Sam Gindin

Doug Miller 00:00

Yes. Okay, we are recording. So Sam Gindin, we have a letter of consent form here that asks you to agree to some conditions that are therein. I won’t read them to save time and be efficient. But if you have read them and you agree that it’s acceptable, what we’re asking you to do today, definitely, and that you will send us a hardcopy, when you have a moment to.

Sam Gindin 00:33

I’ll do that today or tomorrow.

Doug Miller 00:34

Thank you so much. I read a little bit out of Bob White’s book, and it looks like you were pretty, pretty key. I was going to say right hand man, but he in fact called you his left arm man in the book. So he obviously confided in you, entrusted you a great deal in the whole operation of what was going on in the UAW that became the CAW. Could you talk a little bit about how you got to that point where you were starting with the union, where you were, and what was going on in your life, and then your involvement with the union, and then we’ll work into how SACTU comes into it.

Sam Gindin 01:18

Okay, I’ll try to do that relatively quickly. I’m from Winnipeg, Manitoba, which has a long culture. The north end of Winnipeg had a large, longtime culture of left radicalism. During the McCarthy period, we elected a Communist alderman, the only place probably in North America that was doing that.

I went to school in the States. I didn’t want to become an academic. I tried to get a job with unions. I wrote every union that there was. Most of the jobs were in the States. I actually wrote to Detroit. And my partner said she wouldn’t come with me if I went to Detroit. But I was going to go there anyway. And then they got a job in Canada, Canadians. It was approved that Canadians could start a research department. So I went there. So I started working there in 1974.

I think the important point about this was that the auto workers were, I think, at a peak in terms of their strength at the time. They were militant, through the ‘60s and in Canada, unlike the United States, they were militant through the ‘70s. And there was a history that had very much to do with the things that a lot of Americans began to take for granted. In Canada, we actually had to fight just to keep up at the time. So there was a tradition of militancy.

And I think I was hired, really out of that, that there was a sense in the union leadership that there was a Left, which, in fact, they were trying to co-opt. And I think they hired me and a black person, who wasn’t actually very radical, as part of giving the union a Left image at the same time. And it’s that they were actually following the Waffle, which was the left-wing trend in the NDP. So they are trying to kick that out at the same time. But they’re actually adopting a lot of its attitudes. And I think I was hired on that basis.

So I was there to start a research department. I had an influence because I was there. They depended on me for research. But to maintain that influence, I had to do my job. Something that women know about twice as well as anybody who normally would have had that job. So I actually felt like I had two jobs, just to establish my credibility and that they will trust me. And then, in addition to that, I felt like I was there as a socialist. So I had to do as much as I could in terms of raising socialist issues. I felt like I had three jobs. And I really was kind of going crazy.

Eventually, more than a decade later, we ended up with a research department of 10 people. Mostly all people on the Left, I would say the majority were Marxists, the vast majority. So I came to the union at a good time. And you should know that the Auto Workers are unique in this sense – and I think it’s true, even though I’m not a labour historian of unions that had a Left in them that two kinds of things happened, either the Left was destroyed during the McCarthy period, or very much marginalized. Or in those few places where the Left actually took over the leadership of the union like in Mine Mill. They were kicked out of the labour movement in Auto in Canada, and it had just happened in the States with Reuther firing hundreds of staff after he came to power. The difference in Canada is that the Left was strong enough to be sustained. But not so strong that they had to be kicked out.

So there was actually a Left culture, some sense of links to the Left, you know, they supported UE (United Electrical Workers) when it was being kicked out. Not by much it was by maybe 50, a little over 50%. But there was that kind of support. The Left was always seen as a loyal opposition, I’d say in the union. So I was coming into that context, which is pretty unique. There was no paranoia. about somebody being on the Left. They were just waiting to see what I would do, rather than immediately distrust me. And that was different. You know, within a week of coming on staff at the CAW – UAW at a time – in Canada, a Steelworker came up to me, somebody who was on the Left, and he said, “You’re on the blacklist. And I said, “What do you mean, I just got here, I haven’t done anything. “And he said, “Someone saw you have lunch with Cy Gonick in Winnipeg, the left-wing professor.” He said, “We have a person in the office who keeps a filing cabinet on everybody in the trade union movement on the Left.” , And he said, “and you’ve just been put on it.”

And this really came out of their ties to the social democratic party, to the NDP. There was a lot of paranoia and a lot of discussions between social democrats and the UAW in the States, about the Left in Canada. So Auto, yeah, the UAW in Canada was unique in terms of the leadership. They weren’t Communists, they weren’t on the Left, but they were not paranoid about the Left, and they had respect for the Left. You know, that’s the context that I came in to.

Doug Miller

And if I’m not mistaken, it was also a peak union time. And there was still a lot of support for unions; unions were making gains.

Sam Gindin 07:11

There was a big difference between Canada and the States, you know, but by the early ‘70s, the UAW and labour movement generally in the US had kind of reached its peak. You had the rebellions in Lordstown, you have, you know, it’s part of a youth rebellion, rebellion against authority. But that was the peak of it. And then it began to decline by the early ‘70s, by the energy crisis in the mid ‘70s. And that was kind of the peak of it, and the labour movement was starting to be attacked. And it was really attacked primarily by letting unemployment rise. There was a great quote in “Time” magazine that there wasn’t enough room on sidewalks for picket signs and unemployment lines, basically, that you had to make a choice between them.

But in Canada, that didn’t happen. Canada actually maintained this. The labour movement in Canada maintained its militancy through the 70s. The public sector in particular was growing. And that was setting standards.

So that was part of the basis for the eventual split because we were starting to look more at what was happening in Canada, and then the whole history of our union, which was to look to the United States. So in Canada, the mood was still very militant; there were strikes ; there were protests; these were growing. So the mood in Canada was very good. And I can think of one of the roles that I played when I came to Canada in ‘74. There was the beginning of this turn to neoliberalism. It started early and didn’t really emerge till the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. But there was a sense of trying to break workers’ expectations that the postwar period was over, that things had to be changed, and workers couldn’t maintain their high expectations.

And I thought that we could actually maintain the strength of the union, in a sense, by being conservative, simply by saying no, we didn’t want to change what had been going on. It wasn’t a radical notion. And that echoed in the union to Bob White in particular, but also with Dennis McDermott. And so from ‘74 to ‘78, we were just being stubborn in terms of fighting against the trends in North America, in the United States, and against the state trends towards concessions.

Then Bob White became president. And he really started off by building his reputation on that, you know. The main message we were saying was, “No, no to cutbacks, no to concessions.” And, you know, by the time Bob left (in 1992), it was harder to just say no. When Buzz came in, I think he had a much more difficult time because you had to have an alternative and you had to be part of a much larger movement. So that was kind of the context in the mid ‘70s. A militant union. And I don’t know if you want to link this now to South Africa, but I can because there’s a link.

Doug Miller 10:07

God, that’s exactly the question. I was going to ask that with all these other things going on. How does the union get time for international solidarity? Yeah.

Sam Gindin 10:15

So I thought your question on timing was a good one. And there’s an irony here, that unions that aren’t, and I think I’m right about this— I’m doing this based on my own experience but also watching other unions–unions that often struggle find out that they don’t actually have much time anyways, they end up doing bureaucratic things, bureaucratic things seem to, you know, possess them and upset and obsess them. They’re not doing much. So they’re worried about maintaining control. People who are working in the union are more concerned with whether they’re getting credit for something or blame for something.

But when you actually are in struggles, you actually get energized when you get more people active. But there’s an energy that comes from that. And I think that that was an important thing in our union. It wasn’t that they had less time because they were in motion. It actually turned out that they had more time now.

How much they could commit to things was another question. In other words, they had more time to think about issues like South Africa and support things. But it didn’t mean that they had the time to do it. So the second thing that was so important in the union was that there are actually people who are going to do the work. And that’s why Jane and Brenda, and the two Kens were so important. And my role was mostly, I think, mediating that, you know, we could get good resolutions passed. That wasn’t too hard. There was some debate about how you’ve got workers on side.

And my argument always was that doing it incrementally wasn’t the way, that making the argument that you needed solidarity because it was good for you. You know, otherwise, the global South would take your jobs wasn’t a good argument. People weren’t actually worried about South Africa taking our jobs, unstable, and etc. So that didn’t work.

And I always thought that what actually motivates workers, even workers who are relatively conservative, is seeing other people in struggle. That’s what moves – and that the best message was actually telling our members that, look, there are people in struggle, they’re actually fighting. They’re fighting dogs, are fighting police, you know, they’re fighting, jailing, and they’re risking their lives. And it’s about, you know, the demand to be treated like a human being. And you know, not because you’re black, and that resonated.

