We're Going to Run This City: Winnipeg's Political Left after the General Strike by Stefan Epp-Koop (review)

It often seems that Winnipeg history ended in 1919, the year of the general strike. The most commonly cited scholars of Winnipeg's political and social history focus on the period between the city's incorporation and the beginning of its irrevocable "decline" circa 1913, with the General Strike as a sort of terminal point to the story of the city's potential. Stefan Epp-Koop's study of left municipal politics in the 1920s and 1930s is a welcome move out of this curtailed periodization. As well, an analysis of Winnipeg electoral politics is a worthwhile defiance of recent historiographical trends, which are largely allergic to the subject. I teach history of Winnipeg. One of my students recently asked why had I not discussed one single Winnipeg mayor in class? It's a fair point. Epp-Koop's work focuses on two labour mayoralties – S.J. Farmer and John Queen – and highlights the political strengths that enabled their victories (especially the ground gained through campaigns for better municipal services and labour rights); as well as the challenges posed by internal divisions on the political left and a united and effectively organized political opposition, backed by Winnipeg's business class.

Still, the ghost of the strike lingers. The book's introduction weaves a narrative that begins in 1919 and reaches its conclusion with the political left "running this city" in 1934–36, when it controlled the mayoralty and city council for a short but sweet two years. The argument that 1919 was a point of rupture in electoral politics has always seemed more romantic than real to me, though it is oft-repeated. Class polarization at city hall was nothing new in the post-1919 world, although admittedly the pro-business Citizens' Committee upped its game while it still felt threatened. The author claims that after the strike political parties on the left were "far more successful" (8) than previously, but readers should be reminded that the municipal elections of 1919, 1920, and 1921 were not a success for the left, which was busy fighting its internal battles for the time being and could not beat a well-organized opponent with greater resources. Provincially, in 1922 the Independent Labour Party (ilp) won only six of 55 seats in the Legislature; by 1936 (when the ilp and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation – the ccf – ran under a common banner) it had five. To consider these successful years for the left is perhaps generous.

The book is not exactly an overview of municipal politics in the 1920s and 1930s. It is more a study of the Independent Labour Party and the party that became its main rival in its north end base: the Communist Party of Canada (cpc), which had significant success in Winnipeg's city council races beginning with the election of William Kolisnyk to council in 1926. The cpc produced some talented politicians, who put considerable effort into local issues that affected working people. Particularly during the Communist "Third Period," relations between the cpc and ilp appear to have been on occasion vicious; during the "Popular Front" era, relations eased. Epp-Koop plays up the drama of division and conflict to tell a story, but he makes the important point that personality (not just the Comintern) mattered at the local level.

Whatever their limits and depressing capacity for turf wars, both parties gave poor European immigrants a political voice in the city. The ethnic politics of north end Winnipeg were complex and strongly felt. Tensions within the Ukrainian immigrant community and between Ukrainian and Jewish immigrants were reflected in party loyalties and voting habits, while the British-Canadian leadership of the ilp apparently struggled to navigate the waters. Understanding how ethnic and community ties shaped electoral struggles is a valuable project, since so many on the left still seem to understand "ethnic politics" solely as distasteful communalism.

We're Going...