May 1-June
25
100th
Anniversary of the Winnipeg General
Strike
Canadian Workers' Proud History of Organized Resistance
and Defence of Rights
- Dougal MacDonald -
Rally in Victoria Park During Winnipeg General Strike.
Introduction
This year marks the 100th Anniversary of the Winnipeg
General
Strike which took place from May 1 to June 25, 1919. World
War I had ended but it did not end the greed of the power-hungry
men who had started it in the first place. In Canada the war was a
pretext to suppress resistance to imperialist war and
conscientious objection to participating, as well as to attack
organized labour and revolutionary politics. The War Measures
Act remained in effect for over a year after the end of the
war and was used against organizers of the Winnipeg General
Strike in 1919. After the War, Canadian forces along with troops
from 10 other countries, at the instigation of Britain and
France, were also sent to invade Soviet Russia in a vain attempt
to maintain the privileges of the Czarist regime negated by the
establishment of the world's first socialist state. Meanwhile,
soldiers who survived the experience of trench warfare, many of
them suffering injuries and the unrecognized effects of mustard
gas and post traumatic stress, were discouraged by post-war
inflation and unemployment. Thousands more died following the war of
the Spanish flu.
In these circumstances, Winnipeg's metal and building
workers
went on strike, demanding higher wages and shorter hours. They
were joined by iron workers who were fighting for company
recognition of their union, the Metal Trades Council. On May 15,
with the overwhelming support of its 12,000 members, the Winnipeg
Labour Council called a general strike. Thirty thousand union and
non-union workers walked off the job. Among the first out were
the city's telephone workers. Winnipeg had no phone service for a
week. Sympathy strikes were organized in Edmonton and Calgary in
support of the Winnipeg General Strike.
The context for this strike was the grave economic
crisis in
which Britain and, by extension, Canada found themselves following
World War I, as well as the unconscionable treatment the workers
received when they returned from fighting the trench warfare in
which thousands were used as cannon fodder in the euphoria for
empire which preceded the war. The war quickly smashed that euphoria,
leaving Canada at a crossroads, not only flailing in the throes
of an economy whose old basis had been smashed by the war but
also without an aim rooted in the former empire building. The
service of governments to alien interests and the moloch of
capital with which the workers definitely did not identify put a
severe strain on the ability of governments to maintain labour
peace.
Mass rally in Victoria Park, June 10, 1919.
The Government of Canada, along with the provincial
government,
also clearly feared a revolution similar to the one that had just
happened in Russia. They spread lies that claimed "immigrants"
were behind the strike. The Government of Canada amended the Immigration
Act so that even British-born immigrants,
who
in those days were automatically granted citizenship rights,
could be deported. It mobilized the police forces against the
striking workers and resorted to violence to crush the strike.
The response of government to the terrible plight the workers
were in at that time clearly revealed the role of the state in
suppressing the struggles of the workers who had just sacrificed
so much in the trench warfare of World War I.
In June, the federal authorities officially resorted to
deportation threats to suppress working class politics, even
though they attempted to deceive the public by avoiding the word
"political" in their accusations. Amendments to Section 41 of the Immigration Act
defined "a prohibited immigrant" as "anyone
interested in overthrowing organized government either in the
Empire (at the provincial level in Canada too) or in general, or
in destroying property, or promoting riot or public disorder, or
belonging to a secret organization trying to control people by
threat or blackmail."[1]
After nearly a month, Winnipeg's mayor called out special
constables whose presence fueled the strikers' fire. Their
leaders were arrested. The North West Mounted Police (which
became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920) and special
constables fired on the workers, killing two men. An additional
34 people were wounded and 80 arrested. A few days later, the
strike ended with a protest march organized by war veterans on
June 21.
One of strike leaders, Roger Bray, speaks to mass rally in Victoria
Park during strike.
The Winnipeg General Strike became known as the largest
social
revolt in Canadian history. It is the subject of many studies as
concerns not only the role of the government and police forces
but also the role played by unions, communists, socialists and
the traditional political parties. The strike remains of great
significance to the subsequent development of the Canadian
working class movement for emancipation.
Labour Day 1919 protest against trials of Winnipeg General Strike
leaders arrested June 16, 1919.
