Book review: Recalling when BC’s oppressed saw their Solidarity compromised

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Solidarity: Canada’s Unknown Revolution of 1983

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David Spaner | Ronsdale Press (Vancouver, 2021)

$24.95 | 240pp.

From July through November of 1983, activists in BC mounted a fierce resistance movement, known as Solidarity, to a draconian set of new laws brought in by the provincial government, laws that launched a concerted attack on workers, women, the poor and the marginalized .

“Revolution,” the old saying goes, “is the festival of the oppressed.”

For months in 1983, the festival seemed to be in full swing as organized labour, feminist groups, anti-poverty groups, human rights advocates, gays and lesbians and allies marched, occupied workplaces, petitioned, picketed and sang. David Spaner’s Solidarity: Canada’s Unknown Revolution of 1983 tells their story.

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Thousands of BC residents (including, full disclosure, this reviewer) attended raucous mass meetings and poured into the streets, giving a new generation of activists a taste of what solidarity felt like. As the momentum of resistance grew, voices were heard calling for a general strike.

But the resistance was a complex and delicate united front. It included relatively conservative leadership in many trade unions and in the labor umbrella group the BC Federation of Labour. Also in the ranks, more radicalized membership and in some cases leadership in a few unions, and a broad array of popular organizations like the feminist groups in Women Against the Budget. These groups — the Solidarity Coalition — were linked in an uneasy partnership with the more conservative and BC Fed-funded Operation Solidarity.

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Victory seemed possible, but then the leadership of the BC Fed, alarmed at that prospect of fundamental change, sent the International Woodworkers of America’s leader Jack Munro to cut deal with Premier Bill Bennett’s Social Credit government. In trade for concessions on a few anti-union elements in its package, the government got an agreement from the Fed, which had provided much of the funding and infrastructure for Solidarity, to end further resistance.

The festival was over, and the circus was leaving town.

Spaner was a participant in the events of 1983, and his perspective is unapologetically pro-Solidarity. His thoroughly researched book by him includes extensive interviews with many others who led and participated in Solidarity. Some readers will criticize Spaner’s decision of him not to include interviews with business and government figures, but he makes no excuses for his decision to make this book essentially an oral history of the Solidarity 1983 events, told in the voices of the activist opposition. His book by him rescues an important moment in BC history from mainstream amnesia and does so in stylish, effective prose.

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Highly recommended.

Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at [email protected]

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