“An Illness of the Mind”: The State Repression of Com-munism in Quebec Under Maurice Duplessis in the Post-War Era Текст научной статьи по специальности «Философия, этика, религиоведение»

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"An Illness of the Mind": The State Repression of Communism in Quebec Under Maurice Duplessis in the PostWar Era

Z. Allen-Mercier,

Master degree student, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada, 2070, rang 10-1, Val-Paradis, Quebec, Canada, J0Z 3S0, phone number: +1 819-941-2114, e-mail:zoe.allen-mercier.1@ulaval.ca

Based mainly on the newspaper articles and published speeches of Canadian politicians, this article deals with the anticommunist measures undertaken in Quebec during the time of Maurice Duplessis' second mandate as Prime Minister, after the Second World War. Located far from the real communist threat, Quebec theoretically had no need to organize the anti-comminist hunt. However, it was launched and lasted until Duplessis' death in 1959. It should be noted that prosecutions of communists, socialists and other potentially "dangerous" groups started in 1930s with police raids and persecution of radical or ethnic groups potentially threatening national security of Canada. In 1940s the relationship of Canadian government with the socialist republic remained tense, even though the Soviet Union joined the Allied powers. Rapidly growing gap between the East and the West after the end of the Second World War demanded stern policy aimed at neutralization of the "Red Scare". The article analyses the causes and political strategies at the root of such measures as well as the nature of the Quebec's society throughout this period. Quebec authorities, especially Maurice Duplessis, had a strong fear of communism even after Khrushchev had voiced his doctrine of peaceful co-existence. Never ending struggle

with communists was held in order to preserve national identity and traditional institutions. Anticommunism turned into a policy was also used as a process of social regulation and a means of bringing under control any political challenges potentially compromising for the established order.

Key words: Communism, anticommunism, repression, Quebec legislature, Maurice Duplessis, labour relations, Great Darkness

" We have to prevent the spread of the pestilence and the propagation of communist poison. [...] It is logical and acceptable to lock up places where blossoms one of the worst illness of the mind, the communist curse, which is at the root of autocracy, atheism and unloyalty" - Maurice Duplessis[1].

In the wake of the Second World War, the union that brought ideological enemies together soon gave place to a new world order based on the opposition of the former allies for the hegemony of their respective political system. As the whole world was dragged into this polarizing fight, the Soviet Union took on a more and more evil aspect in the West, representing embodiment of all vices. However, if Western external politics were driven by a sense of "duty" to protect liberties against communist tyrannies, this international conflict also made it possible for repressive mechanisms to take place in Western states themselves. Justified by the demands of state security, policies of containment of communist ideology took a disproportionate scale, turning almost into an irrational fear of communism in North America [2, p. 178]. In Canada and in the United States, the State outlined several laws with the purpose of restricting socialist subversive activities as well as to extend the police's right to track down spy and propaganda networks among its citizens. In Quebec, this anticommunism was however tinged with the particularity of

the province's political reality under Maurice Duplessis, who pushed those security measures even further. Quebec's Prime Minister indeed, set up a true "communist hunt" which would last until his death in 1959.

First, this study will focus on the development of anti-communist measures outlined in Quebec during the Duples-sis' era after the Second World War in order to highlight its particularities within North America. While being part of a larger Cold War context, Duplessis' measures against communism had a more conservative and radical orientation than the rest of Canada's. Secondly, the study will focus on the Quebecer societal frames of the era, often considered traditional and clerical, which influenced the State in adopting those anticommunist measures. To do so, Duplessis and his ministers' speeches will be analyzed, in order to highlight the governmental strategy against the "Red enemy", as well as the Prime Minister's private letters and contemporary Press articles1.

1. A dangerous ideology for the State security

If the Cold War set a perfect context for persecution of communists, Canada's loathing against them actually dates back from earlier than 1945. At the end of the XlXth century, the socialist movement emerged with the progress of industrialization and created its first Communist Party in 1921, in parallel with the consolidation of the Bolshevik power in the USSR. Along with the first Canadian Communist Party, the movement slowly grew in Quebec where, according to federal reports on workers' organizations, about 8 groups started being active [3, p. 15].The economic crisis of the thirties strengthened the movement as socio-economic issues worsened. In face of poverty and long lasting job shortage, people became keener on questioning social order. However,

in August 1931, the Party was outlawed by Ontario's public prosecutor on the basis of the 98th article of Canada's Criminal Code . The latter therefore allowed multiple police interventions in the offices of the Party, those of the newspaper "Worker" and of the "Ligue d'Unité ouvrière", as well as the arrest of nine leaders of the Party. A few years later, as the Second World War raged, communists were then persecuted for their opposition to the conscription and the so-called "imperialist" war. From 1939, according to the Martial law, Canada's Prime Minister Mackenzie King allowed a hunt of dissents by the Royal Canadian Guard along with the persecution of other elements potentially revolutionary and subversive. Those could either be or political, social, religious or ethnic groups remotely considered a challenge to national security [4, p. 8]. This loathing against the socialist movement was furthermore intensified in the wake of the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov's pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

