The Winnipeg General Strike: Businessmen Unite

At this moment in history, there was a great scare as people believed that communism was spreading due to the 1917 revolutions in Russia. But the Winnipeg strike was not a communist revolt; it was an attempt by the workers to gain better working conditions and hours that they felt they deserved. The businessmen

The workers could see as well as anyone that communism was not for them, yet people thought that unions led to communism. The business men used this to fuel the fear that unions were bad, further helping themselves in disrupting the unions’ platform for collective bargaining.

This hatred of the strike was mostly seen in the eastern provinces, where the business class were firmly entrenched in their practices. The papers from the east did not represent the workers, but the views of the papers owners, business men themselves, who were vehemently opposed to the strike, and unions in general. The Montréal Gazette, for example: “The leading English-Language, Tory Paper in Montréal. Its attitude reflected business opinion closely. It was violently opposed to the strike and unsympathetic to the cause of unionism in general.” The Toronto Times stated in a May 20, 1919 article that “The object of the One Big Union is plain. It is the aim of the reds who dominate that organization to use mass-power, in defiance of agreements, for overturning organizing society… Canada must not become a second Russia. Plunder, murder and rape must not become ruling principles under a British flag.” As with just about every other paper, they gave a strong impression that the communists were staging a revolution in Winnipeg, when all the workers wanted were equitable pay and conditions. This could be seen by the majority of the western papers who were more understanding of the strike and what it actually stood for. The Albertan in Calgary was not only understanding of the need for the strike but saw through the acts of the government and that of the Citizens’ Committee.

The Winnipeg General Strike ended in failure and death for the strikers. Their demands not having been met, they were asked to return to work by the Strike Committee. The business men and the government fuelled the cause of the strike and it was they who caused such a bloody end to the conflict. Although the workers demands were, in time met, it caused a serious rift between the business men and the workers of Winnipeg that to a certain extent remains to this day.

Some topics in this essay:
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