Deja Vu Not -The Battle of Ballantyne Pier — British Columbia Chronicles

Readers are forgiven if they’ve come to think of me as an unabashed union supporter based upon Chronicles that have been sympathetic to the struggles of the labourers of old. Such as the Vancouver Island coal miners and the unemployed (many of them veterans) who staged the occupation of the Vancouver post office then the great Trek to Ottawa in the depth of the 1930’s Great Depression. (See the Chronicles: On-To-Ottawa Trek.)

Do these posts mean I’m a union fan? In those cases, yes.

But, to make my position clear: I am by choice a lifelong self-entrepreneur—what some would say is the antithesis of a unionist. I believe in personal independence, self-initiative and giving and receiving fair value for my pay.

I also believe that every man and woman, world-wide, should receive fair compensation for their labours in a safe and respectful work environment. But employers—I’ve been one—have their rights, too. The ideal, of course, is to achieve that happy medium that’s both fair and equitable to all concerned.

The bottom line, for me, is that I am both an historian and storyteller with, I like to think, a social conscience. And the inescapable fact is that, in any review of the labour struggles in the history of British Columbia and elsewhere, labour invariably held the higher moral ground.

If that means my portraying many of the employers of the past in a negative light, so be it.

Which brings up two other key players in these dramas: the governments (civic, provincial and national), and their respective police agencies in the 1930’s. (Also before and after but this is the period we’re discussing.) Fearful almost to the point of paranoia of Communist infiltration of the labour movement for purposes of civil disruption, various governments chose to keep the peace—the status quo that favoured employers—at all costs.

There’s simply no whitewashing the fact that strikers and protesters in Canada, the U.S., Great Britain and other Commonwealth nations—the so-called bastions of democracy—too often met large labour disputes with the same weapons of violence and intimidation that were favoured by the Fascist governments of the day.

Does this mean the strikers and protesters were always in the moral right and above violence of their own? Hardly, and I’m not about to attempt to whitewash them.

Let’s let the fact speak for themselves.

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As of this writing, the strike that has locked down British Columbia ports for over two weeks continues although members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada have returned to work during arbitration between it and the British Columbia Maritime Employers Assoc.

Prime Minister Trudeau has expressed his government’s “dismay” that an initial agreement was vetoed by the longshoremen union leadership: “The impact on workers, on citizens, families and businesses right across the country of this prolonged strike has been significant,” he said.

It goes without saying that the cost in lost revenues, commercial and public inconvenience, and hard feelings will continue to be felt for some time. Are there ever any real winners in a major labour dispute?

Longshoremen begin their historic march to Ballantyne Pier. ‘Mickey’ O’Rourke, VC, is carrying the Union Jack at the head of the column, bottom left. —*Vancouver City Archives*

But today’s seaport disruptions are nothing like the confrontation in Vancouver in June 1935 that was defused by 100’s of armed police officers using clubs and tear gas. As noted, during the world Depression of the Dirty ‘30’s many governments, Canada’s provincial and federal included, viewed labour unrest as a Communist threat to our capitalist society.

In other words, a strike was an act of treason to be dealt with by whatever means necessary. Even if few of strikers were actually Communists, even if the means were brutal.

The unfolding of the current waterfront longshoring dispute would indicate that Canadians have come a long way in improving labour relations over the past 90-odd years. But it hasn’t been an easy road as you’re about to see in this Cowichan Chronicle.

* * * * *

First, I must set the stage.

One could argue that the story begins with the unloading and loading of ships in British Columbia ports in the 1800’s. Not only a dirty and dangerous job, it was sporadic. There was no way of truly scheduling a sailing ship; it came and went as best and as fast as it could, subject to the whims of weather.

Meaning that a longshoreman was on call—and he damn well better jump to it when a ship did dock, if he wanted to work that day and the next.

Hardly a way, one would think, for a man to set down roots and raise a family. Yet, surprisingly, many were able to do so and, by the mid-1930’s, the depth of the 10-year-long Depression that gripped much of the western world, many Lower Mainland B.C. longshoremen had families and their own homes—but no job security.

Hence it shouldn’t be any real surprise that the story of longshoring along the length of the Pacific coast, both above and below the 49th parallel, is one of labour disruptions, strikebreaking and disputes. So, as briefly as possible:

Today’s B.C. Maritime Employers Association, one of the contenders in the current longshoring dispute, “handles everyday labour matters, such as administering the collective agreement [with the ILWU], payroll services, discipline and grievance, and arbitration hearings on behalf of its members”.