1.1. An omnipresent threat

In the United States, the post war era is known as "the Second Red Scare" referring to the increasing fear of communists leading to a radical marginalization of potential ideological enemies. This era was indeed marked by the adoption of intransigent anticommunist policies, often arbitrarily applied. McCarthyism therefore took the shape of a state relentlessly monitoring its population in order to trace any form of sympathy towards socialism [5, p. 3].

In Canada, even though the Soviets joined the allied forces in 1941 and greatly contributed to the victory, the relationship with the socialist republic remained tense. Nevertheless, this period of lull allowed the creation of the LaborProgressive Party in 1943 through which socialists could law-

fully work in spite of the 98th article [3, p. 98]. If Stalin was then an ally for practical reasons, the dissensions opposing them yet remained just as deep. The end of the war therefore only heightened their mistrust and socialist protagonists in North America were then considered foreign agents under the USSR's control.

In a book dedicated to anticommunism in Canada, Reginald Whitaker and Gary de Marcuse developed the concept of "national insecurity" to describe the disproportionate fear of an inside threat which characterized the State in the wake of the Second World War. "Canada set out in search of external and internal enemies and soon found them. Obsessive concern with security always presupposed a large degree of underlying insecurity" [7, p. ix]. The large mobilization during the war and the feeling of an enemy threat persisted beyond wartime and were then instrumentalized on the behalf of international rivalry. The demands of national security were furthermore justified by traumas from the war and the discovery of crimes perpetrated by Nazis. Those conditions thus set a favorable ground for a fight against totalitarian states incarnated by the Soviet Union and communists throughout North America. If this renewed orientation of the country was encouraged by different groups of economic and conservative interest, the primary role was however played by the State itself [7, p. 34].

It was in this atmosphere of heightened suspicion that the Guzenko affair came to be known, thus materializing the government's concerns of an internal threat. In the course of his work in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, Igor Guzenko came across evidence of a spy network, which he revealed to the Ministry of Justice after suddenly leaving his duties on 5th of September 1945. The 109 stolen documents allowed lifting the veil on the involvement of many members of the Labor-

Progressive Party, such as Fred Rose and Sam Carr, as well as other state employees3. This discovery made it legitimate to fear a communist threat within every sphere of the society and thus create the alarming impression of a Soviet fifth column [4, p. 180; 8]. First fearing that the Soviet Union had successfully accessed the secret of the atomic bomb, the federal authorities lashed a large-scale hunt onto "Soviet spies" [9]. In the coming month, a royal inquiry commission on the matter of internal security was established, soon followed by several arrests. The Martial law was indeed used in February 1946 to justify a raid by the anti-narcotic squad on the homes of 13 people who were later interrogated without formal accusations, nor access to habeas corpus, juridical support and under very harsh conditions [4, p. 175; 10]. Among those suspected were researchers of McGill University, military engineers and several state employees from different ministries. Soon after, Fred Rose, Sam Carr and Guy Caron, leaders of the Labor-Progressive Party, were condemned to prison for spying [4, p. 180; 11]. The advent of the Guzenko's affair henceforth appeared very convenient; it allowed establishing requirements for security despite the end of the war and the return of peace as well as creating a myth around communist agents inside the country. In Canada as well as in the United States, communists served the need to seek a new enemy and maintain the state of anxiety justifying the resort of forceful measures within the country. The identification of specific enemy, namely Stalin and his spies, made even more intelligible the use of repressive mechanisms on the behalf of collective security. It made the population more inclined towards more sacrifices and greater mobilization [12, p. 490]. Upon the recommendations of the royal commission, the monitoring system was improved and another security council was established in 1946. In order to prevent internal spying, the

Canadian Royal Guard was required to monitor officials within the state itself; multiple state employees' files were analyzed by the Canadian Guards. Relatives and friends were even interrogated to find out any details of their everyday lives. "Any employee who had something in their past or in their private life they wished to conceal was a potential target for blackmailing by unscrupulous Communist spymasters" [4, p. 190]. Justified by fear, any moral judgment or prejudice was enough to raise suspicion. "Homosexuality was an abominable perversion, the sexual counterpart of the political de-viancy of communism - and inexorably connected to it - at a level that did not require rational explanation but could be 'felt' by all right-thinking persons" [4, p. 190].