Women workers played strong roles in the strike. They
acted as
strikers and supported other striking workers. They set up the
food kitchens and simultaneously tried to look after their
families. Women telephone workers on strike unplugged the
telephone lines, took to the streets during protests, and
confronted scabs. Women were members of the Central Strike
Committee as well as members of the Women's Labour League. On May
20, the Western Labour News announced an all-day
organizational meeting for all women workers. In fact, women
began the general sympathetic strike in support of the already
striking metal and building trades workers on May 15, 1919. When
500 telephone operators, 90 per cent of whom were women, clocked
out at the end of their shifts at 7:00 am, no other workers
came in to replace them.
Pertinent Notes
The causes of the Winnipeg General Strike were multiple.
Prime Minister Sir
Wilfrid Laurier had declared to the Canadian people that the
twentieth century would "belong to Canada." From 1898 to 1912
economic growth was rapid and the population of the Canadian west was
growing. There was an air of optimism and the ruling class
promoted euphoria about empire. Winnipeg was a major industrial
centre in Canada's heartland, the depot of three major railways:
the Canadian Pacific, the Canadian Northern, and the Grand Trunk
Pacific. The movement by rail of new immigrants from east to west
and of grain from west to east generated a great deal of wealth
for the owners of capital.
Winnipeg rail workers began organizing themselves in the
1890s. Machinists and toolmakers were the first to organize and
other workers followed. A Trades and Labour Council was organized
to unify workers, a labour-oriented newspaper called the Western
Labour News was created, and a labour
candidate
won a parliamentary seat. Several militant strikes were fought in
the railway system, including where workers faced off against
machine guns and imported strikebreakers. At the same time, the
local economy continued to grow and unemployment was kept at bay
by the large number of available jobs, especially in
construction.
The situation changed when Britain began to shut down
some of
its production facilities. By the time World War I was declared
in 1914, Winnipeg was in a virtual depression with many
unemployed workers walking the streets. Those employed worked at
low wages for long hours in poor working conditions and inflation
ran rampant. Winnipeg began producing war materials and munitions
in 1915 but the amount was comparatively small. Many workers
opposed conscription, viewing the war mainly as a scheme to send
workers to their death to increase capitalist profits. It was
well-known that certain individuals were making huge profits
supplying war materials. Farmers faced high tariffs and falling
grain prices. When the war ended, soldiers came home, not to a
world "safe for democracy," but to unemployment, poverty and
neglect.
During the war, the number of organized workers in
Winnipeg
grew by one-third. The main focus of labour activity became the
Metal Trades Council, formed in 1918 to represent
machinists and toolmakers. Workers in the three railway-owned
shops worked for wages. The non-union contract shops were owned
by Manitoba Bridge (Deacon), Vulcan (Barrett brothers), and
Dominion Bridge (Montreal capitalists). They paid workers less
than the railway shops using a piecework system. One of the Metal
Trades Council's
main goals was to enforce wage parity in all six shops. The
Winnipeg General Strike essentially grew out of the May 1 strike
of the building trades union and the May 2 strike of the
metal-trades workers at the three contract shops. The strike
lasted 41 days and an estimated 25,000 workers participated.
Greatly inspired by the 1917 victory of the Bolshevik
Revolution, a May 22, 1919 editorial in the Western Labour
News said: "The fight is on. It overthrew the government in
Russia, Austria, Germany, etc." In Winnipeg, accused strike
leader William Pritchard during his courtroom defence vigorously
highlighted the contributions of Marx and Engels to the labour
movement. On the other side, the "Committee of 1000," the
anti-strike organization of the local and national capitalists,
including the Canadian Manufacturers Association, the Bankers
Association, and Imperial Oil, claimed that the strike was the
start of the Bolshevik Revolution in Canada and that all the
workers were dangerous radicals who were determined to wreck the
existing institutions and establish a Soviet government.
Strikers fill the streets June 4, 1919. Building in
background is headquarters of the anti-strike "Committee of 1,000."
On June 22, 1918, Prime Minister Borden had approved
sending
Canadian soldiers to Siberia to join the ultimately unsuccessful
reactionary crusade of 14 countries which sought to crush the
Bolshevik Revolution. On December 22, 1918, a mass meeting in
Winnipeg condemned that intervention.
