Geoff Bickerton

DOUG MILLER 00:00

So, good morning, Geoff Bickerton. Good morning. Geoff is, I believe, in Ottawa. Good. And then Ken is in Toronto. And I'm Doug Miller here in Montreal. It's Thursday, the 21st of July. And we're interviewing Geoff about his experiences in his union. And, and we're going to interview Geoff Bickerton, about his experiences with the union, the Canadian Postal Workers, and the anti-apartheid movement and SACTU Solidarity.

So, Geoff, good morning, again, and welcome to these interviews. I know you sent us back the consent form, but we need to put an oral affirmation of what you just read and signed in the consent form. So you've read it, you understand and agree to the conditions therein?

GEOFF BICKERTON

I do.

DOUG MILLER

Good. Excellent. So. So, Geoff, we all have a life before SACTU and before the union. Where are you out of – and how did you get exposed to social justice issues like apartheid? And then the union eventually and SACTU Solidarity? Could you just take us on a little bit of a path there?

GEOFF BICKERTON 01:38

When I was in high school, I was the only kid I knew that was subscribing to Moscow News. I don't know exactly how I got there.

My stepfather helped organize his union in the late 1940s. My experience with him was one where the union was extremely important. Being in a union and having, you know, the security, he was a warehouse worker; he worked on the night shift, operating a stacker. And I guess that got me into more left-wing thinking. And I got involved in the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, the Ontario Waffle actually before that, and after it left, the NDP, and then the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, which was the remnants of the Waffle after the Waffle sort of disintegrated. I was involved in the labour movement, as you know, worked as a labourer as a member of CUPE and was involved in the Labour Council and the Left in general.

And a job came up at CUPW after I finished my university. I went part time to university, but finished it and then John Deverell, who was the director of education at CUPW, was leaving. They changed the position to a research position, but he suggested I should apply, and I did, because I thought it would be an opportunity to talk to Joe Davidson and Jean-Claude Parrot one on one. They were my heroes, them and Madeleine Parent. And so I ended up getting a job, you know, although totally unqualified for it, but whatever. And that got me involved in CUPW. And at the time, you know, I mean, like most young people as throughout my life, I'd been deeply against the Vietnam War. And, you know, grew up in that culture of understanding the world from the viewpoint of looking at American imperialism. But I, you know, didn't know much about the world. I spent a couple years hitchhiking in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

And so that opened my eyes to a lot of things like poverty, and especially in the Middle East, hitchhiking in the occupied territories, about the situation of the Palestinians. But I didn't know anything about South Africa except that I would follow whatever currents in the Left were calling for us to do. So I didn't know much until I met up with these people from the SACTU Solidarity Committee, and I think that goes for many. For many of the people in our union, you know, the union had a policy against apartheid. But, you know, every union had a policy against apartheid, and, you know, everyone on the left was against apartheid.

But we didn't really understand the dynamics and what was going on in South Africa, or basically, what sort of role Canadians could play at that time. And so it was when the individuals from the SACTU Solidarity Committee, when they approached the union, all of a sudden the lights went on. And, frankly, you know, I can say this, I know Ken's listening, but it was obvious the integrity and the political analysis they had, that they shared with us, that I think really made the difference in terms of getting CUPW much more involved in South Africa, specifically, SACTU Solidarity work than it would have been otherwise.

DOUG MILLER 06:14

Wow. So just to put a little time frame to this, you finished university about when and you started?

GEOFF BICKERTON 06:23

I started at CUPW in January of 1977. Finished my university at about, let's say in about 1974, hitchhiked a year in 1970, and a year in 1972. So, you know, worked in, you know, at decent unionized jobs, you know, labouring jobs, etc., between ‘74 and ‘77.

DOUG MILLER 06:53

Wow, a very dynamic time in history as well, for lots of things going on. Yeah, that's right. Absolutely. So do you remember your first meeting with the SACTU Solidarity Committee?