So I think that was one thing that was very important, but still, so I didn’t find it hard to make, you know, to make the case that South Africa, apartheid was bad. And we should pass good resolutions. I don’t think that was that hard. In other unions, the question is, What were you going to do about it? So that was two questions. Yeah. What was your message? How are you going to find the time to really make a commitment? The labour movement is wonderful at passing good resolutions, and they don’t matter. They’re nice, they create some space. That’s not the issue. One of the problems with the Communist Party was that it was always so happy to get good resolutions passed because they could show the international movement that it was progressive, and achieving things.

But that wasn’t a test. The test was, “What did you get the union to do with its structures?” And that’s where it was so important to have the SACTU committee, because my main role was to convince the leadership to give access to them, to get some funding, but it was primarily to legitimate they’re going into our locals and making the case. And that was critical.

Doug Miller 13:58

How did you go about that? What?

Sam Gindin 14:01

I mean, first of all, this was an organizing task, you know, and it’s really to their credit that they did it. I think if those had just been up to me, yeah, I could have created more space, I would have gotten resolutions passed, I would have convinced them to have a speaker sometime.

But the real, you know, what SACTU really accomplished was going out there and doing this. So in terms of me convincing them to think the biggest barrier was that the trade union movement, the unions often farm their international activity out to the international department of the CLC. Oh, boy. So as you know, this is going to happen eventually, in all struggles that for a time there might be a consensus on who’s on the right side, but there are always divisions of some kind and as soon as there are divisions So it’s a question of, “Who do you trust?” And because people aren’t reading a lot and don’t know that much about it, they, you know, they institutionalize it or leave it to trusting the CLC. That’s their job. And it’s just easier, they don’t want to get into a fight with the CLC or be accused of being Left or Communists or radicals.

So I think the biggest issue, aside from, you know, I had some credibility just from, I think the way I was, I would argue with them over other issues. I came to the Union thinking that I wouldn’t last long. So I was never worried about being identified as a Lefty. I just assumed I’m not going to last a year. And I also made a point of hanging around with the Left in the union. At conventions, I would sit with the Left. And that was just my way of saying, “This is who I am, I’m not keeping it a secret. But you can trust me, I’m not going to give people secret documents, or betray you.” And so I was developing trust, that was the most important thing. That if I was saying something, and then it was a question of how you’re articulating this, so I didn’t think it was off the wall.

But my main role was this fight with the CLC. I had to convince them that the CLC was taking a wrong position. And that their position was actually based on their anti-Communism and their bureaucratic links to the international structures.

And, you know, the union really deserves credit for this. I mean, it was, you know, starting with McDermott. McDermott was interesting because McDermott came out of the right wing and built part of his reputation by fighting Communists. One of the staff people was kicked out of the union, for he was a rep (international representative) at GM, and he was kicked out of the union for conspiring with Communists to oppose the collective agreement. And McDermott was a main part of getting rid of this guy, but McDermott was a a poor Irish kid, and his politics were very anti-discrimination, and anti-apartheid. And when he was a sailor, he would go into South Africa and into Johannesburg with black comrades and go to bars, just a defyer. And he was very important in the human rights legislation that evolved in Ontario.

So McDermott was open to this. And McDermott was also, even though he was on the Right, he was very sympathetic to the underground and to the Spanish fighting fascism. So even, you know, it’s one of the things about trade unionists: there’s a certain complexity in terms of their history. So McDermott’s was very open to this. But still McDermott, you know, he eventually wanted to be head of the Canadian Labour Congress, he was a little bit cautious. So it took some to get him to take this risk. He had actually, you know, he did have to trust me to take this risk, and it kind of left me to do it.

And Bob White was much more sympathetic. I think he really got what this fight was about. And he was quite ready to take sides when he became head (of the UAW) in ‘78. So this is pre-SACTU Committee. Yeah.

But the question of South Africa was always, you know, one of those things that was around, and it was one of the questions you asked me was, “when did I get active”, and I couldn’t remember it all. But I do remember, at university in the ‘60s – ‘67 probably, you know, being going to, you know, demonstrations against apartheid, forums against apartheid. Anyway, so I think that was a big part of the issue, dealing with (the CLC).

And wasn’t just the CLC, there was always good Left people in Canada, you know, like John Saul, who would normally not be with the CLC. He’d be too radical for them, but he aligned himself with the CLC. And was opposed to SACTU when this happened. And for my part, I had to trust, you know, Jane, and you know, the whole SACTU Committee, because I wasn’t doing all the studying of what was going on in South Africa. I didn’t know what the splits were.

And I think like, like the trade union movements around me, you listen. And you get a sense of who actually seems to be supportive, of struggle and who seems to be finding excuses. Like I always remember – this is a side story – but I always remember Bob Nickerson. We had a delegation to Nicaragua. Yeah, it was Nicaragua. And Nickerson came out of the Right, he was the staff person chosen by Bob to kind of be linked in with the Right indeed knowing what the right was doing. During a (a visit to Nicaragua) Nickerson goes there with a CLC delegation. And we briefed them before he goes, and I do my bit on real unions and CIA-funded unions and everything else, you know, not expecting him to buy this stuff. But he’s going to go and see for himself.

When he came back, I said, “So how did it go?” He said, “shit, all the unions the CLC took us out to were obviously CIA fronts. They didn’t care about fighting.” And this is a right-wing guy who goes down there. The first thing he did when he came back, he said, “We got to collect all these computers that we don’t need anymore. Every time we renew them, we got to send the old ones to Nicaragua, they need them.” And he became very active on it. And, you know, it came out of the right context, even trade unionists who moved to the right, because of bureaucratic infighting or the general climate.

You know, a lot of them still retain that working class sensibility that it can get tapped into. And the way it gets tapped into is when there’s a struggle; it doesn’t get tapped into just trying to have an argument. And so, you know, so the big, you know, the big thing that was making this happen was there was a struggle in South Africa. There was a SACTU Committee that was actually organizing, and there was a union, whose history was such that it was open. And in that context, I could play that mediating role. I couldn’t have done this if I was in Steel, for example, it wasn’t like my personality, was wonderful. And I would have walked in and done this at Steel, it was in that context,

Doug Miller 21:31

The whole conjuncture, as they call it in French. Yes. Pardon?

Sam Gindin 21:35

It’s a word in English now too, it’s okay,

Doug Miller 21:39

I know where I am in Canada. So along comes the SACTU Solidarity Committee, they are organized. And it also seems that the struggle that you talk about manifests itself by giving the locals and their members ways to participate in it and get involved. Because they did.

Sam Gindin 22:02

Yeah. I can give you an example of a difference. When OCAP was organizing, this is much later

Doug Miller

I’m sorry, what’s that?

Sam Gindin

OCAP, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, okay. Your radical group, one of the most radical groups, in terms of actions in Ontario. So I remember taking a rank-and-file, a young woman who was a single mother living in poverty, and taking them to a meeting in Oshawa to make her case. And she talked about how hard life was, and how things had to be changed. And, again, I could get into a show[check tape] I had links there. So she gives her pitch. And then they collected money to give her – that was the end result of it. It wasn’t, it didn’t end up to be a political thing. And the difference with the SACTU stuff was that they were going to workers, and they were going there with a political project. They weren’t just looking for a handout.

And if I remember this, right, one of the demands at the local level was to make the case for a defence fund. That people were being thrown in jail. And this was the Defence Fund. A fairly modest demand. It’s not the most radical demand in the world, but it was something concrete. And, again, workers could identify with it, they could not just say,

“I helped somebody, you know, one person by charity or something” They could actually feel like they were doing something concrete. But they knew that the struggle was going on. There are other things we did, and I think this might have been before SACTU, I can’t remember the date now.

Because, I think to me, my head is around ‘78 [ SACTU SC newsletter 1983 auto bargaining]. When the boycott was on, we would argue with our companies to take money out of the money that was being invested in South Africa, how to stop it in our pension funds. So we did that. And then you know what that meant – that we had to do some education, especially with bargaining committees. And I don’t remember that being that difficult. It’s just a question of, you know, making it a priority and going and doing it. So the SACTU Committee would speak to our councils, and that would give them links. And we would write letters to locals to let them (SACTU) come. But they went in, they did the work.

