The "October Crisis" in Quebec

The following article, originally titled “Abolish the War Measures Act!” is reprinted from SC No. 45, November/December 1980.

“So I told one guy, I think it was (Pierre) Vallieres or (Charles) Gagnon: ‘We’re arresting you for nothing. You went and sat down in front of the United Nations building in 1965 and you went on a hunger strike demanding to be recognized as a political prisoner. Well, my friend, you have become one.

“‘Now I’m arresting you, and I have no charges against you. Go to jail—I don’t know for how long—and wait!’”

—Gilles Masse, Montreal Police Brotherhood president describing the October 1970 arrests, quoted in the Globe and Mail, 4 October [1980]

The 1970 October Crisis. Trudeau invokes the draconian War Measures Act following the kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross and Quebec labor minister Pierre Laporte by the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ). Armored cars roll into Montreal and fully armed troopers in battle dress guard public buildings.

Over 450 “suspects”—labor leaders, separatists, leftists—are rounded up and held incommunicado for days, without charges, as all civil liberties are suspended. The capitalist media exploit the wild rumors of Cuban involvement, lengthy FLQ hit lists, the ravings of cabinet ministers to create a climate of fear to justify the government’s dictatorial measures. Trudeau speaks darkly of “apprehended insurrection.” The conservative Catholic editor of Le Devoir Claude Ryan is implicated in a mythical provisional government. Jean Marchand spins a lurid yarn of “3,000 terrorists armed with rifles and enough dynamite to blow up the heart of Montreal.”

The welter of reminiscences, official inquiries, journalistic reviews and new trials marking the tenth anniversary of the “October Crisis” all point to the total fabrication of evidence used by the Liberal governments in Ottawa and Quebec to justify the repression. The Keable commission “investigating” RCMP crimes, the Duchaine report and the unmasking of several police agents within the FLQ point to the strong probability that the authorities had foreknowledge of the kidnappings but chose to exploit the situation to deal a knockout blow to the entire nationalist movement. Almost all of the kidnappers had been followed, photographed and investigated for years; the cops knew within days, if not hours, the handful of FLQers they were looking for. But Trudeau and then-Quebec premier Robert Bourassa saw an opportunity to harass, intimidate and disrupt the activities of their political foes. The massive display of force was aimed not only at separatists but at the left and the militant Quebec labor movement. Not one of the known members of the FLQ was picked up in the wave of mass arrests.

The War Measures Act gives the bourgeois state the legal means to dispense with all supposed guarantees of democratic rights whenever it feels that capitalist rule is being challenged. This dictatorial anti-working class piece of legislation must be abolished. For the Communist Party of Canada, however, the problem was “that the War Measures Act contributed nothing to counteracting the juvenile terrorist activities of the FLQ” (Canadian Tribune, 20 October [1980]). From the mouths of Stalinists this is not such a surprising statement. The Italian CP has been outspoken in clamoring for the enforcement of “law and order” against the Red Brigades—demanding expansion of the state secret police and more suppression of “political criminality.”

As Leninists we reject the impotent petty-bourgeois strategy of terrorism, which is born out of pessimism over the ability of the working masses to overthrow their oppressors. Inevitably terrorist acts provide a pretext for massive state terror, as did the 1970 kidnappings. We condemn acts of random terror, such as the mailbox bombings of the sixties, which endanger the lives of innocent people. But although the Felquistes were misguided, their targets in October 1970 were symbols of imperialist oppression and capitalist rule. We demand that those imprisoned for the Cross/Laporte kidnappings be freed!

The War Measures Act was intended as a warning to the Québécois that the slightest threat of separation would be met with all the military muscle the Canadian state could muster. It is the elementary duty of the Canadian labor movement and socialists to unconditionally defend Quebec’s right to independence. Only through the active defense of the democratic national and language rights of the Québécois can the basis be laid for truly uniting French- and English-speaking workers in the struggle for North American socialist revolution.