FFWD Weekly
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History
by David BrightA crowd gathers on the streets of Calgary. There’s tension in the air, as the massing numbers threaten to bring traffic to a standstill. Suddenly there’s a shout and the crowd moves forward as a single entity.... Just then, the first float appears from around the corner, and yet another Stampede parade begins....
A month earlier, of course, a much smaller crowd had prompted the city to send unprecedented numbers of armed police onto the streets, as Calgary played host to the World Petroleum Conference. Officers handed protestors a sheet detailing their Charter rights to peaceful protest, accompanied by a much longer list of actions that might result in their arrest. At no time did the number of protestors amount to more than 0.5 per cent of those attending this year’s Stampede, but still the message was clear: if you’re going to going to stage a demonstration, you’d better wear a cowboy hat.
Coming quickly on top of one another, the WPC and Stampede raise important questions about the right of lawful assembly in Calgary. When does a peaceful gathering – whether protest or parade – become unlawful? Who decides this? What’s more important: the intentions of the crowd or their actions? In short, just how public is Calgary’s public space?
These are not new questions. During the Great Depression, they surfaced in dramatic form as the growing ranks of the unemployed – led by the Communist Party – clashed with the police in a series of bloody confrontations on the city’s streets. The immediate issue was the struggle to preserve existing terms and conditions of unemployment benefits paid by the city. Beneath this concern, however, was a fight to define and defend the right to protest in public.
By 1930, more than a quarter of Calgary’s workforce was unemployed and the cost of providing them all with relief was proving too much for the city. Accordingly, the council cut its assistance that winter. The unemployed staged a parade to protest this move, but forgot to apply for a parade permit. The police seized upon this oversight and moved in to arrest six of the Communist leaders who had organized the march. "The unemployed are being treated fairly in this city and there is no need for any demonstration of any kind," declared Mayor Andrew Davison in early 1931. With that, he promptly refused to sign permits for any of the parades planned for that spring.
Denied the right of peaceful protest, the unemployed took matters into their own hands. By then, it was standard practice to perform some nominal work – digging holes, clearing ditches, etc. – in return for unemployment assistance. When the city proposed a new round of relief cuts in June 1931, the call went out to refuse even this work until the cuts were restored – in other words, the unemployed declared themselves on strike!
The problem was that many of the unemployed ignored this strike call and continued working for their relief. This obviously undermined the effectiveness of the strike, and so on the morning of June 29, 1931, crowds of striking unemployed marched on relief work sites across the city in an effort to persuade the others to join them. Things soon got ugly. "They will not go to work," one of the strikers shouted. "We will not let them, we will kill them first."
At this point, the police entered the fray and arrested the strike leaders on a charge of unlawful assembly. Later that evening, a crowd of several hundred gathered downtown to protest this action. The police moved in once more, declaring this gathering also to be unlawful. This time the confrontation turned violent: bricks and bottles were thrown, fracturing the skull of one officer. Police arrested more than 30 protestors, but were not satisfied to leave it at this. At 9 o’clock they raided the headquarters of the striking unemployed and, according to one witness, "clubbed over the heads about 100 men and women, who... were driven to the rear of the basement where some of them were badly hurt."
When the dust settled, there were the legal ramifications to be dealt with. Six Communists appeared in court charged with unlawful assembly. All received jail sentences and two – Sophie Sheinen and Hans Thernes – were committed for deportation upon their release. At the heart of the trial was the question: just what constituted an unlawful assembly?
An answer was provided in December 1931 when the Alberta Supreme Court heard an appeal of these convictions. Chief Justice Harvey rejected the argument that the gathering had not been unlawful in its intent, instead stating:
"Persons lawfully assembled may become an unlawful assembly if they conduct themselves with a common purpose in such a manner as would have made their assembling unlawful if they had assembled in that manner for that purpose.... The seriousness of the offence of which they were convicted lies in the probable or even possible consequences...."
This convoluted ruling takes some reading, but its implications were momentous. From now on, any assembly could be declared unlawful not because of its intent or its action, but simply on the basis of its "probable or even possible" outcome. In short, every public gathering was now a potential riot.
Clashes between the unemployed and police continued over the next few years, but now the authorities had an important legal weapon on their side. The courts had redefined peaceful protests, thereby limiting the idea of public space in the city. Seventy years later, the same issues would resurface as protestors once more took to the streets. Who said everyone loves a parade...?
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