And then the question is, and I think this is one of the questions you asked, “So how much did this influence?” Now what obviously, you know, it influenced the leadership. I mean, the leadership came to see that it was right, that in the fight with the CLC, that it was right, we could keep giving them the information to show them what was really going on, on the ground. We could bring in the speakers and they could see the difference in the speakers who would be coming from the CLC and the ones that we would bring. So the leadership was strengthened, and that was very positive.

Then at the local level, I’d say that one of the things that happened is that some people were recruited to make this a priority, could be a local union president or a local activist who would get moved by this, and they would become very active. So you know, again, you’re building an organization. I wouldn’t say that in general, you know, we created this mass of people committed to this as a priority. But we did commit, I think, you know, an impressive consciousness amongst workers that if this came up, which side they were on, and why. And I think that was impressive, impressive, internationalist, international work. The speakers that we brought in were very important. You could, you know, for workers to get access to somebody who’s in this kind of struggle in South Africa, was always moving. And I thought that those kinds of speakers and tours were very important.

I do remember one incident that I think was actually quite important. What was his name? Erwin, was it not? I’m not thinking of Jim… was it Alec Erwin? Oh, yeah. Alec Erwin was a white, South African. And like a lot of the South African whites who are progressive, had become very active as a student in the student movement against apartheid, became very influential. In NUMSA (National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa). He wasn’t an elected leader. But like a lot of whites at that time, people who were white and educated and influential carried a lot of sway. He was the education director [of COSATU formed in 1985] And then he went into, he eventually went into the state after apartheid, he was one of the people that ended up with an important, he was actually I think, the Minister of Industry for a while.

Anyways, Alec, I think during this period, I can’t remember whether it was after apartheid, or before he was brought to Canada to speak about support for South Africa for the South African trade union movement. And this was completely about the CLC’s counter-attack on us. This was to have Alec speak for the formal trade unions that the CLC was supporting at the time and divide us.

So we got hold of him before he went in to give his talk. He had just arrived, so we got him into a hotel room. I don’t remember who was there. I remember John Bettes, from the aerospace [CAW] local 112. Yeah, who is on the Left, had a lot of problems. But he was very, very informed, really smart guy. I think his grandfather was one of the founders of the Communist Party in the early ‘20s. In Canada, one of the 21 or so people that did this. So Bettes, we invited him into the meeting. And by the way, in that time, Dias (Jerry Dias, of Local 112, later National President, UNIFOR) was very good on both apartheid and the Palestinian question, especially at that time, he was very, very good.

So we invited Bettes to a meeting, and Ken Luckhardt was there, and I can’t quite remember who else was there. And we just told Alec what was going on, we just gave him our interpretation, that you’re being used, that this is part of the fight that we’re trying to, we want unity, we’re not shitting on the other unions, but we, you know, we see our connection with SACTU as being very important. And he didn’t go, he didn’t give his talk. He told the CLC that he wasn’t going to be used that way. And he went back to South Africa.

And that was very impressive. You know, I was impressed by that. Both that, you know, he was quite ready to sacrifice a relationship to the CLC, which would have international repercussions. He was quite, you know, ready to avoid playing that kind of sectarian role. And he was doing it on the basis of a few of us talking to him. So he’s obviously doing this on things that he himself suspected or knew; it wasn’t just that, you know, what we told him he was going to believe, you know, and, you know, I think our credibility as a Lefty, so, you know, that was that was also very important that that confirmed things to our leadership.

So, you know, SACTU was, you know, a great example, and we tried to use that, too, as a model in other kinds of struggles. You know, one of the keys, you know, one of the most important things about this is the Left can moralize very well, and, and the Left, you know, is good at symbolic things like getting resolutions, and the Left is always anxious to get some funding And that’s what the trade union movement does. But what it’s not good at is actually organizing.

And the difference here was that there were people who were organizing, who organized their own lives, you know, Brenda, and Jane and Ken and the two Kens, two of them would work and try to get some money and two of them would organize. And it was that organizing full time that made this happen. Otherwise, it would have been, you know, a good progressive thing that we could write something good about; it would have achieved something; but it wouldn’t have achieved what was done. And we kept, I kept, emphasizing this message to the movements. If you want to do this, this is what it has to be, you have to figure out ways of actually engaging workers and talking with them. And that takes a lot of time and commitment and priorities. And it isn’t just symbolic actions. It isn’t about a protest, which is fine, but they were the beginning of something.

Doug Miller 30:55

Wow, what a magisterial overview. It’s great. I really, really, really like where we’re going here. This is you – and you make the point about this from your perspective as a CAW researcher and a militant – but they were also well connected to, too, many other locals (of other unions) as well. And the CAW became a springboard for that, too. I’m sure.

But that’s another story for SACTU to tell. Well, look, if

Sam Gindin 31:29

I just say something on that, which I also think is important, because, you know, I mean, I, you know, I’ve been emphasizing the history of the union, but also its structure was important. The union. The reason that the Left was so strong in the union was because a lot of the big plants were actually organized by Communists. And so it gave the Communists a base. That was one thing that was very important – they actually had a base at the local level.

As the union consolidated, it tried to remove that base. It tried to centralize it because of its own struggles with the Left. Union leadership I’m talking about in the ‘50s. And one of the ways it tried to centralize things, it tried to move the issues to wages and benefits and away from control over the workplace. Because the workplace was where the Left was strong. And at the top, it was where the centre would be strong in terms of general bargaining. And it was also the deal that they could make. I say deal loosely, because (it was )never (an) affirmed deal. And there was always a lot of struggle over it. But it also made it easier for the union leadership, at that time, to get the companies to give them wages and benefits. And they would let the company rule the workplace, or try to rule the workplace, at least, because the workers still resist it. And that would also still strengthen the union, because it was the union leadership getting wages and benefits. And it has established its credibility that way. And it strengthens the company because what they really wanted more than wage concessions ever was control of the workplace, that was always more the most important thing to them. So there’s that kind of a history in the union. That was very important in terms of centralization.

But the centralization was also a strength because by the time of Dennis (McDermott), and then especially with Bob (White), we were strong. And because we were strong, we could do things centrally, we could actually tell our locals, “Here’s a plan, and we’re going to try to carry it out.” But the union still had its democratic traditions, democratic in the sense of participation from below so that we built strong locals. We didn’t have fragmented locals the way CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) for example; we amalgamated them if they were small. And so we had strong locals.

So we had two advantages. One is we could have a centralized policy. And, two, that it could be carried out. So the fact that, you know, the union could tell locals, “Look, this is our project, we decided that this convention, you have to support it,” and then a lot of the locals would carry it out. So it was a good dynamic. And that dynamic isn’t always good, because when there isn’t a Left, it can be very problematic. The locals can start just doing whatever the centre wants, there can be no check on the centre and that’s eventually what happened. But that’s a longer story. But I just want to emphasize the structure of the union at the time that facilitated this as well. Okay, go ahead with your question.

Doug Miller 34:26

Well, I again know where you sat. Of course you were very close to the leadership, but I’ve been a leader, a president of a local, of two different CUPE and CEQ unions and I know there’s an awful lot of democracy in the local level. And these things do get debated, and it’s really quite interesting. And you make it sound so easy. A resolution gets to the floor of the labour, the labour assembly at the top. Yeah, but it does take a lot of effort to get through all the stages to get it there.

Sam Gindin 35:06

No, no, I shouldn’t underestimate that. Just as an example. I’m working with something. Green Jobs Oshawa, it is an environmental project. And one of the things we wanted to do is get a resolution passed at an NDP convention, supporting us. And of course, I wasn’t involved in this. But they worked hard to get this done, they got the resolution, and then they wouldn’t let it on the floor because it came in a day late or something. And you know, so that’s the kind of work you have to do. So what did they do? They actually organized on the floor, and they got some trade union leaders, like Fred, from the provincial head of, my mind is blank, pardon me. (Fred Hahn), that’s no, no, this is now Fred (Jane says ‘Upshaw”) No, this is now. He’s the Ontario head of CUPE. He spoke on it anyway. (Brenda says “Hahn). Yeah, Fred Hahn, I think he got it on the floor.

Again, they forced the NDP. And to do that you almost had to have, I think you had to have a unanimous vote. So they did it on the floor. I mean, they’re doing all this work, and they get the resolution passed.

But my point was, they just got it to pass. The NDP did nothing with it, because the leadership wasn’t interested in talking about public ownership or threatening General Motors. So I just mean, that, you know, we can get tied down in resolution. It’s good because you’re doing education. You know, for us, it was a way to raise the issue. And that’s good. And it is legitimate you, you know, we walk around saying, we got this resolution passed, and the NDP supports it. But the real issue is organizing around it doing something about it. And yeah, that’s the only reason that I’m, yeah, I didn’t mean to skip over the other stuff.

