STRUGGLING FOR A NEW LEFT: THE NEW TENDENCY, AUTONOMIST MARXISM, AND RANK-AND-FILE ORGANIZING IN WINDSOR, ONTARIO DURING THE 1970S

A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Science

TRENT UNIVERSITY Peterborough, Ontario, Canada © Copyright by Sean Antaya 2018 Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies M.A. Graduate Program September 2018 ABSTRACT

Thesis Title: Struggling for a New Left: The New Tendency, Autonomist Marxism, and Rank- and-File Organizing in Windsor, Ontario during the 1970s

Author’s Name: Sean Antaya

Summary:

This study examines the emergence of the New Left organization, The New Tendency, in

Windsor, Ontario during the 1970s. The New Tendency, which developed in a number of

Ontario cities, represents one articulation of the Canadian New Left’s turn towards working-class organizing in the early 1970s after the student movement’s dissolution in the late 1960s.

Influenced by dissident Marxist theorists associated with the Johnson-Forest Tendency and

Italian workerism, The New Tendency sought to create alternative forms of working-class organizing that existed outside of, and often in direct opposition to, both the mainstream labour movement and Old Left organizations such as the Communist Party and the New Democratic

Party. After examining the roots of the organization and the important legacies of class struggle in Windsor, the thesis explores how The New Tendency contributed to working-class self activity on the shop-floor of Windsor’s auto factories and in the community more broadly.

However, this New Left mobilization was also hampered by inner-group sectarianism and a rapidly changing economic context. Ultimately, the challenges that coincided with The New

Tendency’s emergence in the 1970s led to its dissolution.

While short-lived, the history of the Windsor branch of The New Tendency helps provide valuable insight into the trajectory of the Canadian New Left and working-class struggle in the

1970s, highlighting experiences that have too often been overlooked in previous scholarship.

Furthermore, this study illustrates the transnational development of New Left ideas and organizations by examining The New Tendency’s close connections to comparable groups active

ii in manufacturing cities in Europe and the United States; such international relationships and exchanges were vital to the evolution of autonomist Marxism around the world. Finally, the

Windsor New Tendency’s history is an important case study of the New Left’s attempts to reckon with a transitional moment for global capitalism, as the group’s experiences coincided with the Fordist accord’s death throes and the beginning of neoliberalism’s ascendancy.

Keywords: New Left, Canada, labour, rank-and-file organizing, autonomist Marxism, working- class history, Windsor

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Acknowledgments

I never could have completed this thesis without the help that I received from others.

First, I must thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario

Graduate Scholarship Program, and Trent University for funding this project. I enjoyed my time at the Frost Centre and I am thankful to the many wonderful people who I got to meet and interact with during my time in the MA program. The administrative assistants at Kerr House,

Cathy Schoel and Jeannine Crowe, were always kind, helpful, and jocular. Furthermore, it was a pleasure working as a Teaching Assistant for James Onusko’s Ontario history course.

Sean Carleton and Julia Smith were kind enough to welcome me to Peterborough when I first arrived, and they soon introduced me to the Friday Happy Hour group and the Mad Batters softball team (Go Batters!). This great circle of friends lent me considerable support and prevented me from becoming too much of a recluse. Likewise, Mason Godden accompanied me for many late-night gaming sessions, and my oldest friend, Norman Nehmetallah, was always up for beer, baseball, and mild debauchery whenever I found myself in Toronto.

Himself an expert on Windsor labour history, Jeremy Milloy played an important role at the beginning of my project, offering sources, feedback on writing, and other insights. Our historical discussions were rivalled only by the intense deliberations on our beloved Detroit

Tigers and Toronto Maple Leafs. Gary Kinsman’s help proved indispensable. Gary kindly shared his collection of New Tendency documents and gave me detailed comments on some of my early writings on the group. I am also indebted to Jim Monk, Jim Brophy, Ron Baxter, and Mike

Longmoore – the former New Tendency members who were kind enough to speak with me about their experiences and continue to inspire me. I must also thank the staff who helped me at

Bata Library at Trent University, the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, the

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City of Windsor Community Archives at the Windsor Public Library, and the Thomas Fisher

Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.

My committee members, Dimitry Anastakis and Sam Gindin, proffered excellent critiques and suggestions, and asked challenging, but essential, questions during my examination. I am also grateful to Joan Sangster, whose Canadian history course was without a doubt the best class I have ever taken. Joan’s guidance and recommendations were vital for this project, particularly for my writings on the political and economic context of Windsor in the

1970s. In her role as Frost Centre director, Joan always took students’ issues seriously and was a great advocate to have on our side.

It was nothing short of an honour to work with Bryan Palmer, my supervisor. Bryan was incredibly generous with his time, knowledge, and vast book collection, and I enjoyed our many long discussions on labour history and left which often veered into the arcane. I wish him the very best in his so-called retirement, though I am thoroughly convinced he will continue to produce books and articles at a Stakhanovite pace.

Most importantly, I must thank my family. My parents are unflinching in their love and support and have always been willing to take my interests seriously – from punk rock to labour history. My grandparents have no doubt played an equal role in my development, fostering in me a deep love of books and history from a young age and providing a caring environment for me to grow up in. Finally, with much love I dedicate this thesis to Crystal Kelly, who puts up with me even when I am at my most curmudgeonly, and to our faithful pup, Arctic, who spent most of the writing process at my side and protects our garden from squirrels, cats, and skunks.

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Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………...ii

Acknowledgments……………………………...... iv

Table of Contents………………………………...vi

List of Acronyms………………………………..vii

Introduction……………………………………….1

Chapter 1………………………………………...10

Chapter 2………………………………………...35

Chapter 3………………………………………...74

Conclusion……………………………………...128

Bibliography…………………………………....135

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List of Acronyms:

AFL – American Federation of Labour

AWG – Auto Workers’ Group

CAW – Canadian Auto Workers

CCF – Co-operative Commonwealth Federation

CCL – Canadian Congress of Labour

CIO – Congress of Industrial Organizations

CLC – Canadian Labour Congress

CPC – Communist Party of Canada

CPC-ML – Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)

CPL – Canadian Party of Labour

CRC – Community Resource Centre

CUCND – Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

CUOE – Canadian Union of Operating Engineers

CUPE – Canadian Union of Public Employees

CUPW – Canadian Union of Postal Workers

CUS – Canadian Union of Students

DRUM – Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement

GM – General Motors

GWIC – Greater Windsor Industrial Commission

JFT – Johnson-Forest Tendency

LC – Lotta Continua (trans. Continuous Struggle)

LIP – Local Initiatives Program

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LRBW – League of Revolutionary Black Workers

MC – Militant Co-op

NCM – New Communist Movement

NDP – New Democratic Party

NLF – National Liberation Front

NT – The New Tendency

ODS – Out of the Driver’s Seat

OFY – Opportunities for Youth Grant

OLRB – Ontario Labour Relations Board

OPP – Ontario Provincial Police

PCI – Partito Communista Italiano (trans. Italian Communist Party)

PO – Potere Operaio (trans. Workers’ Power)

RCMP – Royal Canadian Mounted Police

RFAC – Rank-and-File Action Committee

RMG – Revolutionary Marxist Group

RUM – Revolutionary Union Movement

SAC – Student Administrative Council

SAWC – Struggle Against Work Collective

SNCC – Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

STO – Sojourner Truth Organization

SUPA – Student Union for Peace Action

SWC – Socialist Women’s Caucus

SWP – Socialist Workers’ Party

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TDU – Teamsters for a Democratic Union

TLC – The Labour Centre

WFH – Wages for Housework

WLG – Women’s Liberation Group

WOHIS – Windsor Occupational Health Information Service

WPAC – Windsor Political Action Committee

WP – Workers’ Party

WU – Workers’ Unity

WUW – Workers’ Unity Women

UAW – United Automobile Workers

UFW – United Farm Workers

UIC – Unemployment Insurance Commission

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1

Introduction

Within the last two years leftists across all of English Canada have moved more and more out of the universities in an attempt to develop working class politics. […] However, at a deeper level there seemed to exist a need and consequently a searching for a new approach to political organization, the crucial point being that, in practice, these groupings have rejected the two dominant conceptions of revolutionary change, the orthodox communist and the social democratic. – The New Tendency, “Towards a Newsletter,” 19731

The 1970s tend to be portrayed as a decade of reaction and retreat – a snuffing out of the so-called 1960s youthful idealism, the end of the Keynesian post-war boom, and the beginning of a reactionary neoliberal order.2 There is no doubt that the end of the 1970s was indeed characterized by a sharp right political turn, the consequences of which are still being felt today.

But such narratives overlook and mask the incredibly rich struggle from below waged throughout the decade by men and women who envisioned a very different future, characterized not by brutal inequality, a withering of workers’ power, and imperialist wars, but by higher wages, better working conditions, and ever-improving social services. Contrary to labour’s decline, then, the 1970s was in fact a decade of sustained worker militancy at a rate that has not been matched since.3

1 “Towards a Newsletter,” The Newsletter 1 (1973): 1. 2 A recent corrective to this narrative, albeit in an American context, is Lane Windham, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017). Windham notes that even the widely praised Jefferson Cowie largely interprets the 1970s as a period of labour’s decline, despite continued militancy throughout the decade and the fact that the number of workers voting in National Labour Relations Board elections remained high until the 1980s. Moreover, public sector unions gained ground during this period and, in many cases, these workforces were disproportionately composed of women and racialized people who were often just beginning to reap the benefits of union membership for the first time. See Windham, Knocking on Labor’s Door 3-9. While Cowie does capture some of the spirit of rank-and-file militancy in major events like Lordstown and organizations like the United Farm Workers and United Mine Workers of America, he also has a narrow political focus filtered entirely through the lens of presidential campaigns and the decline of the Democratic Party. Radical alternatives are ignored or dismissed, and the experiences of the New Left, which for much of the decade was still quite vibrant, are thus written out of his narrative. See Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: The New Press, 2010). 3 See Chapter 1 for a longer discussion on this theme.

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These working-class struggles signalled different things to different people. Some were no doubt waged to secure gradual, but materially meaningful, palliative reforms. Others saw in the class conflicts of the 1970s the possibility of proletarian revolution, the radical extension of democracy over all aspects of social and economic life, and the total liberation of human potential from the fetters of the capitalist workplace. Among this latter contingent was a revitalized New Left that turned its focus towards Marxism and turbulent workplace organizing after the decline and dissipation of the student movement and a meandering search for new revolutionary subjects. At the same time, this New Left struggled with the failures of its predecessors, instead hoping to develop a praxis that would transcend earlier errors and take advantage of the window for radical change that appeared to be open. Indeed, for many on the left, this was the last historic conjuncture in which world revolution seemed truly achievable, a belief that many present-day readers might find simply incomprehensible.4

Canadian historians have only relatively recently begun to examine the role of the New

Left in Canadian workplaces during the 1970s in any great depth. Most prominent is Ian

Milligan’s Rebel Youth, which examines the New Left’s engagement with the labour movement throughout the long 1960s, and shows how many New Leftists often ended up reconciling their differences with the mainstream labour movement in an attempt to reinvigorate it from within.5

4 This brings to mind, for example, Mark Fisher’s famous paraphrase of Slavoj Zizek and Frederic Jameson, that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” See Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (New Alresford: Zero Books, 2009), 1. 5 Ian Milligan, Rebel Youth: 1960s Labour Unrest, Young Workers, and New Leftists in English Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014). Interestingly, much of the writing on labour and the New Left in the 1970s addresses women workers. Writing on women and labour in the 1970s includes Joan Sangster, Remembering Texpack: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Militancy in Canadian Unions in the 1970s,” Studies in Political Economy 78 (2006): 41-66; Julia Smith, “An ‘Entirely Different’ Kind of Union: The Service, Office, and Retail Workers’ Union of Canada (SORWUC), 1972-1986,” Labour/Le Travail 73 (2014): 23-65; Meg Luxton, “Feminism as a Class Act: Working-Class Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Canada,” Labour/Le Travail 48 (2001): 63-88; Joan Sangster, “Debating Maternity Rights: Pacific Western Airlines and Flight Attendants’ Struggles to ‘Fly Pregnant’ in the 1970s,” in Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker, eds., Work on Trial: Canadian Labour Law Struggles (Toronto: The Osgoode Society for Legal History, 2010), 283-314; and Heather Jon Maroney, “Feminism at Work,” New Left Review 141 (1983): 51-71. See Chapter 2 for a more detailed discussion on the Canadian New Left.

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However, as Bryan Palmer notes in a review of the book, while Milligan correctly identifies the

New Left turn towards Marxism, the working-class, and ultimately the mainstream labour movement during this period, he largely ignores those organizations on the revolutionary left that attempted to engage with the working class outside of, and quite often in opposition to, the official labour movement. As a result, both the successes and, more often, the failures from these endeavors remain largely unexplored.6 Operating from within the same Thompsonian tradition as

Palmer, I likewise believe it is worthwhile to rescue such overlooked organizations from the oft- referenced “enormous condescension of posterity.”7 These were people who, contra Margaret

Thatcher and her later acolytes, dared to demonstrate that there is an alternative and that it is indeed worth fighting for.

If Palmer focuses on the absence of Maoist and Trotskyist groups from Milligan’s analysis, other left groups could also be added to the list of revolutionaries too often left out of analyses of the 1970s, including those who gravitated to what might be called ‘autonomist’

Marxist positions. Though short-lived in Canada, autonomist Marxism emerged amidst wide- spread labour unrest in manufacturing cities around the world and posed a unique challenge

‘from below’ to the bureaucratic politics of the Old Left and mainstream labour unions. The most prominent Canadian group espousing autonomist Marxism during the 1970s was The New

Tendency. More of a loose affiliation of smaller groups based in Toronto, Windsor, Winnipeg, and Kitchener-Waterloo than a singular unitary body, The New Tendency only actually existed from 1973-1975 before succumbing to organizational splits which had loomed over the group

6 Bryan Palmer, “Rebel Youth offers depth but lacks dimension,” Canadian Dimension 50, No. 3 (2016), retrieved at: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/rebel-youth-offers-depth-but-lacks-dimension 7 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Middlesex: Penguin, 1968), 13.

4 from the very beginning. Nonetheless, during its short existence the group acted as the Canadian reflection of autonomist Marxism’s global historical moment.

Each city-based branch of The New Tendency embraced somewhat distinct theoretical perspectives, but the organization was linked by a few shared positions. First, while both cognizant and a part of the aforementioned New Left turn towards the working-class, The New

Tendency criticized not only the Old Left represented by the Communist Party of Canada (CPC),

New Democratic Party (NDP), and the established trade unions, but also the New Leftists who moved towards a rejuvenated Leninist politics represented by Trotskyist and Maoist organizations and also those who endorsed entryism or reform within the NDP, such as the

Waffle.8 Despite the vast differences between the various groups that they critiqued, The New

Tendency saw all Leninist and social-democratic groups as essentially vanguardist and bureaucratic, and instead sought to harness workers’ spontaneity and direct action at the point of production. At the same time, all of the branches (at least at the beginning) saw themselves as revolutionary Marxists and not anarchists; they instead looked towards groups such as Facing

Reality in Detroit, Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio in Italy, and Big Flame in England for inspiration, all of whom they correctly saw as essentially part of the same emerging anti- vanguardist politics.9

There has been something of a resurgent interest in autonomist Marxism in recent years in the wake of the left’s inability to formulate an effective resistance to the contemporary neoliberal order. Historical writing, such as Steve Wright’s recently reissued account of Italian workerism and Michael Staudenmaier’s chronicle of the Sojourner Truth Organization, has been joined by journals such as Viewpoint, Endnotes, and Insurgent Notes which have attempted to

8 “Towards a Newsletter,” The Newsletter 1 (1973): 1-3. 9 “Towards a Newsletter,” 7.

5 grapple with the varying legacies of autonomism and left communism and gauge the applicability of these traditions for a new era.10 As Wright notes in the new postscript to

Storming Heaven, Viewpoint, which first emerged out of the editorial collective’s engagement with the Occupy movement, has done considerable work translating many autonomist texts for the first time and recirculating obscure older texts which have had limited availability.11 In

Canada, former New Tendency member John Huot has written about some of his experiences with the Toronto branch of the organization in the anarchist journal, Upping the Anti, while historian Gary Kinsman has gathered together an impressive collection of documents and interviews with former New Tendency members in the hopes of producing a full-length book on the subject.12 Despite this renewed interest, there is still much to uncover in the history of the autonomist movement and the New Left in Canada more broadly.

This study seeks to examine the Windsor Labour Centre, which functioned as the local branch of The New Tendency. Though never numbering more than approximately 25 dedicated members, the Labour Centre had a comparatively outsized influence in the community. Relying primarily on newsletters, leaflets, newspaper coverage, and internal documents, alongside interviews conducted with some of the most active members of the organization, it is possible to reconstruct the experiences of this once vibrant revolutionary organization which was active on the shop-floors of Windsor’s auto-factories and in the community more broadly. In the process,

10 Steve Wright, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 2017); and Michael Staudenmaier, Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization 1969-1989 (Oakland: AK Press, 2012). See also Nicola Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalism: Labor Migration, Radical Struggle, and Urban Change in Detroit and Turin (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013); and Robert Lumley, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 (London: Verso, 1990). 11 Wright, Storming Heaven, 216-217. 12 See John Huot, “Autonomist Marxism and Workplace Organizing in Canada in the 1970s,” Upping the Anti 18 (2016), retrieved at: http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/18-autonomist-marxism/. See also Gary Kinsman, “Recovering the History of Canadian Autonomist Marxism,” Upping the Anti 19 (2017), retrieved at: http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/19-recovering-the-history-of-canadian-autonomist-marxism/

6 one particular, place-based manifestation of the New Left’s working-class politics is revealed, its brief history indicative of an attempt to revitalize the traditions of a militant working-class city and confront an ossified labour bureaucracy that no longer seemed to reflect the will of the rank- and-file. Outside the factories, the group sought to organize working-class women and other oppressed groups in the community and approached this social movement organizing work from a class-based perspective. These community initiatives often consisted of attempts at institution building, revealing the challenges that New Leftists faced as they sought to create alternative spaces of resistance in the city. Furthermore, despite the local nature of this study, The New

Tendency’s history is also profoundly transnational and reveals much about the ways that ideas, political organizations, and social movements emerge on a global level, as The New Tendency forged significant linkages with counterparts in Europe and the United States.

In addition to this history’s relevance to labour, the left, and the 1970s, it is worthwhile to examine these particular struggles in Windsor for a number of reasons. First, Windsor was, and remains however precariously, an essential hub of the Canadian automotive industry. The auto industry and its workers played a central role in the development of 20th century capitalism and class conflict in North America, as evidenced by the very concepts of Fordism and post-Fordism that tend to dominate political economy literature. Additionally, as Antonio Gramsci observed nearly 100 years ago, auto factories in many ways represent capitalism’s most highly organized and advanced productive capabilities.13 Though one should be careful not to overemphasize the importance of factory workers within the working-class as the early Italian autonomists were sometimes wont to do, it is hard to deny that there is something about the mechanized factory setting, with its automation, high division of labour, and utter dehumanization that seems to

13 Antonio Gramsci, “Americanism and Fordism,” in Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds., Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: The Electric Book Company, 1999), 558-622.

7 simultaneously evoke both the innovative potential and sheer brutality of capitalist social relations. Reiterating an older Marxist argument, Mike Davis notes in a recent article for

Catalyst, that it is precisely these conditions within the industrial factory system, “which organizes the workforce as a synchronized collectivity that through struggle and conscious organization can become a community of solidarity.”14 While much of this production has now moved elsewhere, it follows that if one seeks to understand the inner workings of capitalism and class conflict in Canada, investigating the auto industry and the experiences of auto workers over the course of the 20th century produces valuable insights.

Likewise, as A.C. Jones has argued, the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) represents the “vanguard” of the labour movement in some respects, as “its successes marked the progress of the movement, its failures its retreats.”15 Though Jones was referring to the American labour movement, the quotation could just as easily apply to Canada. To understand the strengths and weaknesses of the Canadian labour movement over time, the once-mighty UAW/CAW (now

Unifor), the workplaces that it operated within, and the union’s relationship with the rank-and- file all ought to be important areas of research. At the same time, investigating both the organizations and spontaneous revolts which challenged the UAW’s legitimacy as the sole arbiter of workers’ struggles on the shop-floor extends understandings of working-class resistance and the consciousness of the rank-and-file, complimenting conventional studies of union history. If Detroit’s auto industry and the conditions of workplace resistance in the 1960s and 1970s have been the subject of numerous studies, little has been published on Windsor’s

14 Mike Davis, “Old Gods, New Enigmas,” Catalyst 1, no. 2 (2017): 21. 15 A.C. Jones, “Rank-and-File Opposition in the UAW During the Long 1970s,” in Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, Cal Winslow, eds., Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s (New York: Verso, 2010), 282; See also John Barnard, American Vanguard: The United Auto Workers Union During the Reuther Years, 1935-1970 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004).

8 working-class self-activity during the same period.16 A study of The New Tendency thus takes us into this largely uncharted territory.

This study begins with an examination of the material conditions of Windsor in the 1970s and the history of the auto industry, the labour movement, and the left within the city, before moving to a discussion on the post-war Fordist accord and its limitations. It then looks to the student New Left, where many New Tendency members first cut their teeth organizing. Chapter

2 chronicles the subsequent New Left turn to Marxism and workplace organizing in the early

1970s by examining Workers’ Unity, a radical rank-and-file organization at Chrysler in the early

1970s, and the Community Resource Centre, a left-wing Windsor bookstore that New Left activists established during the same period. Both projects represented important organizing experience for former student militants and forged a milieu for what would become the Windsor

Labour Centre. The third chapter discusses the intellectual roots of The New Tendency in the

Johnson-Forest Tendency and Italian workerism, allowing for an examination of the Labour

Centre’s impact in Windsor and beyond. The chapter subsequently explores the organization’s multifaceted working groups, revealing the strengths and weaknesses of the differing theoretical approaches operative within the organization. Throughout, the study also highlights the

16 Instead, most of the labour literature on Windsor tends to focus on the 1945 Ford Strike and the resulting Rand formula. See, for example, Herb Colling, Ninety-Nine Days: The Ford Strike in Windsor, 1945 (Toronto: NC Press, 1995); Mary E. Baruth-Walsh and G. Mark Walsh, Strike: 99 Days on the Line (Manotick: Penumbra Press, 1995); Sam Gindin, The Canadian Auto Workers: The Birth and Transformation of a Union (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1995), 98-105; David Moulton, “Ford Windsor 1945,” in Irving Abella, ed., On Strike: Six Key Labour Struggles in Canada 1919-1949 (Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1975), 129-162; Irving Abella, Nationalism Communism and Canadian Labour: The CIO, the Communist Party, and the Canadian Congress of Labour 1935-1956 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 144-148; and William Kaplan, “How Justice Rand Devised His Famous Formula,” in Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker, eds., Work on Trial: Canadian Labour Law Struggles (Toronto: The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2010), 77-110. For a study which examines class struggle in Windsor during the period prior to the Ford Strike, see John Manley, “Communists and Auto Workers: The Struggle for Industrial Unionism in the Canadian Automobile Industry, 1925-36,” Labour/Le Travail 17 (1986): 105-133. One notable exception which does examine the 1970s is Jeremy Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Violence at Work in the North American Auto Industry, 1960-80 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017). The labour literature which exists on Windsor and Detroit is further discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, respectively.

9 international context in which the Labour Centre and New Tendency emerged and developed, as the group engaged with a network of theorists that spanned both the Detroit River and the

Atlantic Ocean. The conclusion offers a discussion on the legacies of The New Tendency and its broader historical significance.

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Chapter 1

This chapter seeks to contextualize the socio-economic and political conditions from which The New Tendency emerged in Windsor. The first part of the chapter examines the industrial structure of Windsor in the 1970s and the historical legacy of open class-conflict between labour and capital in the Windsor area. After tracing the development of the auto- industry and its centrality within Windsor’s economy, it then looks at the Communist Party’s influence on the development of Windsor’s militant UAW locals, which fostered a climate of mass labour resistance in the area culminating in the 1945 Ford Strike. The strike, in turn, led to the famous Rand Formula which helped set the parameters of the post-war Fordist accord between capital, labour, and the state. The constraints of this accord then led to the re-emergence of widespread militancy in the 1960s, largely driven by a younger generation of workers both across Canada and in Windsor specifically. It was this wave of militancy that shaped the politics of The New Tendency and which members of The New Tendency participated in and sought to develop into a coherent mass revolutionary movement.

The second part of this chapter examines the student-based New Left in Windsor during the 1960s and early 1970s where many New Tendency members first became politicized. The student activist scene on the University of Windsor campus gave New Leftists their first organizing experiences that later informed their work in The New Tendency. This section also highlights the younger high-school activists in the area who were politicized through their own student organizing and then later through involvement in the Catholic Left. These different strands – the older auto-worker radicals disenchanted by the degeneration of the labour bureaucracy, the University activists, and those who became politicized through the religious left

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– all eventually linked-up to form the basis of the Windsor Labour Centre and The New

Tendency.

* * *

Like the rest of Canada, Windsor experienced a massive population increase in the post- war period. By 1971, the population of the Windsor Metropolitan Area ballooned to 258,655 from 120,049 in 1951, and during the 1960s alone, the city proper nearly doubled its population from 114,367 in 1961 to 203,300 in 1971.1 While part of this growth was due to high birth rates tied to the post-war baby boom, it was also the result of the city annexing nearby municipalities, thereby reflecting another significant post-war trend of rapidly expanding urban centers.2 In

Windsor, both the post-war baby boom and annexation ended in the late 60s, and as a result its population numbers remained mostly static through the 1970s.3 While Windsor now featured its own university and community college, for many Windsorites the most seemingly surefire way to reap the benefits of post-war prosperity was to obtain a job in one of Windsor’s auto factories.

The automotive industry has long been the heart of the Windsor economy. Aided by

Windsor’s geographical proximity to Detroit, Ford was the first auto manufacturer to come to the city when it established a branch plant in 1904 to circumvent tariffs by converting an older wagon factory to auto production.4 Both General Motors (GM) and Chrysler established factories

1 For Census Metropolitan Area data see Statistics Canada, Population Characteristics by Census Tracts, 1951 (Ottawa, 1951); and Statistics Canada, Population Characteristics by Census Tracts, 1971 (Ottawa, 1971). For city proper data see Windsor, Essex County Local Government Restructuring Study, Research Report #1, The Social and Economic Environment (City of Windsor, 1974), pp. 4, Records of the City Clerk’s Department 1874-1993, City of Windsor Community Archives (hereafter CWCA), RG2-AVI 201. 2 Essex County Local Government Restructuring Study, 6. 3 Statistics Canada, Population and Housing Characteristics, Windsor, 1976 (Ottawa, 1976); and Statistics Canada, Selected Population, Dwelling, Household, and Family Distributions, Showing Selected Social and Economic Characteristics, for Census Tracts, 1981, (Ottawa, 1981). 4 David Fraser, “Years of Struggle: A History of Local 200 of the United Automobile Workers of America at Ford of Canada, Windsor, Ontario, 1941 to 1955,” MA Thesis, University of Western Ontario (1983), 20; and Mary E. Baruth-Walsh and G. Mark Walsh, Strike: 99 Days on the Line (Manotick: Penumbra Press, 1995), 11.

12 in the city limits by the 1920s. In the post-war era, Windsor manufacturing peaked at nearly

37,000 workers in the sector in 1953.5 However, by the early 1960s, the auto industry was beginning to move out of Windsor, and manufacturing declined to 21,000 workers.6 A large part of this decline was the result of Ford moving much of its production to Oakville. While Ford employed 12,000 workers in Windsor in 1951, by 1961 this number plummeted to 4000.7

Perhaps unsurprisingly, city officials saw unemployment as the most significant economic issue threatening the city during this time of uncertainty.8

Following this brief period of deindustrialization, Windsor’s auto industry became a prime beneficiary of the 1965 auto pact between Canada and the United States. Though the auto pact had been negotiated under the guise of trade liberalization, the agreement contained provisions that guaranteed increased investment specifically for the Canadian auto industry and

Windsor benefitted from this massive influx of capital.9 Though 1600 Ford workers in Windsor were initially laid off due to restructuring, Ford and Chrysler both expanded their Windsor operations in 1965, as did many of the parts manufacturers in the area.10 GM also moved the rest of its trim work to Windsor from Oshawa in the latter half of the 1960s, though the company began part of this process prior to the signing of the auto pact.11 Overall, Windsor saw capital

5 The number of 37,000 in 1953 comes from UAW, Comments on the Memorandum on Industry Location Presented to the Government of Ontario by the United Automobile Workers, (Windsor, 1963), pp. B1, Windsor-Essex County Development Commission Fonds (hereafter WDCF), CWCA, RG12-B6. However, the Windsor Economic Committee claimed that there were as many as 43,000 manufacturing workers in 1953 in their report, Windsor Economic Committee, 1963 Windsor Economic Committee Report, (Windsor, 1963), WDCF, CWCA, RG12-B5. 6 Similar discrepancies exist for the 1961 numbers. The UAW reported 21,000 manufacturing workers for 1961, while the Windsor Economic Committee reported 27,000 workers. In any case, the peaks and troughs occurred in the same years in both reports. See UAW, Comments on the Memorandum on Industry; and Windsor Economic Committee, 1963 Report. 7 UAW, Comments on the Memorandum on Industry, 1. 8 Windsor Economic Committee, 1963 Report. 9 Dimitry Anastakis, Auto Pact: Creating a Borderless North American Auto Industry, 1960-1971 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 124-125. 10 Anastakis, Auto Pact, 125-126. 11 Pamela Sugiman, Labour’s Dilemma: The Gender Politics of Auto Workers in Canada, 1937-1979 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 138.

13 investment for the purposes of manufacturing expansion increase each year from 1967 to 1970, with investment in 1970 culminating at $149 million.12

Capital investment in Windsor continued into the early 1970s, as the area enjoyed a period of relative prosperity evidenced by higher incomes than the Ontario average, a high degree of vehicle ownership, and the construction of over a thousand new residential units each year from 1967-1971.13 The Greater Windsor Industrial Commission (GWIC) reported that 54 plant expansions took place in 1971 alone, with the biggest expansions taking place at the Big

Three auto factories and many of the others at tool and die shops associated with auto production.14 Moreover, fifteen new manufacturing plants were built in Windsor that year, though only half were directly related to the auto industry.15 In terms of the number of jobs and economic output, it seems quite evident that the auto pact was a net benefit for Windsor’s manufacturing sector.16 By 1971, the Census reported that Windsor had 34,840 workers employed in manufacturing representing approximately 37% of Windsor’s workforce – clearly an impressive rebound from the dire circumstances of 1961.17 Though the manufacturing workforce contracted at times throughout the decade, particularly in response to the oil crises in

1973 and 1979, this number emerged nearly identical in 1981 at 34,910.18 Additionally, annual manufacturing output doubled from its pre-auto pact numbers to $2 billion, which, as the GWIC

12 Greater Windsor Industrial Commission (GWIC), 1971 Annual Report, (Windsor, 1972), 9. 13 Information on income and car ownership relative to the Ontario average was found in Essex County Local Government Restructuring Study, 55. Information on residential units was found in, GWIC, 1971 Annual Report, 9. 14 GWIC, 1971 Annual Report, 1. 15 GWIC, 1971 Annual Report, 1. 16 In addition to the evidence from statistics from census and city documents that I cite in this section, this has been confirmed by other scholars. See, for example, Herb Colling, “The Automotive Industry in Windsor,” in Maureen Irish, ed., The Auto Pact: Investment, Labour, and the WTO, (New York: Kluwer Law International, 2004), 47-49. 17 Statistics Canada, Labour Force (1) 15 Years and Over, By Detailed Industry Showing (A) Age Groups, (B) Wage- Earners by Age Groups, (C) Self-Employed and (D) Number Born Outside of Canada by Sex for Census Metropolitan Areas (Place of Residence) 1971, (Ottawa, 1971). 18 For a city document that mentions the impact of the recession on Windsor, see Essex County Local Government Restructuring Study, 69. For 1981 manufacturing statistics, see Statistics Canada, Selected Population, 1981.

14 boasted in 1972, “was greater than six of Canada’s ten provinces.”19 Now, however, this production was increasingly geared for export to the United States which left Windsor particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in the US economy.20

The Windsor auto plants themselves have long been sites of open class conflict, and by the 1970s there was already a notable legacy of rank-and-file militancy amongst the workforce.

Even prior to the UAW establishing itself in the area, the short lived Communist Party of Canada

(CPC)-affiliated Automobile Workers Industrial Union was formed in Windsor in 1928.21 When the UAW did come to Canada in 1936, its first local, Local 195, was established at Kelsey Wheel in Windsor.22 Soon joined by Local 200 at Ford Windsor, the UAW local executives in Windsor were predominately CPC members and independent radical socialists prior to the post-war purging of communists and radicals from the Canadian labour movement.23 The Canadian

UAW’s first strike action occurred in December of 1936; James Napier and the other founding radicals in Local 195 organized a sit-down strike, partially in sympathy for striking Local 174 at

19 Greater Windsor Industrial Commission, Windsor and Essex County: A Community and its People (Windsor: Windsor Publications, 1972), 4. 20 This vulnerability was discussed in, Essex County Local Government Restructuring Study, 45-46. It also noted, for example, that 58% of Windsor’s manufacturing production was exported to the United States in 1968. 21 Sam Gindin, The Canadian Auto Workers: The Birth and Transformation of a Union (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1995), 26-27. For a longer discussion on the CPC’s organizing role in Windsor’s auto industry during this period, see John Manley, “Communists and Auto Workers: The Struggle for Industrial Unionism in the Canadian Automobile Industry, 1925-36,” Labour/Le Travail 17 (1986): 105-133. 22 Gindin, The Canadian Auto Workers, 56. For an autobiographical account of the early UAW in Windsor, see J.S. Napier, Memories of Building the UAW (Toronto: Canadian Party of Labour, 1975). While unabashedly partisan, these short memoirs provide an excellent window into the early years of the UAW in Canada and the internal factionalism between the Communists and social-democrats. 23 Communists and radical socialists were allied within the UAW’s left-wing Unity caucus to oppose the Co- operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF)-affiliated Progressive caucus led in Canada by Charles Millard which represented the right wing of the Canadian labour movement. See Irving Abella, Nationalism Communism and Canadian Labour: The CIO, the Communist Party, and the Canadian Congress of Labour 1935-1956 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 30-31, 49. While Local 200’s executive was predominately made up of independent radicals and Communist sympathizers, Local 195 was more openly Communist. However, both locals were affiliated with the Unity caucus. It should also be noted that the Communist influence in the unions was not simply a matter of entry into executive positions. Rather, the Communists and radicals had done much of the actual organizing work and had an organic connection to and support from the rank-and-file ‘from below.’ See Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 77-78, 87.