The Shipping Federation of B.C., as it was originally called, was created after the First World War to represent the interests of shipping and railway companies, terminal and storage operators in response to increasing labour volatility. The years immediately following Armistice saw British Columbia providing the fuel for two of the most significant disruptions:

The General Strike of 1918 (Canada’s first) protested the gunning-down by a ‘Special Police constable’ of Vancouver Island coal mining martyr Ginger Goodwin. An even greater work stoppage the following year was in sympathy with the famous general strike in Winnipeg.

In self-defence, the employers comprising the Shipping Federation circled the wagons and matched American port employers’ more rigid anti-union policies.

With the ‘30’s and world depression, what had for decades been a simmering pot boiled over. Decreased shipping encouraged the abuse of long-established hiring practices. Most of the unions that were in existence were localized, lacking in real clout beyond their own small jurisdictions. A ruthless employer could play off union against union, individual against individual, race against race and minority against minority. (God help you if you were First Nation, Black or Jewish.)

From 1912 on, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), an amalgamation of Canadian and American dockworkers, did gain minor concessions from the Federation. But, in 1923, the employers refused to continue negotiations and created its own puppet union. The Vancouver and District Waterfront Workers’ Association was supplemented by as many as 350 strikebreakers and special police who were bivouacked in the CPR liner Empress of Japan.

The ILA retaliated by striking but after two months of seeing ships loaded and unloaded by their replacements, the union buckled. An uneasy truce reigned for the next 10 years. What would be the precursor to the Ballantyne Pier event began in Portland, Ore.

Among the many ships calling at Vancouver and getting caught in the cross-fire between the employers and frustrated longshoremen was the American freighter *S.S. Kingsley.* —*City of Vancouver Archives*

In May 1934, the ILO again sought a coast-wide contract, union-controlled hiring halls and increased wages. Employers again refused and the workers walked off the job, initiating what became known as the Big Strike.

It lasted three months despite, a recent historical documentary tells us, the loss of 50,000 shore workers’ jobs—almost a third of them in the Portland area alone. Shipowners and waterfront employers were also hard-hit. What sustained the strikers was a phenomenon of those desperate times—the support, moral and tangible, of shopkeepers, farmers and fellow unemployed workers who provided, respectively, credit for groceries, free fruit and produce—and solidarity.

They even joined in manning picket lines.

But the employers had allies, too. The newly-formed Citizens Emergency Committee of wealthy businessmen, for one, put up funds for strikebreakers and Special Police, the euphemism for company goons—thugs wearing suits and badges—in a pattern already long established in North American labour disputes.

San Francisco, the largest harbour, became a war zone where, on ‘Black Thursday,’ two picketers were killed in a clash with police, while strikers were injured in confrontations in other ports along the Pacific Coast. Not until July 31st was the dispute finally settled by federal arbitration which awarded the union a coast-wide contract that included union hiring halls and a raise in pay.

That was 1934 and in the U.S., but, settlement or no, the battle lines hardened.

By the following year, the sixth since the stock market crash of 1929 had precipitated the Depression, 10’s of 1000’s were unemployed and general public discontent was nation-wide. British Columbia in particular was seething. All of this played into the hands of Communist opportunists who used the unemployed for their own ends and thus making labour a national security concern for governments,

Red infiltration into labour ranks served to reinforce the employers’ position—they weren’t just defending their own interests, they were defending the capitalist system.

This brings us to the summer of 1935 and a failed general strike. Legions of unemployed had left government relief camps to mass in Vancouver, leading to the occupation of the post office and Woodward’s department store then, in a final act of desperation, the launching of the historic and ill-fated On-to-Ottawa Trek.

Coincidentally, Vancouver waterfront dock workers finally rebelled against the Federation’s “whites only” hiring practices which included favouritism and blacklisting. The consequent work stoppages were, the Federation declared, a breach of contract and, worse, the devil’s work of Communist agitators.

Vancouver Chief Constable Major-General William Wasbrough Foster, CMG, DSO, VD. —*Vancouver City Archives*

Ballantyne Pier was set to become Vancouver’s OK Corral.

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The opening round, as it happened, was fired not in Vancouver but in Powell River with the lockout of 50 dock workers. When Vancouver longshoremen refused to unload cargo from the upcoast port, 900 of them were also locked out. Then Seattle longshoremen refused to touch cargo handled by non-union workers (what, today, we call ‘hot goods’) from either Canadian port.

The Federation, again citing breach of contract, declared a total lockout.

