Throughout the Winnipeg General Strike the Western Labour News, with J.S. Woodsworth as editor and Fred Dixon as reporter, continued to be printed and distributed. It was one of the few papers in Winnipeg to present the workers' perspective of the strike. However, in the wake of the riot on June 21, 1919, the Citizens' Committee of One Thousand decided to move against the newspaper, stop its publication, and arrange for the arrest of its editor. The Citizens' Committee justified its actions by pointing to articles in the paper that were considered "seditious libel" and likely to incite further riots. On Monday, June 23, as Woodsworth was on his way to inform the General Strike Committee of the forced shutdown of the paper, he was arrested on charges of seditious libel. Woodsworth was incarcerated briefly in the city jail on Rupert Street and the next day was moved to the provincial jail on Vaughan Street. Eight days later he was released.

On Wednesday, June 25, 1919, the Winnipeg General Strike was called off, without the workers gaining any of their objectives. To add insult to injury, a government report written after the strike concluded that there was no evidence of a deep-laid plot for revolution, nor did any of the workers intend to use force or violence to overthrow the government. Rather, the government report found that the causes of the strike were the high cost of living, long hours of work, low wages, poor working conditions, and the unwillingness of employers to recognize the right of collective bargaining.

Almost three decades would pass before Canadian workers would secure union recognition and collective bargaining. It has been said that it took years for western labour to regain the spirit, influence, and power it lost in Winnipeg. Thus ended the greatest industrial battle in Canadian history. Yet the Winnipeg General Strike was not a total failure. As historian David Bercuson has noted, the strike was one of the most complete withdrawals of labour power ever to occur in North America. This sense of labour and class solidarity helped to elect labour candidates to provincial legislatures in the following years, and in the 1921 federal election saw J.S. Woodsworth become the leader of the Labour Party in the House of Commons.