15

Kelsey Wheel in Detroit, led by President of Local 174, Walter Reuther, and partially to win their own recognition. Local 195’s sit-down suffered an initial defeat when the five main organizers were fired, but the local ultimately continued to gather strength in the strike’s aftermath.24

After gradually building support for the UAW throughout the Second World War, the most impressive manifestation of Windsor workers’ militancy in the immediate post-war era was the 1945 Ford Strike. The strike has been discussed at length elsewhere, but it is worth briefly summarizing here to contextualize the rank-and-file militancy that eventually re-emerged in

Windsor during the late 1960s. The actions that workers and union leaders took during the strike greatly influenced the ways by which Windsor workers were subsequently perceived by capital and the state.25 Moreover, if one is to understand how Windsor workers challenged the post-war accord, one must first examine how their actions helped to establish it in the first place. Finally, the history of the 1945 strike remained the high-water mark of the Canadian UAW in the eyes of the older auto-worker radicals and dissident CPCers who later associated with and mentored the younger New Tendency militants; this watershed event in Canadian labour history thus loomed large in the collective memory of working-class resistance in Windsor.

The purpose of the 1945 strike was to win union recognition for Local 200 at Ford

Windsor and to implement automatic dues check-off for the workers there. Though Local 200 led a successful organizing drive at Ford Windsor in 1941 and signed a collective agreement

24 Napier, Memories of Building the UAW, 10-17. 25 For research on the 1945 strike see, in addition to the aforementioned works by Fraser, Baruth-Walsh and Walsh, Napier, and Gindin, Stephen Cako, “Labour’s Struggle for Union Security: The Ford of Canada Strike, Windsor, 1945, MA Thesis, University of Guelph (1971); David Moulton, “Ford Windsor 1945,” in Irving Abella, ed., On Strike: Six Key Labour Struggles in Canada 1919-1949, (Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1975), 129-162; Herb Colling, Ninety-Nine Days: The Ford Strike in Windsor, 1945 (Toronto: NC Press, 1995); and William Kaplan, “How Justice Rand Devised His Famous Formula,” in Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker, eds., Work on Trial: Canadian Labour Law Struggles (Toronto: The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2010), 77-110.

16 with the company in 1942, management brazenly ignored the union’s legitimacy, resulting in several wildcats in the subsequent years.26 In response to Ford’s attempt to undermine the union during the 1945 negotiations, workers walked out on September 12, 1945. They received a great deal of support from the greater Windsor community, with various community groups and unions, including Local 195, joining Local 200 on the picket lines in sympathy strikes; Windsor mayor Art Reaume attempted to prevent Windsor police from interfering with the dispute.27

Local restaurants and farmers from the surrounding Essex County donated food to the strikers, while women’s auxiliaries cooked for the strikers and marched on the picket lines themselves.28

Even petty-bourgeois elements got in on the action, as 97 small business owners wrote a letter of support to the strikers published in The Windsor Star.29

The strike also enjoyed substantial support from the broader labour movement rank-and- file and the left outside of Windsor, as Local 200 received $240 000 in donations from across

Canada, though the moderate Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL) executives themselves were somewhat more lukewarm in their support.30 In the House of Commons, strikers found an advocate in Labour-Progressive Party (Communist) MP Fred Rose who grilled Labour Minister

Humphrey Mitchell for his support of Ford Windsor President Wallace Mitchell, while in the

26 The question of whether to support the wildcat strikes was the subject of controversy within the Canadian branch of the UAW. Canadian unions felt no particular affinity to honoring the UAW’s no-strike pledge because Canadian unions never received a union-security clause akin to the one in the US in exchange for the pledge, and George Burt, Canadian director of the UAW, secured an exemption from the international UAW. However, the Communists in the UAW opposed the strikes to support the military defense of the Soviet Union which, to the CPC in this period, took precedence over local struggles. See Moulton, “Ford Windsor 1945,” 132-133 and Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 56-57. 27 Moulton, “Ford Windsor 1945,” 137, 141. 28 Baruth-Walsh and Walsh, Strike: 99 Days, 56-60, and Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 90. 29 Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 90. It should be noted that the local Chamber of Commerce was still wholeheartedly against the strikers. See Cako, “Labour’s Struggle,” 69. 30 Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 90-91. This hurt the credibility of the CCF-aligned executive, whereas the Communists gained recognition and respect for their unabashed support of the strike. See Cako, “Labour’s Struggle,” 122.

17 cultural realm, the famed Communist singer and actor Paul Robeson came to Windsor to perform a benefit concert, raising money for Christmas presents for the strikers’ children.31

The strikers’ most noteworthy action came when the provincial and federal governments respectively sent OPP and RCMP officers to break the strike after the union became progressively more militant, first refusing to allow technicians through the pickets to service the power station and then barring watchmen from monitoring the plants.32 To prevent what would have almost certainly been a vicious battle with the police, the strikers created a massive blockade of up to 2000 parked cars in front of the plant by hemming in commuters and thereby preventing the police and strikebreakers from accessing the plant.33 Suggested by Canadian

Director of the UAW, George Burt, UAW Local 600 previously used this tactic successfully during their own struggles with Ford in Dearborn.34 Furthermore, Roy England and Alex Parent, the Communist presidents of Local 200 and Local 195, attempted to initiate a Canada-wide single day sympathy strike, though this was less successful than they hoped because the moderate social-democrat leaders of the CCL refused to support it.35 The union eventually

31 On Rose’s support see Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 92. On Robeson, see Baruth-Walsh and Walsh, Strike: 99 Days, 106. 32 Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 92-93. 33 Moulton, “Ford Windsor 1945,” 141. 34 Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 97. 35 On the attempted sympathy strike see Moulton, “Ford Windsor 1945,” 143. On the presidents’ political affiliations see Kaplan, “How Justice Rand Devised His Famous Formula,” 78-81, and Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 49, 57. Whether or not England was actually a Communist is subject to some debate. Although earlier studies such as Fraser’s insisted that England was not a Communist despite his affiliations and the general prevalence of Communists on the local executives, Kaplan suggests that both presidents were in fact members of the CPC, though only Alex Parent was open about his membership. In a certain sense, it matters little whether or not England was in fact a card-carrying member of the CPC because whatever his official affiliation with the party, he was certainly a member of the Unity caucus alongside radicals and Communists and more or less adhered to the Communist ‘line’ in this period. Cako suggests that the Communists’ attempt at a general strike in 1945 contributed to the CCFers’ eagerness to purge the radicals from the UAW in the Ford strike’s immediate aftermath. See Cako, “Labour’s Struggle,” 122.

18 agreed to end the strike if the company accepted binding arbitration, though not without a significant portion of the workers initially voting to maintain the pickets.36

Justice Ivan Rand was appointed as arbitrator and devised the well-known ‘Rand

Formula,’ to settle the dispute. Despite some concerns about Communists’ involvement in the strike, Rand acquiesced to the union’s main demand, and declared dues check-offs henceforth mandatory for all workers working in a union shop whether or not all workers were members of the union.37 However, as part of the compromise, Rand further penalized the act of striking during the life of a collective agreement, which severely limited union power on the shop-floor.38

Though wildcat strikes were already made illegal in Privy Council Order 1003, Rand made such actions more punitive for unions by allowing employers to suspend dues check-offs during illegal strikes.39 It was thus largely from Rand’s formula in response to the labour militants in

Windsor that the post-war accord between capital, labour, and the state came to pass.40

This compromise essentially forced union officials to “police” the terms of the collective agreement on the shop-floor, and to discourage the kinds of everyday direct action that was once a vital part of union strategy.41 This process played itself out in Windsor when

Local 200 leaders suppressed numerous wildcats in the early 1950s after the most influential militant members of the local were fired during a 1951 wildcat.42 In addition to these new restrictions on militants which changed the union’s relationship to direct action, the now-

36 Moulton, “Ford Windsor 1945,” 146-147. 37 Kaplan, “How Justice Rand Devised His Famous Formula,” 92-97. 38 Kaplan, “How Justice Rand Devised His Famous Formula,” 100, 101. 39 Kaplan, “How Justice Rand Devised His Famous Formula,” 102. 40 At the same time, it is important not to undermine the significance of the earlier PC-1003 and the American Wagner Act on which it was modeled. See, for example, the collection, Cy Gonick, Paul Phillips, and Jesse Vorst, eds., Labour Gains, Labour Pains: 50 Years of PC 1003 (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1995). 41 Bryan Palmer, Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 214. 42 Don Wells, “The Impact of the Postwar Compromise on Canadian Unionism: The Formation of an Auto Worker Local in the 1950s,” Labour/Le Travail 36 (1995): 154; and Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 148-150.

19 president Walter Reuther and other social-democrats aggressively purged the UAW of

Communists and radicals at the behest of the American and Canadian states – effectively enforcing a “one-party rule” within the union.43 Other erstwhile militants, such as Roy England, escaped purges but became more moderate and more firmly entrenched in the emerging labour bureaucracy.44 Further still, Reuther’s centralized “pattern bargaining” system jettisoned disputes over shop-floor conditions and management rights in favor of wage gains and material benefits, thereby subverting any demands that would pose a true challenge to capitalist social relations.45

In Canada, this bureaucratic degeneration was solidified once George Burt, who had hitherto been associated with the radical Unity caucus, eventually complied with Reuther’s purge. This sent a particularly powerful message to unionists in Windsor, where Communists had largely built and led the locals from the beginning.46 In Windsor, the first victims were the Communists on the Local 195 executive, who faced an all-out propaganda war backed by the international union filled with extreme red-baiting and intimidation.47 The post-war compromise therefore largely succeeded in integrating organized labour (or at least its most influential bureaucrats) into the capitalist system. The consequences of this faustian pact would not be fully felt until the rank and file revolts of the mid-1960s and 1970s.

43 The post-war purge is well documented. See Abella, Nationalism Communism and Canadian Labour, 164-166; Gindin, The Canadian Auto Workers, 121-126; and Charlotte Yates, From Plant to Politics: The Autoworkers’ Union in Postwar Canada (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993). 44 Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 148-150. 45 Gindin, The Canadian Auto Workers, 112-120; Wells, “The Impact of the Postwar Compromise on Canadian Unionism,” 151. 46 Abella, Nationalism Communism and Canadian Labour,164-166. 47 Gindin, The Canadian Auto Workers, 126. In particular, Napier explains that Burt helped the right-wing Catholic Action group gain control of Local 195’s executive in 1946 at Reuther’s behest. Catholic Action and the CCF agreed to collaborate to purge the Communists from the UAW. See Napier, Memories of Building the UAW, 61-62 and Cako, “Labour’s Struggle,” 122-128. This, of course, is just one example of many similar actions by the social- democrat faction in this period.

20

It should, however, be noted that this process happened somewhat unevenly in Windsor, and radicals were able to retain a small, but still influential, degree of diminished influence in the post-war era. Even after the purging of militants, Local 200, for example, successfully waged a grueling 112 day strike in 1954 to preserve seniority rights, and independent radical Victor

White managed to briefly serve as the local’s president in the late 1950s.48 Moreover, in 1956, the then-radical Charlie Brooks split Local 444, representing Chrysler workers, from the more conservative Local 195 to much fanfare, though he too would eventually succumb to certain bureaucratic tendencies.49 The Windsor and District Labour Council also retained a left-wing orientation well into the 1970s, as older militants like White, Nels Dearing, John MacArthur, and

Ed Baillargeon retained influential positions.50

Perhaps because of this latent radicalism, Windsor maintained a notorious reputation for militancy despite the purging of many Communists from the ranks of Windsor’s local executives and municipal reports that claimed the union and management in the auto factories were developing a relationship of “working harmony.”51 Both municipal and UAW officials blamed this reputation for Ford’s partial exodus to the Greater Toronto Area.52 In the early 1960s, the city concluded that Windsor’s “image” must have been the reason for capital flight because their research found that at the time Ford left, person-hours lost to labour disputes in Windsor were

48 Fraser, “Years of Struggle,” 160, 177. 49 Yates, From Plant to Politics, 92. Brooks was a complex figure and will be subject to further discussion in later chapters. He remained firmly part of the UAW’s left wing until his murder in 1977 but was the target of significant criticism from more radical rank-and-file groups, including The New Tendency’s Auto Worker Group. 50 Victoria Cross notes that the purges were somewhat less successful in Canada, and Windsor in particular, than in the US. Both Cross and Jim Brophy note the lingering importance of these older militants during the 1970s. Dearing and MacArthur were in the CPC, and MacArthur also remained editor of the Windsor UAW’s newsletter The Guardian during this period. See Victoria Cross, “We Can Tell Them All to go to Hell: The CAW, Multinationals, and the Auto Pact,” in Maureen Irish, ed., The Auto Pact: Investment, Labour, and the WTO (New York: Kluwer Law International, 2004), 61-62, in particular the discussion in footnote 30; and Jim Brophy, interview by Sean Antaya, phone conversation, 3 August, 2017. 51 The appearance of “working harmony” is described in, Windsor Economic Committee, 1963 Report. 52 This was the common explanation in both Windsor Economic Committee, 1963 Report; and UAW, Comments on the Memorandum on Industry.

21 actually declining, and Windsor’s average hourly wage increased far less than in comparable communities and below the Ontario average from the years 1951-1961.53 Don Wells’ comparative study of UAW locals in Windsor and Oakville in fact confirms that these suspicions were well justified, and notes that Ford’s Vice President chose to move production to Oakville from Windsor because of its “ ‘better climate.’ ”54 This reflects capital’s broader tendency to close factories with strong traditions of unionism and militancy to move to struggling areas that might supply a more compliant work force as part of the ongoing processes of capital accumulation.55 Windsor was thus relatively fortunate in that Ford and the rest of the auto- industry only downsized during this period and did not completely relocate.

When Windsor re-entered a period of relative prosperity in the late 1960s, both the allegedly harmonious climate in the Windsor auto plants and the broader Canadian post-war accord itself began to fall apart at the seams as young workers launched a series of wildcat strikes across Canada in many different industries. Though it was dubbed the ‘wildcat wave’ of

1965-66, this influx of rank-and-file rebellions continued well into the 1970s. In fact, the amount of person-days lost to labour disputes did not peak in Canada until 1976, though this number includes both legal and illegal strikes and is heavily skewed by the Canadian Labour Congress

(CLC)-coordinated 1976 ‘general strike’ against wage controls.56 Nonetheless, this statistic does demonstrate that labour militancy was not limited to the early years of the 1970s. Sam Gindin maintains that approximately one third of strikes in Canada during the 1970s were wildcats,

53 Windsor Economic Committee, 1963 Report. 54 Wells, “The Impact of the Postwar Compromise on Canadian Unionism,” 155. 55 See Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labour (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); and Bryan Palmer, Capitalism Comes to the Backcountry: The Goodyear Invasion of Napanee (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1994). 56 Statistics Canada, “Person days not worked as a result of work stoppages,” 2017, retrieved at: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/88b26545-5dd2-4426-8cf2-94dd85f9aad9

22 including at least 59 unauthorized strikes at GM plants.57 Further reflecting workers’ discontent, grievances in North American GM plants skyrocketed during this period.58 Even more tumultuous were Windsor’s Chrysler plants where the company reported 26 illegal work stoppages in the summer of 1970 alone.59 The following year was even more restless at Chrysler, as Jeremy Milloy reports that in 1971 there were “sixty-eight incidents of sabotage, thirty-seven walkouts, and eighteen sit-downs.”60

Writing during the early 1970s, in the midst of this revolt from below, Stuart Jamieson observed that the wildcat waves of the 1960s mirrored periods of growing gross national product, high inflation, and low unemployment. To put it simply, he argued workers who were fed up with inflation were revolting because better economic conditions meant they had less to lose.61

More importantly, however, young workers across Canada were frustrated with the constrictive parameters of the post-war accord. Ian Milligan and Bryan Palmer both show how much of the labour unrest during this period can be interpreted through the lens of generational revolt.62 Post- war youth who were raised on democratic ideals entered authoritarian workplaces where they had very little say over the day-to-day operations and on-the-job conditions.63 This generation of young workers rejected the authority not only of their employers but also of their union leaders who were primarily concerned with enforcing the conditions of the collective agreement and

57 Gindin, The Canadian Auto Workers, 175. 58 A.C. Jones, “Rank-and-File Opposition in the UAW During the Long 1970s,” in Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, Cal Winslow, eds., Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s (New York: Verso, 2010), 285-286. 59 “UAW urges stop to illegal walkouts,” The Windsor Star, 14 June 1971. 60 Jeremy Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Violence at Work in the North American Auto Industry, 1960-80, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 85. 61 Stuart Jamieson, Industrial Relations in Canada, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Macmillan, 1973), 94-115. 62 Ian Milligan, Rebel Youth: 1960s Labour Unrest, Young Workers, and New Leftists in English Canada, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014); and Bryan Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 211-241. See also Peter McInnis, “ ‘Hothead Troubles’: Sixties Era Wildcat Strikes in Canada,” in Lara Campbell, Dominique Clement, and Gregory S. Kealey, eds., Debating Dissent: Canada and the Sixties (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 155-172. 63 Milligan, Rebel Youth, 36.

23 largely forewent any direct challenges to employers’ management rights in the workplace in favor of monetary gains in bargaining.64 Because of this situation, Milligan notes young people conducted their wildcats primarily over issues relating to “basic material conditions, respect on the job, health and safety regulations, and control [emphasis his].”65

Windsor, like the rest of Canada, had a predominantly young workforce during the 1960s and 1970s, and in this sense the city’s auto workers fit into this broader pattern of youth revolt.

The overall population in Windsor became much younger during the 1960s and early 1970s. In particular, the percentage of the population aged 15-24 increased the greatest compared to other age cohorts.66 City documents note that these workers generally had an education of either a high school diploma or less, and were generally unskilled.67 The issue of what to do with this large incoming young workforce was an important theme in various municipal studies in Windsor during this period and officials debated how to attract investment and employment opportunities for young people.68 Despite the city’s attempts at diversification, the auto industry was the only real option for many of these young people to make a decent wage in their hometown.69 When the young workers did enter Windsor’s factories, in-plant conditions increasingly worsened as the companies relentlessly sped-up production to deal with increased competition from foreign auto makers and to contend with the falling rate of profit.70 Canadian auto production was also

64 Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 219-221. 65 Milligan, Rebel Youth, 58. 66 Essex County Local Government Restructuring Study, 24. 67 Windsor Economic Committee, 1963 Report. 68 Windsor Economic Committee, 1963 Report; GWIC, 1971 Annual Report; and Essex County Local Government Restructuring Study, 24. 69 Essex County Local Government Restructuring Study, 69-73. 70 Jones, “Rank-and-File Opposition in the UAW During the Long 1970s,” 283.

24 being reorganized to conform with American style management standards in wake of the auto- pact, which further riled Windsor workers.71

The conditions on the assembly lines only deteriorated as the 1973 oil crisis further threatened auto makers’ profits. While the resulting lay-offs stifled militancy in Detroit to a degree, auto workers’ rank-and-file resistance continued in Windsor throughout this period.72

Though the favorable economic conditions in the wake of the auto-pact may have helped to initially spark the wildcats in Windsor’s auto factories during the 1960s, the in-plant health and safety issues that resulted from production speed-ups and company austerity measures were more persistent factors and fomented revolt throughout the decade, as will be highlighted in my examination of the rank-and-file groups Workers’ Unity and The New Tendency’s Auto

Workers’ Group.

In addition to the background on Windsor’s labour militancy, it is essential to understand the importance of the campus New Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s in shaping future New

Tendency radicals’ experiences and world views. Like other Canadian universities in the post-

71 Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 69-72. Milloy notes that this was a particular point of contention in Windsor auto plants during the late 60s. Mike Longmoore also recalled that this was a significant issue. Mike Longmoore, interview by Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 29 June 2017. 72 On the impact of recession on plant conditions and the resulting effects on resistance in Detroit, see Jones, “Rank- and-File Opposition in the UAW During the Long 1970s,” 306-308; According to the Labour Gazette there were at least six work stoppages involving 100 or more workers related to the auto industry in Windsor from 1973 to 1975. However, these numbers are misleading in that they do not include smaller acts of militancy that involved less than 100 workers, those which went undetected or were tacitly accepted by foremen, or those which simply went unreported to the Department of Labour. In both the documents relating to The New Tendency that I examined and in the interviews that I conducted with former New Tendency auto workers, the everyday forms of resistance and direct action such as sabotage, sit-downs, slow-downs, and counter-planning were described as ubiquitous during this period. See Chapters 2 and 3 for longer discussions on shop-floor resistance. Windsor union officials themselves were also concerned about various forms of direct action that proliferated throughout the 1970s and attempted to stymie these forms of resistance. See, for example, “UAW urges stop to illegal walkouts,” The Windsor Star, 14 June 1971. See also the Canadian UAW’s correspondence with management which contain numerous examples of everyday sabotage and other direct action in Martin Glaberman, “Marxist Views of the Working Class,” in The Working Class and Social Change (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1975), 9-15; and Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 85. For an autobiographical account of everyday life in an auto-factory which describes the culture of resistance on the assembly line, albeit during the 1980s in Flint, Michigan, see Ben Hamper, Rivethead (New York: Warner Books, 1991).

25 war era, the University of Windsor was a hub for the New Left and garnered a reputation as harboring a particularly radical student body.73 Part of this was related to Windsor’s natural place as a landing spot (or at least a waypoint), for American draft resisters and thus the anti-war and anti-imperialist movement was particularly active on campus.74 For example, student radical and future New Tendency member Mike Longmoore was the treasurer of the International Union of

Students at the University of Windsor, where he did solidarity work for the Palestinian cause and helped Arab students combat racism on campus and in the broader community. Longmoore played a key role in bringing over draft resisters and recalled the relative ease in which

Americans could be brought over at that time:

We set up a system where people would call up, and we’d drive over and bring them back to Canada. The customs people would put them through and there was no real hassle. I found that surprising; I thought that they’d give them a hard time because these people were not only draft dodgers but deserters as well. And if [the border guards] had taken a tough stand, [the resisters] would have gone to jail. But word was out: if you want to get out, come to Canada.75

Some American ex-pats played a crucial role in campus activism. Prominent on campus was the American Jim Brophy, who eventually played a leading role in the Windsor New

Tendency. Brophy first moved to Canada in 1965 from Rochester, New York. Disgusted with the

73 Milligan, Rebel Youth, 75. Doug Nesbitt, “The ‘Radical Trip’ of the Canadian Union of Students, 1963-1969,” MA Thesis, Trent University (2009), 135. As a testament to the student activists’ real or perceived political power, Jim Brophy recalled how he and his fellow activists were heavily monitored by the RCMP during this period due to suspected subversive activities. At one point, he and other activists were even accused by the RCMP of planning to firebomb a bus station, though the accusation had no basis in reality. The RCMP continued to surveil Brophy through his time in The New Tendency. Jim Brophy, interview by Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 3 July 2017. For a more in depth look at the RCMP’s covert surveillance of campus activists and the New Left more generally see Reg Whitaker, Gregory Kealey, and Andre Parnaby, Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada from the Fenians to Fortress America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 324-364. It should be noted that despite an invigorated New Left student movement, there was also strong conservative presence on campus which Brophy also made note of. This even led a CUS fieldworker to describe the campus as “ ‘American and relatively conservative,’ ” in fall of 1968. See Nesbitt, “The ‘Radical Trip,’” 160. 74 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017; and Longmoore interview. 75 Longmoore interview.

26 treatment of black Americans in his community and country more generally, Brophy chose to move to Canada, initially deciding on Windsor over Toronto simply due to the cheaper cost of living.76 Though he did not originally intend to come over as a draft resister, Brophy soon decided that he would stay in Canada to resist the war. Brophy recalled the gradual politicization that he underwent by witnessing and participating in various radicalizing events – a process he described as joining the student movement “sideways.” The line in the sand moment for Brophy came when the student council which preceded his presidency held a meeting to discuss a resolution supporting war-resisters. At the meeting, a group of conservative and predominately

American students – including some of Brophy’s former classmates who had likewise moved to

Windsor from Rochester – threatened to beat up supporters of the resolution. This “thuggery” on the part of the conservative students helped bring together and galvanize the anti-war students, both Canadian and American.77

This experience led Brophy to participate in and organize various actions, such as protests against DOW Chemical recruiting on campus, and he soon became the president of the university’s Student Administrative Council (SAC) which was affiliated with the increasingly radical Canadian Union of Students (CUS). As Ian Milligan notes, CUS provided many student activists with their first introduction to left-wing organizing and the annual CUS congresses were major events for the Canadian New Left, especially after the dissolution of the Student Union for

Peace Action (SUPA) in 1967 which had hitherto been the most significant organization for the

Canadian New Left. Brophy recalled CUS’ 1968 Winnipeg conference being particularly transformative for many people as the young New Left continued its turn towards Marxism and

76 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017; and Margaret Keith and Jim Brophy, “Your health is not for sale,” in Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd, eds., The New Rank and File (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 189. 77 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017.

27 the working-class, though Brophy’s own focus remained on student activism for the time being.78

Mirroring the efforts of other CUS-affiliated student unions, Brophy’s SAC and other campus activists continued to engage in solidarity work for the civil rights and anti-imperialist movements. Part of this involved bringing in speakers such as Stokely Carmichael and Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers to talk to hundreds of University of

Windsor students. While listening to the SNCC speakers discuss their organizing struggles in the southern United States had a profound impact on Brophy and other activists, even more noteworthy was when the SAC sponsored a packed meeting at the Cleary Auditorium organized by the Asian Studies Department, where the Vietnamese National Liberation Front’s (NLF) foreign minister and the Vietnamese Ambassador to Cuba were invited to speak. Brophy, who was also slated to speak, expected the crowd to be filled with young student activists entrenched in the New Left anti-war movement. To his surprise, he instead saw a sea of older Eastern

European immigrants who at one point formed the core of the CPC’s Windsor branch. When the

Vietnamese representatives got on stage to talk, the raucous older crowd got to their feet for the remainder of the event, cheering and hollering their support for the NLF and the North

Vietnamese Army. In addition to witnessing this intergenerational solidarity from Windsor’s older radicals, backstage Brophy got an early taste of left-wing sectarianism when representatives from the Detroit-based Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) harangued the left-liberal professors who organized the event for being insufficiently

78 Milligan quotes Brophy in his discussion on the CUS congresses. See Milligan, Rebel Youth, 74-75. See also Myrna Kostash’s writing on the CUS in, Myrna Kostash, Long Way from Home: The Story of the Sixties Generation in Canada (Toronto: James Lorimer and Co., 1980), 87-103.

28 revolutionary. As Brophy noted, “They just cut the lines with these guys like they’re ready for the armed struggle!” 79

One of the high points of the Windsor student movement came when Brophy and 54 other students occupied Windsor Hall on the university campus for 10 days to protest the firing of the well-liked theology professor, William Kelly. Kelly came into conflict with the majority of the conservative theology department over his progressive views, though the vague reasoning given for the non-renewal of his contract was that he was “causing tension in the department” and that he allegedly “didn’t understand the ideals of the department.”80 When Kelly told his students that he would not be returning the following year, the students presented two separate petitions to the university administrators – the second of which was signed by 80% of the students who had taken his class – but to no avail.81 After seeing the impact and controversy of the student occupation of the computer building at Sir George Williams College in Montreal,

Brophy and his comrades decided to go ahead with an occupation despite the CUS executive discouraging them from taking such militant action.82 Officially backed by the SAC and enjoying widespread support across the student body, the occupiers presented the university administration with four demands: “for equal student participation on campus decision-making

79 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. On DRUM and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers see Chapter 2. 80 Shirley Walker, “Dr. Kelly... the human fuse for protestors,” The Windsor Star, 14 February 1969. The occupation eventually grew to include over 200 students at times. “Protest in 4th day,” The Windsor Star, 14 February 1969 81 Walker. 82 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. The occupation at Sir George Williams occurred after the university administration rehired a racist professor who had been the subject of numerous complaints by the university’s black population. The occupation became a riot once police breached the students’ barricades in an attempt to end the demonstration, and the conflict resulted in mass damage in the university’s computer centre. The event helped to mobilize Montreal’s black community and according to Sean Mills “acted as the immediate spark that set off a Black renaissance in the city.” See Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2010), 96; and Marcel Martel, “ ‘Riot’ at Sir George Williams: Giving Meaning to Student Dissent,” in Lara Campbell, Dominique Clement, and Gregory S. Kealey, eds., Debating Dissent: Canada and the Sixties (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 97-114. Martel notes that the University of Windsor’s student council publicly condemned the violence at Sir George Williams but still contributed financial aid to the students who were arrested. See Martel, “ ‘Riot’ at Sir George Williams,” 103.

29 bodies on a one-student-one-faculty basis; for the opening of decision-making meetings; the reinstatement of Dr. William Kelly [...]; for a promise of no reprisals against students taking part in the occupation.”83 Unlike the Sir George Williams occupation, police never confronted the occupiers, the protest remained entirely peaceful, and the occupiers were ultimately successful.

The occupiers achieved student representation on decision-making bodies (though not on a one to one basis), the university guaranteed not to pursue any reprisals, and Kelly was eventually reinstated.84 For Brophy, this represented the high watermark of Windsor’s campus-based student movement during the 1960s, and the occupation proved to him what could be achieved through collective direct action.85

After graduating, Brophy continued to radicalize when he and his friends took a trip to

California to link up with the militancy on the Berkeley campus and participated in the Peoples’

Park protests which were violently suppressed by then-Governor Ronald Reagan’s administration. However, when they returned to Windsor, they faced a right-wing backlash on campus which coincided with the dissolution of the CUS across Canada.86 As Doug Nesbitt notes, the student movement’s leaders’ increasingly radical positions (particularly on anti-

83 “Leddy discusses Windsor students’ demands in 45 minute SAC-backed confrontation,” The Globe and Mail, 15 February 1969. According to a poll conducted by sociology students, support was fairly evenly divided, with a slim majority of 49 percent of students opposing the occupation compared to 45% in support. However, there was very little organized opposition, despite a few attempts to organize counter-protests by conservative students based primarily out of the engineering department. See “Majority opposes sit-in,” The Windsor Star, 17 February 1969; “U of W protest resisted,” The Windsor Star, 12 February 1969; and “Protest in 4th day,” The Windsor Star, 14 February 1969. Additionally, at a large meeting to discuss the occupation, a pro-occupation professor’s speech was reported to be received positively by “more than 1000 wildly cheering students.” See “Leddy ready to talk with SAC,” The Windsor Star, 13 February 1969. Brophy also recalled having significant support across the student body. Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. The occupiers also received support from NDP MP Lorne Nystrom. See “Youngest MP backs students,” The Windsor Star, 17 February 1969. 84 “Probe academic freedom: Faculty proposes teacher-student body on Windsor campus,” The Globe and Mail, 22 February 1969; and “U of Windsor panel reinstates professor,” The Globe and Mail, 15 May 1969. 85 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. 86 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. Students at Windsor actually officially disaffiliated from CUS in fall of 1968 after a successful anti-CUS campaign replete with red-baiting, but that year’s student council was still dominated by activists like Brophy who were pro-CUS. See Nesbitt, “The ‘Radical Trip,’” 164. According to Brophy, it was not until the following academic year when he returned from his California trip that the backlash fully set-in.

30 imperialism) in place of educational issues now reached a point that disconnected the leaders from many of their constituents. Because CUS was unable to build sufficient mass support for its radical politics, an organized minority of conservative students took advantage of this growing disconnect and, with support of the mainstream press, managed to turn back the tide of radicalism on campuses across Canada.87 Because of the on-campus backlash, Brophy and his friends decided that the student movement “exhausted itself” and moved to Toronto where they founded Guerilla, the popular, if short-lived, countercultural magazine.88 In Toronto, Brophy soon became better versed in Marxist theory and involved more heavily in working-class organizing as will be explored in the next chapter.

Despite the right-wing backlash on the university campus, the burgeoning New Left was alive and well in other parts of the Windsor community. In particular, the Ursaline nun Pat

Noonan played a pivotal role in politicizing Windsor high-school students in the Young

Christian Students and Young Christian Workers groups in the area.89 During her time in the convent, Noonan became interested in Liberation Theology after joining the social justice- oriented group, Observe-Judge-Act. Once she returned to Windsor, she supported left-wing causes such as women’s right to access abortion, anti-poverty work, peace activism, and solidarity efforts for left-wing groups in Latin America along with a group of other younger social justice-minded nuns and left-wing priests such as Father Robert Warden. Though her activism caused controversies with more traditional conservative clergy, the Ursalines supported

87 Nesbitt, “The ‘Radical Trip,’” 164, 178-183. 88 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. See also David Churchill’s article which examines the role of American draft resisters such as Brophy in Toronto’s counterculture in this period, and in particular his discussion on Guerilla, David Churchill, “American Expatriates and the Building of Alternative Social Space in Toronto, 1965-1977,” Urban History Review 29, (2010): 40-41. 89 Jim Monk, interview by Sean Antaya, Amherstburg, Ontario, 2 May 2017. The social-gospel inflected religious left was active within the broader Canadian New Left and student movement. See, for example, Margaret Beattie, A Brief History of the Student Christian Movement in Canada, 1921-1974 (Toronto: Porcupine’s Quill, 1975).

