Communists, Gangsters, and Canadian Sailors

CANADIAN SEAMEN'S UNIONS are now running neck and neck with the Winnipeg General Strike for the lead as the most studied phenomenon in Oniytian labour history. At least six books and a handful of unpublished theses have appeared over the past three decades dealing with the organization and difficulties of these unions from the 1930s to the 1960s. Four books appeared in 1986-7 alone, one of them based on a highly acclaimed, made-for-television docudrama. Controversies about these unions in the two decades after World War JJ make them ripe for such intense scrutiny. Before 1950, the bumptious Canadian Seamen's Union (CSU) symbolized the spirit of democratic, militant, Communist-inspired unionism that was sweeping through several Canadian industries. After 1950 the new Seafarers' International Union (SIU) became die most infamous embodiment of corruption in labour ranks that helped to sour public support for workers' organization. Canada's Cold War-era labour movement deserves such renewed attention. The period from the late 1930s to the early 1950s marked a crucial turning point in the history of the Canadian working class which still lacks the careful analysis it deserves. Unfortunately, Canadian historians have not yet found a satisfactory way to write about it For too long, writers have been locked in sterile, Cold War-categories, especially when it comes to interpreting left-wing influence in the labour movement Communist-led trade unionism generally has either inspired writers, or made them extremely uncomfortable, and most often, they have felt obliged to chose sides. A fresh approach might try to assess as dispassionately as possible how the new unions were created, how they actually worked, and what forces of resistance they faced. But regrettably, these new books on the seamen's unions have not broken out of the cheering and booing phase of historical writing. William Kaplan has written what unfortunately will be for some time to come the standard academic monograph on the subject His book. Everything That

Criminology · Political science · Sociology · Canadian Identity and History · History