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In the fall and winter of 1919-1920, in response to vigorous lobbying by A.J. Andrews and others on behalf of the Citizens’ Committee of 1000, the Canadian state, through Orders in Council in 1919 and 1920, became the paymaster for a private prosecution of the Winnipeg strike leadership charged at the end of the strike with seditious conspiracy. The prosecution was initiated under provisions of the Criminal Code that allowed for prosecutions by private citizens or organizations, subject to the consent of the Attorney General of Manitoba. The federal government paid Alfred J. Andrews and his associates in the Citizens’ Committee fees for services rendered during the strike, when, as leading figures in the Committee, they led the campaign against Winnipeg’s working-class revolt. The Department of Justice also paid $12,332.00 to the Winnipeg based McDonald Detective Agency for work associated with the prosecution. This federal largesse allowed Andrews to secure two juries almost certainly tainted by pre-trial investigations ordered by Andrews. The unity of purpose forged by Winnipeg’s business elite and the federal state illuminates the tendency of the liberal state and capital to forge a common front against perceived threats to the status quo in moments of extremis.

The article reviews the book, "The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor's Southern Prophets in New Deal America," by Erik S. Gellman and Jared Roll.

The article reviews the book, "Canadian Marxists and the Search for a Third Way," by J. Peter Campbell.

A.E. SMITH was a central figure in the Communist Party from the mid-1920s until his death in 1947. An advocate of the radical Social Gospel until at least 1923, Smith's interchange with leading members of the Canadian Communist movement, the growing prestige of the Soviet State, and his disillusionment with the social democratic movement in Canada and abroad, combined during the post-war epoch of reaction to cause a shift in his perspective away from the optimistic verities of the Social Gospel to his apocalyptic vision of the Communist International. While he retained his basic epistemological perspective after 1923, Smith's estrangement from the non-Communist left led to his political isolation and, in early 1925, to his entry into the Communist Party. (English)

This article reviews the book, "Canada the Good: A Short History of Vice since 1500," by Marcel Martel.

The article reviews the book, "Reform or Repression: Organizing America's Anti-Union Movement," by Chad Pearson.

This article reviews the book, "An Exceptional Law: Section 98 and the Emergency State, 1919–1936" by Dennis G. Molinaro.

The authors' careful analyses of labour and working-class organizations in Brandon are aimed at reconstructing and disclosing aspects of the history of class and class relations. While other western Canadian cities, Winnipeg, for example, have received much deserved attention by historians, studies of other cities, such as Brandon, in the early 20th century help to provide a more well-rounded understanding of working-class life in Canada during this period. In the tradition of the new labour history Black and Mitchell pay close attention to the unique development of class relations in the community of Brandon, while placing that community in a broader, national context. This work includes a careful consideration of the working class in Brandon, the particular obstacles and challenges workers there faced, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of class relations in Canada. --Website description

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.

Severe critique of the documentary, "Prairie Fire: The Winnipeg General Strike" (1999). Concludes that the film is a historiographic and cinematic failure.

Introduction and text of a speech that was to be given in 1970 at the University of Winnipeg by socialist politician and publicist William "Bill" Pritchard (1888-1981), who was a leading defendant at the sedition trial held in the aftermath of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.

For six weeks in the early summer of 1919, Winnipeg, then the largest city in the Canadian Prairies, was shut down by a general strike. More than 30,000 of the city's workers walked off their jobs in a test of strength that was to prove the focal point of a labor explosion that was national and international in scope. The strike was provoked by the refusal of employers to recognize and bargain with the metal and building trades federations of unions. The Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council organized a poll of its affiliates' members, and a general strike was approved by a vote of 11,112 to 524. The response to the strike call on May 15 was overwhelming. Not only did organized workers respond solidly, shutting down factories, newspapers, telephones, and streetcars, but thousands of unorganized workers joined them. The city fell silent....

The authors' careful analysis of labour and working-class organizations in Brandon is aimed at reconstructing and disclosing aspects of the history of class and class relations. While other western Canadian cities, Winnipeg, for example, have received much deserved attention by historians, studies of other cities, such as Brandon, in the early 20th century help to provide a more well-rounded understanding of working-class life in Canada during this period. In the tradition of the new labour history Black and Mitchell pay close attention to the unique development of class relations in the community of Brandon, while placing that community in a broader, national context. This work includes a careful consideration of the working class in Brandon, the particular obstacles and challenges workers there faced, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of class relations in Canada. --Publisher's description