On the whole, over the years 1966-70, many new community organizations emerged and working class struggles proliferated (in comparison with the years of the “Quiet Revolution” during which there were relatively few major conflicts). However, while it does seem that there was a growing combativity during this period, the level of workers’ class consciousness remained quite low, as it was almost exclusively limited to economic aspects.
The three major Quebec unions are: i) CSN: Confederation of National Trade Unions; ii) FTQ: Quebec Federation of Labour; and iii) CEQ: Quebec Teachers’ Corporation.
Both the CSN and the CEQ are purely Quebec unions whereas the FTQ is the Quebec branch of the Canadian Labour Congress, which in turn is affiliated to the AFL-CIO. The FTQ regroups primarily the industrial sector (steelworkers, rubberworkcrs, etc.) while the CSN has a strong base in the civil and public service (e.g. hospital) though it competes with the FTQ in construction and has certain teacher unions (college & university level).
In the context of the end of the “Quiet Revolution,” of the beginning of the recession, and of a certain radicalisation of existing citizens’ committees, the union federations began to modify ideologically their perceptions of social problems and their conceptions of their own role. They did not criticize “business unionism” but essentially opted for widening the scope of union activity beyond internal contract negotiations. This had become necessary as a result of increased government intervention at all levels on the one hand, and on the other because there continued to exist a large gap between the hopes and demands generated by the “Quiet Revolution” and the incapacity of the government to provide solutions to the real problems of the working class. The trade union movement tried to move away from being a marginal, defensive force, or mere pressure group. It sought to become an intermediary force and at the same time an integral part of the bosses-state-unions network, and the representative of the “underprivileged” and the working class. This led them in the first instance to a position more critical of capitalist society and towards a verbalization of social inequalities. This comes out clearly in two documents produced by the two union centrals. In 1966, the CSN issued a report entitled A Society Built for Man& and a regional branch of the FTQ, the Montreal Labour Council, published a paper called The Third Solitude. It should be noted that in general, the FTQ follows the lead of the CSN in political and social matters.
At its 1968 convention, the CSN clarified the main lines of its orientation. Its report entitled The Second Front appeared at the beginning of a recession and at a time when an increasingly sharp consciousness of economic and social problems on the part of community organizations had led them to try to orient themselves around political action. At this point, outflanked by the combativity of these organizations, the union movement sought to catch up by using them as models and by seeking to integrate them into framework divided into a first front and a second front. THUS THEIR POSITION WAS: “WE WILL TAKE care of the first front – the workplace and you community organizations, the second front – community organizing, consumer and political struggles.”
The “trade-unionist” or “social-democratic” concept of a separation between workers’ economic and political struggles influenced the ideological and organizational development of the community organizations in the period 1968-1970. On the whole, the militants in the organizations limited themselves to consumer problems and when there was a workers’ struggle, they gave it their support while trying to integrate it into the social struggle at the community level.
Workers’ struggles were given two comparable types of leadership during this period: trade union “organizers” for economic struggles at the workplace and the community organizers for economic struggles in the community. It was at this time that these two groups of petty bourgeois intellectuals began developing common positions via regional conferences, during 1970 and through a projected “Labour”-type political movement in Montreal (which was later to become the From d’Action Politique-FRAP, Political Action Front).
The years 1970-71 marked the culminating point of the recession which began in 1966 and ended only in 1972. This recession affected not only the less dynamic sectors of economy (leather, clothing, textiles) but also the more stable and more advanced sectors (metallurgy, aeronautics, pulp and paper, petrochemicals). These industries are the most solid within Quebec’s economic structure, employing the best-paid workers, who generally enjoy the greatest job security. The workers in these sectors constitute, along with the workers in the public service (and para-public, e.g. hospitals) the principal foundations of Quebec unionism. Thus, for the first time in a long while, their relatively privileged position was attacked by a recession.
The beginning of the 1970’s was thus marked by long and determined workers’ struggles. While these were principally centered around collective bargaining, they were intensified by the strengthened position of the bourgeoisie during a recession. As well, new types of struggles appeared: against technological innovations resulting in the elimination of jobs, as was the case in the heated struggle at Montreal’s largest daily newspaper, La Presse), or against plant shutdowns or layoffs (Gulf, mines in northwestern Quebec).
