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The history of British Columbia is a history of class struggle. From the time of the fur trade to the present, working people and their battles to make a better world have transofrmed the politics, economics, laws, and workplaces of the province. This bibliography will make this history more accessible to trade unionists, students, and the general public. ...The bibliography was compiled by graduate students of Simon Fraser University's History Department: Dennis Pilon, Todd McCallum, Andy Parnaby, and David Sandquist. --Introduction

Labour bureaucracy has long been a subject of interest to sociologists and industrial relations specialists, but it has rarely been examined by labour historians. In Red Flags and Red Tape Mark Leier aims to understand how and why bureaucracy came to dominate an organization that was established to promote greater democracy for the working class. The formative years of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council, from 1889 to 1910, provide the basis for his study of the interplay between bureaucracy, class, and ideology. Leier sets himself three tasks: he examines the theoretical debates on the labour bureaucracy; he investigates the early history of the VTLC to show how and why bureaucratic structures evolve over time; and he looks at the ideology and personnel of the labour council to try to understand the complex relationship between bureaucrats on the left and right of the political spectrum. He describes the ideology of the bureaucrats (including their attitudes towards gender and race) and how it compares to that of the council's members, and observes that bureaucrats are defined by their power over a movement rather than by their ideology. Finally, since the VTLC was, at different times, dominated by labourists and socialists, Leier explores why different leaders held variant or antagonistic views. Leier concludes that the pressure of trade unionism and the class position of labour officials led to increased bureaucracy and conservatism, even among the socialists of the labour council, and as the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council matured, increased red tape isolated the officials from the membership. --Publisher's description

Extensively revised throughout and including a chapter of new material, Rebel Life chronicles the life of labour organizer, revolutionary, anarchist and labour spy Robert Gosden. Mark Leier's revisions incorporate new information about Gosden's career that has come to light since the first edition was published in 1999. Canada's west coast was rife with upheaval in the second and third decades of the twentieth century. At the centre of the turmoil is Robert Gosden, migrant labourer turned radical activistヨturned police spy. In 1913, he publicly recommends assassinating Premier Richard McBride to resolve theminers' strike. By 1919, he is urging Prime Minister Robert Borden to "disappear" key labour radicals to quelch rising discontent. What happened?Rebel Life plumbs the enigma that was Gosden, but it is much more: an introduction to BC labour history: a trove of rarely seen archival photograph, and sidebars rich with historical arcana; and, with its chapter describing the research that unearthed Gosden's story, Rebel Life is a rich resource for instructors, students, and trade unionists alike.

The article reviews and comments on three books: "Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914" by Tom Goyens, "Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism" by Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt, and "Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism" by Paul McLaughlin.

This paper examines the life of Robert Raglan Gosden, 1882-1961. Gosden was an unskilled worker who joined the Industrial Workers of the World and advocated violent revolution. He took part in the Vancouver Island mining strikes of 1912-1914, and was a key player in the 1916 provincial election scandal. By 1919, however, he was an informant for the RCMP. The paper outlines Gosden's career and analyzes the complex way his class experience shaped his construction of masculinity as well as his radical politics and his later activity as a labour spy.

Examines longstanding conspiracy theories, as well as the reconsideration of forensic evidence given in Susan Mayse's book, "Ginger: The Life and Death of Albert Goodwin," that the British-born miner and labour activist was murdered by Dominion Police on military orders of the federal government in 1918. Concludes that there was no proof of conspiracy nor was there sufficient evidence to show that the police shooter had intent to murder. Argues, however, that this does not absolve the government and business from culpability since they were responsible for taking Canada into an imperial war - and Goodwin, who opposed conscription and the war, was being pursued by the police for evading conscription.

The article reviews the book, "Things That Never Added Up To Me: Songs of Love, War, Theology, Golf and the Great American Railroad," by Al Grierson.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Hoffa," by William Sloane, and "Labor Shall Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of Labor," by Steven Fraser.

The article reviews the book, "Harvey and Jessie: A Couple of Radicals," by Jessie Lloyd O'Connor, Harvey O'Connor and Susan M. Bowler.

The article reviews the book, "The Damndest Radical: The Life and World of Ben Reitman Chicago's Celebrated Social Reformer, Hobo King, and Whorehouse Physician," by Roger A. Bruns.

