Communist Party of Canada
The Communist Party of Canada is a federal political party in Canada. Founded in 1921 under conditions of illegality, it is the second oldest active political party in Canada, after the Liberal Party of Canada. Although it does not currently have any parliamentary representation, the party's candidates have previously been elected to the House of Commons, the Ontario legislature, the Manitoba legislature, and various municipal governments across the country.
The Communist Party of Canada focuses on contributing to the "labour and people's movements" through extra-parliamentary activity. Throughout its history, the party has made significant contributions to Canada's trade union, labour, and peace movements. The Communist Party of Canada participates in the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties.
In 1993, Elections Canada deregistered the party and seized its assets in accordance with changes to the Canada Elections Act introduced by the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. Then party leader Miguel Figueroa subsequently began what would become a successful thirteen-year-long legal battle against the changes, which were struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada in Figueroa v. Canada .
History
Origins (1921–1928)
Between May 23 and 25, 1921, local communists and socialists held clandestine meetings in a barn behind a farmhouse at 257 Metcalf Street, then in the outskirts of Guelph, Ontario. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, working undercover, attended the meetings. His report states that delegates attended from "Winnipeg, Vancouver, Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal, Sudbury and Regina" and that Soviet Russia had offered to provide funding for the group. In addition to Guelph resident Fred Farley, a member of the United Communist Party of America, the attendees named in the RCMP report included Thomas J. Bell, Lorne Cunningham, Trevor Maguire and Florence Custance. The group was "incessantly praising the Soviet Government of Russia, and urging the overthrow of the Government of Canada", according to the police report.The Communist Party of Canada was subsequently founded on May 28, 1921. Many of its founding members had worked as labour organizers and as anti-war activists and had belonged to groups such as the Socialist Party of Canada, One Big Union, the Socialist Labour Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and other socialist, Marxist, or Labour parties or clubs and organizations. The first members felt inspired by the Russian Revolution, and radicalized by the negative aftermath of World War I and the fight to improve living standards and labour rights, including the experience of the Winnipeg General Strike. The Comintern accepted the party as its Canadian section in December 1921, and thus the CPC adopted an organizational structure and policy similar to other communist parties at the time.
The party alternated between legality and illegality during the 1920s and 1930s. Because of the War Measures Act in effect at its time of creation, the party operated as the "Workers' Party of Canada" in February 1922 as its public face. The following month, it began publishing a newspaper entitled The Worker. When Parliament allowed the War Measures Act to lapse in 1924, the underground organization was dissolved and the party's name was changed back to the "Communist Party of Canada".
The party's first actions included establishing a youth organization, the Young Communist League of Canada, and solidarity efforts with the Soviet Union. By 1923, the party had raised over $64,000 for the Russian Red Cross, a very large sum of money at that time. It also initiated a Canadian component of the Trade Union Educational League which quickly became an organic part of the labour movement with active groups in 16 of 60 labour councils and in mining and logging camps. By 1925 party membership stood at around 4,500 people, composed mainly of miners and lumber workers, and of railway, farm, and garment workers. Most of these people came from immigrant communities like Finns and Ukrainians.
The party, working with the TUEL, played a role in many bitter strikes and difficult organizing drives, and in support of militant industrial unionism. From 1922 to 1929, the provincial sections of the WPC/CPC also affiliated with the Canadian Labour Party, another expression of the CPC's "united front" strategy. The CLP operated as a federated labour party. The CPC came to lead the CLP organization in several regions of the country, including Quebec, and did not run candidates during elections. In 1925 William Kolisnyk became the first communist elected to public office in North America, under the banner of the CLP in Winnipeg. The CLP itself, however, never became an effective national organization. The CPC withdrew from the CLP in 1928–1929 following a shift in Comintern policy, and the CLP folded shortly afterwards.
