LABOUR HISTORY EVENT COMES ALIVE IN GRAPHIC FORM STUART DERDEYN
1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike The Graphic History Collective & David Lester | Between The Lines
Humanity is shaped and impacted, good and bad, by the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
The names of those they stepped on to reach the heights of fame aren’t consigned to the annals of history. This is why working-class history is vital to presenting the authentic picture of a period in time. The Graphic History Collective aims to share these too often lost tales to add to the official understanding of how the world works.
One of the most tumultuous times in this nation’s history took place from May 25, 1919, to June 26, 1919, when the Winnipeg General Strike occurred. It makes for an obvious graphic novel-style representation with illustrations from Vancouver-based artist/ musician David Lester.
What went down when 35,000 workers walked off their jobs during a six-week general strike was not a spontaneous event, nor was it ultimately a successful one.
The how and why of this and the buildup to the strike are all revisited in this Graphic History Collective and David Lester released book. It’s published to coincide with the centenary year of the most significant labour action in Canadian history.
As Brandeis University history professor James Naylor notes in his introduction, the common symbol of the strike has been the overturned street car. It’s meant to reflect the violence and vandalism that the striking workers unravelled on Winnipeg. That one image from Bloody Saturday is hardly the most representative of the true violence visited upon workers that day by the Royal North-west Mounted Police and militias of private “specials” (hired thugs) who set about viciously attacking strikers — killing two and wounding many — under the pretext of re-establishing order.
Artist David Lester’s blackand-white illustrations of the first day of the event sets the collective in motion. Complete with the Sweet Clover Bacon and Pork Sausage Co. sign at Portage and Main, the image displays the sheer numbers who took to the streets that May demanding a variety of improvements in collective bargaining rights, wage improvements and more.
Among the key organizing figures were alderman such as Abraham Heaps and John Queen. It’s eye-opening that, 100 years later, you have to pinch yourself to imagine a politician putting themselves in such an attached position. At one time, it happened.
The book outlines the frustrations over the widening economic gap between the rich and the working poor in Winnipeg at the time.
Returning soldiers — the majority conscripted from the poorer classes — found unemployment, inflation and poor living conditions upon returning home while the wealthy had cashed in producing war materials for the First World War.
This inequality led to an increase in labour organizing and strikes. One of the first general strikes was in B.C. on Aug. 2, 1918, to protest the murder, widely held to be an assassination, of mining organizer Albert (Ginger) Goodwin. This, and other continuing incidents, fuelled the strikers in Winnipeg.
The history is fascinating, touching on everything from newspaper headlines equating strikers with the rampant spread of international Bolshevism to the backroom arrangements between wealthy industrialists, government officials and the judicial system to put tools such as Immigration Act amendments in play to deport “undesirables.”
When the order to charge is finally given on June 21, 1919, Lester’s illustrations invoke both the terror and conviction of the protesters as the crowd is set upon on the day known as Bloody Saturday. By 6 p.m., Canadian Army Service Corps trucks — equipped with Lewis machine guns — were patrolling main street and strikers were being herded into packed prison cells.
At 11 a.m. on June 26, the Winnipeg General Strike officially ended and 1919 closes with a few plates analyzing the lasting impact of the Winnipeg General Strike in continuing fights for improvements in the society.
It’s clear a lot more than clicking the like button is required to ignite true change.