A Hard Man to Beat: The Story of Bill White, Labour Leader, Historian, Shipyard Worker, Raconteur; An Oral History

Louise May was with the Department of History, University of British Columbia.

This book is based on a series of interviews conducted by Howard White, editor of the award-winning Raincoast Chronicles, with Bill White (no relation), president of the Marine Workers’ and Boilermakers’ Industrial Union, Local No. 1 (formerly the Boilermakers’ and Iron Shipbuilders’ Union Local No. 1) from 1945 to 1955.

The editor has arranged Bill White’s account of these years into four sections: “The Shipyards” describes the dangerous working conditions in Vancouver’s wartime shipbuilding industry and the struggle to organize a union to ameliorate them; “The Compensation Board” highlights a number of cases in which White defended the rights of fellow workers before the Board and his success in establishing a Royal Commission to investigate the practices of the Board; “The Kuzych Case” details the legal battle White waged all the way to the Privy Council in London to protect the right to a closed shop; and finally, “The Party” describes White’s membership in the Communist Party and the Party’s role in the labour movement.

In his introduction the editor suggests that beginning his book may be “like dropping in on a heated conversation between two old campaigners who have already been carrying on all night. The air is thick with strange names, technical language and a familiarity with the intricacies of the labour movement you can’t at first make whole sense of.” However, he assures the reader that “All you need to know about the way the labour world fitted together in the 40’s and 50’s you will know by the end of the story.” This is too much to expect from interviews conducted with one individual. While the reader will be left with a vivid impression of White’s personality and commitment to social justice, those unfamiliar with labour history will find the story somewhat inaccessible.

Although the history of the Marine Workers has been told in A History of Shipbuilding in British Columbia as told by the Shipyard Workers, there is still a need for a major study that places Bill White and his union in the context of provincial and national labour history.