Raising the Workers' Flag: The Workers' Unity League of Canada, 1930-1936 - Softcover

Endicott, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1442612266 ISBN 13: 9781442612266

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2012

Synopsis

During the Great Depression, the conflicting interests of capital and labour became clearer than ever before. Radical Canadian workers, encouraged by the Red International of Labour Unions, responded by building the Workers' Unity League – an organization that greatly advanced the cause of unions in Canada, and boasted 40,000 members at its height. In Raising the Workers' Flag, the first full-length study of this robust group, Stephen L. Endicott brings its passionate efforts to light in memorable detail.

Raising the Workers' Flag is based on newly available or previously untapped sources, including documents from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Security Service and the Communist Party's archives. Using these impressive finds, Endicott gives an intimate sense of the raging debates of the labour movement of the 1930s. A gripping account of the League's dreams and daring, Raising the Workers' Flag enlivens some of the most dramatic struggles of Canadian labour history.

About this title

About the Author:

Stephen L. Endicott is a professor emeritus in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University.

Review:

‘Well-written, accurate and vastly interesting, Endicott’s fascinating new book Raising the Workers’ Flag should attract the attention of active trade unionists and friends of labour... This well-pictured book recounts the history of our most militant national labour federation.’ (Garnet Dishaw Our Times Dec-Jan 2013)

'This is a great book, the product of twenty years of intensive labor in the archives by a historian who has an unmatched sensitivity to the complexities and nuances of communism's history. It achieves that rarest of combinations - immaculate scholarship and gifted story-telling.'

(Ian MacKay The American Historical Review (2013) 118 (5), 1509-1510)

‘This is a great book, the product of twenty years of intensive labour in the archives by a historian who had an unmatched sensitivity to the complexities and nuances of communism history. It achieves that rarest of combinations – immaculate scholarship and gifted story-telling.’ (Ian McKay The American Historical Review; vol 118:05:2013)

‘Few historians have tackled their subject with more enthusiasm, insider insight, and eye popping detail than Stephen l. Endicott has done in this first book-length treatment of the Worker’s Unity League(WUL).’

(Ron Verzuh BC Studies number 178, summer 2013)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1442612266
• ISBN 13: 9781442612266
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 480