While he was Premier, McBride was also the minister of mines. This meant that he should theoretically have played a particularly prominent role in the events of the Great Coal Strike. He did not, however, instead pursuing policies that basically ignored the dispute. Much of this was done at the urging of his friend Donald Mann, who wanted the strike to proceed apace. Many scholars, most notably Alan John Wargo, lay considerable blame for the violence of the strike on this policy by McBride. For Wargo, government intervention could only have found in favour of the miners, and thus compelled the companies to improve working conditions for the endangered workers. Of course, Mann likely agreed, and thus asked McBride to ignore calls for arbitration. When the government finally did become involved, as protectors of private property after the riots, it was William Bowser, the Attorney General and Deputy Premier, that ordered in the troops, while McBride was in England soliciting investors for BC. Although his actions were only peripheral to the strike, therefore, his role was far more important, as Wargo and others point out.