Doug Miller 36:54

No, no, no, I quite agree. I quite agree.

Sam Gindin

I’m sure you do.

Sam Gindin 36:58

Okay, I keep interrupting you.

Jane Armstrong 37:00

So I just raise, Sam, the resolutions, either at Ontario Federation of Labour conventions, or at CLC conventions, I think, brought together though, and gave strength to local union leaders who were having to challenge CLC representatives in various regions across the country, who were trying to dissuade local unions and local leaders from supporting SACTU, whether by saying SACTU didn’t exist underground, or that it was Communist, whatever methods they used. And at both the CLC conventions and at Federation of Labour conventions, when people got together around those resolutions, they made those kinds of, in essence, links to others, which I think gave them strength when they went back to their regions in having to deal with the continuing struggle by the CLC to find a third way or whatever you wanted to call it.

Sam Gindin 38:14

Yeah, no, I think you’re absolutely right. Yeah. Again, even with the Green Jobs Oshawa thing, I tend to – whenever we’re debating strategy, and resolutions come up at labour centrals, or the, you know –, I support them, I say it’s, but I tend to pooh-pooh them. And the reason I do that, is I think they’re important for exactly what you said, you know, the legitimate things, they strengthen things. They mean, you can’t be as attacked, when you’re just carrying out what looks like policy, that’s very important. But I also know that what happens is that these central institutions are going to try to undermine it in informal ways. They’re going to whisper about this. You know, they’re going to say it’s passed, but, you know, all those kinds of things. So we, I, just tried to always warn people that you have to be organizing and building because the actual institutions to formal institutions are either going to step aside because they’re not interested – or actively undermining.

But I do want to say in terms of what you’re saying, Jane, and I think the important question about its impact is, one is that, you know, there were a long time, there were longtime Lefties who were playing an important role in this all along. And Pat Clancy especially played a really important role. I mean, Pat didn’t just, you know, I have to say for myself, you know, I did what I could, but I was also doing a lot of other things. And Pat had actually made this a priority. That was a longtime Lefty who grew up in a completely Communist context. In the sense that he used to sit on Tim Buck’s knee when he was a little kid, but he never joined the Communist Party. He always rejected its undemocratic centralism. But he always had, you know, he was self-taught. I couldn’t believe how, you know, I searched for Clancy whenever I could, you know, they put them off somewhere in Sarnia. And I would, I would travel there, or he would just drive in for an hour just so we could have a conversation on it. I couldn’t believe how well he understood the world.

And on this issue, Clancy just took it on. And he was also very busy, but he took it on. So Clancy made it a priority. And that was very important. He was ready to fight at any time. It was a staff meeting. And, you know, we always had right-wing people on the staff who would bring some kind of a question to the staff. Clancy would take it on, and he had a lot of authority, and he was very effective. So Clancy was important. But I do want to say that I think that in terms of what Jane is saying, and what Brenda is nodding her head when Jane is saying is that, you know, there were local people, Clancy was a developed Lefty, you know on all kinds of international issues.

I remember when Lula was emerging as a Brazilian metal worker before he became political. And we were supporting the Brazilian metal workers. Lula came to Canada to talk to us. And we had a meeting with Dennis and Bob, and they invited Clancy, who used to be in opposition to them as a Lefty before he came on staff. And they invite Clancy. And we’re having this very serious discussion about the Left and politics in Brazil. And Clancy had tears in his eyes. All Clancy, all he was thinking of, was shit, here is this union that I’ve been fighting my whole life. And I’ve been fighting on these kinds of issues. Here, I’m sitting with Lula. And we’re with him. And he just had tears. So Clancy, he was a developed guy.

But there were a lot of people who maybe heard about this, or for some personal reason, were interested in the question of Africa, maybe they’re from South Africa. Or maybe they were just moved by all of this, who really had to be shored up and became good activists locally. So there was a core of local activists. I don’t mean them in the hundreds, but there was a core of local activists who SACTU had organized and was keeping developed, because they kept them informed. The information had to be there, because you’re in this fight all the time with the CLC. And for those people, winning those kinds of resolutions was always important locally, at the CLC, because it was neutering the other side.

But you know, my argument was always like, okay, the CLC is not going to go out and sell these resolutions, you have to. And it was always that, you know, that’s what I mean by the organizing, and that’s what, you know, that’s what the SACTU Committee was so crucial about. Do you know Nostovsky, Katherine Nostovsky. I was, like, I’m not, may not be pronouncing her name, right. But we got to her from Palestine. But she wrote her thesis on internationalism and the trade union movement.

And so she did things on SACTU, as well, you know, I don’t know.

Brenda Wall 43:23

Yeah. Yeah. She interviewed us.

Sam Gindin 43:24

So take what Jane said, seriously, play a role. I’m trying to emphasize the importance of there of your own role, Jane and the SACTU Committee, in terms of organizing resolutions, are good, and they’re necessary. And there’s a process there. You know, as you also said, you know, in terms of your own local experience, you have to win people over, (it) gives you a chance to talk about it. That’s all really important. But it does come back to we have to be organizing and building structures. And that’s was what SACTU Committee was so important for.

Doug Miller 44:06

You’ve done a sort of picture of a lot of the opposition you faced and where it came from. Did you have allies that you could call on outside of the labour movement or in other structures within the labour movement?

Sam Gindin 44:23

You mentioned this question of opposition, I have to tell you how I met John Harker. John Harker was the head of the CLC International Affairs Department. And Dennis McDermott becomes head of the CLC. And we had expected Dennis to maybe make Dan Benedict, the head of the department. He’d actually promised him. I think I can say this, that he had promised him that he would move him in. Dan was hated by the UAW in the (U.S.-side) International, the Germans, the Japanese and the Americans at international events, because of his support for Third World struggles and attacks on American imperialism. (He) had run (for International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, ICFTU, position) and lost, because he had the support of everybody except the Germans, Japanese and Americans. And that was enough to lose. So we had expected Dan to be moved in. And Dennis moved this guy, Harker.

And so I’m at an airport. And Dennis is passing with Harker to go to an airplane soon after he got elected. And he called me, “Sam, I want you to meet the new head of the International Affairs Department.” He had just appointed him. And this is how he introduces him. He says, “This is John Harker, and in United States (he) would be the equivalent of the CIA plant at the labour federation.” Harker is standing there. This is how he introduces him.

And you know, he’s doing it half jokingly, but completely seriously, and I think what it was, and I have to be careful saying this because I have no proof. But I think it basically was the equivalent of the State Department in Canada, the International Affairs Department, saying to Dennis, that “we give you a lot of money to do things, and you’re not going to get this if somebody like Harker isn’t appointed to that position, somebody we trust”. I think it was as simple as that. And Dennis just had to make a choice. And you know, if Bob White was confronted with that, I don’t think he would have made that choice, frankly. But Dennis did. And yeah, so in terms of allies? I don’t really remember many allies. You know, I think my main concern was that I had to convince Dennis, at first when I was critical, I was always critical of the CLC that seemed to emerge very quickly on almost any issue.

But yeah, what actually became very important, and with Bob White was SACTU. My main thing was, can I convince them, Bob? And, yeah, our own union. And, you know, Clancy was an ally, but Clancy would have just been seen as somebody on the Left otherwise, yeah, so of course, Clancy takes good positions. So I think the strength of it was we just had a good case for anybody who was actually interested in work or struggles.

But in terms of, you know, help from outside, the, you know, CUPW (Canadian Union of Postal Workers)was always good. Jean-Claude Parrot was always good. But again, somebody like Jean-Claude, he’s an ally, but he’s the kind of a person that if he’s on a particular side, the CLC would immediately use that to isolate you, not to strengthen you. “Well, oh, yeah, you’ve got Jean-Claude on your side, that actually proves where you’re at” kind of a thing.

I can’t remember really, you know, I mean, the, you know, allies would have meant making breakthroughs. In you know, normally conservative unions, certainly not Steel (United Steelworkers of America). I can’t remember the timing on things like CUPE. CUPE, was very decentralized, and they often had good leaders. So there might have been moments when CUPE was good. There certainly were moments when CUPE was good. I just don’t remember the timing of when it happened. CUPE often had, you know, good progressive leaders, including I mean, Grace Hartman was from early on. And she, I imagine would have been, I can’t remember, it would be easy to check. But I imagine she would have been very supportive. But you know, the question was somebody like Grace was, Grace was a Communist, but not openly. And therefore vulnerable. And people who are vulnerable, were very careful about choosing which battles they should take on.