Conditions at the Time of the Strike
World War I and the post-war crisis had radically
undermined
Britain's monopoly position among capitalist states. The post
World War I period was characterized by various powers
manoeuvring for greater market share, mainly at the expense of
Britain. The war had shaken up the pre-war relations and new
forces were entering the market including not only the United
States but also Germany, Japan and other countries as well as
Britain's own dominions and colonies, including Canada, which had
managed to further develop their own economies during the war.
The new competition and loss of market share made it more
difficult for Britain to extract profits by plundering of markets
and sources of raw material, including in Canada. In response,
British capital endeavoured to restrict production, or at any
rate not to expand it indiscriminately.
As profits in Britain and its colonies declined and the
few
crumbs which fell to the working class dwindled even further,
workers began to resort more and more frequently to direct
struggle against capital. Canada was still mainly under the
control of Britain. The aim of the British and the capitalist
ruling elite in Canada, Manitoba and Winnipeg itself, was to
secure the maximum possible profit by exploiting labour
irrespective of the needs of the workers and society. In the
conditions of the war and post war, such intense exploitation
inevitably led to resistance on the part of the workers and to
their fight for higher wages and better working conditions, among
other things.
Crowd, angered by state attacks on strikers June 21, 1919, partially
overturns a streetcar.
Contrary to the myth that the Winnipeg General Strike
was an
"anomaly" because the working class movement in Canada has been
"well-behaved" throughout its history, even a cursory look at
labour history verifies that there had been decades of organized
struggle against capital, including numerous strikes. The Halifax
General Strike and other strikes in Nova Scotia were also taking place
at that time.
Just prior to the Winnipeg General Strike, Winnipeg civic
employees, supported by other public service unions, had won a
strike. The General Strike was only one of many such strikes,
albeit one of the larger, longer, and more significant ones in
terms of advancing the fight for workers' rights and laying the
claims on society which belonged to the working people by right.
The workers heroically faced the intransigence of the owners,
whose contempt for the workers, bullying and use of the state to
protect their interests were without limit.
The expansion of Canadian capitalism included the
capitalists'
continuous striving to reduce costs of production in their
industry. The fact that the metal workers were the target of the
main blow in this case was no accident. They were skilled workers
with a high level of expertise and experience who knew their
worth in the process of production. Their work generated large
profits for the railway capitalists who were one of the most
powerful owner groups in Canada. Also, as the first large group
of workers to be organized in Winnipeg, the metal workers
represented an advanced detachment of the working class. It was
the strategy of the ruling elite to crush them in order to lower
their wages and lengthen their working day, and secure the
compliance of the rest of the working class. Everyone must toe
the line. But the result was the opposite of what they wanted.
Instead of being cowed, thousands of other Winnipeg workers and
other workers in Canada, such as in Toronto, Vancouver, Regina,
Edmonton and Calgary, eagerly supported the metalworkers with
strikes of their own.
In 1919, Canada was governed by the Robert Borden-led
Conservative Party which declared itself a most bitter enemy.
This was the same Borden who, in June 1918, had helped
draft the British resolution asking for "immediate Allied armed
assistance to Russia" with the aim of crushing the workers'
revolution there. Two months later, Borden called for the
dispatch of Canadian troops to Siberia. During the Winnipeg
General Strike, the Borden government violently attacked the strikers
and their
allies while the monopoly press in the service of the owners of
capital repeatedly blamed the strike on immigrants and
Bolsheviks.
Hands Off Russia meeting in Victoria in 1918 opposes sending Canadian
troops to Siberia.
As the course of the strike showed, the Canadian
capitalists
and the government formed by the Conservative Party, proved to be
more experienced, more organized, and therefore stronger, than
the Winnipeg workers and their leaders. They entered the conflict
fully armed and prepared to crush the workers.
 On May 22, the federal
government sent battalions of soldiers
armed with machine guns to Winnipeg. On June 6, the government
amended the Immigration Act
to permit deportation of immigrants
accused of "sedition." On June 10, "special police" recruited
from among scabs and thugs attacked a peaceful demonstration. On
June 16, some of the strike leaders were arrested and imprisoned
and placed under threat of deportation. They then organized for
compliant labour leaders to step into the vacuum to undermine the
strike.
