When the State Trembled: How A.J. Andrews and the Citizens' Committee Broke the Winnipeg General Strike

by Reinhold Kramer, Tom Mitchell

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.

Genres: History, Canada

464 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2010

Reviews

[Tom Axworthy]

This is not a complete history of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.It is a history of the shadowy Citizens business group, the Citizen's Committee of 1000 largely based on correspondence between A.J.Andrews the leader of the business group and Arthur Meighen the senior Manitoba Minister in the Borden government .When the State Trembled tells the story of how a few well- placed businessmen and lawyers organized themselves to fight and defeat Labour in the 1919 General Strike, one of the most momentous events in Winnipeg history.But the book is more than a contribution to local or labour history, it is a description of how a small( only about 34 citzens were actual participants in the Committee of 1000 which opposed the Strike Committee) ideologically charged secret group with able leadership can manipulate public opinion and mislead government authorities to undertake extreme actions.This is a tale of a conspiracy that worked.Led by lawyer A.J. Andrews and other lawyers from the Winnipeg elite the Citizens Committee helped forestall negotiations that might have led to peaceful settlement of the strike, and whipped up public opinion with lies and exaggerations about the impact of the strike( a favorite was no milk for babies when the Strike Committee explicitly allowed milk deliveries). Andrews and his Committee then persuaded the Conservative government of Robert Borden to amend the Immigration Act to allow the deportation of so-called radicals and to appoint representatives of the 1000 Committee to be agents of the Justice Department, especially A.J.Andrews himself who then brought his legal friends to assist the Crown as well. With these appointments as Agents of the Justice Department members of the Citizens Committee initiated the arrests of the strike leaders, prosecuted the leaders under private motions but then sent the Federal government enormous legal bills which were paid through àn existing fund to help demoblized veterans so that the whole matter could be kept hidden from parliamentary review.This book shows how legal norms , democratic fair play and constitutional principles can fall away during a crisis when a group with access to power can play its cards skillfully and without scruples.It is a precedent which we should never forget and we are indebted to the authors for providing such a detailed expose.

[Norman Smith]

This is a good book about A.J. Andrews and the Citizens' Committee (which is in the title of the book, so no big surprise); it is not a good history of the Winnipeg General Strike. The strikers are mostly off-stage, and events are mentioned but not described. Even the climax of the strike, Bloody Saturday, is covered very little, merely by quoting dispatches from the authorities. I was hoping to learn more about the strike, and not just about the reaction to it.

I also had difficulty with who was who. Aside from Andrews (arch-schemer) and Meighen (gullible politician), I really could not get a sense of any of the other characters, their motivations, nor their backgrounds except where it entered into the question of prosecution versus deportation.

The book is very good in describing Andrews's and the other Citizens' machinations to oppose the strike. The authors are very good in keeping Andrews's various personae separate (Citizen of the committee, citizen of Winnipeg, lawyer, prosecutor, etc.). They also tease out his tactics and rationales.

I think, in fact, they are better at explaining Andrews's actions than Andrews would have been. I am skeptical that Andrews would have been able to be so devious, consciously and consistently. I suspect he was playing by ear most of the time, and his actions gained coherence only after the fact, in the leisure of the authors' study.

The authors are also very good at presenting two sides of the story, as far as their focus on Andrews and Citizens permits. They are also very good at injecting some humourous or facetious comments from time to time. The book is surprising easy to read, given the potential dryness of the topic.

So, I was disappointed that the authors hadn't written the book I wanted to read, but was satisfied with what they did write. Now I have to find another book to learn about the strike itself.

[Macho]

This book fairly loosely tracks the documentary record based on then-newly available correspondence between Citizens' Committee leader AJ Andrews' and federal cabinet Minister Arthur Meighen during the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, as well as the court record of the administrative deportation proceedings and criminal prosecutions that Andrews subsequently led against strike leaders. The authors' thesis is that past work on the strike focused too much on the role of state actors in breaking the strike, and that the true victors were a small group of lawyers who aggressively pushed the interests of Winnipeg's business elite through the citizens' committee. Though the thesis and book don't give the best overarching view of the strike and its context, this also largely wasn't the authors' goal, and the book does shed helpful light on one of the most important threads that played out in the context of the strike.