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In March 1919, over 230 union delegates assembled at the Western Labor Conference in Calgary to chart a radical new direction for wage workers through the creation of a revolutionary industrial union centre, the One Big Union (OBU). This essay argues that the practices of the OBU's radical manhood, their particular sense of what it meant to be a union man, shaped the organization's structure and politics as well as the emergent culture which fostered such widespread working-class radicalism. Drawing upon already existing practices espoused by Canadian labourists and American Wobblies as well as fashioning new ones, OBU men distinguished radical manhood from both the class politics and the masculinities of male bosses and scabs. While the organization of working women was not seen as an important issue at the WLC, the upsurge in women's militancy during the labour revolt prompted OBU supporters to encourage these women to join their male comrades. At times, advocates of the One Big Union posed the questions of women's oppression and emancipation as crucial elements of the union's purpose; their infrequent ideological commitment, however, too often failed to translate into organizational gains for working-class women and the development of feminist practices within the union. In their challenge to the bourgeois order, OBU men created a program that, in the prevailing context of gender relations, meant that the One Big Union would bring about the transformation, but not the eradication, of men's power.
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The article reviews the book, "Woody, Cisco, and Me: Seamen Three in the Merchant Marine," by Jim Longhi.
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The article reviews the book, "The Centralia Tragedy of 1919: Elmer Smith and the Wobblies," by Tom Copeland.
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In March 1919, more than 230 union representatives gathered in Calgary for the Western Labor Conference. There, they initiated plans for a revolutionary industrial organizatin, the One Big Union, which embodied the internationalist principles of Marxist unionism. Within its first year, the One Big Union (OBU) issued over 70,000 membership cards, and was a powerful symbol of working-class demands for the end of class exploitation. However, given its patriarchal inheritance, the OBU was always something more than just a class organization. It was an attempt by working men to organize around a specific sense of gender identity, which I have called Marxist masculinity, in order to reconstitute the social bases of male power. The first chapter outlines the events surrounding the creation of the OBU in 1919 and the wave of general strikes that swept through Canada that summer. In particular, it sketches the relationship between class politics and a masculine structure of feeling, and how this relationship influenced the OBU's ideology. The second chapter discusses three elements around which Marxist masculinity was constructed. To begin, the experiences of women in the OBU are situated in relation to the organization's policies regarding membership in individual unions and the Women's Auxilliary. As well, it examines the personal lives of OBU leaders and the naturalized assumptions about heterosexuality which governed their politics. The final chapter discusses the purge of Tom Cassidy and Catherine Rose, two dedicated activists fired because of rumours of their sexual involvement. The OBU leadership wanted to prevent a public moral panic around issues of "free love" and was thus determined to have the matter kept quiet. In taking this position, OBU leaders regulated the gender and sexual identities of union members through concepts of proper masculine and feminine socialist behaviour.
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