Businesses in labor-intensive industries charged that the Industrial Workers of the World and socialist organizations were undermining the economy. When the Bolshevik's victory in Russia was complete these complaints grew more common. Security officials were also concerned about the possibility of unrest and disorder in cities with large foreign-born populations; high on the list of such a city was Winnipeg (Bercuson, 1974).
The General Strike represented, for both its opponents and proponents, a clash of absolutes. The difference in the views lay in the definition of the absolutes. For the societal elite in Canada, the Winnipeg General strike represented the clash between anarchy one hand with order and decency on the other. Opposing the view, working class Canadians, social activists, and the Methodist Church viewed Winnipeg as a clash between greed and oppression on one hand and the rights of men on the other. Over the years since the Winnipeg General Strike the absolutes of 1919 have softened, and a widespread general consensus has developed in which it is recognized that the principles for which the strike were waged were just, the demands of labor were reasonable, and the reactions of the political-social-economic elite to labor's demands and the strike were the source of most of the trouble that occurred. That this consensus view as generally correct is supported by the facts that first the most important demands of labor and social activists made during the strike have been recognized and passed into law by the government, and second the political successor, the New Democratic Party, to the forces behind the Winnipeg General Strike has emerged as a political force in Canada.
In the aftermath of WWI, Canadian Prime Minister Robert Border (Tory) was in Paris with the other world leaders attempting to formulate a new international political structure to be built around the League of Nations.