1.2. Quebec and the anticommunist fever

In this environment of hostility against communists, Quebec wasn't an exception to the rule. On the contrary, Maurice Duplessis' government followed an even more persistent and radical orientation; rather taking example on Americans than fellow Canadians. As Khrushchev's Soviet Union adopted a strategy of "Peaceful coexistence", the fear of communism in the rest of Canada had indeed softened up along with the implementation of a welfare structure [2, p. 193]. In Quebec, anticommunism remained nonetheless at the core of political strategies until Duplessis' death in 1959. The enemy's face took different shapes as the State brought up accusations of "communist sympathies" upon whomever challenged its authority. Just as in the case of the federal government, those measures were motivated by a concern for eliminating spies within the province, "communists being only loyal to Stalin" [1] and therefore considered disloyal foreign agents. In the province, social conservatism and the national matter however contributed to the creation of a different form of anticom-

munism. Beyond the matter of national security, communism in Quebec represented a threat "to our religious beliefs, to our traditions and to our laws" which were part of a historical and national identity, as expressed by Duplessis [13, p. 331]. Merging with a strategy of identity populism, anti-communism allowed the creation of an ethos opposed to a foreign and immoral enemy [14, p. 111].

"<...> we must prevent this pernicious contagion. With a clever foresight, which other countries envy, my government leads since along time a fight against atheist communism, enemy to democracy and spiritual values that make the richness of our Christian civilization. The fight against communism will be pushed with more vigor than ever, if possible. It is a sacred duty, which couldn't harm true liberty, the one of honest people" [15, p. 251].

Furthermore, in contrast with its Canadian counterpart, Quebec's government adopted a far more moralizing line in its condemnation of communism, representing it as a true vice, an illness of the mind.

"We believe that if it is right to put in quarantine those suffering from contagious diseases, if it is also right to lock brothels, it is then logical and suitable to lock up places where blossoms one of the worst illness of the mind, the communist curse, which is at the root of autocracy, atheism and unloyalty" [1].

Although the Canadian Guard also engaged in moral profiling, associating, as we just saw, homosexuality with an appeal for subversive activities, it seems however that the line adopted by the provincial government reached a higher level in its "dehumanization" and "demonization" of the enemy, which was no longer only a threat to the State's security but also to the nation's sake. Duplessis' anticommunism took a radical form, an "absolutist form" as Ralph Miliband and

Marcel Liebman explained:

"<...> A total, unqualified and vehement rejection of 'communism' as the embodiment of evil, the work of Satan, the product of the darkest and most sinister impulses of the human spirit, the negation of civilization and enlightenment, and much else of the same kind. This anticommunism, couched in extreme moralistic terms, often with strongly religious connotations, sees the Soviet Union as the material incarnation of evil and as the main source of the dissemination of evil. Consequently, its disappearance from the face of the earth is a prime condition of human regeneration and salvation, and something to be prayed and worked for, fought and died for" [16, p. 18].

Such a moralizing line considerably broadened the notion of communist perversion in addition to allowing no compromise in its ways to eradicate it. In accordance with this orientation, the State adopted series of measures to counter the communist expansion in the province. Therefore in 1937, the National Union Party drew up the "Act to Protect the Province Against Communistic Propaganda" - also commonly known as the "Padlock Law" which was maintained until 1957, although its constitutional legitimacy was often questioned. The latter allowed, upon order, the closing of houses where the elaboration of "communist" or "bolshevik" propaganda took place, as well as imprisoning whomever had allegedly taken part in aforementioned activities (through impression, publication, composition, distribution, etc). In addition to offering a very inclusive notion of the terms "house" and "people" - including any gathering location and any moral entity - the absence of definition for "communism" and "bolshevism" created a legal blur, allowing the condemnation of any presumption of affinity with the movement or any political opposition. As general attorney, Maurice Dup-

