Student Tasks

Was the government justified in claiming that the Winnipeg General Strike was the beginning of a communist revolution and using military force to put it down?

Historical Context for Teachers

Socialism, Bolshevism, Communism and the Russian Revolution

• Socialism is a political ideology that advocates radical changes to society, including a workers’ revolution that would replace the capitalist system with a communist society in which workers would control production.
• Socialism focuses on:
  • the general welfare of people rather than the individual
  • cooperation rather than individualism
  • labourers and workers rather than on business or political leaders.
• Socialism preaches the nationalization (all privately owned businesses are owned by the people/state) of all major resources, corporations and banks in a society. The profits from these industries would then go to the state (government) to be used to better the lives of all of society.
• The Russian Revolution began in November 1917 when a group of Socialists known as the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized power of the Russian government.
• A civil war was fought in Russia, from 1918 to 1920, between the Bolsheviks (who renamed themselves the Communist Party) and a variety of rival groups. In 1920, the Communist Party emerged as the winner of the civil war and formed the Soviet Union or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
• After the Russian Revolution many people in Canada feared Bolshevism and Socialism would spread to Canada and there would be a worldwide revolution of workers.

Effects of WWI

• World War I ended on November 11, 1918, when an armistice (ceasefire) ended fighting for the approximately 600 000 Canadians who participated.
• From January to June 1919 heads of state met at the Paris Peace Conferences to work out the final settlement to the war. The war was officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.
• After communist revolutions occured in Germany and Hungary in the summer of 1919 many governments around the world feared the spread of communist revolutions to their countries. In Canada, spies and informants were placed at union meetings and workplaces to report to the government.
• During March 1919, labour leaders met in Calgary to discuss the creation of the One Big Union (OBU) that would organize all workers into a single powerful union. They believed that a large union representing large number of workers would have more power to negotiate for better wages, improved working conditions and the right to collective bargaining (when contracts are negotiated between the employer and representatives of the union).
• After the war ended, thousands of Canadian troops returned home to find massive unemployment, inflation and a rising cost of living. Since 1914, the cost of living doubled, while wages did not rise at the same rate.
• Throughout Canada the gap in living standards between the rich and poor was growing (what is called class inequality). During the war many owners of businesses engaged in war profiteering (an individual or group that profits from warfare by selling weapons and other goods to countries at war) and became very wealthy, while the workers and soldiers did not share the profits.
• New immigrants to Canada often experienced unemployment and terrible living conditions. During the war, the population of Winnipeg grew at a rate of 163 percent. The commercial elite who controlled the Winnipeg city government cared little for improving city social conditions. There were 4658 cases of typhoid fever in working class areas of Winnipeg in the first five years of 1900.
• From 1918 to 1919, union membership soared throughout Canada and strikes increased (400 strikes in Canada during 1919). Most of the strikes focused on achieving union recognition and collective bargaining rights for workers.
• Winnipeg was known as “Injunction City” because it was easy for business owners to get court injunctions to stop picketing or striking. This frustrated many of the workers and union representatives.

The Winnipeg General Strike

• On May 1, 1919, the Winnipeg building trades went on strike because they were fighting for a 44-hour work week (down from 60 hours) and $0.85 per hour. They were joined two days later by the metal trades.
• On May 15, 1919, negotiations broke down between the city council and labour representatives in the building and metal trades. The Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council called for a general strike of all workers.
• On May 15, 1919, at 11:00 a.m., 70 unions and 35 000 workers went off the job in Winnipeg which had a population of 175 000 people. The unions were looking for a decent wage, an eight-hour day and a guarantee of collective bargaining for all future negotiations.
• The strike closed the city's factories, crippled its retail trade and stopped the trains. Public-sector employees (e.g., policemen, firemen, postal workers, telephone operators and employees of waterworks and other utilities) joined private-industry workers in a display of working-class solidarity.
• The strike was organized by the Central Strike Committee which included representatives elected from each of the unions. The committee bargained with employers on behalf of the workers and coordinated the provision of essential services.
• Opposition to the strike was organized by the Citizens' Committee of 1000, a counter-strike committee created shortly after the strike began by Winnipeg's most influential manufacturers, bankers and politicians. The Citizens' Committee, who had the support of the Winnipeg Free Press and the Winnipeg Tribune newspapers, declared that the strike was a revolutionary conspiracy led by a small group of “alien scum” and anarchists.
• The federal government intervened soon after the strike began when Government officials went to Winnipeg to meet with the Citizens' Committee, but refused to meet with the Central Strike Committee.
• The federal government supported the employers, and ordered all federal employees to return to work immediately or face dismissal. The Immigration Act was amended so British-born immigrants could be deported, and the Criminal Code’s definition of sedition (acts meant to cause insurrection against authority) was broadened.
• On June 17, 1919, the government arrested 10 leaders of the Central Strike Committee and two propagandists from the newly formed One Big Union. Sympathetic strikes erupted in city centres across Canada from Amherst, Nova Scotia, to Victoria, British Columbia.
• Mayor C. F. Gray banned all parades, but on June 21, in what became known as Bloody Saturday, a huge crowd showed up on Main Street to watch a parade of strikers. Gray called in the Royal North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) and, when they arrived, the crowd attacked them and smashed and burned a streetcar. The NWMP charged the crowd three times, but were met with jeers, rocks and bricks.
• Mayor Gray read the Riot Act from the steps of city hall. After the NWMP’s third unsuccessful charge, they opened fire on the crowd, killing one and injuring 30.
• The strike was ended at 11:00 a.m. on June 26, 1919 when strike leaders agreed to send workers back to work after the Manitoba government appointed a Royal Commission to investigate the causes of labour unrest in Manitoba.
• Seven of the arrested leaders were convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the government and sentenced to jail terms from six months to two years.