31

Noonan and allowed her to continue her social justice activism, though she eventually left the order voluntarily in 1970.90 Noonan was also the co-founder of the Women’s Liberation

Movement in Windsor in May of 1970. Her women’s liberation group eventually proved to be the genesis of the women’s group within The Labour Centre and the Windsor New Tendency.91

Noonan’s activist work brought many young people into the milieu that would become

The New Tendency. In particular, Jim Monk and Mark Buckner were brought into the fold through a close friend who was involved with Noonan in the Young Christian Students. Monk had previous experience in student politics and was elected student council president in his last two years of high school. Though he initially ran as a moderate, he became further left-wing in his politics through his experiences in the student movement. Additionally, Monk was involved in the counterculture, helping to run a high school newspaper and working for a local rock radio station oriented towards progressive politics. Through the Young Christian Students, Monk became closely involved in Noonan’s activism.92

For Monk, the most significant event of this early countercultural activism was the

Amchitka nuclear test protests during November of 1971. Across Canada, peace and environmental activists inspired by the Vancouver-based Don’t Make A Wave Committee

(which would later become Greenpeace) organized marches and pickets at various border crossings to protest the US military’s nuclear weapons tests on Amchitka Island, Alaska. While there were earlier protests against nuclear tests at Windsor border crossings in October of 1969,

90 Monk interview; Longmoore interview; and the recent documentary on Noonan’s life, “This is What a Feminist Sounds Like,” directed by Audra Macintyre and Kim Nelson (Windsor, 2012), retrieved at: http://www.thisiswhatafeministsoundslike.com/#film See also Tiffany Champagne, “ ‘Friend of the Poor’: The Life of Father Robert Warden,” Diocese of London, 30 January 2015, retrieved at: https://dol.ca/documents/2016/10/Father%20Robert%20Warden%20-%20January%2030%202015.pdf 91 “This is What a Feminist Sounds Like.” 92 Monk interview.

32 the 1971 protests proved to be far more powerful.93 Opposition to the tests was not necessarily a radical view in Canada at the time, and the tests were denounced in the House of Commons in a nearly unanimous resolution during the prior week.94 Thus, the protests were characterized as much by the general sentiments of sixties counterculture and Canadian nationalism as they were by that of the more radical and increasingly Marxist-influenced New Left.95 Jim Monk was able to promote the protest on the radio station and in the high school newspaper, and other activists in the community such as Mike Longmoore leafletted the university and local high schools.96

Other university activists who had participated in the 1969 occupation and remained politically active also contributed to the protests.

The biggest protest came on Wednesday, 3 November. That afternoon, approximately

4000 protestors blockaded and marched onto the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor to

Detroit – ten times the number that participated in the earlier 1969 protests.97 While many protestors were university students, a significant portion were in fact high school students, and local high schools reported very low attendance for the day as students walked out to partake in the protests.98 The sheer scale of the protest astounded police on both sides of the border, as

93 Pat Sherbin, Gord Henderson, Cam Norton, Lee Palser, Ron Base, and Jim Robinson, “Nation-Wide Blast Protest,” The Windsor Star, 2 October 1969. For the origins of Greenpeace, the Don’t Make a Wave Committee, and the organization of the Amchitka protests in 1969 and 1971, see Rex Weyler, Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World (Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2004), 57-132. 94 Robert Hull, “Amchitka blast widens gulf between angry Canada, U.S.,” The Windsor Star, 28 October 1971. 95 Currents of Canadian nationalism were evidenced by the proliferation of Canadian flags at the protests and burning of American flags. “A nation’s young protest at Ambassador Bridge,” The Windsor Star, 4 November 1971; and “Stop the bomb,” The Windsor Star, 8 November 1971. The countercultural element can perhaps best be summed up by one protestor’s pithy quip to The Windsor Star: “Wow, it sure is nice to get smashed on hash and come out to the revolution.” Brian Kappler, “It was the almost happy protest,” The Windsor Star, 4 November 1971. Further reflecting the ‘60s countercultural atmosphere, Mike Longmoore recalled his brother, Joe, started a chant based on Eastern mysticism at the Saturday protests to intimidate the police, though it should be noted by this point in time the Longmoores were also very much engaged in working-class organizing. Longmoore interview. 96 Monk interview; and Longmoore interview. 97 Brian Kappler, Gord Henderson, Mike McAteer, and Lorne Gannon, “A border closed by protest,” The Windsor Star, 4 November 1971; and Sherbin, et al. 98 Kappler, “It was the almost happy protest.”; and Jim Monk, interview.

33

Canadians attempted to make their way to the US side to link up with American protestors, though Detroit police equipped with riot gear prevented them from passing.99 Despite heavy police presence, no major physical altercations between protestors and police occurred.100 Like

Jim Brophy’s involvement occupying the university, Jim Monk experienced the collective power of mass action for the first time – his only comparable moment being when he participated in the protests against the Bathhouse Raids in Toronto a decade later. Describing the enormous feeling of power from below at both events, Monk recalled, “It was exciting. It was scary as hell, but that’s what I imagine a revolution – I mean an actual storming of things – to be like.” Monk realized that by blocking the bridge, the protestors essentially brought the local economies of

Windsor and Detroit to a standstill because auto parts could not get across the border, and that they essentially won the “propaganda war” evidenced by an impressive amount support in the community. This lesson in mass insurrection, which Monk noted was the result of both planning and spontaneity, left an indelible influence on his political perspective going forward.101

Windsor’s specific material conditions thus made it a prime location for The New

Tendency to emerge. The city’s economy relied primarily on a factory-based industrial workforce which was imbued with a legacy of radicalism dating back to the CPC’s key role in the founding of the UAW in Canada and its subsequent struggles which culminated in the 1945

Ford Strike. Though some of this radicalism tapered off after the post-war purge, the younger

99 Bruce Blackadar, “Size of protest amazes Detroit police,” 4 November 1971. 100 While there were no confrontations on the 3rd, the smaller though still sizable (2000 protestors) Saturday November 6th protests did see clashes between protesters and the police. Protestors threw bottles, smashed two Michigan cars that attempted to drive through the pickets, and pushed through police lines to get onto the bridge. “Police nab, free 14 at bridge,” The Windsor Star, 8 November 1971. Mike Longmoore recalled getting into a scuffle with an officer who then chased him across the nearby University of Windsor campus. The Saturday protests ended when Joe Longmoore lit off a smoke bomb which caused disarray amongst the protestors and further incensed the police. Longmoore interview. The smoke bomb is also mentioned in a newspaper article, “Two flare-ups erupt as Canadians protest A-test,” The Globe and Mail, 8 November 1971. 101 Monk interview. After the nation-wide protests against the 1971 test, the US military ceased testing on Amchitka “ ‘for political and other reasons’ ” in 1972. See Weyler, 132.

34 generation’s discontent with the parameters of the post-war accord meant that by the early 1970s the factories were once again open sites of class-struggle, mirroring events elsewhere in North

America. Likewise, Windsor’s proximity to the United States helped the activist scene at the

University of Windsor develop the university into one of the more radical campuses in the country due to a strong anti-imperialist sentiment. Moreover, particular events, such as the occupation in support of William Kelly and the Amchitka protests, punctuated this period. Such events inspired young activist participants to continue their leftward trajectory towards revolutionary politics and gave them a sense of what could be accomplished through direct mass action. Soon, these various trends converged, as many of the young university radicals and high- school activists turned towards working-class organizing both due to the New Left’s continued resurgent interest in Marxist theory, and out of necessity when some members began to experience the rhythms of working-class life themselves while working in Windsor’s auto factories.

35

Chapter 2

The impressive 1971 Amchitka protests were still largely characterized by the politics and practice of student activism. By this time, however, the Canadian New Left more broadly was completing a shift towards workplace organizing. This entailed a deepening commitment to more theoretically coherent Marxist perspectives, and a move away from the loose mélange of anti-authoritarianism, Third Worldism, and oppositional youth culture that dominated the campus politics of the mid-1960s. Such a shift affected many of the leaders of Windsor’s student movement. They soon became important organizers in both factory-based rank-and-file groups and in community projects which sought to engage and mobilize working-class people in other areas of their lives. This chapter traces the early history of Windsor New Leftists’ working-class turn in general, and two initiatives in particular: the Chrysler-based rank-and-file group Workers’

Unity (WU), and Windsor’s left-wing bookstore – the Community Resource Centre (CRC). The coming together of the members of these and other left-wing initiatives in the community led to the formation of The Labour Centre (TLC), which soon became the Windsor branch of The New

Tendency. In addition to illustrating the working-class turn amongst New Leftists in Windsor, the earlier experiences and tensions within WU and in forming the bookstore continued to affect and inform the perspectives within The Labour Centre and The New Tendency for the entirety of the group’s existence. These experiences also belied an unfortunate, but perhaps unavoidable, mixing of the personal and the political which re-emerged within internal conflicts in the following years.

* * *

As alluded to in the previous chapter, the early Canadian New Left primarily emerged from the peace movement and the Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

36

(CUCND) in particular. By the end of 1964, the radical minority of CUCND formed the Student

Union for Peace Activism (SUPA) which became the Canadian New Left’s main organizational hub until its dissolution in 1967.1 New Leftists of the early to mid-1960s rejected what they saw as the dogmatism and rigidity of the Old Left represented by both the reformist social-democratic

New Democratic Party (NDP) and the ostensibly revolutionary Communist Party of Canada

(CPC). Championing the principles of “participatory democracy,” and influenced by a diverse array of thinkers including C. Wright Mills, Frantz Fanon, and the Frankfurt School theorists, the

New Left denounced the bureaucracies of both the capitalist world and the Eastern Bloc.2

Initially skeptical of Marxist organizations, the early New Leftists in SUPA tended instead to emphasize various forms of “horizontalism” and decentralization, and looked towards students and various uniquely dispossessed and oppressed groups in society as the potential forces for social change rather than the traditional popular representatives of the working-class (i.e. male industrial workers, unions, the CCF/NDP, and the CPC).3 A strong focus on anti-colonialism and

1 On the Canadian New Left, see Bryan Palmer, Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 245-309; Ian Milligan, Rebel Youth: 1960s Labour Unrest, Young Workers, and New Leftists in English Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014); Myrna Kostash, Long Way from Home: The Story of the Sixties Generation in Canada (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1980); and Dimitrios Roussopoulos, ed., The New Left in Canada (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1970). While Roussopoulos’ book is a collection of New Left essays from the period itself, it is a useful introduction to the Canadian New Left at a particular point in time. 2 Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 248-256; and Milligan, Rebel Youth, 65-72. 3 Milligan, Rebel Youth, 65-72. Much of this line of thinking is exemplified in Roussopoulos, The New Left, 131- 152, though the looming reemergence of Marxism can also be detected. As Bryan Palmer notes, it is important recognize that the various oppressed and dispossessed groups that SUPA sought to work with must indeed be considered as part of the working-class even if the activists themselves did not necessarily articulate their work in this way. Relatedly, it is important not to conflate the institutions of the labour movement with being the only legitimate representatives of the working-class. See Bryan Palmer, “Rebel Youth offers depth but lacks dimension,” Canadian Dimension 50, No. 3, (2016), retrieved at: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/rebel-youth- offers-depth-but-lacks-dimension For more on dispossession, class composition, and the importance of linking the struggles of waged and unwaged workers, see Michael Denning, “Wageless Life,” New Left Review 66 (2010): 79- 97; and Bryan Palmer and Gaétan Héroux, Toronto's Poor: A Rebellious History (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2016).

37 anti-imperialism was also evident, especially as the United State ratcheted up its involvement in

Vietnam, which further amplified these elements as the anti-war movement gained steam.4

Though SUPA collapsed under the weight of its internal contradictions stemming partially from a lack of defined theoretical perspective and the co-option of its work by the federal government-sponsored Company of Young Canadians, the Canadian New Left continued to evolve.5 Post-SUPA, many New Leftists began to advocate for a far more rigorous and

Marxist-based theoretical perspective, though often retaining a significant focus on anti- imperialism in the Third World. Many New Leftists began to move towards the Maoist New

Communist Movement (NCM) and a reinvigorated Trotskyism during this period, often forming new revolutionary organizations in the process. The focus on anti-imperialism also contributed to the spread of left-nationalism in Canada, which, by the end of the decade, most notably lead to the emergence of the Waffle group within the NDP. Not only did student New Leftists cast aside some of their affinity for decentralization by joining political parties and cadre organizations, they also turned their focus towards struggles in the workplace and the labour movement, and attempted to understand, partake in, and ultimately direct towards revolutionary ends, the working-class discontent and upsurge in workplace militancy that mirrored the student unrest of the sixties.6

Rank-and-file and oppositional union movements of both a reform and revolutionary nature emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a result of the largely youth-driven upsurge

4 Milligan, Rebel Youth, 67. Kostash, Long Way from Home, 90-103. Anti-colonial theorists like Fanon were even more popular in Quebec due to the historical subjugation of French peoples within the Canadian state. See Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 2010). 5 Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 274-276. 6 On this turn, see Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 278-297; and Milligan, Rebel Youth, 121-183. Parts 1 and 2 of Max Elbaum’s book on the development of the New Communist Movement are also instructive on this turn, albeit in an American context. See Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Che, and Mao (New York: Verso, 2002), 15-164.

38 in militancy against the poor working conditions and inattentive union bureaucracies that characterized workplaces across North America. They were also one manifestation of the broader New Left turn to the working-class, and many former student activists sought-out blue- collar jobs; they did so sometimes out of necessity, and sometimes as part of a conscious political strategy to industrialize and embed themselves in working-class experiences and struggles. Once in the workplace, activists could link up with existing oppositional groups or attempt to organize their own by forming alliances with other militant workers.7

Perhaps the most well-known example of this phenomenon is the Revolutionary Union

Movement (RUMs) groups based out of the Detroit auto factories across the river from

Windsor.8 The RUMs were founded in 1968 by radical black workers well-versed in Marxist theory, having been taught classes on Marx by Facing Reality members Martin Glaberman and

George Rawick at Wayne State University, and mixed these influences with a strong black nationalist sentiment.9 The RUMs, which by 1969 merged to create the League of Revolutionary

7 Elbaum, Revolution in the Air, 132-134. 8 There is an ever-growing body of literature on the RUMs/LRBW. Most significant are Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975); James Geschwender, Class, Race, and Worker Insurgency (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Kieran Taylor, “American Petrograd: Detroit and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers,” in Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, and Cal Winslow, eds., Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below in the Long 1970s (New York: Verso, 2010), 311-334; and Jeremy Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Violence at Work in the North American Auto Industry, 1960-80 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017). Also instructive is the LRBW propaganda film “Finally Got the News,” which details DRUM’s struggles with the UAW, outlines some of their key theoretical positions, and describes the extremely poor working conditions that black workers faced on the shop-floor of Detroit’s auto factories. See “Finally Got the News,” directed by Stewart Bird, Rene Lichtman, and Peter Gessner (Detroit: Black Star Productions, 1970). 9 While members of the RUMs/LRBW did take classes with Glaberman and Rawick, the connections between the RUMs/LRBW and Facing Reality should not be overstated. Though Facing Reality was supportive of the RUMs/LRBW and kept in contact with some members, the groups never engaged in any formal organizational collaboration. See Martin Glaberman, interview by Jeff Shantz, Peter Graham, and Neil Fettes, Revolutionary Optimist - An Interview with Martin Glaberman (Toronto: Red & Black Notes, 2001). Politically, the members of the LRBW would mostly come to associate much more with the NCM than Facing Reality’s variant of autonomist Marxism, though there was indeed some general overlap between Maoism and autonomism at times, which will be explored in greater depth in the following chapter. The Sojourner Truth Organization, for example, was influenced by, and had connections to, both LRBW and Facing Reality members. See Michael Staudenmaier, Truth and

39

Black Workers (LRBW), spread their ideas in underground publications such as the The South

End – Wayne State’s student newspaper which had essentially been taken over by RUM leader

John Watson – and the Inner City Voice, which the RUMs distributed throughout the factories.10

Noting that black workers were often assigned the worst jobs in the plant, subjected to unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, and targeted by virulent racism from the company and white workers, the RUMs instigated wildcat strikes and condoned violence against foremen, believing that such actions were justified responses to the violence that they faced every day as factory workers on the line.11 The RUMs opposed both the auto companies and the UAW, which they felt was completely deaf to their needs and in collusion with the bosses.12

In their response to the RUMs’ growing popularity amongst black workers and community radicals, the UAW essentially proved the RUMs right. Seeing the RUMs as the reemergence of outside Communist infiltration in the union rather than a logical response to terrible working conditions and a complacent union bureaucracy, the UAW attempted to crush the RUMs in any way possible.13 Union officials kept close surveillance on workers involved with the RUMs, encouraged workers to cross picket lines during RUM-led wildcats, and allegedly rigged local executive elections.14 Though the LRBW lost most of its influence by

1971 as a result of the combined repression from the UAW and the state, and growing sectarianism within the organization itself, Detroit auto workers continued to partake in direct

Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization 1969-1986 (Oakland: AK Press, 2012), 32-33, 45, 105- 111. 10 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 23-27. 11 Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 107-112. 12 Taylor, “American Petrograd,” 319. 13 Thompson, Whose Detroit? 121-123. 14 Thompson, Whose Detroit? 121-122; A.C. Jones, “Rank-and-File Opposition in the UAW During the Long 1970s,” in Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, and Cal Winslow, eds., Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below in the Long 1970s (New York: Verso, 2010),” 294; and Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 50-51.

40 action and agitate against the UAW bureaucracy.15 The UAW continued to blame Communist outside agitators and black radicals for these disruptions and paid little attention to the actual in- plant conditions, despite the fact that workers participating in these actions were not limited to one particular ethnic group and were not necessarily involved in radical politics.16

While there is a substantial amount of scholarly literature that examines the significance of DRUM and other rank-and-file movements like the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), there is little focus on similar movements in Canada.17 Though it is important not to overstate the similarities between these incredibly varied rank-and-file organizations due to their very different contexts and end goals, parallels can indeed be found in their general struggles over union democracy, use of direct action, and the repression that these groups faced from union bureaucrats during this particular historical moment for the North American labour movement and the left. The diversity of tactics represented by these groups also speaks to the heterogeneity

15 The summer of 1973 was particularly volatile in the Detroit factories, and there were a series of intense wildcat strikes. Additionally, more moderate rank-and-file organizations, such as the United National Caucus, persisted through the early 1970s and posed a challenge to the Reutherites. See Jones, “Rank-and-File Opposition in the UAW During the Long 1970s,” 294-306. 16 Thompson, Whose Detroit? 183. 17 On TDU, see Dan La Botz, Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamster’s for a Democratic Union, (New York: Verso, 1990); Dan La Botz, “The Tumultuous Teamsters of the 1970s,” in Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, and Cal Winslow, eds., Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below in the Long 1970s, (New York: Verso, 2010), 199-228; and Samuel Friedman, Teamster Rank and File: Power, Bureaucracy, and Rebellion at Work and in a Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). Various reform movements existed within other large unions, such as the United Mine Workers of America. These rank-and-file movements can also be viewed as part of the same phenomenon as the emergence of unions like the United Farm Workers (UFW) which challenged the mainstream labour organizations in the AFL-CIO and attempted to emphasize the struggles of workers who were previously neglected (mainly racialized workers, female workers, immigrant workers, and, particularly in the case of UFW, farm workers). Jefferson Cowie covers this phenomenon, including the plight of the UFW, in the first chapter of Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: The New Press, 2010), 23-74. See also Frank Bardacke, “The United Farm Workers from the Ground Up,” and Paul Nyden, “Rank- and-File Movements in the United Mine Workers of America, Early 1960s-Early 1980s,” in Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, and Cal Winslow, eds., Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below in the Long 1970s (New York: Verso, 2010), 149-172 and 173-198, respectively. In Canada, small independent unions such as Canadian Textile and Chemical Union and the Service, Office, and Retail Workers’ Union of Canada were militant, socialist, and feminist-oriented unions which likewise came into conflict with the corporatist and chauvinist CLC officialdom. See Joan Sangster, Remembering Texpack: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Militancy in Canadian Unions in the 1970s,” Studies in Political Economy 78 (2006): 41-66; and Julia Smith, “An ‘Entirely Different’ Kind of Union: The Service, Office, and Retail Workers’ Union of Canada (SORWUC), 1972-1986,” Labour/Le Travail 73 (2014): 23-65.

41 and creativity of the New Left during this period; they illustrate the different ways in which former student activists sought to move forward and engage in working-class struggles during a time when the possibilities for social transformation and revolution appeared limitless to many.

Workers’ Unity first emerged as a rank-and-file group based out of Windsor Chrysler’s

Plant 2 as part of a grassroots opposition to UAW Local 444 President Charlie Brooks and the system of patronage that he established within the local. As noted in the previous chapter,

Brooks previously gained notoriety for splitting Local 444 from Local 195. Early on, Brooks was a member of the Communist Party and remained on the left-wing of the UAW bureaucracy for his entire life, often coming into conflict with the more moderate labour bureaucrats such as

Dennis McDermott and others aligned to the social-democratic Reutherite faction in the union.18

Brooks was a firm proponent of social unionism and was well-liked in the community for his support of various social justice issues and his ostensible continuation of the UAW’s pre-Second

World War militancy and the legacy of 1945.19 Brooks was not unattached to the Canadian New

Left and in particular the left-nationalist currents within it. Indeed, left-nationalism was already one of the tools that Communists and left-wingers such as Brooks used to retain support in

Canada against the dominance of American Reutherites in the International Union who sought to purge them out.20 Most notably, he, along with other Windsor labour leaders on the UAW’s left

(often other CPCers or ex-CPCers) supported the NDP Waffle faction before it was crushed by

McDermott and others on the right-wing of the Canadian labour movement’s bureaucracy.21

18 Charlotte Yates, From Plant to Politics: The Autoworkers’ Union in Postwar Canada (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993) 90-93. While most scholarly works have only noted that Brooks was suspected to be a Communist, Mike Longmoore was able to confirm that he was indeed a member of the CPC. Mike Longmoore, interview with Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 29 June 2017. 19 Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 148. 20 Yates, From Plant to Politics, 90-104. 21 Yates, From Plant to Politics, 153-155. On the rise and fall of the Waffle, see John Bullen, “The Ontario Waffle and the Struggle for an Independent Socialist Canada: Conflict Within the NDP,” Canadian Historical Review 64, no. 2 (1983): 189-215.

42

Furthermore, Brooks opposed the Vietnam War, supported nuclear disarmament, and helped establish a firm anti-war position within the Canadian UAW.22

In the workplace and within the local itself, however, workers’ perception of Brooks was more complex. While still enjoying a great deal of support because of his outwardly radical rhetoric, Brooks came into conflict with younger workers’ resurgent militancy. For many young and radical Chrysler workers, Brooks became the symbol of the increasingly detached and repressive labour bureaucracy that too often held workers back in the post-Second World War era.23 Brooks’ commitment to radicalism was indeed always predicated on his own ability to hang on to power, and he was by many accounts extremely adept and efficient at co-opting and out-maneuvering any opposition that emerged within the local.24 Further, as touched upon in the previous chapter, his objective place in the Fordist system of industrial relations meant that he was legally compelled to quell most workplace disruptions within the life of a contract no matter his personal beliefs or convictions, and thus this system of industrial legality placed him in opposition to young wildcatters and dissidents who sought to take direct action on the shop- floor.25

It was in this climate that Workers’ Unity emerged in 1970. Formed by militant Chrysler workers John Horne and Al Dumouchelle, and Dumouchelle’s wife Lucy, a New Left tenant organizer connected to the student movement, WU attempted to pose a challenge to the entire

Fordist system of unionism. In the plants, Horne had a reputation as something of a wild-man

22 Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 148. 23 Here it is important to note that social unionism and business unionism are, in many ways, two sides of the same bureaucratic coin in the context of post-war industrial relations. Bryan Palmer’s discussion on this theme is instructive. See Bryan Palmer, Working Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991 (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 1992), 370-378. 24 Yates, From Plant to Politics, 90. In addition to Yates, this view of Brooks came across in the interviews I conducted with Jim Monk, Ron Baxter, and Jim Brophy. 25 I discuss some of these conflicts at length later in this chapter. See also Brooks’ reaction to wildcats in, “UAW urges stop to illegal walkouts,” The Windsor Star, 14 June 1971.

43 and remained a divisive figure throughout the 1970s. As Ron Baxter recalled, Horne previously worked at the Heinz tomato processing factory in Leamington before getting a job at Chrysler.

While working at Heinz, Horne gained notoriety for pelting a hated foreman with tomatoes, and he carried over this cavalier attitude to his job on the assembly line and in his union politics in the UAW.26

In the beginning, WU was primarily formed to take on the Brooks administration within

Local 444. While the organization retained its anti-Brooks orientation over the course of its short lifespan, soon after its founding WU began to be seen by its members as a vehicle to empower the rank-and-file and challenge the ossified union structure altogether. Unconcerned with the obligations of industrial legality that constrained Brooks and other labour bureaucrats, WU endorsed direct action on the shop-floor such as wildcat and sit-down strikes, and primarily focused on improving everyday working conditions and health and safety standards. When WU first emerged in the 1970 Local 444 elections for union president, WU made it clear the group was only running a candidate to gain a platform and some recognition in the plants. Though

Horne lost the election to Brooks, WU did gain 22% of the votes, suggesting that the group was tapping into real discontent amongst a segment of the Chrysler workers. Following the election,

WU continued to leaflet workers on issues regarding working conditions and critiques of

Brooks.27

While WU continued to build up popularity in the Chrysler plants, the group also began to attract supporters from elsewhere in the community. In particular, former student activists

Mike and Joe Longmoore, and Mike’s wife Margaret, began to associate with the emerging WU

26 Ron Baxter, interview by Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 31 May 2017. 27 Ron Baxter and Bronwen Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” The Newsletter no. 4 (1974): 3, 6-7.

44 group.28 Mike obtained a job working in one of Windsor’s Ford plants after graduating university and had deep-roots in Windsor’s working-class community and left-wing culture. His father had likewise worked at Ford, and as a child Mike was inadvertently involved in the 1945 strike when he and his mother got stuck in the now-famous blockade. Longmoore also grew up on Drouillard

Road in the working-class neighborhood outside of the Ford factory on Windsor’s East Side and continued to live there throughout this time.29 In this climate, the Longmoores became well- acquainted with many of Windsor’s old radicals such as Nels Dearing, Cliff Gunther, and

Mansfield Matthias. These older radicals had memories of building the UAW and recalled the

CPC’s former strength, although many such veterans of the class-struggle had either left the CPC by this point or otherwise loathed Stalinism’s historical record. While Matthias and Gunther were onetime CPCers, others had always remained independent despite their close relationships with Communists within the UAW’s left-wing caucuses. These independent radicals included

Victor White and the anarchist Spanish Civil War veteran Federico Arcos, whose antipathy to the Communist Party was rooted in his understanding of its role in the Spanish Republic’s loss to

Franco’s Fascists. Yet all of these figures were associated with the dissident CPC milieu at Ford

Windsor.30 The Longmoores were similarly sympathetic to the old CPC and tended to adhere to its line, but Mike was not particularly dogmatic in this sense, and was very much involved in the younger generation of New Leftists, taking part in the rank-and-file revolts from below. Further complicating the situation, some of the older radicals on the executive of the Windsor and

28 Bronwen Wallace (?), Workers’ Unity Timeline (no title), internal New Tendency document (Windsor: no date, 1973?), Gary Kinsman New Tendency Collection (hereafter GKNTC); and Baxter and Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” 5. 29 Mike Longmoore, interview by Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 29 June 2017. 30 Longmoore interview. Jim Brophy helped to further explain some the political dynamics surrounding the group of older radicals. Jim Brophy, interview by Sean Antaya, phone conversation, 3 August 2017. For more on Federico Arcos and his fascinating life story, see Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Oakland: AK Press, 2005), 400-407.

45

District Labour Council whom Longmoore associated with were still quite close to Brooks due to his old connections to the Communist Party and the left-wing caucuses within the UAW.31

The WU’s New Left-inflected working-class politics also attracted young activists elsewhere in the province who were likewise turning towards workplace organizing. Most prominently, Ron Baxter and Bronwen Wallace, two student activists who later played essential roles in The New Tendency, moved from Kingston to Windsor mainly because they were captivated by WU’s organizing efforts at Chrysler, and saw it as an important experiment in building working-class power outside of the traditional Marxist and social-democratic parties and organizations. They also believed that the WU project had the potential to be somewhat different from the ‘boring from within’ tactics of trying to take over a union executive and attempting to implement a radical program from above, due to Horne’s and Dumouchelle’s professed commitment to reflecting the direct will of the rank-and-file. Despite this early optimism, Baxter and Wallace eventually criticized the Workers’ Unity experience for being too vanguardist in the years after the group disbanded.32

Both Baxter and Wallace attended Queen’s University and were heavily involved in New

Left activism and organizing on campus. In high school, Wallace became politicized by the 1962

Cuban Missile Crisis, and subsequently took up the archetypal New Left trajectory, first joining the CUCND and then SUPA once she began her university studies. Wallace also became deeply involved in the women’s movement. Most prominently, she helped to establish a co-op daycare at Queen’s, and took part in the (in)famous 1970 Vancouver Women’s Caucus Abortion Caravan

31 Nels Dearing and John MacArthur, for example, were members of the Brooks administration at Chrysler; Ed Baillargeon was similarly close to Brooks. 32 Baxter and Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” 3-15. This criticism will be examined in greater depth in the following chapter.

46

Protests in Ottawa, where she and other activists occupied the House of Commons.33 Baxter was similarly involved with New Left groups at Queen’s, including a group called Students for a

New University. He and his comrades faced significant repression from the RCMP, who raided radical students’ apartments and collaborated with the university administration to expel Chuck

Edwards, one of Baxter’s closest friends who served as president of the radical CUS-affiliated student council prior to his expulsion.34

Due to both RCMP repression and the aforementioned changing theoretical trends within the student movement, Baxter and Wallace decided to leave campus politics behind. Baxter’s turn towards the working-class was largely catalyzed by reading Andre Gorz’s influential tract,

Strategy for Labor: A Radical Proposal, in which Gorz called for the New Left to reinvigorate and democratize the labour movement, and to organize around “non-reformist reforms” in the advanced capitalist countries.35 Baxter was also increasingly interested in the emerging autonomist Marxist movement in Italy following the “Hot Autumn” of 1969, wherein students

33 Wallace would later become a celebrated poet. She explains her early political trajectory and the profound impact that the Cuban Missile Crisis had on her understanding of society in Bronwen Wallace, “The Cuban Missile Crisis and Me,” in Joanne Page, ed., Arguments with the World (Kingston: Quarry Press, 1992), 26-37. For more on the significance of the Abortion Caravan protests see Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations: The Vancouver Women’s Caucus, the Abortion Caravan, and the RCMP,” Canadian Historical Review 90, no. 3 (2009): 463-495; and Shannon Stettner, “‘We Are Forced to Declare War’: Linkages between Women’s Anti-War Protests and the 1970 Abortion Caravan,” Social History/Histoire Sociale 46, no. 92 (2013): 159-178. Wallace was one of the protestors who gave a speech during the House of Commons occupation. 34 Ron Baxter, “Life, Love and Politics in the City of Roses,” unpublished essay (Windsor: no date), GKNTC. 35 Baxter highlights the importance of Gorz in both Baxter and Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” 7; and Baxter, “Life, Love and Politics in the City of Roses.” He also emphasized the importance of Gorz on his changing thinking at that time during his interview. See Baxter interview. Gorz was a leading thinker for the New Left more generally. See Milligan, Rebel Youth, 70; and Andre Gorz, Strategy for Labor: A Radical Proposal (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967). It is also important to note that the type of state repression that Baxter and his comrades faced was relatively typical amongst New Leftists and led many activists to drop out of student politics and even activism altogether. See Steve Hewitt, Spying 101: The RCMP’s Secret Activities at Canadian Universities, 1917-1997 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 93-172; and Palmer, Canada’s 1960’s, 247.

47 and workers fomented a near revolution by launching massive wildcat strikes across the country, organized independently of the traditional labour unions and the Communist Party.36

Italian autonomist Marxism was first developed by dissident theorists in the Italian

Communist and Socialist parties. In particular, a group of thinkers including Mario Tronti and

Raniero Panzeieri associated with the journals Quaderni Rossi (Red Notebooks) and Classe

Operaia (Working Class) gave rise to Operaismo (Workerism) during the early 1960s.

Workerism emphasized the importance of working-class struggles at the point of production and challenged the legitimacy of the traditional organizations which claimed to represent working- class interests and were hitherto understood by Marxists to be the vanguard organizations leading the class struggle. As the old working-class organizations proved to be increasingly inadequate by quelling growing worker unrest, workerist theorists and organizations continued to gain popularity, and further developed their theories of “workers’ autonomy.” This referred to the need for working-class struggle to be organized completely autonomously from capital, and therefore outside the bureaucratic organizations which became subsumed into the management of the capitalist system in the post-war era. This ‘autonomism’ also stressed the independence of different segments of the working-class from one another, and thus women and racialized workers, for example, each had the right to organize and partake in their struggles separately from the rest of the working-class. The theoretical development of autonomism informed the explosion of direct action and mass worker militancy at automotive factories in cities such as

Turin and the emergence of protest movements on university campuses – not unlike the waves of militancy from below which proliferated throughout North America during this period, albeit on an even larger scale. This, in turn, led to the emergence of a number of autonomist Marxist

36 Baxter interview. On the Hot Autumn, see Steven Wright, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 2017), 82-97.

48 organizations which sought to bring together this mass of worker and student militancy and make the most of an ostensibly revolutionary historical moment.37

At Queen’s, Baxter befriended a member of one of the largest and most influential autonomist Marxist groups, Lotta Continua (LC), and Baxter went to visit her in Italy in early

1970. Baxter was able to travel around the country where he bore witness to the impressive revolutionary upheaval in the country amongst students and workers. As Baxter recalled, “There was this political stuff popping up everywhere – in every town we went, every place I went in

Italy, it was just like politics, politics, politics! And it was the labour stuff, it was at FIAT, it was wildcat strikes, and students were organizing demonstrations.”38 While traveling through Italy,

Baxter also spent time living with Gianni Sofri, brother of influential LC leader and theorist

Adriano Sofri, where he became further acquainted with LC’s theoretical positions.39

After Baxter returned from Italy, he and Wallace decided to take a trip across Canada.