lessis furthermore granted himself a considerable and arbitrary power in terms of judiciary repression. In charge of evaluating the quality of all evidence and of rending a verdict, he thus had full power over the closing of a residence and the imprisonment of whomever seemed to be a communist sympathizer. The general attorney could also pass his power on to any constable or officer in order to seize and confiscate such propaganda. Moreover, the Padlock Law was also designed to deny defendants the right to presumption of innocence. Upon the sole judgment of the general attorney, any individual, corporation, society, corporate name, tenant, agent or dealer, etc. was declared guilty without any form of trial or access to a legal defense. Those who admittedly had taken part in "printing, publishing or distributing of any newspaper, periodical, pamphlet, circular, document or writing, propagating Communism or Bolshevism" were liable to imprisonment from 3 to 12 months. The arbitrary nature of this act was denounced by many people and groups concerned with its infringement of freedom of speech, of opinion, of gathering and many other legal rights. Regardless of their rightful claims, those were however accused of supporting communists, by defending their rights, and fell victims themselves of the Padlock law [17, p. 112-130].

The act was applied as soon as 1937 against the communist newspaper La Clarté, whose offices were closed down. On the same day, the residence of Jean Péron, chief editor, was searched by the provincial police. From then on, denunciations and anticommunist raids multiplied; Between November 1937 and April 1938, the provincial police had closed five establishments, confiscated 532 books, 4 000 copies of the newspaper La Clarté, 1 500 copies of other newspapers, 268 pamphlets, leaflets and tracts. Throughout the year of 1938, members of the Communist Party were visited more

than 40 times. If from 1939 to 1944, during the Liberal Party's leader Adèlard Godbout's mandate, the law remained unused, it was however pushed forward again in the immediate wake of Duplessis' reelection. The Guzenko affair hence appeared to be a perfect occasion for Quebec's Prime Minister to pursue the anticommunist fight from where he had left it. For the common goal of eradicating the Soviet spying network, the provincial and federal authorities also joined their forces. The Anticommunist squads were thus expected to collaborate with the Canadian Guard and these benefited from a large financing and great manpower [18, p. 7302]. With this renewed legitimacy, provincial and municipal anticommunist squads actively pursued their search, closing of houses and arrests of alleged communists. In 1948, the office of the newspaper Le Combat, successor of La Clarté, as well as the Quebecer sections of the Labor-Progressive Party were searched by the provincial police. In 1949 in Montreal, the house of Max Bailey, Fred Rose's friend, and of many other "communists" were closed down [19]. In the course of this "communist hunt", the National Film Board also ended up in Duplessis' target at the end of the 1940s. In 1950, upon accusations of infiltration and propagation of communist propaganda, the Prime Minister ordered a ban on all production and distribution of NFB's movies in Quebec [20]. Very keen on detecting subversion within any activity, especially among immigrants, Roland Paquette, Montreal's head of the Recorder Court4, ordered the arrest of 17 people in December 1949 following 12 raids of the anti-subversive squad in "alleged gambling reunions". Those were gathering places for the Association of United Ukrainians of Canada, which was allegedly associated with the Labor-Progressive Party and used those locations to host subversive activities to finance their attempts of social disturbance [21].

It is however on worker unions, nests of communists, that Duplessis' measures fell most harshly. In 1954, following the Padlock Law, the provincial government issued the bill 19 decreeing the "disaccreditation" of worker unions with alleged communists in their leadership. Once again, the very broad definition of "communist" allowed to incriminate whomever was member of a communist or Marxist organization, a movement or group considered as such, regardless of its name; whoever supported a such group; whoever was commonly known to be a sympathizer, partisan or militant communist and whoever approved or promoted subversion or the challenge of established order. Worker unions were furthermore threatened with stripping them of their accreditation if one of their representatives or leaders, yet without matching this description, was associated with another group allegedly under the influence of communism or whose leaders included such a person [7, p. 305]. Hence, this wide concept of "alleged" communist affiliation opened the way to the arbitrary discontinuation of many worker unions as well as many purges amongst them, out of fear of reprisals. This bill indeed echoed the famous "Taft-Hartley Act" issued in the United States in 1947. The latter requested, in section 9h, an oath by the leaders of worker unions declaring their detachment from communist ideologies and any subversive organizations as well as those promoting socialist ideas. Organizations failing to comply with this oath were denied the protection and support of the National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) therefore resulting in a great loss of influence [5, p. 11].

