In the Canadian labour movement's long and continuing history of struggles to establish its trade-union rights, no episode was more spectacular, explosive or meaningful than the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. General strikes by definition involve working-class confrontations with authority and produce a massive disruption of society while paralysing economic life. They are "cataclysmic events [and] by their nature, unlikely to be created in a day."1 The Winnipeg General Strike had many roots, including class polarization, working conditions and socialist ideas. The labour relations conflict was compounded during World War I and intensified when the war ended. On May 15, 1919, the labour conflict reached its climax as the whole productive life of the city ground to a halt and thousands of workers joined the union members in walking off their jobs, commencing the General Strike.
In many ways Winnipeg was at war with itself. The city was divided socially, economically, geographically, and ethnically. 2 While labour and business battled for power, there was also an ethnic prejudice problem that plagued the city. Winnipeg was divided into two main groups: people of British origin and the more recent immigrants (who were labelled aliens), who were mostly from Eastern Europe. These immigrants inhabited the area north of the CPR rail tracks, which provided not only a physical division between the rich and the poor, but also an "ethnic schism."3 In fact "in the areas largely populated by immigrants from central Europe, overcrowding, illiteracy, crime and seasonal unemployment rule[d]."4 Even the most skilled workers were affected. Despite the fact that they generally had better paying jobs than the unskilled workers, they still had to compete with child labour and did not have control over wages. Many of the recent immigrants from Britain experienced the working-class uprisings in the industrial revolution and brought with them ideology regarding industrial-class labour unions.