Hawkins described her experiences at the picket line of workers on strike against Quality Meat Packers (QMP) in Toronto, which she had visited two days earlier. The company’s inability to divide the workforce by nationality is a strength of the workers there fighting for livable wages, she said.

André Blémur, who has been working at Volailles Marvid for 18 years and who is now a general worker in the salting department, asked how did QMP workers achieved this level of unity.

Hawkins replied that QMP workers are using their union more effectively by drawing on their experiences during a previous strike they lost six years ago. “They are mobilizing union power like you are doing now,” she said. The need of workers to organize unions and use those that already exist to resist more effectively the bosses’ attacks on our wages and benefits has been at the center of the SWP campaign, Hawkins said, along with the need to build a labor party based on the trade unions that would fight to defend the interests of working people 365 days a year.

Glorieuse Dorvil, another Volailles Marvid worker, said the threats of closing the plant don’t scare them anymore.

Hawkins said she identified with this attitude. Only by standing up to the employers and telling them, when they threaten to shut down, that any company that can’t pay decent wages and benefits doesn’t deserve to stay in business do we have a chance to fight to win, she said. And if a company folds up tent and moves, workers should do our best to follow them wherever they go and collaborate with fellow workers at the new location to organize and fight the bosses there too.

Later that afternoon, Hawkins met with other workers on strike against the provincial liquor stores. In the evening she spoke at a Militant Labor Forum in Montreal, which 20 people attended.

Hawkins was welcomed by students at two colleges the next day. At Maisonneuve Cegep, the International Solidarity Action Group (GASI), a student organization, opened its office to anyone who wanted to hear about and discuss the SWP campaign.

After Hawkins described her experiences on the Volailles Marvid picket line, one of the students asked about the exact location of the poultry workers strike. Eight of the students signed up to visit the picket line.

One of the students said that workers in northern Quebec had occupied a part of the aluminum refinery protesting the shutdown of that operation. He explained that they were able to run the smelter better than the bosses had, which showed that workers don’t need bosses.

Hawkins said that such gains can only be temporary as long as the capitalist system remains intact. A social revolution is needed, so workers and farmers can take state power and begin reorganizing production and distribution of goods for the benefit of the vast majority, not the profits of a tiny minority, she said.

Hawkins and campaign supporters were there all morning. Before students left for classes at noon, several had bought copies of the Militant and Pathfinder Press pamphlets in French.

That afternoon, through the initiative of one of the students who had heard Hawkins speak the day before at the Militant Labor Forum, Hawkins spoke to a political science class at Rosemont College. One of the students was happy to translate and even though the professor had originally allotted 15 minutes for Hawkins he kept encouraging students to ask any questions they might have.

One of the points that drew the students’ interest was the explanation by Hawkins on why the SWP campaign champions the right of semicolonial countries to develop the sources of energy they need for economic development, including nuclear power . Such development, she said, is a precondition for any economic and political advances of working people. The SWP campaign also exposes the hypocritical efforts of Washington and other imperialist powers to prevent countries like Iran and north Korea from developing nuclear energy under the banner of “nonproliferation,” Hawkins said.

The lively exchange lasted about 45 minutes and Hawkins was warmly applauded at the end.
 

He and other workers were interested in the descriptions by Hawkins of working-class struggles throughout North America—from the Co-Op miners’ union organizing fight in Huntington, Utah, to the Quality Meat Packers strike in Toronto, Ontario.

Campaigning at the Halls plant gate was a highlight of the November 11-13 visit to Scotland by the SWP vice-presidential candidate.

Hawkins also joined a team of Militant distributors at the Soapworks factory in Glasgow, where workers recently scored a victory after striking for better wages and dignity on the job. Seventeen Soapworks workers bought copies of the Militant during campaigning at that plant gate.

“They’re using our compassion for suffering to whip up support for the war, but it was about oil. If there had been a justification for war, though, I would have voted for it,” said Steven, one worker who spoke to Hawkins for a while, referring to the U.S.-led war against Iraq.

“All their wars are to maintain economic domination and about how the imperialist powers will divide the world among themselves,” Hawkins replied. “They are never about easing suffering of the Iraqis or any other peoples.”

“Why does Britain always follow the U.S.?” was one of the questions at a November 11 Militant Labour Forum here, where Hawkins spoke on the “Real Results of the U.S. Elections.”

“Blair is not George Bush’s poodle,” Hawkins replied. “The British ruling class is following its own policies. It sees participation in the war in Iraq as strengthening its interests in the region. French and German imperialism lost their investments in Iraq but the British government wants a piece of the action through its ‘special relationship’ with Washington.” Since the decline of the British empire during World War II, and the emergence of Washington as the number one imperialist power, London has clung to this relationship out of its relative weakness, Hawkins said.

“Why do people in the Third World who grow rice end up eating rice from the U.S. because it is cheaper?” asked a worker from Halls, attending his first forum.

“The tentacles of finance capital reach into every country,” said Hawkins in response. “U.S. government subsidies, just like EU agricultural subsidies, go mainly to big capitalist farmers. Peasants in the Third World cannot compete, and they are driven off the land in huge numbers. Conditions of life become intolerable. As a result of imperialist domination, millions are driven to immigrate to the imperialist countries. We now find many working people from Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the factories and mines of the United States. To unite the working class across borders, we support the right of semicolonial countries to adopt whatever trade tariffs they need to protect domestic industry and agriculture, but we demand that Washington drop all its tariffs and other protectionist measures. We also demand the cancellation of the foreign debt of semicolonial nations and support their right to electrification by whatever means, including nuclear power, to achieve economic development that’s necessary for any advances for workers and farmers.”

After her visit to Scotland, Hawkins headed to London.  
 
 
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