Copyright 2014-2017 David R. Henderson
Selected Content
Fighting the Draft: My Incredibly Successful
Initiation into Political Activism
Related to Chapter 18, Freedom in Our Time
In Chapter 18, I wrote in a footnote that my own first experience at political activism was tremendously effective. Here is that story.
The libertarian activism in which I was directly involved had to do with the draft. In 1968, Gerard Pelletier, Canada's secretary of state in Pierre Trudeau's government, suggested a draft for civilian work. Young people would be required to spend a year working for the government at artificially low wages. The penalty for refusing to go would be a prison sentence. I immediately wrote a letter to the Winnipeg Free Press, which was published. I wrote:
I read with astonishment the article in the Free Press, October 29, entitled Non-Military Draft Plan Under Study. The only objection to the idea made by State Secretary Gerard Pelletier was that it would be difficult to put into practice. Considerations of justice do not appear to have entered his mind.
It is indicative of the temper of our times that when people propose government intervention, they do not say, "Is it right?" but only "Can we get away with it?"
In the same article Mr. Pelletier is quoted as saying that the young would like to "play their part in creating a more just society." I am one of those young people. Because I want a just society I am taking my stand. I refuse to be coerced into serving a year for the government. Government intervention has never led to a just society and never will. (November 9, 1968.)
Nationwide, the absence of any upset in response to Pelletier's proposal was itself upsetting. Remember that this was in a country with a strong anti-draft tradition: Canada had avoided a draft during most of World Wars I and II, even though it had sent plenty of man off to war. Truth to be told, the absence of any upset, given that I was 18 at the time, was downright scary. My libertarian friends felt the same way. The next month, we learned that Pelletier was scheduled to speak at a French-Canadian conference in St. Boniface, a largely French-speaking city within the borders of Winnipeg.
We decided to hold a protest. One of the members of our group, Dennis Owens, called one of the organizers of the conference to ask permission for our group of about 10 people to show up and hold a peaceful protest. We promised that we would be protesting only the draft and not anything having to do with French/English relations, which were in a delicate state at the time. We were given permission.
About two weeks before the demonstration, we decided that it would be a good idea to write up a short statement expressing our principled opposition to the draft, a statement that was pro-freedom and general enough that it could attract signatures from people across the ideological spectrum. Also, it called on Pelletier not only not to push for the draft but also never again even to advocate it. My friend and mentor, Clancy Smith, was the chief author of the statement. We took our time getting signatures-hey, we were college students-and then, on a Thursday night, realized that the demonstration was to happen on Saturday afternoon. We needed to add to the roughly 100 signatures we had obtained.
So on Friday morning, a core group of about five of us started hanging out in front of the cafeteria at the University of Winnipeg and asking everyone who entered or exited for a signature. I had the time of my life. It was fun trying to figure out, with each person, how to make the case. It was also fun flirting with the various attractive co-eds. And the rewards were often immediate-signatures on the bottom lines. Around noon, when the cafeteria was busiest, an English professor named Elmer Reimer picked an argument with Clancy. Reimer, a decent, good-hearted, if somewhat pompous, man, attacked Clancy, whom I think he liked, for his libertarian "notions." Clancy called him on that, saying, "How come, whenever you present your ideas, they're ideas, but whenever we present our ideas, they're notions?" The fight attracted lots of attention; I think a lot of the students liked seeing a fellow student stand up to a professor, especially when there was no physical violence and when the student was so passionate and articulate at the same time. So we signature gatherers went through the crowd and noticed that the signatures were coming faster and faster. By about 4:00 p.m. that day, we found that we had collected over 400 additional signatures, for a total of over 500. Not bad for a Friday at a partially commuter campus with a total student body of under 4,000.
That evening, we adjourned to Clancy's father's basement to work on our posters. To make clear that this was not an anti-French demonstration, we made some of the signs in French. I made one, based on a line from Barry Goldwater: "We consent to be governed. We do not elect to be ruled."
