Sedition in wartime Ontario; The trials and imprisonment of Isaac Bainbridge, 1917-1918.

Dissent is rarely tolerated during wartime. In Ontario, as elsewhere. in Canada, the state used various means to curb and suppress dissent during the First World War. One powerful tool was the law of sedition. This article examines one particularly notable prosecution, the trials and imprisonment of Toronto socialist newspaper editor Isaac Bainbridge. Over a year before the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, Ontario authorities had decided to crack down on political dissent, using the law of seditious libel. The enforcement of this law illustrates how both the government and the courts handled dissent during an emergency situation. Examining the use of the law also demonstrates the avenues of resistance presented by the liberal system of justice. Owing to the intentional vagueness of the law, the state was able to regulate public space and discourse through the political crime of sedition. An understanding of how this regulation worked in Ontario helps us understand the role of the government and of the courts during the politically charged years of the late First World War.

Between May 1917 and November 1918, Social Democratic Party of Canada (SDPC) activist Isaac Bainbridge was arrested in Toronto on four occasions, three times on charges of seditious libel and one time on a charge of possession of seditious material. He served a little over four months in prison on two separate occasions (22 November 1917 to 1 March 1918 and 27 May 1918 to 29 June 1918). The trials and imprisonments of Isaac Bainbridge during the final years of the First World War present an excellent example of politically driven justice. The rule of law was subverted, through a selective application of sedition laws, to suppress peaceful dissent. Bainbridge, the Dominion Secretary of the Social Democratic Party and the editor of the SDPC's party organ Canadian Forward, was a public figure and well known within the Canadian socialist and labour movement. A fuller account of his story adds to the body of work on Canadian state trials as well as on the Toronto left. When Peter White, the Crown Prosecutor who successfully had Bainbridge sentenced during his November 1917 political trial, informed the jury that "when the law is on the statute book, no one has a right to advocate resistance to it," (1) he provided a succinct view of how the state would no longer tolerate peaceful dissent in the polarized world of November 1917. With the Bolsheviks in control in Moscow and the Canadian forces in Western Europe finding themselves in dire need of men, both conscripts and volunteers, the political climate of the period was becoming increasingly charged. Bainbridge would learn firsthand the extent and measures the Canadian government would take to silence anti-war sentiment--a sentiment with foundations in anti-capitalist versus anti-militarist analysis.

However, Bainbridge's rhetoric was insufficient on its own to merit prosecution. For example, as noted later in this article, the Mail and Empire published Leon Trotsky's The Bolsheviki and World Peace--far more radical than anything Bainbridge publicly published--and other socialist newspaper editors did not face seditious libel changes. Bainbridge had two additional factors against him. The first was the large ethnic component of the SDPC, detailed later in this article. The second was that he lacked the political clout of an anti-militaristic figure like Henri Bourassa or of the Mail and Empire. Given that the state focused on both left and ethnic dissent, a nexus of these two factors presented a compelling target for the government of the day. (2) This, combined with the personal hostility he experienced from government and lower court officials--detailed at length in this article--and his own radical views (perhaps best expressed in a letter published in a Russian newspaper intercepted by British Intelligence) led to Bainbridge's prosecution. Unlike the Mail and Empire's, editors, Bainbridge was a fervent believer in what he wrote. The pressing question of why Bainbridge found himself the attention of such legal efforts will be explored through the findings of this article, and considered further in the concluding remarks.

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Although the law of sedition was enforceable and enforced, it is important to recognize the limits placed by the liberal courts on the arbitrary coercion of the government. The distinction between the rule of arbitrary power and the rule of law, astutely noted by E.P. Thompson, (3) is borne out by the case of Isaac Bainbridge. Indeed, frustration with the courts in the last year of the war would lead to the increasing shift away from Criminal Code prosecutions to Order-in-Council legislation. (4) Through the Bainbridge case, this article will demonstrate the coercive aspects of the legal system and its limitations. It also demonstrates that there were dramatic confrontations in Ontario as well as ambitious working-class goals, despite perceptions to the contrary. (5)

The State, the War and Rising Dissent, 1917-18

With Britain's declaration of war on Germany in 1914, the self-governing colony of Canada was also effectively at war. Initially, the support for the war was frenzied throughout Ontario, although this support was disproportionately urban. (6) Morale building became a key element of wartime policy in Ontario, and detraction from that came to be seen as a seditious act. While recruitment targets were easily met in the first year of the war, this was reflective of unemployment during this period. (7) Recruitment was also aided by the disproportionate enlistment rates of first generation English immigrants. (8) The subsequent growth of well-paying military-based industries, which drew young men away from voluntary enlistment, (9) coupled with the growing realization of the horror of modern warfare, led to declining recruitment numbers. (10) Morale was breaking.