hey had gathered in late evening,

one thousand of them, and now
suddenly they were lined up in
formation along the tracks, poised
waiting to board the CPR freight
that cut across the sweep of
Vancouver’s waterfront every
night at 10 o’clock before heading
out to the Prairies and east.

Behind the locomotive, a handful
of men waited quietly, ready at a
~ moment to pull the coupling pin
that connected engine and cars’
should the engineer try to pull the
long freight out without its
- unannounced passengers.

The men that would soon
clamber up the sides of the boxcars
were nothing new to the engineer
— for half a decade, men and
women, caught in the grips of a
depression that by 1935, had left
nearly a quarter of the working
force without jobs, had travelled
back and forth across the length of
the country in search of empty
promises of work and wages.

But tonight, June 3, 1935, it was
startingly different. Tonight their
numbers had swelled to one-
thousand with hundreds more
thronging the tracks at the foot of
Gore Avenue to see them off. And
as the words were shouted with
determined precision: “Division
_One — board the train . . . Division
Two...,’’ the whole nation
listened.

Tonight their destination was
Ottawa — to demand that the
elected leader of the-country give
substance to his word to end
unemployment.

Three years earlier, in 1932,
when the millionaire prime
minister, R. B. (Iron Heel) Ben-
nett, intoned in the House, ‘‘the
poor will always be with us,”’ it
framed his government’s policy: to
take no effective action to cope
with the depression that had
crippled the country. And when, in
the fall of the same year, the chief
of the general staff, A. G. L. Mc-
Naughton, recommended the con-
struction of a network of relief
camps throughout the country
under the control of the depart-
ment of national defence, Bennett
and his Conservative cabinet lost
little time
scheme. He hoped that, in isolated
_parts of the country, in rude shacks
thrown together of two-by-fours
and shiplap, covered with one
_ Sheet of tarpaper, the single unem-
ployed would be forgotten — and
silent.

in moving on_ the»

But the Communist Party had
already begun its national cam-
paign for work and wages and
unemployment insurance, the
impact of which was so great as to
prompt Bennett to reply by in-
voking Section 98 and jailing eight
Communist leaders in 1931.
Already the Workers Unity
League, founded in the same year
as Bennett’s election, had begun to

put into life its militant
organization policy which en-
compassed the unemployed.

launched that year, carried the
outline of their demands in its April
5 edition:

e Six-hour day, five-day week,
minimum 20 work days per month.

‘50 cents per hour for unskilled

labor, trade union rates for skilled
work.

e Full compensation coverage
for camps; adequate first aid
supplies.

e Abolition of national defence
and all military control and an end
to the system of blacklisting by

By Sean Griffin

Throughout the relief camps — by
now referred to by the more fitting
name slave camps — a new
organization, the Relief Camp
Workers Union, sprang, growing
from bunkhouse to bunkhouse,
determined to ‘‘promote and lead
the struggles of the relief camp
workers for higher living stan-
dards.”’

In British Columbia, the first big
walkout came in December, 1934.
1,200 workers struck primarily
over the issue of blacklisting.
Delegations were sent to relief
authorities and premier Pattullo
demanding relief for blacklisted
men but the strikers’ numbers
were relatively small as yet, and
union leaders urged a return to the
camps and greater organization
for a mass walkout in the spring.

From the cramped office on
Cordova Street in Vancouver, the
RCWU newspaper, mimeographed
with whatever money could be
raised, and smuggled into the
camps under the eyes of the
military authorities; was sent out
outlining the plans for that
walkout.

On March 10, the leaders of the
RCWU and the Workers Unity
League met-in Kamloops. The
relief camp strike was set for April
4.

The word went out. For days
after the stated date, the rail lines
and roads were filled with men
deserting the 20 cents a day slave
camps and making their way into
Vancouver.

The B.C. Workers News, just

which men are cut off from all
means of livelihood. .

* Recognition of democratically-
elected committees in every camp.

The democratic right to vote
for all workers.

@ Institution of a system of non-
contributory unemployment in-
surance based on the Workers Bill
of Social and Unemployment In-
surance.

e Repeal of Section 98 of the

Criminal Code, Sections 41-42 of the
Immigration Act and all anti-
working class legislation.

By April 12, some 2,000 men hed
joined the ranks of the strikers.
Several unions responded with
donations, some of them, like that

given by the Vancouver and #

District Waterfront Workers
Association, exceeding $800. A tag
day was set for April 13 — in
defiance of a city ban — and would,
by the time the final tally was

made, show the support of the

people of Vancouver to the amount
of $5,500 — an enormous sum for
1935.