GEOFF BICKERTON 07:08

Wow, yeah, I've been trying to, I've been trying to think of that. I actually don't remember. It was a through a phone call that, and I'm not sure if it was with Ken Traynor, Ken Luckhardt that set it up? And they were coming to Ottawa for a reason. And so we met, and they basically described the SACTU Committee as to what it was, you know, what they were doing, what they needed to sort of move forward in a way in terms of getting support from some of the affiliate unions.

And I think they were even at the very, very beginning, pretty forthcoming about the overall situation in terms of trying to understand that sort of tensions that existed around the CLC. And I think they made that sort of pretty clear at the beginning that the CLC was supportive of the anti-apartheid struggle, but everything at that time seemed to be happening through the lens of anti-communism, you know, and there was a lot of red-baiting in the labour movement, etc. A lot of people were sort of unwilling to step out on issues for fear of being labelled Reds, etc. There's quite a bit of that.

DOUG MILLER

And I remember the mid-70s, when the labour unions were leading some major strikes against the Liberal government policies and tactics with respect to unions. And CUPW, of the public sector, was certainly one of the most militant. What do you figure was behind that kind of openness to militancy and, for that matter, left-wing politics, that included in this case, anti-apartheid and SACTU?

GEOFF BICKERTON 09:34

Well, I think you have to circle back quite a ways there. In 1965 the postal workers went on strike, and it was sort of like a wildcat strike. There was no legal framework at the time. And, basically, following that strike at the convention the union changed its name and really changed its orientation. And what had been going on at that time was Bill Walsh had been heavily involved with the leadership of the labour movement. They asked him to come in and help write the constitution for the union. Walsh was a really respected trade unionist. But, if not a member of the Communist Party, close to the Communist Party.

In other words, you know, the union sort of started off from maybe not even understanding the whole issue around the Reds versus the others. But it received a lot of support from left-wing unions. There was a wild, two-week illegal strike in 1974. Within the membership of this CUPW, there were a lot of activists that were involved in left-wing organizations, not so much the Communist Party actually but a lot of Trotsky-like or Trotskyist organizations and Maoist organizations, in Quebec especially. So the Communist Party was pretty active in Toronto. I don't know what you call them. They weren't Trotskyites or Maoists but they were very strong. A local president for a while was the person for the Canadian Party of Labour. And so there's a lot of factions among the left-wing factions that sort of fought against red-baiting within the union.

I remember we submitted a resolution on red-baiting in the late ‘70s to a CLC convention. Eventually, it was passed, in the early ‘80s. With all the Red baiters completely denying that they spent their life Red baiting.

So there was an openness, if you will, and we really saw that in the 1978 strike. We went on strike. The government passed legislation, and basically tells McDermott at the time, to put out a statement asking other unions not to comment, because they, the CLC was sort of working to support us, but, actually, of course, they were working to oppose us. And at the last day of the strike, there was a meeting with Jean-Claude, where McDermott announced that they were actually going to issue a statement calling for our members to go back to work, which we have a copy. It was a press release that they had.

So who was there to support us? It was the left-wing unions, you know, such as the Fishermen. It was the left of the IWA people, and Jean Louie Pedard (?) in Ontario (check tape) It was Mine Mill, it was the United Electrical Workers. It was these unions who stood up and supported us through that and then went on supporting us after the strike, when we were really being attacked by McDermott.

We worked together and formed an alliance called the Action Caucus with them. And some of the progressives who are known as the non-communist but progressives from other unions like Cecil Taylor, who was president of Local 1005 of Steelworkers in Hamilton and Dave Patterson (Local 6500 USW). We had, you know, alliances with various unions and worked together. So there was a bit of a plaintext in the sense of a non-anti-Communist left because it wasn't a Communist left so much as it was Communist and fellow travellers. And we worked with people like them and people like you, people who were actually part of the apparatus of the Communist Party that worked in the labour movement. So there was a sense of that.

