107th Anniversary of Winnipeg General Strike
May 1-June 25, 1919

Winnipeg Workers’ Historic Fight to Affirm Rights and Lay Their Claims on Society

Rally in Victoria Park during Winnipeg General Strike.

The Winnipeg General Strike, which took place over 41 days from May 1 to June 25, 1919, became known as the largest social revolt in Canadian history. The strike remains of great significance to the subsequent development of the Canadian working class movement for emancipation. It is the subject of many studies as concerns the role played by unions, communists and socialists, as well as the traditional political parties, the government and police forces.

At the time of the strike, World War I (1914-1918) 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 1914, used to carry out mass internment of so-called enemy aliens from 1914 to 1920, 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 of the Spanish flu following the war (1918-1920).

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. As many as 35,000 people took part – union and non-union workers who walked off the job. Among the first out were the city’s telephone workers. Sympathy strikes were organized in Edmonton and Calgary in support of the Winnipeg General Strike.

Women workers played strong roles in the strike. Many were strikers and supported other striking workers. They set up the food kitchens while simultaneously looking 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. In fact, women began the general sympathetic strike in support of the already striking metal and building trades workers on May 15. 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. Winnipeg had no phone service for a week. On May 20, the Western Labour News announced an all-day organizational meeting for all women workers.

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. The war quickly smashed the euphoria for empire which preceded it, 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.

One of strike leaders, Roger Bray, speaks to mass rally in Victoria Park during strike.

The Government of Canada, along with the Manitoba 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 of the workers 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’ anger. 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.

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 workers must deploy the strength of their numbers and organizations to deprive the state of the power to defeat them.

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.

Since the time of the Winnipeg General Strike, how to ensure that the struggles of the working class and people achieve their goals and realize the overall need for empowerment remain the order of the day. For its part, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) – founded on March 31, 1970 on the basis of the Leninist organizational principles to carry out those tasks required to open the society’s path to progress – carries out constant political, ideological and organizational work for people’s empowerment. This includes summing up the significance of the Winnipeg General Strike, to give honour to the memory, contributions and sacrifices of those who took a stand and put the experience of all such actions at the disposal of the working class and people in a manner that provides a guide to action in the present.

Labour Day 1919 protest against trials of Winnipeg General Strike leaders arrested in June.

Note

1. Barbara Roberts, Whence They Came: Deportation from Canada (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988), p. 84.

[BACK]