Young Communist League of Canada
Encyclopedia
The Young Communist League of Canada (YCL-LJC) is a Marxist-Leninist youth organization which fights to build a powerful youth and student movement across Canada
and for socialism.
According to their website,
. Since that time the YCL has been active to various degrees, in international solidarity as well as young workers and students rights.
was its first General Secretary, from 1923 to 1924. It soon became a member of the Young Communist International
, part of numerous YCLs around the world, the most notable being the Komsomol
in the USSR upon which all other Young Communist Leagues became modeled.
Despite conditions of illegality, the YCL grew in the 1920s. The League was founded as the Young Workers League because of the War Measures Act
banning Communist and other radical organizations in Canada. In the words of one its early organizers, Dave Kashtan, the YCL "served as an educational organization for young workers and students, educating young people 'in the spirit of socialism'." Its first organizing work was in Toronto and Montreal, especially among the youth of immigrant communities.
The interest of young people in the YCL reflected the times. The "Great October Socialist Revolution," and the actions of nineteen capitalist countries — including Canada — to intervene in Russia to smash it, had a galvanizing impact on Canadian workers. Although Canada's economy was in a boom, youth of the mid-to-late 20s could well remember post-war unemployment and misery. "When I look back," Dave Kashtan wrote, "I realize that the stories of the Great War, 1914–1918, had a profound influence on my outlook. Canadians remembered the Canadian Expeditionary Force of 475,000, the 230,000 casualties, and the death of 60,000 young people. Radicalism would grow from the legacy of those years."
The YCL's purpose was to organize young workers and students to achieve better working conditions and enhance their quality of life, and while its constitution declared it to be an independent youth organization without party affiliations, it publicly supported the policies of the Communist Party of Canada
. According to Kashtan, who became a YCL organizer at age 17, "The YCL program put forward an anti-militarist stance. We believed that socialism offered the only remedy for unemployment and poverty."
By 1928 the Young Communists League apparently had 40 schools in Canada, with an attendance of 2,000 children. YCL organizers in Montreal around that time included Fred Rose
and Sam Carr
, who would later become famous leaders of the Communist movement in Canada. Organizing was far from easy. Kashtan describes some of the work he did as an agitator and his arrest:
Kastan's story captures the world the early YCL had to work in. "I was young, only seventeen.[...] I was encouraged to read and study. The people I came to know were working people of different national and cultural backgrounds. I was introduced to a world of books and the richness of different cultures. These newly formed relationships were intellectually stimulating. When one of the speakers quoted "for each age is a dream that is dying or coming into birth and in their interaction lies the secret of historical change," I began to more fully grasp the significance of the dream which we had."
And in the 1930s, the struggle for that glowing dream would intensify.
inflicted tremendous suffering and hardship on working people. Factories closed, mass unemployment swept the country, farmers were evicted, and poverty conditions affected the lives of all toilers – in the cities and countryside alike. There was no unemployment insurance, and "relief" was doled out as charity under the most humiliating conditions. As the YCL noted in its seventh national convention, August 1934, "A whole generation is growing up that has never had a chance to earn a living and has only unemployment, hunger and misery as its perspective."
Still, the YCL rejected the claim its generation was the "lost generation
," and instead helped win youth to fight for their rights. Although the total membership was never large, the YCL influence and activities in the youth movements during the Great Depression
of the 1930s were quite substantial. YCLers were involved with unemployed movements, with peace and trade union activists, and among university students. "The Y.C.L. became the mobilizing force for widening circles of young workers in strike actions," according to then Communist Party leader Tim Buck
.
This was an expression of the growing radicalization and revolt of young people. "In Stratford, Flin Flon, Noranda, Sault Ste. Marie, Fraser Mills, B.C., Timmins, Cochrane, Montreal, Winnipeg, etc., youth was in the forefront of the struggle. Leaders of the youth movement were frequently arrested and imprisoned. Many of them won national recognition as strike leaders."
Under the slogan 'work and wages,' YCLers organized the unemployed in relief camps across the country, not least in western Canada. "The leading preoccupation of the YCL when I became secretary," Maurice Rush says in his autobiography, "was to organize unemployed youth." Like many other observers, Rush (who was leader of the YCL in BC after 1935) says that the YCL was very active in the Relief Camp Worker's Unions (RCWU), mobilizing the On to Ottawa Trek.