They decided to visit Windsor after getting in touch with Lucy Dumouchelle, who they met through a mutual acquaintance active in Kingston’s tenant organizing movement. Though they initially only stopped in Windsor temporarily in the fall of 1970 to investigate WU, Baxter and

37 For an intellectual history of the development of Italian workerism and autonomism, see Wright, Storming Heaven. A complementary study which focuses on the social and cultural history of the Italian left during this period is Robert Lumley, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 (London: Verso, 1990). See also the Radical America special issues on the Italian Hot Autumn and ensuing struggles, Radical America 5, no. 5 (1971) and Radical America 7, no. 2 (1973). I delve deeper into the development of Italian autonomism and its influence on The New Tendency in the following chapter. 38 Baxter interview. 39 Baxter interview. In 1990, Adriano Sofri was convicted of ordering the murder of an Italian police officer during the violent “Years of Lead,” when he was one of LC’s most prominent figures. Most evidence points to Sofri being framed as demonstrated by historian Carlo Ginzburg, who compares the trial to the early modern witch-trials, which he had researched extensively. See Carlo Ginzburg, The Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late- Twentieth-Century Miscarriage of Justice (London: Verso, 2002). Sofri’s experience was not uncommon, as the autonomist movement faced relentless state repression by the end of the 1970s, and many other prominent leaders, such as Antonio Negri, were similarly jailed on dubious charges. See Lumley, States of Emergency, 337-338.

49

Wallace soon decided that Windsor and WU offered the best and most interesting opportunity to get involved in working-class organizing.40

Upon Baxter’s and Wallace’s move to Windsor in January of 1971, the UAW was gearing up for a potential strike. The UAW bargaining team reached an agreement with Chrysler the night before the strike deadline, and the UAW planned to hold the ratification in Windsor

Arena so that much of the membership could attend.41 WU brought leaflets and signs to the meeting which criticized the contract as a “sell-out” and a “sweet-heart contract,” although the other workers needed little encouragement from WU to express their discontent. The workers in attendance were already unhappy with the proposed contract due to the lack of input from the union’s Canadian branch during negotiations and the contract’s negligence of local issues.42

Additionally, 650 workers were laid off a week before the meeting, and the contract did not include any provisions to protect jobs at Canadian plants.43 As a result, the meeting began with a chorus of boos and chants which prevented Brooks from speaking for 15 minutes. A full-on revolt against Brooks and the UAW executive soon broke out once Brooks began to lecture the workers on the new contract, paternalistically dismissing any criticism from the audience.44

As Brooks continued, workers continued to heckle, and began to throw beer bottles and garbage at the executive. While the bottles rained down near Brooks, sending shards of glass flying, other workers jumped over the boards and onto the ice surface to protest directly in front

40 Baxter interview. 41 Windsor Arena was a hockey arena with the capacity to hold thousands of attendees. 42 Baxter and Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” page 3-5; and Spiros de Bono, “Chrysler pact hope still alive, workers jeer head of local,” The Windsor Star, 29 January 1971. Yates mentions that these were general concerns amongst the Canadian UAW membership more broadly during negotiations. See Yates, From Plant to Politics, 147. 43 “Beer bottles fly at union meeting,” The Globe and Mail, 29 January 1971. 44 “Pickets disrupt meeting,” The Windsor Star, 29 January 1971; and de Bono, “Chrysler pact hope.”

50 of the executive sitting at the centre of the arena.45 This contingent of workers included members of WU who brought their anti-contract signs with them, making for a dramatic photograph that was featured on the front page of The Windsor Star the following morning.46 The executive tried to calm things down, but by this point most workers began to exit the arena, the exodus probably stemming from a variety of reasons: anger at the inadequate contract; dismay at the executive’s clear lack of concern for rank-and-file involvement; discontent with the violent turmoil breaking out; or a realization that there were better things to do than bear witness to unfolding pandemonium. Meanwhile, many of the ballot boxes were tipped over or left open near the entrances, with ballots strewn across the floor and blowing out the windy hallways. Despite this massive display of rank-and-file dissent and clear disregard for any semblance of democratic process regarding the ballot boxes, the contract was, according to the UAW, ratified with 68% approval. Brooks meanwhile denounced WU as an “anti-union group distributing unsigned pink trash.”47 The whole experience was eye-opening for the members of WU. For Baxter in particular, the incident and its aftermath were a perfect distillation of the older labour bureaucrats’ sheer contempt for all dissent and critical opinions within the union, and simply proved the absence of any real organic connection between the labour leadership and the rank- and-file.48

45 De Bono, “Chrysler pact hope,”; “Beer bottles fly at union meeting,”; “Pickets disrupt meeting,”; and Baxter and Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” 3-5, all describe this scene in similar detail. In his interview, Baxter’s recollection of the event matched the textual sources. Baxter interview. 46 “Stormy Meeting,” The Windsor Star, 29 January 1971. The picture can also be found in a recent collection of historical Windsor Star photos. See Sharon Hanna and Craig Pearson, The Windsor Star, From the Vault, Volume II: 1950-1980 (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2016), 124. 47 Baxter and Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” 5; and Baxter interview. “Pink trash” refers to the colour of WU’s mimeographed leaflets rather than a redbaiting slur, though the double meaning could have been intentional. The New Tendency’s Auto Worker Group similarly printed leaflets on pink-coloured paper after WU disbanded. 48 “Election ‘Results,’” Workers’ Unity, May 1971; and Baxter interview.

51

After the conflict over the contract, the members of Workers’ Unity worked to build up their base of power in Chrysler’s Plant 2, where Horne, Al Dumouchelle, and others worked building engines. In-plant elections in March of 1971 saw WU run as a slate of Horne for

Chairman, Dumouchelle for Chief Steward, and Gerry Pacquette for Midnight Steward against the incumbent “Brooks men.” The election platforms highlighted the necessity of responding to the direct needs of the rank-and-file, and WU members promised their constituents that they would be subject to recall at any time during their term. They criticized the former stewards for spending their time enforcing company rules rather than fighting to improve in-plant working conditions and continued their critique of the labour bureaucracy and the current union structure by suggesting union executives in the international union had stronger ties to the ruling class than the rank-and-file. As a testament to their New Left-inflected Marxist politics, WU also advocated for the formation of workers’ councils in each department to democratize the workplace and allow workers to further assert control over the labour process.49 In the election,

WU found a great deal of support, and Horne and Dumouchelle got elected to their positions.

This allowed WU to have more or less full control of union matters within Plant 2.50

In addition to leaflets, WU soon began to put out an eponymous newspaper with the subtitle proclaiming itself the “Voice of the UAW Rank and File” and distributed the paper at the

Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors plants in Windsor. Demonstrating the influence of Lotta

Continua, articles in the newspaper stressed the importance of uniting the struggles of waged factory workers inside the plant with those of the unemployed, women, farmers, and students – essentially linking workers’ particular concerns in the factory to a broader class struggle against

49 Baxter and Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” 5. Gerry Pacquette, “Brothers Unite!” Workers’ Unity election leaflet (Windsor: 1971), GKNTC. 50 Spiros de Bono, “Labor,” The Windsor Star, 4 November 1971.

52 capitalism.51 Other articles pointed directly to the autonomist struggles in Italy and the conflicts of the UAW and CIO in the 1930s and 1940s as possible models for how to reinvigorate the labour movement via direct participation and militant action from the rank-and-file; the creation of student/worker alliances were also enthusiastically advocated.52 Furthermore, the WU newspaper encouraged disgruntled workers to write in with their stories, and published a section titled “Rumblings from the Lines” which featured quotes from workers expressing their discontent with factory life.53

WU also continued to denounce Brooks and the labour bureaucracy, often pointing out specific instances of Brooks’ abuse of power and hypocrisy. One article referred to the tumultuous January ratification meeting and questioned the legitimacy of the election results, while another criticized Brooks and the international union for telling Local 444 members to cross Canadian Union of Operating Engineers’ (CUOE) picket lines when the Chrysler powerhouse workers went on strike. After workers in Plants 2 and 3 disobeyed Brooks by refusing to cross, the company soon agreed to a contract with CUOE. Brooks then claimed credit by congratulating Local 444 for helping CUOE obtain a better deal, despite the fact that he himself ordered members to cross the picket lines and undermine the strike.54 In response to these criticisms, Brooks continued to denounce WU as anti-union wreckers in an attempt to crush their dissenting voices in the local, and often resorted to the same sorts of slanderous

51 “We Will,” Workers’ Unity, May 1971; and A Student Worker in Plant 2, “An Injury to One is an Injury to All,” Workers’ Unity, July 1971. 52 “No More Good Losers,” Workers’ Unity, September 1971; and “‘A Happy Employee is a Good Employee,’” Workers’ Unity, June 1971. While the creation of student/worker alliances was not exclusively an autonomist concept, WU was particularly influenced by the manifestation of such alliances during the Hot Autumn and within organizations like LC. 53 “Rumblings from the Lines,” Workers’ Unity, May 1971; and “Rumblings from the Ford Lines,” Workers’ Unity, September 1971. 54 “Negotiations are not enough!” Workers’ Unity, May 1971.

53 attacks that the Reutherites once launched against Communists and radical left-wing unionists.55

As noted in the WU newspaper, at one membership meeting Brooks claimed to have receipts in his possession that proved WU was in the pay of malevolent – albeit unspecified – outside actors. When the membership confronted him to show these receipts, Brooks then claimed that he would have to “subpoena” them from WU. Meanwhile, WU in fact relied on donations from workers at the auto plants. In response to Brooks’ accusations, WU subsequently published the numbers of donations they received and the corresponding amounts of each donation in the following issue of their newspaper.56

WU continued to participate in and encourage direct action in the plant, and these methods were often successful in improving working conditions for employees. As noted in

Chapter 1, working conditions continued to decline in Windsor auto plants during the 1970s as production was reorganized along American standards in wake of the Auto Pact, and as companies constantly sought to cut costs through a combination of speed-ups, increased automation, layoffs, and poor health and safety standards. One article in the WU newspaper chronicled workers’ struggles within the motor test area in Plant 2. The motor test department was known for being particularly unhealthy due to excessive fumes, smoke, and exhaust. To deal with the issues in the department, the WU-led plant union held mass meetings in the lunch room so that the rank-and-file could determine a course of action, and they collectively formulated a proposal for the company to clean up the area. When the company claimed these proposals were unworkable, workers from Plant 2 held a large demonstration outside the plant to attract attention from the public, defying Brooks, who voiced opposition against any demonstration. The protest

55 WU likened Brooks’ tactics to “the McCarthy hysteria of the 1950s.” See “Just for the Record,” Workers’ Unity, July 1971. 56 “Just for the Record,” Workers’ Unity.

54 was successful and attracted attention from the local media; as a result, the company cleaned up the area by installing better equipment and ventilation.57

In another instance, John Horne sanctioned a walkout after an anonymous caller phoned into the union office and a local radio station claiming that a bomb was placed in the engine plant. Horne initially asked Chrysler to stop the line and let the workers out into the parking lot until security could verify whether there was a bomb present. When the company denied Horne’s request, he sanctioned a wildcat (though technically Horne himself never left the plant). In retaliation, the company fired Horne and three other workers, including one of the plant committeemen. After filing a grievance, Horne felt that Brooks was doing little to help him and the others because “‘[Brooks] wanted to get rid of us.’” Brooks rebuffed the accusation, claiming that, “‘Mr. Horne and I do not see eye to eye on many things, but he is the elected plant chairman and it is our duty to stand by him in a case like this.’” Circumventing Brooks, Horne eventually brought his case to Douglas Fraser at the UAW international office. Fraser successfully convinced Chrysler to reinstate Horne and the others to their jobs.58

In addition to addressing health and safety issues, WU used direct action to confront unjust discipline and foremen who abused their power. For example, in the same test department in Plant 2 that was previously the focus of health and safety protests, there were persistent problems with foremen and supervisors who harassed workers and denied them emergency relief. After one such incident where workers were denied relief, workers in the department launched a sit-down strike and one worker was fired as a result. After another mass membership meeting in the plant, which determined that the plant union would offer the company an

57 “Hot Test Flares Up,” Workers’ Unity, June 1971. 58 Spiros de Bono, “Labor,” The Windsor Star, 4 November 1971. Fraser was then the head of the UAW’s Chrysler department. He later became the UAW’s president in 1977.

55 ultimatum, the in-plant union got the fired worker reinstated, and the company agreed to deal with the abusive foremen and supervisors. Moreover, when the company began to use foremen to work on the line rather than getting relief men, the Plant 2 union similarly told the company that workers would walkout unless the company stopped this practice; as before, the company complied.59 In Plant 3, when a foreman began to work on the line, the other workers in the department stopped working and were disciplined. In response, the Plant 3 workers launched a successful two-day wildcat strike. While Brooks came out against the wildcat at a membership meeting, WU endorsed Plant 3’s actions, and again argued that direct action tactics needed to be a normal part of union strategy by pointing to the various instances in which workers were able to quickly achieve their goals through such tactics.60

WU also established a women’s group during this time called Workers’ Unity Women

(WUW). Alongside Pat Noonan’s Women’s Liberation Group, WUW was one of the main feminist groups in Windsor, primarily targeting the wives of auto workers as potential recruits, though the group remained made up of the wives and partners of the core WU members: Lucy

Dumouchelle, Bronwen Wallace, Colleen Pacquette, Margaret Longmoore, and two others.61

The group maintained a column in the WU newspaper called “Salt of the Earth” which dealt directly with the broader problems that women face in capitalist society and in their specific roles as autoworkers’ wives. WUW emphasized the group’s working-class identity, noting that

“we are not the version of Women’s Liberation that one is given in the media” instead explaining that all articles were written by “wives and friends of autoworkers.”62 Articles used plain

59 “Hot Test Flares Up,” Workers’ Unity. 60 “The Way it is!” Workers’ Unity, July 1971. 61 Wallace (?), Workers’ Unity Timeline (no title); and “Jane Doe Study Group – HerStory,” internal Labour Centre document, (Windsor: no date, 1973[?]), GKNTC. 62 “Salt of the Earth,” Workers’ Unity, May 1971.

56 language to illustrate concepts such as social reproduction, describing the ways that so-called women’s work in the home is “essential to every corporation in this society.”63 One article in particular drew an analogy between the “internal maintenance” done by repair workers and janitors inside the factory and the equally important “external maintenance” done by workers’ wives inside the home. The article further explained how the socially necessary labour performed by women is devalued in capitalist society because it does not directly “produce anything” despite ultimately being essential for production; moreover, it discussed the distinction between productive and reproductive labour, and began to introduce the Marxist concept of the labour theory of value.64

Other WUW articles advocated for establishing a co-op daycare centre both to give women a break, and to allow them to work another waged job if they needed or wanted to do so.

WUW advocated for a similar model to the daycare that Wallace previously established at

Queen’s, and argued for daycare access to become a core demand for the UAW.65 Alienation within the family was another topic, as WUW pointed out the ways in which factory work creates a disconnect between working men and their families both due to the nature of shift-work which forces workers to be away for odd hours during the week and because of the mental and physical toll that the work itself takes on factory labourers. WUW noted that marital problems in working-class families could often be linked to these particular conditions.66 Though the initial

WUW group did not gain a wide degree of support, compared to the UAW’s mainstream their analyses and overall project did point to a radically different way of confronting women’s issues

63 Quote is from, “Salt of the Earth, Two for the Price of One,” Workers’ Unity, June 1971. However, this was a general theme across all of the Salt of the Earth articles. 64 “Salt of the Earth, Two for the Price of One.” 65 “Salt of the Earth,” Workers’ Unity, July 1971; and “Salt of the Earth, Daycare Soon,” Workers’ Unity, September 1971. 66 “Salt of the Earth,” May 1971.

57 in capitalist society and in relation to the labour movement by incorporating much-needed

Marxist-feminist arguments that Wallace and Lucy Dumouchelle initially honed in the student movement, where women’s issues were similarly too often dismissed as secondary or irrelevant to the broader class struggle.67 Indeed, this initial experiment, like that of the broader WU project, proved to be valuable experience for The New Tendency’s later organizing efforts.

WU also began to attract more popularity in the Ford plants during the summer of 1971 in the aftermath of a controversial wildcat strike. On June 17th, a group of workers from the hot test area led a walkout from Ford Windsor’s Engine Plant 2 and established pickets at the plant gates. By 4pm that afternoon, production came to a halt at both Ford engine plants and the foundry as thousands of incoming workers honored the picket lines.68 The initial 50 workers, including Mike Longmoore, were wildcatting over the extremely poor working conditions within the plant, including inadequate ventilation, constant burn hazards, and slippery floors.69 Similar to the issues that WU was dealing with in Chrysler’s Plant 2, Ford had reduced the number of workers in their own hot test area, and increased the workload for the remaining workers in the department while overlooking other health and safety issues.70 As one of the workers put it, “

‘The company puts production ahead of safety... it takes them four minutes to fix a line but it takes them nine weeks to repair a hoist.’ ”71 The strikers also demanded that the company rehire laid-off workers to reduce the amount of overtime that they were being forced to work, and to

67 For a comprehensive history of sexism on the shop floor and within the UAW itself, and the ways in which women fought to improve these conditions, see Pamela Sugiman, Labour’s Dilemma: The Gender Politics of Auto Workers in Canada, 1937-1979 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1994). On women’s struggles against sexism within the New Left, see Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 297-304; and Kostash, Long Way from Home, 167-169. For a longer discussion on working-class women, domestic labour, and class-struggle, see Meg Luxton, More than a Labour of Love: Three Generations of Women’s Work in the Home (Toronto: The Women’s Press, 1980). 68 Walt McCall and Gord Henderson, “Ford remains shut,” The Windsor Star, 18 June 1971 (Final). 69 Gord Henderson, “Wildcat shuts Ford,” The Windsor Star, 18 June 1971. 70 “Ford awaits union’s word,” The Windsor Star, 19 June 1971. 71 Henderson, “Wildcat shuts Ford.”

58 stop using job transfers to discipline workers. Lastly, they claimed that Ford was threatening to move their production to Cleveland as a response to their militancy, though the company denied the allegation. Like the struggles against Brooks at Chrysler, Longmoore and others were in conflict with Local 200’s executive and wanted to be able to handle their own grievances in the ways that they saw fit, though the executive did not publicly criticize the striking workers.72

The wildcat shut down production at Ford for three days and attracted significant attention from the local media. Though Ford did eventually address some of the workers’ complaints by installing fans and repairing the dangerous flooring in the hot test area, the company came down hard on the walkout’s participants by firing 10 workers, including

Longmoore, and suspending 46 others.73 The fired workers filed grievances, and the union began to negotiate with Ford over their fate. The union was able to rescind some of the firings into suspensions, and other firings into resignations.74 Near the end of the negotiations, only the jobs of Longmoore, Donal Gebbie, and Knighton – one of the initial leaders of the walkout – remained to be decided. While Longmoore and Gebbie did not lead the walkout, they both successfully agitated for extending the length of the strike past the initial Thursday walkout, served as part of an unofficial strike committee, and helped coordinate pickets for the length of the strike. Ultimately, Ford proposed to drop Knighton’s discharge to a suspension if the union agreed not to move Longmoore and Gebbie’s grievances to arbitration. Both the union negotiating committee and plant committee approved of these terms in a depressing display of

72 Henderson, “Wildcat shuts Ford;” and “Ford awaits union’s word.” 73 “Donal Gebbie and J. Longmoore v. United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, Loc. 200 and Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd.,” O.L.R.B. Rep. No. 519 (1973), 2. 74 Having a discharge on one’s record could lead to a worker being “blackballed” by the other factories in the city, whereas if a worker resigned, they could still obtain a job at either GM or Chrysler relatively easily at this time. This issue is discussed in “Donal Gebbie and J. Longmoore,” (1973), 3.

59 business unionist ‘solidarity.’75 The union furthermore did little to alleviate other workers’ suspensions.76 Despite this setback, Longmoore later recalled that there was still something of carrying on Windsor’s militant legacy in the wildcat’s larger significance:

We were all fired up and taking on the world. And people were getting burned in the foundry. And finally somebody got hurt bad and there was that walkout and that three day wildcat strike, and that’s how I got fired and everybody went back to work. But we had a history; I’m sure you’re aware of the history of the Ford Strike in ‘45.77

In response to the firings and other discipline, Longmoore and other Ford radicals established the Ford Workers’ Defense Committee. It was both an immediate rank-and-file movement to put pressure on the company and the union to reinstate the fired workers and alleviate suspensions, as well as a means to build rank-and-file power more generally at Ford, establishing a more permanent challenge to the labour bureaucracy as WU had done at Chrysler.

The rest of WU similarly began to direct more energy towards engaging Ford workers by using the walkout as a starting point, and included articles focused on Ford in their July and September issues of the newspaper.78 Despite generating significant rank-and-file pressure, the Local 200 executive refused to reconsider its stance on the terms of the severe discipline. As one Defense

Committee leaflet reported,

Now that we are back to work, we find that the situation around the firings of Brothers Longmoore and Gebbie has not changed. The Union officials still refuse to negotiate the matter with the Company; furthermore, they still refuse to send the cases to arbitration. Added to this they are still ignoring the unanimous membership directive (June 24th meeting) to hold a special meeting concerning any severe discipline resulting from the Walkout. More incredibly, the Union still ignores the signatures of over 800 members who

75 “Donal Gebbie and J. Longmoore,” (1973), 1-4. 76 “Where Do We Stand?” Ford Workers’ Defense Committee Leaflet, (Windsor: 1971), GKNTC. 77 Longmoore interview. 78 “Important Meeting Tonite,” Ford Workers’ Defense Committee Leaflet, (Windsor: 1971), GKNTC; “Where Do We Stand?” Ford Workers’ Defense Committee Leaflet; “Ford Workers’ Committee Report,” internal Labour Centre document, (Windsor: 1973[?]), GKNTC; “Learn and Fight Together,” Workers’ Unity, July 1971; and “Rumblings from the Ford Lines,” Workers’ Unity.

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demanded the meeting. Finally, the Union administration has made absolutely no attempt to help in any way the brothers who received long suspensions.79

As with Local 444’s January ratification meeting at Windsor Arena, the Local 200 executive’s actions belied a jarring lack of regard for the concerns of its membership and of democratic process, and exhibited an affinity for class collaboration with the company in the face of genuine discontent and dissent amongst its membership. Under pressure from Mance Matthias and other older militants in the Defence Committee, Longmoore and Gebbie later brought their case to the

Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB), and argued that the union violated their duty to fair representation in their negotiations with Ford.80 However, in the internal New Tendency documents, the Defence Committee later reported that they merely took legal action to expose to other workers the futility of pursuing workers’ struggles through the courts under capitalism.81

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the OLRB found no wrongdoing on the union’s part and, legally speaking, this ruling was rather uncontroversial. Longmoore and Gebbie indeed violated the terms of industrial legality by helping perpetuate an illegal strike.82 Of course, this does not excuse the union executive for their deference to bourgeois codes of conduct. Rather, it is simply another example of the ways in which the post-war system of industrial relations had transformed unions like UAW Local 200 from working-class institutions capable of organizing mass action to further workers’ interests, to fairly anemic corporatist organizations too afraid to reject the absurd terms of the walkout negotiations in which Ford leveraged workers’ livelihoods

79 “Where Do We Stand?” Ford Workers’ Defense Committee Leaflet. The union’s official reason for ignoring the petition was that the petition asked for the meeting to take place during working hours, meaning workers would have had to wildcat to attend, and the union leadership did not want to violate the Labour Relations Act. See “Donal Gebbie and J. Longmoore,” (1973), 10-11. 80 “Ford Workers’ Committee Report,” internal Labour Centre document. 81 “Labour Centre Meeting – June 9, 1973,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: 1973), GKNTC. 82 “Donal Gebbie and J. Longmoore,” (1973), 11-12.

61 against one another. The fact that the walkout was entirely justified – morally, if not legally – by the dangerous working conditions that Ford allowed to exist within its factories in the first place was, under the terms of industrial legality, irrelevant.83

By fall of 1971, WU was beginning to fall apart, as differences over politics and personalities began to be overwhelming. According to Baxter and Wallace, Horne had done little work to contribute to the formation of the proposed workers’ councils in each department, and was also planning along with Al Dumouchelle, Mike Longmoore, Margaret Longmoore, Terry

Caughan (a Ford worker), and Doug Poupard (a Chrysler worker) to run for city council in

December as a slate named the Windsor Political Action Committee (WPAC). Believing that

WU had veered too far from its original purpose, Baxter and Wallace left the group and it officially disbanded soon after.84 WPAC continued its municipal campaign, promoting the need for solidarity action between employed and unemployed workers; improved public services such as co-operative health clinics; increased funding for hospitals, public transit, and neighborhood groups; and more youth facilities throughout the community.85 Despite their progressive platform, the WPAC candidates only managed to obtain a few thousand votes each.86 Although

83 It is important to note that my accusations of class collaboration are not intended to refer to individual instances of conspiracy or collusion etc. Indeed, the OLRB ruling was clear to emphasize that this did not occur, and this claim may have very well been correct – although these more overt and sinister forms of class collaboration are not exactly uncommon. Rather, I refer to the union’s meek acceptance of bourgeois legality and codes of conduct, and a willingness to negotiate a ‘reasonable’ settlement to retain the appearance of respectability, thereby valuing the union’s relationship with Ford more than with their own members, rather than rejecting the unjust terms of the bargain and struggling in solidarity with the fired workers. For a scathing expose of the UAW in this regard, written by a respected investigative journalist, see William Serrin, The Company and the Union: The ‘Civilized Relationship’ of the General Motors Corporation and the United Automobile Workers (New York: Vintage Books, 1974). 84 Baxter and Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” 6. 85 John Horne and Al Dumouchelle, “A Personal Message to Plant 2 Workers,” WPAC leaflet (Windsor, 1971), GKNTC; and “Vote Windsor Political Action Committee Slate,” WPAC leaflet (Windsor, 1971), GKNTC. 86 “How the candidates placed,” The Windsor Star, 2 December 1971.

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WU ceased to exist as an organization, John Horne and Al Dumouchelle retained their positions in Plant 2 well into the 1970s.

Though WU disbanded fairly quickly, it did give Baxter and Wallace their first experience in working-class organizing, provided them with a basic understanding of shop-floor politics, and helped them establish important connections to other radical organizers in the community. Additionally, the conflicts with the Local 444 and Local 200 executives demonstrated to WU members the outright hostility that established union leaders exhibited towards challenges to their authority from below, and the numerous difficulties and provocations that any organized attempt to confront their authority would face. Both the lessons that they learned and the connections that they established proved to be integral to the formation of The

Labour Centre and The New Tendency in the following years. Perhaps most importantly, WU’s actions helped to entrench a degree of democratic participation and a particular culture of collective militancy within the union in Plant 2 that did not necessarily exist in the other plants.

Jim Monk recalled when he started working at Chrysler in Plant 2 during the fall of 1973:

Nobody did anything at Plant 2 without a vote, whereas at the other plants, the steward or the committeeman or the plant chair [would make the decisions] – it was very top down. Somebody would call an action and it would be imposed whereas [in Plant 2] we were asked, ‘weʼd like to do this, can we do a work to rule?ʼ So I was really freaked out when I got to Plant 3 where theyʼre cutting off the overtime and theyʼre not asking me about it. In Plant 2, the engine plant, it was really radical compared to the other plants, under John Horne back then.87

87 Jim Monk, interview with Sean Antaya, Amherstburg, Ontario, 2 May 2017. Horne was also still (at least nominally) championing the idea of workers’ councils at that point, albeit in a somewhat moderate form. See “Departmental and Area Councils,” Engine Plant Committee Newsletter, 23 February 1973, GKNTC. Even Jim Brophy, who was otherwise quite critical of Horne, noted that, “Horne was successful in stopping the worst of the repression and giving the workers some space.” Jim Brophy, interview with Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 3 July 2017. I explore some of the conflicts between Horne and The New Tendency Autoworkers’ Group in the next chapter.

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Members of The New Tendency Auto Workers’ Group eventually contested Horne’s own authority and viewed Horne himself as a representative of the labour bureaucracy to a certain extent; nevertheless, WU’s organizing efforts seem to have created a qualitative change for workers within Plant 2 in both their day-to-day work experience and in their relationship with their union – no matter how uneven, incomplete, or temporary this change may have been.

While former student activists like Mike Longmoore, Ron Baxter, and Bronwen Wallace were engaging with working-class politics through rank-and-file movements within Windsor’s auto factories, the turn towards the working-class initially took a somewhat different trajectory for others like Jim Brophy, who moved to Toronto in 1970. Alongside other ex-student radicals,

Brophy started Guerilla, an underground magazine which quickly became something of an institution for Toronto’s burgeoning counterculture. The magazine reviewed rock concerts and art-house movies, interviewed a wide array of prominent individuals associated with the broader counterculture and the left, supported Toronto’s gay community, promoted women’s liberation, was resolutely anti-imperialist and supportive of American draft resisters who formed an activist network in Toronto, and endorsed various grassroots community health clinics and food co- ops.88 Politically, the magazine published perspectives across the left-wing spectrum, though generally the editorial collective seemed to move from a sixties student New Left perspective towards a more explicit Marxism as time went on, though still largely remaining outside of sectarian debates and conflicts among the various organizations on the revolutionary left.89

88 On Guerilla, see David Churchill, “American Expatriates and the Building of Alternative Social Space in Toronto, 1965-1977,” Urban History Review 29, (2010): 40-41. The entire run of Guerilla can be found at Toronto free press, 5 June 1970-19 October 1973, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, Toronto. 89 The opening article in the first Guerilla sums up the initial anarchistic and perhaps Situationist-influenced countercultural attitude: “The methods of the left-wing ideologists are similar to those of their Capitalist counterparts. They are conspirators in the creation of Spectacles, the object being to “politicize”. To make the masses aware. The success of this manipulation depends on averting one’s responses from real-life situations, one loses touch, subjects events to “Interpretation”. The long-range goal, of course, is The Revolutions, i.e. the exchange of one set of rulers for another. […] We must struggle to live in a hostile environment. We must be our revolution.

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While working on Guerilla, Brophy was involved in solidarity work for the United Farm

Workers grape boycott, and helped organize fellow American war-resisters in Toronto so that they could drum up support for the boycott at various grocery stores in the city.90 Brophy’s biggest shift in focus, however, occurred once he began associating with a group called the

Militant Co-op (MC) and befriended the burly leader of the group, George “The Bear” Longley, who wrote a regular labour column for Guerilla. MC was a broad-left, grassroots, rank-and-file group primarily made up of militant Teamsters, United Electrical Workers, former members of the Communist Party, and other assorted radicals. It focused on building workers’ power by supporting strikes in the greater Toronto area on the picket line; organizing boycotts; and conducting educational campaigns wherein the Co-op held workshops and distributed leaflets which informed workers’ how to organize their workplace, explained the importance of solidarity in struggle, and included detailed information about various labour conflicts in the province. Longley often reinforced these values in his regular columns, denouncing scabs, strikebreakers, and other grifters by name while celebrating workers who went out of their way to help their comrades.91

This involves wild-eyed experimentation and hungry exploration. We glimpse the world that is ours in the visions of madmen, the words of great mystics, the illumination of poets, our own dreams, the feel of our bodies. Past revolutionaries have failed because of the failure of revolutionaries to live. Our concrete alternative is to BE.” See Jim Christy, “Beyond the Spectacle…,” Guerilla 1, no. 1, 5 June 1970. However, this initial viewpoint is contrasted with the fact that by early 1971, Clara Phillips’ “Marx U,” column began to appear semi-frequently to promote the continuing relevancy of Marxism and defined concepts like historical materialism and class consciousness for readers. See, for example, Clara Phillips, “Marx U,” Guerilla 2, no. 30, 19 January 1971. For Guerilla’s policy on sectarianism, see Dave Maxwell, “Unity of the Left,” Guerilla, 17 August 1970. 90 Jim Brophy, interview with Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 3 July 2017. The boycott was also heavily promoted in Guerilla. 91 “Filling the Vacuum: The Militant Co-op,” Guerilla, no. 17, February 1971. For examples of Longley’s columns see George Longley, “The Bear’s Lair,” Guerilla, no. 17, February 1971; George Longley, “The Bear’s Lair,” Guerilla, no. 16, January 1971; George Longley, “The Bear’s Lair,” Guerilla 2, no. 18, 18 August 1971; George Longley, “The Bear’s Lair,” Guerilla 2, no. 4, 7 July 1971; and George Longley, “The Bear’s Lair,” Guerilla 2, no. 6, 21 July 1971.

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MC and Longley also encouraged direct action in other ways, such as picketing stores whenever workers got “screwed” by companies overcharging on car repairs or purchasing other necessities.92 Like WU, the group was critical of the union bureaucrats and in the Toronto

Teamsters locals and elsewhere in the community.93 The group was also very supportive of unemployed workers’ struggles, and formed an internal caucus for unemployed workers.

Longley reinforced this support in his column by emphasizing, “UNEMPLOYMENT IS

EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS because you might be next.”94

Through this time, Brophy also began to read more Marxist literature while remaining outside the established Marxist organizations. For Brophy, the whole experience with MC was transformative, as he recalled:

That was probably like a seminal event in my own development, because this was an organization that was grassroots, totally organized by workers. And it opened my eyes, and set the stage for me going into Chrysler’s and coming back to Windsor. And so it was a big step in my development. It took me out of what would be the New Left into a more class-based politics. But I never felt comfortable with the traditional Marxist organizing and organizations. I was never attracted to go into the Maoist organizations even though I read all the stuff by Mao Tse-Tung at that time like everybody did. I didn’t see [a use for] the Leninist model, without being able to critique it; but I just felt like this idea that some external force was going to drive the working-class struggle forward seemed ridiculous. And coming out of the student movement and the anti-war movement, you had this notion that times were different, things were changed, and the old ways of organizing weren’t necessarily the most effective without being able to articulate a big theory about it – you just felt that and you experienced that.95

While Brophy’s notion that this Marxist class-based politics from below was outside the trajectory of the New Left can be contested, as can his characterization of the vanguard party as

92 “Filling the Vacuum: The Militant Co-op,”; Longley, January 1971; Longley, “Bear’s Lair,” Guerilla 2, no. 8, 4 August 1971; and Longley, 18 August 1971. 93 For example, George Longley, “Bear’s Lair,” Guerilla, no. 8, 14 September 1970 94 George Longley, “Bear’s Lair,” Guerilla, no. 25, May 1971; Longley, February 1971; and “Filling the Vacuum: The Militant Co-op.” 95 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017.