DOUG MILLER 14:36

Well, that's tremendous insight into it, because I was always impressed with the militancy of the CUPW workers, especially as public workers, because they don't tend to be people who speak out all that much. Ken, what what would you add about that first meeting with Geoff?

KEN LUCKHARDT 14:56

Just as a point of information, let's say CUPW rather than In the “cup w”.

DOUG MILLER 15:01

CUPW. Okay.

KEN LUCKHARDT 15:02

That's important, for reasons that we don’t need to talk about today. But, yeah, I want to start.

Geoff, it's great to see you again. And it's great to renew relationships. I want to start with a contextual comment and question, then I'll get back to some of the specifics as we go ahead.

As I look back on our work in the ‘80s, the odds were against us, totally against us for a number of reasons. First of all, we were introducing a new topic into the labour movement. Nobody was really serious about anti-apartheid work in 1980. Nobody talked about South Africa. The media covered it from the point of view of the white minority, the business community, and military production. It was all supportive of apartheid, and that included the labour movement. So when I came back, when Brenda and I came back from Africa and Britain in 1980, it was a new subject matter – and to ask unions no matter how progressive they were, to take on a new topic, a new struggle, was a big task. So we had to deal with that.

Secondly, as Geoff has mentioned the context was the Cold War and the height of the Cold War. Anytime people tried to make change, “Which side are you on?” came up. And so we had to deal with that. And that was crystallized in terms of the CLC and International Affairs Department and the ICFTU [International Confederation of Free Trade Unions] – international trade union politics. But, nonetheless, despite those things, we moved ahead.

I want to jump into a question that I put to Geoff, when we closed our doors in the late ‘80s. I remember Geoff talking to Ken Traynor and myself suggesting that we should take the time then to document the methodology and the success of the SACTU Solidarity Committee as something that should be on record. Now, at that time, we didn't do that as the situation was too close to us. I think we had to let time pass. But here we are 30 years later doing exactly what you suggested.

This has been an amazing experience for all of us. Jane, Brenda, Ken, Vince Greason and Doug.

So my question, my first question, Geoff, is, why do you think it's important that this effort that we made on behalf of southern South African workers be documented? What's its importance for future workers, future movements?

GEOFF BICKERTON 17:38

Great question, Ken. It's important for a number of reasons. Firstly, as you mentioned, the labour movement on its own gets consumed with the issues that its members are facing, usually at the workplace. On its own, it can solve those problems. And it takes a degree of thinking things out to realize, at some stage, that the problems are, you know, you're going to spend your life sort of bandaging the wounds, etc. But you're not going to stop the major contradictions in our society that stop working people in their tracks and have to do, as you know, with who has power in society, etc.

So on its own, I think the labour movement sort of spins its wheels. And when I say that, I don't mean to depreciate incredible work or discourage other people from doing that. But it sometimes takes people to intervene, if you will, to shake things up, and to get people thinking out of the box about what's possible, and how we really changed the world.

It wasn't clear to us then, although it became clear to us, thanks to the work of yourself and others, that there was an opportunity to actually bring real change to South Africa. And I remember us having the discussion about the fact that the transformation of South Africa could lead to incredible changes in the world. And it was seen that way at the time; that is it was conceivable because of the left leadership in South Africa at the time and the wealth within the country.

I think we perhaps underestimated a number of things like the difficulties of moving things forward, talking about post revolution or whatever in South Africa. It was said this could create an historic opening. Why is it important to document – through the work that you did – it is because it was so systematic, and so thought out, and so strategic.

And I'll tell you we just got a really good new elected person on our executive, the CUPW, who is strategic in producing things. You know, there are not a lot of people like that, leading unions, because that's not what necessarily gets you elected as a leader of a union. So you need to have that, and individuals cannot do that. It has to be a concept; it has to be a group of people; there's no one single person that can sort of figure that out for you guys. It really is the issue from so many perspectives, with not just such clarity, but totally non-judgmental, understanding the situation that you're in, and understanding the steps to organizing and, if you will, understanding the opposition in a way that is very rare in the labour movement. We don't take the time to understand the opposition, for instance, with respect to their strengths and their weaknesses.