The Trek began after youth marched out of the camps all over British Columbia and assembled in Vancouver. Through the work of progressives, including the YCL and Communist Party, thousands of working people opened their homes to the protestors, and fed them - sometimes sharing the family's relief rations. Communist women in Vancouver issued a call for a solidarity action, and five thousand working-class women came out to a special "Mother's Day" demonstration on behalf of the camp workers and to demand the closing of the camps.
Vancouver's Mayor told the strikers that the Municipal Council had limited powers and therefore could not do anything about their claims. The BC YCL and CPC, together with the Camp Workers' Union, decided to undertake a great march believing that only action on a national scale could move the Bennett
Conservative government. YCL Comrade Arthur (Slim) Evans, was elected leader for a great journey across the country to Ottawa, 'riding the rails' on the tops of trains:
For those most threatened by the Treker's demands like the Bennett government, the failure of the "On to Ottawa" Trek was a tough blow. Bennett was widely criticized for his handling of the situation. However, for the unemployed young workers, the strike was a tremendous gain. It was a Communist-led struggle, and an historic struggle. Later that year, the hated federal government was disbanded in an election, and major imputus was given to the movements for public health care, education, unemployment insurance and other social safety-net reforms.
Through such work, the YCL grew in force. A "Pioneers" movement of young children with Communist Parents or sympathisers, organized in the 1920s, extended its membership of more than 6,000. Under the leadership of the YCL, the Pioneers published its own magazine with a circulation of more than 4,000.
The YCL's interests were not just limited to the plight of unemployed youth. In 1935, an official Communist club was established at the University of Toronto. As BC YCL leader Maurice Rush noted, "The members realized that the struggle for a decent life for the young generation of the Thirties required broad, united public action by all sections of young people. We worked tirelessly to build that unity, with considerable success.
Together with changing conditions domestically and internationally with the rise of Fascism
, this led to a new conception of the YCL and its role in the struggle.
YCLers and Communist Party members at the time saw Fascism's influence first-hand in Canada. In Montreal, YCL organizer Dave Kashtan wrote, "the newspaper Le Devoir worked in alliance with key members of the Catholic hierarchy, [promoting] the ideology of Mussolini's Italian fascist government. Between 1932 and 1938, numerous articles and editorials in Le Devoir provided a platform for the fascist-influenced youth organization, Les Jeunes Canada."
Many of the YCLs members had Jewish ancestry. Kashtan recalls right-wing students at the University of Montreal who were encouraged to organize demonstrations against the YCL and all local opponents of fascism. "They resorted to violence when three representatives from the democratic Spanish republican government came to address the students at McGill. McGill students stationed on the entrance stairs of the Students' Union building where meetings were held had bricks hurled in their direction."
At the same time, Kashtan wrote, "the Mayor of Montreal banned protest meetings supported by labour organizations. The Quebec Board of Censors was hailed by corporatist supporters when it refused permission to screen the film The Life of Émile Zola starring Paul Muni. Confronted by the growing fascist corporatist campaign, the development of the anti-fascist youth movement among young Canadians became a compelling necessity."
In November 1935, at the ninth plenum of the Communist Party, November 1935, Dave Kashtan's brother Bill Kashtan, then secretary of the YCL, reported on the gains made through the On To Ottawa Trek, but he emphasized the fact that, encouraging though they were, this progress lagged far behind the rising temper and the extending militancy of the Canadian youth.
According to Tim Buck, Kashtan reiterated that "the youth movement is the heart of the movement for social emancipation," and called upon the party and the YCL to raise their sights and measure up to the needs of the youth. Kashtan advocated simultaneously a reorganization of the Y.C.L. along the lines of a more flexible educational youth organization, and also charged it with the task of leading the masses of students, young workers and intellectuals, in an independent united front organization to defend the immediate interests of the youth:
Together with the Communist Party, the YCL began outreaching to youth organizations in all parts of the country with a view to such united youth action. A joint youth council sprang up in Winnipeg and was followed by others in various parts of the country. On May 23–25, 1936, the Canadian Youth Congress was founded at a national conference at Ottawa, called to prepare delegates for the World Youth Congress held in Geneva later that summer and discuss major youth concerns: peace, employment and education.