The labour and socialist movement of British Columbia before World War One was home to a number of competing tendencies and factions. While the different groups could and did work together on occasion, their relations with each other were often marked by hostility and suspicion. The Vancouver free speech fights of 1909 and 1912 illustrate dramatically the in-fighting between the Socialist Party of Canada. the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Vancouver Trades and Labor Council. The different approaches of the organizations to the issue of free speech reflect their different ideologies, constituencies, and clans strata, and the actions of the SPC suggest that the party was, despite its impossiblist rhetoric, more interested in pragmatic trade unionism and social democracy than revolution. In refusing to put its faith in parliamentary democracy, the IWW demonstrated that it had a more consistent and deeper analysis of capitalist society than moat historians have suggested, but this very analysis and the actions consistent with it meant the IWW could be increasingly marginalized and isolated. (English)

This article reviews the book, "The Soul of the Wobblies: The I.W.W., Religion, and American Culture in the Progressive Era, 1905-1917," by Donald E. Winters.

This article reviews the book, "Roughneck: The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood," by Peter Carlson.

The article reviews the book and CD, "Working-Class Heroes: A History of Struggle in Song," edited by Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore.

This dissertation is an examination of bureaucracy, class, and ideology in the labour movement. It seeks to understand what is meant by the term labour bureaucracy and to determine the degree to which bureaucracy shaped ideology in the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council from 1889 to 1909. -- The first section is an analysis of the theoretical literature and historiography of the labour bureaucracy. As well as providing an overview of the topic, the thesis tries to formulate a different definition of the labour bureaucracy, one that focuses on the power of the bureaucrats, rather than their ideology. The second section is a study of the officials and leaders that made up the VTLC from its beginning in 1889 to the founding of the B.C. Federation of Labour twenty years later. In this section, the ideology of the council is examined to evaluate the impact of bureaucracy on the labour movement. The policies and structure of the council are studied in detail to show how the separation of the leaders from the led developed over time and to demonstrate why bureaucratic solutions - the hiring of experts, reliance on government intervention, the routinization of procedures, and the creation of labour institutions - were taken and to outline the effect they had. The conflict between labourists and socialists is examined closely to suggest first that bureaucracy is not limited to labour leaders of any single ideology, and second, that the needs of the labour movement and the demands of bureaucracy itself tended to soften ideological battles. Even with the ascension of socialists to the council in 1907-1909, continuity remained the hallmark of the labour council, in part because socialists had no particular commitment to rank-and-file control of the labour movement. Finally, the lives and class positions of the labour leaders are illustrated to try to shed some light on the ways in which bureaucracy, class, and ideology become intertwined.

This thesis is an examination of the Industrial Workers of the World and its relations with capital, organized labour, and the socialist movement in British Columbia before the First World War.

The article briefly reviews Francis Wheen's "Karl Marx," "Compass Points: Navigating the 20th Century," edited by Robert Chodos; William R. Haycraft's "Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry ;" "Rosa Luxembourg: Reflections and Writings," edited by Paul Le Blanc; "No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism," edited by Daniel Guérin, with translation by Paul Sharkey; Lynne Bowen's "Robert Dunsmuir, Laird of the Mines;" Nikolai Bukharin's "How It All Began: The Prison Novel;" Neil Tudiver's "Universities for Sale: Resisting Corporate Control over Canadian Higher Education;" Cynthia R. Commachio's "The Infinite Bonds of Family: Domesticity in Canada, 1850-1940;" Harry Fisher's "Comrades: Tales of a Brigadista in the Spanish Civil War;" Eve Blau's "The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919-1934;" Alan Kidd's "State, Society, and the Poor in Nineteenth-Century England;" "Nationalism, Labour, and Ethnicity, 1870-1939," edited by Stefan Berger and Angel Smith; and "Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture," by Sherrie A. Inness.

Briefly describes the newly released documentary, "The Plywood Girls," which focuses on the hundreds of women who worked at the sawmill in Port Alberni, BC, during the Second World War.

Reprint of an article first published in the Vancouver Sun, entitled "Productivity Latest Stick to Beat Workers." Discusses the debate that it generated.

Brief obituary for Robert Kenney, who died in Toronto on Sept. 28, 1993 at age 88. A bibliophile with a longstanding commitment to Marxist philosophy, Kenney's collections of books, pamphlets, leaflets, and newspapers, as well as the personal papers of A.E. Smith, were donated to the the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. The Memorial University library has acquired 2,200 pamphlets in the English language representing an international spectrum of opinion include socialist, communist (the Canadian Communist Party is well-represented), trade unionist and anti-war. Saskatchewan labour collections assembled by the Saskatchewan provincial archives include union papers, strike files and secondary sources from the 1940s-1980s. The collection is named after Bob Hale, the former Canadian Labour Congress regional director for the Prairies. Takes note of forthcoming conferences and a newsletter on comparative industrial relations published at McMaster University.