But the only discussion that we ever had around how to deal with the CLC, or the unions, or the issues within CUPW – -there was always a sense of understanding the different layers of complexity. Now, it has to do somewhat with the individuals. You're pretty, pretty exceptional. Let's face it. And then when you add them all together, I don't know. But there's some arithmetic to remember, and how that ends up being a lot more than the sum of its whole. Anyway, still, that was true.

And people can see that people like Jean-Claude absolutely understood that right from the beginning, in that he was dealing with serious people who are not going to end up taking us down some opportunistic road, but were seriously concerned with building. So that was the other thing.

And it was, I'll say one more thing, you were willing to take calculated risks, to move things forward, understanding that taking actions and getting people to actually move things forward, much more than developing analysis. And what I mean by that was somebody having a sense that there are small actions and more risky actions. So like, bringing a resolution to a meeting to have a local pay a monthly donation to a strike fund that's half a world away. It's not that risky. But nevertheless, it notches things up a bit. It moves things a bit forward in terms of establishing a different base in that local union. You can then work from credibility and legitimacy to build from there as opposed to your having an international day of action against apartheid where, I don't know, maybe there's four or five unions involved, I forget exactly. But you [the SACTU Solidarity Committee] managed to get the letter carriers union involved, that was really something.

You know, it was that type of action that involves risk, with people in plants potentially getting suspended, et cetera. That's a different type of action. But nevertheless, it really does give people a sense that there was something happening here, that this was not just actors on a great stage. Things might seem today or whatever they were, they involve asking people to do things that would take a little bit like it's just mentioned, it's improved. I think we had a few suspensions in the general plan. People knew what they were getting into.

KEN LUCKHARDT 24:18

Can I follow up with this. Well, thank you, Geoff. That's really important. And 30 years later, it's okay to do it now instead of before. We're doing it. And that's the important thing. I don't have my 1980 calendar in front of me, so I can't remember when we first met. But I will say that the two unions that got us off the ground were the CAW and the postal workers. And we knew that, so having met Gindin in the CAW, we know we were to meet Bickerton. So it was kind of a logical process.

And I can't remember the first trip to Ottawa, for myself, responsible for the education work, but I do remember the first trip we made to Ottawa for a major meeting with South African trade unionists. Zola Zembe with Jean-Claude Parrot. It was in your office on Metcalfe. And the reason I remembered is because – you correct me if I get this wrong –, but Jean-Claude was in negotiations with Canada Post management. He actually exited himself from those meetings to meet, though, which was to us an incredible move. I mean, Zola appreciated that beyond words. He said, “This is someone you must follow. This is some union that you must work within.” We did. So that was a first actual contact between a SACTU leader and a postal worker leader. So I remember that very clearly.

I also remember an occasion, which amazed everyone, including myself and Zola.

Zola was on tour in 1981. And again, in ‘83, I believe it was in Ottawa. And at one point on the way we (Zola and SSC) were invited to join the postal workers, who had decided they were going to have a major event on May Day, a march on one of the hotels in Ottawa. So we were invited to speak. And so of course, who's going to be the speaker, not me. And on that agenda were other very progressive people to speak.

And the postal workers had also opened the bar too early in that hotel, so people had started to drink and were having a good time. They were getting noisy. So Jean-Claude could not be heard when he tried to speak. Al Campbell from London, who was also a very progressive union leader. He couldn't speak. Nobody was listening. And I forget, there was another speaker, nobody was listening. Zola was then called upon to speak. So it's all being said, and Zola is standing at the microphone. He said, “I will not speak,” and nobody could hear him. He repeated that over and over again, “I will not speak, I will not speak.” Eventually, he got the rest of the sentence until you listened. For whatever reason, there was a lull in the noise. And people started to listen. And so, Zola gave his usual speech.