Violet Anderson reported on the 1936 Congress in Toronto's Saturday Night Magazine:
One of the aims of the Congress was to act as a lobby group on questions of peace, education, and unemployment. Out of the Ottawa meeting came the Declaration of Rights of Canadian Youth, resolutions on Canadian youth and world peace, and the proposed Canadian Youth Act. The YCL played a leading role in the fight for the Youth Bill: prepared by the Youth Congress, submitted to the cabinet and made a subject of public discussion by committing members of parliament to support of it. RCMP security bulletins show leading members of the YCL to have been enthusiastic proponents of the CYC and key organizers. As the menace of war became increasingly acute, the fight to mobilize the youth of Canada for peace took front rank along with the fight for the Youth Bill, economic protection of the youth and repeal of the Military Service Act. Along with the Communist Party, the Youth Congress movement became one of the fighters for a policy of national reconstruction. As its national secretary, Kenneth Woodsworth pointed out in his booklet, "Canada's Youth Comes of Age":
The Congress rejected the claim that they were part of a 'lost generation'—instead, as it said, Canada's youth are 'waking up.'
At its peak, the CYC had a constituent membership of over 400,000 and its annual national conferences were attended by over 700 young people. The second Canadian Youth Congress in Montreal in May 1937 saw a drive to broaden the scope of the movement and to involve participation from French-Canadian youth. Youth in British Columbia organized their own BC Youth Congress, which was initiated by the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) working with the YCL. Annual conferences were held from 1936 to 1940. CYC members continued to speak out against the rising tide of fascism and to work for Canadian youth until 1942.
Antifascism became a major position of the Congress, and Congress representatives became involved in activities that supported Loyalist Spain, a cause the YCL strongly championed.
Throughout the Spanish Civil War
, the YCL joined with other progressive organizations and played an important role in organizing the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion
in which many YCL members fought on the Republican
side.
With the assistance of the CPC, 1,200 young Canadians made their way to Spain to form the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion of the International Brigades. Many perished on its blood-soaked battlefields, the first to fall in the struggle against fascism, and for the cause of democracy and freedom. These "pre-mature anti-fascists" – as they were wrongly dubbed by the Canadian establishment – were true selfless heroes whose sacrifices and contribution to Canadian history must never be forgotten.
But help came in all forms. For example, YCLers active in the Workers Sports Association helped organize support:
Actions like this earned the WSA the attention of the police. In cities like Lachine, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver, WSA clubs were under police surveillance. "A boxing event was arbitrarily cancelled. In Toronto, hall owners were warned that their hall licences would be cancelled should the premises be rented for WSA functions. A police raid of the Vancouver WSA club led to the confiscation of its membership lists and the club's equipment." In BC, YCLers organize Girls Brigades to raise aid for Spain, a solidarity effort which won world-wide attention.
After the Spanish Civil War the YCL was involved in various anti-fascist activities, union organizing, and work in youth cultural associations such as baseball teams. It also published a newspaper, The Young Worker. However, the YCL was banned along with the Communist Party in 1941 . Canadian Communists organized themselves as the Labour-Progressive Party
while the YCL was transformed into the National Federation of Labour Youth.
Initially, the NFLY was not an explicitly Marxist-oriented organization, but rather formed along the concept of the 'popular front
.' In some instances it merged with chapters of the Co-operative Commonwealth Youth Movement, the youth wing of the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
. This policy was contrary to that of the CCF, the main left force which a popular front would have been formed, and resulted in the expulsion of numerous Communists from the social democratic party. While the new NFLY grew rapidly, the Federation reconsidered this approach after the war and re-oriented itself as a communist youth organization. In November 1945, the NFLY was a founding member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth
.
The NFLY began the post-War era on an optimistic note, organizing for the first World Youth Festival, which was held at Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1947 under the banner of "Youth Unite, Forward for Lasting Peace" and attended by 17,000 participants. One of the delegates was long-time Metis fisherman and trade unionist, Homer Stevens. In his oral autobiography, Homer Stevens: A Life in Fishing, Stevens recounts organizing for the youth festival: "You might figure that with everything I'd been involved in, going to a World Youth Festival would seem a little juvenile... In fact, it turned out to be one of the most important experiences in my life."
