On June 18th, over 40 ILWU members, pensioners, and supporters gathered at the Ballantyne memorial at New Brighton Park in Vancouver, BC to commemorate the 84th anniversary of the Battle of Ballantyne Pier and remember the militant history of Vancouver waterfront workers. Recognizing the First Nations Joulene Parent from Local 500 opened the event by acknowledging that the event was held on the unceded land of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. “We make this recognition at all of our labor events because it is not just history, it is also about moving forward,” Parent said.

Kill a Worker, Go to Jail

ILWU Canada’s Second Vice President, Dan Kask served as the master of ceremonies. He drew attention to the recent 61st anniversary of the collapse of the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge which could be seen just across the river. Nineteen workers died during the accident. Kask then pointed out the banner behind the podium featuring ILWU Canada’s Kill a Worker, Go to Jail campaign. “The purpose of the campaign is to bring awareness to the short-comings of Industrial manslaughter laws in Canada and the lack of enforcement of those laws,’ Kask said. The crowd observed a moment of silence for the workers killed in the bridge collapse and for two ILWU members, Everett Cummings and Don Jantz who were killed on the waterfront in the past year.

“Today means a lot for our union,” said ILWU Canada President Rob Ashton. “It means we are alive and can continue to fight on. Those four letters, ILWU, have given generations of our people something to live for. And as we know in the past, it has been the reason why some people have died—not because they wanted to, but because they stood up for the ILWU. When we stand up for this great union, it means we stand up for the rest of the labor movement. We know what happens when you let your guard down if you relax from the fight—governments, police, and corporations will try and steamroll you even harder and faster. The only way we defend ourselves is with our strength and our solidarity.”

The Battle of Ballantyne Pier

Dave Lomas, Pensioner from ILWU Local 500, who has extensively researched the history of the battle, gave a detailed story of the Battle of Ballantyne. Ballantyne Pier was the site of a pitched battle between 1,000 locked out dockworkers and police in Vancouver, British Columbia, on June 18th, 1935. The Battle of Ballantyne was a part of the long history of militant trade unionism by Canadian longshore workers and ultimately laid the foundation for the formation of ILWU Canada. After a decade of successful organizing and strikes by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), the employers broke the back of the ILA during a 1923 strike and replaced it with a company union, the Vancouver and District Waterfront Workers’ Association (VDWWA). Workers eventually overcame this tactic by electing their leaders and forcing the union to address their interests and not the employers. In 1935 The Shipping Federation provoked another major strike in the spring of 1935 and locked-out workers at the port at Powell River.

The conflict spread to other dockers in the region. Vancouver longshore workers were also locked-out after they refused to unload ships coming from Powell River. Seattle longshore workers, in an act of solidarity, refused to unload ships coming from Vancouver and Powell River that were loaded by non-union workers. On June 18th, approximately 1,000 longshore workers and supporters marched through Vancouver towards Ballantyne Pier where non-union workers were unloading ships. The workers were blocked at the pier by hundreds of armed police officers. The dockers came under attack from the police and Mounties. Workers were beaten with clubs as they tried to run to safety, while many others tried fighting back, using makeshift weapons. Police attacked the union hall with tear gas where the women’s Auxiliary had set a first aid station. Several people were hospitalized during the three-hour battle, including a worker who had been shot in the back of his legs. The battle was a tactical defeat for the longshore workers, but they continued the struggle to form a union independent of the Shipping Federation, and in 1937 ILWU Canada was born.

Enduring lessons

The 2019 line-up featured several speakers who highlighted the enduring lessons of the Battle of Ballantyne Pier and the dockworkers struggle of that era. “It’s a bloody reminder that the rights we enjoy today are the result of tangible sacrifices made by working people,” said President Laird Cronk of the Vancouver Federation of Labor. “The themes of bad faith bargaining, union-busting, and employer intimidation—these are not just challenges of the past.” “Battle of Ballantyne speaks to the struggle that we go through every day, every time we bargain a collective agreement—in 1935 we saw what a conspiracy between the employer and government coming together to undermine workers looks like,” said Graeme Johnston President of the BC Ferry & Marine Workers Union. “We workers continue to fight in the streets, in the board rooms, in their union halls, to build power and fight back against the employer and to get the rights that they deserve.”

History lesson

President Stephen von Sychowski of the Vancouver & District Labour Council reminded the crowd that future victories are sometimes built on the lessons learned in defeats.

“Change could be delayed, but it couldn’t be stopped because longshore workers continued to fight and ultimately the demands of 1935 were achieved, and the ILWU grew to become one of the largest and strongest unions in our Province,” von Sychowski said. This theme is echoed in the musical, The Battle of Ballantyne Pier, according to director Sherry MacDonald. “Lecture speaks to the mind, but drama speaks to the heart. In The Battle of Ballantyne Pier, you will see every day, average characters fall and get back up again and eventually become stronger for it and this is the story of unionism on the waterfront,” she said. Local 400 member and member of the Young Workers Committee, Kyle Knapton said the key lesson of 1935 was rank-and-file participation in our unions. “What can we take away from this? The only chance we have against the attempts to undermine our rights as workers is to actively participate in our unions,” Knapton said. “The youth need to step forward and get involved at meetings, in committees attend events and continue to fight for our rights that our predecessors gave their lives for.”