66 an “external force,” his general sentiment about the processes at work in the transition from student politics to class-based politics is illuminating both for his own personal theoretical development and other New Tendency activists, and is reflective of the larger trends ongoing within the Canadian New Left during the early 1970s.96

Inspired by the work of the Militant Co-op, Brophy and his then-partner Reni Jackman began looking for more ways to build connections to the working-class, and make a full break from the increasingly insular community of ex-student leftists with whom they associated in

Toronto.97 Brophy formulated a plan to launch a bookstore in order to build a political base of activity, and was partially inspired by a friend who had been involved in student activism at the

University of Windsor and was now involved with the Ho Chi Minh bookstore in Montreal, which had quickly become a hub of radical anti-imperialist politics in the city.98 Brophy and

Jackman saw Windsor as a potentially conducive environment for the bookstore project for a variety of reasons: Brophy still had connections there from his time at the university; Windsor was a “working class town”; and the city was both economically and culturally dominated by the

United States, observing that “every facet of community life in Windsor is influenced by its

96 An internal document which outlined the history of the bookstore likewise characterized this as a shift away from the “youth culture” towards the working-class. Bronwen Wallace, “Community Resource Centre,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: no date, 1973[?]), 1, GKNTC. While Wallace is credited with typing the document, the content seems to reflect the perspectives of Brophy, Jackman, and the Guerilla Publishing Collective (which was now completely separated from the eponymous magazine). This is significant because Wallace and Brophy were part of different factions in the bookstore dispute and also in the Labour Centre and New Tendency more broadly. 97 From the aforementioned document: “It had been for some time been evident that the congregation of ex-student leftists in Toronto was incestuous. This internalized breeding was giving birth to a practice that was completely divorced from the life of the masses. Like sex between individuals (if you’ll permit the analogy to continue momentarily), once started it was hard to stop. So it became obvious that as revolutionaries we had to break this type of existence and develop a more direact [sic] link with the working class,” Wallace, “Community Resource Centre,” 1. 98 Wallace, “Community Resource Centre,” 1. Mills briefly discusses the Ho Chi Minh bookstore as one of many important “spaces of resistance,” for immigrants in Montreal. See Mills, The Empire Within, 161. Particularly, the Ho Chi Minh bookstore was a significant organizing space for anti-imperialist Vietnamese immigrant student activists like Brophy’s friend. This is also evident in a New York Times profile of Vietnamese students in Montreal. See Jay Walz, “South Vietnamese Students Are Resisting Canadian Efforts to Send Them Home,” The New York Times, 19 July 1970.

67 closeness to the huge American metropolis of Detroit.”99 Brophy and Jackman thus felt that a bookstore could function in the city as a locus of resistance to capitalism and American imperialism, and could serve as a common “community centre” of sorts for various left-wing groups and projects.100

From the beginning, the bookstore ran into conflicts over questions of control and affiliation with other groups in the community. Brophy initially sought support from the local labour movement, the faculty and student council at the University of Windsor, and independent groups or activists.101 Brophy knew the older labour leftists such as John MacArthur, Ed

Baillargeon, and Victor White, who at times supported him when he was in the student movement as he came into conflict with other more conservative labour leaders such as Dennis

McDermott, the Canadian Director of the UAW through this period.102 This proved to be the bookstore’s main base of initial support, as White and Baillargeon were executives on Windsor’s

Labour Council, and pledged financial support to Brophy’s bookstore project. However, the

Labour Council initially added the caveat that there would be “‘no money without some control,’” and the university faculty and student council gave similar stipulations.103 At the same time, Brophy had learned about Workers’ Unity and was in contact with Baxter and Wallace.

Politically, Brophy was much closer to the New Left Marxism of Baxter and Wallace than of the

Old Leftists on the Labour Council. However, over the course of the struggles at Chrysler, WU of course came into conflict with some of the same Old Leftists who now offered their support to

99 The quotes are from a promotional newsletter from the bookstore which explained some of the history and objectives behind the store. See “People’s Bookstore,” Community Resource Centre (Windsor: 1972), GKNTC. Similar reasons are given in Wallace, “Community Resource Centre,” 2. Baxter similarly emphasized the importance of Windsor as a border city in Baxter interview. 100 Wallace, “Community Resource Centre,” 2. 101 Wallace, “Community Resource Centre,” 2. 102 Jim Brophy, interview with Sean Antaya, phone conversation, 3 August 2017. 103 Wallace, “Community Resource Centre,” 2.

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Brophy. Ballargeron and MacArthur were both allied with Brooks within the UAW and would have therefore been opposed to some of the perspectives being espoused by the former WU activists. Brophy was ultimately able to fend off initial demands for control from outside backers like the Labour Council. Yet the constant tension of “Who Controls the Bookstore?” remained a central theme for its entire existence.104

Initially, however, things looked promising when the store officially opened in January of

1972 as the Community Resource Centre (CRC). The bookstore’s early focus was on emphasizing Canadian Left political material and literature in an attempt combat American imperialism and cultural domination, promoting books by figures across the left political spectrum, which included left-NDPers Ed Broadbent and James Laxer, Canadian literary nationalist Hugh MacLennan, Praxis group associate Gerry Hunnius, and the notorious felquiste

Pierre Vallières. In addition to the focus on Canadian content, the CRC carried other popular

New Left texts, such as Gorz’s aforementioned Strategy for Labour and William Hinton’s account of the Chinese Revolution, Fanshen; and various left-wing periodicals including

Canadian Dimension, Guerilla, Monthly Review, and New Left Review.105 To supplement their small storefront and directly engage with the community, the CRC had a traveling “bookmobile” which sold books at various locations across the city and county throughout the week, most often parking outside the auto factories’ gates at shifts’ end.106 The CRC also encouraged university professors to order their course books through the store, which helped provide a somewhat steady consumer base and gave students an excuse to go to the CRC so that they could potentially be exposed to other left-wing reading material for the first time. However, this caused

104 Wallace, “Community Resource Centre.” 6-7. 105 “Book Reviews,” Community Resource Centre (Windsor: 1972), GKNTC; “Community Resource Centre,” Community Resource Centre (Windsor: 1972), GKNTC; and “People’s Bookstore,” (1972). 106 “Bookmobile,” Community Resource Centre (Windsor: 1972), GKNTC.

69 conflicts at times when professors ordered books that were either “the standard bourgeois crap” or even “outrightly reactionary.”107 Like the conflicts with the labour council, this highlighted the contradictions inherent to using a bookstore as a base for fighting an ideological war of position and building a political centre, while at the same time needing to sustain itself economically and being subject to the contradictions of the capitalist market.108

By this point in early 1972, Wallace and Baxter came aboard the project and the CRC made links with other community activists, including Pat Noonan, Sheila Dillon, and their

Women’s Liberation Group (WLG). As a result, WLG soon merged with the remnants of WUW to form the Socialist Women’s Group.109 By February, the activists involved in the bookstore, women’s group, and ex-WU, came together to form The Labour Centre which also brought into the fold the three Longmoores and some of the older radical leftists in the community, including

Mance Matthias, Cliff Gunther, Victor White, and Federico Arcos. The Labour Centre acted as a space for both theoretical debates and organizing initiatives in the workplace and the community; it would also become the Windsor branch of The New Tendency and serve as the central base for left-wing organizing in Windsor for the next four years.

Other developments that occurred throughout 1972 had ramifications for the CRC, The

Labour Centre, the emergence of The New Tendency, and the tensions that shaped these groups for their entire existence. First, Brophy began working at Chrysler to support both himself and the bookstore financially. Building on the lessons of others’ earlier experiences in WU, he soon began to organize a new rank-and-file group to mobilize auto workers completely independent of the trade union apparatus. The theory and tactics of this group also reflected the fact that his

107 Wallace, “Community Resource Centre.” 108 The bookstore history demonstrates that the activists themselves were very aware of this contradiction. Wallace, “Community Resource Centre,” 2-7. 109 “Jane Doe Study Group – HerStory.”

70 theoretical perspective was moving closer to the Italian autonomist Marxism of groups like Lotta

Continua and Potere Operaio. He was first introduced to these theories by John Huot, an academic he befriended while living in Toronto and with whom he kept up a close correspondence over Marxist theory and strategy once Brophy moved back to Windsor. Huot was one of the first to import and translate autonomist pamphlets in North America, and shared these writings with Brophy, The Labour Centre, and other like-minded activists amongst the

New Left in Ontario who were similarly eager to engage with the working class while remaining outside Leninist organizations and the trade unions.110

Ron Baxter, too, began to import autonomist literature translated by the English group

Big Flame. At the CRC, Baxter helped put together and began to distribute the first two

Canadian autonomist pamphlets: Italy: New Tactics and Organization (using the Big Flame translations of Lotta Continua documents), and Organizing for Workers’ Power: Beyond Trade

Unionism and Vanguardism (from John Huot’s translations of an Adriano Sofri leaflet) and each included added introductions applying autonomist theoretical analysis to a Canadian context.111

In addition to outlining some of the basics of autonomist concepts and highlighting the differences with traditional Marxist organizing strategies, these pamphlets continued to promote the concept of student/worker alliances, believing that the proliferation of wildcat strikes and general working-class unrest in North America suggested that the situation was ripe for a Hot

Autumn in Canada.112 By the end of the year, however, Baxter, Wallace, and the majority of the other activists in TLC were shifting away from the Italian autonomist theoretical perspective and

110 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. 111 Adriano Sofri, Organizing for Workers’ Power: Beyond Trade Unionism and Vanguardism (Windsor: Community Resource Centre, no date, 1972[?]); and Italy: New Tactics and Organization (Windsor: Community Resource Centre, no date, 1972[?]). 112 “Preface,” in Italy: New Tactics and Organization (Windsor: Community Resource Centre, no date, 1972[?]), 4- 7; and “Introduction: Organizing for Workers’ Power in Canada,” in Organizing for Workers’ Power: Beyond Trade Unionism and Vanguardism (Windsor: Community Resource Centre, no date, 1972[?]), 1-7.

71 towards a somewhat different theoretical orientation influenced by the Trinidadian Marxist

C.L.R. James, and the Detroit-based Marxist theoretician Martin Glaberman, one of James’ closest collaborators.113 The Labour Centre invited Glaberman to teach a course on Marx’s

Capital for which Glaberman had gained a certain eminence within the New Left. Because of this course, Baxter and Wallace were won over to Glaberman’s particular theoretical perspective and quickly became close friends with him. These two distinct theoretical perspectives, in addition to a third more traditional Leninist perspective advocated for by the Longmoores and some of the older leftists like Mance Matthias, persisted throughout the life of The Labour

Centre and these divides eventually contributed to its dissolution.

Throughout the year, the CRC also obtained a number of government grants to support the bookstore. Representing the tail end of the robust post-war Keynesian welfare state, such funds were readily available for grassroots organizations like the CRC, as the Canadian government sought to co-opt and diffuse some of the New Left’s activism, or, as Jim Monk wryly noted, “get kids hooked on a paycheck.”114 A Local Initiatives Program grant allowed the

CRC to hire a group of younger activists to work at the store, including Jim Monk and Mark

Buckner, who had spent the previous year involved with Pat Noonan’s Liberation Theology groups and were also part of the NDP Waffle faction until it was expelled from the party.

However, through 1972 they, like Baxter and Wallace, gradually became close to Glaberman and

113 Baxter interview. Glaberman’s background and the theoretical developments in The Labour Centre are covered in greater detail in the following chapter. 114 Monk interview. The Local Initiatives Program (LIP), and Opportunity for Youth (OFY) grants are also discussed in the bookstore history document. Wallace, “Community Resource Centre.” Martin Loney argues LIP, OFY, and the other grants of this period targeted at youth, native, and poor peoples’ groups ought to be perceived “at least, in part, as a program of social control.” See Martin Loney, “A Poltical Economy of Citizen Participation,” in Leo Panitch, ed., The Canadian State: Political Economy and Political Power (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 446. An article in Guerilla put forward a critique of the grants a few years earlier. See “The Local Initiatives Program: Toeing the Liberal Line,” Guerilla 2, no. 28, 22 December 1971.

72 soon became some of Glaberman’s most faithful theoretical adherents and collaborators.115 The divide between those who were part of the CRC leadership collective and those who were hired to work at the store through the government grant projects proved to be yet another fault line in the CRC and TLC, as the younger workers began to demand full workers’ control of the bookstore, while the members of the leadership collective sought to only allow bookstore workers into the collective after they proved their commitment to the project in both deed and in theoretical perspective. This became one of the first conflicts within the groups in which the lines between personal and political criticisms would blend together, with each side decrying the other as petty bourgeois.116

Nonetheless, despite the dissolution of Workers’ Unity and the emerging divides within the bookstore, the activists were successful in establishing a political centre and a physical base of operations in the community. The Labour Centre acted as a forum where activists organizing in separate working groups could come together and work through both the theoretical and practical problems that they encountered in their work, while the CRC offered an easy way to produce and distribute leaflets and radical literature within the city and beyond. This base of organizing set the stage for the establishment of The New Tendency once TLC connected with analogous groups in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Kitchener-Waterloo. In all of these places, activists were following similar paths in working-class organizing, developing comparable theoretical

115 Monk interview. 116 The conflict over the bookstore is documented in a series of internal Labour Centre documents. See Wallace, “Community Resource Centre,”; “Community Resource Centre II,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: no date, 1973[?]), GKNTC; Mike McLister et al., “Response to CRC II Paper,” internal Labour Centre document, (Windsor: no date, 1973[?]), GKNTC; Bronwen Wallace, “The Bookstore Debate: An Individual View,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: no date, 1973[?]), GKNTC; and Jim Monk, “Working at Project Lunchbucket… Working at the Community Resource Centre,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: no date, 1973[?]), GKNTC. Accusing opponents of being petty-bourgeois or “middle class” was also identified as a common bad-faith arguing tactic in TLC more generally. See “Notes from the Underground,” internal TLC document (Windsor: no date, 1973[?]), GKNTC.

73 positions, and moving towards a unique New Left Marxism grounded in workers’ self-activity at the point of production and a rejection of the Leninist vanguard party. It is to the theoretical and practical contours of The New Tendency’s ascendance and decline that we now turn.

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Chapter 3

The Labour Centre (TLC) that emerged in Windsor in early 1972 was not an isolated phenomenon; the group was part of a global trend in which certain segments of the New Left moved towards autonomist Marxism. While less popular in terms of sheer numbers than their analogues in the New Communist Movement, this trend nonetheless made significant contributions to the development of Marxist theory and practice, and made an impact perhaps not adequately reflected in terms of membership numbers.1 This chapter examines the development and decline of TLC in its function as the Windsor branch of The New Tendency – the largest and most influential Canadian-based autonomist organization – in this context. It first traces the theoretical development of autonomist Marxism in general, and the different currents which manifested within The New Tendency. In particular, the chapter details the overwhelming influence of the Detroit-based Johnson-Forest Tendency (JFT) and Facing Reality groups on the

Windsor branch of The New Tendency; it also draws comparisons at times to the theoretical perspectives of the English-based Big Flame and Italian-based Lotta Continua and Potere

Operaio, all of which exerted somewhat less influence in Windsor but had an important impact on The New Tendency more broadly. After establishing the different theoretical trends within

The New Tendency, the chapter critically examines the Windsor New Tendency/TLC’s organizing work at the Chrysler plants and in the community.

The JFT and Facing Reality provided important guidance to the Windsor New Tendency, offering a compelling Marxist alternative to the Stalinist and social democratic politics associated with the labour bureaucracy, but ultimately this theoretical perspective also led some

1 From various membership lists, the Windsor branch of The New Tendency never numbered more than 25 members at a given time, though the working groups that the Labour Centre organized would have each involved more people who were not full-fledged members.

75 of the members of The New Tendency to reject any action perceived as vanguardist. This, in turn, resulted in a degree of paralysis and an inability to stake out a clear position on the question of working-class organization. This perspective – combined with insufficient theoretical alternatives within the organization, a general climate of sectarianism which caused personal and political differences to overlap, and, perhaps most significantly, changing material conditions within the Canadian economy and society more broadly – resulted in the end of The New

Tendency experiment.

* * *

Before exploring the Windsor Labour Centre and New Tendency further, it is important to first examine the history of the JFT and Facing Reality and to trace the development of their theoretical perspectives not only because of their direct influence on the Windsor branch in particular, but also due to the groups’ significant impact on the broader movement towards autonomist Marxism more generally. The JFT was initially an internal faction of the Max

Shachtman-led Workers’ Party (WP) during the 1940s and was founded by C.L.R. James and

Raya Dunayevskaya who published under the pseudonyms J.R. Johnson and Freddie Forest.

James became an influential figure in the Trotskyist movement in Britain through the 1930s as a member of the Independent Labour Party. In 1938, he moved to the United States at the behest of

Trotsky and James P. Cannon, chairman of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), who wanted

James to become director of the SWP’s department dedicated to the American black struggle.2

Dunayevskaya, meanwhile, was Trotsky’s former secretary and, like James, was drawn to a

2 Frank Rosengarten, Urbane Revolutionary: C.L.R. James and the Struggle for a New Society (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2008), 25. Alongside Rosengarten’s biography, there is an abundance of literature on C.L.R. James and his influence. See, for example, Paul Buhle, C.L.R. James: The Artist as Revolutionary (New York: Verso, 1989); Kent Worcester, C.L.R. James: A Political Biography (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996); and the edited collection, Selwyn Cudjoe and William Cain, eds., C.L.R. James: His Intellectual Legacies (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995).

76 particularly Hegelian-inflected Marxism. The JFT soon attracted other talented theoreticians and activists from the SWP and WP, including Martin Glaberman, who had been a dedicated socialist activist in New York from the age of 13 and later moved to Detroit in 1942 where he became an autoworker, and Grace Lee (later Grace Lee Boggs after her marriage to fellow JFT member

James Boggs), who was the daughter of Chinese immigrants and studied Hegel extensively at

Bryn Mawr before joining the WP.3

The Workers’ Party was itself formed out of a split from the SWP based on Max

Shachtman’s differing interpretations of the USSR’s class structure. While the SWP held to the orthodox Trotskyist understanding of the USSR as a degenerated workers’ state, Shachtman saw the USSR as a new type of society distinct from both capitalism and socialism which he termed bureaucratic collectivist. Though the JFT sided with Shachtman, James and Dunayevskaya meanwhile formulated their own separate theory which described the USSR as state capitalist.4

The JFT’s theory of state capitalism, however, was not meant to simply describe the class structure of the USSR, but to define a new stage of capitalism altogether which the theorists saw as emerging across the world in both capitalist and so-called socialist states. The JFT argued that capital’s tendency towards centralization meant that both the West’s increasingly planned

Keynesian economies and the East’s Stalinism were two sides of the same coin,5 and supported

3 While Glaberman’s role is discussed in most historical accounts of the JFT, including the aforementioned C.L.R. James biographical works, the most comprehensive account of his life is a series of unpublished interviews conducted and edited by former New Tendency members. I am incredibly thankful to Jim Monk for giving me a copy. See Martin Glaberman, interview by Jim Monk, Ron Baxter, and Martin Deck, “Third Draft of Transcribed Interviews with Martin Glaberman, Detroit 1992-1995,” edited by Ron Baxter (Windsor: unpublished, 1996), Jim Monk Personal Collection. See also Martin Glaberman, interview by Jeff Shantz, Peter Graham, and Neil Fettes, Revolutionary Optimist - An Interview with Martin Glaberman (Toronto: Red & Black Notes, 2001); and Martin Glaberman, introduction to Marxism for our Times, by C.L.R. James (Jackson: Univeristy of Mississippi Press, 1999), xi-xxvii. On Grace Lee Boggs, see Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change: An Autobiography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). 4 Kent Worcester, “C.L.R. James and the American Century,” in Selwyn R. Cudjoe and William E. Cain, eds., C.L.R. James: His Intellectual Legacies (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 175. 5 Their state capitalist perspective was first outlined in J.R. Johnson, F. Forest, and Ria Stone (pseud. C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, and Grace Lee), The Invading Socialist Society (The Johnson-Forest Tendency, 1947), 23-29,

77 this argument with earlier comments on capital’s tendency towards centralization from Marx,

Engels, and Lenin.6 Because these ideas were ultimately incompatible with orthodox Trotskyism, the group split from the WP and then again from the SWP in 1951 after briefly rejoining, and formed a new organization called the Correspondence Publishing Committee in that same year.7

Tied to the JFT’s understanding of state capitalism as a new global stage of capitalist society, was the concept of “the invading socialist society” – a phrase the group derived from

Friedrich Engels in his Anti-Duhring, which referred to the notion that capitalist competition eventually leads to monopolies and greater centralization, while at the same time creates the material conditions necessary for socialism.8 From this, the JFT theorists argued that the material conditions within the specific stage of state-capitalist production inherently developed workers’ capacities for self-organization. This meant that they saw the examples of workers’ self-activity

and then examined in further detail in their 1950 manifesto, C.L.R. James, State Capitalism and World Revolution (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing House, 1986). Equally important is the 1958 book, C.L.R. James, Grace Lee, and Pierre Chaulieu, Facing Reality (Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1974). The introductory paragraph sums up the state- capitalist position: “The whole world today lives in the shadow of the state power. This state power is an ever- present self-perpetuating body over and above society. It transforms the human personality into a mass of economic needs to be satisfied by decimal points of economic progress. It robs everyone of initiative and clogs the free development of society. This state power, by whatever name it is called, One-Party state or Welfare state, destroys all pretense of government by the people, of the people,” James, Lee, and Chalieu, Facing Reality, 5. 6 This is laid out in the third chapter of State Capitalism and World Revolution, “Lenin and State-Capitalism,” especially pages 18-22. See also James, Dunayevskaya, and Lee, The Invading Socialist Society, 23-24, and C.L.R. James, “Marxism for the Sixties,” Speak Out, no. 2 (1965). In particular, James alludes to Marx’s assertion that, “In any given branch of industry centralisation would reach its extreme limit if all the individual capitals invested in it were fused into a single capital. In a given society the limit would be reached only when the entire social capital was united in the hands of either a single capitalist or a single capitalist company,” in Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 627. James also placed an emphasis on Lenin’s comments on monopoly capitalism in the preface of The State and Revolution, and on Lenin’s final articles “On Cooperation,” “How We Should Reorganize the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspections,” and “Better Fewer, but Better,” which critiqued the increasingly bureaucratic state apparatus in the USSR. See V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014), 37; and V.I. Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 33 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), 467- 502. Martin Glaberman stressed the importance of Engels’ Anti-Duhring as key to his understanding of state- capitalism. See Glaberman, interview by Shantz, et al, 10. 7 Worcester, “C.L.R. James and the American Century,” 176. English Trotskyist Tony Cliff formulated a separate theory of state-capitalism at the same time but did not share the view of state-capitalism as a new world stage of capitalism. See Tony Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia (London: Pluto Press, 1974). 8 Their use of the phrase first appears as the title of the pamphlet The Invading Socialist Society. However, the theory is best developed in Facing Reality. See also Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 338.

78 at the point of production in the form of wildcat strikes, worker organized slowdowns, and sabotage as essentially part of the same phenomena that led to the workers’ councils which emerged in Russia in 1905 and 1917, and in Hungary in 1956. For the JFT, the fact that most

American workers appeared to have a “backwards” consciousness was not a problem, because their particular actions and demands in their everyday resistance demonstrated that they were attempting to exercise control over production.9 Furthermore, this theory contained a critique of the emerging labour bureaucracy, which “acts as the bodyguard of capital.”10 Already by the late

1940s, the JFT recognized that the main contradictions of the Fordist Accord – in which capital and the state recognized the right to union representation and collective bargaining, while unions accepted capital’s right to manage – fundamentally undermined workers’ power at the point of production and within their unions. They showed how the legalism of collective bargaining and grievance procedure turned union officials into “contract lawyers and porkchoppers” whose purpose was to discipline workers and enforce the collective agreement.11 As Martin Glaberman outlined in pamphlets like Punching Out and Union Committeemen and Wildcat Strikes, it mattered very little whether a steward or union official was a radical, as they would soon find themselves constrained by the structure of Fordist industrial relations.12 To the JFT, there was little difference between union bureaucrats, management bureaucrats, and Stalinist bureaucrats,

9 Because this is a core component of the JFT’s theory, it appears in numerous documents. See, for example, James, Lee, and Chalieu, Facing Reality; “Who Are the Backward Ones?” in The Correspondence Booklet (Detroit: Correspondence Publishing Co., 1954): 2-3; “Why Workers Don’t Read,” in The Correspondence Booklet (Detroit: Correspondence Publishing Co., 1954): 52-53; George Rawick, “Working Class Self-Activity,” Radical America 3, No. 2 (1969): 30-31; Robert Wicke, “Class and Class Conflict in the American State,” PHD Diss., Washington University (1971), 275-278; Bill Watson, “Counter-planning on the Shop-Floor,” Radical America 5, no. 3 (1971): 84-85. See also Martin Glaberman, “Workers have to deal with their own reality and that transforms them,” in Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd, eds., The New Rank and File (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 208-209. 10 James, Lee, and Chalieu, Facing Reality, 21. 11 Martin Glaberman, Punching Out (Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1973), 20. 12 Glaberman, Punching Out, 23-27. Martin Glaberman, Union Committeemen and Wildcat Strikes (Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1971), 14-23. Both were originally published as Correspondence pamphlets in 1952 and 1955, respectively.

79 and they therefore supported workers’ efforts to subvert their official union leaders and pursue their own forms of organization and action.13 The JFT’s understanding of the role of the labour bureaucracy under Fordism proved prescient as these contradictions further intensified in the rank-and-file revolts of the 1960s and 1970s, where workers openly challenged their unions while their ostensibly leftist labour leaders worked with capital and the state to control dissent.14

However, as I will explore in greater depth in my analysis of the Windsor New Tendency, the

JFT’s critique of the labour bureaucracy and its understanding of the ‘invading socialist society’ contained within it an unwarranted elevation of spontaneity at the expense of other forms of strategy and organization.

Though the JFT and Correspondence at times produced dense texts to elucidate their theories such as State Capitalism and World Revolution, Facing Reality, and Notes on Dialectics, central to their project was the creation of material that could be produced by and for workers themselves.15 Based out of Detroit, Correspondence produced a newsletter which was distributed in the auto factories and encouraged workers to write articles so that workers themselves could share and learn from one another’s experiences. In place of a Leninist vanguard party, it was by facilitating this dialogue between workers that Correspondence sought to raise consciousness so that workers might come to recognize that a new socialist society was already emerging on the

13 “Introduction,” in The Correspondence Booklet (Detroit: Correspondence Publishing Co., 1954), 1. JFT also saw evidence that workers were participating in self-activity in factories in the USSR by ‘soldiering’ and setting their own production standards; such evidence reinforced the JFT’s claims that this was a worldwide phenomenon. See James, Lee, and Chalieu, Facing Reality, 30-34. 14 For scholarship that examines this phenomenon, see the collection, Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, and Cal Winslow, eds., Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s (New York: Verso, 2010). For a Canadian example, see the chapter on the “Wildcat Wave,” in Bryan Palmer, Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 211-244. 15 James, State Capitalism; James, Lee, and Chalieu, Facing Reality; and C.L.R. James, Notes on Dialectics (London: Allison & Busby, 1980). Notes on Dialectics originally appeared as a JFT pamphlet in 1948.

80 shop-floor via their own self-activity.16 Additionally, Correspondence printed pamphlets which contained extended narratives based around particular workers’ personal experiences, and also explored the different types of oppression that the working-class experiences under capitalism.17

The JFT’s recognition that the working-class experiences oppression differently based on race, gender, and age, proved to be a significant theoretical contribution at a time when Old Left groups too often pushed these distinctions aside.18 Like the Correspondence newsletter, these narratives sought to link personal experiences to the JFT’s broader theories, though at times this resulted in broad and inaccurate generalizations. As Asad Haidar and Salad Mohandesi point out, the influential pamphlet on workers’ self-organization at the point of production, The American

Worker, presents Phil Singer’s experience as if it were “the experience of all workers everywhere.”19 Similarly, they note how A Woman’s Place, which was attributed to two fictitious authors but really written solely by Selma James, claims to express the sentiments of the

“‘average woman,’” while Si Owens’s Indignant Heart claims to speak to the experience of all black workers.20 As a result, while such initiatives were important as experiments in stimulating creative rank-and-file theory and practice from below, the JFT’s willingness to play fast and loose with the specific contexts of their writings led to a problematic presentation of their ideas.21

16 Asad Haider and Salar Mohandesi, “Workers’ Inquiry: A Genealogy,” Viewpoint 3 (2013), retrieved at: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2013/09/27/workers-inquiry-a-genealogy/ 17 See Paul Romano (pseud. Phil Singer) and Ria Stone (pseud. Grace Lee), The American Worker (Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1969); Charles Denby (pseud. Si Owens), Indignant Heart (Montreal, Black Rose Books, 1979); Mary Brant and Ellen Santori (pseud. Selma James), A Woman’s Place (Detroit: Correspondence Publishing Co., 1954); Arthur Bauman, Artie Cuts Out (Detroit: Correspondence Publishing Co., 1954). 18 Owens, for example, recounts racism that he experienced in the SWP and the ways that party leaders tried to brush away his concerns about race. Denby, Indignant Heart, 169-172. 19 Haider and Mohandesi, “Workers’ Inquiry: A Genealogy.” 20 Haider and Mohandesi, “Workers’ Inquiry: A Genealogy.” 21 In addition to their workers’ paper and pamphlets, Correspondence set up a “school” where rank-and-file workers shared their experiences while the JFT intellectuals simply listened and wrote down what the workers were saying. Similarly, to prevent the development of bureaucracy in their group, the members who were classified as ‘workers’ were given the greatest priority to speak in general meetings while members classified as intellectuals simply listened, though at times this led to a degree of disfunction. See Grace Lee Boggs, “C.L.R. James: Organizing in the

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Correspondence thereafter went through two separate splits over the next ten years. First,

Dunayevskaya left with Owens and Correspondence editor Johnny Zupan to form News and

Letters in 1955, mainly due to personal differences with members who had been closer to James prior to his deportation in 1953.22 Then, in 1961, James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs broke with the remaining members due to their belief that it would be primarily black Americans, the wageless, and other “outsiders,” and not the entirety of the working-class in a traditional sense who would bring about revolution in America.23 This left Martin Glaberman to lead the remaining James followers, or “Johnsonites,” who now called the group Facing Reality.24 While

Glaberman officially disbanded the group in 1970 contrary to James’ wishes, Glaberman and his associates continued to reprint Facing Reality pamphlets under his Bewick Editions imprint, and organized conferences under the auspices of Facing Reality throughout the 1970s.25

During the late 1960s, a much wider New Left audience began to embrace Facing

Reality’s particular variant of Marxist theory. While the JFT had international collaborators early on, particularly with Cornelius Castoriadis from the French ex-Trotskyist group Socialisme ou

Barbarie, in the wake of the worldwide youthful rebellions in the late 1960s Facing Reality’s theories gained a far broader influence. In Italy, for example, workerist groups like Lotta

Continua and Potere Operaio sprung up alongside widespread student and worker militancy.

USA, 1938-1953,” in Selwyn R. Cudjoe and William E. Cain, eds., C.L.R. James: His Intellectual Legacies (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 170; and Haider and Mohandesi, “Workers’ Inquiry: A Genealogy.” 22 Nicola Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalism: Labor Migration, Radical Struggle, and Urban Change in Detroit and Turin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 108; and Glaberman, interview by Monk, et al, 101. 23 Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalism, 108. See also James Boggs, The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1968). 24 Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalism, 108. 25 The Windsor New Tendency continued to obtain Facing Reality documents from Glaberman’s publishing company Bewick Editions and distributed them in Southern Ontario. See Ron Baxter, “Dear Newsletter,” The Newsletter 2 (1973): 58-59. In 1973, New Tendency militants congregated at what was colloquially described as a Facing Reality conference. One article noted, “Facing Reality no longer operates as a group although they have maintained informal contact with one another. Some of the people previously involved in the group continue to publish some of their documents.” See Dougherty and Vanderloop, “Leadership, Collective Practise & The New Tendency,” 11.

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While the JFT pamphlets had a profound early influence on Mario Tronti and the theoreticians involved in Quaderni Rossi who carried out their own workplace investigations termed “co- research,” in the aftermath of the Hot Autumn autonomist groups looked directly to Facing

Reality for theoretical guidance, as activists such as Ferruccio Gambino formed close friendships with Glaberman and the historian George Rawick, another key Facing Reality member.26 In addition to maintaining correspondence with Italian autonomist theorists, Glaberman, Rawick, and other Detroit-based radicals including Dan Georgakas and members of the LRBW travelled to Italy to speak to autonomist militants and later hosted the Italians back in Detroit.27 Georgakas also noted that central elements of Potere Operaio’s theories which promoted “No Work” as both the central working class tactic and demand could be traced to some of James Boggs’ writings.28

The “struggle against work” theories later traversed the Atlantic and gained traction amongst The

New Tendency militants sympathetic to the Italian perspectives.

