Reg McQuaid  was staff for the International Commission for Coordination of Solidarity Among Sugarworkers (ICSASSW) which worked closely with LAWG.

 

Intertwined History

 

The sugar work began in 1973. It grew out of GATT-fly, which was largely the creation of John Foster and George Cram, and the first staff person was John Dillon. I understand that they were part of the LAWG collective so in that sense they were intertwined. When GATT-fly was formed to do research into action around an alternative trade policy for Canada, the first international conference to be held was around sugar, the International Sugar Conference in 1973. I had recently returned from India and was interested in the concept of trade and development, so I volunteered with GATT-fly. They then asked me to help them prepare a brief on sugar, on what Canada’s position should be at the sugar conference. I was given files from Brewster Kneen’s research, and also Greg Arbour, who had done some research the previous year, which I think had to do with John Foster going to the UNCTAD conference in Santiago, Chile in ’72. So GATT-fly grew out of that conference and the sugar work grew out of GATT-fly. As matters developed, the government ignored our brief.

 

Through the analysis of LAWG we were oriented towards the role of labour. In India I never gave a second through to sugarcane, or rarely, because I was surrounded by it. So I was well familiar with how it grew, and how it was processed and all that. And the fact that slaves were freed by the British Empire, India brought indentured workers to the colonies where sugar was produced. So in some ways I was conditioned to it. But as far as an understanding of the trade union movement and things like that, that analysis came largely, I think, through LAWG.

 

In 1976 or ’77 there was an international conference of sugarworkers, I believe in Mexico. I think it was an IUF, International Union of Foodworkers conference. I remember we looked at the list of unions that were present there, and they were all these AFL-CIO types and the ICFTU, and also I think IFPAW, the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers. This was in the height of the Cold War when trade unions were regarded ideologically. So when we saw that list, we saw that all the unions that we were in touch with in Latin America through, well really it was LAWG who had the on-the-ground connections, were not represented. One does not have to be terribly sophisticated to know the history the AFL-CIO and American Institute of Free Labour Development and the CIA. About how they were infiltrating and subverting trade union democracy throughout Latin America. So we said, we want to have an international sugarworkers conference with the unions that we are working with, who we know

to be the authentic, democratic representatives of the workers in those countries.

 

The Significance of the LAWG History Project to Future Generations?

 

I can think it will give people an opportunity to build upon what other people have started or tried to do. We don’t have to invent the wheel. We don’t have to start from zero. Because the questions, the situations which activists try to address nowadays, it’s important to know that people in the past have also tried to address them. To put it positively, the present or future generations could learn from our activism in what we should be doing. Or to put it negatively, they could learn by our mistakes and not have to repeat them. They could say, “Ah, this is where they went wrong” and they could be more effective.