#david bercuson

[proudlyhopelesslyoptimistic]

L&L field

Section the Second: In which we explore the changes in the academy during the 1980s that meant some called for people to stop writing about class in the same way and some called for people to stop writing about class at all. Following that a rebuttal of the structural determinist Marxist strawmen the critics of working class history used to prove their points. Then, a defense of the Thompsonian tradition and even that boring Bercuson version of working class history.

[proudlyhopelesslyoptimistic]

The general strike drained much of the vigour from the city's unions. Winnipeg was almost completely free of work stoppages in the eighteen months following the general strike and there were only two walkouts of any significance. This was the least in many years and shows graphically that workers had had their fill of strikes. A labour force that had expended every possible effort to win a six-week general strike but had been totally defeated was certain to be more docile in the months and years ahead' the workers were simply too exhausted mentally and economically to offer much industrial resistance. The union's vitality was also sapped as a result of the OBU secessionist movement.

Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg, 177-78.

It wasn't a total defeat. First, efforts were directed at electing independent labour party people in the municipal election -- which they did.

And second, Winnipeg to this day is a beacon of hope to the labour movement, a time when workers ran an entire damn city themselves successfully -- milk delivered and communal meals served --and challenged the operating of the capitalist state, and it doesn't matter how many times you say “the strikers were not revolutionaries and did not seek the violent overthrow of the existing social and political order” -- not all strikers were revolutionaries but their actions were, and they might not have wanted to meet the Canadian army with weapons, but that also doesn't mean it wasn't revolutionary.

Third, the strike was not about original contract demands, it was about the balance of power between labour and capital, and as the Mather’s Commission and the institution of paternalism in the 1920s demonstrated -- the state and companies had to take serious steps to avoid another such conflagration.

Fourth, the One Big Union was an amazing idea and we lost a great deal when the craft-based unions prevailed.

[proudlyhopelesslyoptimistic]

The reception given this book very much depended on the ideological proclivities of the reviewers. Marxist and the followers of the so-called 'new' labour history generally dismissed it. Bryan Palmer was typical: 'Bercuson breaks no new ground, and essentially reiterates that the strike was merely a struggle for collective bargaining rights gone wrong. This piece of conventional wisdom has had a long life . .' Non-Marxists gave it a warmer welcome; Irving Abella called it a 'masterful, thorough, engrossing study.' It is somewhat surprising that no new full-length treatment of the strike has appeared since Confrontation was first published. Thus even detractors such as Palmer must still admit that it 'provides the essential chronology and narrative of the conflict.'

Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg, Preface to the Revised Edition, xi-xii.

I would be defensive too if the best you can offer is that other people have merely written articles and book chapters about Winnipeg. 

[proudlyhopelesslyoptimistic]

There was a great deal of confusion in certain quarters, with charges made that no votes had been taken and that the decision to end the strike was arbitrary. But there could be little doubt now that the great strike was over at last. The workers' battle was lost. In defeat unions girded themselves for the next struggle .  .  . So ended the greatest industrial battle in Canada's history. The Winnipeg general strike had finally revealed the futility and tragedy of massive confrontation combined with hysteria and intransigence.

David Bercuson,Confrontation at Winnipeg: Labour, Industrial Relations, and the General Strike, revised edition, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 175.

Thank you for that inspirational interpretation Bercuson.