Brenda Wall 48:58

And there was Jeff Rose as president at one point, and he wasn’t, he wasn’t going to stand up to the others so much, but the locals and the divisions were better.

Sam Gindin 49:08

So, you know, somebody like Jeff Rose – I mean, again, you know, we’re getting it’s all the sociology, union leaders in bureaucracy –, but somebody like Jeff Rose was smart, progressive, well educated, and once he was retired, he was very radical. I mean, it’s a very radical thing. And that was a pattern and CUPE, I mean, if a CUPE leader ever talked once they retired, they were lefties. I would say that about Dennis, too, or even once Dennis McDermott was gone. He would rant and rave about the Reuther brothers as being part of the CIA, you know, I mean, that was his brothers, but Victor – Victor being, you know, carrying the money to fight the Communists in France, but at the time

Yeah, Jeff would have been a cautious, more bureaucratic-style. trade unionist. (He) tried to take progressive issues or stands but not go too far and alienating anybody. But what Brenda’s saying is right. CUPE was so decentralized that — and this is an important strategic question. Generally, a lot of times, it’s hard to get to the top and get them to take a strong position that’s controversial. They’re going to be worried about a lot of other things; they’re going to be worried about, you know, “I don’t want to alienate somebody on something that’s not that important.”

But you can reach the locals, and the strategy has to be organizing anything to reach the locals. And eventually, there is a tendency of unions to become bureaucratic, not automatic. And it absolutely demands pressure from below. I mean, that is the key to unions not being bureaucratic. It’s not making good arguments, and it’s not even electing a Left person. You know, often again, a Left person will feel, they’re vulnerable, they got to be careful, they’re going to be red-baited. It’s having locals that make a leader feel like he’s being pushed but also that will be supportive. So organizing at the local level was another crucial strategic decision. This wasn’t just organizing to get by avoid on site , that was part of it in the same way that Jane was talking about resolutions. You wanted Bob (White) on side. He wasn’t going to undermine it. So he was going to open doors. But then you had to do the work with a local. So that was critical. And that’s a critical lesson.

The one thing I’d say about that is that work at the local level is really hard. In a moment, when the labour movement has been so defeated, it is so hard to do that work, because so much has changed. You know, you’ve got two people working in a family. So everyone is rundown, exhausted, doesn’t have time, and is feeling insecure. So they don’t feel like they have the luxury to worry about other things is short termist. I mean, everything that you could imagine, They’re dependent on corporations, even in the public sector, you’re dependent on capital not leaving. So there’ll be a tax base for everything. So it is so hard and workers are fragmented. I talked to workers, you know, called me from Oakville with a problem. And I always talk to people at GM; they have the same problem. No, it’s just so fragmented.

And that’s why a socialist party is so fundamental. That’s what a socialist party does, it connects you, it gives you intellectual resources, it gives you research. So when the leader says, “Well, I just talked to the company, and they told me this, and this is the truth.” How does the rank and file worker challenge that? And I think what, you know, what the SACTU Committee was doing in the absence of those kinds of structures, which we ultimately will need and SACTU could only do at a limited level on a particular issue, is they were providing that kind of base. They were giving people counter information, linking them up, giving them confidence through resolutions, bringing in international, you know, all those kinds of organizational things that we normally associate with a left-wing party at a moment when there wasn’t one they were doing.

Jane Armstrong 53:29

I think there’s one other thing that you can bring context to and that is that the 1980s was also a particular time, where, for example, General Motors had 22,000 workers at Oshawa. What do we have now? Maybe 2,000, at best. But also it was more powerful in a sense, but there was also this struggle between international unionism in the midst of the 1980s. We broke up. And it made Bob White for two reasons a real leader well beyond the UAW/CAW because there were other unions struggling with the international context, the U.S. control over their direction in Canada. And I think the stature that Bob got because of the struggle that was you know, the basis for the film “Final Offer” was really important in also the kind of stature and credibility he lent to the work in a way that we were doing in terms of opening doors with other unions, particularly at the local level where we you couldn’t get into Steel at the top. We got into some Steel locals at the bottom.

And the same right across the country. And I think part of it had to do with that very public struggle. The other thing is there used to be labour reporters. Bob White was in the news at least once a week on average. So there was a whole range of things happening in the ‘80s that kind of dovetailed at the time of the work that we were doing. As well as the issue of apartheid was in the news.

Sam Gindin 55:34

Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, this question that, you know, we started with, you know, asking about how to work or, you know, how do unions that are so busy with other things find time to do this. And, you know, this is the example of it.

This is when the union was more involved in more things, you know, that just fighting its own union. It was fighting the state because all our collective agreements were actually signed by the UAW in the States. When we split, we didn’t have any collective agreements. We had to sign. We had to go to every local , every unit. I think we had more than 400 at the time, and got them to approve staying in the CAW. So we were fighting with the state that didn’t like us splitting. Because this was threatening investment from the States, we’re fighting with our own union. So there’s all this stuff going on. And the point is that it reinforced the SACTU stuff, as you said, rather than took away from it, the question isn’t just busyness. It’s that when you’re in struggle, you’re in struggle.

So two things about it, I think are worth emphasizing. One is your point about his stature. You know, I mean, so, you know, part of what happens is that Bob becomes committed to the apartheid struggle, personally. And, you know, Bob, when Nelson Mandela comes to office, Bob White is invited in and has like a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Nelson Mandela, and they’re just sitting around discussing strategy. When I go to a SACTU, not a SACTU, a NUMSA meeting in South Africa, it was an absurd meeting might not have been news at the time. And I’m listening to workers discussing whether they should retain a relationship to the international trade union movement.

And one guy stands up and says, “Well, Bob White thinks we should he’s in it. He’s in the International Metalworkers’ Federation,” and people start nodding their heads, like he was known.

You know, and that had to do with things like, you know, international positions that have to do with the fact that in the middle of neoliberalism, in the middle of continentalism was, you know, we’re talking about getting more integrated in the United States, in the middle of being, you know, 10 percent of a union(in which) were just a dinky little tail. We took it on. And it just gave him the stature for taking something on. There was a lot of national sentiment you know, (which) gave Bob the stature to lead the fight against free trade. Yeah. He and Maude Barlow became the official leaders of that thing.

So Bob has all this status. And yeah, that spills over to Bob being able to use his credibility in a way that extends beyond just formal power. It did mean when, when you go to a CUPE local, and you say, you know, “This is a SACTU Committee, and, you know, the Auto Workers really support them. And Bob has been active, would even make a statement on it at conventions, and it mattered. It gave people confidence. And that’s important, because the people at the local level don’t feel that they’re competent or confident, and they don’t have the information to speak to international controversial events. So that was very important. And Bob had that kind of credibility.

I’ll just give you another example. I lost most of my experience, frankly, because you’re asking me about what happened. Most of my experience was actually later, with NUMSA. You know, we at one point, had a program where we brought over 10 people from NUMSA, to write an educational program. And first we went there. And Leo Panitch came with us as part of our group, David Robertson, Peggy, myself, I don’t remember who else was there. And we spent a couple of weeks talking to stewards. Then we came back to Canada, and spent about five weeks with them living here, developing this program. And then they took it back to South Africa. And it was a radical program, on the kind of radical stuff we were doing in PEL (CAW Paid Educational Leave) at the time.

But by the time they got back, the Left wasn’t in charge of NUMSA anymore. And the program was thrown in the garbage under ANC pressure, because it was actually critical of the ANC. What eventually happened was one of the people who came was a very young shop steward who never said a word. Quiet, completely quiet. A couple of decades later, he leads a coup in the union and takes it over. That was Irvin Jim. So there’s that whole history, you know, that does come out of this, the, you know, the follow up in terms of the end of apartheid relationships, to unions that emerge. And I was more active in that, you know, I’d been to South Africa a few times for educationals and for discussions. But one of the things that I remember early on is right after apartheid.

Jay Naidoo, who had family in Montreal. He was called into the (South African) Cabinet as a key person in the Cabinet, very articulate. He called and wanted to meet with Bob White and myself in Port Elgin. We drove to Port Elgin with him and his wife. And he wanted to discuss strategy. And I remember one of the things that White said to him, which I just was so impressed with, because it was such a political thing to say. He said, “This is wonderful that they’re bringing you into the Cabinet. But you have to recognize that this is now a government, like other governments, that’s getting integrated into capitalism. And, you know, they are friends and they are allies, you don’t have to jump on them. But you have to retain some independence. And you have to make sure that your best people don’t all go into the state and leave the unions, devoid of these people. Because unless the union stays militant and pushes them, you’re going to get killed. You know, your history isn’t going to matter.”