Debates, arguments, and expulsions
From 1927 to 1929, the party went through a series of policy debates and internal ideological struggles in which advocates of the ideas of Leon Trotsky, as well as proponents of what the party called "North American Exceptionism", were expelled. Expellees included Maurice Spector, the editor of the party's paper The Worker and party chairman, and Jack MacDonald who resigned as the party's general secretary for factionalism, and was expelled. The Secretary of the Women's Bureau and later, general editor of the Woman Worker Florence Custance was only saved from expulsion from the Party due to her untimely death in 1929. Her feminism and advocacy of birth control, for example, were well known to the mainstream press, but her radical contemporaries questioned her political sympathies and gave her few chances to shine.MacDonald, also sympathetic to Trotskyist ideas, joined Spector in founding the International Left Opposition Canada, which formed part of Trotsky's so-called Fourth International Left Opposition. The party also expelled supporters of Nikolai Bukharin and of Jay Lovestone's Right Opposition, such as William Moriarty. The CPC disagreed internally over strategy, tactics, the socialist identity of the Soviet Union, and over Canada's status as an imperialist power. While some communists like J. B. Salsberg expressed sympathy with these positions, the vast majority of members had decided to continue with the party by the early 1930s, after debates that dominated party conventions for a couple of years.
Tim Buck was elected as party general secretary in 1929. He remained in the position until 1962.
Great Depression (1929–1938)
The stock market crash in late 1929 signalled the beginning of a long and protracted economic crisis in Canada and internationally. The crisis quickly led to widespread unemployment, poverty, destitution, and suffering among working families and farmers. The general election of 1930, brought to power the R.B. Bennett Conservative government which attacked the labour movement and established "relief camps" for young unemployed men.The CPC made a systemic critique of the depression as an alleged crisis of capitalism. It was also the first political party in Canada to call for the introduction of unemployment insurance, a national health insurance scheme, universally accessible education, social and employment assistance to youth, labour legislation including health and safety regulations, regulation of the working day and holidays, a minimum wage for women and youth, and state-run crop insurance and price control for farmers.
The party's offices were raided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Further, eight party members were arrested, including Buck and Tom McEwen, under Section 98 of Canada's Criminal Code, which outlawed advocacy of force or violence to bring about political change. The party and the Workers' Unity League launched a campaign calling for their release and presented a petition with 450,000 signatures to Prime Minister R. B. Bennett in November 1933. They demanded the release of the prisoners, an investigation into Buck's attempted murder, and the repeal of Section 98. After the prisoners were released a rally was held in Maple Leaf Gardens in 1934, with 17,000 in attendance and 8,000 unable to attend due to there not being enough space. Eight Men Speak was created based on the events.
Although the party was banned, it organized large mass organizations such as the WUL and the Canadian Labour Defence League, which played an important role in historic strikes like that of miners in Estevan. From 1933 to 1936, the WUL led 90% of the strikes in Canada. Already, conditions had taught social democrats, reformists, and the communists important lessons of cooperation. In 1934, in accordance with the re-examined position of the Comintern, the CPC adopted a strategy and tactics based on a united front against fascism.
In the prairies, communists organized the Farmers Unity League, which mobilized against farm evictions. They rallied hundreds or thousands of farmers into demonstration Hunger Marches that encountered police brutality. In 1936, James Litterick was elected as an MLA for Winnipeg, the first CPC member to be elected to Manitoba's legislature.
Party members were also active in the Congress of Industrial Organizations' attempt to unionize the auto and other industrial sectors including Steelworkers, the Canadian Seamen's Union, the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, the International Woodworkers of America, and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.
Among the poor and unemployed, communists organized groups like the left-wing Workers Sports Association, one of the few ways that working-class youth had access to recreational programmes. The Relief Camp Workers' Union and the National Unemployed Workers Association played significant roles in organizing the unskilled and the unemployed in protest marches and demonstrations and campaigns such as the On-to-Ottawa Trek and the 1938 Vancouver Post Office sit-down strike.
The party organized the mobilization of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion to fight in the Spanish Civil War as a part of the International Brigade. Among the leading Canadian communists involved was Norman Bethune, known for his invention of a mobile blood-transfusion unit, early advocacy of Medicare in Canada, and work with the Chinese Communist Party during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Solidarity efforts for the Spanish Civil War and many labour and social struggles during the Depression resulted in much cooperation between members of the CPC and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. After 1935 the CPC advocated electoral alliances and unity with the CCF on key issues. The proposal was debated in the CCF, with the 1936 BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan conventions generally supporting cooperation while the Ontario convention opposed. While the motion was defeated at the CCF's third federal convention, the CPC continued to call for a united front.
The call was particularly urgent in Quebec, where in 1937 the Duplessis government passed "an act to protect Quebec against communist propaganda", which gave the police the power to padlock any premises used by "communists".
Another mass organization organized by the party was the Canadian League for Peace and Democracy, founded in 1934 as the Canadian League Against War and Fascism.