The JFT’s theories were also influential in Britain, where Big Flame shared certain similarities to Correspondence and Facing Reality, and likewise hoped that giving rank-and-file workers space to share their experiences in a newsletter and working mostly outside of the union structure could lead to consciousness raising.29 Further, Glaberman and Rawick maintained contact with the Welsh Marxist researcher Huw Beynon, whose influential book, Working For

Ford, examined the same everyday resistance in the English Ford factories that Big Flame sought to harness, and came to similar theoretical conclusions about workers’ self-activity as

26 Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalism, 178. On co-research see Steve Wright, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 2017), 19-23 and 42-53. See also Rawick’s work on slavery in the American South which in many ways fit into Facing Reality’s project of investigating working-class cultures of resistance in George Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972). 27 Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalism, 178-179. 28 Dan Georgakas, “Italy: New Tactics and Organization,” Radical America 5, no. 5 (1971): 5-6. 29 “Why Big Flame?” Big Flame, no. 1 (1972). Many of Big Flame’s documents can be accessed on a website run by former Big Flame members, see https://bigflameuk.wordpress.com/

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Facing Reality. Personal correspondence also reveals that Glaberman and Beynon very much admired one another’s work, and they saw themselves as part of a similar political project.30

Coinciding with a growing international influence, Facing Reality’s theories became popular with the segments of the American New Left associated with the journal Radical

America, and consequently shaped the journal’s core theoretical positions.31 The journal frequently published articles by Facing Reality members, such as George Rawick’s “Working

Class Self-Activity,” which argued that while it is important to recognize the historical gains that the working-class made through the CIO during the 1930s, radicals must move on to recognize the wildcat strike as “the next stage of workers’ struggles,” because these rank-and-file strikes would prefigure workers’ councils.32 Likewise, former autoworker and Facing Reality member

Bill Watson’s 1971 article “Counter-Planning on the Shop Floor” made essentially the same argument as Rawick by claiming that sabotage, wildcats, and horseplay “are glimpses of a new social form we are yet to see full blown, perhaps American workers’ councils.”33 Interestingly,

Watson’s article attracted the attention of not only the American New Left and the Italian autonomists, but also the executives at FIAT who later contacted Radical America to obtain a copy of the article.34

30 Huw Beynon, Working for Ford (London: Penguin, 1973); The correspondence between Glaberman and Beynon also mentions that Beynon befriended Rawick through Glaberman. It was also clear in the correspondence that Beynon and Glaberman viewed one another’s work as incredibly important. See “Correspondence; Beynon, Huw, 1975-94,” Walter Reuther Library, Martin and Jessie Glaberman Collection, Box 39, File 21. 31 Buhle notes that C.L.R. James and his particular variant of Marxism was the biggest influence on the editorial collective, particularly from 1968 until the mid-1970s. See Paul Buhle, “Building Radical America,” Jacobin Magazine, 5 September 2015, retrieved at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/buhle-new-left-antiwar-sds-civil- rights/ 32 Rawick, “Working Class Self-Activity,” 30-31. 33 Watson, “Counter-Planning on the Shop Floor,” 77. 34 Radical America later published the letter from FIAT as an advertisement for a pamphlet version of the Watson article, boasting that “if FIAT thinks [Watson’s article] is worth reading, you should too!” See “RA Readers,” Radical America 7, no. 2 (1973): 46.

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Glaberman in fact became an associate editor of Radical America during the early 1970s and played a leading role in producing a special C.L.R. James themed issue of the journal which included excerpts of key Facing Reality documents such as State Capitalism and World

Revolution and Facing Reality, which soon proved to be one of the journal’s most popular issues.35 Further still, Radical America published a symposium on Jeremy Brecher’s influential book Strike! that examined the history of workers’ self-activity and largely shared Facing

Reality’s theoretical outlook.36 As a result, it was through Radical America that Facing Reality’s theories reached thousands of student radicals across America (and beyond) who were eager for a more libertarian style of Marxism.37

It is in this context that a group of radical activists and autoworkers associated with the

Windsor Labor Centre embraced Facing Reality’s theoretical positions to understand their own experiences on the shop-floor. The fact that Windsor became a small hub of autonomist Marxist theory is not coincidental. Instead, it is reflective of the particular material conditions of Windsor during the 1970s, as examined in Chapter One. As a city with an economy based primarily around the auto industry, Windsor saw a resurgence of rank-and-file militancy in its factories during the 1960s and 1970s as workers became increasingly fed-up with the constrictive parameters of the post-war Fordist Accord. In this way, Windsor mirrored the other hubs of autonomist Marxism across the globe. As Nicola Pizzolato argues, it was in automotive cities like Detroit and Turin where capitalism’s productive capabilities were most developed, the

35 Glaberman wrote the intro to the issue and was credited as providing “aid and consultation.” See Martin Glaberman, “Introduction,” Radical America 4, no. 4 (1970). Buhle notes that the C.L.R. James special issue was one of the most popular issues of Radical America second only to the massively successful Radical America Komiks. See Buhle, “Building Radical America.” 36 The symposium included Glaberman’s critique of the book. See Martin Glaberman, “The American Working Class in Historical Perspective,” Radical America 7, no. 6 (1973): 81-91. See also Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (Boston: South End Press, 1972). 37 Buhle notes the demographics and number of subscribers in Buhle, “Building Radical America.”

85 traditional trade union bureaucracies had become most entrenched, and thus where the contradictions of the Fordist mode of capitalism were most acute that workers most forcefully rejected the legalism of their unions and instead took to various forms of direct action such as wildcat strikes and sabotage.38 To understand this phenomenon, radical intellectuals alongside working-class militants in these cities developed new theories and organizations to understand and harness this emerging unrest, and formed transnational networks between their respective hubs to circulate these new ideas.39 Pizzolato compares the similar ways in which FIAT in Turin spawned groups like Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio with the development of Facing Reality and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) in Detroit, and examines the transnational linkages between the movements in these cities. However, I argue that it is necessary to add other groups to this network such as Big Flame, which was involved in struggles at Ford Halewood, and The New Tendency in Windsor and Southern Ontario more broadly.40

As in these other cities, The New Tendency facilitated the exchange of ideas between radical activists and auto-workers around the globe. After befriending Glaberman, Ron Baxter set up Mile One Publications to function as the Canadian branch of Glaberman’s Bewick

Editions. Through Mile One and the Community Resource Centre (CRC), the Windsor New

38 Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalism, 10-17. 39 Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalism, 10-17. 40 Harry Cleaver refers to the importance of these international connections to the autonomist movement and even namechecks The New Tendency in his new preface to Wright’s Storming Heaven. See Harry Cleaver, forward to Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism, by Steve Wright (London: Pluto Press, 2017), viii-xi. Glaberman similarly speaks to the importance of this international network in his biographical interviews. See Glaberman, interview by Monk, et al, 170-173. It is important to note that while the LRBW was involved in this network, their politics were quite different in comparison to the autonomist groups like Lotta Continua, Big Flame, Facing Reality, and The New Tendency. Unlike the other groups, the LRBW was also strongly informed by black nationalism and was politically closer to the New Communist Movement. LRBW members ended up playing influential roles in NCM groups like the Communist League. See Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Che, and Mao (New York: Verso, 2002), 102-105.

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Tendency was able to play a key role in the circulation of pamphlets from groups like Facing

Reality, the Sojourner Truth Organization, Big Flame, and Lotta Continua, which the New

Tendency maintained at least loose contact with throughout its existence. 41 It also seems likely that The New Tendency was the first group in North America to circulate Italian militant

Adriano Sofri’s writings in any sustained way. When Radical America republished Sofri’s

Organizing for Worker’s Power, the journal credited Toronto New Tendency member John Huot for the translation and noted the pamphlet came to their attention from “militants in Southern

Ontario.” 42 Radical America likely obtained a copy of the CRC’s version of Sofri’s pamphlet, perhaps through Glaberman.43 The same Radical America issue also included Toronto New

Tendency member Bruno Ramirez’s interview with Guido Viale, a leader of Lotta Continua who had been framed for murder and then released due to the Italian government’s lack of evidence.44

Clearly then, The New Tendency and its Windsor branch must be understood in this larger context of the global development of New Left activists and militant workers, and not merely as an isolated collective. Baxter himself, after all, had been drawn to the group’s politics at least partially as a result of his own experiences in Italy a few years prior as discussed in the previous chapter.

The Windsor branch of The New Tendency was based in the Windsor Labour Centre and its working groups which had been established over the course of 1972. These groups focused on

41 Baxter, “Dear Newsletter,” 58; Baxter, “Correspondence,” 63. Both Ron Baxter and Jim Monk discussed their involvement in Bewick and Mile One in their interviews. Jim Monk, interview by Sean Antaya, Amherstburg, Ontario, 2 May 2017, and Ron Baxter, interview by Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 31 May 2017 42 Adriano Sofri, “Organizing for Workers’ Power: Beyond Trade Unionism,” Radical America 7, no. 2 (1973): 33. 43 See the CRC version of the above Sofri text, Adriano Sofri, Organizing for Workers’ Power: Beyond Trade Unionism and Vanguardism (Windsor: Community Resource Centre, no date, 1972[?]). 44 Bruno Ramirez, “Interview with Guido Viale,” Radical America 7, no. 2 (1973): 113-119. Ramirez himself immigrated to Canada from Italy in the late 1960s. A write-up on Ramirez is included in Harry Cleaver’s short history of the post-New Tendency journal, Zerowork. See Harry Cleaver, “Background: Genesis of Zerowork #1,” retrieved at: http://zerowork.org/GenesisZ1.html

87 separate struggles in the workplace and the broader community, and included, but were not limited to: the aforementioned women’s working group, a gay liberation organization, a high- school student newspaper with corresponding student working groups at local high-schools, a

Palestinian solidarity group organized by the Longmoores, and a new rank-and-file autoworkers’ group initially formed by Brophy and former WU member Gerry Pacquette.45 As noted in the previous chapter, The Labour Centre was meant to be a place where the activists involved in these separate working groups could discuss their experiences from a non-Leninist and non- social democratic Marxist perspective. Approximately 10 months after its emergence, The

Labour Centre then helped found The New Tendency by linking up with other such groups based in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Kitchener-Waterloo.46 Militants from each organization organized conferences in Toronto and Windsor which established the organization and its internal bulletin,

The Newsletter, after realizing that they were part of a similar emerging political orientation that was increasingly gaining popularity on the left worldwide.

Though Facing Reality informed the Labour Centre’s broad theoretical outlook, there were three separate theoretical factions in the Labour Centre itself.47 The largest of these, which

45 Colleen Pacquette, “Dear Newsletter,” The Newsletter 1 (1973); and Ron Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat: Marxism in North America Today (Windsor: Mile One Publications, 1974), 1-2. Big Flame had a similar decentralized organizational structure based around working groups. See “Big Flame on Organization,” The Newsletter 2 (1973): 49-56; and “The Labour Centre Meeting Minutes of December 9, 1973,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: unpublished, 1973), 3, GKNTC. While many New Tendency members in Windsor worked in the auto industry, others, like Ron Baxter and Mark Buckner, worked for Canada Post. In Toronto, the situation was reversed, with more members working at the post office. Postal workers’ struggles were the subject of multiple Toronto New Tendency pamphlets and workers’ inquiries published in The Newsletter. See, for example, Peter Taylor, Working – and Not-Working—at the Post Office (Toronto: The New Tendency, 1974), later republished as Peter Taylor, “Working and Not Working at the Post Office,” in Walter Johnson ed., Working in Canada (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1975), 15-32; John Huot, “Workers’ Struggles in Advanced Capitalism: The Post Office,” The Newsletter 3 (1973): 40-55; and “The April Postal Strike: Workers, Union, and the State,” The Newsletter 5 (1974): 19-48. See also John Huot’s recollections of The New Tendency’s involvement in postal worker struggles, in, John Huot, “Autonomist Marxism and Workplace Organizing in Canada in the 1970s,” Upping the Anti 18 (2016), retrieved at: http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/18-autonomist-marxism/ 46 Pacquette, “Dear Newsletter.” 47 I should note that I do not mean “faction” in the official Leninist sense. The organization never had formal factions until the final splits.

88 became known as Out of the Driver’s Seat (ODS) once the Labour Centre finally split, was the faction closest to Facing Reality theoretically. In their self-published manifesto, ODS explicitly referenced James and Facing Reality as the basis of their perspective, and likewise defined

“state-capitalism” and “the invading socialist society” as the two key concepts central to their work.48

Windsor’s close proximity to Detroit and the resulting ease through which ideas could flow and cross-border personal relationships could form was likely part of the reason the majority of the Windsor faction sought to base their theory primarily in the perspectives put forward by Facing Reality instead of the “Italian perspective” as advocated by the Toronto faction.49 Glaberman, in particular, made a major impact on Baxter, Wallace, and Monk through the Capital class and this resulted in lifelong friendship and political collaboration.50 In addition to frequently meeting with members, Glaberman also lent books and pamphlets to TLC for reading group discussions.51 Given Glaberman’s stature, experience, and deep historical and theoretical knowledge, it is understandable that a majority of the organization’s members would align with his perspective. In addition to Baxter’s Mile One Publications, the Windsor branch also arranged for members from other cities to attend Facing Reality conferences and events and coordinated Facing Reality members meeting with New Tendency groups in Southern Ontario to promote their perspective.52 Windsor New Tendency members also became close to University of Windsor sociology professor Seymour Faber, a good friend of Glaberman’s who had been a

48 Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 47-57. 49 Dougherty and Vanderloop, “Leadership, Collective Practise & The New Tendency,” 11. 50 Monk interview; and Baxter interview. 51 “New Tendency Study Group: The Russian Revolts, 05 and 17,” internal New Tendency document (Windsor: unpublished, 1973), GKNTC. 52 Dougherty and Vanderloop, “Leadership, Collective Practise & The New Tendency,” 11.

89 member of Facing Reality and was involved in the factional struggles within the Worker’s Party during the JFT days.53

However, not all members of the Windsor New Tendency were so enamoured with

Glaberman’s theoretical outlook. Jim Brophy, for example, remained closer to John Huot and the

Toronto New Tendency faction which held close to LC’s and PO’s theoretical perspectives. For this faction, the increasingly important theoretical concepts which underlie the principle of workers’ autonomy were that of class composition, the social factory, the mass worker, and the struggle against work.54 Each of these concepts can be traced to Mario Tronti’s major theoretical text, Workers and Capital – itself a collection of earlier Quaderni Rossi articles and influenced by Tronti’s interactions with other theorists like Romano Alquati, Raniero Panzieri, and the JFT

– which was overwhelmingly influential on the theoreticians in the Italian autonomist movement.55 While much of Tronti’s work was, and remains to be, unavailable in English, excerpts from Workers and Capital were available in the New Left journal, Telos, and the later contributions from Adriano Sofri and others who drew upon Tronti’s concepts were circulated in the New Tendency.56

Theories of class composition and recomposition formed the basis of the workers’ autonomy tradition, though the theory was applied differently depending on the group or thinker.57 Most broadly, theories of class composition were used as analytical tools to place

53 Monk interview. On Faber’s involvement in the Workers’ Party, see Glaberman, interview by Monk, et al., 109. 54 John Huot, “Autonomist Marxism and Workplace Organizing,”; and Peter Taylor and Judy Ramirez, “Elements for a Political Perspective,” The Newsletter 3 (1973): 3-9. 55 Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically (Oakland: AK Press, 2000), 66-77. 56 See, for example, Mario Tronti, “Workers and Capital,” Telos 14 (1972): 25-62; and Mario Tronti, “Social Capital,” Telos 17 (1973): 98-121. 57 Because the interpretations of these theories were so varied, I try to focus on how they were understood to the proponents of the Italian autonomist perspective within the New Tendency.

90 workers’ struggles at the centre of capitalist development.58 As one document from the Toronto

New Tendency argued:

Orthodox Marxism […] refers to the ‘objective’ laws of capitalist development, which are presumed to be over and above the class struggle, and to the ‘subjective effects,’ of these laws on the class struggle. This way of talking obscures the fact that the most fundamental law of capitalist development is the class struggle. The law of class struggle means precisely that the actual historical development of capitalism in its changing forms is the struggle between workers and capital.59

Animated by this perspective of historical development, the Italian-influenced theorists argued that as capitalist production constantly reinvents and reorganizes production in response to workers’ struggles, the composition of working-class struggle changes to match the particular material conditions of the historical epoch, and that class struggle is expressed most intensely amongst workers employed in the most advanced sectors of capitalist development.60 Thus, while in the 19th and early 20th century advanced capitalist production largely depended on skilled workers whose struggles took the particular form of conflicts over control of production, capital responded to these demands by reorganizing production along the Taylorist principles of scientific management to deskill work, enable mass production, and thus strip skilled workers of their primary source of power. The Fordist production system which emerged led to the emergence of the unskilled “mass worker,” whose struggles took on a different form than in the previous historical conjuncture. The theorists argued that mass workers’ struggles in the Fordist era were not defined by the struggle over control of the workplace, because the workplace had

58 For a longer discussion on this concept, see Wright, Storming Heaven, 33-37. 59 Toronto New Tendency, letter to TLC, 9 June 1974 (Toronto: unpublished, 1974), 2, GKNTC. 60 While analyses of class composition and recomposition are valuable, this understanding of historical development had significant weaknesses at times and masked the unevenness of development and the complexities of how the working-class is, and has been, composed. See the chapter, “The Historiography of the Mass Worker,” in Wright, Storming Heaven, 163-182. For a balanced analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the autonomist class composition approach, see David Camfield, “Reorienting Class Analysis: Working Classes as Historical Formations,” Science and Society 68, no. 4 (2004): 438-444.

91 been made so undesirable by the new production methods. Rather, class struggle was defined in the struggle against work itself, as workers overwhelmingly demanded “more wages for less work,” which workers expressed both in overt large-scale strikes, and in the aforementioned everyday-resistance of absenteeism, sabotage, wildcats, and slow-downs that the JFT theorists hitherto interpreted as prefigurative struggles for workers’ control. Tied to this, rather than an economistic demand as Lenin argued, autonomists believed that wage demands were an explicitly political struggle reflecting the specific nature of capitalist production under Fordism.61

For many early workers’ autonomy theorists, it was the mass workers’ struggles that carried the most importance, driving the workers’ movement forward, though this aspect of the theory would change drastically over the course of the 1970s through dialogue with the social reproduction theories of Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James, and Sylvia Federici.62

Influenced by Selma James’ earlier Correspondence inquiry, The Woman’s Place,

Marxist-feminists in Italy, Canada, and Britain continued to develop theories of social reproduction, and engaged in exchanges between and within Lotta Continua, Potere Operaio, Big

Flame, former Facing Reality members, and The New Tendency throughout the 1970s. Many such theorists themselves emerged out of the workerist milieu. While Selma James continued to live and organize in England after C.L.R. James’ deportation from the US, Dalla Costa had been a member of Portere Operaio, before forming the autonomous women’s organization, Lotta

61 This perspective is outlined in Huot, “Autonomist Marxism and Workplace Organizing,”; Taylor and Ramirez, “Elements for a Political Perspective,”; Toronto New Tendency, Letter to TLC; and Potere Operaio, “The Communism of the Working Class,” internal AWG document (Windsor: unpublished, 1974[?]), GKNTC; and Windsor Auto Workers Group, “Notes on Developing a Political Perspective: ‘Refusal of Work,’” internal AWG document (Windsor: unpublished, 1975), GKNTC. 61 “The Labour Centre Meeting, October 14, 1973.” 62 Wright, Storming Heaven, 36-37. Wright notes how Tronti had difficulty reconciling his belief that it was at capital’s most developed points that workers had the most power and where their “‘revolutionary capacity’” was the strongest with his conception of the social factory, which would be taken up by the Marxist-feminists associated with Wages for Housework.

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Feminista, in 1972. Selma James and Dalla Costa’s 1972 document The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community became the basis of the Wages for Housework perspective which spawned an international organizing network with branches in Italy, Canada, and

Britain.63 In it, Dalla Costa and James argued that women’s household labour produced surplus value, and therefore the exploitation of the capitalist “factory” must be seen as stretching into other areas of society, for which they employed Tronti’s concept of the “social factory.” 64

Rejecting Tronti’s focus on the centrality of the factory worker but following the worker’s autonomy theorists’ understanding of working-class resistance, they argued that working-class women should therefore employ strategies of refusal as part of the broader struggle against work to demand wages for domestic labour.65 James and Dalla Costa played key roles in promoting the

Wages for Housework perspective in Canada and met with New Tendency activists in 1973; they continued to maintain close contact with the group throughout most of its short existence.66

Out of these engagements with the Marxist-feminists involved in WFH, the workers’ autonomy theorists in Italy further developed the concept of the social factory to reconcile their understanding of the mass worker as the revolutionary subject.67 Adapting the social factory concept to the class composition-based understanding of historical development, autonomists in

Canada likewise argued that in response to the mass workers’ factory struggles, capital collectively subsumed all of society into a “social factory,” wherein almost all labour, either waged or unwaged, led to value creation for capital. As a result, the struggles of women and the

63 For a comparative study of the WFH network in Canada and Italy, see Christina Rousseau, “Housework and Social Subversion: Wages, Housework, and Feminist Activism, in 1970s Italy and Canada,” PHD Diss., York University (2016). 64 Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1975), 32-51. 65 Dalla Costa and James, The Power of Women, 49-51; and Rousseau, “Housework and Social Subversion,” 80-82. 66 Huot, “Autonomist Marxism and Workplace Organizing.” 67 Wright, Storming Heaven, 123-124; and Potere Operaio, “The Communism of the Working Class.”

93 unemployed could be considered to take place at the point of production and be understood to carry as much importance as auto workers’ struggles in the factory.68 Rather than organizing within or around unions or parties, which the autonomists saw as historically-specific models tied to older modes of production and therefore obsolete, the workers’ autonomy theorists argued different sections of the working-class ought to create their own independent organizations which could each confront capital autonomously and separate from the “most powerful” sectors of the class.69

In Windsor, this workers’ autonomy faction found its strongest influence in the Auto

Workers’ Group (AWG), led by Jim Brophy. While Jim Monk did his own parallel organizing work at Chrysler, which sometimes overlapped with the AWG early on, Brophy’s work in the

AWG became increasingly isolated from the rest of TLC as each faction became further entrenched in their differences. Brophy’s faction was also somewhat more sympathetic to certain aspects of Maoism than the faction which became ODS. The New Communist Movement established Maoism as the dominant theoretical orientation within the New Left during this period, and it was common for certain autonomous organizations to put forward a form of “soft

Maoism,” which celebrated the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and saw in it an alternative to the bureaucratic degeneration and ossification of the Soviet Union.70 Of the autonomist organizations, the most enthusiastic in this respect was perhaps the Sojourner Truth Organization

68 Toronto New Tendency, Letter to TLC, 5; and Potere Operaio, “The Communism of the Working Class.” 69 Toronto New Tendency, Letter to TLC, 9; and Windsor Auto Workers Group, “Notes on Developing a Political Perspective: ‘Refusal of Work.’” 70 For example, see Big Flame’s discussion on China in Paul Thompson and Guy Lewis, The Revolution Unfinished: A Critique of Trotskyism (Liverpool: Big Flame, 1977), 41-42. Big Flame later refers to their group, alongside Lotta Continua, as loosely being part of a global “soft Maoist” tendency, in Peter Anderson, “The Crisis of the Revolutionary Left in Europe,” Revolutionary Socialism, no. 5 (1980): 22. I thank Gary Kinsman for alerting me to the Anderson article. In his discussion of the different Maoist “threads” which existed on the left in the 1970s, Elbaum identifies “Cultural Revolution Maoism,” as one particularly anarchistic variant of Maoism. One might categorize the autonomist “soft Maoism” as part of this thread. See Elbaum, Revolution in the Air, 140.

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(STO), which worked closely with various New Communist groups throughout its existence.71

While somewhat further from the NCM than STO, both Lotta Continua and Big Flame were sympathetic and hopeful for the potential of the Cultural Revolution.72 Thus, the Italian- influenced section of The New Tendency similarly followed suit in this regard. Despite an affinity for certain aspects of Maoism, the influence should not be overstated, as the various autonomist theoretical concepts were far more influential. Indeed, the faction had no resemblance to their contemporaries in the anti-revisionist New Communist groups such as the

Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) (CPC-ML) or the Canadian Party of Labour

(CPL), whom The New Tendency critiqued as hopelessly dogmatic and disconnected from workers’ everyday struggles.73 The Maoist influence which did exist was thoroughly opposed by the ODS faction, which found itself in agreement with Glaberman’s scathing critique, Mao as a

Dialectician.74

The third faction based around the Longmoores and the older militants maintained a somewhat unusual, though not unproductive, relationship with the rest of the group. While the

CPC’s traditional Leninist party and trade union-focused perspective was ostensibly antithetical to The New Tendency’s core ethos, this did not prevent this faction from making contributions to the group’s organizing efforts, and there was no perception amongst the other activists that the

71 See Michael Staudenmaier, Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization 1969-1986 (Oakland: AK Press, 2012). Interestingly, STO, LRBW, and Facing Reality floated the idea of merging into a single organization at an early 1969 conference, though little came of these discussions. See Glaberman, introduction to Marxism for Our Times, xxi-xxiii. 72 Anderson, “The Crisis of the Revolutionary Left in Europe,” 22. 73 Lisa Donner and David Kidd, “Intervention at Ford Oakville,” The Newsletter 4 (1974): 38. Of the CPC-ML’s propaganda, Mike Longmoore also noted, “I just can’t understand the way they use language; its just so stilted.” Mike Longmoore, interview by Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 29 June 2017. 74 See Martin Glaberman, “Mao as a Dialectician,” International Philosophical Quarterly 8, no. 1 (1968): 94-112. The article was also published as a Facing Reality pamphlet and distributed through Bewick and Mile One. Glaberman’s critique was intended to be as much an indictment of Louis Althusser as Mao himself.

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CPC was attempting to take-over the Labour Centre or force its line onto the others.75 In fact, this faction was perhaps the least sectarian. For example, when Jim Monk proposed that each working group ought to be split into three separate groups based on the three ideological perspectives, Mike Longmoore pointed out both the obvious unworkability of this proposal for such a small organization, and also emphasized the need for working-class unity in the face of increasingly concentrated forces of reaction.76 Moreover, Jim Brophy recalled that while there were significant theoretical disagreements, the older militants’ expertise was often invaluable.77

For example, in the wake of the UAW’s 1973 contract, Victor White and Mansfield Matthias helped the AWG formulate leaflets which contained detailed critiques of the contract that were still framed in a language that would resonate with other workers. The younger activists had little experience with the legalistic details of collective agreements, but the older militants were able to identify weaknesses in the agreement that the others would have likely overlooked.78 The other interviewees similarly spoke of their great respect for these older militants.79 Mike

Longmoore’s affinity for the CPC’s perspective did not stop him from being a contributor to the

NT’s Newsletter, though his other organizing work was often separated from the rest of the group.80 Furthermore, his brother Joe produced workers’ inquiries into “counter-planning on the shop floor” at the Chrysler Truck Plant that he worked at, suggesting that despite their

75 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017; and Monk interview. 76 “Labour Centre Meeting Minutes of December 9, 1973,” internal TLC document (Windsor: unpublished, 1973), 4, GKNTC. 77 Jim Brophy, interview by Sean Antaya, phone conversation, 3 August 2017. 78 Brophy interview. See also “Historic Setback,” AWG Leaflet (Windsor: 1973), GKNTC; and the discussion on the leaflet in “The Labour Centre Meeting, October 14, 1973,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: unpublished, 1973), GKNTC. 79 Monk interview; Baxter interview; and Longmoore interview. 80 Mike Longmoore is credited as editor of Newsletter no. 3.

96 comparatively more Leninist perspective, the Longmoores were still very much interested in the developing debates around workers’ self-activity.81

The close relationship between CPC sympathizers and The New Tendency is not as strange as it might appear at first glance. In Italy, Tronti himself rejoined the Italian Communist

Party (PCI) after the Hot Autumn, while factions within both LC and PO advocated for the formation of a new mass workers party.82 The heterogeneity of opinion within TLC was thus characteristic of autonomist Marxism elsewhere. While those aligned with Italian autonomism within TLC were constituted as a single faction of sorts, it is important to note that the debates within Italian autonomism itself were incredibly varied and diverse.

The working groups themselves at times resulted in relatively successful sustained initiatives. Some of the more successful work stemmed from the Socialist Women’s Caucus

(SWC). As outlined previously, the group evolved out of a merger between women who had been involved in Windsor Women’s Liberation Group (WLG) and Workers’ Unity Women

(WUW) and included women sympathetic to both ODS and the Italian perspective. Most of the women felt that the previous feminist organizing in Windsor involving the WLG had not sufficiently dealt with economic issues and were unhappy with the popular perception of the feminist movement as a middle-class phenomenon. As a result, the SWC began to become directly involved in working-class women’s struggles and held weekly open meetings that any woman could attend without being a member. At the meetings, the women discussed pamphlets and articles of Marxist-feminist orientation, held guest lectures, and attempted to raise women’s

81 Joe Longmoore conducted a two-part analysis of the Chrysler Truck Plant. Part one is Joe Longmoore, “Plant One Report,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: unpublished, 1973[?]), GKNTC. Part two is in the section titled “Truck Plt. Part Two,” in “The Labour Centre Meeting, October 14, 1973.” A long discussion about the Longmoores feeling somewhat isolated in their organizing work is, “The Steering Committee Meeting with Joe and Mike L.,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: unpublished, 1973[?]), GKNTC. 82 Wright, Storming Heaven, 80-81, 134-135.

97 consciousness by directly confronting personal problems and linking them to larger issues relating to women’s place in society.83

One of the SWC’s first initiatives was the formation of a daycare collective in TLC’s headquarters. As discussed in the previous chapter, Bronwen Wallace had long promoted the benefits of affordable daycare for women and had experience organizing a co-op daycare at

Queen’s. Additionally, this allowed women to participate in SWC open meetings who otherwise would not have been able to attend due to familial obligations. Initially, various members of TLC alternated responsibilities looking after the children, though after a number of problems with this method, the daycare collective hired a full-time daycare provider.84

During this period, the group also directly supported strikes involving women workers, including the much-publicized Dare Cookies strike in Kitchener. As Ian Milligan writes, the

Dare Strike was a cause celebre for the Canadian New Leftists who reoriented towards labour struggles in this period. The Dare workers were fighting for gender pay equity, and improvements to the deplorable working conditions in which it was not uncommon for workers to faint and vomit while on the job. The picket line, meanwhile, was characterized by “extreme violence,” with strikebreakers and police pitted against the strikers and their New Left supporters. When repressive court injunctions stymied strikers’ abilities to defend themselves on the picket line, supporters organized a successful boycott of Dare products.85 In Windsor, the

SWC organized the local boycott by picketing and leafletting local grocery stores. The group also arranged for four of the Dare strikers to speak and helped them obtain the “moral and

83 Pat Noonan, “The Women’s Movement,” internal TLC document (Windsor: unpublished, 1974), GKNTC. “Jane Doe Study Group – HerStory,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: no date, 1973[?]), GKNTC. The material discussed in the study groups included pieces by Marx, Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Alexandra Kollontai, and Margaret Benston. 84 “Jane Doe Study Group – HerStory.” 85 Milligan, Rebel Youth, 131-132.

98 financial support” of the Windsor Labour Council. The SWC, supporters from the open meetings, and male members of TLC also went to Kitchener to join in a motorcade and support the Dare strikers on the picket line. The SWC similarly joined women workers on the picket line when members of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union struck at the local Balhi-Hi motel in

Windsor.86

Looking to further broaden and intensify their work, the group founded The Women’s

Place in early 1973. According to a document outlining the history of the group, The Woman’s

Place had a three-pronged strategy of service, education, and research. Service entailed engaging with women’s immediate problems and tended to involve getting women in “‘crisis’ situations,’” into contact with lawyers as quickly as possible. The Women’s Place reported a great deal of initial success in this area and noted that it helped “more than forty women,” in this regard during the first six months of its existence.87

The education strategy was multifaceted. In addition to SWC’s continuing study groups geared towards the more dedicated activists, the Women’s Place held weekly “drop-in” hours on

Tuesday afternoons so that women could stop by to discuss any issues or questions with both

Women’s Place activists and other non-activist women. Further, The Women’s Place held workshops on a wide variety of topics, including: “Women and trade unions,” “Women and sexuality,” “Jobs and Careers,” “Rape,” “Women and Politics,” “Lesbianism,” “Should Women be Paid for Housework?” and “Community Controlled Daycare.” Like the success of their services for women, The Woman’s Place reported that approximately 300 women attended the workshops over the first 6 months. The Women’s Place also organized smaller “community day”

86 “Jane Doe Study Group – HerStory.” 87 “Working Group Report: The Women’s Place,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: unpublished, 1973), GKNTC.

99 sessions on similar topics in East Windsor and Downtown Windsor, respectively, to engage with women who would not normally be able to obtain transportation to TLC office, or who felt more comfortable attending events in their own neighborhoods.88

The Women’s Place and SWC also conducted detailed investigations into the lives of working-class women. Many of the activists involved in the earlier WLG felt that they had alienated other working-class women with over the top rhetoric and actions which did not speak to women’s everyday experiences and struggles.89 Demonstrating the influence of the JFT workers’ inquiries, Women’s Place activists sought to learn from the experiences of non-activist women as much as the other way around through their open discussions and research.

Specifically, Bronwen Wallace documented her experiences as a “white-collar” worker in an

Unemployment Insurance Commission (UIC) office, and as a secretary at the University of

Windsor. Wallace sought to identify how white-collar work was equally as repressive as factory work, albeit in different ways, and how white-collar workers might build solidarity with one another to overcome these oppressive conditions. While Wallace’s inquiries did not result in any lasting organizing in her workplaces, she did identify important contradictions inherent in office work, particularly in the public sector. At the UIC office, for example, Wallace noted that unlike factory workers whose on-the-job resistance directly threatens capital, it was the unemployed themselves who largely bore the brunt of things when workers failed to meet their quotas processing claims. This led to a situation where workers would often take their frustrations out on the claimants themselves, and vice versa. The situation was further complicated by the fact that workers with more seniority acted as supervisors, meaning that in many cases union stewards were also supervising with the ability to discipline workers. Furthermore, Wallace

88 “Working Group Report: The Women’s Place.” 89 Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 8-12.

