We print on these two pages chapter three, of Tim Buck’s new book: Lenin

and Canada! His book is a vital part of the history of the working people of
Canada, and the Communist Party which ever since it was founded has consistent-
ly fought the capitalist system. It is a book of hope, pointing to Canada’s socialist
future in the struggle for which no Canadian has played a more inspiring, coura-
geous or creative role than Tim Buck, veteran of over half-a-century of struggles

for peace, independence and socialism.

The first attempt to found a Com-
munist Party in Canada was in Febru-
ary 1919. It was necessarily illegal be-
cause the repressive law outlawing the
IWW, communist, socialist, syndicalist,
anarchist and all other revolutionary
organizations, was still in effect. The
plans for the founding conference were
betrayed and the police caught several
of the participants. Two leading com-
rades, John Boychuk and Tom Bell,
were sentenced to prison terms. Two
others were deported and later became
active in the founding of the Commu-
nist Party of Germany, one of them,
Comrade Ewert, became a member of
its Central Committee. Mrs. Florence
Custance was arrested but released
without official charges, and resumed
her activity immediately.

A number of groups continued to
operate illegally. Most of us became
members of the Communist Party of
America when it was founded, others
joined the United Communist Party of
America shortly afterward. For the rea-
son noted above and conditions in the
United States at that time our organi-
zations were necessarily illegal.

As members of U.S. parties the Can-
adian membership had no direct con-
tact with the Communist International
(Comintern), but the spirit of its Sec-
ond Congress, especially Lenin’s pole-
mics against the leftist sectarians, com-
bined with the situation in Canada,
convinced the majority of us, in the
Canadian units of both the Communist

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‘PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY: APRIL 24, 1970—PAGE 8

Party of America and the United Com-
munist Party of America, that we
should unite in a distinctly Canadian
Communist Party. The American Com-
mission of the Comintern, headed by
Comrade Sen Katayama, agreed and en-
couraged us. A joint committee worked
out a proposal for the merging of the
Canadian members of the two United
States parties in an independent Cana-
dian party. After discussion in every
unit it was approved by the majority
of the members of each. The unity con-
vention was held, of necessity illegally,
on the outskirts of the city of Guelph,
Ontario. Its exact location was a barn
on a small farm. The occupant of the
farm was Fred Farley, a worker in the
waterworks department of the City of
Guelph. It was he who had given me
refuge after students from the Ontario
Agricultural College had broken up an
anti-war meeting and thrown me into
the Speed River. Comrade Farley had
been an active member of the Socialist
Labor Party, but had left it over the
issue of affiliation to the Third (Com-
munist) International. He was one of
the founding members of the Guelph
unit of the Communist Party of Can-
ada.

The unity convention founded the
Communist Party of Canada on June 1,
1921. Our new party’s application for
affiliation to the Comintern was accept-
ed. Under the influence of Comrade
Carl Jansen, an American member of
the American Commission of the Com-
intern, and other United States dele-
gates returning from the Third Con-
gress, we undertook an energetic study
of the best means by which to develop
broad public communist activities. This
led to formation in February 1922 of
the Workers’ Party, a legal organiza-
tion which became the Communist Par-
ty of Canada when the government al-
lowed the repressive wartime legisla-
tion to lapse in 1923.

The campaign to establish a broad
public party of the working class was
initiated by a preliminary conference
held in Toronto in December 1921. The
conference issued a public call for the
founding of a new revolutionary poli-
tical party of the working class. It
elected a Provisional Central Commit-
tee with the task of establishing the
organization and preparing for a con-
stituent convention to be held in To-
ronto in February 1922. Two members
of the Provisional Central Committee,
Jack MacDonald and Tim Buck, under-
took public speaking tours to establish
local units of the projected party in
Ontario and Western Canada.

The campaign to establish the new
party was the first broad public call
upon Canadian radicals to turn their
backs on the ideological confusion and
the political nihilism of syndicalism
and the sectarian sterility of the Social-
ist Party of Canada (SPC) and the
Socialist Labor Party (SLP). The pre-
valence of those baneful influences
which had become rooted in the work-
ing class movement and, opposed to
them, the widespread confidence in
Lenin’s leadership, were both emphasiz-
ed simultaneously by the fact that, in
the debate about the organization of
the new party, the key issue very quick-
ly became Lenin’s book: Left-Wing
Communism—an Infantile Disorder.