At about 9:30 that evening, while we were at the tail end of making our signs, Clancy's phone rang. It was an aide to Pelletier. He had gotten wind of our demonstration and had called to ask us to change our minds. Clancy said no. Then the aide asked if he could come over and talk to us that evening. Clancy said yes. He then asked Clancy if, in return, we would cancel our protest. Clancy said no. The aide replied that he and a couple of other Pelletier aides would be there in about an hour. I was stunned. Here I was, at age 18, and the oldest person in the room was probably 21 or 22, and the aides to a top Canadian politician, one of Prime Minister Trudeau's closest buddies, was asking for an appointment with us. For the next hour, while we were waiting, we argued about what our approach should be. One of the group, Dennis Owens, thought we should be explicitly libertarian. But three of the others, Clancy, Mike Prime, and Perry Taylor, were equally as adamant that we shouldn't. They pointed out that the issue, though libertarian, had attracted much wider support, witness our signatures, and coming off as libertarian would marginalize us, making it easier for Pelletier to dismiss us.
The aides showed up at about 11:00 p.m. I remember only two of the three names: one was Andre Ouellete, the second's last name was Rabinowitz, and the third, who spoke little, I don't remember. The third guy was introduced as an official of the Company of Young Canadians, a government-run organization that Trudeau had recently formed with the goal of persuading young people to do "public service" work for the government. He was wearing an expensive suit: I remember my friends later calling it a three-hundred-dollar suit, which would translate into about $1,500 today. We invited them in. Both sides were wary of each other. I smiled at them but got glares back. Before they sat down, they looked around and even, before sitting, looked under the cushions. I didn't know why but one friend later speculated that they had been looking for hidden microphones.
Ouellette began by saying that the situation in Quebec was quite sensitive, that the French-speaking people of Quebec were hurting, and that this would add further hurt. As he spoke, he sounded phony. At my high school, when someone starting playing on your sympathy in a phony way, you made a pantomime motion of playing a violin. I knew better than to do that, but I couldn't help laughing quietly. He glared at me, and it just made me giggle more. Finally, he told me that I was heartless and uncaring and that I should stop. That was a like a dash of cold water, and I did stop. But then Clancy said, "No, David, you did nothing wrong."
Ouellette saw that he wasn't persuading us and so he brought in some new information. CBC Radio and CBC television (the government owned radio and television networks) in Quebec have been taken over by the Quebec separatists, he told us, and these separatists would use any excuse they could find to portray our protest as anti-French. (Months later, during the question period in Canada's House of Commons, a member of Parliament from the Progressive Conservative party accused Trudeau of having allowed Quebec separatists to take over CBC in Quebec. Trudeau flatly denied it. Dennis Owens noticed the news story in the paper and wrote former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, telling him of our conversation that night.) Clancy countered that we had thought of that and wanted also not to give that misimpression, and that that was why we had bilingual posters. Moreover, said Clancy, we were protesting against Pelletier's proposed draft and our signs would make that clear.
Then Clancy began. We want to tell you, he said, why we're against a draft. He laid out various pragmatic arguments: it gets in the way of young people's plans; when government has cheap labor, it uses it wastefully; etc. "Finally, and most important," said Clancy, "is the moral argument."
"Don't talk to us about morals," interrupted Rabinowitz, "talk to us about numbers. How many people do you have?" We were stunned. We knew, or figured we knew, that these people thought that way. We just didn't expect them to be so open about it. Clancy, in a later conversation, compared Rabinowitz to Joseph Stalin, who, when told that the Pope had objected to one of his nastier policies, had responded, "How many divisions has the Pope?" Clancy persisted anyway, making the point that people have a right to live their own lives as they see fit, as long as they aren't violating other people's rights. Ouellette and Rabinowitz listened semi-patiently.