In brief, in Quebec as well as in Canada, the context of the Cold War fostered the formation of a true fear of socialists within the country and their later identification with "Soviet agents". Throughout the development of measures to

counter this threat, the State of Quebec went even further by opposing communists with very radical and arbitrary measures justified by a moralizing and populist political line. "Communism" became the object of a most pernicious depiction and its definition encompassed all political opponents.

2. Anticommunism at the core of economic, social and political interests

In the face of such a radical anticommunist movement, one comes to seek further explanations for the extent of repressive reactions in North America. The emergency to consolidate internal security presupposes a certain danger from those communist groups. As Jennifer Ear reminds us, the more threatening a movement appears to the authorities, the harshest the repression will usually be [22, p. 11].

2.1. A real threat?

Nevertheless, as Reginald Whitaker and Gary de Marcuse explained, the precedence given to the national security in Canada arose from a disproportionate vision of the communist threat in the country. Conversely, the importance given to this matter simultaneously contributed to the impression of threat. In spite of the Cold War context, it indeed seems that, on the contrary of what the authorities claimed, there had never been a serious threat of a Soviet invasion. As for the communist population inside the country, it appears that it had been limited to a few marginal groups whose social anchors were relatively restricted [7, p. xii]. In Quebec as well as in Canada, communists therefore constituted a negligible threat.

If the advent of the economic crisis of 1929 and the following worsening of living conditions had enhanced a certain expansion of the communist ideology, it however turned out

that the movement didn't experience further large development. Indeed, as Michel Fournier recalls, the communist expansion remained limited, as those who kept their jobs felt privileged and those who suffered from job shortages rather felt a fatalist pessimism [3, p. 26]. If the Labor-Progressive Party made some political and organizational gains following the Second World War - going from 16 000 members in 1939 to 23 000 members in 19455 and increasing the number of elected deputies in the House of Commons - the movement was nonetheless unprepared to face the unfavorable circumstances of the post-war era. The Party's agreement to the "No Pledge Strike" restricting the right of strike for the sake of warfare efforts had indeed compromised its ideological legitimacy and its rooting among worker organizations. Weakened by the lack of a social base, the communist movement couldn't properly face the repressive setbacks once the war was over. In Quebec, where the Party had only 500 people amongst its membership as the war ended, the upcoming an-ticommunist measures greatly impaired this already marginalized movement [22, p. 110]. In the light of those numerous hardships endured by the latter and the lack of true representation within the population, one can hardly still argue that communism truly endangered contemporary institutions. It thus appears that the roots of Duplessis' alarmist reaction towards "Red enemies" lies elsewhere.

2.2. "A just man is one who measures his rights against

his duties"6. Between traditionalism and liberalism

In order to understand the adoption of such a coercive line towards communists, it is necessary to look into the State's nature during Duplessis' era. The latter was however the object of a very diverging literature. In the aftermath of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, the society at the time of

Duplessis was largely considered a pre-modern society; rigid and traditionalist. The picture of the Great Darkness' times (1936-1939, 1944-1959) evoked a backwards society, characterized by the domination of the Church over the population and of traditional bourgeois elites. According to Richard Desrosiers in his master degree thesis published in 1971, Maurice Duplessis' ideology was in strict accordance with the dominant ideology i.e. the leading French Canadian class. The vision of the National Union Party's founder was one of a static world, a universe ruled by eternal and immutable principles [23, p. 385-388]. Whereas the rest of the West was going through a growth of the welfare state and entered a new modern era, Quebec had allegedly remained, until 1960, a traditional and clerical society.

Regardless of this dominant historiography, other researchers assert that Duplessis' regime was far more complex than what the concept of Great Darkness implies. Even though the National Union Party's anticommunist line took on a clear conservative and moralizing form, it did not nonetheless necessarily indicate a backwards state structure. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, several historians and sociologists revisited Duplessis' era with a new approach and offered original explanations for the regime's nature. For Jacques Beauchemin, it is important to reinterpretate duplessism so we can truly bring out the fully modern and liberal character of the State in spite of conservatism, which yet undoubtedly shaped it. It is thus important to tell conservatism apart from traditionalism, two often mixed up concepts [24, p. 3355]. In their book "La société libérale duplessiste"Jacques Beauchemin, Jules Duchastel and Gilles Bourque expose Quebec's postwar society with the appearance of a complex structure binding industrial development with the persistence of rurality, clearly containing progress of democratization

with the sustainment of traditional institutions. "We outline, through the concept of liberal society, a society that organizes and maintains itself on the basis of a liberal political regulation or, in other words, that undergoes the liberal phase of a

