Treaty of Versailles

Discouraged Peace
Encouraged Peace
• Creation of League of • War-Guilt clause (blame)
Nations • Reparations
• No secret alliances • Military/Arms limitations
• Poland, Latvia, Estonia, • Loss of territory (A&L,
France controls
Yugoslavia, Finland,
Rhineland, lose colonies)
Lithuania, Hungary,
• Germany forbidden to
Austria and
join League of Nations
Czechoslovakia are
• Germany and Austria
granted status as
forbidden to unite
nation-states
• Re-drawing of the map
where new nations had
their own minorities
What were we
fighting for?
Where is the brave new world we were
promised?
 True or False
• Many families were in desperate financial shape in
1918

• True: The combined death toll of war and influenza

significantly reduced the workforce. It left thousands
of families without a primary wage earner and
orphaned thousands of children.
 True or False
• While it was frustrating to wait in Europe, returning
soldiers were safe from hardship once they returned
home.

• False: Given the sacrifices they made, returning soldiers

found it difficult to accept the conditions facing them
when they returned from the front. Returning soldiers
faced factories closing down, prices going up and
difficulty gaining employment.
• False: Many soldiers that survived fighting overseas
succumbed to illness once resettled in Canada and
inadvertently killed thousands of family members who
welcomed them home but perished soon after their
arrival due to influenza.
 True or False
• War had been good for women (at least where it
related to voting rights)

• True: By 1920, most of the property and income

restrictions on voting had been swept away and
after in 1921 most women could vote
 True or False
• Male workers were in a good situation now that
there was not a ‘total war’ where the home front
economic activities were directed to supporting the
front and they could focus on earning money safely

• False: In Canada, higher profits for a few happened

alongside low wages, oppressive working
conditions and spiralling costs of living for many
• Strikes and economic hardship were prominent
features of life in the pre-war period and in the early
1920s.
 True or False
• The authorities took rational and pragmatic views
on the difficult economic situations and the
frustration workers were feeling

• False: Canadian authorities were in the grip of a Red

Scare. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia established
a new communist government. Canadian and
American governments, as well as industry and
business leaders, feared the influence of
communism would lead to a Bolshevik revolution.
• Government was also cozy with industry leaders
 Consider the Cousins
• The unrest among Russian
factory workers developed
into 3500 strikes between
January and July 1914.
During the war, exhausted
and starving working women
successfully led poorly paid
and underfed workers in a
bid to overthrow the royal
regime. After civil war a
communist government was
established.
 Red Scare
• Being concerned about Bolshevism was not entirely
unreasonable for the authorities in Canada

• It is true that many labour unions in Canada’s west were

aligned with leftist ideas and called for socialist reforms
of government and the uprising in Russia in 1917 had
inspired trade unionists in Winnipeg and elsewhere in
Canada

• But much of the strife and conflict that happened

between Canadian workers and authorities grew out of
the violent and panicked reactions of the established
authorities
 Please note that…
• There were 149,000 workers in more than 400 strikes that
resulted in more than 3.4 million workdays being lost in
1919

• Returning soldiers presented complex challenges for the

labour movement…

• General Strike is essentially a critical mass of the labour

force in a city, region, etc. with workers walking off the
job in solidarity. General strikes typically involve workers
from a number of different workplaces/types of
employment that come together for a particular
purpose. In many cases the general strike involves
workers striking in support of others.
• Rising unemployment was a factor. The end of war
meant the closing of munitions plants. Now, too, there
were hundreds of thousands of returning soldiers to
inflate demand for work. In addition, ex-servicemen
expected to return to their old jobs, which meant
displacing women and men who had been brought into
those positions during the war. All of this created an
atmosphere of uncertainty in the workforce while
mobilizing, at least part of, a large female workforce in
protest. Politically, too, the returned troops were
something of a wildcard. Some were outraged at the
anti-war and anti-conscription postures struck by many
on the labour-left, to say nothing of their hostility toward
the Russian Revolution and its supporters. There were also
instances where returned British-Canadian soldiers
turned their ire against Central and Eastern European,
people they described as enemy aliens, who had
taken their jobs. Other veterans felt that the radical
critiques of profiteering, incompetent generalship in
Europe, and international capitalism were entirely on the
mark. Ottawa’s disinterest in the fate of returning soldiers
pushed many veterans still closer to the labour-left
camp.
 Labour in Canada
• At the Western Labour Conference of March 1919
the One Big Union was founded.
o One Big Union was an organization intended to represent
all Canadian workers. The goal was to influence
government and industry through peaceful means.