And I was just so impressed. The sophistication to get that, you know, where does this come from, you know, a Grade Seven education. You know, he didn’t grow up in any kind of Communist thing. He did have good mentors who always preached to him the importance of independent labour. He never adopted, you know, adopted social democracy. But when he said that I was just kind of blown away. And you know, the same thing, you know, we had, we had, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas when he was running from the left in Mexico. He came up. Again, it was a similar kind of thing, he came up to meet with us in Port Elgin, the two of us and I was just amazed that, you know, both the confidence that Bob had to make these kinds of strategic statements. Like coming from me, it would just be, “Oh, well, you’re a lefty, what do I expect from you. But to hear Bob say these things was very impressive. And again, all these things come out of a certain development, which, you know, SACTU is part of, you know, it’s reinforcing those things, rather than letting them sink into what are the trade union leaders?

Brenda Wall 1:02:58

Can I just come back to the local level again, too. While you’re reminding me of Bob’s Grade Seven educational level, and Pat, you know, from an Irish working class family in downtown Toronto, some of the actions taken at the local level, we have to remind ourselves how important they were. And they had the support of Bob White at the top, they had the resolutions and so on, but workers taking actions at the local level, I think, was so impressive within those UAW/ CAW at the time.

It was ‘85 and ‘86, particularly that they had these solidarity actions, like, you know, sanctions at the workplace, more or less. We had Alcan workers, you know, which were CASAW (Canadian Association of Smelter and Allied Workers) that later became part of CAW , workers at the 3M plant, too, had (airline) reservation agents of CAW refusing to handle South African travel and so on. We had the communication workers and others refusing calls to South Africa, postal workers sending mail all over the country. You had these weeks of actions and I think that the CAW/ UAW locals at the time were so key to that, but they had the support, they felt they had the support from Bob White and the leadership. They had people like Pat Clancy.

Pat was delivering suitcases of money into South Africa. You know, the workers thought that was wonderful. Yeah. That’s where the SACTU solidarity strike funds only went. He took the suitcase across, but – and I remember particularly CASAW guy, O’Brien Hyman. He was president of the CASAW local union. At the time, he later became part of OPSEU and was instrumental in getting the South African food out of the (Toronto) Don jail, and then he became president Fred Upshaw’s assistant right suddenly He died a couple of years ago, but he was typical of the workers in the locals (who) wanted to take action, you know, they took these things on, and they had repercussions in South Africa, no doubt, you know, Alcan and 3M and so on. So do you remember those? You do?

Sam Gindin 1:05:19

Yeah. I mean, I also remember, like, you know, Zola Zembe, when he spoke here, and also when, you know, when he’d come back to speak after. I mean, a couple of things I remember. One is that he wasn’t shy about being critical. And that was impressive. He never had the sense of, “I’m trying to win these people over. And I shouldn’t sound too radical.” His sense was, “I’m going to lay it out.” And that was a particular analysis of the moment, but also an analysis about the potentials of the working class. And I think that was very important.

The other thing is, you know, I remember personally coming to the union, and going to my first educational, like, you know, in Black Lake. And what I loved most was staying up all night, with these guys listening to their fights, and how creative they were. So, you know, the potential of workers, when it’s encouraged, and the space is there, is, you know, amazing. That’s why we believe in socialism, and socialism is only going to happen because we believe in the potential of workers to change the world. And that’s a difference between social democracy. It doesn’t really think workers can change the world other than knock on people’s doors and raise money. And, he doesn’t believe the world can be changed, and you can’t have them go together, if you don’t believe in workers that can be changed. So that potential was always there.

But I guess what strikes me – and I keep coming back to this is – it’s not spontaneous. It’s not that, you know, workers will resist because they’re defending themselves. But to think in radical revolutionary terms, it’s not spontaneous. And the context matters so much. And once workers were defeated, you know, looking at the present moment, the scale of that defence, that defeat is immense. You know, the big defeat was that, for one thing, it came with the defeat of the Left at the same time, because you can’t have a Left without workers in motion. But the real defeat was that they lowered their expectations. And they kind of became defensive in survival mode, which means individualism, which means they instinctively, actually reinforced neoliberalism. I have a problem. I work more hours, I work through my vacation, I’ll go into debt, my spouse will work more hours. So we’re living right now. I’m trying to pose this historically. Because I think this question changes. There’s nothing essentialist about it. It’s not that workers are inherently good, or inherently conservative, it’s that it changes in the context and from what they learn. So in Auto (UAW), you know, there is this history, which in the ‘60s was really passed on to militant young workers who were part of the youth rebellion and anti-authoritarian, (They) were actually learning things from old workers who had formed a union and were telling them not to be stupid, or they’ll get fired.

And the young workers are saying, “Yeah, but you guys are just sitting around not doing anything.” And it was a great dynamic. So there was this learning and dynamism that went on. And in the union, it still remained there. That’s one of the differences about the ‘80s. In Canada, the union, you know, people think of well, the ‘50s and ‘60s. The union started getting integrated. Well, that was the American experience. You know, in the mid-50s. We were having 150-day strikes at Massey-Ferguson, at Chrysler and de Havilland because we were trying to keep up with the Americans, and the American corporations thought of Canada as a colony, basically, you know, and that was the case with the United Aircraft strike. The big issue there was in Montreal, in around ‘74, was that they wanted parity with the States. And the Americans are saying, “Why would you get parity, with the States we are 10 times your size, you don’t have the economies of scale, et cetera.” And so, you know, so there were these historical differences and things changed. And right now we’re facing a situation where workers are demoralized, fragmented, and defeated. And to try to get them to do things that are creative would be very hard. So on the one hand, what you’re saying, Brenda, support from the top is even more important than ever, because they just don’t have the confidence to rebuild on their own or from some outside thing.

But even then, you know, what you really see in your period. So Canada is struggling, you know, it’s fighting through this period. And then when they try to change it, and lower the expectations in the States, they were quite successful by the early ‘80s, the American labour movement is defeated. In Canada, it isn’t. And that’s part of this tension in our own union, with the UAW, so we’re still fighting. And in that context of fighting, and people still wanting to fight, there is the spirit of shit: “ If someone’s giving me something to fight over.” They like it. It’s, like, fun. You know, you just kind of see what happens when there’s a struggle going on. And, yeah, so that was happening. So it was the encouragement at the top; the legacy of what this union had been in that it was in struggle, that (gave) legitimacy to the union, because what it was fighting for people were actually fighting for it, it was popular support for a certain kind of anti-American nationalism at a time.

So all those things are coming together. But your role was critical to making it happen, I guess, is what I’m trying to emphasize. So in terms of the particular stories which you know far better than me, I remember, but I don’t remember them, you know, just feeling like they were unique. I remember all kinds of, you know, that’s what people were doing.

You know, I remember you know, when I, I came to the union, I’ll just give you an example. I remember the year 1978, because of the number at Budd Automotive in 1978, there were ‘78 wildcats. Last time I checked, if there was one wildcat a year in the union after I retired, that was big news in the union. This was in one place at Budd Automotive, at one point. You know, the union, a lot of the bureaucracy in the union happened locally. It was them learning from the top about how you do things. And they began to have union offices in the plant. And they began to paper them over with newspapers, so nobody could see inside. One of the workers took a forklift truck, and he ran over the office. If there was going to be an office in the plant, then it was going to have open windows and people could see whether they were actually representing them. And I just mean, there was a spirit that when workers see that they can be creative. I remember a young worker was talking to Jimmy O’Neill (assistant to Bob White in 1980s). And he was saying shit, “We can’t do anything. We try to do anything and somebody gets fired.” And O’Neill said, “Did you think of cutting a cable?” And he said, “What do you mean?” He says, “Next time a foreman does something to you, just cut one of the electric cables and it cuts the power off? Don’t brag about it. Don’t go tell him he did it because he was an asshole. Just do it. And then he’ll wonder, well, what happens the next time he does something, do it again, they’ll get the message.” And the point was that O’Neill remembers this from when he was in the plant. The young workforce has no experience of it. It’s not in the realm of possibilities.

