to her husband the athlete and sports official. In this case, she did not equivocate:
Les was much more interesting when he was in the Communist Party and being active in Local 213. He believed he was trying to change the world for good. Sport is such a self-centred and egocentric activity, it just doesn’t begin to compare. I much preferred my husband the trade unionist to my husband the sports politician. He was a better man then.68
Les McDonald died on Labour Day Monday, September 4, 2017. An appropriate date, it was also bittersweet.