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History General

Raising the Workers' Flag

The Workers' Unity League of Canada, 1930-1936

by (author) Stephen Endicott

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Sep 2012
Category
General, Treaties, Labor & Employment
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781442643734
    Publish Date
    Sep 2012
    List Price
    $100.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781442612266
    Publish Date
    Sep 2012
    List Price
    $43.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442696839
    Publish Date
    Sep 2012
    List Price
    $41.95

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Description

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 the author

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

Stephen Endicott's profile page

Editorial Reviews

'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.'

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

‘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).’

BC Studies number 178, summer 2013

‘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.’

The American Historical Review; vol 118:05:2013

‘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.’

Our Times Dec-Jan 2013