Raising funds through voluntary donations from fishing families, Homer helped put together a delegation from BC composed mostly of young working people who were politically active. "There were ten of us from British Columbia in the Canadian delegation of some ninety-odd people, thirty of whom were students from McGill University, which included people from a wide range of political inclinations." Delegates had to raise at least $500, and most were not communists. This gives a good impression of the NFLYs organizing ability.
On return from the festival, Stevens writes,
The NFLY, along with the LPP and the left in general faced serious repression during the Cold War
. The NFLY attempted to fight growing anti-Communist
sentiment and isolation through efforts in the peace movement, campaigning in solidarity with the Korea peoples during the Korean War
. Still, the NFLY continued working on issues effecting youth. One of the most exciting stories is of the 8-cent candy-bar strike.
The price of a candy bar in 1947 was 5 cents, exactly one Nickel. But when the war ended controls were removed from prices. Protests were when the price of chocolate bars rose by 60 per cent on April 25, 1947, officially to do with the increase in the price of Coca beans. According to CBC news, "Young people informally affiliated with the National Federation of Labour Youth flood[ed] the streets bearing placards protesting the 3-cent candy bar price hike." Young people across Vancouver Island protested outside confectionery shops, and demonstrations were not limited to big cities. One such action was in Ladysmith:
The protest gained steam and spread across the country. On April 30, 1947, approximately 200 children stormed the Victoria legislature demanding action. A day later in Toronto, students from three different secondary schools staged a mass protest. In Fredericton, children combined their sugar rations to make large masses of homemade fudge. There was a demonstration in every major city. "The kids' national boycott of more expensive candy was no laughing matter for stunned proprietors who watched their sales fall eighty percent overnight. Child pickets besieged storeowners with whistles, armbands and placards bearing slogans like 'Don't be a Sucker! Don't Buy 8 Cent Bars!'"
A cross-country protest was planned for May 3. The protest was quelled, however, by the Toronto Telegram's accusations that the National Federation of Labour Youth was a communist front determined to "plant a few of the seeds of Marxism."
workers, campaigning against rising prices, organizing a nation-wide '10 cent candy bar' strike of youth. It also published a monthly newspaper for youth.
The Federation also launched a campaign in support of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
and worked with organizations like the Student Christian Movement
to bring youth to the World Festival of Youth and Students in Prague (1947), Budapest (1949), Berlin (1951), Bucharest (1953), Warsaw (1955), and Moscow (1957).
The Communist Parties recognized, however, that they had sustained heavy and damaging blows. Both leftist sectarian approaches, failing to see what was new, and right-opportunist capitulation aggravated anti-Communism. In 1958, the Labour-Progressive Party essentially split at its congress, following the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary
, Nikita Khrushchev
's Secret Speech and allegations by J.B. Salsberg about anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union under Stalin and Khrushchev. As the Party re-named itself the Communist Party, after the law banning the Communist Party was finally lifted, the Communists faced a challenge of broadening connections with people's movements, analysing what was new, and adapting to those changes.
Among the young Communists changes were also afoot. The NFLY been weakened by the cold war, and was now re-organized as the Socialist Youth League of Canada. It began publishing a newspaper called "Scan." And while the Communists faced internal challenges, youth struggle was growing. After over a decade Cold-war attitudes were changing.
"Young people [are reacting] quickly to events and are unhampered by prejudices built up through the years," Rae Murphy, a leader of the SYL wrote heading into the SYL's second National Convention in May 1960. By 1964, then General Secretary of the Communist Party, Leslie Morris, could say that "this [younger] generation is interested in socialism and the Communist viewpoint, and is not as conservative and prejudiced towards new ideas as its parents often are. Most of our public meetings—and the most active public debates—are now marked by the attendance and participation of young people."
Changing attitudes were part of the times—and troubles of youth. At its 1960 convention the SYL could point to many problems facing student, worker and farm youth that seemed. About "70% of all high-school students leave school before completing grade 12"; while in Quebec "47% of the population between the ages of 14 and 17 are not in school at all," Murphy wrote, adding that the vast majority of Quebec highschool girls dropped out for financial reasons according to recent surveys. On farms, more and more youth are leaving to the cities for jobs, while less than 50% of students in Universities come from working-class homes, cut out by rising tuition fees.