That's one of those memorable occasions, not just with the postal workers, but our SACTU entire eight years of work. It was one of those things where a South African had to grab the reins and bring it to where you want it to be. And he did it very effectively. So once this relationship was established, then we were being invited to regional programs, schools, of CUPW across the country. And the support was absolutely fantastic. And it's at some point, I have to almost say it was because of people like yourself and again in the union, that we were able to establish the roots of our work without that – the progressive leadership…. And, you know, I'm not sure that we would have been as successful as we were. But those are some of my early memories of our work with CUPW.

And of course in Toronto after we had had a problem with the fire in our first location. The [CUPW] Local in Toronto, which is just up the street, invited us to take up space in their union building, which was an incredible way to further establish a relationship between ourselves and CUPW. And that proved to be a very, very important development for us.

GEOFF BICKERTON 29:45

Ken you mentioned the fire up – sorry, was your previous location where there's a fire was that on Cecil Street?

KEN LUCKHARDT 29:56

Oh, it was on the corner of Broadview and Danforth. For us it was a block away from your local office. And the landlord. It was a kind of an old, rundown building, I think the landlord may have had something to do with the fire, and we don't really know what happened. But we were then without the space to work. And we were only a few months old by that time. And so within a year of our existence, we had to find a location. Through your office up in Ottawa, we were somehow approached to have space in the CUPW local in Toronto, which we really appreciated, which we grabbed immediately. So that was what I remember.

GEOFF BICKERTON 30:40

Was there anything memorable? I know there's a digression, but it's just something that's always been I've been thinking of lately, because it was mentioned in our last session about the fire, that a fire led you to recall your place? You wouldn't happen? Remember when that fire was? Would you like the wasn't one of the four steps?

KEN LUCKHARDT 31:01

Early on 1981. At the latest and it wouldn't have been on Labour Day. Well, I, you know, I don't remember it might have been. I know Brenda and I were out of town. So maybe it was a holiday weekend. We were called by another young woman who was helping us in the office and saying, “We just saved your books, but we haven't saved anything else.” So it was one of those.

GEOFF BICKERTON 31:37

Reason I’m asking is, you know, the Communist Party building on Cecil Street had a fire. Yeah. That was on Labour Day. And yeah, I think it was ‘80 or ‘81. Anyway, at the very same moment that they had a fire, we had a fire in our office, and it was arson. People broke in and tried to set fire to several of the offices.

They were successful with one. There were actually people in the restaurant downstairs at the time. So it was really dangerous to do that. Anyway, and then we had to relocate for several months. But it's always, you know, it's never failed to take my attention that these two fires were actually going on at the very same moment. Every day in two organizations. Just wondering if there was a third.

KEN LUCKHARDT 32:29

Oh I don't think so. It may have been in the same year, but it wasn't at the same time.

So there were a lot of things that we came to the CUPW to ask for. I mean, one of our specific campaigns given to us by SACTU was called “Voices in Solidarity”, where we asked union leaders in Canada to make a cassette tape recording with a comment in solidarity, which would then be sent to South Africa through the underground and played around railway stations where, you know, hundreds of thousands of workers, Black workers, would amass before going back to the townships. So, you know, Zola explained this to us and explained it to Jean-Claude – this is the way it works. You know, you tape the tape recorder onto a pole at the railway station. Somebody pushes the button and all of a sudden Jean-Claude is saying solidarity messages to South African workers without having to go to South Africa, without having to endanger anybody's lives. Bob White, Jean-Claude Parrot, and other progressive leaders were willing immediately to jump for that opportunity to do as we had asked about those tape recorders. The ironic thing is that even Dennis McDermott, once Bob White did it, McDermott wanted to do it. But only after Bob White. Otherwise McDermott would have played the ‘we don’t deal with SACTU’ via the ICFTU to you. So that's an example again, of CUPW responding quickly.