H

modern state" . The conservative line, without being a traditionalist one, would have rather been linked with a necessity of social reproduction in a liberal society [24, p. 43]. Refuting the theory of the domination of the Church over the State, the three authors reiterate, nonetheless, the importance of the institution, which undoubtedly enjoyed numerous political and juridical privileges as its place within the private sphere remained omnipresent. It indeed asserted its power in the sphere of social regulation as a prominent social force, strongly contributing to the clericalization of political organizations, without yet subjecting laic political authorities. Moreover, the dominance of religious institutions in the social space required a minimal intervention from the State in this sphere. Thus, the Church, enjoying its privileges, would actually have contributed to a political structure of liberal inspiration [25, p. 270-275].

Nevertheless, this liberal society wasn't devoid of contradictions. The transition to a modern State and the development of industrialization had indeed compromised social solidarities and traditional institutions without necessarily leaving place for an alternative model. In absence of a proper welfare state, the conservative institutions could hardly contain the social upheavals, worsening social issues and the emancipating dynamic due to the liberal orientation of the State and its efforts of industrialization. Such risks of social unrest thus required the creation of ethical categories likely to enable social control and disciplinary mechanisms in order to restrict sources of unrest, such as communism [24, p. 33-35]. The political discourse was therefore themed around the no-

tions of stability, duties, responsibilities, collaboration, etc. [26, p. 49]. According to a semantical analysis by Beauche-min, Bourque and Duchastel, it appears that those notions of moral and principles expressed through political speeches helped create a conceptual framing aimed at legitimizing legislative institutions and laws. Social order was furthermore framed by notions of submission and respect for the hierarchy through which the sense of duty shall prevail over democracy and liberties. In the course of this social containment, it became even more important to fight communism, which was considered the absolute opposite of stability, cooperation and order. Anticommunist measures were at the core of this political strategy of maintaining social control. As the State in its speeches associated communism with misery and collapse of traditional institutions, the movement could then also be blamed for social mutations and the problems the society was facing [2, p. 140-155].

2.3. An instrumentalized threat

Anticommunism allowed the maintenance of the social organization in different ways. As the ideology was relentlessly assailed for its promotion of atheism and principles opposed to Christian morals, it allowed the religious institution to maintain power over the society [7, p. 196; 27, p. 5]. However, beyond the interests of the Church, it appears that anticommunist measures were first and foremost motivated by economic and political interests. In a way that helped it discredit its political opponents, The National Union Party often resorted to an amalgamation process as explained by Bourque, Beauchemin and Duchastel [2, p. 178]. While associating its rivals to communism the government could enhance its own reputation and thus place itself as the only protector of democracy "[which] never compromised with com-

munists or their auxiliaries" [2, p. 179]. The notion of auxiliary indeed widened the criteria of inclusion into the so-called "communist label". Through Duplessis' eyes one didn't have to support the ideology to yet help its expansion. In such a manner, Duplessis secured his power during the 1948 and 1956 elections by accusing the Liberal Party of being soft against the Red enemies and creating favorable conditions for the collapse of democracy - even though associating communism with the Liberal Party can seem contradictory [2, p. 178; 7, p. 198]. As a way to undermine any source of political challenge, the government used such amalgam against critical medias, such as the newspaper Le Devoir which he often accused of slander8,and even brandished the specter of a communist plot for every political setback9 .The constant reminder of such a threat was later on toned down by the safety brought by Duplessis' Party as expressed by the Prime Minister himself: "The communist threat really exists, but it is not to be feared, for we have a man at the head of Quebec's legislature who stands up for our rights dearly obtained by our ancestors" [2, p. 177].

Moreover, such accusations became an instrument throughout the clash between the provincial and federal governments. As provincial autonomy became a hobbyhorse for Duplessis' government, this amalgamation strategy appeared to also be useful in discrediting the federal government and legitimizing more provincial jurisdiction. Following Pierre Eliot Trudeau's trip to the Soviet Union, Duplessis accused Canada's Prime Minister himself of sympathizing with the communists by maintaining relations with the enemy and facilitating the arrival of Soviet agents in the country [7, p. 296]. The virulent anticommunist discourse thus became an important tool in his condemnation of federal centralization:

"You have most certainly noticed that centralization of powers has always been the sine qua non condition of Bol-chevism, Fascism, Hitlerism and Communism. Just imagine what would happen to this country of ours if we had only one government for the whole of Canada, directed by the CCF people or by other radical socialists. It is hard enough today with the insidiously socialistic regime we have. <...> Provincial legislatures, the legislature of Quebec in particular, are the essential bulwark against Communism and Socialism. When we are fighting for the safeguard of Provincial autonomy, we are fighting in favor of Democracy and democratic institutions as against the forces of disorder and tyranny so well represented by Communism and Socialism"10.