For the most part, the struggles have been fought with determination and in many cases have been quite militant; the Common Front General Strike in the public service and the spontaneous sympathy strikes in support of it in May 1972; the workers’ occupation of the Price pulp and Paper plant; the detention of one of the owners of Consolidated Bathurst (pulp and paper); the militant rally and demonstrations around the strike at La Presse etc, are, examples: of the heightened worker combativity in this period.
In many cases, however, the struggles met with setbacks, or at best with partial successes. Union defeats considerably outnumbered victories in the early 1970’s. It was the recession that confronted “traditional” trade-unionism with problems it was incapable of resolving: unemployment, layoffs, plant shut-downs, but also inflation and speed-ups which constantly eat away at increased salaries. The need for readjustment asserted itself for the union officials.
This, in conjunction with a growing number of organizers who were trying to inject a political content into the economic struggles, led to the union centrals (CSN, FTQ. CEQ) each issuing a “manifesto.” These documents were the first attempt by the workers’ movement to bring out the economic and political context of the specific battles they were waging and to situate them in the framework of the class struggle. They thus represented a step forward in ideological terms for the workers’ movement. In the spirit of the manifestos, various other documents and public pronouncements were made which attempted to clarify workers’ opposition to American imperialism (Gulf), the Canadian big bourgeoisie (Dominion Glass, La Presse) and to the Quebec state and middle-level bourgeoisie.
However, the syndical attempts to constitute an opposition force remained fragile. On the one hand they modified their role as defenders of the workers’ interests by diminishing their collaboration with the state apparatuses and withdrawing from several joint consultation committees. But on the other hand, they have remained faithful to their reformist conceptions of political action and have generally continued to uphold this conception outside the workplace, within the “second front.”
These forms of political action (hospital and school board elections among others) have been unsuccessful. The leftist rhetoric of the union leaders, coupled with a lack of leftist strategy (a practice conforming to traditional trade unionism), the division between the union federations, the lack of credibility they have with the workers, the bureaucratic nature of the federations and the absence of solid relations with rank and tile, all converged to make the unions easy targets for those in power. And when the reaction came, it was well-organized-combining demagogic attacks, repressive legislation, and fines and imprisonment of the three union leaders (after the general strike in 1972, on charges of contempt of court, for suggesting that the strikers ignore injunctions).
However, these struggles did help many of the workers involved gain a certain level of consciousness of the fact that their interests are opposed to those of the ruling class, not only on the economic level but on the political level as well. The Common Front struggle, for instance, showed clearly the collusion between the Quebec state structure and the bosses. It exposed as well some of the repressive instruments (special back-to-work laws) that the state was ready to use against the workers.
In brief, these struggles helped certain workers to express their interests, both political and economic, to understand that they were opposed to those of the ruling class and their state, and to begin to understand the necessity for workers to organize into an autonomous force which could struggle effectively against the ruling class.
In the short term, the positive effects could be seen in the more militant struggles and also in acts of defiance towards the political powers (e.g. non-respect of injunctions). In some instances the workers went beyond the limits set by the union leaders. However, on the whole, these struggles did not go beyond the immediate interests of the workers involved. Because of the lack of an autonomous political organization belonging to the workers to help give direction to these struggles, they remained militant economic struggles rather than political struggles.
This brings us to those groups which, during the sixties, operated outside the framework of the union movement while trying to defend either the interests of the “majority of the population,” or, the interests of the working class. It is principally from these groups, the community organizations and progressive groups, that the current socialist movement developed, both organizationally and in terms of its militants.
The emergence of community organizations in working class neighbourhoods coincides with the decline of the reform movement ushered in and directed by the Liberal Party since 1960. It had become clear for many that the workers and the “ordinary citizens” were not consulted and did not profit from the progress of the “Quiet Revolution”. This was the context in which the community citizens’ committees developed. They were an attempt to catch up with the gains supposedly made by the other classes in Quebec society.
Their importance lies not in their numerical strength, which was limited, nor in the victories they obtained, which were few and far between, but rather in the type of activity which they developed, the ideology they diffused, and their role in the evolution of other types of organizations that succeeded them.
