When the State Trembled: How A.J. Andrews and the Citizens' Committee Broke the Winnipeg General Strike

The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, which involved approximately 30,000 workers, is Canada's best-known strike. When the State Trembled recovers the hitherto untold story of the Citizens' Committee of 1000, formed by Winnipeg's business elite in order to crush the revolt and sustain the status quo. This account, by the authors of the award-winning Walk Towards the Gallows, reveals that the Citizens drew upon and extended a wide repertoire of anti-labour tactics to undermine working-class unity, battle for the hearts and minds of the middle class, and stigmatize the general strike as a criminal action. Newly discovered correspondence between leading Citizen lawyer A.J. Andrews and Acting Minister of Justice Arthur Meighen illuminates the strategizing and cooperation that took place between the state and the Citizens. While the strike's break was a crushing defeat for the labour movement, the later prosecution of its leaders on charges of sedition reveals abiding fears of radicalism and continuing struggles between capital and labour on the terrain of politics and law. --Publisher's description. Contents: Permitted by Authority of the Strike Committee -- Who? Who? Who-oo? -- Seven Hundred and Four Years Ago at Runnymede -- The Anointing of A.J. Andrews -- The Flag-Flapping Stage -- To Reach the Leaders in this Revolutionary Movement -- Time to Act -- Enough Evidence to Convict the Whole Strike Committee -- The Road through Bloody Saturday -- The Only Way to Deal with Bolshevism -- They are all dangerous: Immigration Hearings -- They Started the Fire: Preliminary Hearing -- Poor Harry Daskaluk -- Duty to God, Country, and Family: The Russell Trial.

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