Battle of Ballantyne Pier
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The Battle of Ballantyne Pier occurred in Ballantyne Pier during a docker's strike in Vancouver, British Columbia, in June 1935.
The strike can be traced back to 1912 when the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), began organizing the waterfront workers in Canada, alongside the Lumber Handlers' Union in Vancouver. Going head to head with the employers association, the Shipping Federation, several strikes resulting in wage increases were won by workers in the coming years. Victories on the waterfront increased over the next decade, and by 1923, the Shipping Federation became determined to break the power of the ILA.
In October 1923 1400 striking dockworkers joined picket lines at the Vancouver waterfront. The Shipping Federation had arranged that the dockers would be met by 350 men armed with shotguns. They had been housed on a nearby ship. The gunmen's intimidation of the strikers, coupled with the fact that ships were being loaded and unloaded by numerous non-union workers, caused the strike to collapse two months later.
The 1923 strike destroyed the ILA, and it was soon replaced by a new organization, the Vancouver and District Waterfront Workers' Association (VDWWA). Set up originally by the bosses as a company union, the VDWWA soon took a confrontational stance towards the Shipping Federation. By 1935, nearly every port in British Columbia had been organised by the VDWWA. Following the pretext to the destruction of the ILA, the Shipping Federation provoked a major strike in the spring of 1935, locking out 50 dockers at the port at Powell River.
The strike snowballed with other dockers across the region striking or being locked out. Following a refusal to unload ships coming from Powell River, 900 workers were met with a lockout in Vancouver. Dockers across the border in Seattle also refused to unload ships coming from Vancouver and Powell River because they were staffed by non-union workers.
On June 18, several weeks after the original lockout, 900-1100 dockers and their supporters marched through Vancouver towards Ballantyne Pier where non-union workers were unloading ships. The strikers were met at the pier by several hundred armed policemen. Attempting to force their way through, the dockers were attacked by the police lines. Many marchers were clubbed as they tried to run to safety, while many others tried hopelessly to fight back, using whatever weapons they could find.
Aided by Mounties who had been posted nearby, the police attacked the strikers. The VDWWA union hall was attacked, with tear gas being used against members of the women's auxiliary who had set up a first aid station inside. The battle lasted three hours, and included police actually firing guns at strikers. the battle produced several hospitalizations, including that of a fleeing striker who was shot in the back of his legs.
Despite the violence of June 18, the strike dragged on into December, but the strike lost much of its militant character after the fighting at Ballantyne Pier. The struggle to form a union completely independent of the Shipping Federation continued for another two years, when, in 1937, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) was born.
The strike of 1935 failed. It, however, helped the future founding of a union for the dockers of British Columbia that was completely independent of the employers' association. The ILWU participated in numerous disputes in the following years, and in the 1940s, it won many strikes that lead to better pay and conditions for waterfront workers.