100 identified a climate of “repressive decorum” wherein supervisors’ and managers’ ostensibly friendly attitudes masked “whose interests are being served by what.” She also took note of the persistent deskilling, automation, and reorganization on the job which caused layoffs and intensified exploitation for the remaining workers.90 Though Wallace was not able to formulate a strategy to counter these conditions, partially due to the ODS position on organization, her documentation and inquiries are prescient in the current economic climate characterized by increasingly service-based ‘unskilled’ jobs, and where austerity has only intensified the above- identified contradictions in the public sector.

New Tendency members Jim Monk, Stephen Sherriffs, and Steve Lough were also key members of the Windsor Gay Unity group. The New Tendency’s unequivocal support for the gay movement was noteworthy at a time when other groups on both the Old and New Lefts often considered non-heteronormative sexuality to be a form of bourgeois “hedonism” or

“decadence.”91 Alongside certain Trotskyist organizations like the Revolutionary Marxist Group,

The New Tendency was far ahead of other Marxist organizations on this matter.92 Gay Unity facilitated community dances and other events for gay men in Windsor; held discussions and study groups on gender and sexuality; and attempted to coordinate a larger political strategy with analogous gay organizations elsewhere in Canada by maintaining ties to the influential The Body

Politic editorial collective in Toronto, participating in conferences, and eventually joining the

90 Bronwen Wallace, “White Collar Blues,” The Newsletter 2 (1973): 2-8; Bronwen Wallace, “White Collar Blues Part II,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: unpublished, 1973), GKNTC; and Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 42-46. 91 Elbaum, Revolution in the Air, 138-139; and Tim McCaskell, Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2016), 56. 92 While the RMG was very supportive of gay liberation, McCaskell describes how certain RMG strategies were perhaps “opportunist” or sectarian. See McCaskell, Queer Progress, 71-73.

101

National Gay Rights Coalition.93 Alongside New Tendency/TLC members Monk, Sherriffs, and

Lough, non-New Tendency leaders in the group, such as Harold Desmarais, were also active labour militants and the group was successful in pushing the mainstream labour movement in

Windsor towards a progressive orientation on gay issues.94

Members of TLC also attempted to work with high-school students, as the younger members like Jim Monk and Mark Buckner had themselves been active in student politics and were not long out of school. Like other TLC initiatives, the heaviest focus was placed on investigation, and in encouraging high school students themselves to organize around particular issues. The most successful initiative was TLC’s popular high-school newspaper Z-Minus, which was in many ways modelled on Correspondence-style rank-and-file publications and was distributed at most local high schools. The paper was written by students themselves, and detailed instances of resistance in the education system including student strikes and walkouts.

Moreover, it listed techniques for dealing with boredom in the classroom, organizing to improve student services, and fighting against discipline. 95

While imperialism was not a major focus for The New Tendency in the way it was for organizations associated with the New Communist Movement, the Longmoores did continue their anti-imperialist organizing in a Palestine-focused working group. The group organized fundraisers for the Palestinian struggle in both Windsor and Detroit, and helped Arab students confront racism in the community more broadly. In one instance, Mike Longmoore and a group of Arab students were refused service at a restaurant in Kingsville, resulting in an intervention

93 Steve Lough, Jim Monk, and Harold Desmarais, “Gay Rights,” Windsor Gay Unity Leaflet (Windsor: no date, 1975[?]), GKNTC; Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 12-18; Stephen Sherriffs, “Dear comrades,” Gay Unity correspondence (Windsor: 1974), GKNTC; and Monk interview. 94 Lough, et al; Monk interview; and Miriam Frank, Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014), 39-40. 95 Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 3-8, 67.

102 from the Ontario Human Rights Commission.96 The group also leafletted the community promoting Palestinian liberation and faced intense hostility and threats, noting that had they themselves been non-white, they likely would have been physically attacked.97

Of course, much of The New Tendency’s work took place at the point of production in

Windsor’s auto-factories. As noted previously, Brophy was one of the first of the activists to enter the factories, initially seeking to support the bookstore through his income. By early 1973, he began to organize a new rank-and-file group in Chrysler’s Plant 2 with former Workers’

Unity member Gerry Pacquette called the Rank and File Action Committee (RFAC), which also functioned as The New Tendency’s AWG. Brophy and Pacquette put out their first leaflet on

May Day 1973, which outlined the initial purpose of the group. The leaflet stressed the need for rank-and-file workers to organize to confront the poor working conditions within the plant independently of the UAW, whose strategies they derided as “timid” and “bull shit.” Noting that they were not looking to run against the current union leadership, they instead encouraged workers to join the RFAC with the goal of organizing workers’ councils so that workers could directly and democratically deal with problems themselves, much like the early WU though without the electoral component.98

While the RFAC began to see some positive, albeit skeptical, support from the first leaflet, the union representatives allied to John Horne were less than thrilled. In one incident,

Brophy had been working at a dip tank station where spilt oil constantly corroded his thick work boots. Older contracts made the company responsible for covering the costs of replacement boots, but concessions in this area in the most recent contract meant Brophy was on the hook to

96 Longmoore interview. 97 “The Labour Centre Meeting Minutes of December 9, 1973.” 98 Jim Brophy, “Organizing Notes,” The Newsletter 2 (1973): 26-32. The article includes reprints of the first two AWG leaflets. I use the acronyms RFAC and AWG interchangeably.

103 pay for his own replacements. After confronting the superintendent, Brophy attempted to get the union to file a grievance for him. Instead, Brophy was pulled into a meeting with Harold

Newton, his Horne-aligned union committeeman, who also happened to be a former linebacker for the Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger Cats and Calgary Stampeders. When Newton began to accuse him of being a “‘company stooge,’” Brophy suggested that Newton’s anger had more to do with the leaflet and pointed out that Newton’s allies Horne and Al Dumouchelle previously made similar demands when they were in Workers’ Unity. Newton then threatened to

“‘kick the shit out of,’” Brophy.99 A second leaflet detailed the incident to highlight how Horne’s leadership and the UAW more broadly devolved to using “strong-arm tactics to intimidate and silence rank-and-file members.”100 While Horne’s initial tactics towards the group involved coercion and threats through Newton, he eventually left the group alone.101 By contrast, Charlie

Brooks initially attempted to co-opt or form an alliance with the group and offered to help them print their leaflets, perhaps seeing the group as potentially helpful in his struggles against Horne in Plant 2. However, seeing Brooks as part of the labour bureaucracy and remembering his repressive actions towards WU, the group declined the alliance.102

Like WU before it, the AWG continued to build support by producing leaflets which spoke to workers’ everyday concerns and realities within the plants, and by October of 1973 grew to 17 core members.103 Rather than attempting to impose a particular line or lecture workers on abstract theoretical concepts, the group made a genuine effort to meet other workers

99Brophy, “Organizing Notes,” The Newsletter 2, 29-31. Brophy also heard rumours that Newton wanted to throw him into the dip tank. Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. 100 Brophy, “Organizing Notes,” The Newsletter 2, 29-31. 101 Brophy theorized that this may have been because the AWG ultimately did not pose an electoral threat to Horne. Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. 102 Brophy interview, 3 August 2017. 103 “The Labour Centre Meeting, October 14, 1973.” However, at this early stage, at least half would have also been regular New Tendency members, if not more.

104 where they were at and build up from that everyday reality where resistance was rampant.

Indeed, almost all AWG leaflets contained critiques of the union and its ineffectiveness in the wake of constant speed-ups and layoffs which affected everyone in the plant. In particular, one leaflet noted:

Our union doesn’t seem to have any plans for fighting the layoffs, speed- ups etc that we have seen in Plant 1, 2, 3 and the Spring Plan. We all know the company is cutting out the B-bodies in Plant #3, and you can bet your bottom dollar the company will use the opportunity to cut out a few extra jobs besides. The union leadership in most cases waits until the company moves, guys walk-out, and then the union is forced into the position of fighting company discipline. Even Tricky Dicky knows the best defense is good offense. Once the fight gets out of the plant and into the office, we’ve lost control.104

As Jeremy Milloy has observed, the AWG also linked this greater intensification of the labour process and poor working conditions with increased violence in the plant and the community.105 One leaflet lamented the increase in industrial accidents in Windsor, as three workers died over the course of two weeks, while another worker had been stabbed at Chrysler.

Seeing the incidents as all part of the same phenomenon wherein companies were forcing workers to withstand inhuman conditions, the leaflet argued that “the main responsibility must fall on Chrysler as the direct instigator of this stabbing by its ruthless exploitation of the workforce which pushed its workers to vent their frustrations by turning on each other. The day before this incident, the line where these men worked was sped up by over 10 cars an hour.”106

As usual, the AWG also blamed the UAW’s complicity in the speed-ups and resulting violence and poor conditions, noting that, “Our own union president openly brags how in Plant 3 with the

104 The Rank and File Bulletin, 8 April 1974, GKNTC. 105 Jeremy Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Violence at Work in the North American Auto Industry (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 62-63, 115. 106 Rank and File Bulletin, 7 May 1975, GKNTC. Also quoted in Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 63. Milloy tends to mistakenly portray the RFAC as a radical union caucus, rather than an autonomous rank-and-file organization. He also tends to downplay some of the very real differences which existed between New Left rank-and-file groups like WU and the RFAC/AWG and the mainstream of Brooks’ Local 444. See Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 114-115.

105 same size workforce they produce over 3 times the number of cars [as in comparable factories].”107

To counter the union’s inaction and the company’s repression, the AWG detailed, engaged-in, and encouraged workers’ self-organized resistance. For example, one leaflet pointed to two separate instances wherein workers in the chassis department and metal shop, respectively, conducted sit-down strikes in solidarity with relief workers who were suspended for refusing to fill-in for workers who had been laid off. Both sit-downs shut down the plant for the rest of the day.108 In another instance, workers from one department occupied the canteen and were soon joined by the rest of the plant to support the department’s concerns. Highlighting the union’s hypocrisy in responding to workers’ self-activity, the AWG noted how when workers wildcatted in response to deteriorating working conditions and layoffs, the union labelled them

“shit disturbers.”109 However, when a union official was fired, the union encouraged a walkout which resulted in the company disciplining over 400 workers. Two weeks prior, the fired union official, Paul Forder, told two workers that their only option to resolve their issues was to go through the grievance procedure. Continuing, the AWG noted that when 27 workers led a walkout to support a relief worker who had been fired, the union accused them of “gutting the union.” The AWG argued that all workers should receive the level of support and solidarity given to Forder, rather than reserving such privileges for particular union officials.110

Critiques of the union bureaucracy based on the AWG’s experiences were further elaborated upon in The New Tendency’s Newsletter. For example, one article about the 1973

107 Rank and File Bulletin, 7 May 1975. 108 “At Last! Historic Breakthru!” AWG leaflet (Windsor: no date, 1974[?]), GKNTC. 109 Rank and File Bulletin, 8 April 1974. 110 This issue was discussed in at least three separate leaflets. See Rank and File Bulletin, 8 April 1974; Rank and File Bulletin, 11 April 1974, GKNTC; and “To the Plant One Rank and File,” AWG leaflet (Windsor: no date, 1974[?]), GKNTC.

106

Chrysler “non-strike” shows how the UAW actively stifled rank-and-file opposition to a massively unpopular contract. The article explained the union’s repressive actions leading up to negotiations, such as mobilizing a UAW flying squad to reopen the Mack Avenue plant in

Detroit that had been occupied by workers protesting the firing of one of their colleagues.111

Similarly, in Windsor, when workers wildcatted to protest the in-plant conditions during a heat wave, the union simply ordered them back to work while UAW leaders Leonard Woodcock and

Douglas Fraser assured Chrysler that they would keep the Windsor workers under control.112 The article also noted that when the UAW came to an agreement with the company after a three day strike, they disallowed any dissent at ratification meetings. When a steward complained that he had too little information about the contract to answer workers’ questions, Canadian UAW leader

Dennis McDermott replied, “that the steward’s job was to ‘police the contract’ not to explain it,” thus further revealing labour leaders’ attitudes towards the rank-and-file and the constraints that even well-meaning stewards faced in their work.113

The AWG also attempted to use the leaflets to highlight divisions within the working- class and demonstrate the ways that such divisions held workers back in their struggles against the company. For example, one of the group’s early leaflets was issued in response to a theft of a worker’s wallet and watch in the factory after Brophy discussed the incident with other workers in the department who encouraged him to put out a leaflet on the incident. The leaflet simply highlighted the importance of working class unity and urged workers to help find the wallet and discourage stealing amongst one another more generally. In response to the leaflet, workers in the department raised $90 for the worker whose wallet and watch were stolen. In his “Organizing

111 Stuart Ryan, “Chrysler Non-Strike 1973,” The Newsletter 4 (1974): 16. Ryan was a member of the AWG at Chrysler. 112 Ryan, “Chrysler Non-Strike 1973,” 16-17. 113 Ryan, “Chrysler Non-Strike 1973,” 19.

107

Notes” in the Newsletter, Brophy emphasized that it was important not to read too deeply into the workers’ money raising efforts, but he believed that the process indicated that workers were taking the leaflets seriously, and that the leaflets had the potential to directly help workers on the shop-floor.114

Similar leaflets attempted to address racism against immigrants and other forms of discrimination that workers expressed in the factory. One leaflet noted that when the V-8 engine department refused to work unscheduled overtime, the company brought in scab workers from a separate department. The leaflet countered the widely-held belief in the factory which held that only immigrants scabbed in these situations, demonstrating instead that it was so-called ‘“good

Canadians,’” who were scabbing on the V-8 workers and that the union did nothing to prevent their actions.115 Another leaflet attempted to explain the difficult position that immigrant workers found themselves in at the plant, highlighting how they were:

[…] in a foreign, hostile, repressive environment. In this situation he is penniless, scared shitless by the blue and white gestapo, and unable or severely handicapped in communicating his situation to anyone. He has already sensed the racist tension that exists and is very aware that if he is not a ‘good little worker’ he will be fired and deported. […] How many times have you seen management put the immigrant on the most repressive job in the dept.? How often have you seen immigrants used for speed-up? And how often have you criticized the worker and not the boss? […] Discrimination and looking out solely for no.1 divide our interests so far apart that the company could run us over with a herd of boy scouts. If you don’t believe me look at the 6 line; up to 100 jobs a day and not a squawk heard.116

Leaflets like that of the passage above not only helped workers empathize with immigrant workers and humanize their predicament, they demonstrated to Canadian workers

114 Jim Brophy, “Organizing Notes,” The Newsletter 3 (1973): 61-62. As before, the article contained a reprint of the original leaflet that was distributed in the plant. 115 Rank and File Bulletin, 8 April 1974. Milloy similarly highlights the AWG’s anti-racist activism and makes reference to the April 8 leaflet in particular. See Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 114. 116 Rank and File Bulletin, 7 May 1975.

108 why it was also in their self-interest to fight racism on the shop-floor and in the community.

Indeed, the ability to link workers’ particular lived-experiences to the interests of the broader working-class without moralizing or imposing abstract concepts was one of the AWG’s main strengths, and potentially allowed the group to attract a larger audience of workers than other active far-left groups. Brophy recalled that workers, at least in Plant 2 where the culture of shop- floor resistance was most strong, afforded the AWG a level of respect and support that other revolutionary groups, such as the CPC-ML, did not necessarily obtain.117 This is of course difficult to prove without any sort of statistical data; however, according to TLC and AWG internal documents, workers did tend to bring the leaflets home with them to read, and often expressed positive reactions and feedback when the group handed them out.118 In response to the leaflets which criticized the 1973 contract, for example, the AWG reported to TLC that workers

“lined up to get copies of the leaflet”, with some workers coming back to take multiple copies to give to friends and other workers in their respective departments.119 Internally, the group constantly evaluated the effectiveness of particular leaflets and attempted to gauge why a given

117 Brophy interview, 3 August 2017. 118 Monk notes that in contrast to union leaflets which workers’ read and then threw away on the floor or into the garbage, “Leaflets [from the AWG] about the ‘historic content’ and work stoppages in a particular plant were read carefully and then folded up and taken home. I only rarely found one in the garbage or on the floor. The same is true of a leaflet two of us put into the plant the day after the walkout.” However, he did note that two other leaflets “received disparaging remarks from workers, with many of them thrown away or posted up with uncomplimentary comments scrawled on them.” Jim Monk, “Working on an Assembly Line,” in Walter Johnson, ed., Working in Canada, (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1975), 55. An internal TLC document similarly notes that the response to the first three leaflets generally ranged from “favourable” to “very favourable.” “Agenda: Labour Centre Meeting, Aug. 12/73,” internal Labour Centre document (Windsor: unpublished, 1973), GKNTC. In response to a later leaflet, an internal AWG document noted that workers brought it home to read and that workers’ response while the group was leafletting was “very good.” Windsor Auto Workers’ Group, “Dear Brothers, Dec. 12, 1975,” internal AWG document, (Windsor: unpublished, 1975), GKNTC. In his interviews, Brophy likewise recalled workers tended to be supportive of the leaflets. Brophy interview, 3 July 2017; and Brophy interview, 3 August 2017. An internal AWG document suggests that over time, the group began to take a leadership role in certain shop-floor struggles. It notes that the group moved from “just communicating struggles,” to a point where, “We began to actually provide certain leadership in the struggle and to give expression to the concrete oppression that workers were experiencing in the plants.” Windsor Auto Workers’ Group, “Notes on Developing a Political Perspective: ‘Refusal of Work.’” 119 “The Labour Centre Meeting, October 14, 1973.”

109 leaflet was or was not liked by other workers and incorporated these lessons into future work to ensure their message would resonate in the plant.120

Early on, the AWG did not have a distinct theoretical position, so when Jim Monk began working at Chrysler in September of 1973, he too was involved in the group for a time, as was

Mike Longmoore who was also hired at Chrysler during this period. However, it did not take long for the theoretical differences to become apparent, and Monk and Longmoore each split off from the AWG to do their own organizing work in the factory based around their particular perspectives.121 Despite the group’s close connection to the rest of the rank-and-file, Monk felt the AWG was still too heavily focused on “nagging” the workers and assuming a vanguardist position in relation to workers’ self-organization.122 Instead, Monk sought to continue documenting the widespread resistance which already existed on the shop-floor, not only in sit- downs, walkouts, and occupations, but also in more subtle practices such as absenteeism and

“doubling up,” – a technique where a worker would do the job of both his own and his partner’s for 4 hours of an 8 hour shift, while a partner would work the other 4, effectively halving the workday for both. In doing so, Monk produced workers’ inquiries on workers’ resistance in his department, attempting to identify the prefigurative nature of these struggles.123

Despite his focus on investigation rather than organizing, Monk nevertheless participated in, and sometimes led, rank-and-file resistance at the point of production. For example, he organized slowdowns and sit-downs with the workers in his section of the Chrysler truck plant to

120 “Agenda: Labour Centre Meeting, Aug. 12/73,”; “The Labour Centre Meeting, October 14, 1973,”; Windsor Auto Workers Group, “Dear Brothers, Dec. 12, 1975”; Windsor Auto Workers Group, “Notes on Developing a Political Perspective: ‘Refusal of Work,’”; and Ron Baxter, “Dear Comrades,” The Newsletter 6 (1975). 121 Windsor Auto Workers Group, “Notes on Developing a Political Perspective: ‘Refusal of Work.’” 122 Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 40, 57-63. 123 His most detailed work was, Monk, “Working on an Assembly Line,” which was originally a section titled “Blue Collar Workers,” in Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 31-41.

110 improve safety conditions and lighten workloads.124 These workers also psychologically

“tormented” their hated foreman to get him moved to the night shift. 125 Furthermore, when other issues arose in the plant, Monk refused to use the grievance procedure and successfully employed various other types of direct action to resolve disputes.126 While Jeremy Milloy has likened these forms of everyday resistance to E.P. Thompson’s “moral economy” of the early- modern English countryside, Monk, following Facing Reality’s theories, would have instead understood himself as developing a revolutionary praxis through his participation in the invading socialist society on the shop-floor, while attempting to stay outside a so-called ‘vanguardist’ role in such struggles.127 While Monk was similarly opposed to working inside the union structure, he did have a more cordial relationship with the former members of WU than Brophy. At one point,

Monk helped Al Dumouchelle research the dealings related to UAW’s co-op housing project,

Solidarity Towers, believing Brooks might have been involved in a corruption scandal, though they were never able to find any sort of conclusive evidence of wrongdoing.128

Theoretical differences were also hardening in The New Tendency more broadly, ultimately leading to the first splits in the organization. By mid-1974, a group of women in the organization, including Reni Jackman, became directly involved with the emerging WFH perspective, and felt that they needed to form an organization completely autonomous from the broader Labour Centre, believing that they would not be able to adequately develop the movement in a “mixed” organization with men which would involve “‘male mediation of the

124 Monk, “Working on an Assembly Line,” 50-54. 125 Monk, “Working on an Assembly Line,” 53. Jeremy Milloy also refers to this incident in his chapter on shop floor culture. See Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 85-86. 126 Frank, Out in the Union, 39. 127 Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 85; E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 50, no. 1 (1971): 76-136; and Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 47. 128 Monk interview.

111 struggle.’”129 Though Bronwen Wallace and other women in what would become the ODS faction had concerns about the AWG’s overemphasis on factory work – which she termed “blue collar chauvinism” – and problems of sexism in the group, they remained within the broader organization for the time being, believing the WFH perspective to be equally flawed.130 The split mirrored developments in the Toronto branch of The New Tendency where women similarly left the organization.131 In both instances, the newly formed WFH groups linked up with the global

WFH network organized primarily by Selma James, Dalla Costa and Federici. While the

Windsor split had political justifications, it was at least partially driven by interpersonal grievances. Many of the women, including Jackman, had been involved in relationships with men in the AWG and TLC, and ended these relationships immediately after forming the WFH group, which predictably resulted in initial resentment on both sides of the split.132 While the

Toronto WFH enjoyed some organizing successes in the late 1970s, particularly amongst immigrant women and lesbians, the Windsor branch seems to have fizzled out sometime after

1975.133

129 Windsor Auto Workers Group, “Notes on Acknowledging the Class Perspective: Wages for Housework – Documents #2,” internal AWG document (Windsor: unpublished, 1975), 2, GKNTC. 130 Bronwen Wallace, “A typewriter is not a punch press but…,” The Newsletter 5 (1974): 18; and “The Labour Centre Meeting, Jan 20, 1974,” internal TLC document (Windsor: unpublished, 1974), GKNTC. An earlier internal criticism highlighted certain sexist attitudes and practices within TLC more broadly. See “Notes from the Underground,” internal TLC document (Windsor: no date, 1973[?]), GKNTC and “The Labour Centre Meeting Minutes of December 9, 1973.” Jim Monk formulated a critique of the WFH perspective for the ODS faction. While supporting women’s right to organize their struggles autonomously, he argued that WFH reinforced “the role of women as people who do housework and raise families rather than attacking the sexist basis for such determinations.” See Jim Monk, “Marxism and Historical Movements,” internal TLC document (Windsor: unpublished, 1974), GKNTC. 131 Huot, “Autonomist Marxism and Workplace Organizing.” 132 Windsor Auto Workers Group, “Notes on Acknowledging the Class Perspective: Wages for Housework – Documents #2,” and Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. 133 On the Toronto WFH and the offshoot, Wages Due Lesbians, see Rousseau, “Housework and Social Subversion,” 148-188; and Christina Rousseau, “Wages Due Lesbians: Visibility and Feminist Organizing in 1970s Canada,” Gender, Work, & Organization 22, no. 4 (2015): 364-374. Due to the lack of remaining textual sources, it is difficult to determine exactly when the Windsor WFH branch dissolved. Certainly, they were still active through 1975, as evidenced by references to the group’s activity in AWG documents and the appearance of a WFH article from Windsor in the journal, The Activist. See Windsor Auto Workers’ Group, “Notes on Acknowledging the Class

112

Around the same time as the WFH split, long-time member Mike McLister resigned from the group, citing the increasing sectarianism within TLC between what he saw as three separate emerging organizations, each seeking to legitimate itself and discredit the others. For McLister, rather than “the continuance of the somewhat arbitrary and artificial distinctions,” TLC members would be better off attempting to build a mass working-class organization. While admitting the path towards such an organization was unclear, McLister insisted that the “sectarian, petty backbiting” which he believed plagued the organization was the last thing that would help the working-class.134 Not long after the first split and McLister’s departure, the three Longmoores left The New Tendency to formally join the CPC, having similarly become fed up with the group’s sectarianism and perhaps unhappy with the group’s aversion to involvement in union work. Mike Longmoore soon became a steward at Chryslers, and he has remained active on the left wing of Local 444 into retirement.135

McLister’s statements were indeed prescient. In addition to the WFH and CPC splits, the faction associated with Glaberman and the remnants of Facing Reality consolidated themselves within the New Tendency as ODS and published a pamphlet on the group’s activities and theoretical perspectives in 1974. The shortcomings of their particular stances became clearer in the ODS pamphlet which neatly summarized their overall position on the role of the labour movement, leftists, and organization:

If the labour bureaucracy is the representative of state capital within the labour movement, there is also a corresponding stage of development of the proletariat as a whole under state capitalism. And that is precisely the

Perspective: Wages for Housework – Documents #2,” 10; and Windsor Wages for Housework Collective, “Portrait of a Canadian Housewife,” The Activist 15, no. 1-2 (1975): 10-20. 134 “The Labour Centre Meeting, Jan 20, 1974.” 135 Again, it is difficult to date precisely when the Longmoore split occurred, but Longmoore discussed his activism within Local 444 and the CPC in his interview. Longmoore interview. The other interviewees confirmed that this was the general trajectory of the Longmoore faction.

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description we gave of the invading socialist society today. The state capitalist economy of the U.S. and Canada, while not as crudely apparent as in the communist countries, is the most advanced form of capitalism in the world. It has created the conditions for the most advanced form of organization of the proletariat. It is no longer the role of marxists to organize workers. The workers are already organized, by the conditions of production, by the unions, and by the struggle of workers against those conditions and those unions. Either one knows this to be true or one must subscribe to the notion of the backwardness of the North American working class and thus return to vanguardism via the back door.136 While the above passage could easily fit into many of Facing Reality’s pamphlets, it is also here that the limitations of this particular theoretical perspective start to become apparent. For ODS, any form of organizing, even of rank-and-file groups like those that Brophy championed, were considered redundant and therefore immediately equated with vanguardism. Instead, ODS suggested leftists ought to simply provide information and analysis to the working-class, which would relate to various examples of workers’ struggles elsewhere so that workers could develop strategies to challenge capital as they saw fit.137 In a sense, this represents a call for a revival of the JFT’s earlier Correspondence project, but with even less organizational coherence.

Nonetheless, ODS did acknowledge the necessity for leftists to participate in the struggle for socialism “alongside their fellow workers,” and even suggested that in some instances Marxists might serve as rank-and-file leaders.138

There is of course nothing wrong with suggesting that leftists ought to provide useful information to workers to aid them in their struggles and to directly participate in those struggles, but these suggestions are so vague that they hardly constitute any sort of coherent programmatic alternative to so-called “vanguardism,” as socialist activists in the workplace likely would have

136 Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 56-57. 137 Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 62-63. 138 Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 63.

114 already been doing such things inherently in their work. Moreover, in their attempt to challenge the labour bureaucracy and top-down Old Left groups, ODS’ line of thinking over-corrects to the point of embracing an almost vulgar determinism that emphasizes spontaneous organization at the point of production as the only organization necessary, while discounting the simple fact that ideas and consciousness, despite initially arising from material conditions, do have an impact on material reality themselves, and that the ideas that workers hold do matter and make a difference in the outcomes of struggles.139 The distinction between the particular ways that workers are organized are also vitally important, as is having leadership that can make the most out of the particular material constraints of a given historical moment whether they are in trade unions, political parties, or other organizational forms. Yet, ODS mostly cast these complications aside in its analysis.

Building on this argument, it is also unclear how having group members serve as one-off leaders from time to time is an improvement on either organizing rank-and-file groups or formulating a coherent strategy for activists’ involvement in trade unions. Indeed, tied to The

New Tendency’s view of vanguardism was a sort of ambivalence at best (and antipathy at worst) about the value of trade unions. The New Tendency was right to criticize the often reactionary and class-collaborationist labour bureaucracy and to point out the limitations of trade unionism

139 Contrast, for example, the UAW during this period with the Common Front unions in Quebec. It becomes clear that differences in union leadership and the circulation of radical ideas amongst the rank-and-file within a particular material context can result in a very different alternative to the UAW’s business unionism. For summaries of the Common Front actions in the early 1970s see Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), 186-206; Jacques Rouillard, Une Histoire du Syndicalisme Enseignant: De l’idée à l’action (Quebec City: University of Quebec Press, 2012), 130- 150; and Palmer, Canada’s 1960’s, 236. Other historical examples include the formative 1934 Minneapolis Teamster strikes, Toledo Auto-Lite Strike, and San Francisco General Strike, all of which relied heavily upon radical leadership and organizations, although The New Tendency would have likely dismissed these older examples as irrelevant to the context of the 1970s due to the processes of class decomposition and recomposition. On the significance of these earlier strikes, see Art Preis, Labor’s Giant Step: 20 Years of the CIO, (New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1964), 19-34. Ernest Mandel discusses the determinism inherent in the sponteneist line of thinking in Ernest Mandel, “The Leninist Theory of Organization,” in Steve Bloom, ed., Revolutionary Marxism and Social Reality in the 20th Century (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1994), 91-94.

115 and the consciousness it conditions, but the group’s broad theoretical outlook tended to mask the very real accomplishments of the labour movement and tended to downplay the protections – however minimal or subject to bureaucratic methods – that they provide to workers. Ironically,

Glaberman himself previously criticized this type of argument in his review of Brecher’s Strike!.

Glaberman noted that “Unless you accept a conspiratorial view of history – that labor organizations are everywhere introduced to restrain and defeat workers – you have to deal with the question of why labor organizations of various types arise.” 140 While New Tendency members took pains to point out in their articles that they were not anti-union, their lack of specificity and nuance likely pushed away would-be working-class sympathizers who still saw some value in trade unionism. To their credit, ODS did acknowledge the difficulty of their position on the union question to an extent but were unable to come up with a satisfactory solution before the group split.141

This lack of coherence, while not unique to ODS or the Windsor group more broadly, played out in articles on the pages of The Newsletter. For example, one article by Ron Baxter and

Bronwen Wallace reflected on their participation in WU. Despite evidence which suggested that an organization like WU might be valuable, Baxter and Wallace concluded that the group was essentially too vanguardist, and that their leaflets constituted “nagging the workers.”142 Although there is very likely some truth to this concept, the fact that workers do not want to be nagged is a rather superficial excuse to give up on organizing the rank-and-file, and would perhaps suggest that activists ought to reevaluate their individual tactics rather than overhaul their complete understanding of organizational strategy.

140 Glaberman, “The American Working Class in Historical Perspective,” 82. 141 Monk, “Working on an Assembly Line,” 55-56. 142 Ron Baxter and Bronwen Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” The Newsletter no. 4 (1974):11-12.

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Baxter and Wallace also argued that any work within trade unions was simply unproductive because of the “historical fact” that “the role of trade unions in advanced capitalism” could only constitute “controlling the rank and file, mediating the in-plant struggle and deflecting any activities which might disrupt peaceful industrial relations.”143 There is no doubt that unions often do fulfill these roles at times, but they also represent a basic level of workers’ power that cannot be dismissed outright; as the earlier Glaberman comment suggests, it is incredibly reductionist (and undialectical at that) to suggest that all unions under advanced capitalism are in every instance a force for reaction. Despite their contradictions, unions in fact pose a barrier to the accumulation of capital, and can challenge the individualist ideology that pervades capitalist society.144 While the Windsor New Tendency could not foresee what was to come, one only needs to look at the level of repression that capital and the state have directed at unions since the 1970s and the resulting low level of workers power to see who benefits from a weakened labour movement.145 Thus, while it would be wrong to suggest rank-and-file groupings like WU or the AWG should have focused all or even most of their energies on union work, it would likewise be a strategic misstep to completely reject any prospect of working from within the union to build up independent workers’ power simply out of a fear that doing so would make one somehow complicit in a ‘vanguardist’ bureaucracy. My criticism of Wallace’s and Baxter’s article does not mean that WU itself should have been above critique. It is simply to

143 Baxter and Wallace, “Anatomy of a Militants’ Group,” 10. 144 For a good contemporary discussion on unions and their potential for rebuilding workers’ power, see Sam Gindin, “Rethinking Unions, Registering Socialism,” Socialist Register 49 (2013): 26-51. 145 For more detail on this process, see Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz, From Consent to Coercion: The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms (Aurora: Garamond Press, 2003). As the Gramscian title implies, the book demonstrates how starting in response to economic crises in the 1970s, the Canadian state has moved away from the policies of the Fordist Accord, wherein the state went to great lengths to incorporate trade unions into the capitalist system (as criticized by The New Tendency), towards a policy of outright coercion where trade unions’ rights are constantly whittled away. While much of the focus is on public sector unions, private sector unions have not fared any better in Canada. This reaffirms the simple fact that unions do pose a threat to capital accumulation and are therefore a potential source of oppositional politics despite the machinations of various union leaders and bureaucrats.

117 say that the method through which they criticized the group was based more in their aversion to organization than in an honest assessment of the group’s strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, while the AWG had a similarly cynical view of unions, the group at least proposed a more concrete organizational alternative on the shop-floor.

