Year: 2019
Location: Winnipeg
Profile: Greg Kealey is one of Canada’s leading labour historians. He was the founding editor of Labour/Le Travail, Canada’s major journal for labour history and labour studies. Kealey has published numerous books, book chapters, and articles on working-class history, and on Canadian state surveillance of radicals. During his career, Kealey taught history at Dalhousie University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the University of New Brunswick. He served as vice-president, research, and provost at UNB. In his interview with ALHI during a conference on the labour revolt of 1919, he provided national and international historical context for the Winnipeg General Strike and other instances of labour resistance during and after World War I. He explained how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, from its formation after the war, was devised to serve as an agency of surveillance and repression of working-class radicals. Particular targets were the One Big Union which called for solidarity of all workers with any group of striking workers, and the emerging Communist Party of Canada. Kealey noted as well the hypocrisy of Canadian capital’s recruitment of immigrant workers as cheap labour, only to then make them scapegoats for social problems resulting from the operations of the capitalist system.
Keywords: Capitalist system; Communist Party of Canada; Immigrants as cheap labour; Labour historian; Labour/Le Travail; Labour history conference; One Big Union; Royal Canadian Mounted Police; State surveillance; Winnipeg General Strike.
Transcript: Download PDF
See also: Great Labour Revolt, 1919; Systemic Racism in Alberta