June 21 has gone down in history as Bloody Saturday.
Armed
Mounties and soldiers viciously attacked a peaceful protest by
unarmed workers and killed two strikers and injured 30 others. The
leaders of the Canadian labour movement seemed to
have been caught somewhat unawares and unorganized. Only a week
before the conflict those leaders were expressing their
conviction that there would be no conflict.
North West Mounted Police ride into crowd in Winnipeg, June 21, 1919, a
day which came to
be known as Bloody Saturday.
On June 23 the president of the Canadian Trades and
Labour
Congress stated that the strike was "officially over" and the
time had come for the workers to put their energies into winning
elected positions on the Municipal Council. The fact was that the
Strike Committee was already organized to keep the city's
essential services functioning, showing the ability of the working
class to organize the society according to its needs.
J.S. Woodsworth, future leader of the Cooperative
Commonwealth
Federation, forerunner of the New Democratic Party, took over the Western
Labour
News, organ of the strikers, when its
editor was arrested. His every speech and editorial were filled
with reformist illusions and promotion of a peaceful
parliamentary path to victory for the workers.
Several leaders of the Winnipeg General Strike received
their
schooling as labour leaders in Britain, during that period when
British capital was raking in super-profits and could shower
favours on the labour leaders and use them to obtain compromises
with the British working class. Many such leaders were blinded by
the glamour of capitalism and became divorced from the workers.
Instead of fighting for the workers, they took up capitalist
ideology and became enamoured with "getting ahead." Engels called
such leaders bourgeoisified. Ramsay MacDonald, who was the first
British Labour politician to become Prime Minister, is one
example. After 1931, MacDonald was repeatedly denounced by the
British Labour movement as a traitor to their cause, although
some of his critics were certainly no shining examples of working
class leadership themselves.
The Borden-led Conservative Party realized the major
political importance of the
Winnipeg
General Strike, that such a
strike could be seriously fought only by a combination of
political measures, such as the changed immigration legislation,
and military measures, and the mobilization of police and
troops to crush the workers. The Strike Committee was not
experienced enough to recognize the political importance of the
general strike and limited the action to exclusively economic
demands, the fight for fair wages, better working conditions,
and a shorter working day.
The general staff of the capitalists understood that
wide-ranging union support of the Winnipeg General Strike would
be dangerous to their cause. This fueled their anti-communist,
anti-immigrant propaganda. The federal Minister of Labour, who
was a former vice-president of the Typographers Union, agitated
strongly against the workers and called for the detention of
their leaders. The One Big Union, known as the Wobblies, supported
the strike but did nothing to organize or lead it. Other
international union leaders openly opposed the strike under the
hoax that its real agenda was not to advance the cause of the
workers but to put an end to international unionism.
Public statements were even made that the strikers did
not
intend to turn the struggle into a political struggle and that
the Strike Committee had no intention of raising the question of
political power. As history has shown, a general strike which is
not turned into a political struggle will leave the working class
to face the organized political power of the capitalist class
unprepared.[2]
Crowd gathers outside City Hall during Winnipeg General Strike.
The situation facing the capitalists and their
government was
made even more serious by the fact that many soldiers who
returned from the war played an important role in the strike. To
deal with this, the government and capitalist media played on
their loyalties to split their ranks. To this end, the executive
of the Great War Veterans Association (GWVA) attempted to foment
racism by propagandizing that while the soldiers had been
overseas fighting in the war, "alien" workmen, i.e., immigrants,
had been taking their jobs and that these "aliens" were those who
had gone on strike. For its part, the Western
Labour
News, in a
May 20 editorial, urged the workers who were also veterans to help
remove the reactionary executive of the GWVA. Overall, soldiers
with a labour background supported the strike while others were
indifferent or opposed. Pro-strike soldiers were the main
organizers of what they called "parades" which brought the
workers out into the streets in protest. Anti-strike soldiers
organized counter-demonstrations.
