Divided Loyalties A Study of a Communist-Led Trade Union’s Struggle For Survival in Trail, British Columbia 1943-1955 by Ron Verzuh MA, Canadian Studies, Carleton University Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences © Ron Verzuh SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Summer 2017 Copyright in this work rests with the author. Please ensure that any reproduction or re-use is done in accordance with the relevant national copyright legislation. Approval Name: Ron Verzuh Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (History) Title: Divided Loyalties: A Study of a Communist- Led Trade Union’s Struggle For Survival in Trail, British Columbia, 1943-1955 Examining Committee: Chair: Jeremy Brown Associate Professor Joseph E. Taylor III Senior Supervisor Professor Allen Seager Supervisor Associate Professor Kendra Strauss Internal Examiner Associate Professor Labour Studies Program and The Morgan Centre for Labour Research John H. Thompson External Examiner Professor Emeritus Department of History Duke University Date Defended/Approved: July 19, 2017 ii Ethics Statement iii Abstract “Divided Loyalties” examines a Communist union’s struggle to survive in the post- Second World War environment of anti-Communism and anti-trade unionism that marked one of the most violent periods in the history of the Canadian labour movement. In 1943, Local 480 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers in Trail, British Columbia, was nearing the end of a six-year battle for certification as the legal bargaining agent for about 4,000 smelter workers. After it achieved that goal the following year and for the next decade, it faced new battles with the employer, the powerful Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada (CM&S) with its paternalistic president S.G. Blaylock. The local also faced an array of other opponents: a workforce suspicious of a Red-tainted union with a radical past, a company union that had been established by Blaylock after the First World War, a company-loyal newspaper, and a divided community situated in the rural West Kootenay district near the Canada- United States border. Among the local’s most vigorous adversaries were the local churches, the federal government with its secret service police, and the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL). By the 1950s, it had been purged from the CCL, shunned by the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), and victimized by cold warriors bent on its destruction. To survive it needed to win the support of a substantially immigrant workforce with a strong alternative culture to the dominant Anglo-Saxon one. It had to address the concerns of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women war workers who had been hired at lower wages to replace enlisted men. And it fell into the middle of an ideological clash between the region’s two dominant left-wing political parties. Its greatest strength and potential weakness was an unabashed Stalinist named Harvey Murphy. He had been a fugitive from justice and was incarcerated in a war-time internment camp as a threat to national security, but he became an influential leader of the provincial labour movement and an outspoken advocate of workers’ rights who was hated by some and respected by others. “Divided Loyalties” begins with a victory, but Local 480’s survival for the duration of the twelve-year period of this study was far from assured. Keywords: Communism, trade unionism, labour history, social history iv Dedication For Leola v Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge the assistance of my thesis committee, in particular my senior supervisor Professor Joseph Taylor, Associate Professor (Retired) Allen Seager, and the many labour history teachers, scholars, researchers, librarians, archivists, fellow students, and trade unionists who offered suggestions and encouragement. vi Table of Contents Approval ............................................................................................................................. ii Ethics Statement................................................................................................................. iii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv Dedication ........................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ vi Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. vii List of Tables ................................................................................................................... viii List of Acronyms ............................................................................................................... ix Epigraph ............................................................................................................................. xi Chapter 1. Introduction – Portrait of a Union Town ................................................. 1 Chapter 2. Company Unionism and Blaylock’s Cooperative System ..................... 40 Chapter 3. Gender Conflicts and Ladies Auxiliary Politics ..................................... 85 Chapter 4. Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics in Trail’s Immigrant Enclave .......... 122 Chapter 5. A Clash of Ideologies in the Smelter City ............................................. 160 Chapter 6. Steel Cold Warriors and Trail’s Red Union ......................................... 200 Chapter 7. Resisting Canadian McCarthyism in the Kootenays ........................... 242 Chapter 8. Conclusion – The Complicated Legacy of Local 480 ........................... 278 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 301 vii List of Tables Table 1.1 Total CM&S Employees ............................................................................. 8 Table 1.2 Population Growth Patterns for Trail ........................................................ 11 Table 2.1 CM&S Net Profits 1935-1949 .................................................................. 44 Table 3.1 Estimated Number of Female Employees at CM&S During WW II ........ 90 Table 3.2 Individual Wage Earnings by Gender in Trail in 1951 ............................. 91 Table 3.3 West Kootenay Residents in Wartime Service ......................................... 97 Table 3.4 Smelter Workforce Turnover During WWII ............................................ 99 Table 4.1 Religious Denominations in Trail 1941-1951......................................... 125 Table 4.2 Immigration to Trail by Period of Migration .......................................... 127 Table 4.3 Trail Population by National Origin in 1941 .......................................... 148 Table 5.1 B.C. Election Results in Trail-Rossland ................................................. 176 viii List of Acronyms ACCL All-Canadian Congress of Labour ACTU Association of Catholic Trade Unions AFL American Federation of Labor AUC Amalgamated Union of Canada BCFL British Columbia Federation of Labour CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations CCF Cooperative Commonwealth Federation CCL Canadian Congress of Unions CLC Canadian Labour Congress CLDL Canadian Labour Defense League CMA Canadian Manufacturers’ Association CM&S Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada CPC Communist Party of Canada and Canadian Peace Congress CSU Canadian Seaman’s Union DOCR Defence of Canada Regulations FDLP Fernie and District Labour Party HUAC House Committee on UnAmerican Activities IATSE International Association of Theater and Stage Employees IBEW International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers ICA Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act (B.C.) IJC International Joint Commission ILS International Lenin School ILWU International Longshore and Warehouse Union ISWU Independent Smelter Workers’ Union IUMMSW International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (Mine-Mill) IWA International Woodworkers of America IWW Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) LA Ladies Auxiliary LAC Library and Archives Canada LPP Labour Progressive Party (Communist) ix LRB Labour Relations Board MWUC Mine Workers’ Union of Canada NFB National Film Board of Canada NWLB National War Labour Board OBU One Big Union PPBAA Pullman Porters Benefit Association of America RCWU Relief Camp Workers’ Union SPC Socialist Party of Canada SWOC Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee TBT Trail Board of Trade TDT Trail Daily Times TLC Trades and Labour Congress TPC Trail Peace Council UFLWU United Fur and Leather Workers’ Union UAW United Automobile Workers UE United Electrical Workers UMWA United Mine Workers of America USWA United Steel Workers of America WCC Workmen’s Cooperative Committee WFM Western Federation of Miners WIUC Woodworkers’ Industrial Union of Canada WUL Workers’ Unity League x Epigraph “While the acts of kings and governments provide the great brush strokes on the canvas of human experience, it is the strivings and aspirations of ordinary people, and day-to-day events, that complete the picture and give it meaning. A careful reading of the history of the Kootenay district clearly demonstrates this fact. In the lives of the early fur traders, miners and lumbermen, we find