We can distinguish two periods in the evolution of the committees. The first, 1965-68, is characterized by actions based almost exclusively on immediate local demands on the various levels of government (for community centres, health clinics, increased aid for welfare recipients, etc.).
The limited nature of the demands can in part be explained by the nature of the membership of the citizens’ committees. On the one hand we have the community organizer, a new type of petty bourgeois intellectual (in Quebec, that is), whose emergence is tied to the educational liberalization of the “Quiet Revolution.” Backed by various institutional sources (charities, or even government agencies-directly or indirectly), they were full-time organizers sent out to the various working class communities, where they worked with existing community groups, or were instrumental in forming new ones.
The people that they reached were not generally from the industrial working class but rather allies of the working class as such, whose material conditions were very difficult, e.g. welfare recipients, or salaried workers from the non-productive sectors (office workers, postal clerks, teachers, bank clerks, etc.). The community organizers usually played a dominant role in the committees, often in a patronizing manner. This is not difficult to understand. A combination of their training and the inexperience of the other members, plus their ability to devote themselves full-time to their work and the possibility of their planning with other community organizers, gave them a solid advantage over the other members of the committees.
The organizers involved the members of the committees in actions based on the concrete problems of their communities-actions which were to lead to concrete short-term solutions acceptable to both the members of the communities and to the various levels of government. Unfortunately, there were few results from these actions.
Thus, as the attempts of the committees to achieve reforms through negotiations with or pressures on the government met continually with few results, and caused a high rate of turn-over in the various organizations, the necessity to go beyond this kind of activity became widely recognized amongst the militants of the citizens’ committees. This internal crisis coinciding with the beginnings of the recession (1967-68), provoked a marked turn towards the development of some direct form of political activity.
A general meeting of militants from over 20 citizens’ committees in May 1968 affirmed this shift (demanding the transformation of “the governments into our governments” through the undertaking of direct political action) from a more or less liberal and populist attitude to a more or less social-democratic one. This shift marked the beginning of the second period (1968-70) and culminated with the participation of the citizens’ committees in the formation of a social-democratic municipal political party (see below). It affected the work being done in the community, with the priority increasingly given to working with the working class and the lower sectors of the petty bourgeoisie.
In addition, the kind of actions and of struggles undertaken were somewhat less spontaneous and more organized and thought out. They were the result of an orientation of creating community organizations such as food cooperatives, tenants’ associations, etc., as the basis of a political force of salaried workers in the community. The perspective of militants was as follows: to bring out the political aspects from economic struggles at the level of the community or on occasion from the support of union struggles, and to build permanent “fronts of struggle.” The political lessons to be learned in struggle were that the salaried workers were in the majority in this society but in the minority in government – they should therefore exercise the power of government. The three permanent “fronts of struggle” were: the work front, the consumer front and the political front.
It is important to understand on one hand, that these changes in orientation did not affect all of the citizens’ committees in Montreal, or more especially outside of Montreal, and on the other hand, that even within this new orientation, which could be described at the same time as more technocratic and more explicitly political, an activist approach to work and an idealist analysis continued to exist. The most important manifestations of this approach were the belief in the ability of workers to understand spontaneously their interests as a social group, and in the rapidity which the political strategy developed was to lead to access to power.
In practice, despite the activist and technocratic aspects developed in these organisations, the citizens’ committees increased in the number of participants, especially among workers and salaried employees of the non-productive sectors and undertook more and larger struggles in their milieus.
Also active during this period were various petty-bourgeois groups, principally in the student movement and nationalist movement. These groups were to supply many militants who would be active in the later evolution of the workers’ movement. As well, certain groups attempted to articulate programmes with a definite socialist orientation and developped links with certain parts of the workers’ movement.
