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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, The General Strike at 80 - Article﻿</title>﻿
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﻿<b﻿>﻿The General Strike at 80 
﻿<br﻿>﻿Time to Try Again?
﻿<br﻿>﻿</b>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

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by Jim Naylor﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, September - October 1999﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿</center>﻿
In the hot early summer of 1919, 30,000 workers shut down Winnipeg, the metropolis of the prairies, for six long weeks. Factories closed, telephones fell silent and newspaper presses rolled to a halt. An elected strike committee that met daily maintained essential services such as fire protection, bread and milk delivery and waterworks. The threat and then the decision to fire government employees - police, telephone and postal workers - failed to undermine the strikers resolve. Only the arrest and jailing of strike leaders and "Bloody Sunday" (mounted police and vigilante-like "specials" who replaced the regular police attacked a silent parade of pro-strike returned soldiers) brought the strike to a close.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Is the Winnipeg General Strike now only an outdated relic of the past? On the contrary, the idea of the general strike remains very much alive in Canada. On several occasions, it has caught the imagination of large numbers of workers: from the Common Front struggles in Quebec in the 1970s and 1980s, to the Solidarity movement against the British Columbia Social Credit government in 1983, to the Days of Action against the Tories in Ontario.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Marching through the streets of Montreal, Vancouver or Toronto, surrounded by tens of thousands of others who share your anger with the neo-liberal agenda and governments' attacks on working people, it is hard not to imagine its potential. The NDP seems unlikely to win many elections soon, or to effectively restore workers' rights. As long as the assault continues, the general strike promises to force itself back onto the agenda. It is, of course, a long way from idea to reality. Recent movements have run aground on bureaucratic conservatism, industrial legalism and a reasonable wariness that those at the head of the movement lacked clear perspectives.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
As activists renew arguments for a general strike they must be willing to provide leadership and strategies. If it is time to try again it is also time to examine past experiences and debates.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<b﻿>﻿Militancy and solidarity﻿</b>﻿
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
The ostensible goal of the Winnipeg general strike - emphasized by mainstream historians - was to support the local metal trades workers and carpenters in their demands for collective bargaining rights. But this hardly explains the scope of the movement. Winnipeg unionists voted about 11,000 to 500 in favour of a general strike, but perhaps three times that many walked off the job. Few of them would benefit directly from the strike. Thousands were unorganized, unskilled, often immigrant, workers, who enjoyed few of the benefits the metal trades workers and the carpenters already had. The Winnipeg General Strike was marked by an astounding solidarity of workers - women and men, immigrant and Canadian-born, returned soldiers and non-combatants - that alarmed bourgeois Winnipeg.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
To combat the strike, employers formed the Citizens Committee of 1000. They declared that "No thoughtful citizen can any longer doubt the so-called general strike is in reality a revolution - or a daring attempt to overthrow the present industrial and governmental system." Along with the city's newspapers, they tried to undermine workers' solidarity through a vicious anti-immigrant campaign, attempting to cast the strikers as disloyal foreigners. This was a powerful, but ultimately unsuccessful, tactic in the context of the just-completed world war.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
The strike was not in any sense "a revolution," but capital and governments were legitimately worried. Most threateningly, militancy seemed to be matched by a growing socialist consciousness, particularly among the emerging leadership of the union movement.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<b﻿>﻿Post-war workers' revolt﻿</b>﻿
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
In Winnipeg, a meeting of 1700 workers, sponsored jointly by the local labour council and the Socialist Party in the city's famed Walker Theatre the previous December, seemed to reflect the convergence between militancy and socialist consciousness. The crowd sent messages of congratulations to revolutionaries in Russia and Germany and lambasted the wartime constraints on Canadian democracy. As well, Winnipeg workers seemed eager to prove their mettle. The local labour council had threatened to organize a General Strike on three separate occasions in the year before the great walkout of May-June 1919.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
