Pioneering socialist was unstinting in his support for workers
To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, we are counting down to Canada Day with profiles of 150 noteworthy British Columbians.
Parker Williams is all but forgotten today. But in the B.C. legislature in the early 1900s, the socialist member for Newcastle on Vancouver Island was a force of nature.
“He was quite a speaker,” said his grandson, Brian Williams. “They say he could spiel out more words per minute than anybody in parliament.”
He didn’t hold back. Following a bitter coal miners’ strike on the Island between 1912 and 1914, he not only went after the Conservative premier, Richard McBride, and Attorney General William Bowser, he went after their parliamentary colleagues for toeing the government line.
“What do you expect from 40 spineless shrimps of the 5-, 10- and 15-cent politicians who sit in the House and do the bidding of McBride and Bowser?” thundered Williams. “They care not what happens to the people so long as the party machine works well.”
Williams cared what happened to “the people.” A one-time coal miner from Wales, Williams was first elected to the legislature in 1903, one of the first two socialist members elected in B.C.
He was unwavering in his work on behalf of coal miners and other workers. One of his finest moments came in January 1914 when he shamed the government over the death of a young man who had been sentenced to a year in prison over a protest during the coal strike. Badly treated in prison, the boy fell ill, but his parents weren’t notified until after he died.
“I ask for the stunned mother and father no sympathy from this House,” said Williams, his voice choking with emotion.
“They will carry their agony to their grave. But this I shall say: that the root of all this sorrow and this suffering will be found in the incompetency, inadequacy, callous and domineering methods of the government in handling this situation from the beginning.” He was very effective in opposition. “You know that nursery rhyme about Miss Muffet sitting on a tuffet?” said Brian Williams. “McBride was the premier at the time, and (there was a newspaper cartoon that) had McBride sitting on a tuffet eating his curds, and grandpa was the spider coming down and scared him away.”
Williams wasn’t perfect — like many people in labour circles in his day, he was against Asian immigration, feeling it lowered wages. In 1917, he left politics to become one of three commissioners who oversaw the new Workers’ Compensation Board.
“That was his pet peeve from when he got into parliament: compensation,” said Brian Williams.
According to his biography on the Nanaimo Archives website, Williams also administered the Mothers Pension Act and the Old Age Pension Act — he issued the first old-age pension cheque in B.C. in 1927.
He died June 17, 1958, at age 86.