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REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS Ian Milligan, Rebel Youth: 1960s Labour links with a decidedly older Left, particu- Unrest, Young Workers, and New larly that based in the labour movement. Leftists in English Canada (Vancouver: Although these links were complex and University of British Columbia Press often fraught with conflict, they were an 2014) essential part of creating the Canadian New Left. While the historiography of the US To this developing body of New Left New Left is rich and varied enough to scholarship we can welcome the addi- have already gone through several waves tion of Ian Milligan’s Rebel Youth: 1960s of revision, scholarship on the Canadian Labour Unrest, Young Workers, and New New Left has been sparse. With the no- Leftists in English Canada. Milligan’s table exception of studies of Québécois book aims to “demonstrate the salience nationalism and the Quiet Revolution, of labour and how this significantly af- relatively little has been written about the fected the direction of radical and not-so- panoply of movements that erupted and radical political and cultural movements flamed out across English and French through the long sixties.” (11) While Canada over the course of the 1960s and campus revolts must be part of any tell- early 1970s. To the extent that such schol- ing of the New Left’s story, and are cer- arship exists, it has focused largely on the tainly featured in Rebel Youth, Milligan’s student-led and “new social movement” focus extends far beyond the universities. aspects of the New Left. Here the domi- He argues that understanding what was nant narrative has been one of “children happening in the workplace was central of privilege” rejecting the values of their to understanding the New Left. parents and the class-based “Old Left” to The first two chapters of Rebel Youth found movements based on identities and outline the contours of this broader per- lifestyles. spective on youth revolt in the 1960s. We Fortunately, a new generation of schol- encounter not only the well-known cam- arship has developed in recent years to pus radicals, but the young Inco miners challenge the “children of privilege” nar- in Sudbury gathered at the mine cages, rative. Contributions from Sean Mills, banging their lunch pails in defense of Bryan Palmer, Joan Sangster, Peter their customary right to have lunch be- McInnis, Benjamin Isitt, two significant fore their shift. We meet the anti-au- edited volumes, and several disserta- thoritarian, pot-smoking “long-hairs” tions have begun to paint a much more working the lines at Inglis and Chrysler. nuanced – and interesting – picture of They shared with their college-bound the “long 1960s.” While recognizing the contemporaries a common youth cul- “newness” of the Canadian New Left, ture, characterized by “personal freedom, this new scholarship has highlighted individual expression, and democracy both its global dimensions, as well as its above all else,” which did not mix well Table of Contents for Reviews, pp. 5–6. LLT-76-01.indb 213 2015-10-20 4:37 PM 214 / LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL 76 with the authoritarian structures of the Project. But, as with similar New Left university and workplace alike. (22) But community organizing initiatives in Milligan is careful to note that within the US, these Canadian efforts proved this shared culture, there were important fleeting. By the late 1960s, there was a differences along race, gender, and class growing realization among student New lines. These differences created divisions Leftists that class remained centrally im- that would prove difficult to overcome as portant, and that an alliance of some sort the movements of the 1960s developed. with workers would be necessary. The next two chapters focus on youth The question, as Milligan explores, revolt in the workplace, and how the was what shape that alliance might take. campus-based left understood and re- Student New Left efforts to engage with sponded to this revolt. Imbued with the working class struggles exposed the cul- anti-authoritarianism of the period, tural, material, and ideological chasms young workers chafed at basic workplace that separated the students from their indignities and arbitrary rules that their working class peers. At the same time, the seniors accepted, such as miners having overwhelmingly male student New Left to heat their lunch using electric wiring leadership’s ossified conception of class from the underground lighting system. left it blind to dynamics of patriarchy and (43) They also often rebelled against sexism within their own movements. The their official union leadership, engaging result was conflict and acrimonious splits in unsanctioned wildcat strikes in the within New Left organizations, but also late 1960s on an unprecedented scale. a feminist-led push to expand notions of This revolt spilled over into internal what the working class was beyond in- union politics, leading to leadership