FILM REVIEW

october 2005 :: RMTnews 27 “Betrayed” is the bitter and tragic story of the destruction in the early 1950’s of the Canadian Seamen’s Union. The CSU was a progressive union with a strong and united rank and file membership which had achieved the eight-hour day, paid sick leave and equal pay for ‘non- white’ workers on board ships of the Canadian merchant fleet, which at the time was the fourth largest in the world. During the Second World War, Canadian merchant seamen had paid a high price on the Atlantic convoys, with 1,600 seafarers losing their lives. Their reward four years later, were the plans to privatise the merchant fleet by the Liberal government of Louis St Laurent, and to diminish the hard won CSU agreements covering working conditions on Canadian ships. The CSU opposed the government’s plans and organised an international strike involving 90 vessels in 26 countries, including the UK, South Africa, Australia, British Guinea, Ceylon, New Zealand, Italy, Holland and many other ports world wide. The Canadian government, in collaboration with private Canadian and US shipping interests, then instigated a brutal and ideological campaign to discredit the CSU and its members. SUPPORT At the start of the strike, dockers in ports world-wide supported the Canadian seafarers against the shipowners attempts to replace CSU members with scab US-based Seamen’s International Union crews, led by their international representative Hal Banks –a thug and convicted felon. The Beaver Brae in London’s Victoria docks was ‘blacked’ by port workers, as was the Argemont in Surrey docks, also CSU ships in Liverpool and Avonmouth were ‘blacked’ in support of the strike. Many UK seafarers also supported their striking Canadian brothers. However, the leadership of the National Union of Seamen, under arch- reactionary Tom Yates (later sir), dismissed the strike as nothing more than an inter-union conflict and not a ‘bona fide’ industrial dispute. An emergency meeting of the ITF seafarers, section also voted unanimously not to intervene in the dispute, and avoided instructing dockers’ unions abroad to support the strike, by refusing to load or unload any cargo on the strikebound CSU ships. Yates used the pages of the union’s journal The Seaman to attack and discredit the CSU as a ‘study in sabotage’ by a Communist-dominated seamen’s organisation – as part of his declared ‘cold war’ propaganda campaign. TERROR Hal Banks also commenced a reign of terror on CSU ships, using acts of violence, brute force, blacklisting, graft and corruption, and ‘red-baiting’ to destroy the CSU and impose SIU agreements on Canadian crewed ships. During the world-wide strike by CSU members and the aftermath involving the SIU, over 100 CSU members had been arrested in Canada and 200 arrested in overseas ports. More tragically, CSU members had been murdered and seriously injured by the ‘baseball bat’ tactics of Hal Banks gangsters, condoned by the government. By 1954 the betrayal was complete and the livelihoods of 6,000 loyal CSU seafarers had been destroyed. They were denied work, pensions and benefits from the Federal government until five years ago simply for defending their jobs and to retain a Canadian flag merchant fleet for a country with three oceans on its coastline. The documentary, six years in the making by French- Canadian filmmaker Elaine Briere, combines archive film with recent interviews with the seafarers themselves. Coverage of the 2002 Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) dispute on board the Yarra in Port Pirie is also included in the film. The ship is owned by the Canadian Steamship Line, owned by the family of Paul Martin who is the Canadian prime minister and once again involved in strike breaking and flagging out practices, some years later. In the words of MUA National Secretary Paddy Crumlin: “No maritime worker, indeed no worker, should miss this film.” Copies of the DVD can be obtained from the Elaine Briere at order@SorryAustalia.com Stuart Hyslop looks at a new film telling the story of the destruction of the Canadian seafarers' union BETRAYED FILM REVIEW