But resistance was also growing. "The peace demonstrations that have begun to sweep the universities, and the student demonstrations against the savagery of South African government, are signs of a health change and reflect the democratic instincts of young Canadians," Murphy noted. Four years down the road, Morris would note that "Young Canadians are slowly winning the vote at 18 [...] they are full of protest and challenge, full of their own special forms of rebellion, and the contribution they have made to the cause of peace is outstanding."
It is "not we 'against the world,' but we with all who want changes" the Party declared—but putting that into practice was not easy. "Today in Canada we can see the beginnings of a of a change," Murphy wrote, but added:
While this was very true—there was a resurgence of folk with musicians like Bob Dylan
and
the Seekers
—today's readers can chuckle about Murphy's 'offending rock and roll.' What the Cold war had effectively attacked was the Communists organic ties with the masses. Like the YCL and NFLY before it, SYL expressed a sincere revolutionary concern with the future of young Canadians and put forward a program of resistance to big business. But turning that humanist, revolutionary and Communist commitment into a fight for a better future for youth was hard.
At the SYL's convention these issues were front and centre. The main question facing the League was "How to get into the fight? How do we develop the broadest and most diversified approach to young Canadians and yet maintain our character and identity?" Concretely, the young Communists would deal with this question when organizing the Canadian youth delegation to the 1962 Youth festival in Helsinki. What about other struggles? In general, Murphy argued, the SYL must "by example [...] move young people into action around the issues of the day." Easily said—but at the same time those problems facing youth seem "almost insurmountable," he noted elsewhere.
Throughout the early to mid-1960s, Communist youth wrestled with these questions, and experimented with a variety of organizing models, including some along the lines of the New Left
. By 1964 they were again working generally under the name of the Young Communist League. But it wasn't until the late 1960s that the YCL would really begin re-organizing into a more structured pan-Canadian body, having gained momentum from new youth struggles inspired events like the Cuban Revolution, and what they say as the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people.
By the end of the decade, Murphy's comment in 1960 that the SYL must not underestimate the "possibilities and the role the youth movement can play," turned out to be prescient.
Unlike the NFLY, the new YCL was largely sidelined by more radical youth groups aligned with the New Left
. This was especially true in the student movement, and was unable to play an effective role in preventing the dissolution of the Canadian Student's Union in the late 1960s. But while not leading the movement, the YCL was still an active part of the youth radicalization of the 1960s and 1970s and it did succeed in attracting many new youth into social movements, the labour movement, and the Communist Party.
The re-founded YCL was active in campaigns such as support for the Cuban Revolution
, opposition to the Vietnam War
, and solidarity with the people of Chile and South Africa which was also built through the World Youth Festivals in Berlin (1973, just before Pinocet's coup) and Havana (1977). The YCL had offices across the country, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Hamilton, Toronto, and Montreal. Internationally, YCLers served as staff on WFDY in Budapest.
The YCL again began publishing The Young Worker, and then "New Horizons." It also staged campaigns for lower transit rates and picketed a the few white-only restaurants operating in Canada. Unlike the older YCL, the new YCL contained a nationally autonomous unit within itself for Quebec, the LJC(Q). By the late 1970s and into the early 1980s many members of the LJC(Q) were playing leading roles in the Quebec student movement including Quebec National Association of Students, while English-Canadian YCLers were active in the National Union of Students.
In international solidarity, the YCL supported the developments in El Salvador and Nicaragua, sending a delegation to help with the 1989 Nicaraguan coffee harvest. The YCL also sent a member on a fact-finding mission to Palestine about the situation in the Gaza strip. Several members also toured the Soviet Union, and the YCL organized for the 1985 and 1989 youth festivals in Moscow and Pyongyang, respectively.
At the time of the 1989 festival, the YCL claimed to have re-built contacts across the country, including the North West Territories, and its magazine had apparently a readership of several thousand. The pages of its magazine also document the YCL's active role in the student movement, especially around helping organizing the Canadian Federation of Students
. The political focus of the YCLs domestic campaigns was centered on the concept of a "Charter of Youth Rights," and by the late 1980s the YCL was beginning to help construct a broad coalition of groups to fight the Brian Mulroney
Tories with this document as a basis of unity.
