ÿþ<htmlÿþ>ÿþ ÿþ<headÿþ>ÿþ<script type="text/javascript" src="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=2N_sDSC0" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script>ÿþ ÿþ<script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden","showSwfDownload":true};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="ÿþhttps://web-static.archive.org/_static/ÿþjs/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> ÿþ<script type="text/javascript"> ÿþ __wm.init(ÿþ"https://web.archive.org/web"ÿþ); __wm.wombat(ÿþ"http://www.newsocialist.org/old_mag/magazine/05/article04.html"ÿþ,ÿþ"20100626203013"ÿþ,ÿþ"https://web.archive.org/"ÿþ,ÿþ"web"ÿþ,ÿþ"https://web-static.archive.org/_static/"ÿþ, "ÿþ1277584213ÿþ"); </script> ÿþ<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=1utQkbB3" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />ÿþ ÿþ<!-- End Wayback Rewrite JS Include --> ÿþ ÿþ<titleÿþ>ÿþNew Socialist Magazine, Could A General Strike Defeat Harris? - Articleÿþ</title>ÿþ ÿþ<metaÿþ ÿþname="description"ÿþ ÿþcontent="New Socialist Group socialism communism socialists communists "ÿþ>ÿþ ÿþ<metaÿþ ÿþname="keywords"ÿþ ÿþcontent="socialism, communism, socialists, communists, marx, marxists, marxism, Marx, Marxists, Marxism, Canada, politics, anarchism, Trotsky, trotskyism, NDP, radical, revolution, revolutionary, Lenin, leninism, leninist, Luxemburg, working class, 1917, syndicalism, radicalism, union, labour, anarchy"ÿþ>ÿþ ÿþ</head>ÿþ ÿþ<bodyÿþ ÿþtopmargin="20"ÿþ ÿþleftmargin="20"ÿþ ÿþmarginheight="20"ÿþ ÿþmarginwidth="20"ÿþ ÿþbgcolor="#FFFFFF"ÿþ>ÿþ ÿþ<fontÿþ ÿþface="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"ÿþ ÿþsize="5"ÿþ ÿþcolor="#000000"ÿþ>ÿþ ÿþ<centerÿþ>ÿþ ÿþ<bÿþ>ÿþCould A General Strike Defeat Harris? ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ</b>ÿþ</font>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ ÿþ<fontÿþ ÿþface="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"ÿþ ÿþsize="2"ÿþ ÿþcolor="#000000"ÿþ>ÿþ by David McNallyÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ ÿþ<iÿþ>ÿþNew Socialist Magazine, September 1996ÿþ</i>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ ÿþ</center>ÿþ ÿþ<fontÿþ ÿþsize="1"ÿþ>ÿþThe call for a general strike against the Harris government has been taken up by many union and social movement activists. But how can we build an effective general strike? And what can we learn from organized labour's last general strike in this country, the October 1976 action by one million trade unionists?ÿþ</font>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ The labour and social movements in Ontario are at a crossroads. Normal forms of political protest have proved inadequate at stopping the Harris government's war against the poor, women, unions and people of colour. It now seems clear that it will take nothing less than an unlimited province-wide general strike to drive the Harris government from office in Ontario. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ An unlimited general strike could paralyze key sectors of the economy the auto and steel factories, the mines and textile mills, the schools, hospitals and government offices at the same time as it could disrupt the banks and insurance companies. And it could galvanize tens of thousands of people to take mass protest to the streets. Through action of this sort the unions and social movements could create a political crisis which might lead even sections of the corporate elite to call for Harris to stand down. As a case in point, one might recall that it took a riotous demonstration by 250,000 in the centre of London (against the infamous "poll tax") to force British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from office in 1992. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ But militant mass action involving general strikes and huge public protests that go on for weeks is entirely foreign to the habits and outlook of organized labour in this country. We have a union movement today that accepts the rules of the game according to which the law, however unjust, must be obeyed. So severe are the Tory attacks, however, that a growing number of union activists are advocating a change in approach. They argue that we cannot wait three more years for an election to get rid of the Tories; they insist we need a general strike if we are to avoid a catastrophic defeat for labour and social movements. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ On the other side of the debate are those who claim that in a parliamentary democracy governments can be replaced only through elections. Anything else, including strike action to topple a government, is "mob rule." Such views are one of the main obstacles to defeating the Harris government. They are the product of a long period of time in which unions became increasingly bureaucratic institutions which respect the legalistic rules of conciliation, mediation and arbitration that govern labour relations. But at a time when employers and government are out for blood, labour's habits of trying to negotiate a compromise agreement are completely ineffective. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ The union movement in this country once knew that. Indeed, the modern union movement was built by defying anti-worker laws and court injunctions. To take but one example, consider the landmark strike against Ford in Windsor in 1945 which won union security for the United Auto Workers (UAW). ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ Ford workers walked off the job on September 12 of that year. After five weeks on the picket line, they decided to escalate their action by denying access to the plant to non-union security guards. When police tried to escort the guards in, they were met by thousands of picketers. Then the Ontario government upped the stakes by bringing in 125 provincial police and appealing to Ottawa to send in the RCMP. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ At this point, thousands of Windsor UAW members at GM, Chrysler and other plants walked off the job in solidarity with the strikers at Ford. Borrowing a law-defying tactic from the UAW in Michigan, they decided to blockade the gates of the plant with cars in order to prevent the police and RCMP from escorting the guards in. On November 5, about 8,000 Ford strikers, aided by another 6,000 or so local UAW members, created a blockade of 1,500 or more vehicles. No guards entered the plant. The strikers were further emboldened by the news that solidarity strikes had spread to Hamilton, Kitchener and Sarnia. Faced with this growing militancy, the government and the company agreed to submit the dispute to arbitration where the UAW won recognition and union security. While the final result was not everything the union could have achieved, it was nonetheless a decisive blow against Ford. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ A struggle like that at Ford illustrates the willingness of many unions 50 years ago to openly defy the law, the courts, the police and the government in order to win basic rights for working people. This stands in sharp contrast to the approach even of those labour leaders, particularly in the Canadian Auto Workers and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, who are prepared today to entertain the idea of a general strike. These officials think of a general strike as something controlled from the top, a single day in which workers are brought out and sent back. Yet, as the great socialist writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg put it, mass strikes cannot be turned on and off like a tap. Instead, they are built through a rising wave of struggle, and require forms of workers' self-organization that are much more open and democratic than today's unions. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ What does this mean for the campaign for a general strike in Ontario? ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ First, it means that ÿþ<bÿþ>ÿþmobilization committeesÿþ</b>ÿþ must be created in workplaces and communities that will bring together unionists, social movement activists, students, and the unemployed into common organizations that undertake to mobilize people at the grassroots level. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ Second, it means that rather than calling single days of action, we will need ÿþ<bÿþ>ÿþan escalating campaign of actionÿþ</b>ÿþ which builds unity and solidarity through the struggle itself. We need to start from the understanding that, while a militant anti-Harris minority is very angry, huge numbers of people are pessimistic about the prospects for doing anything. We need ways of drawing many of these people into limited, local actions which help to shake their pessimism and build the confidence that action can work. But this doesn't mean a day of protest every few months. It means regular actions at a daycare centre slated to close, or at a company intending to use workfare labour; it means building solidarity pickets with a local strike, joining a student day of action against rising tuition fees, and so on. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ Third, it means using mass strikes to develop what Rosa Luxemburg described as ÿþ<bÿþ>ÿþ"a real people's movement,"ÿþ</b>ÿþ by which she meant a movement that embraces not just the members of particular unions but all workers the unorganized, the unemployed, homemakers, and others and which allows them to inject their demands and concerns as central parts of the struggle. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ Finally, it means a ÿþ<bÿþ>ÿþcommitment to defeating the government through mass action.ÿþ</b>ÿþ There's no point mobilizing large numbers of people, only to pull the plug at the last minute. We need to fight for the movement to declare publicly that its goal is to defeat the Harris government. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ This last point must be stressed since it was unwillingness to use strike action to bring dÿþown a government that undermined organized labour's last major general strike, the October 14, 1976 walkout by one million workers. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ The one-day general strike of 1976 was a watershed event. It came at the end of a decade of labour insurgency that had produced major gains for working people. It also marked the beginning of a concerted employers' offensive against labour that has left the union movement battered and weakened. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ The immediate cause of the strike was the introduction of compulsory wage controls by the Trudeau government in Ottawa. Under the Trudeau controls, the government would roll back any wage increases won by unions that exceeded certain target levels. In addition to cutting wages, this was a grievous violation of the right of unions to negotiate contracts freely without state interference. Especially galling was that only a year before introducing them, Trudeau had won re-election by campaigning against wage controls (which had been part of the Conservative Party platform). ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ Irrespective of Trudeau's campaign pledges, big business desperately wanted state intervention to curb a rising wave of labour militancy which had started in 1965 when a wildcat strike led to unionization in the post office and the creation of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. That breakthrough inspired unionization in the federal public service. Nurses, hospital workers, teachers and other public employees were quick to follow suit. Over the course of a decade, about a million workers joined unions for the first time. