RCMP Spied on Feminists

by Barry Weisleder / September 2008

After numerous revelations that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) systematically spied on, harassed, and disrupted labour, socialist, student, gay liberation, and Quebec nationalist organizations, it hardly came as a surprise to learn that the RCMP Security Service infiltrated the women’s movement in the early 1970s. They monitored marches and rallies to keep an eye on feminists, including celebrated Cape Breton singer and songwriter Rita MacNeil.

The latest exposure comes thanks to historians who sifted through hundreds of pages of recently declassified files. In an Aug. 5 Toronto Star article, journalist Jim Bronstill cites a March 1971 Star item that "reported two founding members of the Toronto Women’s Caucus (TWC) quit the group, alleging ‘a male-oriented radical socialist movement’ of Trotskyites had taken over the women’s group." The question arises: Were these "two" who quit the TWC actually RCMP agents?

Lis Angus, a socialist-feminist who was active in the TWC, and on its staff for a short time, provided this account of her experience to Socialist Action newspaper: "I don't remember there being any particular concern about this [RCMP spying] then, and from what I have seen in the coverage now, it's a good thing that we didn't develop any paranoia about it, just carried on with our activities. From what I have seen, the RCMP don't seem to have found out anything earth-shaking, and it's rather amusing that they found feminism both perplexing and threatening.

"One of the important contributions that TWC made was to give Rita MacNeil the self confidence to develop herself as a singer and singer-songwriter. Another—probably more significant—was the important work we did in support of Dr. Henry Morgentaler. Beyond those, of course, was the impact on the many young (and not-so-young) women who had an opportunity to explore feminist ideas and develop feelings of pride and self-worth as women. Our daughters today appreciate the contributions that our generation made to changing the opportunities available for today's women—and TWC was part of that."

Rita MacNeil told the Toronto Star that she was more amused than offended to learn that the RCMP had her under surveillance when she lived and worked in Toronto in the early 1970s.

Notwithstanding the good natured responses of Rita and Lis, the snooping and disruption activities of the secret police, including the RCMP’s successor spy agency, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), are a serious cause for concern. Anti-democratic police practices continue—from agents-provocateurs infiltrated into a labour protest at the Montebello summit in September 2007, to threatening the life of aboriginal leader Shawn Brant, to ‘rendering’ Muslim Canadians to foreign powers for interrogation under torture, to laying false charges against the Toronto 18. This pattern shows that the cops and the Canadian state continue to conspire against the rights of working people, aiming to preserve the capitalist status quo. To stop them from trampling on civil liberties, it will take no less than a revolution!