Hilarious excerpt from The Worker, June 1934
The above text describes part of women in an incident at a mine near Stellarton, Nova Scotia. A group of miners was trying to break away from their old union (the United Mine Workers of America) and reaffiliate with the Amalgamated Mine Workers of Nova Scotia (AMW), a more millitant union associated with the Workers Unity League, a centre of communist labour unions in Canada. Both the UMWA and the AMW had been striking to protest a pay cut proposed (or forced) by the coal mine owners. The UMWA accepted the pay cut fairly easily, while the AMW continued to strike to fight it. As a result, the UMWA allied with the owners to attempt to break the AMW and force its members to join the UMWA, which (falsely) claimed to represent the majority of the workers. So, the owners bar the AMW men from working, and as a result the AMW men picket the mine, to stop what UMWA men as are willing from going down the mine. Of course, the RCMP show up to escort the scabbers down the mine (only 12 were willing to scab). Anyhow, the above snipit picks up what happened when the scabbers came up from the mine. Esentially the wives of the AMW men jump them and beat them up, etc. Murdock Wilson, refered to in the clip, is actually one of the AMW leaders, meaning the women were so angry that even the leader of the union they were supporting couldn’t reign in their fury….
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