Across the country, thousands of workers raised monies, marched, and staged sympathy strikes to show support for the strikers in Winnipeg, while Conservative Prime Minister Borden and other members of his cabinet became even more convinced that the Red Revolution was at hand. They believed that the strikers intended to build up the One Big Union, destroy craft unionism, and foment revolution. The federal Conservatives, along with Winnipeg's anti-strike forces within the Citizens' Committee of One Thousand, proclaimed that the labour disturbance was largely the cause of "aliens" and "foreigners" who should be deported. Accordingly, the federal government intervened in the strike, and Prime Minister Borden authorized the Royal North-West Mounted Police to arrest 11 of the strike leaders in the very early hours of June 17, 1919.