Full bibliography

Between 1880 and 1920 the dominant ideology of independent working-class politics east of the Rockies was labourism, a brand of reformism which resembled but remained distinct from other ideological currents on the Canadian left. It was the political expression of skilled workers, who set out to win over wider support in the working class. It remained, in essence, a form of working-class liberalism, which had existed as Radicalism on the left wing of the Liberal Party but which took on an independent life in Canadian politics as industrial conflict heated up. For a brief period at the end of World War I, labourists allied with Marxist and ethical socialists to produce the visionary political dimension in the unprecedented post-war upsurge of the Canadian working class. The political movement and its ideology quickly declined in the early 1920s, however, along with the craftsworkers who had propelled it for half a century.