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Labor-Progressive Party Parti ouvrier-progressiste | |
|---|---|
| Former federal party | |
| Abbreviation | LPP |
| Leader | Tim Buck |
| Founder | Tim Buck |
| Founded | August 1943 (1943-8) |
| Dissolved | June 1959 (1959-6) |
| Preceded by | Communist Party of Canada |
| Succeeded by | Communist Party of Canada |
| Youth wing | National Federation of Labor Youth |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Far-left |
| National affiliation | Communist Party of Canada |
TheLabor-Progressive Party (LPP;French:Parti ouvrier-progressiste) was the legalfront of theCommunist Party of Canada and its provincial wings from 1943 to 1959. It was established amidWorld War II after a number of Communist Party leaders were released from wartime internment, with Communist Party general secretaryTim Buck serving as the LPP's head. The LPP had one electedmember of parliament during its history, trade unionistFred Rose, who won a 1943 by-election inMontreal. The party also saw provincial and municipal successes, particularly in Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.
In the1940 federal election, the Communist Party led apopular front in several constituencies inSaskatchewan andAlberta under the nameUnity, United Progressive or United Reform and elected two MPs, one of whom,Dorise Nielsen, was secretly a member of the Communist Party.
After the Communist Party of Canada was banned in 1940, under the wartimeDefence of Canada Regulations, it established the Labor-Progressive Party (LPP) as a front organization in 1943 after the release of Communist Party leaders from internment. Nielsen declared her affiliation to the LPP when it was founded in August 1943. She was defeated in the1945 election when she ran for re-election as an LPP candidate.[1][2][3][4]
Only one LPPMember of Parliament (MP) was elected to theHouse of Commons under that banner,Fred Rose, who was elected in a 1943 by-election inMontreal, sitting with Nielsen. Rose was re-elected in 1945. In 1947, he was charged and convicted for spying for theSoviet Union, and was expelled from the House of Commons.
The leader of the party wasTim Buck. Other prominent members wereMargaret Fairley,Stewart Smith,Stanley Ryerson andSam Carr.
While "labour" is generallyspelled with a 'u' in Canadian English, and English in the former British Empire, the Labor-Progressive Party used the American spelling[5] as did theAustralian Labor Party.
InOntario, two LPP members,A. A. MacLeod andJ. B. Salsberg, sat in theLegislative Assembly of Ontario from 1943 to 1951 and 1955 respectively. The LPP also jointly nominated severalLiberal-Labour candidates with theOntario Liberal Party.Alexander Parent, who was also president of UAW Local 195, was elected as the Liberal-Labour MPP forEssex North in 1945. In January 1946, Parent announced he was breaking with the "reactionary" Liberals and sat the remainder of his term in the legislature as a Labour representative while voting with LPP MPPs MacLeod and Salsberg.[6][7] He did not run for re-election in 1948.[8][9][10]
TheManitoba party had amongst its leading membersJacob Penner who was a popularaldermen inWinnipeg, Manitoba, as well asBill Kardash who was aManitobaMember of the Legislative Assembly.[11][12]
The party also ran candidates inQuebec general elections from 1944 to 1956 as theParti ouvrier-progressiste.
The LPP had strong pockets of support in working-class neighbourhoods of Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg as well as in theCrowsnest Pass mining region ofAlberta andBritish Columbia[13] elected a number of its members to local city councils and school boards. In Winnipeg,Jacob Penner was a long-time member of the city council whileJoe Zuken sat on the school board. In Toronto, Charles Simms and Norman Freed served as aldermen while Smith was elected to the city's powerfulBoard of Control.
From1944 to 1947, Helen Anderson Coulson sat onHamilton's City Council as an Alderman (from 1944–1946) and, after the1946 municipal election, as a member of the city's highest decision making body, theBoard of Control.[14] She played a significant role in theStelco Strike of 1946, and paid for her stances in the 1947 election, being shut out of the 4-person body after receiving the second highest number of votes in1946.[15] She would unsuccessfully seek election numerous times over the next decade, most prominently opposing MayorLloyd Jackson in 1950.[16]
Dr. Harry Paikin was elected a school trustee on the Hamilton Board of Education in 1944 and remained in office for three decades, until his death in 1985,[17] including ten years as chair.[18][19]
Following theNazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the Canadian Communist Party reversed its earlier position urging Canadian neutrality inWorld War II and instead urged full support for the Soviet, not Canadian, war effort. The party formed the "Tim Buck Plebiscite Committees" urging support forconscription in the1942 referendum.After the vote the committees were renamed theDominion Communist – Labour Total War Committee and were the main public face of the Communist Party, and became the main wartime activity of the Labor-Progressive Party, helping it raise its profile and encouraging the federal government to release Communist leaders who had been detained early in the war.
The LPP faced repression during theCold War asanti-Communist sentiment increased inCanada, particularly after the revelations ofIgor Gouzenko following his defection from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa. Gouzenko's revelations led to the downfall of Fred Rose. Nevertheless, the party continued to elect a handful of members to provincial legislatures, city councils and school boards across Canada well into the 1950s.
An almost fatal blow for the party was the crisis that enveloped it followingNikita Khrushchev'sSecret Speech to theTwentieth Party Congress of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union and the1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, the first event shattered the faith many LPP members had in the Soviet Union andJoseph Stalin while the second caused many to doubt that the USSR had truly changed. Aggravated as well by revelations of widespreadantisemitism in the Soviet Union (a serious blow to Jewish members of the LPP such as Salsberg andRobert Laxer), the party underwent a serious split with more than half of its membership including many in the leadership, including Salsberg,Stewart Smith, Harry Binder, Sam Lipshitz and other prominent LPP leaders, ultimately leaving with the remaining party being a remnant of what it once had been. TheUnited Jewish Peoples' Order, which had been one of the largest organizations allied with the LPP, broke with the party in December 1956 as a result of Salsberg's revelations after his fact-finding mission to the USSR to investigate reports of systemicantisemitism and repression ofJewish culture.[20]
The LPP last ran a federal candidate in a December 1958 by-election and ran nine candidates in the1959 Ontario election. Shortly thereafter, it renamed itself the Communist Party of Canada once again.
The LPP had a youth wing, the National Federation of Labour Youth which had formerly been known as theYoung Communist League. The NFLY was renamed the Socialist Youth League of Canada in the 1950s but became defunct later in the decade due to internal party turmoil.
| Election | Leader | Candidates | Seats won | Votes | % | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1945[i] | Tim Buck | 68 / 245 | 1 / 245 | 111,892 |  2.13 | 6th |
| 1949 | 17 / 262 | 0 / 262 | 32,623 |  0.56 | 8th | |
| 1953 | 100 / 265 | 0 / 265 | 59,622 | 1.06 | 7th | |
| 1957 | 10 / 265 | 0 / 265 | 7,760 | 0.12 |  7th | |
| 1958 | 18 / 265 | 0 / 265 | 9,769 | 0.13 | 6th |
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