"Communists love Canada!": The Communist Party of Canada, the "people" and the Popular Front, 1933-1939

Journal of Canadian Studies, Winter 2002 by John Manley

Party culture, however, was modified rather than transformed. Changing behaviour was no simple matter. On the trade union front, most party members quickly came to terms with new realities and set about establishing harmonious relations with leading reformists, but that was not always the case. As a letter of 28 November 1936 from FOC secretary George Sundquist to a leading party trade unionist indicated, some industrial activists continued to resent the WUL's liquidation (NA, FOC Collection, Vol. 16, file 32). J.B. McLachlan, unable to stomach the opportunist manner in which liquidation was implemented, resigned from the party (Frank and Manley 115-34). No sooner had Vancouver left-wingers rejoined the Vancouver and New Westminster Trades and Labour Council (VNWTLC) than they launched an electoral drive against the ruling "clique" of the province's leading labour statesman, Percy Bengough. The left failed to elect any of its candidates, but according to the RCMP "five votes would have turned the election" (Kealey and Whitaker 335-36). Bengough responded with a pamphlet invoking the British Labour Party's long-standing and recently reiterated opposition to the united front, which characterized the united front as a duplicitous attack on the real unity of the labour movement (NAC, Bengough Papers). Although Bengough's stance was consistent with a recent record of anti-communism, Toronto viewed him as a potential ally of some significance - he was a prominent Liberal confidante of new Prime Minister Mackenzie King - and sent in former WUL secretary and Kingston detainee Tom Ewan as provincial secretary, to impose discipline on a notoriously headstrong provincial party. Nevertheless, a significant number of B.C. members continued to press for a more aggressive reading of the Popular Front (Ewan). Tim Buck discovered this when he visited Vancouver during the 1937 B.C. provincial election. Most of the audience at one of his election meetings, the News-Herald reported on 14 May 1937, were dismayed by the "mildness" of his discourse. Sensing their disquiet, Buck belatedly spoke in more militant terms and produced the desired response.

Veteran rank and filers often had difficulty shaking off the Third Period style and mindset. It was perhaps significant that, unlike some of their juniors, the still-- powerful FOC and ULFTA did not change their names. Many rank and file communists never got used to the idea that it was "sectarian" to take credit as communists for their work in the wider movement; they continued to ply new members with mind-numbingly routine tasks, and distrusted middle-class recruits (Kealey and Whitaker, "Security Bulletins IV" 333; Kealey 50-2; Freed "Ban"). YCL cadre Kent Rowley, reporting on "Our Experiences in Establishing the Montreal Youth Club" in the October 1937 issue of Discussion, scoffed at the old-timers who associated "honest endeavour with discomfort." Marxist education did not become the centrepiece of branch activity. Scores participated in party education, but many more still viewed study as a task that could always be skipped in favour of real struggle; Calgary district organizer Pat Lenihan, not daring to tell his comrades that he had requested a six-month leave of absence to attend the National Party School, let them think that he was on a secret mission to Spain (Levine 123). A predominantly bourgeois section of the party did not easily surrender the tradition of sexual bohemianism (Weisbord 89-90; Sangster 157-60)