Only a few copies of Lenin’s master-
piece had become available in Canada
at that time, January 1922, but it was
already the subject of a widespread and
heated discussion. Albert Wells, editor
of the B.C. Federationist was a member
of the Communist Party of Canada and
at the suggestion of its Central Com-
mittee he _ published Left-Wing Com-

munism in instalments. The keen inter-
est of the workers is indicated by the
fact that the circulation of the paper
increased from less than 9,000 to 40,000
per issue as a result. The first install-
ment appeared February 18, 1921.
The impact of that book upon the
working-class movement in Canada.was
terrific. Lenin’s demolition of the atgu-
ments used by the self-styled ‘“‘left-
Communists” applied fully in Canada.
His simple but irrefutable arguments
and the activities that he advocated pre-
sented Marxism to Canadian workers
in a way that, for us, was new. Here
was in fact the application of Marxism
in the day-to-day struggle for socialism.
That book was the main topic of dis-
cussion among revolutionary workers
for a long time. It started a deep-going
change in the thinking of the left in
general, first of all in the trade union
movement. Although that process was

only at its beginning when the conven- °

tion which founded the Workers’ Party
of Canada was held, that convention
and the party that it founded each felt
and benefited from the warm power of
Lenin’s influence. The party, in turn,
became an influential factor in the fur-
ther development of the ideological
change to organizational regrouping.

The founding convention itself sig-
nalized the incipient change, both by
its composition and by the place where
it was held. In addition to delegates
representing the organizations set up

under the leadership of the Provisional .

Central Committee, there were dele-
gates representing’ locals of AFL
unions, of anti-AFL unions, of groups
of members of some unions which had
refused to authorize an official dele-
gate, of the One Big Union (OBU), and
one member, an Official of the Indus-
trial Workers of the World (IWW).
The One Big Union was represented by
an official delegation composed of three
members of its executive board, headed
by its General Secretary, R. B. Russell.
The convention met in the Labor Tem-
ple, headquarters of the American Fed-
eration of Labor, in Toronto:

The proposed aim of the convention,
set forth in the welcoming keynote
speech prepared by the Provisional
Central Committee, was to establish
a Marxist party which, while prevented
by law from affiliating to the Commu-
nist International, would be guided in
its activities by the policies of the In-
ternational and its resolutions and deci-
sions as adopted from time to time. A
party which would dedicate itself to
the task of helping the working class
to comprehend its real interest as a
class, and to formulate its class poli-
cies. A party which would serve the
working class, express its interests,
and advance those interests by syste-
matic revolutionary work among all

Chairman of the Communist Party of Canada, Tim Buck, addressing
the 20th Convention of the Party in Toronto, April, 1969.

sections of the population.
Stated in those general terms thé
proposed aims of the convention, af
the character of the party to be found
ed, were greeted unanimously. But the
minute that the question of the partys
activities was placed before the dele:
gates, in the form of draft resolutions —
prepared by the Provisional Centra
Committee, “the fat was in the fire.”

The draft resolutions prepared by thé
Provisional Committee proposed thal
integral with dedictaion to the funda’
mental tenets of Marxism, the convel |
tion should commit the new party ©)
immediate tasks and aims that welt
diametrically opposed to the traditions
of the left in the working-class move
ment in Canada and which contradich
ed, violently, the then-prevailing at
tude of its most vocal representative
The general political expression of t a
contradiction was the proposal that ©).
convention should call upon all revol!
tionary workers to unite in a r
systematic campaign to replace the dis
unity and internecine warfare, which
characterized the movement at thal

time, by a united front of the ei.
ing class. Our draft resolution follow

closely the line of the appeal than be,
been issued by the Executive Commi

tee of the Communist internatiol :
(ECCI) following the Third Y
Congress. Partly because of tha
majority of delegates were prep@
endorse that resolution without

It must be admitted that few of
recognized in full the logic of thé ¥
tical line indicated in the United *
Appeal of the ECCI. The immatutly
our movement at that time was
in the fact that the majority g
delegates decided their attitude it
eral political questions by their att
to one or other of the concrete F
sals submitted by the Provisional
mittee. For all but a very few the
sive question was: “What wi
vention do with the draft reS
which defines its attitude towarde
the activities of its members — 4
trade union movement?” That qué

of the new party and the trade
movement, became the touc
the convention.

It was the first time in the hist

the working-class movement 19 \
that such a debate had taken P
a public convention of represe?
revolutionary workers. A Marxis
native was proposed: to replace
ist Party sectarianism and §

irresponsibility, and to replace th
that secession was the only We“,
which reactionary bureaucracy, q_
trade unions could be combat y
systematic revolutionary activity
in the trade unions and in 4 eile
class organizations. Until thee

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