James Bryson MacLachlan, 1869-1937
Jim McLachlan was born in Ecclefechan, Scotland on February 9, 1869. The son of workers – his people were cotton weavers and farm labourers – he spent a number of years in the Lanarkshire coalfields. Influenced by social critics such as Thomas Carlyle and by labour leaders like Keir Hardie, he early committed himself to a questioning, activist and progressive approach.
He immigrated to Cape Breton when he was 33, in 1902, and began work in the Princess Colliery. It was a period of industrial expansion and large-scale immigration. Within the year he had brought his wife, Katherine Greenshields, and his family across to Sydney Mines. He soon became involved in the union movement and began to contribute to the developing working class consciousness in industrial Cape Breton and to the ever-increasing radical segment within the ranks of Nova Scotia miners.
When District 26, United Mine Workers of America was formed in 1909, McLachlan was elected Secretary-Treasurer. At that point he moved to Glace Bay. The hard and bitter strike of 1909 followed. McLachlan, like many others, was blacklisted. He continued with District 26 until it was disbanded in 1915. In 1916 he was instrumental in organizing the unaffiliated United Mine Workers of Nova Scotia. Late in the spring of 1917, the two organizations (UMWNS, PWA) joined together in the new Amalgamated Mine Workers of Nova Scotia and at their first convention in Sydney in October, 1917, McLachlan was again elected Secretary-Treasurer. He continued in this position when the Amalgamated became the reconstituted District 26 in 1919 and remained there until removed by John L. Lewis during the tumultuous strike of 1923. He had never been defeated in a union election.
Jim McLachlan was arrested at the beginning of the 1923 strike. The prosecution was led by the Attorney General of Nova Scotia and was an acknowledgement by the authorities of the immense influence and inspiration wielded by McLachlan within the working class during Cape Breton’s intense industrial conflict. The charge – seditious libel – was a curious one and prompted Dawn Fraser to write:
“Away false teachings of my youth, it’s now a crime to speak the truth.”
McLachlan was released from Dorchester penitentiary in March, 1924, and immediately returned to Glace Bay where he became editor of the Maritime Labor Herald. Blacklisted from the mines, prohibited from involvement in the UMW, he continued his role as a powerful, questioning and critical voice in economic, social and political issues of concern to Cape Bretoners. He edited the Nova Scotia Miner from 1929 to 1935.
He helped to organize the Socialist Party of Canada in the area in 1910 and ran on the ticket in the provincial election of 1916. The following year he assisted in establishing the Independent Labour Party in Nova Scotia and was the candidate under that banner in the federal elections of 1921 and 1926. He was a Labour candidate in the provincial elections of 1928 and 1933. In the early 1920s, he became a member of the Communist Party of Canada and sought election as a member of that party in the 1935 federal election. He was 65 when he ran his last campaign. In this latter period he was also president of the Workers Unity League (1930-1936), a national and very active group which stressed the need for revolutionary organizations. Jim McLachlan died in Glace Bay on November 2, 1937.
A powerful speaker, a learned man, a radical, an individual completely committed to the cause of the worker, his epitaph – from the Old Testament – on his gravestone reads: “Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”
Away, False Teachings of my Youth
Away false teachings of my youth,
It’s now a crime to speak the truth;
This man of law has so decreed
That it’s a base and foul deed
Well meriting the dungeon cell
For anyone to boldly tell.
Yes it’s a crime for me or you
To state a thing we know is true.
So, let us warn the nation’s youth
That it’s a crime to speak the truth;
They made the law to fit the case,
To lead McLachlan to disgrace.
So crucify him on a cross
Because he dared to sass the boss,
Because he had the guts to tell
The company to go to hell.
Merry Christmas to you, Jim
Merry Christmas to you, Jim,
In your prison dungeon dim;
What although the bars are cold,
They have sheltered hearts of gold,
Fit companions they for you –
Steel is strong and steel is true.
Ah, better, yes with you to stand
Than humbly lick a tyrant’s hand,
Like salves and traitors to the cause
Who pawn their souls for men’s applause;
The steel were truer friend than him –
Merry Christmas to you, Jim.
Dawn Fraser, Echoes from Labor’s War: Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s (New Hogtown Press, Toronto, 1976).
This brief biography of the legendary union organizer J.B. McLachlan was provided to us by the J.B. McLachlan Commemorative Society.
© 2009 J.B. McLachlan Commemorative Society
© C@P Society of Cape Breton County, 2009