But, you know, somebody can do it by example. It begins an open question if the union can really defend you. So you know, you can do things if the union encourages it. In the early ‘80s, and this speaks, Brenda, to the time period that you’re talking about in the early ‘80s. Part of excuse me, part of defeating the working class expectations was to let unemployment rise, as I said, and in the early ‘80s, you know, the U.S.-led interest rate in Canada let interest rates go up to 18 per cent. And there was mass unemployment, and we had a whole range of plant closures. And people would stand up at conventions, at the (Canadian) council. And they would say,” I want to say goodbye to my friends who I’ve known for so long, and I’m not going to be here anymore. My plant is closing.” And as more people began to speak, say that, it stopped being pathetic, and started having it be sounding like there was anger starting to emerge. And Bob White, was smart enough not to say a word. He sat there, he let this grow. And then he stood up at the end. And he said, “We can’t let this go on. I think you know what you have to do when you go back home.” That’s all he said. On the way home, about half a dozen people in their cars driving back together planned how to take over their plant.

We had about eight plant closures in a couple of months. So, you know, so what Brenda is saying is that when that is encouraged, when there is a sense of you have to do this and it can be done when it’s collective.

So it’s not just some individual being a hero. All this kind of creativity was emerging, and it was emerging around other things. And it was emerging through you guys’ giving it that focus, like, you know, what can you do about South Africa? You know, and it did emerge in places where there are local histories, like on the docks. And again, it depended on whether you were talking about the East or the West, you know, the, it’s all this variation. And at the local level, you always have that variation, you have somebody who has a particular history, somebody who was a particular leader. So it was part of that kind of creativity, I guess, is what I’m trying to emphasize.

To Brenda and you guys, you know, both helped develop it, because those became examples for others, even if it had nothing to do (with) South Africa. And you built on it, you know, it was there, it didn’t just happen out of the clear blue. So those kinds of anecdotes are really important. You know, we saw them with the grape boycott too, there’s a lot of creative things that people could do once you’re actually in struggle. And then the other thing to remember about this, is the corporations are never standing still. When we get creative, they sit down and they get more creative.

And you know, what’s happened for three decades now, is they have creatively figured out how to squash rebellions inside the workplace. How you do it legally, how you do it illegally. I mean, they changed everything. For example, they used to hire foremen out of the workforce. They know the worker, they know how to run things. So you hire them. GM built a university to hire university students who are trained in management, they know nothing about the workforce, about the operation, they know nothing about cars. And, you know, they have a really sophisticated way, a plan for how to do this, and we haven’t changed at all. In fact, we’ve lost the skills and capacities we had.

So of course, we’re in trouble. And reviving this isn’t going to be easy, I do think it’s going to be explosive. I do think, you know, as Brenda was suggesting, once it begins to happen, and you get all the shit away, the scales fall from your eyes, the fear disappears. And that’s what happens. I think Jane had said once, this was then about just unionizing. Of course workers are afraid. They’re always afraid they have good reasons and are afraid. But all of a sudden something happens in terms of the fear, and they just crossed a line, where the fear doesn’t happen anymore compared to what’s happening to them. And then it’s an explosion. And that’s how organizing actually happens.

And I think that’s important, I think that’s something to generalize, you know, the ‘60s were an explosion. They weren’t predictable in 1962. The sit-down strikes, you know, in the 1930s, early ‘30s, you can keep reading all this stuff, about people saying, people are going to rebel you nuts, with 25 percent unemployment, with people not even speaking the same language, because they’re all immigrants from a different place. We’re talking about, and so it surprises you – and Brenda saying we shouldn’t be surprised the creativity is there. But it does, it happens in that explosive, unexpected way in the right circumstances. And we have to be there to make sure it’s not just like a spark that happens. And then goodbye, they react and it goes away, but we can build something on it. And I think the SACTU Committee can be proud of what, you know, they built with pretty meagre resources, I have to say.

Doug Miller 1:18:26

Wow, that’s tremendous. Gwen, did you want to get in here at this point?

Gwen Schulman 1:18:32

My there, yeah, so completely fascinating, I feel like I’m about to take this in a different direction. But I also feel like we’re rapidly running out of time. So we’re having this conversation now in the context of Black Lives Matter, people very openly talking about white supremacy here in Canada and structural racism. So my question is to go back to that period and ask to what extent the struggle in South Africa galvanized the labour movement here to address issues of racism here, whether it’s in the workplace, whether it’s in terms of settler colonialism here? Did it influence the conversation about racism here in Canada? Within the labour movement?

Sam Gindin 1:19:21

Really good question. Well, first of all, the labour movement did begin in the ‘80s to take very progressive positions on identity politics. I mean, you could really see it at the OFL (Ontario Federation of Labour) running campaigns against racism. I remember if I walked into a plant in 1974, when I came to the union, and I said, “We’ve got a conference on gay rights in Port Elgin.” You would just get snickers. It was, like, “Who’s this guy? You do that one year and then a decade later, you could go into the plant and the guy could be walking around with a clipboard saying, “Who wants to come to the gay rights conference in Port Elgin?” And people just came up and signed on. It was, like, a non-issue.

So though at those levels, the union changed, and you know, and I think this has to be understood in a lot of changes that were going on simultaneously conjunctural, as Doug was saying, like, so, for example, a lot of trade union leaders actually married trade union women, and the trade union woman actually educated them. I can think of so many men who became feminists because of their partners. Active feminists, you know, they had some good instincts. I remember Bob Nicholson always trying to make sure that he gave the women on a committee some confidence so they could speak, but really their partners that there were strong women with confidence emerging, that was important.

Yeah, so things that were going on for a long time suddenly became relevant, the trade union movement, but most of its organizing was people of colour and women. So they had to actually speak to these issues, just from that self-interested way. So that was a factor.

And the anti-apartheid struggle, yes, but I think one of the really important things about the anti-apartheid, about the SACTU and the anti-apartheid struggle, was that world the SACTU Committee was coming from was a class analysis. This is really important. They weren’t saying these were blacks, but they are integrating it. It was because they were blacks. There’s a history that they’re the majority in this population, in terms of democracy, but they are workers. And it was also kind of a take on slavery, that slavery didn’t happen because people didn’t like black people. If they didn’t like black people, they would have left them in Africa. It happened because they’re looking for people to exploit.

And that’s a very important issue now, in terms of how we articulate these identity questions with class questions. I mean, it’s really a critical question about the Black Lives Matters issue. And it raises two kinds of questions, I think.

One is just about the strategy of movements. A lot of what we see is protest movements. And that’s what a lot of the Left has been for a long time. It’s like the old Left was focusing on the state. And it was leaving out identity questions, racism, gender issues, etc. And those movements became protest movements. And a lot of the Left ended up being a protest movement, protest, anti-globalization, it was about protests. One of the things that began to happen in this century actually was suddenly protests began to become more political. It was Podemos. In the squares, it was Syriza, it went to (Bernie) Sanders suddenly emerged, where people who weren’t interested in politics are suddenly supporting Sanders, the same with (Jeremy) Corbyn’s Momentum. So there was a change going on. And the question about what Black Lives Matters is, I think is, where does this go beyond protest? And that raises questions about its relationship to white workers, because first of all, it really raises issues within the black community.

So when you say defund the police as an example. The slogan works, and everybody jumps on it. But the reality and most black communities, every black community that I know, is because of how they live, of course, they’re worried about their safety, and they don’t want to get rid of the police. There’s gangs there. And so, you know, what they’re interested in, is a different kind of police force that’s more democratic. But they’re also interested in changing the conditions of housing, education, and health.

And to do that, you need an alliance. And if you think of it in class terms, you know, the alliance is a class alliance. But of course, it has to be along class lines, that says there are inequalities within our class that we have to correct. So you know, that’s the way to bring it together, you know, if you’re going to say we want a class alliance, (then) everybody in the class has to be equal. And that doesn’t just have to, again, it can’t just be a slogan, it means that we are going to fight for your equality completely starting in our own organizations. But it has to be a class struggle.

And then you can imagine it’s starting to be sustained, rather than protests that come and go, because it’s got, you know, these issues that have broader appeal, including in the black community. And that can link up with unions in a particular way. And I think in that context, there has to be a lot more care given to how white supremacy is talked about because there’s a difference between saying there are white supremacist in the United States and just referring to white supremacy, as if all, anybody who’s white is a white supremacist.