The strike was gaining
momentum. Even R. B. Bennett’s
MacDonald Commission, ap-
pointed April 1 to investigate the
relief camps, had already failed in
its eleventh-hour attempt to avert
the camp strike and was now
running into further snags.
Workers Unity League organizer,

Art Evans, caused a storm in the

commission’s hearings when he
charged commission members
with profiting from the operation of
the camps.

fi hat ys
yore hd a od

Fs

AS,
@ 2
> 4

A huge rally of the Relief Camp Workers Union i in Cambie Street Grounds (the present site of the bus depot).
The rallies were held almost every week during the period of the relief camp workers strike, leading finally to

the On-to-Ottawa Trek.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE SUPPLEMENT—FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 1975—Page 4

As he addressed the committee,
he held up a pair of Gault’s-over-
alls — supplied to every inmate —
and pointed out that McHattie, a
commission member, had been a
longtime member of the Gault
firm.

In the Interior, in the Kootenays,
police hauled men. off trains and
charged them with trespass under
the Railways Act. But still they
found their way into Vancouver to
join the strike.

On April 23, Vancouver city
mayor Gerry McGeer read the
Riot Act to a mass demonstration
in, Victory Square and moved
police against another nuisance
demonstration in the Hudson’s Bay
Company store. But even -the
shattered glass in the store
showcases failed to still the
growing demand for government
action.

Six days later the longshoremen
staged a one-hour walkout in
support of the strikers. 16,000
packed the old Arena +to hear their
demands and to cheer Matt Shaw
as he answered Bennett’s charge of
“agitators representing Com-
munism”’ with his own question:
“Is it any wonder there are

_agitators when they have been in

“support from the people of Valh |
. but still the governmem —
‘of Iron Heel Bennett was silent on

Two days relief. overwhelial

couver .

the issue of negotiations.

The meeting in the old theatres i
Main and Georgia was pack
the night of May 30, 1935. But evely
division endorsed the audacious
decision of the central strike
committee to take the demands
Ottawa. The departure was set
June 3, 10 p.m.

Throughout the long, cold boxea
ride through the Rockies and dow?
onto the flatlands of Alberta allt
Saskatchewan, Communist Par
organizations and unemploy
councils met the men with food an
money. With each stop, 2
recruits joined the Trek, each to be
welded into the iron discipline thal
had been forged in Vancouver ©
the battle against  poli¢

harassment and the ever-presell
spies sént into the strikers’ ranks |

by the Communist Activities
Branch of the police department.

With each city, the colum?
marching smartly down the streets
grew longer.

Denied relief in Calgary, the
trekkers followed a familial

_ pattern. A snake parade — a tactic

~ The mothers’ heart — part of the mammoth May Day parade in bse! i
demanding abolition of the relief camps. g

military controlled camps for 10
cents a day?”’

The one-hour walkout on the
waterfront grew to 24 hours on May
Day when longshoremen, the
Export Log Workers, the Boiler-
makers Union and the Seafarers
Industrial Union booked off to join

the march of 20,000 filling the grass ~

in what is now Malkin Bowl.
Among the marchers were 3,000
high school students who left
empty classrooms at Britannia,
Templeton, King Edward, Prince
of Wales and several other schools

in order to demonstrate their:

support.

The Women’s Labor League,
aside from its many other ac-
tivities, also decided to change the
tradition of Mother’s Day and
urged all women to take a camp
striker home and give him a hot
meal, to ‘‘do something of real
value ... instead of the- usual

maudlin sentimentalism usually

associated with Mother’s Day.”

In the midst of it all, a tiny ad
appeared in the Vancouver
Province: ‘‘University graduates
wanted for educational work in
B.C. relief camps. Age 23-29.
Salary 25 dollars and board.”’

On May 18, 250 camp strikers
occupied the top floor of the city
museum and refused to vacate
until relief was granted. Sup-
porters below passed up baskets of
food and tobacco until a delegation
returned triumphantly from city
hall to report that the concession of
two days relief had been wrung
from McGeer’s tight fists.

developed in Vancouver to offset
police attacks — was formed
around the city hall, finally forcing
the relief commissioner and the
mayor to grant three days relief.
The strikers number had by now
more than doubled, swelled by men
from Calgary and an -addditional
500 from Edmonton, recruited by

an advance guard of members of |-
the Young Communist League sent —

north. A new division was formed,
Division Four. 4
The boxcars moved inexorably

east ... Medicine Hat ... Swift |
Current Moose Jaw ...
Regina....

As the train rumbled into Regina —
in the middle of June, in Ottawa |.
Bennett was completing his plans

to stop the Trek by brute force. |
Three years earlier, in a speech
picked up by the Mail and Empire,
he had asked that ‘‘every man and
woman put the iron heel of
ruthlessness”’ to

man and woman,” but moved with
his own ruthlessness to crush the
movement of men bringing their
demands _to Ottawa. The
deployment of police already in
motion, the telegram from the Cal-
gary relief commissioner de-

-claring that “B.C. single men area

dangerous revolutionary army,”
only added impetus to his actions.
On June 13, federal minister of jus-

tice Hugh Guthrie told the House, | j

“the government has decided to

take whatever action as may be ©
necessary through the R.C.M.P., to_

those who |
protested against his arrogant —
policies. Now he did not ask ‘every