• The Winnipeg General strike was emblematic of the

political and economic tensions in Canada
o 15 May 1919 metal and building workers went on strike
demanding, higher wages, a shorter working week, and
the right to collective bargaining.
o The strike lasted 43 days
o Significant because although only 12 000 workers in
Winnipeg belonged to any kind of union 30 000 people
walked off the job.
 Consider the demands
again
• Right to collective bargaining
• A living wage
• An 8 hour work day

• What rights do we currently enjoy as workers?

 May 1919
• The Trades and Labour Council formed a General
Strike Committee and called for widespread action
since the metal workers were being ignored
o On May 21 the Trades and Labour Council formed a
General Strike Committee.

• When the Committee took upon itself the power to

provide basic services, the press all over North
America declared that this was proof that the
strikers were trying to establish a “Soviet style
government” and seemed proof of a Bolshevik
conspiracy
 Winnipeg General Strike:
Establishment reactions
• The Citizen’s Committee of One Thousand
was organized in response to the strike.
o It was made up of business leaders, politicians
and industrialists who viewed the strike action as
a genuine threat of Bolshevik revolution.
• The anti-strike Winnipeg Free Press published an
editorial that compared striking milk truck drivers
and bakers to German bombers, branding them
"baby-killers" because of their participation.
• A crowd gathers outside Winnipeg City Hall in 1919
during the General Strike
 Violence inherent in the
system
• The goal of the Mayor and the Citizen’s Committee
of one Thousand was to crush the strike and
discredit the strike leaders.
o Hired 2000 ‘specials’ (a militia to replace striking
police)
o Fired civic workers and had leaders arrested

• When it was clear to Winnipeg authorities that the

local police sympathised with the strikers the NWMP
were called in to maintain order.
•
 "Bloody Saturday"
• 21 June 1919 - War veterans had organized a
protest parade for the arrest of the strike leaders
but chaos broke out after the city's mayor read
the Riot Act to the crowd.

• Police on horseback — both militia and

Mounties — charged the protesters, swinging
bats as they passed through the crowd. On a
second charge they began firing their revolvers.
Two strikers were killed and about 30 were
wounded. Many strikers were arrested.
It became violent
 Reverberations
• The strike committee agreed to end the general
strike on June 26.
o Though their demands for fairer wages and hours
hadn't been met, workers did accomplish some
of their goals.
o Legislation was enacted to allow collective
bargaining, strikers were guaranteed their jobs
back, and employers agreed to recognize
unions.
 CBC digital archive
• Listen to the radio report and see if you can
discover what is significant about the measures that
the federal government took in response to the
Winnipeg General Strike

• Remember that the government response included

amending the Immigration Act in order to allow
individuals involved in the strike to be deported.
Also, the Criminal Code was changed to criminalize
any organization that intended to bring about
governmental, industrial or economic change.
 What did the federal
government do?
• Parliament amended the Immigration Act so British-
born immigrants could be deported, and
expanded the definition of sedition.

• The Criminal Code was changed to criminalize any

organization that intended to bring about
governmental, industrial or economic change.
 Were the strikers’ actions
worthwhile?
• Read pages 62, 64 and 65 to find specific pieces of
evidence that will support your writing.

• To practice perspective taking skills, you will be

writing thesis statements/paragraphs that justify the
actions and positions of the workers and the
government.

• On the back side of your paper, put down one or

two reasons why the Winnipeg General Strike is
significant
 Four Quadrants
• The workers’ position • The government’s position
and actions were and actions were justified
justified

• The workers’ actions • The government’s actions

were unjustified were unjustified