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From the 1940s to the 1970s the communist left in British Columbia used debates and perceptions of environmental change as a means to engage in a critique of capitalist society. In engaging in these debates, communists articulated a Marxist understanding of the connections between capitalism and environmental change. However, these articulations were heavily connected to broader occurrences that situated the communist left alongside a diverse group of social actors. Beginning in the 1940s the communist left situated their critique of provincial forest policy into a wider social debate over the management of forest resources. During the 1950s and 1960s, concerns over environmental change were transformed into debates over the effects of nuclear weapons and industrial pollution. From the late 1960s through to late 1970s elements of the communist left once again engaged with the environmental changes taking place in the forest sector, as renewed concerns developed over the status of the forest economy and the preservation of wilderness areas. To investigate the communist left’s perceptions and politicization of these issues this thesis focuses on the activities of communist controlled unions such as the International Woodworkers of America as well as the B.C. section of the Communist Party of Canada/Labour Progressive Party. In addition to these organizations, this thesis also follows the experiences of Erni Knott. As a woodworker, a founding member of the IWA, a member of the Communist Party, and an active environmentalist, Knott’s experiences highlight the complex way in which communist politics merged and conflicted with perceptions of environmental change.
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While historians have been increasingly attentive to the politics and culture of social movements since the long sixties, they have engaged much less with the significance of anarchism within these activist currents. As part of an emerging field of anarchist studies, this article demonstrates that anarchist projects were critical in shaping postwar political radicalism in Vancouver and its relationship to a global pattern of cultural transformation, capitalist restructuring, and social movement activism. Specifically, the article investigates how and why Vancouver’s anarchist community created strong political, personal, and cultural connections with an emerging punk scene during the 1970s and early 1980s. It demonstrates that these relationships emerged from anarchism’s conflicting relationship with the city’s New Left and countercultural communities in the long sixties, as well as from anarchists’ specific engagement with punk as a tool for revolutionary struggle in the wake of the sixties. Overall, the article argues that anarchists cultivated connections with punk in this context because they saw it as awash with the potential to bridge generations of political dissent; to support emerging activist projects; and to help usher in new expressions of radical culture in the city. In so doing, the article offers new insights into the political, social, and cultural legacies of the long sixties, in Vancouver and beyond.
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