Then we get into the sanctions movement, which we had developed by the mid-80s, based largely on the research of Ken Traynor and the publication that we put out – Trafficking in Apartheid. So we were called upon, as part of the international call from South Africa, to have sanctions at the workplace, not just in the streets, but in the workplaces where workers would be called upon to refuse to participate or have anything to do with a connection that had to do with South Africa.

So our targets were reservation agents in the airline sector that were CAW, telephone workers of CWC (Communication Workers of Canada) and the TWU (Telecommunications Workers Union) in BC (British Columbia) and also dockworkers of course on the ships in Vancouver. So we had a week of action in the spring of 1986, I believe it is. And we called upon workers to do those things. And so postal workers were encouraged by their leadership to refuse to handle any mail to or from South Africa. And similarly for the other sectors. And that worked very successfully and nobody got fired. Nobody was disciplined because by that time, the movement against South Africa was so well established. After only six years, you know, as in 1980, we weren't talking about sanctions. By ‘86, we were seeing workers take action, you know, even in the Don Jail in Toronto.

O'Brien Hyman got inmates to refuse to eat South African peaches.

GEOFF BICKERTON 35:46

Do you remember the incident that happened outside the embassy here in Ottawa on that day?

KEN LUCKHARDT 35:53

So remind me? Okay.

GEOFF BICKERTON 35:56

We decided just CUPW members, but Jean-Claude and a bunch of people from our local and our national. We had worked with the Letter Carriers union to make sure that no letter carrier would deliver mail that day to the South African embassy. And the letter carrier concerned with it, he was a decent guy, but he, you know, he was not necessarily political, etc. So he said, Yeah, he was okay with that, that he was going to do it. But then, of course, it became sort of publicly known in the post office that we were going to do that this day. We're going to… no one was supposed to move any mail destined to South Africa or coming from South Africa. So he decided to book off sick that day, with a relief letter carrier who was much more tuned in to the local and said, “Absolutely, no problem.” You're not delivering, he doesn't care. And you're right, management didn't try anything with him.

So we went down to the embassy to picket on that day, to make sure that nobody else is going into the embassy. And there was a news crew there. From CTV CBC: one of the one of the news crews. And Jean-Claude, was on air with some of the others. And this, I don't know what it was, it was a courier, it could have been Federal Express truck, or it could have been another private courier, but it drove up to make a delivery. So the camera comes right in as Jean-Claude goes and talks to the driver. And the camera goes right into this conversation right there. They're listening to it. And Jean-Claude explains what today was, what we're doing, why we're doing it. And the driver just looks at him says, “I’m not going in there,” then drives off?

It was on our news – I don't know if it's on the national news – but it was certainly on our local news that they did a story about this day. And they actually, you know, they showed that and they showed that the driver driving away just saying no. But it was like those moments, right? Where if you don't do it, if you don't take a little bit of risk that that driver is not going to just go through and you know, say something and then make the delivery anyway. And they will say the day was a failure. But you got to do something.

DOUG MILLER 38:37

Thank you for that story that's important to have on. If Jane Armstrong were on the call, she would at that point ask you, as I'm gonna ask you, is there any possibility of finding that clip? Is it something that would have been archived with CUPW materials? Or how would we go about getting that from local TV?

GEOFF BICKERTON 39:00

If you can give me the date that that happened? I can look back through old news clippings. We have a pretty good record at that time. And then we could perhaps contact either CTV or CBC to see if they would actually have it, once we have the date.

KEN LUCKHARDT 39:15

Yeah, okay. We certainly know that week of action. And that's well documented on that. That is a spin off to the broader question is do CUPW archives exist? And if so, would there be access to them by this project so that we could find additional materials to what we gather ourselves?

