Where the Fraser River Flows: The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia

by Mark Leier

Book by Leier, Mark

138 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1990

About the author

Mark Leier is a Canadian historian of working class and left-wing history. He is the director of the Centre for Labour Studies at Simon Fraser University, where he is also a Professor of Canadian History and the history of Marxism.
Politically anarchist, Leier's books have mostly reflected on British Columbia's rich history of labour radicalism. His first book, Where the Fraser River Flows: The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia (1990) deals with the famous syndicalist, working class rebels, while his second, Red Flags and Red Tape: The Making of a Labour Bureaucracy (University of Toronto Press) deals with the institutionalization of a non-revolutionary labour movement. In Rebel Life: The Life and Times of Robert Gosden, Revolutionary, Mystic, Labour Spy (1999), Leier examines the life of an Industrial Workers of the World member (or "Wobbly") turned police labour spy. His fourth book, Bakunin: The Creative Passion is a biography and political chronicle of the 19th century Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin and is being published in paperback by Seven Stories Press.
As part of the Graphic History Collective, he helped produce May Day: A Graphic History of Protest," available through the SFU History Department.
A former folk singer, Leier is also known for bringing a banjo to his history classes.

Reviews

[Macho · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book really valuable, despite some important gaps. The first chapter is a really well-written description of the US IWW's politics when contrasted with the other labour and socialist forces at the time. The second chapter is on some early IWW strikes in BC, especially in the lumber camps, including setting up a self-governing strike camp with better sanitary conditions than the company camps and a restorative-ish justice system: the punishment for fighting, e.g. might be to cut and bring back two big armfulls of firewood for the camp's use. Chapter three goes over the free speech fights in Vancouver and Victoria, which mirror IWW free speech fights in US cities at roughly the same time. The chapter starts to get into the frenemy dynamics of the IWW & SPC (Socialist Party of Canada), who were the leading anti-capitalist force in colonial Canada in that era. The SPC ended up later either borrowing or co-opting (depending how you see it) the IWW's One Big Union principle at the time of the Winnipeg General Strike. The IWW & SPC dynamics are expanded on in Chapter four. Apparently the BC IWW was against electoralism with such intensity that they burned writings of US IWW leader Big Bill Haywood they saw as sympathetic with electoralism. Chapter five starts with a bit more of a philosophical essay on the fate of socialist movements but then explores the factors that led more specifically IWW decline in Canada beginning around the first world war. Among the omissions I noted up front is that there is no mention at all of the Squamish longshoremen who formed an IWW local in Vancouver in 1906 when other unions excluded indigenous members, though I imagine Leier just wasn't aware of it yet when this book came out in 1990.

[Toby Mustill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book to gain a greater perspective on syndicalism. I was given it by a good friend who challenged me on my concept of socialism and why - I thought - socialism was the best perspective to hold for the working class.

Although I am not 100% convinced. This book went a long way to challenging my preconceived notions of what syndicalism is and is not, and, further, what socialism is and is not.

I will not do a deep dive into my thoughts or concepts coming out of this reading experience as it would give far too much of the book away, however, it is well worth a read.

Aside from the theoretical challenges it provides to the reader. The book provides a deep dive in history in the early 20th century labour landscape for which I could write an entire other review, which is equally as excellent. But my central take away from this book is its theoretical challenges to my thought processes. Give it a read!

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few interesting passages:
p.51 CN strike of 1912
The IWW made Martin and other contractors do more than just pull out their hair. By April 2, they had met with Premier Richard McBride and asked for militia troops to end the strike; while the premier demurred on the question of military aid, he did dispatch special constables and allow the company to swear in and arm foreman as constables. The men were sent on the pretext that order needed to be restored, in site of police reports that the level of violence and disorderly conduct had actually gone down during the strike. Provincial health inspectors were sent to close the workers' camps, even though they were cleaner than the CN camps. Striker were harassed by police and company thus: one man was shot in the leg by a company constable, while another was run down by a train.

During the third week of April, the police intensified their campaign against the strike. The men were ordered to return to work, and when they refused, armed constables entered the camps and ousted them at gunpoint. Several camps were destroyed and sweeping arrest made. By June, nearly three hundred men were imprisoned on charges from vagrancy to inciting murder, and many more were driven from the area. Immigration authorities kept IWW men from entering the area, but they eased restrictions for men willing to scab. Donald Mann, one of the magnates of the CN, used his influence to change immigration regulations to facilitate the importation of navvies from the United States, and it became more difficult to keep scabs out. The Wobblies' "1,000 mile picket line", which had union members picketing employment offices in Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma, Minneapolis and San Francisco to curtail the hiring of scabs, began to falter. An IWW request for arbitration under the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act was refused by the federal government and the railways, thus supporting Wobbly contention that the state was not a friend to labour."

Chapter 3 The Vancouver and Victoria free speech fights
p.112-114 on the distinction between militancy and radicalism

[Ryan Andrew Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leier's discussion of the difference between militance and radicalism provides a robust tool for evaluating the viability of activist strategies in different contexts.