| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 55

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Roger Stonebanks, Fighting for Dignity: The Ginger Goodwin Story (St. John's: Canadian Committee on Labour History 2004)

EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS after Albert "Ginger" Goodwin was shot dead by Dominion Police constable Dan Campbell in the wooded hills of Vancouver Island, the story of this coal miner, socialist, draft resister, and union leader remains shrouded in controversy. As a battle over political memory rages in British Columbia, with Goodwin at the centre, Stonebanks' book appears at an opportune time. Fighting for Dignity is not perfect, but its publication represents a welcome contribution to the field.

The major strengths of the book — and its claims to originality — are new material surrounding Goodwin's early life, and a counter-factual chapter exploring the legal evidence against Dan Campbell. Some of this new material is circumstantial, such as information on working and living conditions in Goodwin's native Yorkshire, where a tradition of bitter industrial relations introduced the young miner to the conflict between labour and capital. Stonebanks enriches this material with valuable primary detail, illuminating Goodwin's brief stint in Glace Bay, and providing a more comprehensive account of Goodwin's life during the war and the events that culminated in his death. Fluid and clean in presentation, illustrated with photographs throughout, this book is well suited for the general reader. It provides a coherent narrative, grounded in fact and informed by the major themes of the period. Specialists in labour history will likely treat this work as a teaching tool, rather than as the definitive statement on Ginger Goodwin.

Two other books preceded Fighting for Dignity: Derek Hanebury's short 1986 monograph Ginger Goodwin: Beyond the Forbidden Plateau, and Susan Mayse's Ginger: The Life and Death of Albert Goodwin (1990). Mayse, with a background in creative writing and family roots in the Comox Valley, imbued her work with a wealth of oral history and a creative flair that is lacking in Fighting for Dignity. Stonebanks, however, combines his skill as a journalist with years of meticulous archival research to provide the best historical account of the Goodwin story to date.

Stonebanks situates this contested chapter of Canadian history within the economics of coal and the politics of war, and temporizes Goodwin's life and death within the ongoing struggle for workers' rights and economic justice. In his epilogue, Stonebanks offers an expansive narrative that follows the lives of his historical actors long after the tide of war and labour revolt had subsided. Details about Goodwin's family history, the lives of his peers and adversaries, and the historical geography of Yorkshire, Vancouver Island, and mainland BC breathe life into this book. A sustained emphasis on industrial relations and environmental issues at the Cominco smelter in Trail is also effective.

More problematic is Stonebanks' imprecise handling of theoretical questions. Issues of gender are entirely absent. Similarly, Stonebanks fails to address tensions between skilled and unskilled workers, and aspects of the work process itself, which is a major theme in Mayse's work. Stonebanks points to existing studies in his footnotes, but fails to adequately engage these works and many of the issues they raise. This is particularly striking in terms of the earlier Goodwin books, but also applies to debates on the Socialist Party of Canada, tensions within organized labour, and international debates on labour and World War I. In order to remain accessible to the general reader, pages of theory are not required. However some acknowledgement by Stonebanks of how his work fits within the existing historiography would have been useful.

Another weakness is Stonebanks' handling of theories surrounding Goodwin's death. He dismisses suggestions of cold-blooded murder as conspiracy theory, and backs up this claim with an intriguing chapter by criminal lawyer Adrian Brooks. Legal issues surrounding the killing of Goodwin are explored through the frame of the imaginary trial of Dan Campbell. Though creative, this discussion fails to acknowledge the class basis of Canadian law, and the political bias against labour and radicalism within Canadian courts. Historical inquiry and the functioning of the law are related but distinct processes, and legal evidence is therefore not identical with historical evidence. Stonebanks fails to draw this distinction. One is left with the lingering suspicion that he and Brooks are too quick to acquit Dan Campbell, and discount the testimony of contemporary workers who questioned whether the police officer fired in self-defence.

While Stonebanks is wise to avoid the trap of either glorifying or vilifying his protagonist, elevating Goodwin to the status of sainthood and dehumanizing Campbell as an arch-villain, there is an inconsistency in tone and argumentation. The book drifts uneasily between liberal assumptions and values, and the dissident tradition with which Goodwin identified and to which he belongs. This ambiguity is well illustrated in Stonebanks' uncritical treatment of Canadian Labour Congress president Ken Georgetti at the end of the book. Clearly, Goodwin and Georgetti occupy distinct locations within Canadian labour's ranks; the former was a Marxian socialist and a militant, while the latter adheres to more moderate political alternatives and a more conciliatory industrial stance. Ignoring tensions internal to organized labour, Stonebanks identifies Georgetti as belonging to a seamless continuum, an unidimensional struggle, emanating from Goodwin.

This book, though focused on the past, has much to say to the present. Stonebanks, however, makes only brief mention of the contested nature of historical memory and the battle currently raging in BC over the symbol of Ginger Goodwin. The province's class-polarized political culture, which traces its origins to the coal economy and the days of Goodwin, finds contemporary expression in the unlikely battleground of a stretch of highway on Vancouver Island.

In 1996, the NDP government of Glen Clark named a section of the new Island Highway that passes by Cumberland Cemetery "Ginger Goodwin Way." The electoral upheaval of May 2001 obliterated NDP representation in the BC legislature. Stan Hagan, Liberal (formerly Social Credit) MLA for the Comox Valley and a minister in Gordon Campbell's cabinet, had the signs removed, preferring the less historically charged "Comox Valley Parkway." The Campbell River and Courtenay District Labour Council responded by renting a billboard near the contested stretch of highway, and raised a photo of Goodwin with the words "Ginger Goodwin Way" — an action honoured at the Pacific North West Labour History Association's 2002 meeting.

Every year, on the third weekend in June, labour activists converge on Goodwin's gravesite for Miners' Memorial Day, which coincides with the anniversary of Westray and serves as a reunion — a pilgrimage of sorts — for the British Columbia Left. Between pancake breakfasts, labour sing-a-longs, and pub hopping along Dunsmuir Street in Cumberland, Ginger Goodwin stands out as a potent symbol of working-class consciousness, anti-militarism, and militancy. While the Vancouver Sun described Goodwin in 1918 as "very poor material for martyrdom," he was immortalized within days of his death when Vancouver workers downed tools in a general strike. In April 2004, BC workers brought the province to the brink of a general strike against the anti-labour agenda of the Campbell government. The battle over the memory of Albert Goodwin, therefore, has much significance beyond the history books. Threatened by the corrosive forces of élite history and hostile governments, Goodwin symbolizes resistance in both the past and the present; he is an icon from which contemporary dissidents draw strength in the current conflict against organized capital in BC.

Roger Stonebanks and the CCLH should be applauded for reviving this controversial and timely story. Fighting for Dignity represents a compact, detailed, and accessible contribution to the historiography of Albert Goodwin. For students, scholars, and general readers, this book offers a valuable window into important aspects of the labour and social history of Canada during World War I — and poignant fodder for contemporary social movements.


Benjamin Isitt University of New Brunswick

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