chal- dustrial factory workers, and to build or- lenges and injecting new militancy into ganizations that addressed working class unions in auto, steel, and mining. While women’s issues, such as the BC-based some union leaders resisted calls for Service, Office, and Retail Workers Union change others, like United Auto Workers of Canada (sorwuc). Canadian Director Dennis McDermott, The remaining chapters of Milligan’s sought to engage younger workers. book offer case studies of key struggles, Meanwhile, campus New Leftists both on campus and on the picket line, sought to make sense of this workplace that defined the fraught relationship be- revolt. Many had embraced the idea, tween workers and student New Leftists popularized by intellectuals such as C. in this period. The narrative culmi- Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse, nates in a retelling of the 1973 Artistic that postwar prosperity had placated Woodwork strike, which for Milligan en- the working class, which could no lon- capsulates the strengths and weaknesses ger serve as the central agent of social of the labour-New Left relationship. change. Instead, they argued that change The core strength underpinningRebel would come from the ranks of “the dis- Youth is the voices of those involved in possessed,” a looser term encompassing the events he recounts. Given the paucity the urban poor, First Nations people, stu- of written records, Milligan collected dents, and people of colour. As a result, more than seventy oral histories from early New Left efforts to expand beyond key participants. They provide insight the campus took the form of organizing into the debates and discussions that in poor and First Nations communities, animated the New Left. As Milligan is such as the Kingston Community Project careful to point out, they also provide a and the Student Neestow Partnership particular perspective on the movements LLT-76-01.indb 214 2015-10-20 4:37 PM REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS / 215 of the period. His interview sample was know more about this critical period will predominantly male, and skewed more find much of interest, and Milligan’s work towards former campus radicals and will provide an important base for future labour leaders than worker activists. research. Nonetheless, this collection of primary Barry Eidlin source data and first-person accounts is a Rutgers University remarkable achievement in itself, and will no doubt prove to be a valuable resource for future scholars of the Canadian Gordon Hak, The Left in British sixties. Columbia: A History of Struggle Rebel Youth has other flaws that go (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press 2013) deeper than the limited perspectives of its oral histories. Most significant is This important book examines a vi- its lack of analytical focus. Milligan be- tal topic in Canadian working-class his- gins Rebel Youth by setting out to “dem- tory – the political trajectory on the onstrate the salience of labour,” and “left coast” of British Columbia from its Chapters 1 and 2 do a good job of incor- origins in the 19th century to the pres- porating workers’ perspectives into New ent. Hak’s approach is moderate and bal- Left history. But, as the book unfolds, the anced rather than Marxist, evident in his workers tend to fade into the background selection, structuring, and discussion of and the story becomes much more about subject matter and themes. To be sure, campus-based New Leftists and their Communists, anarchists, and other radi- sometimes more, sometimes less, suc- cal activists and currents receive proper cessful efforts to support working class attention, but Hak is careful to reach out struggles. Similarly, Milligan’s very con- to the diversity of left perspectives and ception of the New Left and its constitu- working-class viewpoints in crafting this ents shifts over the course of the book. survey work. While he notes in Chapter 2 that young He traces the history of BC’s left from workers saw themselves as part of the the standpoint of the working class, New Left, (44) for much of the book he broadly conceived, with the objective counterposes “New Leftists,” by which he of identifying a movement capable of means student activists, and workers. To inspiring and mobilizing a majority of what extent does the author see the two people in a project for far-reaching social groups as separate, or as different parts of and economic change. As a result, Hak’s the same movement? Milligan vacillates association with familiar protagonists on the question. His narrative also lacks and institutions is necessarily detached, cohesion and can be difficult to follow at meaning that some readers, particularly times. The individual cases and stories those most familiar with aspects of BC’s are engaging, but it remains unclear why left history, or those who most strongly Milligan selected these cases, or how they identify with particular ideologies or work together to develop a broader argu- organizations, may feel their pet topic ment.