2.4. Order and stability: a fortress against class fight

"We consider private initiative as one of the main human fundamentals of democratic liberties and of legitimate ambitions, which are essential factors of progress and long lasting prosperity"11. In accordance with the liberal orientation of the State, the National Union Party's regime was characterized, on the socio-economic perspective, by a refusal to intervene in the private enterprises' business if only to ensure its favorable conditions. Private companies, and even foreign companies, indeed benefited from several privileges such as very low royalties, tax exemptions, few social obligations, cheap labor and large territorial concessions for very long periods of time [31, p. 171-173]. That way, the State aimed at making way for a free growth of capital required to limit challenges within the worker associations [24, p. 41]. Since the thirties, the unionizing rate of workers substantially grew and reached 85% in 1939 [31, p. 170]. As we saw, the repressive measures outlined in order to restrict the communist movement were part of a larger attempt to maintain social stability.

However, beyond the communist matter, those measures concealed an outright hostility towards the worker union movement; a hatred that grew stronger in the wake of the 1949 strike in Asbestos. The wave of repression against communists indeed carried on a larger goal of tossing progressive or radical worker unions' representatives aside, making those organizations powerless, and ultimately, controlling the development of the worker union movement. As opposed to the rise of workers' claims, the State under Duplessis had elaborated a very paternalist and disciplinary discourse related to relations between workers and employers. In the course of the aforementioned promotion of moral and individual duties within the social organization, the necessity to respect the social order was reiterated when it came to labor relations. Through an analysis of the speeches given on the occasion of the International Labor Day between 1949 and 1958, it seems obvious that, from Maurice Duplessis' perspective, cooperation within industrial relations, "between conscientious work and honest capital", was the only guarantee for prosperity. "The Union is synonym of strength if it is based on respect of rights and duties of each"; "A true and fair cooperation is a form of sake"; "It is our imperious duty to contribute to progress and prosperity" [30]. As common prosperity had to prevail, workers' grievances were devoid of legitimacy if they compromised the cooperation. In the name of the latter, all claims and the exercise of workers' rights had to be expressed in strict respect of stability and social peace. This ideal of complete alliance between capital and work force was also reiterated by Antonio Barette, Minister of labor, who presented it as a guarantee of the required stability to avoid communistic chaos [32; 33].

Under the cover of the fight against communism, Duples-sis' Party thus outlined a series of bills aimed at restricting

the syndicalist movement and shutting its claim-making initiatives. In addition to the aforementioned Padlock Law, which was largely used against proactive worker unions, Duplessis attempted, in 1949, to pass the bill 5 which was to forbid syndicalist leaders from belonging to a communist group in addition to request from all unions to give a detailed account to the Commission of Labor Relations about their finances, membership, leadership, activities, etc. [34]. Seen as an outright attempt to control all worker unions' activities and as a denial of their rights, the bill was vehemently opposed by the Canadian Labor Congress, the Provincial Federation of Labor and the Confederation of Catholic Workers of Canada in such a manner that the Party eventually renounced it. However, in 1954, the government managed to apply its dispositions regarding communists, under the new bills 19 and 20, requesting a proof of good faith from labor associations in order to obtain their accreditation from the Commission of Labor Relations, therefore providing the latter with an arbitrary right to shut down their syndicalist initiative [35, p. 40]. The Commission wasn't required to provide justification for the denial of certificates of accreditation. Retroactively applied from 1944, these bills were also often used to strip away the right to plan a strike from organizations that were deemed too militant [15, p. 219]. Attempts to undermine the worker union movement furthermore led to the weakening of intersyndical-ist solidarities. In addition to purges within worker unions worried about falling under the label of "Bolshevik agents" because of radical members, associations of workers ended up divided to the point of accusing each other of subversive tendencies. Those unions suspected of communistic allegiances were systematically isolated from other unions worried for their rights. If they complied with a strict opposition to communism, they would however benefit from favorable

