"A fine practical internationalism": The Industrial Workers of the World Confront Asian Exclusion, 1905-1917 (original) (raw)

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common" 1 "White labor cannot be free while labor in a black skin is enslaved" 2 "If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win." 3 During the summer of 1999 almost 600 Chinese people arrived on the shores of British Columbia in four rickety boats. The reaction of British Columbians was overwhelmingly hostile. In letters to the editor, radio phone-in shows, and on the street people cried with outrage that these poor, desperate migrants were taking advantage of us, or at least their smugglers were. On the streets of Victoria, people of Chinese ancestry were subject to increased harassment. The Victoria Times Colonist printed in big bold letters the headline "Go Home". Members of the official opposition in Parliament, including one local Member, held a press conference calling for tighter restrictions on immigrants and refugees. They raised the specter of these new arrivals spreading disease, of course without offering any evidence to support their fear-mongering. It seemed as if the millennium bug had come early and, somehow, the minds of white British Columbians were turned back a century. Once again, B.C. looked to the rest of Canada to be 'Bigot Country'. Like a hundred years ago the threat of uncontrolled Chinese immigration was a major issue. In 1999, however, the anti-Chinese hostility did not go unopposed. In Victoria activists went to the Esquimalt military base where the migrants were being detained and held rallies to tell them that they're welcome here. The office of a local Reform Party M.P. was picketed to protest his hysterical reaction. Rallies of support were also held in Vancouver. These acts were very important in cracking the apparently monolithic hostility of British Columbians to the Chinese boat people. Without these signs of support others who were uncomfortable with the virulence of the public debate may have felt isolated or have come to the conclusion that racial hostility is inevitable. This past summer's flare-up of Sinophobia was a weak reminder of what was once a fixture of the 1Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World.