@ 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