Title
For a Better World: The Winnipeg General Strike and the Workers' Revolt
Abstract
Canada’s largest and most famous example of class conflict, the Winnipeg General Strike, redefined local, national, and international conversations around class, politics, region, ethnicity, and gender. The Strike’s centenary occasioned a re-examination of this critical moment in working-class history, when 300 social justice activists, organizers, scholars, trade unionists, artists, and labour rights advocates gathered in Winnipeg in 2019. Probing the meaning of the General Strike in new and innovative ways, For a Better World includes a selection of contributions from the conference as well as others’ explorations of the character of class confrontation in the aftermath of the First World War. Editors Naylor, Hinther, and Mochoruk depict key events of 1919, detailing the dynamic and complex historiography of the Strike and the larger Workers’ Revolt that reverberated around the world and shaped the century following the war. The chapters delve into intersections of race, class, and gender. Settler colonialism’s impact on the conflict is also examined. Placing the struggle in Winnipeg within a broader national and international context, several contributors explore parallel strikes in Edmonton, Crowsnest Pass, Montreal, Kansas City, and Seattle. For a Better World interrogates types of commemoration and remembrance, current legacies of the Strike, and its ongoing influence. Together, the essays in this collection demonstrate that the Winnipeg General Strike continues to mobilize—revealing our radical past and helping us to think imaginatively about collective action in the future. --Publisher's description
Publisher
University of Manitoba Press
# of Pages
408 pages: illustrations
Short Title
For a Better World
Notes
Contents: "Strike or Revolution" Redux: The Historiography of the Winnipeg General Strike / James Naylor, Rhonda L. Hinther, and Jim Mochoruk -- In the Water: Race, Empire, and the Winnipeg General Strike / Adele Perry -- From Patriotism to Insurgency: The Shifting Allegiances of Winnipeg 1919's Striker-Soldiers / David Thompson -- "Adapt to the Institutions and the Manners of the Country": Winnipeg Jews and the General Strike / Henry Trachtenberg -- The Edmonton General Strike / Mikhail Bjorge -- The Winnipeg General Strike in the Crowsnest Pass / Tom Langford -- Montreal's Civil War: The Municipal Workers' Strike of 1918 / Geoffrey Ewen -- "Justice and Not Charity Should Be Your Demand!": Montréal's Unemployed and the Workers' Revolt / Benoit Marsan -- The Kansas City General Strike: Wartime Solidarity in the American Midwest / Jeff Stilley -- The Seattle General Strike: Five Days That Matter / Cal Winslow -- The Storm before the Calm: Social and Political Upheaval in the Western Hemisphere / Joel Wolfe -- The Rural Nothing Worth Monkey Police, or the Winnipeg Origins of 100 Years of Canadian State Spying on Labour and the Left / Gregory S. Kealey -- Not by Repression Alone: Defeating the Workers' Revolt by False Promises of Reform / Myer Siemiatycki -- Remembering 1919: Commemoration and the Winnipeg General Strike / Sharon Reilly -- Putting History to Work: Public History and Commemoration / David Frank -- The Winnipeg General Strike in the Twenty-First Century / James Naylor, Rhonda L. Hinther, and Jim Mochoruk.
Some chapters based on papers selected from the Winnipeg General Strike Centenary Conference: Building a Better World - 1919/2019, held from May 9-11, 2019.
Citation
Naylor, J., Hinther, R. L., & Mochoruk, J. (Eds.). (2022). For a Better World: The Winnipeg General Strike and the Workers’ Revolt. University of Manitoba Press. https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/for-a-better-world