conditions, as did the unions under the Confederation of Catholic Workers of Canada [31, p. 171-173]. In 1959, the government modified the bill 54 in order to facilitate the recourse to injunctions in case of strikes, furthermore weakening workers' power of negotiation [15, p. 224]. In the quality of general attorney, Maurice Duplessis had at his disposal, the right to decide of the legality of all strikes and therefore legitimize the use of force. The latter was indeed repeatedly used to put a quick end to workers' disturbances. Before even being requested by local authorities, the provincial police intervened almost systematically in labor conflicts, particularly in those involving international worker unions. As an example, the archives recall the quick intervention of the police in the occasion of the strikes in 1946 in Valleyfield, in Asbestos in 1949, in Louisville in 1952, in Murdochville in 1957, etc. [36; 37; 38; 39; 40; 15, p. 226]. On this matter, Hélène David exposed the violent tactics pulled out by the police in order to intimidate workers and bring an end to strikes. The provincial force indeed proceeded to making arbitrary arrests among the picket lines, sacking of worker unions' headquarters and intruding workers' residences overnight [35, p. 49]. This close collaboration between the State and private companies in maintaining a labor order is furthermore clearly reiterated in the private correspondence between James Y. Murdoch, from Noranda Mines Limited and Maurice Duplessis, the latter demonstrating his full support to the employers throughout the ongoing strikes [41].

Conclusion

In the wake of the Second World War, confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union fostered a feeling of insecurity within the country. On the behalf of this ideological war, communists in North America were associated with

a foreign threat. In Canada, as well as in the United States, those were therefore widely marginalized and fell victims of political profiling through several measures undertaken by the State. In Quebec, the so-called protection of democracy took a peculiar aspect as the State developed a moralistic rhetoric justifying all means against the Red enemy for the sake of the national identity and traditional institutions. If the anti-communist fight benefited several societal authorities, such as the Church, it however became clear that repression of communists was mostly used by the State to serve economic and political interests. Not only as an electoral strategy, the anticommunism was also used as a process of social regulation and control of political challenges potentially compromising for the established order. Through a liberal dimension, but yet also disciplinary, the State opposed emancipating dynamics to the requirements of a prosperous collaboration and of the overall duties of a rightful citizen. In such manner, anticommunist measures in the field of labor met the purposes of the State: containing the worker union movement, repressing sources of conflict in the industrial world and thus favoring a free growth of capital. Without ever being a real threat for western institutions, communist protagonists and numerous people who could remotely be viewed as such, were yet at the core of a strategy of consolidation of existing authorities and development of mechanisms of social control.

Notes

1. In spite of their subjectivity, contemporary newspapers allow to follow the media treatment of communists in Quebec as well as measures undertaken by the government. In order to combine different perspectives and therefore reduce the media, the newspapers Le Devoir and L 'Action catholique were chosen for their divergent editorial lines.

2. An "unlawful organization" was defined as one that advocated the "use of force" in promoting economic or governmental change, but "force" was left open to interpretation. The section permitted government seizure of the property of a "suspected" unlawful organization and made it illegal for any building owner to lease a building to an unlawful organization under threat of a maximum prison sentence of five years. http://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/section-98-criminal-code/.

3. The affair wasn't public yet in order to prevent the relations with the Soviet Union from worsening as the war had just come to an end.

4. The Recorder Court was created in 1851 with the purpose of ensuring peace and tranquility in Montreal. In 1952, it was replaced by the municipal court Montreal-CMM.

5. This number of 20 000 is an estimate; 10 months later in the 2nd Labor-Progressive Party report, its leader, Tim Buck, claimed that the organization had 23 000 members [22, p. 108].

6. Quote from French ecclesiastic Jean-Baptiste HenriDominique Lacordaire in many of Duplessis' speeches on Labor day from 1949 to 1958 [1].

7. The authors however remind us about the importance of differentiation between liberal societies and liberalism, in the sense that those societies aren't necessarily the embodiment of liberal theories in their ideal form [2, p. 160]. Free translation.

8. Under the direction of Gérard Filion, Le Devoir indeed published several articles criticizing the government's management of social conflicts and especially its lack of effort in solving the problem of asbestosis among mine workers [28; 2, p. 180].

9. For instance, the argument of a communist plot was evoked to justify the collapse of a bridge in Trois-Rivière which caused 6 casualties [29].

10. Quoted from a personal letter sent by Duplessis to Mr. McCornell, president of the newspaper Montreal Star [30].

11. From Duplessis' 1950 New Year speech [30].

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