Commentary
Winnipeg in the summer of 1919 was a scene of tragic anarchy. On May 15, labour activists declared a General Strike and took over the city, bringing it to a standstill. Workers had genuine grievances, but the strike leaders got carried away. In a nutshell, they were inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, socialism, and “class war,” and militants demagogued the workers with little regard for the consequences.
Public transit, the postal system (an essential service in the pre-internet era), utilities, and even milk and bread delivery could operate only with union bosses’ permission. Even theatres were told they required a strike “certificate” to open. Huge mobs formed in defiance of public order. City police went on duty “by permission of the Strike Committee” and then tried to join the strike. What had created this calamity?
The Winnipeg General Strike turns into a riot as a streetcar is set on fire on June 21, 1919. Public Domain
Ultimately, the roots lie in the terrible caricature of capitalism promoted by socialists in what F.A. Hayek called their “fatal conceit.” They depicted capitalism as a planned conspiracy by a propertied clique against poorly paid workers whose labour creates owners’ extravagant profits. In reality, a market economy is a case of spontaneous order, not planning. Property is not held by a fixed minority, profit is paid by buyers of goods (not taken from labour), and a growing economy benefits ordinary people more than any alternative system. It is not capitalism, but collectivism with its attempts to enforce equality, that tends towards tyranny. Sensible observers in 1919 could see that Lenin’s Soviet Russia was a state-collectivist despotism.
However, 240 union bosses at the Western Labour Conference in Calgary in March 1919 declared themselves unanimously “in full accord and sympathy with the aims and purposes of the Russian Bolshevik and German Spartacan revolutions” and “the principle of Proletarian Dictatorship.” Parliamentarism and free enterprise were “defunct.”
“Blood is running in Russia, and blood will run in this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or we will get our rights,” R.B. Russell of the Socialist Party told a Walker Theatre rally of 1,700 in December 1918. They were “willing to trade in blood.” “We must establish some form of government as they have it in Russia so that we may have a Russian democracy here,” Russell said. J.S. Woodsworth, the founder of the future Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (later the NDP), said there was nothing wrong with supporting Soviet-style government. “Well, why not?” he said.
Field Marshal Harold Alexander between 1944 and 1946. Public Domain
Meanwhile, Canadians were serving in Allied military operations in Russia against communism. Near Vladivostok, the 4,000-strong Canadian Expeditionary Force, including volunteers from the Royal North-West Mounted Police, drilled and awaited orders from irresolute Allied leaders. In May 1919 at Omsk, 55 Canadians aboard a train came under fire from the Bolsheviks. In North Russia in 1918, eight Canadians were killed, 16 wounded.
A future governor general of Canada, Irish Guards officer Harold Alexander, who spoke German and Russian, led Baltic German Landeswehr troops in action against the Bolsheviks in Latvia in May 1919. (How many Canadians, given our present mission in Latvia, have a clue about that?)
In the Winnipeg strike, 30,000 people walked off the job. The Western Labor News welcomed “the coming revolution in this country.” At the corner of Portage and Main on June 10, a gang of hoodlums attacked two special constables appointed by the mayor and a group of taxpayers called the Citizens’ Committee of One Thousand. The Mounties, held back in their stables for weeks, were standing by on horseback and observing the scene. They received the order to charge. In a melee that lasted five hours, hooligans beat up a special constable Sgt. Fred Coppins, but otherwise there was no serious injury.
Arthur Meighen between circa 1914 and 1919. Public Domain
The provincial government led by Premier T.C. Norris found itself incapable, but fortunately the Dominion Government had the right man: Arthur Meighen. Meighen was acting minister of justice in the administration of Sir Robert Borden. According to a multi-volume biography of his life written by historian Roger Graham, Meighen “towered” among his peers “like some lonely giant of the forest” and “emerged as the strong right arm of the Prime Minister.”
Meighen was no anti-union tool of big business, as his enemies claimed in their copious propaganda—a theme that Mackenzie King exploited to obtain his 1921 election victory. On the contrary, Meighen was a Tory in the Disraeli-Macdonald mould: he believed in social concord not the class warfare promoted by socialists. He was in “sympathy” with labourers. He accepted that a limited strike could be legitimate, but not a general strike that paralyzed an entire city, which was “in its very nature revolutionary.” The strikers were “dupes” and union leaders their worst enemies.
Meighen arrived in Winnipeg on May 22 with his colleague, Labour Minister Sen. Gideon Robertson. Much is made of the fact that they refused to sit down with the Strike Committee. But by the leaders’ own words, the strike was “a cloak for something far deeper—an effort to ‘overturn’ the proper authority,” and “there was absolutely no justification for the general strike.” Meighen warned federal workers to return to work or be replaced. He amended the Immigration Act to deport foreign- and British-born “undesirables,” reinforce the police, and arrest strike leaders for “seditious conspiracy.”
On June 16 and 17, Meighen ordered night raids on the homes of strike leaders including Russell, William Ivens (who had told a crowd of 3,000 on May 18 that Winnipeg was now under Soviet control as all cities in Canada soon would be); Roger Bray, George Armstrong, Romanian-born Jewish activist Sam Blumenberg (who said “Bolshevism is the only thing which will emancipate the working class”), A.A. Heap, and John Queen (who said “Long live the Russian Soviet Republic!”)
The demonstrators enjoyed one last gasp. On June 21, a mob at Portage and Main rocked, derailed, and tilted a streetcar, smashing the windows and setting the interior alight. That burning streetcar became the foremost symbol of anarchy in Canadian history. And famously it prompted about 50 Mounties to charge the crowd. In the chaos, one man was killed, another fatally wounded, 30 sent to hospital, and 91 to prison.
The Royal North-West Mounted Police charge toward the crowd during the Winnipeg General Strike on June 21, 1919. Public Domain
As a peace offering, Premier Norris on June 24 created a royal commission chaired by a Liberal lawyer, Hugh Amos Robson. His conciliating report concluded that the strikers’ demands were reasonable—higher wages, a shorter work week, and conceded that the strike was not an attempted coup. But if the strike leaders’ goals were so limited, why did they insist on likening it to the Bolshevik Revolution?
The strike was called off on June 25 and 26, having lasted for six weeks.
Today, the Winnipeg General Strike is commemorated by a full-size canted steel streetcar sculpture installed in 2019 at Portage and Main. The CBC filmed a re-enactment of the police charge whose implication, predictably, is that it represented excessive force, and that the strike was necessary to obtain better working conditions. As in other areas, those on the left monopolize the narrative and demonize dissent.
Inevitably, one man became the scapegoat: “There is no injustice in naming Mr. Meighen as the chief of the advocates of strong-arm measures,” the Toronto Star stated in 1919. More recently, historian Bryan Palmer has said Meighen’s “paranoia about ‘Bolshevism’ and ‘Socialism’ running rampant throughout Canada was legendary.” It’s a typical red herring. In fact, archivists have revealed Meighen’s reluctance to crack down harshly. As for the Bolshevism rhetoric, we know where that came from.
For Palmer, Winnipeg holds “a particular place of Canadian pride as a global workers’ revolt” with “the working class coming to power in Russia.” But let’s get one thing straight: it was not the working class that ruled Russia. Amazingly, Palmer clings to the dream of “a working class ‘Soviet regime.’” “Many of us on the left,” he says, “would crawl through streets of broken glass to make our way to an alley of overt class confrontation as enthralling and unambiguously militant” as Winnipeg in 1919.
The rest of us can thank our lucky stars—and Arthur Meighen—that the strikers failed to bring Bolshevism to Canada.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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