The constitution of an organization in 1970 regrouping the vast majority of progressive militants active in Montreal marks an important step forward in the evolution of the socialist movement. FRAP – Front d’Action Politique (Political Action Front) was the concretization of the attempts by two sectors of the workers’ movement to resolve the internal crises with which they were faced. For the trade-union officers and organizers who participated in FRAP the onset of the recession highlighted their inability to achieve long-lasting gains for the working class solely through collective bargaining. But instead of trying to transform the economic struggles in the workplace into attacks against the bosses and the government, they would rather try to secure the gains made in syndical struggles by opening up what they called the “Second Front”, against the weakening buying power of the worker in the community. The struggle of the workers was thus neatly divided into the economic and non-political struggle around the contract (which was accepted as “tried and true”) and the political struggle based in the community.
The citizens’ committees had also reached an impasse in the type of reformist and populist activity they had carried out since the beginning of the second half of the sixties. One way of resolving the impasse seemed to be to form stronger links with what they considered to be sectors more representative of the working class as a whole. This orientation was greatly influenced by the involvement of some community organizers in more caracteristically working class neighbourhoods. For them, the union movement was indispensable as an ally in their attempts to reach that sector of the working class.
These two groups who constituted the core of FRAP were joined by isolated progressive militants coming mainly from the student and nationalist movements, both on the decline.
The community workers and the syndicalists agreed on one major point: despite its majority in terms of numbers, the development of the consciousness of the working class was blocked by one major contradiction. This contradiction could be expressed as the absence of organized and permanent political expression. According to them, FRAP could make a valuable contribution to resolving this contradiction. In view of the low level of consciousness, an attempt was made to tailor the programme of FRAP to this situation. The only major document published by FRAP gives an identification of its orientation in its title – “Les Salaries au Pouvoir” – Power to Salaried Workers.
Structurally, FRAP drew on the already existing citizens’ committees, which were transformed into Political Action Committees (Comites d’Action Politique – CAPs) and became the constituent organization of FRAP, divided according to the district in which they were located. The CAPs varied in strength and in extent of their links to their respective communities. Thus certain CAPs had been in existence as citizens’ committees for as long as four or five years prior to the creation of FRAP (the two strongest, later to play a dominant role in the split-up of FRAP, were located in the Montreal districts of St-Jacques and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve) while others were created solely for the municipal elections, and were thus more open to near-complete domination by community organizers and union officials.
For the leaders and theoreticians of FRAP, its practice was inserted into the strategic perspective of the creation of a national workers’ party, for which municipal activity was seen as the springboard. Ideologically social-democratic, FRAP rejected the framework of continuing the Quiet Revolution of the early sixties (i.e. reform of a backward state by the rising technocratic petty bourgeoisie in conformity with the interests of American imperialism). It opposed to this the beginnings of a class analysis situating “salaried workers” as the constituency capable of remoulding society in its interests and not that of the bourgeoisie. FRAP had the merits of undertaking a widescale action which regrouped the majority of progressive militants on the basis of a programme which corresponded to the low level of class consciousness of the majority of the working population.
Tactically, FRAP decided to contest the municipal elections against Montreal’s reactionary mayor Jean Drapeau, who was seen as the municipal expression of capitalist political domination in Quebec. It was hoped that the participation of large numbers of previously isolated militants and the launching of the organization on the basis of concrete participation in the municipal elections would guarantee its success. However, not a single seat was won.
The reason for this eletoral failure were multiple. The most obvious was the sensationalist tactic used by the incumbent mayor Drapeau. Using the uncertain atmosphere surrounding the “October Crisis” of the FLQ, Drapeau adroitly issued a statement claiming that FRAP was a front of the FLQ, and thus helped reduce any chances that FRAP might have had in winning any seats.
However, there were more serious weaknesses in FRAP, which if not directly responsible for its electoral losses, were important in its inability to grow in strength after the elections. For the leadership, the production of a programme that was minimal but that discussed various social problems encountered by the citizens of Montreal, coupled with the participation in the October 1970 mayoral elections were the most important ways of developing unity in the organization. However, this didn’t respond to the needs of the militants at the base. As a result, the level of debate around the leadership’s tactical programme, and its assimilation by the rank-and-file, was not particularly high. It did not touch the major political questions, such as the national question, the trade-union movement, American imperialism which were already under discussion amongst isolated groups of the militants involved. FRAP’s political analysis could be summed up in the phrase the “majority versus the minority”, i.e., salaried workers are the majority of the population (all salaried workers without distinction) and a minority within government, which is controlled by a small group of businessmen, luminaries, industrialists; the majority of the population are tenants, the minority are landlords, etc. FRAP’s programme dealt with such problems as housing, health-care, leisure and recreation without applying any more of a systematic analysis to them than they did to their global evaluation of society.