On June 18, 1935, crowds of families, friends and supporters gathered at the Heatley Street entrance to the Ballantyne Pier where ships were being unloaded by non-union workers. Zero Hour was set for 1:00 p.m. and they were there to watch and cheer as an estimated 1000 workers and allies flying Union Jacks marched to the docks to “talk to” strikebreakers. At their head was labour activist and First World War Victoria Cross winner Pte. James O’Rourke, and several union leaders known to be members of the Canadian Communist Party.

Waiting for them was Chief Constable Foster and several hundred city, provincial police and RCMP. On horseback and on foot, many of them were in full view but others were hiding behind boxcars. They were armed with Lewis machine-guns, at least one shotgun, billy clubs and a new anti-riot weapon, tear gas.

The three levels of government, with the aid of the Citizens League of British Columbia, had, in fact, prepared for months for what they feared would become open insurrection. Besides mobilizing police from beyond Vancouver and placing Lower Mainland militia units on alert, they’d drilled Special Constables in the city armoury.

To put all in this context, the workers were fed up with a puppet union and dispatch rules; American longshoremen had won the right to have their own real union and to control hiring, why shouldn’t they? As one of them asked of a Vancouver Sun reporter, did their protesting against working conditions make them “a bunch of Reds”?

At 1:00 p.m., from the union headquarters on East Hastings Street, behind the flag-carrying O’Rourke, VC, in columns four across, some of them wearing their war medals, some singing, and none of them in the mood for conciliation or interference, the cavalcade of dock workers and supporters marched towards the docks.

A previously chosen delegation approached Foster who stood with 20 mounted City Police, 50 more on foot, 36 RCMP on horseback and 40 Provincial Police. Some had taken up sniper positions, some were armed with machine guns and all had clubs.

Foster advised them that to try to continue was futile, they wouldn’t make it across the railway tracks, he said. The marchers advanced. When an RCMP constable began struggling with a longshoreman and was knocked down, two of his comrades took the marcher into custody.

Chief Foster, who’d been shoved aside in a hail of rocks, raised and dropped his hand. According to the BC Labour Heritage Centre history of the Ballantyne Pier action, there was “a high-pitched whistling sound followed as a plain-clothes officer holding a tear gas gun about six feet behind the Police Chief pulled the trigger.

“A canister hurled over the heads of the marchers. Within seconds another canister was hurled, and another...”

Gasping and choking on the acrid fumes, the marchers began to fall back, to find themselves being ridden down and truncheoned. Soon they were in total disorder and, with the spectators, in full retreat with clubs and riding crops swishing at their heads and shoulders.

Which, arguably, should have been the end of it. But police weren’t letting them off that easily. There’d been too much hostility for too long. This was war.

In a scene almost from out of the Wild West: mounted police officers chase down marchers in the street, on the sidewalk, almost into someone’s front yard. —*City of Vancouver Archives*

Newspaper photos capture the chaotic scenes: the pounding of horses’ hooves, shouting, screaming, coughing and spitting on both sides from the tear gas; horsemen, clubs swinging right and left as they ride down Powell Street, scattering protesters, even following them up onto sidewalks. A horse, stung by stones and riderless, gallops frantically from the scene.

Shop windows are smashed. Among the injured are a man who’s been shotgunned in the legs—deliberately, according to a newspaper reporter who witnessed it—and wounded protesters and police, including several women who’d set up a first aid station.

The “battle” on Ballantyne Pier is said to have lasted three hours. That included the chasing down of fleeing paraders, arrests and the raid on union headquarters. The chaos of the charge by mounted police, the firing of tear gas and the flight of unionists lasted no more than 20 minutes. What followed was a wrapping-up operation.

If there was a miracle that day it was the fact that, although numerous people on both sides required hospitalization, no one was killed.

Twenty-four arrests resulted in prison sentences, 28 were hospitalized and the union’s offices were raided and heavily damaged. Mayor McGeer then rubbed salt in the wounds by proclaiming that striking longshoremen and their families were no longer entitled to receive relief payments. His was an almost fitting note of spite for what would prove to be an anti-climactic conclusion to all the years of turmoil and years of depression which had led up to the bloody dockside confrontation.

Spiritually if not mortally wounded, the union struggled on for another six months but the battle on the pier had taken most of the wind out of its sails. Two more years of economic hard times and having to deal with a company faux union, then the Second World War brought all sides together for the duration.

It wasn’t until 10 years after the Battle of the Ballantyne Pier that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 500, was formed.

A minor consolation of this sad affair was that the Canadian Communist movement’s tacitly conceded its own failures by altering course from open militancy through its Workers Unity League to the more traditional political arena. As a result, even with the arrival of the Cold War, west coast shore workers were no longer seen to be threats to national security.

And tear gas would now be a weapon of choice of Canadian police departments.