The workers' revolt was not confined to Winnipeg. In March 1919, a highly representative conference of the Western Canadian labour movement met in Calgary. The delegates identified themselves with revolutionary movements in Europe and threatened general strikes to back their demands for the withdrawal of allied troops from Bolshevik Russia and for a shortening of the workday in Canada. Local disputes provoked general strikes in Amherst, Nova Scotia and Toronto, and general strikes in sympathy with the Winnipeg strike occurred across Western Canada.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Mainstream historians have downplayed the radicalism of the Winnipeg strike. But, despite the lack of a widespread, explicitly socialist consciousness, workers were rejecting their political and social subordination. Unskilled and semi-skilled workers organized and struck, more unified organizations emerged (and even, as proposed at the Calgary conference, a "One Big Union" of all workers). Almost everywhere in Canada, labour councils and unions backed the formation of labour parties. Workers were presenting themselves at work, in the streets, and at the ballot box, as a self-conscious class, ready to play a new role in Canadian society. Canadian capital looked nervously to Russia and determined to nip such developments in the bud.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<b﻿>﻿Roots﻿</b>﻿
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
What had happened to provoke such a movement? The previous two decades had seen rapid and chaotic economic growth. This led to considerable industrial development but insecure and generally harsh jobs. The First World War heightened the monopolization of the economy while creating a severe labour shortage. As a result workers were in a far more secure position to organize and strike without fear of being fired. But, at the same time, they faced far more powerful corporations.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Strikes skyrocketted before the end of the war. Large groups of workers who had never before been able to create unions were able to organize in considerable numbers. These included workers deemed unskilled, especially immigrant workers and women, who bosses had readily fired and replaced in times of higher unemployment.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
The Canadian labour movement was no longer the exclusive reserve of skilled, Canadian- or British-born men. They too had been forced to reconsider their relationship to other workers due to "the dilution of labour" as it was called at the time. Skilled workers felt that they were losing their valuable skills as employers used new technologies and divided the work among a range of semi-skilled or unskilled workers that the employers had introduced into the workplaces. Veterans of the labour movement increasingly felt that their future lay with a new, more militant, form of industrial unionism. Holding onto their old skills and privileges seemed to be a losing battle. They too were attracted to forms of orga﻿nization that could mobilize workers for general strikes and at the ballot box.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Changes in the workforce and the organization of work made the general strike movement possible. But equally important, was the deep crisis of legitimacy that Canadian and international capitalism faced in the immediate aftermath of the war. Business had profited - or profiteered - mightily while soldiers suffered at the front, and working class families faced hardships due to wartime inflation and shortages back in Canada. While governments tried to claim that this was a "war for democracy," Ottawa governed through the War Measures Act, banning socialist and immigrant organizations and (unsuccessfully) forbidding workers from striking. By the time of the Winnipeg strike, the guns of Europe had been silent for over six months, but the state had given up none of its wartime power.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
The results then were general strikes and electoral breakthroughs, as in Ontario where a "Farmer-Labour" government was elected. They were defeated, but only over time. The military assault in Winnipeg was only one step. It was followed by more repression: an immigration act that made it possible to deport British subjects, a criminal code amendment that defined sedition extremely broadly, and gerrymandering that made it impossible, in the case of Winnipeg, for working-class communities to win a majority of city council. There was a renewed campaign for cultural assimilation of immigrant communities. A "National Conference on Character Formation," generously funded by Winnipeg business, sought to regulate working class morality and promote patriotism over working class identity.
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<b﻿>﻿Legacy﻿</b>﻿
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
All the working class political tendencies that developed over the following decades claimed the Winnipeg strike as their own. Although defeated, the strike served as an inspiring example of working class unity. They differed, of course, over the wisdom of the strike and the tactics followed by its leadership and through the 1920s and 1930s such issues were repeatedly rehashed. This legacy is ours to reclaim.
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﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿Jim Naylor is a contributing author to The Workers' Revolt in Canada, 1917-1925, Craig Heron, ed., University of Toronto Press, 1998.﻿</font>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

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