first term as mayor, Clarke was confronted with a citywide strike in support of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. Clarke was sympathetic to the strikers, and when the federal government's Royal Commission on Industrial Relations (the Mather Commission) stopped in Edmonton, he joined labour leaders in presenting a list of twenty-nine demands, including the right to collective bargaining, the eight-hour day, price controls, and workers' rights to run and hold public office. He also resisted the use of strikebreakers (despite strong advocacy from the Edmonton Board of Trade and alderman Charles Grant), for which he was accused by the Edmonton Journal and Edmonton Bulletin of succumbing to the "Soviet power" of the Edmonton Trade & Labour Council (ET&LC). Instead, he and alderman J. A. Kinney negotiated with the ET&LC's strike committee (which included future city mayors Elmer Ernest Roper and Daniel Kennedy Knott and future alderman Alfred Farmilo) to allow the continued provision of certain services. Clarke was re-elected mayor in the 1919 election, but a concerted effort by the Board of Trade and the two local papers saw him defeated by David Duggan in the 1920 election. His attempt to regain his old job in the 1922 election failed, as he finished second of six candidates. He was elected again as an alderman in the 1924 election for a two-year term, but resigned after one year in order to run for mayor in the 1925 election. He finished third of six candidates. There followed a decade in the political wilderness, marked by unsuccessful runs for mayor (in 1926, 1927, 1932, and 1933) and alderman (in 1928, 1929, 1930, and 1931), before he was returned to the office of mayor in the 1934 election. While he had lost the office fourteen years earlier for being too friendly to organized labour, his opponents in 1934 included Knott and labour alderman Rice Sheppard. He was re-elected in 1935 and 1936 (defeating future mayor and labour advocate Harry Dean Ainlay on this second occasion). It was during this term that he laid the groundwork for a football stadium on the site of a closed federal prison. This stadium was eventually named Clarke Stadium in his honour. Joseph Clarke was defeated in the 1937 election by John Wesley Fry. He ran in every municipal election until the end of his life (for mayor in 1938 and for alderman in 1939 and 1940) but