William Coaker and the Fishermen’s Protective Union – Part II, Politics and Decline

On the eve of World War I (1914-18) the Fisherman’s Protective Union (FPU), founded by William Ford Coaker, was prospering. It had recruited members from all over the colony of Newfoundland, especially in the heavily-Protestant settlements along the Northeast Coast. The union had also spun off into other ventures aimed at helping fishers break free of merchant control. Apart from establishing the Union Trading Company (UTC), which operated its own stores, the FPU took an even more radical step in 1919 when it founded its own community, Port Union.

Despite these achievements, Coaker’s ultimate goal was to dismantle the colony’s “truck system.” This system had governed the Newfoundland fishery for many years. Under truck fishers received little or no pay for their catches. Instead, they were outfitted with gear – nets, hooks and lines, etc. – by a merchant to whom all their fish was delivered. At the end of the season the value of a fisher’s catch was weighed against the amount of gear (and Summer provisions) he had been forwarded by the merchant. In good years the value of the landings would be greater than the costs, allowing the fisher to take what was owed him in goods from the merchant’s shop. In theory, this allowed fishers and their families to subsist over the Winter. In practice, the system often left fishers in debt to the merchant. Bad fishing seasons often meant that merchants had to extend credit to their client fishers or see them starve. Many Newfoundlanders were left permanently in debt to merchants, many of whom were accused – not always fairly – of “cooking the books” to make sure the system worked in their favour (In actual fact, some merchants were ruined by continuing to extend credit during a number of unprofitable years).

Coaker was determined to see truck replaced by a cash economy, under which fishers would be paid directly for their catches. With the truck system firmly in place for decades, it was unlikely that Coaker’s objective could be met by a union alone. Real change required mastery of forces like quality control, reduction of harmful competition between exporters, and development of new markets. All these things could only be done by government. Unfortunately, the established political parties didn’t seem to be listening.

Coaker decided to form a political arm of the FPU, a strategy outlined at union conventions on Change Islands (1909) and at Bonavista (1912). The FPU entered a seat sharing arrangement with the opposition Liberals to defeat the government of prime minister Sir Edward Morris (1859-1935); Morris’ Peoples’ Party had made many promises to fishers which were later reneged on. Coaker felt the Liberals, in combination with his own party, were the best hope for positive reform. Sadly for the FPU, the Liberals did badly in the 1913 election, losing most of their districts and allowing Morris’ return to power. In the north, where the FPU ran candidates, they won eight of nine seats, including one for Coaker. These were not traditional members of Newfoundland’s House of Assembly (MHAs), drawn from the Island’s professional and business classes. Among their number were a boatbuilder, a tinsmith, two clerks, a school master and, of course, three fishermen. It was a tribute to how the strength of the union had grown.

In the House of Assembly, through the union newspaper, and by regular letters, Coaker fought against government corruption and mismanagement. He even travelled to the Spring seal hunt, observing working conditions on board the steamers. It is possible that, as part of an elected administration, the FPU might have achieved its aims, but in 1914 the Great War intervened. Although he was a sincere reformer, and unhappy with the way Morris handled the outbreak of war, like many Newfoundlanders of his day William Coaker supported Britain and its empire. Despite being over forty, he considered enlisting for active duty, but was talked out of the idea by supporters.

By 1917 Morris had decided, with the backing of Britain’s Colonial Office, to extend the life of his government for a year to see out the war crisis. This left the opposition, including Coaker, in a bad position. When Morris offered concessions for them to join a national coalition government, the union and the Liberals agreed. A portion of the union platform was suspended until the war was won, but measures including a bill to reform conditions for sealers and loggers was passed with no amendments. On the downside, as part of the government Coaker and his supporters were forced to share in unpopular decisions, including conscription. Compulsory military service was popular in St. John’s but reviled in the outports. Coaker first promised to resist conscription, but in the end his patriotism won out at the expense of union solidarity. In the end the effects of the war had grave repercussions on the union. The reforms sought by Coaker and his co-unionists in the early days of the FPU were within reach during the artificial prosperity created from 1914-19. Wartime expediency outweighed their immediate implementation, however, and the golden opportunity was lost.

