A Film Review , BETRAYED

Covering a time that spans the approach to the Second World War until today, BETRAYED is about Canadian merchant seamen, the Canadian Seamen’s Union and the ship owners who wanted it destroyed – among them the Canada Steamship Lines presently in the soiled hands of the Paul Martin family. It’s about the U.S. and Canadian governments determined to destroy the Canadian Seamen’s Union and the Canadian merchant fleet – and happy to use criminal methods, real criminals, and the RCMP engaged as thugs to do it. Throughout the fight, the “Canadian vice-presidents” and delegates from U.S. unions in Canada worked tirelessly – as members of the Canadian Trades and Labour Congress – on behalf of the SIU, the ship-owners, and the governments of Canada and the United States to destroy the all-Canadian union. One of the most revealing facts about this story, which deals with one of the most important series of historical events in Canada, is that no “major” historian or collaborative body of historians has written it down. Because it concerns government duplicity, sell-out of courageous Canadians, the employment of gangsters approved of by government, visibly destructive policies to weaken Canada, and collaboration with U.S. government in ugly activity, “decent” historians have shied away from it. By “decent”, I mean historians who want to fit into the Establishment, to be accepted, and to receive the benefits that come from supporting conventional power. Information is lodged in works by such writers as John Stanton, Jim Green, Charles Lipton, Stuart Jamieson, and others, and especially in the Hearings and the Report of the T.G. Norris Royal Commission of 1963 – and in P. Edwards book about Hal Banks, called Waterfront Warlord (1987). But no one has put it all together – dealing with all of its implications – as should have been done in an organized and exhaustive fashion decades ago. So we are indebted to Elaine Briere and her companions for their work. The story is located in Canada and the USA, on the Atlantic and around the world, in the Canadian Trades and Labour Congress, and in strikes – one in particular that reverberated through 26 countries and has been called the largest international strike of the twentieth century. The story is also located in the present Prime Minister’s office, inhabited by a man whose “family business”, the Canada Steamship Lines, exploits the results of the destruction of the Canadian Seamen’s Union and the Canadian merchant fleet, having its international shipping fleet flying “flags of convenience”. Those are flags usually of miniscule, almost non-countries that mostly ignore the use of sub-standard ships, the violation of safety standards, and the exploitation of seamen from among the most destitute populations of the world. The story, in BETRAYED, is recounted by Canadians who have fought a long fight, many of whom lived the life of struggle from earliest days on Canada’s Great Lakes. It is told dramatically and touchingly by men and women who are the salt of the earth and – in Canada’s Pantheon of the honoured and decorated – are unsung, unawarded, unhonoured, unnoticed, unremembered. Elaine Briere places them before us, and we see people of great dignity, strength, and indestructible self-respect. The story really begins on the Great Lakes, very early a site of inland shipping traffic. In 1936 the men themselves formed a union, the Canadian Seamen’s Union, a tough but reasonable organization that made significant advances in the improvement of the “galley-slave” conditions on Canadian ships. From the first they alarmed the owners because the union was a model for other workers wanting to better conditions. Then came the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945. Although that war saw air power emerge as a major factor, ships - war ships, and especially merchant ships carrying men and supplies were absolutely crucial. The famous Atlantic Convoys, sitting ducks for Nazi submarines, were manned by merchant seamen, by the same men of the Canadian Seamen’s Union who suffered a higher percentage of losses in the war than any of the “regular” forces. Referred to again and again as the unacknowledged heroes of the Second World War, they didn’t receive veteran status or any of the many benefits “regular” veterans received at the end of the war and for the rest of their lives. Promised the honours deserved by heroes, they found post-war Canada a battleground which was, in many ways, more vicious than anything they had experienced. The Canadian merchant fleet had become the fourth largest in the world. It was staffed by young, experienced seamen, and the world was rebuilding, requiring a steadily growing number of ships. The prospects were excellent. But world politics told against them. In short (a) the U.S. didn’t want Canada to be a major ocean transporting country, (b) the ship owners still wanted the CSU destroyed. Especially when, in 1946, the union won a strike to prevent the owners from stripping hard-fought-for gains from the members. The CSU was the largest all-Canadian union in the Canadian Trades and Labour Congress and it was tough and effective. (c) The Liberal governments of the day faced the challenge of turning the great merchant marine war-time fleet into a peacetime public enterprise. They would sooner Canada had no merchant fleet than a publicly owned one, especially since the U.S. didn’t want Canada strong in ship transport. When the national government let it be known it intended to erase the Canadian merchant marine, the CSU fought the plan from the start. The Canadian government’s criminal activity is on the record. Agreeing with the ship owners that the CSU had to be destroyed, a criminal was found in the U.S.A. in 1949 to come to Canada and front the drive to replace the Canadian Seamen’s Union with the miniscule (in Canada) U.S. Seafarers’ International Union. His name was Hal Banks. When he applied for entry, he was refused because of his criminal record. But a Cabinet Minister over-ruled the decision in order to get Banks