We had come to a standoff. Finally, Ouellette pulled out his trump card. If we can get you a meeting with Mr. Pelletier tomorrow morning, he said, will you promise not to hold your protest in the afternoon. No, said Clancy, but we would like to meet with him. If he tells us at the meeting that he will promise to drop his idea and never again to advocate it, Clancy continued, we will promise not to demonstrate. Ouellette told us that this was out of the question. Then no deal, said Clancy. However, we would be willing to meet with Pelletier and, in light of what he said at the meeting, reevaluate our strategy. Ouellette agreed, and the meeting was set for 9:00 a.m. at Pelletier's hotel room. By now it was past midnight.
We still had to decide what to say. Dennis advocated making a strong libertarian case against the draft and inviting a woman who was head of the local Objectivist (devotees of Ayn Rand) group. Perry Taylor grew livid with anger. In fact, I've rarely seen such beautiful, focused, thoughtful anger. "If we come out as libertarians, Pelletier won't take us seriously," said Pat, and he convinced everyone there. But we still had to figure out what to say. We decided that saying too little was better than saying too much. What we would do is think of good things that the Trudeau government had accomplished, tell Pelletier that we liked those things and they needed to do more things like that, but that the draft was a step in the wrong direction. So we scratched our heads to come up with pro-freedom measures the Trudeau government had taken and we found one: while he was Justice Minister, Trudeau had relaxed or ended (I've forgotten which) the federal government's restrictions on homosexuals. So we would lead with that, segue to our main case that the draft was a terrible idea, tell him that we had support from across the ideological spectrum (one of our friends involved in this belonged to the New Democratic Party, Canada's socialist party), and warn him that if he persisted we would really get serious and get signatures from our friends at campuses across Canada. We wrapped up at about 2:00 a.m. The next morning, Mike Prime, Clancy Smith, Pat Taylor, Edwin Kramer and I got in Clancy's father's car and drove to the International Inn near the airport to see Pelletier. We were let in his room by a plainclothes RCMP officer who was noticeably looking us over, probably for hidden weapons. Pelletier, eying us either cautiously or curiously, shook our hands and we each introduced ourselves. Then Mike Prime did most of our side's talking. Here's Mike's recollection, from a recent letter:
Pelletier's main point which I remember well because we went over it 3 times at least was that we could have no objection because "youth" would be making the "decisions." (Implicitly, youth could not coerce itself. He completely ignored that decisions in a creature of the state would be ultimately political.) I remember telling him that it did not matter at all who was deciding for others, they would be coercing individuals who did not want to "serve." Those who wanted to serve could volunteer and the rest of us should be left in peace. I was surprised that he was so obtuse on an obvious point. It may have been a ploy on his part but there seemed, as well, to be a degree of unfamiliarity with our objections.
Mike ended by saying that if Mr. Pelletier persisted in pushing this we could, working with our contacts at the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, and other major Canadian universities, get close to 20,000 signatures in a few weeks. This sounded ambitious to all of us-kind of like those recent IBM ads in which the CEO overpromises what his organization can deliver-but sounded on the edge of doable, given that U. of T.'s and UBC's student bodies were each more than five times ours and we hadn't even tried the bigger University of Manitoba campus across town. Pelletier was fairly quiet, polite, and non-committal. We then left and went for breakfast, where we celebrated being taken so seriously and discussed what to do next.
And then came the clarity. We shouldn't do anything. Pat Taylor said, "What if we have our demonstration and get on TV? Then what? A lot of people are pissed off at all the youth protesting. When they see that our issue is the draft, many of them will say, 'Draft the bastards.' This demonstration could backfire. We've achieved a lot. We've got Pelletier thinking. Let's stop here." His view carried the day.
Every day for the next two months, I checked the Winnipeg Free Press carefully to see if Pelletier ever spoke in favor of a draft. A few weeks after our meeting, he made a less committed statement in favor of a draft, and then never said anything again. That was my initiation into politics and, I think, a very successful one. The odds are that Pelletier probably wouldn't have persisted even if we hadn't done a thing. But if we reduced the probability that he would persist from, say, 20% to 18%, we had accomplished a lot. And we did all this as very young political amateurs on a budget of under $50.
(Thanks to Michael G. Prime for tracking down my letter and the original news story about Pelletier's plan, and also for his reminiscences about the event.)
