Editing Winnipeg general strike (section)

==Aftermath==
==="State trials" and deportations===
Eight of the strike leaders were brought to trial for seditious conspiracy. The evidence against them focused less on their actions than on their socialist ideas, which were seen as the root cause of the unrest that led to the general strike. Under arrangements accepted (and paid for) by the federal government, Andrews and other "legal gentlemen" who were active in the Citizens' Committee during the strike conducted the prosecution.<ref name="LabourLeTravail1">{{citation|author1-last=Mitchell|author1-first=Tom|title='Legal Gentlemen Appointed by the Federal Government': the Canadian State, the Citizens' Committee of 1000, and Winnipeg's Seditious Conspiracy Trials of 1919–1920|journal=[[Labour/Le Travail]]|volume=53|date=Spring 2004|pages=9–46|url=http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/LLT/article/viewFile/5337/6206|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140517135239/http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/LLT/article/viewFile/5337/6206|archive-date=2014-05-17|url-status=unfit|quote=The prosecution was undertaken by leading members of the Citizens' Committee of 1000's legal committee, including A J. Andrews, Isaac Pitblado, Travers Sweatman, and J.B. Coyne, under provisions of the Criminal Code that allowed for prosecutions by private citizens or organizations, subject to the consent of the Attorney General of Manitoba. For their efforts, the federal government paid Andrews, Pitblado, Coyne, and Sweatman handsomely.}}</ref>{{rp|page=13}}

The largely rural juries selected for the trials found guilty seven of the accused (Armstrong, Bray, Ivens, Johns, Pritchard, Russell and Queen). Most were sentenced to one-year sentences. Russell was sentenced to two years. Bray was convicted on a lesser charge and was sentenced to six months. (As well, John Farnell, who had replaced Bray after his arrest as leader of pro-strike returned soldiers, was sentenced to nine months in prison. He was released three months early, due to his wife's illness.)<ref>Edmonton Bulletin, August 5, 1920</ref>

Heaps conducted his own defence. A jury acquitted him on all charges. Dixon, who was charged with seditious libel, delivered a strong defence of the right to free speech as an essential element of the British tradition. After forty hours of deliberation, the largely urban jury acquitted him. This result caused the prosecution to abandon the similar charges against Woodsworth.<ref name="Bumsted p. 66-69">{{harvnb|Bumsted|1994|pp=66–69}}</ref> 

In the case of the "foreigners" arrested on June 17, there were no criminal proceedings. The attempt to deport Almazoff failed, and Charitonoff appealed successfully against a deportation order. Blumenberg and Schoppelrei were deported on technical grounds related to their original entry into the country.<ref>Kramer and Mitchell, ''When the State Trembled'', pp. 283–287.</ref> Blumenberg found his feet in the U.S., organizing workers in the Duluth area and even running for municipal office there on the socialist platform.<ref>Masters, The Winnipeg General Strike, p. 150</ref>

===Political impact===
A provincial royal commission headed by H.A. Robson investigated the strike. The report deplored sympathetic strikes but concluded that the Winnipeg strike was not a criminal conspiracy by foreigners and stated that "if Capital does not provide enough to assure Labour a contented existence{{nbsp}}... then the Government might find it necessary to step in and let the state do these things at the expense of Capital."<ref>Justice H. A. Robson's report, quoted in {{cite book
 | last = Fudge
 | first = Judy
 | author-link = Judy Fudge
 |author2=Tucker, Eric
 | title = Labour Before the Law: The Regulation of Workers' Collective Action in Canada, 1900–1948
 | year = 2004
 | publisher = University of Toronto Press
 | location = Toronto
 | isbn = 0-8020-3793-3
 | pages = 112
 }}</ref>

The impact of the strike was evident in subsequent elections. Labour had elected some representatives prior to the strike but the number significantly increased afterwards at all three levels of government.

While awaiting trial, Queen was re-elected to the Winnipeg City council.<ref>Edmonton Bulletin, Nov. 29, 1919</ref> While serving out their sentences in prison, Armstrong, Ivens and Queen were elected to the Manitoba legislature. Queen later served seven terms as mayor of Winnipeg.<ref>Bumsted, ''Dictionary of Manitoba Biography'', pp. 9, 120–121, 205.</ref> 

Woodsworth was elected as a Labour Member of Parliament from Winnipeg in 1921 and was repeatedly re-elected until his death in 1942. In 1932 he helped found and became leader of the [[Co-operative Commonwealth Federation]], a forerunner of the [[New Democratic Party]]. That party was elected to provincial government in Saskatchewan in 1944 and in Manitoba in 1969.<ref>{{cite book|last=Young|first=Walter D.|url=https://archive.org/details/anatomyofpartyna0000youn|title=The anatomy of a party: the national CCF 1932–61|publisher=University of Toronto Press|year=1969|location=Toronto|page=[https://archive.org/details/anatomyofpartyna0000youn/page/31 31]|url-access=registration}}</ref> Heaps was elected as the Labour Member of Parliament for Winnipeg North in 1925 and re-elected until 1940.<ref name="Bumsted p. 107-108">{{harvnb|Bumsted|1994|pp=107–108}}</ref>
===Strike's impact on unions===
Organized labour built on the legacy of the strike to strengthen the union movement and to pursue formal collective bargaining rights. The One Big Union flourished briefly, achieving its greatest popularity in 1920. This was followed by the rise of new industrial unions in the 1930s. The renewed poverty and insecurity of the Great Depression led to a long period of labour militancy across Canada in the 1940s, when union membership increased substantially. By the end of that decade, a formal industrial relations regime was established in Canadian law that provided some security for unions and their members but also threatened to limit the scope of their activity.<ref>Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker, ''Labour before the Law: The Regulation of Workers' Collective Action in Canada, 1900–1948'' (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 302–305.</ref>