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

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.