into Canada. In 1944, in a high-handed manoeuvre, the American Federation of Labour, despite the Canadian Trades and Labour Congress and its affiliation with the CSU, had granted the U.S. Seafarers’ International Union “jurisdiction over seamen and fishermen in all waters of North America and Canada”. Over the nearly fifteen years that followed from 1949, assisted by the RCMP, allowed by the Canadian and U.S. governments, Hal Banks conducted a violent, criminal war to destroy the CSU and replace it with the SIU – and he finally succeeded. Over the years two Commissions of Inquiry confirmed the on-going criminality involved in his actions. The first was virtually ignored. After the second one in 1963, Banks was finally charged, convicted, and sentenced to five years in jail. To no one’s surprise, he escaped to the U.S. and could not be found by the co-operating forces of Canada and the United States. But a single Canadian newsman went to New York and found Banks in a few days. Canada, then, had to look as if wanted him extradited. A U.S. court processed – or was in the act of processing – the papers for Hal banks extradition, when the U.S. Secretary of State intervened and blocked Banks’ extradition. A Canadian cabinet minister got Banks into Canada to begin nearly fifteen years of rapacious criminality to destroy an excellent Canadian union. And a top U.S. government official intervened to stop Banks from being punished for a very small part of his criminality. The Canadian Seamen’s Union was destroyed. The Canadian merchant fleet was sold off at fire-sale prices. Today there is no deep sea merchant ship that flies the Canadian flag. But, you ask, wasn’t the CSU a “Communist” union? Wasn’t that why it was destroyed? The answer is, plainly, no. Before McCarthyism in the U.S.A. – indeed at the very beginning of the union’s life – the ship owners wanted it destroyed. All through the Second World War and in the months following, before the Cold War began, there was no “Red” cry, and the union continued to do excellent work for its members. After the appearance of McCarthyism, the “Red” cry was joined together with the criminal tactics of Hal Banks as the only way to destroy the union. Even if the Left nature of the union was as real as its detractors have claimed, the wholesale criminality used against members (communist and non-communist) of the union must be explained. That development needs a note of explanation. From 1917 until the fall of the Berlin Wall the capitalist countries intended the destruction of all Left forms of government, sending military forces into Russia in 1917, hopefully to restore the pre-Communist government. The “alliance” with Russia in the Second World War was a brief intermission in that long conflict. And so from 1946 onwards the U.S. rattled the Anti-Left sabres more and more noisily. In 1947 Loyalty Boards were set up by the president of the U.S. and by 1951 more than three million federal employees had been investigated. That was even before the rise of Joseph McCarthy. Especially alarming to those forces was the fact that the Russian Revolution had given many working people in the world great hope. Because the world of capitalist power was often ruthless, working people in many countries began joining parties advocating some form of Socialism. Indeed, sub-human conditions on Canadian ships produced the Canadian Seamen’s Union which contained some leaders and some members (but by no means all) who were members of the Communist Party of Canada. The Canadian unions in the Canadian Trades and Labour Congress defended the CSU, even when the U.S. ambassador to Canada put pressure on the Congress president. Finally, under huge pressure, the CSU was outlawed by the CTLC, the vote being carried by member branches of U.S. unions in Canada instructed from the U.S. about how to vote. Paul Martin’s father, MP for Windsor, was in government and watching, from 1935 onwards, and he was a member of Cabinet through the whole attack on the CSU. He was ambitious for himself and his son, running for Leader of the Liberal Party in 1948, 1958, and 1968. His desire to be Prime Minister became a family ambition, thrust onto his son, a businessman who worked his way up to be – tragic irony – the CEO of Canada Steamship Lines. In 1981 Paul Martin junior joined with Federal Commerce and Navigation Ltd. to modernize, to make an enlarged and global operation, and to develop ships technologically less and less dependent on seamen and on crews to load and unload. Paul Martin junior wanted wealth, and he has amassed it. He wanted fraternal relations with globalizers and privatizers of the Western World (and perhaps China, too) and he has forged those relations. As successful Finance Minister for a number of years, Paul Martin avoided close scrutiny, though allegations persist that he favoured his own enterprise, the CSL, while acting as a public servant. Now, however, as Prime Minister and figurehead of Canada, his loyalties cannot escape scrutiny. Elaine Briere delivers one of the most disturbing film sequences in BETRAYED in that regard. It is, first, of a Canada Steamship Lines ship under Australian registry being re-registered (despite open conflict) so that the Australian crew can be fired and a “galley-slave” crew hired in its place. (That kind of substitution is a perfect example of what “globalization” means.) Then the sequence turns to a political meeting in B.C. at which Elaine Briere is filmed asking Paul Martin about a disreputable action of his family’s Canada Steamship Lines. The viewer watches Paul Martin snap out a non-answer and then move away as fast as he can from the confrontation. Briere shows us at the end of her film that the long, long battle for Canada and for what we think of as Canadian values has been handed to a man who is (virtual) owner of one of the enterprises historically most visibly and dramatically engaged in the undermining and subversion of the people’s values and their desire for self-respect, dignity, and self-determination. BETRAYED is a film you should see … soon.