The other major weakness of FRAP was the heterogeneous nature of the rank-and-file: students, nationalists, marxists, syndicalists, community organizers, members of citizens’ committees, technocrats in opposition to Drapeau (who was often their employer), etc. The result was a bureaucratic superstructure tacked on to a heterogeneous base which was going through a process of questioning, often bringing up questions that the leadership would refuse to answer.
It was all of these factors that added up to FRAP’s electoral defeat.
Following the elections. FRAP turned in on itself, already showing signs that the unity of the organization was fragile. This came out clearly at the congress held in March 1971, which resulted in the first of two splits in FRAP.
At this congress three factions were present, representing different fractions of the progressive petty bourgeoisie, expressing positions which came out of differing practices. On the one hand there was the dominant faction constituted mainly of militants of the CAP in the St-Jacques district of Montreal (a working class area with a high proportion of students, welfare and unemployed). They identified two major faults in FRAP: a low level of theoretical understanding (class analysis) and weak links with the working class, principally in the workplace. They proposed consequently to decentralize the structures of FRAP in order to permit a greater concentration of energies amongst the rank-and-file. From this practice they saw the possibility of developing the level of theoretical knowledge.
In direct oppostion was a more clearly reformist tendency, represented by the community organizers who felt that the orientation FRAP had giver itself (urban activity based on the community) was correct, and refused the beginnings of a class analysis put forward by CAP St-Jacques. In between the two was a more or less trade-unionist tendency which wished to maintain the unity of the movement but rallied behind CAP St-Jacques’ propositions.
The congress led to the departure of 4 CAPs (those which depended most strongly on the leadership of the community organizers). For the groups which remained, it represented a step forward in their strategic orientation (beginnings of a class analysis, criticism of the Parti Quebecois and of the trade-unions). However these advances were made in the context of debates largely cut off from consistent pratices within the working class and as such had a tendency to be marked by a certain ultra-leftism; lack of debate between the more advanced militants and the less advanced, and a neglect of the necessity of some centralization in order to permit the development of ideological unity, and by a trend towards a turning in on oneself.
The year following this congress saw a further split in FRAP with the departure of the majority of its militants, from the two strongest CAPs (St-Jacques and Maisonneuve). At the time, the respective positions were not stated explicitly, but were characterized by three major points of divergeance:
1. The trade-unionist tendency was prepared to support a project for a workers’ party emanating from the ranks of the more left-wing trade-union bureaucrats, whereas the socialist tendency saw the necessity of maintaining a critical distance vis-a-vis the trade unions.
2. The trade-unionist tendency was in general more favorable to actions in support of workers in struggle which were larger in scale than those advocated by the socialist tendency who were trying to develop strong links with small groups of workers.
3. Finally the trade-unionist tendency saw its organizational links to the working class as being based on the residential nature of the community which would make possible links with various strata of the working class. In contrast, the socialist tendency was pushing for placing the priority on developing core groups of militants principally at the workplace and secondarily within community groups and in the school system.
This split was the end of the second version of FRAP. The organization continues to exist with the support from the unions but has ceased to be a major participant in the evolution of the socialist movement in Montreal.
The period from the middle of 1971 til the middle of 1973 is one of transition characterized by the emergence of a myriad of groups which have attempted to respond to certain demands of the popular strata of Quebec society, including food co-ops, tenants’ associations, unemployed workers’ groups, groups of progressive students. These groups evolved alongside FRAP, some developing similar perspectives, others (the majority) not being able to survive beyond the length of a grant from the government or charity. Thus the groups present during the period can be divided into 3 major categories: 1. The political action committees (CAPs); 2. Social pressure and service groups; 3. study and research groups. Analysing them in this schematic fashion has the danger of oversimplifying and even eliminating that which is dynamic in their evolution, but unfortunately could not be avoided for the purposes of this text.