In November 1919, Newfoundlanders went to the polls for the first time in six years. This time the Liberal-Union alliance, now under Richard Squires (1880-1940) and called the Liberal Reform Party, won the government. Squires’ tenure began just as the wartime boom ended. Unemployment grew and up to 1,500 people were leaving the Dominion annually. People demonstrated in the streets of St. John’s and rioting erupted at the House of Assembly in 1921. Coaker was now head of one of the most important government portfolios, Minister of Fisheries, and it seemed within his power to set things right. The government initiated a scheme to implement a regulated fishery including government-backed research, grading and inspections, a system of foreign trade agents, information services (for weather and market reports), plus regulation of merchant marketing practices.

By this time international forces had taken the initiative out of government’s hands. Scandinavian competitors, absent during much of the war, re-entered the market. Prices fell, creating chaos among local exporters, who then circumvented the new regulations, selling fish at rock-bottom prices. Neither the government nor the union were to blame for the market troubles, but the introduction of the reforms at the same time led many to point fingers. Also, merchants vigorously opposed the reforms and were successful in having them revoked. This failure even led many fishers to doubt their own union’s program. It became clear that the truck system hadn’t been broken.

Even amidst these troubles, Coaker thought big, supporting a pulp and paper mill project on the Humber River which seemed like a solution to debt and government relief programs. The mill aside, from this point the FPU’s glory days were well and truly finished. Coaker felt he was taking on too much with his political career, union presidency, and managing the union’s business holdings. In 1923 he accepted a knighthood sponsored by Squires. Three years later he resigned his post with the union, and in 1932 retired from government. Coaker and the union were absolved in a 1924 scandal that revealed Squires’ complicity in embezzlement, but the tarnish from Coaker’s other activities weren’t so easily removed. From 1923 on, Coaker’s main interest was the union’s business enterprises. Ironically, the man who started out pledging to break the credit system ran his businesses more and more like a traditional merchant. Ventures spawned by the FPU were now little more than limited companies in which union members had little say. Before the war Coaker intended to challenge the traditional system by offering fishers cash for their product. By the late-1920s the Union Trading Company was one of Newfoundland’s largest creditors, and Coaker instructed managers not to take fish if they had to pay cash. Coaker grew wealthy and the union began its long, terminal decline. The distinction between the Liberals and the Union Party gradually blurred until the latter was absorbed.

Coaker retired in 1932, and passed away in 1938. He was buried at Port Union, the community he founded. The legacy left by the FPU is mixed. Coaker’s own business practices in the 1920s soured his reputation with some unionists. The UTC continued operations until the 1970s, but little had been done to cement a union movement among Newfoundland fishers ­ that had to wait forty years. Likewise, Newfoundland’s strict class structure and the credit system remained intact. Any gains that had been made to that end were destroyed by the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Still, historian Ian McDonald argues that it is false to say the FPU accomplished nothing. The great range of activities undertaken by the union destroyed the notion that common Newfoundlanders and Labradorians weren’t fit to rule themselves. For over fifteen years union members engaged in everything from legislative activity, to running union locals, and organizing social activities. They were also willing to accept the leadership of a figure like William Coaker, outside the establishment in Newfoundland politics. This demonstrated a spirit of independence, and a willingness to entertain novel solutions to the ills suffered by ordinary people. At the very least, Coaker and his movement gave pride and self-respect to a generation of fishers who had been fully at the mercy of the merchant class. By supporting progressive legislation to conserve timber stocks and seal herds, plus bills to introduce a strict grading system for cod, union members displayed a good understanding of their own economic self-interest which even the merchants appear to have lacked. As McDonald remarks, it was not perhaps that Coaker never did enough but that the colony had too few leaders like himself and Bond.

Sponsored Listings