GEOFF BICKERTON 39:36

So right now, we actually have three people that are from a sort of a private outfit who are actually working on our archives, because we have so much that's not digitized, and most of these would fall in that category. So what I can do is I can ask our secretary treasurer if he can ask them to take any references to South Africa to SACTU solidarity etc. And I think they actually are putting this all together there. They've totally captured our downstairs boardroom. And they're working every day on this. So there's never a better time to be able to put this together because our files are pretty crummy. Let's face it. Doug? Ken? Would that include local union newspapers, local local union materials?

KEN LUCKHARDT 40:30

Good. Perfect. Oh, what a treasure trove. That would be wonderful. If we could do that. Yeah, that'd be great. And we've been able to collect all of our newsletters, all the lists of the strike fund donors, we got a lot. It's been archived, The first dump of materials was last fall. We're planning to do that again this fall. So any new materials that we can pull together by the end of the year would be great.

GEOFF BICKERTON 40:53

Okay, so I'm on how right now to our secretary treasurer. And so basically, we're looking at the period from 1980 to 1988?

KEN LUCKHARDT 41:06

It's 87. Okay, so ask her for anything between 1980 and 1987. I'm sorry. But I think also because of the work of the SACTU Solidarity Committee, there was a lot of follow up through that period 1990 to ‘94, as well. Okay. I think that's still useful fodder for the Library and Archives Canada, if you could make it that larger, post solidarity committee as well. Yeah.

DOUG MILLER

Because what we're finding, Geoff, and this will not surprise you is that the story of anti-apartheid work in Canada is told differently from what happened. You know, people like Mulroney get credited for things he never did. And, you know, the labour movement, as Jane would point out right now, she's done a lot of research on this labour movement, it's seldom mentioned. And when it is, the work that we did is virtually ignored, either because people don't have access to it, or they don't think that workers are important to the story. So that's why we're doing this. It's very important, amazing stuff. Just to bring us back to the story, again, if SACTU Solidarity and CUPW: any last reflections before we sort of say goodbye to each other? Yeah.

GEOFF BICKERTON 42:33

The work of SACTU transformed the thinking of the CUPW, leadership around solidarity work. And so there, you know, when we talk about, as you mentioned, the spin off later in the 1990s. It wasn't just around, it wasn't limited to South African work. It was work that led, you know, Jean-Claude going to Chile on an Oxfam group, a tour or whatever, during the (Pinochet) regime, during the dictatorship, which was a little bit risky. I must admit, some of us were a little bit worried. It led to us eventually negotiating a fund for international solidarity work that we now have. It I think it transformed the thinking of the union in many ways in terms of understanding the responsibility of unions, beyond their own members, you know, beyond the immediate workplace situations of our membership, which of course, you know, this is where the vast majority of unions’ work and energy lies– and that's totally appropriate. And that's right. But to not understand our responsibilities to our members, on behalf of our members to deal with issues around broader society, social justice environment, and the situation in other countries is a big mistake. And we have been the recipients of a lot of support from workers in other countries. We have been a recipient. If you look at our collective agreement around health and safety issues, there are many clauses that are in our collective agreements that are there because other unions and other countries operating the same type of postal equipment that we operate achieve things that we hadn't even thought of, like having five-minute breaks every hour for people working on coding machines, like having lower noise levels, like having rotation of duties so so that people aren't doing all, you know, some people aren't doing all the heavy work, etc.

These are all things that we picked up – having more time off for night workers. These are things that we picked up from our contacts with other unions that transmitted, you know, not that you didn't change in Canadian society, but make a daily difference to the members that we have working in our plants and delivering the mail. So, you know, so this has not been a one way street.

KEN LUCKHARDT 45:32

And we interviewed Jim Sinclair last week, and he talked about the importance of Jean-Claude’s trip to Chile in terms of developing Latin American solidarity work.. And so that's a very good case in point. And I remember, after the SACTU work, I worked for the CAW International Department, and we worked closely with Evert Hoogers [CUPW] and other groups around the question of Colombia. And we've interviewed Evert Hoogers as well. So there's a lot of feedback and an outgrowth out of the work we did, globally.