Interestingly, Monk, Baxter, and Brophy all seem to have adopted a more nuanced critique of unions. Monk attributed some of the comments about unions in Out of the Driver’s

Seat to overconfident youthful rhetoric. While still recognizing the ways that unions can function to manage and mollify workers’ dissent, he also noted that he now sees that unions do “perform a useful function” for workers and provide a basic layer of protection.146 Baxter made similar comments, noting that “you need a union to start with” from which workers can then build to higher forms of struggle over control of the workplace. Baxter himself later served as a Canadian

Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) union steward while working at the post office in the late

1970s, and spoke highly of Jean-Claude Parrot – the militant president of CUPW during that period.147 In his subsequent health and safety organizing, Brophy has often worked alongside unions while still retaining organizational autonomy, and has similarly remained highly critical of the labour bureaucracy which has attempted to contain and pacify the health and safety movement at times. However, he has also acknowledged that it may have been better for the

AWG to have done some of its work inside the union structure.148 John Huot, who likewise still

146 Monk interview. 147 Baxter interview. Parrot was jailed by the federal government in 1978 for refusing to order striking postal workers back to work. On Parrot, see Jean-Claude Parrot, My Union, My Life: Jean-Claude Parrot and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2005). 148 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017; and Brophy interview, 3 August 2017. Brophy noted that part of the problem was that the AWG had a certain appeal precisely because they were not running in union elections, and thus they were not suspected of opportunism by other workers. Gerry Pacquette’s decision to run for a union position without consulting the rest of the AWG was one the reasons for its eventual dissolution. See also Margaret Keith and Jim Brophy, “Your health is not for sale,” in Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd, eds., The New Rank and File (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 190-191.

118 adheres to a workers’ autonomy perspective, argues that the decision of whether or not to work through unions ought to be “a tactical question” based on the particular context of the struggle or workplace in question.149

The inadequacy of ODS’ extreme anti-vanguardist line of thinking was also evident in the group’s critique of organizing work that the Toronto faction of The New Tendency did at

Ford Oakville. The group there had written an article detailing their organizing, which included helping to instigate a wildcat, leafletting, organizing workshops, and attempting to build a rank- and-file group similar to the Windsor AWG.150 Despite the Toronto faction reporting that other workers supported the group, ODS responded by predictably accusing the Toronto faction of vanguardism.151 This made it absolutely clear that ODS was now judging tactics almost solely by whether or not they could be perceived as vanguardist, rather than by how successful they were in actually galvanizing working-class struggles, catalyzing militant actions, or building class- consciousness. The accusation in fact marked the culmination of tensions between the Windsor and Toronto factions of The New Tendency and represented something of an irreconcilable difference between the groups. In the final Newsletter, the Toronto faction – at this point under the name of the Struggle Against Work Collective (SAWC) after their own internal splits with

WFH – called out ODS for their complete aversion to organization and leadership, their obsession with spontaneity, and their view of themselves as being outside the working class.152

149 Huot, “Autonomist Marxism and Workplace Organizing.” 150 Lisa Donner and David Kidd, “Intervention at Ford Oakville,” The Newsletter 4 (1974): 34-41. 151 Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat, 59-61; and John Ford et al., “Statement on the Dissolution of The New Tendency,” The Newsletter 6 (1975): 5. 152 John Ford et al., “Statement on the Dissolution of The New Tendency,” 11. In addition to the SAWC, the other side of the Toronto New Tendency split into the Toronto Wages for Housework Collective. See “To Newsletter Subscribers,” The Newsletter 6 (1975).

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While SAWC/AWG theoretical perspective is also worthy of critique, their response to ODS’ spontaneism was largely on the mark.153

These theoretical uncertainties and inadequacies around the role of organization, unions, and leadership also contributed to the final TLC split in Windsor, between ODS and the AWG.

The AWG and SAWC, influenced by Italian worker’s autonomy theorists, had always been less critical of organization and certain forms of vanguardism than ODS and Facing Reality. Indeed, some of their analogues in Big Flame, Potere Operaio, and Lotta Continua continued to advocate the necessity of a proletarian party, while also realizing that their own organizations could only constitute pre-party formations at best. The pro-party view does not seem to have gained much, if any, traction within the NT itself, aside from the small Longmoore faction in Windsor, and eventually in individuals like McLister.154 In any case, for the AWG/SAWC faction within the

NT, there was no contradiction between organizing rank-and-file organizations and a commitment to workers’ autonomy, provided that different segments of the working-class were supported in their decisions to organize separately from others. As Brophy later recalled, the

ODS critique of organizing simply clashed with his lived-experiences, especially considering that he and the other members of the AWG were workers themselves:

For me it was this main idea that the function of activists was to record what the working class was doing like you were a visitor or someone in

153 The SAWC argued that ODS was wrong to see Marxist organizations as inherently outside the working-class, and that both Leninists and “Libertarian Marxists” (like ODS) were essentially the same in this regard. However, both SAWC and ODS based their view of organization on a somewhat unfair characterization of the Leninist party. Many Leninists would argue a legitimate vanguard party can only be formed by the advanced sections, or “militant minority,” of the working-class itself and cannot, in fact, be imposed from above or outside the class. While it is debatable as to whether many Leninist organizations have been successful in achieving this goal, it is inaccurate to argue that all Leninists advocate for a substitutionist organization that operates from outside the working-class. See Mandel, “The Leninist Theory of Organization,” 77-127. For an in-depth study which examines this mischaracterization, often rooted in misreadings of Lenin’s What Is To Be Done?, see Lars Lih, Lenin Rediscovered: What Is To Be Done? in Context (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2008). See also Hal Draper, “The Myth of Lenin’s ‘Concept of the Party’ or, What They Did to What Is To Be Done,” in E. Haberkern, ed., Socialism From Below (Alameda: Center for Socialist Research, 2001). 154 Wright, Storming Heaven, 80-81, 134-135; and Big Flame, Our Perspectives and Work (Birmingham: 632 Books, 1975), 9-11.

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the stands looking at the sport was ridiculous. And I just couldnʼt see that. And the other thing was that I was sharing in the exploitation. I was working on the plantation. So I had no real vested interest in just recording their exploitation, I was being exploited. So I just saw it as ridiculous.155 The SAWC perspective, however, had its own weaknesses. Indeed, as early as 1972,

Glaberman identified problems with the concept of the social factory and the workers’ autonomy theorists’ understanding of value production under modern capitalism. In a letter to Selma James written in response to a Radical America article that James published with Dalla Costa,

Glaberman criticized what he saw as, “a looseness, an imprecision,” in their methodology. For

Glaberman, the notion that all social struggles were inherently struggles over the production of surplus value in the social factory was simply incoherent and, in many ways, irrelevant. Like

C.L.R. James, he affirmed that the struggles of women or racialized workers, for example, did indeed carry their own independent validity and were essential in the struggle for socialism; however, to argue in favour of this independent validity ought not to come at the expense of categorical precision. Unlike Selma James and Dalla Costa, Glaberman retained a more orthodox understanding of value and commodity production. He emphasized that the commodity is “not anything that is produced, it is not anything that is useful,”; rather, it is defined by being

“produced for sale.” Thus, the domestic labour performed in capitalist society – his examples being a worker repairing their own house or a woman bearing children – while undoubtedly essential and valuable to both workers and capitalists, did not produce surplus value in a Marxist sense, or constitute commodity production.156

Similar critiques, quite likely informed by Glaberman’s earlier letter, likewise cropped up during internal TLC discussions and in The Newsletter. Mike McLister wrote perhaps the most

155 Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. 156 Martin Glaberman, “Dear Selma,” unpublished correspondence with Selma James, 25 March 1972, GKNTC.

121 detailed critique of the social factory concept as elucidated in Peter Taylor’s and Judy Ramirez’s earlier “Notes on Developing a Political Perspective.” Drawing on the three volumes of Marx’s

Capital to support his criticisms, McLister concluded that:

The authors maintain that capital is “extending its domination beyond the factory into society via the state. Capitalist production has become increasingly socialized,” but so what? That capitalism transforms all aspects of society is nothing new. Was the French Revolution to no purpose? This however doesn’t lead one to the conclusion that capitalist production has been socialized. Do these “Marxists” grasp the meaning of the simple word production; from this statement I don’t think so. […] What I react to in these “theoreticians” is some sort of need on their part to justify the organization of the various sectors of the working class who are outside the sphere of production. […] Since to any rational human being, once aware that the proletariat is made up of all those free souls unencumbered by any means of production of their own, it is most obvious that a large number of them would not be involved in productive labour.157

Through 1975, the AWG gravitated towards the WFH perspective informed by Selma

James and Dalla Costa, despite some initial bitterness as a result of the personal and political splits which marked the previous year. Having split from ODS, the AWG made links with radical autoworkers in Detroit who similarly adopted a worker’s autonomy perspective, and the

157 Mike McLister, “The Marxist Definition of Productive Labour,” internal TLC document (Windsor: unpublished, 1973), GKNTC. A more diplomatic version of the essay later appeared as Mike McLister, “Marxist Definition of Productive Labour,” The Newsletter 4 (1974): 55-61. Monk similarly critiqued the social factory concept in a long essay on Marxism and social movements in which he drew heavily on a Jamesian interpretation of Hegelian dialectics. See Monk, “Marxism and Historical Movements.” Some of these debates were mirrored amongst Marxist-feminists who were similarly divided on whether housework produced surplus value. See Eva Kaluzynska, “Wiping the Floor with Theory,” Feminist Review, no. 6 (1980): 27-54. The questions around social reproduction and domestic labour continued to provoke vigorous debate on the left throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. Arguably the most productive of these debates occurred in Canada. See the collections Michele Barrett and Roberta Hamilton, eds., The Politics of Diversity: Feminism, Marxism, and Nationalism (London: Verso, 1986); and Bonnie Fox, ed., Hidden in the Household: Women’s Domestic Labour Under Capitalism (Toronto: The Women’s Press, 1980). See also Meg Luxton, More Than a Labour of Love: Three Generations of Women’s Work in the Home (Toronto: The Women’s Press, 1980); and the earlier provocation Charnie Guettel, Marxism & Feminism (Toronto: The Women’s Press, 1974).

122 male feminist organization, Project Resurrection: Detroit.158 While still upholding the struggle against work, the AWG declared that the perspective was insufficient on its own, and that the

WFH perspective was the legitimate “class perspective.” The WFH perspective led to further complications as the group became increasingly focused on the “hierarchies of oppression” within the working-class itself, reinforcing the need for organizational autonomy and total rejection of the possibility of uniting men and women, white and racialized workers, employed and unemployed workers, etc. within any sort of unified organization. Instead, the AWG argued, that they, as predominantly white, male autoworkers, would have to attempt to understand the specificity of their class location and formulate some course of action to confront capitalism and dismantle oppression on their own.159 There is indeed much to appreciate in the AWG’s commitment to overcoming the hierarchies within the working-class. Yet one can also detect some similarities to the present-day left’s preoccupation with identitarianism, privilege-based critiques of power, and the subordination of a unified strategy of taking power to the moral preoccupation of ensuring oppressed people wage their struggles completely independently of centralized organizations, no matter how ineffective these perspectives and strategies may be when actually confronting capital in real struggles.160

158 Windsor Auto Worker Group, “Notes on Developing a Political Perspective: ‘Refusal of Work,’”; Windsor- Detroit Auto Worker Group, “Notes on Acknowledging the Class Perspective: Wages for Housework – Documents # 2,” internal AWG document (Windsor: unpublished, 1975), GKNTC. The AWG also retained its close ties to the SAWC in Toronto. The Detroit autonomists produced the pamphlet, Millard Berry, et al, Wildcat: Dodge Truck, June 1974 (Detroit: 1974). John Lippert was also involved in the Detroit/Windsor autonomist milieu. See John Lippert, “Fleetwood Wildcat,” Radical America 11, no. 5 (1976): 7-38; and John Lippert, “Shopfloor Politics at Fleetwood,” Radical America 12, no. 4 (1978): 53-70. 159 Windsor Auto Worker Group, internal AWG correspondence, 22 July 1975, GKNTC; Windsor-Detroit Auto Worker Group, “Notes on Acknowledging the Class Perspective: Wages for Housework – Documents # 2,”; and Windsor-Detroit Auto Worker Group, internal AWG correspondence, 15 August 1975, GKNTC. 160 This problem was by no means unique to the AWG. The STO, for example, was so enthralled with the autonomy of the oppressed that the group at times turned away would-be black and latino members, directing them instead to identity-based national liberation organizations associated with the New Communist Movement even though the prospective members may have preferred the STO’s politics to the other organizations. Staudenmaier, Truth and Revolution, 126. The autonomous-influenced online journal Viewpoint has recently published several nuanced critiques of the contemporary left’s engagement with identity politics. See Shuja Haider, “The Safety Pin and the

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The limitations of the struggle against work perspective were further evidenced in

Brophy’s involvement with Zerowork, a journal project organized by former Toronto New

Tendency members, among them Peter Taylor and Bruno Ramirez, and academics such as Peter

Linebaugh, which grew out of the global autonomist Marxist network that The New Tendency had been associated with.161 The organizers hoped that the journal would help further develop and clarify the struggle against work and WFH perspectives. While the journal produced some worthwhile discussions on workers’ self-activity and resistance, including an early article on the auto industry by Linebaugh and Ramirez that was largely based on the experiences of the

Windsor AWG and ODS, the Zerowork perspectives ultimately suffered from the same theoretical imprecision that characterized the earlier struggle against work theories.162 In a letter to Zerowork, Glaberman echoed his previous criticisms of James and Dalla Costa, again highlighting the “theoretical confusion,” of Zerowork’s conceptual tools and understanding of class. Furthermore, he forcefully criticized the strategic conclusions drawn by SAWC/Zerowork theorists by noting the utter banality of collapsing all working-class resistance and demands

(whether revolutionary or reformist) into the simple maxim of “more money for less work,” noting that:

much of it boils down to rhetoric, rather than substance, because there is no sense of a revolutionary working-class struggle for power, to destroy

Swastika,” Viewpoint, 4 January 2017, retrieved at: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/01/04/the-safety-pin-and- the-swastika; Asad Haider, “White Purity,” Viewpoint, 6 January 2017, retrieved at: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/01/06/white-purity; and Salar Mohandesi, “Identity Crisis,” Viewpoint, 16 March 2017, retrieved at: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/03/16/identity-crisis. See also Cedric Johnson, “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now,” Catalyst 1, no. 1 (2017): 57-85; and Adolph Reed Jr., Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene (New York: The New Press, 2000). 161 Ramirez and Linebaugh both became accomplished historians. See, for example, Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London: Penguin Press, 1991); Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000); and Bruno Ramirez, When Workers Fight: The Politics of Industrial Relations in the Progressive Era (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978). 162 Cleaver, “Background: Genesis of Zerowork #1,”; and Peter Linebaugh and Bruno Ramirez, “Crisis in the Auto Sector,” Zerowork, no. 1 (1975): 60-84.

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this society and to create a new one. […] In any case, if the significance of working class struggle is more money and, hopefully, an end to work, how does the working class establish its control over society and the means of production? That is, what does the revolution consist of?163 Indeed, Zerowork’s call for a “total wage,” characterized by a guaranteed income and increases to programs such as unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, social security, and welfare hardly constituted much more than a very heterodox presentation of essentially reformist demands, or perhaps as Lotta Continua once said of Potere Operaio’s program, a call for

“capitalism without labour.”164 It is not hard to imagine how demands such as those for a basic wage or guaranteed minimum income can be reconciled with capitalism, as evidenced by the interest for such programs across the political spectrum. While this of course does not mean discussions on issues like a guaranteed income and an expanded social safety net are not worthwhile, it does demonstrate the insufficiency of declaring such programs to be the only revolutionary demands. Even Zerowork supporters themselves, such as Peter Linebaugh, began to question the usefulness of concepts like the total wage, social factory, and WFH’s theory of the 24-hour working day, not long after the project’s emergence.165

Brophy, too, again became disillusioned with the WFH perspective, which by this point now argued that waged workers’ struggles ought to be not only separate, but entirely subordinated to women’s struggles. Brophy noted that if Zerowork embraced such a perspective, it would never have any chance of relating to regular workers, because “‘they’ve heard that guilt and liberal shit before and just don’t need it.’” He also warned that the group was likely to split over the issue after having experienced the numerous divisions in TLC, and indeed Zerowork

163 Martin Glaberman, letter to Paulo Carpignano, 28 December 1977, Zerowork Online Archive, retrieved at: http://zerowork.org/GlabermanToZerowork19771228.html 164 Harry Cleaver, “Background: From Zerowork #1 to Zerowork #2,” retrieved at: http://zerowork.org/Background- Z1-Z2.html; and Wright, Storming Heaven, 128. 165 Cleaver, “Background: From Zerowork #1 to Zerowork #2.”

125 dissolved while preparing a third issue of the journal in 1977.166 As in The New Tendency, sectarianism ultimately undermined what was a worthwhile, if theoretically inconsistent, political project.

While important, it would be inaccurate to over emphasize the theoretical differences in the demise of The New Tendency at the expense of a more comprehensive materialist analysis, as other factors were certainly at play in the failure of The New Tendency experiment.

Internecine splits, after all, were not unique to The New Tendency amongst New Left organizations. First, the organization simply lacked the broader popular support that the autonomist organizations in Italy garnered. Communism in post-war Italy had a deep-rooted mass appeal, largely because of the PCI’s leading role in the struggle against fascism and in post- war reconstruction. The institutional legacy and mass support for the PCI legitimated and provided a basic level of knowledge of Marxism and class-based politics for Italian workers in the post-war period so that when workers became disillusioned with the party, they were just as likely to look leftward for alternatives as rightward.167 While the first chapter discussed the support of the CPC amongst labour radicals in the 1930s and 1940s, this popularity never came close to rivalling Italian support of the PCI, whose yearly membership numbers consistently surpassed 1.5 million in the post-war period and routinely garnered over 20% of the popular vote in elections.168 The lack of institutional background and legitimacy, coinciding with ubiquitous

Cold War anti-communist propaganda, meant that any emergent revolutionary organizations in

Canada were going to face incredible difficulties building support.

166 Cleaver, “Background: From Zerowork #1 to Zerowork #2.” 167 Robert Lumley, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 (London: Verso, 1990), 41- 45. 168 Grant Amyot, The Italian Communist Party: The Crisis of the Popular Front Strategy (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 76; and Giacomo Sani, “Mass-Level Response to Party Strategy,” in Donald Blackmer and Sydney Tallow, eds., Communism in Italy and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 458.

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Furthermore, there were other significant differences between the Canadian and Italian contexts. In Italy, the workforce of the Northern factories was largely composed of a mass influx of Southern workers who migrated North after the war. These workers encountered the brutality of the capitalist factory for the very first time, and in many cases faced intense racism and discrimination from Northerners.169 This unique situation perhaps allowed for a greater receptiveness to the radical left than in Windsor, where factory work had long been the norm amongst a predominantly white workforce. The contrast with the Italian context also mirrors some of the differences that Jeremy Milloy has identified between Windsor and Detroit in this same period, as much like Italy, the labour process in Detroit was highly racialized.170

Other factors played a role, including burnout. The intense political activity involving constant meetings; writing, printing, and distributing hundreds of leaflets; and participating in protests and pickets, in combination with working physically exhausting factory jobs, was difficult to maintain past a certain point. Both Jim Monk and Jim Brophy highlighted this factor, which also comes across at times in The New Tendency’s internal documents.171

Perhaps most significantly, by the time of The New Tendency’s dissolution in the mid-

1970s, the political-economic context was changing rapidly from the last gasps of the Keynesian

Fordist accord towards the revanchist neoliberal order which continues to characterize the

Canadian state and economy. On top of the fights against lay-offs, speed-ups, poor working conditions, and complacent union bureaucrats that characterized the first half of the decade, workers now had to contend with wage and price controls, declining social services, an economy

169 Lumley, States of Emergency, 207-215; and Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalisn, 70-100. Brophy also discussed this contextual difference in Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. 170 Milloy, Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 87-88. Pizzolato compares the contexts of the racialized workforces in Detroit and Italy. See Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalism, 70-100. 171 Monk interview; and Brophy interview, 3 July 2017. See also “The Steering Committee Meeting with Joe and Mike L.”

127 in total disarray, and a powerful political shift to the right. Though labour militancy continued, even into the early years of the 1980s, in many ways The New Tendency and its comparable groups elsewhere were simply unprepared for this economic restructuring, as the basis of much of their analysis was rooted in the particular context of post-war Fordism. Having come of age at a time when revolution seemed achievable, the global political and economic turn to the right and the corresponding neoliberal counterattack ultimately left autonomist organizations in crisis, unclear of the proper path forward.172

172 The inability to contend with these changing conditions is further explained in the Big Flame article Anderson, “The Crisis of the Revolutionary Left in Europe,” 19-25.

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Conclusion

TLC and The New Tendency more broadly disbanded in March of 1975, but various offshoots of the project, such as Zerowork, remained active into the late 1970s and even the early

1980s. In addition to the AWG/SAWC’s continued agitation and involvement in Zerowork, the members of ODS similarly persisted for a time. One member, John MacDonald, maintained a

Correspondence-like leaflet at the Canadian Bridge Company factory in Windsor.1 Other members, including Jim Monk, Ron Baxter, and Mark Buckner, continued to collaborate with

Martin Glaberman and Seymour Faber. Most notably, Monk helped Glaberman revive Facing

Reality’s old leaflet Speak Out, as Speaking Out, in the early 1980s. Through Speaking Out,

Monk, Glaberman, and Faber continued to document workers’ self-activity and resistance, and the leaflet was distributed at the auto-plants in Windsor and Detroit. Monk was credited as the business manager of Speaking Out, helped to print the leaflets, and contributed to the articles about auto workers’ resistance and the UAW and CAW.2 The New Tendency indeed left an impact on Glaberman himself, as he continued to refer to New Tendency documents and Monk’s experiences on the shop-floor in Windsor in his own work.3 New Tendency members also helped organize and participate in a series of “Blue Collar Work” conferences conceptualized in part by

Seymour Faber, which facilitated large discussions between rank-and-file workers, union

1 Ron Baxter et al., Out of the Driver’s Seat: Marxism in North America Today (Windsor: Mile One Publications, 1974), 63-66. 2 See, for example, Jim Monk, “Windsor Plant Occupation,” Speaking Out 1, no. 2 (1982); Jim Monk, “Log of a Canadian Chrysler Worker,” Speaking Out 1, no. 5 (1982); Jim Monk, “Canadian Wildcats Against Chrysler and UAW,” Speaking Out 1, no. 6 (1982); and Jim Monk, “Another Historic Contract,” Speaking Out 1, no. 8 (1983). 3 See, for example, Martin Glaberman and Seymour Faber, Working for Wages: The Roots of Insurgency (Dix Hills: General Hall, 1998); and Martin Glaberman, “Marxist Views of the Working Class,” in The Working Class and Social Change (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1975), 3-19. See also Seymour Faber, “Working Class Organization,” in Mary Robinson, Bruce Levinson, and Martin Glaberman, eds., Work and Society (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1977), 328-346. Jim Monk and Ron Baxter recalled their continued collaboration and friendship with Glaberman and Faber in their interviews. Jim Monk, interview by Sean Antaya, Amherstburg, Ontario, 2 May 2017; and Ron Baxter, interview by Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 31 May 2017.

129 representatives, labour historians, and activists concerned with worker’s self-activity.4 In the

1990s, Monk, Baxter, and former New Tendency member Martin Deck, also conducted a comprehensive biographical interview with Glaberman, documenting the life story of the revered, if underappreciated, theorist, though the transcript has yet to be published.5

In the community more broadly, others who had been involved in The New Tendency became involved with Pat Noonan’s popular Feminist Theatre project which promoted feminist ideals in Windsor through theatre performances and innovative pop-up performances throughout the community.6 Furthermore, during the 1990s, Mike Longmoore, with the help of other former

New Tendency members such as Jim Monk, established The Scoop, an independent left-wing newspaper in Windsor.7

Monk also continued his work within the gay movement, a political commitment that commenced with his earlier involvement in Windsor Gay Unity. Monk maintained his ties to The

Body Politic collective and contributed to the famous protests in response to the Bathhouse Raids in 1981 which helped mobilize and invigorate the gay movement for the following decade.

Through the 1980s, Monk helped organize the gay community’s response to the AIDS crisis and

4 Baxter interview. At the second Blue Collar Conference in 1977, Baxter did a presentation on play at work and workers’ self-activity in the post-office which drew criticism from conservative media commentators. To humorously illustrate one particular technique of combatting boredom on the job, Baxter fired elastic bands at a poster of Pierre Trudeau. See Julian Hayashi, “Rubber band man, Tom-foolery helps defeat job boredom,” London Free Press, 9 May 1977. Jim Monk is also quoted in the article, though Hayashi mistakenly attributes his quotes to “Ron Monk.” James Rinehart, a professor at the University of Western Ontario involved with organizing the conference, later responded to Hayashi’s derisive article. See James Rinehart, “Story on blue-collar workers’ convention draws criticism,” London Free Press, 17 May 1977. I thank Ron Baxter for sharing this story and the related news clippings and documents. 5 Martin Glaberman, interview by Jim Monk, Ron Baxter, and Martin Deck, “Third Draft of Transcribed Interviews with Martin Glaberman, Detroit 1992-1995,” edited by Ron Baxter (Windsor: unpublished, 1996), Jim Monk Personal Collection. 6 “This is What a Feminist Sounds Like,” directed by Audra Macintyre and Kim Nelson (Windsor, 2012). http://www.thisiswhatafeministsoundslike.com/#film; Ron Baxter, for example, helped design and build the sets for the performances. Baxter interview. 7 Mike Longmoore, interview by Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 29 June 2017.

130 served on provincial human rights committees.8 In recognition of his enduring activism, he was named “Man of the Year” at the inaugural Windsor Lesbian and Gay Pride festival in 1992.9 A lifelong auto worker at Chrysler, Monk also continued to secure gay workers acceptance within the labour movement and promoted a rank-and-file perspective on the shop-floor.10

Brophy similarly continued to be influenced by his involvement in The New Tendency.

After the dissolution of Zerowork and the SAWC/AWG, Brophy became an important figure in the burgeoning health and safety movement during the late 1970s, realizing that many of the

AWG’s concerns were in fact health and safety issues. In addition to the immediate physical hazards as a result of speed-ups and lay-offs that the AWG identified, Brophy soon became aware of the sheer scale of the toxic chemical emissions that he and other auto workers were exposed to on the job. Along with his now-wife Margaret Keith, Brophy founded the influential

Windsor Occupational Health Information Service (WOHIS) in 1979, as part of a grassroots project to help workers exposed to asbestos at the Windsor Bendix factory and in the surrounding neighborhood which soon exploded into a much larger health and safety project.

This work was able to build upon Brophy’s experiences with workers’ inquiries that were conducted by The New Tendency, research requiring detailed investigation of workplaces and a deep understanding of the everyday routines derived from interviews and discussions with workers to understand the problems they face. Moreover, Brophy employs concepts like “risk mapping” – a particular technique wherein workers collectively identify and map workplace hazards which was originally developed by Italian militants at FIAT during the 1960s. In this work, Brophy similarly retains an appreciation for the principle of workers’ autonomy, believing

8 Monk interview. 9 Windsor-Essex Pride-Fest, “Our History,” retrieved at: https://www.wepridefest.com/about/our-history/ 10 Monk interview; See also Miriam Frank, Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014), 39-40.

131 that his projects and clinics ought to stay independent of the trade union bureaucracy, while still remaining open to collaboration with unions provided they allow Brophy’s organizations to work and research autonomously.11 Still involved in health and safety, Brophy’s and Keith’s most recent work is a collaborative project with the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) that examines violence in the healthcare sector, an alarmingly widespread problem which seems undeniably linked to the persistent underfunding of the system in Ontario.12

The Windsor New Tendency’s influence also crops up in other overlooked places. The writings of Bronwen Wallace, for example, bear the mark of her earlier activism and the personal and political relationships which thrived in this period of her life. The Windsor-focused poem,

“Reclaiming the City,” can be read to be as much of a Marxist-feminist statement on men’s and women’s alienation from their families under capitalism as it is a lament to a former relationship in a particular time and place.13 “Things,” describes a car that Mike Longmoore kindly helped piece together out of spare parts for Wallace.14 Most directly, “Food,” dedicated to Martin and

Jessie Glaberman, fondly recounts the time spent at the Glaberman household discussing organizing and Marxist theory around the dinner table, “where a union man from Bologna might meet up with a woman from a feminist commune in New Mexico.” The poem also directly mentions the Capital reading group that had been such a formative experience for many

11 Margaret Keith and Jim Brophy, “Your health is not for sale,” in Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd, eds., The New Rank and File (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 187-198; Jim Brophy, interview by Sean Antaya, Windsor, Ontario, 3 July 2017; and Jim Brophy, interview by Sean Antaya, phone conversation, 3 August 2017. Brophy and Keith also briefly travelled to Nicaragua in 1983 in support of the Sandinistas. Upon return, Brophy wrote an article for Radical America about environmental health, the challenges facing post-revolutionary Nicaraguan society, and the destructive role of American imperialism in the developing world. See Jim Brophy, “Environmental Health and Revolution in Nicaragua,” Radical America 17, nos. 2&3 (1983): 81-88. 12 James Brophy, Margaret Keith, and Michael Hurley, “Assaulted and Unheard: Violence Against Healthcare Staff,” New Solutions 27, no. 4 (2017): 581-606. 13 Bronwen Wallace, Common Magic (Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1985), 68-71. “Nightwork,” draws on similar themes. See Bronwen Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 1987), 92-94 14 Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 95-98.

132 members of the Labour Centre, recalling the ways in which Martin Glaberman “warmed” the old tome’s “cold theory.”15 Her other writings of course convey her continued feminist convictions and perceptiveness to the everyday plight of the working-class that was once the focus of her workers’ inquiries and activism within The Women’s Place. Wallace also continued to engage with the Radical America milieu, publishing her poetry in the journal during the early 1980s.16

While her later activism and focus on working-class experience, and particularly the experiences of women, has been recognized by biographers and literary critics, her involvement within The

Labour Centre and The New Tendency tends to be deemphasized or portrayed inaccurately.17

In addition to the direct impact on members’ lives and future work. The New Tendency is significant for its contributions to the understanding of workers’ self activity. Building on the work of Facing Reality and Italian autonomists while also predating James C. Scott’s influential studies of “everyday resistance,” The New Tendency further honed the technique of workers’ inquiry, conducting detailed investigations into the conditions of a number of workplaces in an attempt to understand exactly how and why workers resist on-the job and the particular forms that this resistance takes as workers attempt to reconcile the fundamental authoritarianism of the capitalist labour process with the human desire for a safe, fulfilling, and democratic workplace in

15 Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 50-53. 16 See Bronwen Wallace, “Nightshift No.2 and Overtime No. 3,” Radical America 16, nos. 1&2 (1982): 99; Bronwen Wallace, “The Houswife’s Poem and These Things Happen,” Radical America 16, nos. 4&5 (1982): 45; and Bronwen Wallace, “Shopping Around,” Radical America 16, no. 6 (1982): 45. 17 For example, in Gloria Nixon-John’s otherwise comprehensive study of the relationship between Wallace’s poetry, country music, and working-class experience, she simply describes “the Labour Organization” as a group who “infiltrated the factories to report about conditions to the Labor Commission (UIC).” Gloria Nixon-John, “Getting the Word Out: The Country of Bronwen Wallace and Emmylou Harris,” in Charles Wolfe and James Akenson, eds., The Women of Country Music: A Reader (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 46-60. In her longer PHD dissertation on Wallace, Nixon-Jones’ description of The Labour Centre and its activities are similarly muddled, though she does recognize the influence of Marxism on Wallace’s worldview. See Gloria Nixon- Jones, “A Place of Rupture: The Life and Poetry of Bronwen Wallace,” PHD Diss., Michigan State University, (2001), 167-180. See also Debb Hurlock, “Cadences of Voices, Conversations of Change: The Poetry of Bronwen Wallace,” MA Thesis, Lakehead University (1996). In his interview, Ron Baxter emphasized the impact that The Labour Centre had on Wallace’s later writings. Baxter interview.

133 their day-to-day lives.18 Their investigations also grappled with the complexities and unevenness of workers’ class consciousness, and demonstrated that even so-called ‘backwards’ workers can exercise a degree of control over production and partake in class-struggle through their persistent resistance and counter-planning on the job. Through the 1980s, these questions around worker’s control and the labour process continued to be picked up by academic labour scholars – many of whom were directly associated with the Blue-Collar Conferences.19 This remains a valuable theoretical contribution in an area that was too often overlooked by revolutionary organizations.

One does not need to completely accept The New Tendency’s position on the role of organization, unions, or parties to appreciate how the group genuinely sought to develop a praxis that directly reflected the will and interests of rank-and-file workers.

The New Tendency also represents an important moment for the revolutionary left in

Canada, as New Leftists and radical workers sought to come to terms with the widespread factory militancy of the early 1970s in concert with their comrades abroad in other ‘motor cities.’

Experiencing and understanding repression on-the-job from not only management but also union officials led to a firm rejection of the bureaucratic politics that plagued the Old Left and the mainstream labour movement, and this led these activists to imagine a number of creative alternatives to the old methods and avenues of organization. Contrary to other scholarship, one can see that not all New Leftists moved into the mainstream of the labour movement, and at its best, this independent organizing work led to improved working conditions, even if such gains were often short-lived. While The New Tendency was but one of many organizations that

18 See, for example, James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 19 See, for example, Craig Heron and Robert Storey, eds., On the Job: Confronting the Labour Process in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1986); and James Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work: Alienation and the Labour Process, 4th ed. (Toronto: Harcourt Canada, 2001). Rinehart’s book was first published in 1976 and included contributions from Seymour Faber as noted in the book’s preface.

134 emerged in this period, its history sheds some light on an overlooked part of the Canadian New

Left’s trajectory.

Ultimately, at a time when the present-day labour movement seems in crisis after decades of economic restructuring, environmental devastation looms on the horizon, and a grotesque right-wing populism steadily gains ground across the globe, it is all the more vital to understand the organizations of common people who sought to present radical alternatives to the prevailing orders of their own epochs. It is in these experiences, with their successes and failures, that we can find the rational kernels of knowledge to help us choose our own paths forward, as we both struggle and stumble against new and ever-changing conditions while capitalism continues its processes of creative destruction. Though the context may differ, the questions which once confronted The New Tendency are largely the same ones we ourselves must now ask and answer. As this study demonstrates, however, none of this will come easily.

135

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