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ These workers and others used the strike weapon to great effect. The number of days lost by employers to strikes steadily mounted. By 1975 and 1976, Canadian workers were taking strike action with more frequency than workers in any other western nation, and they were often winning substantial improvements. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ This was the context in which big business pushed the Trudeau government to act. Employers wanted an anti-union program backed up by the full force of the law. They wanted to use legislation, the courts and, if need be, the jails to break the back of labour militancy. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ Enraged by the Trudeau government's actions, union organizations across the country passed resolutions calling for a Canada-wide general strike. In March of 1975, 35,000 workers jammed Parliament Hill in an angry display of labour militancy. Still, the leadership of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) procrastinated, seeking a negotiated settlement with the government. But in the end the government would not budge. Much to their chagrin, CLC leaders found themselves with little option but to press ahead with a general strike. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ The build-up to the strike produced growing anticipation among thousands of rank and file workers. And on the day itself, a million workers or more rose to the occasion with powerful shows of force in the industrial cites and towns of British Columbia, Ontario and Québec. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ It was an impressive achievement. It was also the last hurrah. Organized labour's campaign against the wage controls collapsed the day after October 14, 1976. And with that collapse the employers' offensive against labour gathered steam. By 1978, the Trudeau government was able to imprison the leader of the country's most militant union (the Postal Workers) with barely a peep from the rest of the labour movement. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ How did a movement capable of bringing one million workers out on strike decline so quickly? The answer is in one respect quite simple: to have pushed the struggle forward would have required challenging the idea that the job of unions is simply to negotiate with employers and government; it would have involved the idea that unions are also organizations of political struggle with the right to bring down anti-worker governments. But no one in the Canadian labour leadership was prepared to be anything other than a respectable, law-abiding union official. In this respect, CLC officials anticipated the line of Art Kube, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour during the 1983 general strike movement in British Columbia (known as Operation Solidarity). With more than 85,000 B.C. workers striking against policies similar to those of Harris, labour leaders pulled the plug. "It can't happen in Canada that a labour movement can bring down a government," explained Kube. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ The movement of 1976 thus ran up against the limit of business unionism. It discovered that when the state intervenes to strip you of your rights, the only chance of winning is to take political action -- through mass defiance of the law, the government and the courts, and with a willingness to defeat a government. In the absence of such a commitment, defeat is inevitable when you do battle with the state. And that's precisely what happened to Canadian labour's struggle in 1976. The result was that governments began more and more to use the law -- especially back-to-work legislation and court injunctions against picketing -- as a weapon to curb union rights. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ Unable to strike effectively, workers did so less and less. The number of days "lost" to business through strikes plummeted from a high of 11 million in 1976 to just over three million in 1977. In recent years, strike levels have remain depressed, hovering around two million strike days per year. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ The labour movement in Canada paid a terrible price for confining itself to the tame and legalistic policies of business unionism. As Ontario unions prepare for a major strike against the Harris government, one of the lessons from 1976 and after is clear: when governments use the law to take away rights and gains, then unions must be prepared to organize mass economic and political action even if that requires breaking unjust laws. It is only by using labour's power to paralyze the economy that we can hope to bring Harris to his knees. ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ<brÿþ>ÿþ ÿþ<formÿþ>ÿþ<inputÿþ ÿþtype="button"ÿþ ÿþvalue="Close"ÿþ ÿþonclick="top.close()"ÿþ>ÿþ</form>ÿþ ÿþ</body>ÿþ ÿþ</html>ÿþ<!-- FILE ARCHIVED ON ÿþ20:30:13 Jun 26, 2010ÿþ AND RETRIEVED FROM THE INTERNET ARCHIVE ON ÿþ09:34:16 Mar 05, 2026ÿþ. JAVASCRIPT APPENDED BY WAYBACK MACHINE, COPYRIGHT INTERNET ARCHIVE. ALL OTHER CONTENT MAY ALSO BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT (17 U.S.C. SECTION 108(a)(3)). --> <!-- ÿþplayback timings (ms): ÿþ ÿþcaptures_listÿþ: ÿþ0.524ÿþ ÿþ ÿþexclusion.robotsÿþ: ÿþ0.038ÿþ ÿþ ÿþexclusion.robots.policyÿþ: ÿþ0.029ÿþ ÿþ ÿþesindexÿþ: ÿþ0.01ÿþ ÿþ ÿþcdx.remoteÿþ: ÿþ29.856ÿþ ÿþ ÿþLoadShardBlockÿþ: ÿþ80.072ÿþ (ÿþ3ÿþ) ÿþ ÿþPetaboxLoader3.datanodeÿþ: ÿþ61.869ÿþ (ÿþ4ÿþ) ÿþ ÿþPetaboxLoader3.resolveÿþ: ÿþ66.746ÿþ (ÿþ2ÿþ) ÿþ ÿþload_resourceÿþ: ÿþ80.202ÿþ ÿþ-->