@ workers did in fact come
rt of the struggle for the
pain collectively through
fing agency of the workers’
‘the eight hour day, and for
s. For the overwhelming
them, those were the only
counted.
ployers could have brought
an end in 24 hours by
‘to bargain in good faith with
Trades Council and the
rades workers.
d of accepting collective
the capitalist class, in Win-
eg n Canada as a whole, pre-
[their plans and their organiza-
the sympathetic strike.
, the leading reactionaries
at they called a “Citizens
That body announced its
n a “Committee of One
It was in fact the Rally of
#8 of Reaction. They proclaim-
purpose was “To Uphold the
events showed, all too clear-
purpose was to defy the
® fifth day of the strike the
tizens Committee launched

ly paper, the “Winnipeg

Canada, the capitalists
the newspapers and other
Of communication. There
Tadio stations at that time.
® capitalist press, particu-
of the statements that ema-
Boards of Trade, Chambers
, and other agencies of the
all of which were echoed
‘government of Ottawa, one
assumed that Canada was
old of a carefully planned
tion. What is more, capi-
panda made it appear as
bloody revolution which
Canada was being planned
to by sinister agents of the
eviks. Many workers who

took that propaganda at face value,
thought that the capitalists were panic
stricken.

The capitalist class was not panic
striken, however; on the contrary, its
leaders were cold-bloodedly calculat-
ing class sentiment to their class
advantage. That attitude of cynical
calculation was exemplified by Arthur
Meighen, Attorney-General and Deputy
Prime Minister in the Tory government.
He saw in the sympathetic strike a
golden opportunity. To quote the ex-
pression used by a newspaperman at the
time, ‘“Meighen created the fear of
revolution so that he could bust the
bubble of post-war expectations which
inspired the working class.”

GOVERNMENT STRIKEBREAKER!

From the day it was organized, there
was intimate collusion between the so-
called Citizens’ Committee and the
government at Ottawa. While it an-
nounced itself as the rival authority
to the Strike Committee and recruited
and trained a force of toughs, the gov-
ernment secretly sent small arms and
ammunition to Winnipeg to arm them.
It was evident that violence alone
would not break the strike as long as
its key leaders were free to inspire the
workers, but the government’s lawyers
could not find a single legal excuse
for arresting them. So, the Acting
Prime Minister, Arthur Meighen, in-
structed his Minister of Labor, who
was in Winnipeg, to take whatever
action seemed necessary to smash the
Strike and he, Meighen, would pass a
law to make the action legal after-
wards.

Then the Citizens’ Committee, the
government, the Mounties, and the
Minister of Labor, being ready, a riot
was provoked by the armed “Special
Police,” organized by the Citizens’
Committee. That was followed by an
announcement from the Metal Trades

PHOTO—R.C.M.P.

Employers that they were prepared to
negotiate with representatives of their
employees concerning hours of work
and wages. That night, twelve of the
key leaders of the Strike were taken
from their beds violently by armed
mounties in simultaneous raids at two
o'clock in the morning. They were
rushed to Stoney Mountain Penitenti-
ary without trial and held incommu-
nicado.

On June 21 strikers and returned
soldiers were assembling for “a silent
parade” to demonstrate the solidarity
of the strike and support for their
arrested leaders. Armed, mounted
“Special Police” and Mounties charged
at the assembling men. The workers
opened their ranks and let them ride
through. But, the mounted force turned
round and came back at a gallop, and
rode into the spectators, firing as they
charged. By a miracle only two workers
were killed—murdered in cold blood.
Thirty were wounded so badly that
they could not get away, an unknown
number were able to struggle to their
own or a fellow worker’s home and
have their wounds treated secretly.

Following that, the main streets were
patrolled by armed men with machine
gun3 mounted on trucks. The city was,
in effect, under martial rape of the
law. The Trades and Labor Council’s
official organ, “The Western Labor
News”, was banned by the federal
government and had to be published
illegally.

The cunning conciliatory announce-
ment by the metal trades employers
confused a large number of workers,
who assumed that it met the central
demand of the strike. On June 25, ex-
actly six weeks after it started, the
Trades and Labor Council called off
the sympathetic strike. The law that
was written to “legalize” the brazen
defiance of the law that had been re-
sorted to in breaking the strike, receiv-

ed its first, its second, and its third
and final reading in the House of Com-
mons, all in forty minutes. The Liberals
vied with the Tories in their haste to
satisfy the bankers in New York. The.
law that they passed in forty minutes
was “polished up” later, and became
Section 98A of the Criminal Code.

A GUIDE TO FUTURE VICTORIES

One of the lessons of the Winnipeg
Strike which became evident very
quickly is the fact that smashing it did
not prevent the advance of the working
class. Indeed, that historic working
class action raised the issues of collec-
tive bargaining and the eight hour day
to such a level that both were broad
public moral issues from then on. The
law that was enacted to legalize smash-
ing that strike was repealed as dis-
credited legislation in 1936.

Perhaps its most important lesson
was that to defeat the capitalist class,
the working class must combine its
united trade union action with united
working class political action. In the
first federal general election held after
their strike was smashed, the workers
of Winnipeg elected the Rev. J. S.
Woodsworth to the House of Commons
and, what is more, they kept him there
as long as he lived.

These are only the most evident and
immediate of the many lessons of the
strike which included a whole complex
of proofs of the fallacy of Anarcho-
Syndicalism. These lessons were a very
important factor in the subsequent
transformation of the concepts by
which revolutionary workers are guid-
ed today. With this release from the
legalistic illusions which, at that time,
restricted our thinking to the frame-
work established by our bosses, the
militant solidarity and unyielding dis-
cipline demonstrated by the Winnipeg
workers fifty years ago, point the way
to victory in the coming great strug-
gles of the Canadian working class.

PHOTO—CBC WINNIPEG

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 25; 1969—Page 9