Blow Below the Belt, The

DESCRIPTION: In 1966 "the Government Plan was sent around" for resettlement from the outports. "When fifty percent... did sign The other fifty had no choice." Many found no one to buy their home. Many could not find work. Eventually, Premier Smallwood is voted out
AUTHOR: Words: Anthony Ward, Tune: Dave Panting
EARLIEST DATE: 1983 (Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou)
KEYWORDS: homesickness home parting unemployment hardtimes political money
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1950s-1970s - Newfoundland Resettlement Program
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou 8, "The Blow Below the Belt" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #30706
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Leaving of Merasheen" (subject of Newfoundland resettlment)
NOTES [1397 words]: Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou: "The Resettlement Program was carried out in Newfoundland during Joseph Smallwood's government.... Its aim was to relocate... coastal communities to larger centers where they would find better job opportunities and public facilities such as hospitals and schools.... When the smoke had finally cleared over three hundred communities had been completely closed down and those that remained were tombstones marking the passing of a large and noble part of our history."
The title is a reference to boxing as part of an analogy to [that sport]: "But when elections rolled around, we showed Joey [Smallwood] how we felt, We dropped him in his corner and gave Frank Moores the [championship] belt!"
See "The Leaving of Merasheen" for another resettlement song - BS
Joey Smallwood began his career as a radio broadcaster, and used his position to push Newfoundland into Confederation with Canada; according to Brown, p. 374, "Mainland prosperity, urged by Joey Smallwood... won out against the proud penury of independence."
But Smallwood, who went from broadcaster to Newfoundland premier and led the province for more than twenty years, by the late Fifties was turning to "increasingly illiberal one-man rule" (Brown, p. 491). "In Smallwood's chamber there were no advisors, only listeners" (Major, p. 417). The result of his policy was complaints like these.
For more about Smallwood, see especially "Anti-Confederation Song (II)," which tells how he came to power in Newfoundland.
The particular issue was "resettlement." Newfoundland's population was scattered in many small towns and villages, which made social services hard to provide. Indeed, even communication was hard -- with few roads, the outports were connected only by sea, and even those connections were possible only in summer when the seas were (relatively) safe (Chadwick, p. 60). Many people lived without social support or any knowledge of the outside world; they couldn't even read a newspaper if they had one. Smallwood genuinely wanted to provide a better life -- but instead of doing so by improving Newfoundland's infrastructure and training specialists, he got rid of the small towns by moving the people about:
"In 1954, the provincial government had turned to resettling the widely dispersed populations of coastal communities into centralized locations, thus reducing the cost of delivering health care, education, and public utilities such as electricity" (Cadigan, p. 246). "Under the provincial government's first centralization programme in the period 1954-1965, 115 outport communities were abandoned and their populations totalling 7,500 in larger centers with the aid of government grants. Since 1965 [through 1971] at least a further fifty to sixty outports have been abandoned under a new Fisheries Household Resettlement Programme, the cost of which is shared with the federal Departmenn of Fisheries, making a total, including those which had been abandoned without any government assistance, of well over two hundred settlements which have disappeared since Confederation" (Noel, pp. 264-265).
"Many rural people initially favoured resettlement, especially women, who had borne the high costs of trying to arrange the education of their children and maintaining their families' well-being in the absence of well-developed educational and medical facilities. Disillusionment quickly set in, however, as resettled people found little work, inadequate housing, poor land for supplementary farming, and insufficient financial assistance from government in their new communities" (Cadigan, pp. 246-247).
"Government men showed up offering financial aid for relocation. To qualify, at least 80 per cent of families had to agree to move. Communities were torn apart. Older people, the backbone of these [outport] communities, were 'unwillingly forced to decide,' amid their wharfs and kitchens and the graces of their ancestors....
"Between 1954 and 1975 more than 250 communities were resettled. Houses buoyed with oil drums, then towed across open water, had become a common sight. So, too, had the burning of churches, structures the departing people had det to flame rather than leave to vandals or see fall to ruin over time" (Major, p. 422).
Herbert Pottle, who was part of the early Smallwood governments and had a role in starting all this, would later admit that the allegedly voluntary nature of the program and its benefits were overblown (p. 58): "In many cases... [those who were resettled] were the losers -- in housing and school services.... While the government was protesting that no pressure was being applied to resettle, the fact that it was actually sponsoring resettlement severely limited the people's freedom of choice.... [resettlement] shook the Newfoundland 'way of life' where it was still ancestrally sensitive, namely, at the pulse of community; and they had the effect of UNsettling as many settlements as they recomposed." Someone even called it "the cattle-car syndrome," with all the obvious Nazi implications of that phrase. (This wasn't the only time people regarded Smallwood as a Nazi; at the 1969 Liberal party convention, "scores of [failed opposition candidate] Crosbie's supporters giving the fascist salute rushed toward the dais on which Smallwood was standing in triumph"; Hiller/Neary, p. 234).
Pottle concludes on p. 61, "[A]s the research studies have shown, the resettlement of fishing families was not based on any thought-out strategy in keeping with broader provincial ore national goals... for there were never any such goals. The whole operation of relocating people came to resemble strongly an end in itself: to serve the economic development model which demanded full-scale industrialization at a gale's pace" (and which failed to work).
It should be noted, however, that Pottle had an early personal conflict with Smallwood and quit his party, leaving Newfoundland when he failed to gain any support (DictNewfLabrador, p. 275; Hiller/Neary, p. 217).
"In recent years reunions to resettled communities have become commonplace. Descendants of people who moved have even made them the sites of their weddings. All seem to feel the need to reclaim a misplaced ancestry" (Major, p. 423).
Smallwood, despite major mistakes like that, both in economics and in working with people, managed to stay in charge of Newfoundland from the time of Confederation with Canada in the late 1940s until the early 1970s. (Of course, the fact that he twice gerrymandered the electoral districts to improve his prospects helped; Hiller/Neary, pp. 211-215; so did the fact that he carefully called general elections at times when the Conservatives were in disarray; Hiller/Neary, pp. 215-216). As late as 1966, Smallwood's liberals won more than 60% of the vote in Newfoundland. Yet there was a warning of things to come in 1968; in the federal election of that year, when most of Canada voted Liberal; the Progressive Conservaties won the Newfoundland federal delegation (Hiller/Neary, p. 226). And they had a new leader.
In 1968, Frank Duff Moores (1935-2005), who was then only 35 (33 years younger than Smallwood) entered politics as Member of Parliament for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception. What happened between 1968 and 1972 was extraordinarily complicated, as Moores rose to lead the Progressive Conservative party of Newfoundland despite his youth and as Smallwood tried various tricks to hang on to power. In 1971, there was a hung election, with no party really in control, but Smallwood was forced to give up his role as Premier in early 1972. A second election, on March 24, resulted in a clear victory for the Progressive Conservatives -- they won 33 seats to 9 for the Liberal party that had been Smallwood's. Moores as a result formed the next Newfoundland government, serving as Premier from 1972 to 1979, when he retired from elective politics to return to business, although he remained politically active (DictNewfLabrador, pp. 229-230).
From the notes in Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou, it would seem that the author of this knew people who were resettled. It's really more a protest song than a true folk song -- note that it was collected from the author.
For another song on the subject, not collected from the author, see "The Leaving of Merasheen."
For another gripe about Smallwood, see "The Loggers' Plight." - RBW
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