That’s a real problem, I think in terms of getting white workers on side who are really sympathetic, as you saw in the black protests, I mean, that was so impressive to see the diversity in the protests. The Black Lives Matter protests against Trump, the diversity was phenomenal. And the polls were phenomenal (about)the extent to which whites agreed. And you know, there was a concern about, “Well, what happens when there’s riots, or what happens when there’s, you know, breaking stuff, which Trump really wanted to exploit?” Well, it didn’t turn it around, there still was an awful lot of support. Because they put it in context. So to keep that going and to build, I think there has to be more careful discussion of white supremacy, that this is a problem within the white community, and there’s divisions on it that are serious, and not just to label anybody that way.

The second thing is, I think, and this gets a little bit back to what I started with, and what I so much liked about what SACTU was doing. I don’t think guilt is a good organizing principle. And the strategy of making whites feel bad about history, I don’t think is a good strategy. It can be something, you know, there’s something to be said about (it). We want you to be aware of the history. But the guilt doesn’t work, it has to be about having a common struggle. And we’re equal, we have to fight for equality. And how do we do that? Because, I mean, yeah, the guilt doesn’t work. It’s just, it’s not a foundation for doing something, whereas education can be.

I’ll give you a very good example. I was doing a session in the Bay Area, San Francisco, with a group that was doing tremendous work with organizing home workers. Both people who cleaned and people who were taking care of people in homes, and they started with organizing black women. And then they expanded into organizing Latino women. So when I was there, they were having a strategic question, which was there was a split between the black and Latino women. The black women, were saying, “What’s your problem, you never had slavery.” And the Latino women were saying, “Well, you don’t know what happened in our country, and why we came up here. And you’ve been here for hundreds of years, how come you haven’t been able to straighten out your problems.” So they’re completely divided. So they had to decide what to do. And the suggestion(was)that they set up a committee, and the suggestion the committee came up with was we needed two organizations, one for Latina women, and one for black women. And fortunately, some good people absolutely rejected it. And they had a fight over it. And they concluded that all they had to do was have take a break from organizing over the summer and do internal education.

And they did internal education, on American imperialism, in Latin America, and on American slavery, for both of them together in the same room. And when they went through that the problems were solved, people got it. You know, whatever differences we have, you have to understand all this stuff, in historical terms and in class terms, and in terms of what we’re fighting, and how we can win. And how we can win is critical. Because one of the problems with guilt is that you’re trying to mobilize people about feeling bad about something. And that still kind of leaves this white-black split, and whites have to just defer, and they can’t say anything, and they can’t be critical of strategy. Whereas ( two minutes), whereas if you’re fighting about how we can win, the immediate message to blacks, like in Black Lives Matters, where you can’t win if you want to fight alone. If you want everybody to feel bad about why you have bad schools, maybe they’ll improve them a bit, but you’re still going to have lousy black schools, you have to be fighting for universal health care, which you can’t win unless you fight with everybody, alongside everybody. You can’t have good education unless you have better neighbourhoods, which means you have to fight over housing with everybody.

So I think that, yeah, so I think in the current context of races, all those things, and one of the things to learn from the SACTU struggle was the way that they linked the question of apartheid and racism to the class question. And I really found, like you know, what would have been my argument, but actually found it in practice: that when you put it in a class context, these are black workers who are being treated like shit because of their colour. They want your support, and they are not asking you to say solve our problem. They’re saying we’re fighting. We’ll deal with the problem, but we want some support.

And when you do it, that way, you can actually win. That’s the big lesson, you can win. And I think that’s a really important lesson today. I’m thinking through the debates about how Black Lives Matter, how you raise the class question without it being an excuse to not deal with racism and gender questions. And I think it’s doable.

But I think we get stuck when we just do it through labelling whites as white supremacist and trying to make it seem more like politically correct and guilt, but I think we can do it.

Okay, I’m just going have to go soon. So –

Doug Miller 1:30:34

Okay, well, can we just get one or two last questions? And then

Sam Gindin 1:30:39

Hang on one sec. Can you just hang on one second? Sure. Yeah.

Doug Miller 1:30:47

So as I say, anybody got something to bring up?

Gwen Schulman 1:30:54

I get the feeling he really needs to go back.

Sam Gindin 1:30:56

Okay, no problem.

Sam Gindin 1:30:58

I don’t by the way, mind, if you wanted to do this again, although I think a lot of, as you can see, when Brenda starts making her list of creative actions, I never document anything. And not only you guys document that you were there, so you’ve got all of this, I can just confirm that. It’s absolutely true. You know, I can remember that. As soon as this really becomes an issue. And you didn’t need a lot of people, you just needed people who really took it on locally, they could win people over to it. And people actually liked the creative action. So you know, those kinds of examples were real. And as soon as you have those kinds of creative actions on one issue, it gets into people’s heads to do them on other issues. It has spill overs when there’s a strike or anything else. So sorry, you had one you had wanted to ask me something else.

Doug Miller 1:31:52

I think I think you’ve done a magnificent job of giving us the view, the overview, the connections, the interconnections. It’s a great lesson for the present as well, that will be very valuable. So I personally think that we could wrap this up now and as a as a project, the Canadian Anti-Apartheid Activist History Project, if in fact, we feel there’s another level or another direction to take it, we’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind, us coming back to you.

Sam Gindin 1:32:25

I have no problem with you coming back. I’m just thinking, I guess one of the things that I did leave out, which is important, is that a lot of this was institutionalized in our education program. And in 1978-79, we began to look at a paid education leave program, which was modelled on something that people had seen on a tour in Sweden. This isn’t coming from me by the way the program emerged out of the interest of Dan Benedict who played a critical role. And Gord Wilson, who’s the education director at the time played a critical role. And with a good with a more political twist to it. And McDermott loved the idea. There was no fight about doing paid education leave, the idea was simple, we were going to negotiate a certain amount of money in every major set of bargaining tables as far as we could. And that money would go into a fund that will be completely administered by the union with no input from the corporations. And people would get time off to go to Port Elgin. And to take courses over four weeks, in and out, and if they get their regular wages, while they were they doing it. And the point is, the timing was perfect, because ‘78-’79, you begin to have a transition from the old guard that built a union to a whole new generation. So it was really to develop a new cadre, and we actually wanted to put all our leadership through it.

But a lot of the leadership wouldn’t go, they felt, like, “We don’t need education.” There was a macho sense of it, and they wouldn’t go. And they didn’t like, they felt embarrassed if they told the rank and file that they’re going to an educational like they needed it. So it actually ended up to be developmental, primarily of a cadre of new people. And, again, it’s one of those things that needed to support the union, a lot of the local leadership got very nervous about it. And they would raise it at (Canadian) Council meetings, that we’re teaching people, they’re coming back as radicals, and they’re criticizing us and everything else. And I remember White just saying to them, “You guys are afraid of some people getting some education and coming back and challenging you, you should resign.” And he just said that to the leadership and shut people up basically.

But the point is, there was this program and Ken was involved, you know, in setting up the curriculum, but it was just institutionalized. Generally, it meant that it was internationalist. The artwork at the centre (Port Elgin CAW education centre) was internationalist. All of it was about international struggles of all kinds. And it was always very class oriented, very anti-capitalist, but there was always a class sensibility in it, and a sensitivity to gender issues. So then having that history of SACTU just adds to those things. It just meant that that’s part of the legacy that you’re teaching. And it means that people who come out of that kind of program are sensitive to these things. In one way, it was a problem. And I just want to highlight one problem that we got out of Port Elgin, which is interesting, is that we didn’t make organizers. We were educating people, but we didn’t make them into organizers. So a lot of them went back into the workplace and didn’t actually want to talk to their workers. They wanted to talk to other people who thought like them. So they went and they joined something like the Cuban Solidarity Committee, or worked on SACTU.

And that was a problem because their real role should have been to organize workers in the workplace. And instead, they ended up doing most of their organizing work outside of the workplace. You know, it just raises another dimension to these kinds of questions, but I think it is important that the union was open enough to understand that you needed an educational program that wasn’t just about nuts and bolts unionism, about steward training, about grievance handling, but that was political. That was actually about history, struggle, and capitalism. And that, you know, became a base for both being influenced by SACTU because, you know, it always had speakers around these issues. But also, you know, just being straight Yeah [check tape]. Strengthening it and strengthening themselves. Okay.

Doug Miller 1:36:57

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for that, that overview at the end is essential.

Sam Gindin 1:37:05

And good. So nice. So nice to see you guys. Brenda and Jane.

Brenda Wall

Love Lovely to see you.

Sam Gindin

I got to see your daughter a while ago. I run into her sometimes.

Brenda Wall

And your son.

Doug Miller 1:37:20

Have a good weekend. Okay, good. Bye Bye. Okay, I’m going to turn off the recording device.