The Engineering of an Enemy: The Catholic Church, United Steelworkers, Canadian Labour Congress, and International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Loca1598

Abstract

<p>As global politics realized a fundamental realignment with the end of the Second World War, the Canadian state desired the formation of a national consensus over its newly developed Cold War policies. It set about this task through the use of anti-communist rhetoric to facilitate a repressive and intolerant atmosphere where dissent of state policies could be identified as subversive and dangerous. In promulgating this Cold War ideology, Ottawa was wary of the illiberal approach that characterized American McCarthyism. Rather, Ottawa adopted a strategy of "privatizing" its anti-communism through the use of extra-state actors. By "farming" out its repressive activities, Ottawa could portray itself as a neutral defender of liberal values, while at the same time facilitating a climate of repression that would further its policy aims. Attendant to this, the extra-state actors used this state facilitated framework in order to advance their own interests and agendas. This strategy was starkly illustrated by the USWA raids against IUMMSW Local 598 in 1962. The interests of the state, the Catholic Church, CLC, and USWA coalesced around the elimination of Mine Mill local 598 as a representative of miners in northern Ontario. The Catholic Church sought the elimination of a progressive secularizing force in the Sudbury community that threatened the Church's institutional reproduction. For Steel, the acquisition of over 17,000 dues-paying members and the elimination of IUMMSW as a competitor in the membership rich northern Ontario mining communities. While the state prospered from the virulent anti-communist environment and the elimination of a potentially militant union from control over the largest source of nickel in the non-Communist world. Thus the boundaries demarcating the state from civil society are less clear than some would have us believe. The USW A/Mine Mill events illustrate the nuance in the relationship between the state and private actors in the mobilization of ideological hegemony.</p>