A Winnipeg newpaper recalls the the 1919 Winnipeg General strike.
"When the workers of Winnipeg went on strike, the newspapers went on the offensive: 'Bolshevism invades Canada,' screamed the New York Times. But for most of the men and women who streamed out of the warehouses and onto the streets, the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike was not an exercise in ideology. Instead, its roots grew from a yawning chasm of economic inequality that had become too impossible to ignore."
Hugh Amos Robson wrote in his 1919 Royal Commission report on the causes of the strike. "There has been... an increasing display of carefree, idle luxury and extravagance on one hand, while on the other is intensified deprivation."
What exploded forth was a historic labour protest and one of the biggest social resistance movements Canada has ever seen. On May 1, construction and metalworkers walked off the job, demanding higher wages; on May 15, after employers refused to negotiate with two umbrella unions, the women who worked the city's telephones walked off their shift; nobody came to replace them. Within hours, almost 30,000 workers had joined the strike. It was almost the entire workforce of the city. For weeks, everything stopped -- except for protests, arrests and a fractious war of words waged by newspapers. When all was said and done, the strikers held out for 40 days. Most of those days were peaceful, but that was shattered on June 21, 1919 , Bloody Saturday, when 25,000 workers assembled downtown for a planned march. Winnipeg Mayor Charles Gray read the riot act. Police on horseback charged into the crowd of strikers, beating them with clubs. By the time Bloody Saturday was over, one man -- Mike Sokolowski -- was dead of a gunshot wound. Another died in hospital a few days later. On June 26, strike leaders called it off.
See the Socialist Party of Canada Winipeg for personal recollection of W. A. Pritchard one of the participants of the strike and his address to the jury
Also of interest on the same web-site, Hells Alley - a two-act play about the strike and Bloody Saturday by Larry Tickner
"When the workers of Winnipeg went on strike, the newspapers went on the offensive: 'Bolshevism invades Canada,' screamed the New York Times. But for most of the men and women who streamed out of the warehouses and onto the streets, the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike was not an exercise in ideology. Instead, its roots grew from a yawning chasm of economic inequality that had become too impossible to ignore."
Hugh Amos Robson wrote in his 1919 Royal Commission report on the causes of the strike. "There has been... an increasing display of carefree, idle luxury and extravagance on one hand, while on the other is intensified deprivation."
What exploded forth was a historic labour protest and one of the biggest social resistance movements Canada has ever seen. On May 1, construction and metalworkers walked off the job, demanding higher wages; on May 15, after employers refused to negotiate with two umbrella unions, the women who worked the city's telephones walked off their shift; nobody came to replace them. Within hours, almost 30,000 workers had joined the strike. It was almost the entire workforce of the city. For weeks, everything stopped -- except for protests, arrests and a fractious war of words waged by newspapers. When all was said and done, the strikers held out for 40 days. Most of those days were peaceful, but that was shattered on June 21, 1919 , Bloody Saturday, when 25,000 workers assembled downtown for a planned march. Winnipeg Mayor Charles Gray read the riot act. Police on horseback charged into the crowd of strikers, beating them with clubs. By the time Bloody Saturday was over, one man -- Mike Sokolowski -- was dead of a gunshot wound. Another died in hospital a few days later. On June 26, strike leaders called it off.
See the Socialist Party of Canada Winipeg for personal recollection of W. A. Pritchard one of the participants of the strike and his address to the jury
Also of interest on the same web-site, Hells Alley - a two-act play about the strike and Bloody Saturday by Larry Tickner
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