DOUG MILLER

Now, I have one final question before we wrap it up. We've noticed those of us who are doing this project that most of our interviewees are from Central or Western Canada, that we’re a little bit sparse in terms of the interviewees from Atlantic Canada now. I'm trying to remember who the activist would have been in locals in Halifax in New Brunswick and elsewhere in CUPW. I think this is before Darrell Tingley’s rise to prominence.

GEOFF BICKERTON 46:39

Yeah, no, well, it was. Darrell was on the national executive board by that time. He got elected in ‘77, but becomes a much more of a leader beginning in the ‘80s. And Wayne Mundle did a tremendous amount of international work – he went to Trinidad and Tobago. I'm trying to think of a sister now whose name will come to me and I'll send it to you, who also did a lot of work. There's a lot of work done by the people in the Atlantic around Cuba, and Cuba solidarity. Fred Furlong is another carrier involved.

KEN LUCKHARDT 47:28

Thank you. Yeah, I forgot Wayne Mundle. A person that we should make contact with.

GEOFF BICKERTON 47:34

Ruth Larsen was the name of the person I'm thinking of. Okay. Yes. And so she would have been involved at that time, at the local level. And I would very much think that she would have had dealings with SACTU at that time. Yes. And Cuba was her main focus, correct, Um, she, I think the work actually unlocked a lot of people's thinking about a lot of things.

KEN LUCKHARDT 48:05

But Furlong, I met again, in the Port Elgin context, as he became a very important person to your education program. So this is great. I mean, it's worth doing this, to remind ourselves of where we came from. Yeah.

DOUG MILLER 48:23

Yeah. For me, it's been exciting to hear all these stories and see a picture that just hasn't really been told. And I think out of this, the fruits of this labour will help rewrite an unknown part of Canadian history there. So I'm really, really excited by this.

KEN LUCKHARDT 48:42

Why don't you explain to Geoff, what you're doing is the bigger picture.

DOUG MILLER 48:46

Well, that came out of our involvement in Amandla radio, which I've been doing since ‘97. And the founder of the radio show started in ‘87, when she was an activist at McGill University in the anti-apartheid community. And in 2013, when Mandela died, a certain Stephen Harper was in charge here in Canada. And he loaded up a planeload of folks from Ottawa, and related territory, of bureaucrats and politicians, etc., to fly down to Mandela's funeral, and proclaim how much Canada had done for the liberation of Southern Africa, freedom for Mandela.

And of course, we were absolutely outraged at this, this egregious writing of history, rewriting of history, because what you have just told is the kind of struggles we went through to have an influence of any sort over that policy.

And so at that point, we set up a radio show to counter the propaganda that was coming out via the sort of the Conservative Party and we had an interview with a bunch of, maybe 10 activists in Quebec and 10 across country, including, I believe, at least one or two of the SACTU Solidarity Committee people. And it was a wonderful show. a wonderful quilt, that showed that this is a big country and things are handled differently.

But that, you know, there was something going on, and it was all against what were you doing to help Canada or to promote Canada to be more progressive in its outlook towards apartheid? And what did Mandela mean to you? And in fact, what was the Canadian government's response? And so it was just a beautiful, beautiful show. We almost won – we were nominated for a radio award at that time. It took us a few years to get organized. And now it's really taken off since the SACTU guys, as they were effective with the unions. They've been effective with me, getting me mobilized to do all of these things. We're up to almost 25 trade unionist interviews now, and the rest of my project is still outstanding, but we're going to do Quebec. We're going to do it, all the rest.

With that, I think I'll thank you, Geoff Bickerton. It's been a great interview. Wonderful analysis. Great to meet you again, after many, many years. And greetings to Jean, Jane rather. We knew each other when I was a CUPE member. Long time ago. Actually, I was president in my local, so more than a member. And thank you for that. And Ken thanks again. So I wish you a good day. I'm going to turn the recording off first.