Several workers' organizations that were active at the
time,
such as the Independent Labour Party (Winnipeg, 1895), the
Socialist Party of Canada (1904), the Manitoba Labour Party
(1910), and the Social Democratic Party (1911) held meetings and
conferences, including the big Western Canadian Labour Conference
which was held in Calgary in March 1919. That conference adopted
strong resolutions in support of socialism and in defence of
Soviet Russia and even "full acceptance of the principle of the
'Proletarian Dictatorship.' The Canadian Communist Party was
subsequently founded two years later and held its first
Convention June 18-19, 1921 in Guelph, Ontario.
Some Lessons Learned
The first-hand experience of the strike showed the
workers
that the chief obstacle to the workers achieving their goals was
the political power of the capitalists, in this case exercised by
the Conservative Party government. While the Canadian Trades and
Labour Congress seemed afraid of admitting the inseparable
connection between the economic struggle and the political
struggle, the workers gained through their struggle the increased
understanding of the fundamental question of which class holds
political power and that the state is not neutral in the struggle
between capital and labour. The strike tore the veil off the
political power showing it is indivisible and that the struggle
of the workers must target it so that they can deploy the
strength of their numbers and organizations in their favour so
that it cannot be effective as a weapon wielded by those in power
against the workers.
The course and outcome of the strike showed the workers
the
unsuitability of those labour leaders who were infected with the
bourgeois striving for personal wealth, power and privilege. The
strike showed that such leaders must be replaced by revolutionary
leaders who do not espouse such things. The strike also showed
the Winnipeg workers and workers elsewhere in Canada that it was
critical for the entire working class to support individual
strikes in order to ensure their success. The strike brought
home to the working class the truth of this important lesson.
Last and most importantly, the strike showed the
workers,
especially in its most difficult moments, that the existing
parties were incapable of boldly and resolutely upholding the
interests of the working class, which needed its own political party
expressing its own independent politics, tactics and demands. The
subsequent formation of the Communist Party of Canada in 1921
was intended to provide this problem with a solution which it did
until it lost its bearings in the early 1950s when, in the
throes of the Cold War, it created illusions about the bourgeois
democracy.
That situation has changed, however, since March 31,
1970, at
which time the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) was
founded on the basis of the Leninist organizational principles to
carry out those tasks required to open the society's path to
progress. In this endeavour, CPC(M-L) is constantly carrying out
all political and ideological tasks on the basis of
organizational work which serves the fundamental task of
furthering the cause of people's empowerment.
On March 31, 2018 on the 48th anniversary of the Party's
founding, it once again succinctly summed up its mission and how
to achieve it: "All the activities which CPC(M-L) has carried out
for the past nearly 50 years have a common thread -- to further
develop the leading role of the working class in society. The
strength of CPC(M-L) lies in its revolutionary theory, its
political line and its organizations at various levels which are
always paying attention to the particular tasks facing the
society to open the path for progress. The cutting edge for this
period is to wage the ideological struggle and engage in
political work to determine the practical politics required to
build the political movement against nation-wrecking. Practical
politics are required to mobilize the working people and the
youth and students to take up nation-building on a modern
basis.
"The emphasis on organizing work is to activate the
human
factor/social consciousness so that responsibility is taken to
turn things around. By building committees which take their own
independent political stands, the working people and the youth
and students can make serious advance. These committees must be
established at places of work, in the educational institutions
and neighbourhoods and amongst seniors where their members can
take responsibility for their decisions and the actions of their
peers. They can address matters of concern to themselves, the
society and the world. By developing the independent politics of
the working class they will provide themselves with the key to
depriving the international financial oligarchs and the
governments in their service of the power to deprive the people,
who depend on the society for their well-being, of what belongs
to them by right."[3]
Notes
1. Barbara Roberts, Whence
They Came: Deportation from Canada (Ottawa:
University of Ottawa Press, 1988), p. 84.
2. A pointed example is the
British
General Strike of 1926 which involved 1.7 million workers and
lasted nine days but failed to result in any permanent power
gains for the workers.
3. TML
Weekly, March
31, 2018.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number
23 - June 22, 2019
Article Link:
May
1-June
25, 1919: Canadian Workers' Proud History of Organized Resistance and
Defence of Rights - Dougal MacDonald
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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