. The Communist Party split, with a group nominally led by George Hewison
forming the Cecil-Ross Society
. The Party office, within which the YCL office was held, the Party's printing press, and much of the Party's savings went with the Cecil-Ross Society. A few YCLers and Party members joined the short-lived Cecil-Ross group, while most dropped out of communist politics altogether.
In the 1930s the official organ of the YCL was The Young Worker. A monthly publication, it was under the editorial guide of Stanley Ryerson in 1932 and then John Boyd).
During Boyd's time as editor the paper changed into a new weekly called Advance which was not to be an explicitly Communist publication.
Over-optimistically, the YCL tried to transform the Young Worker from an official organ of the YCL to a broader publication, working with the CCYM (Canadian Commonwealth Youth Movement – the CCF's youth wing. John Boyd recounts working with Murray Cotterill, the CCYM's representative:
Advance was quickly replaced by New Advance, edited by Robert Laxer, and then a more successful magazine, Challenge, was launched "and it made a serious effort to broaden its appeal to young people."
Challenge stayed on as the NFLY's publication, until the dissolution of that organization. The communist Youth organizations of the early 60s were replaced by Scan, and then another broadsheet called The Young Worker took its place as the YCL re-constituted itself in the late 1960s.
The Young Worker was replaced by New Horizons, later Horizons, and then Rebel Youth Magazine in the 1980s. When the YCL began re-organizing in 2003, it took up the name Rebel Youth
for the YCL press again.
. It soon renamed itself Young Left and after differences emerged, it split with the Party.
In fall of 2003 a conference in Vancouver was held which formed a Young Communist League Preparatory Committee. When interest was expressed by youth across the country, the YCL expanded to Ontario. In 2004-2005, the YCL was among many groups, including Young Left, who organized a delegation to the 16th World Youth Festival in Caracas.
, the Young Communist League, USA
, the KNE (Greek YCL), the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas
(Communist Youth Union of Cuba), as well as the President of the World Federation of Democratic Youth
.
The convention approved a political report, action plan, Declaration of Unity and Resistance, and Constitution. The main direction of these documents are largely encapulated in the conventions slogans: Youth and Students, Join the Fight—Defeat the Harper Ultra-Right, and: Build the Fightback, Rebel Youth and the YCL—Organizationally, Politically, and Ideologically. (The documents for the convention can be found on the League's website.)
The convention adopted a Constitution, Declaration of Unity and Resistance, Political Report, and an Action Plan. A Central Committee of ten was elected, consisting of two members from British Columbia, one from Alberta, one from Manitoba, three from Ontario, two from the national constituency of Quebec, and one from the Atlantic region. The Committee also elected a Central Executive of two women and two men, including one member from Quebec. Ontario YCL organizer Johan Boyden was elected General Secretary, and BC YCL organizer Stephen Von Sychowski was elected Central Organizer.
In its political report, the YCL stated that "The most urgent challenge facing our League is to help mobilize and strengthen resistance on the broadest possible basis, and forge together a united combative fight back of youth and students, together with the working class and the people, against the current offensive of the ruling class and its governments, beginning with the Harper Tories." Since that time, the YCL has released statements that expand this critique of the Harper Tories.
The YCL is active in campaigns against military recruitment, the war in Afghanistan, global warming, and for reduced tuition fees, higher minimum wages, and justice for non-status and (im)migrant workers, solidarity with Palestine and Colombia. It also joins campaigns against sexism, homophobia and racism. Within these campaigns the YCL puts forwards its own demands like the elimination of tuition, cutting the military budget by half, and nationalizing energy.
The YCL organizes regular summer camps, schools, conferences and seminars on topical issues like the economic crisis and youth. It has or is working to build clubs in about fifteen cities and about four non-urban areas across Canada. It is planning its next convention for 2010.
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and for socialism.
According to their website,
-
- The YCL-LJC is made up of school and community clubs across the country. We are a mass-based organization of young workers, employed and unemployed, high school and post-secondary students, young women and men, queer and straight -- all classes and strata of the population who are exploited and oppressed by Canada’s monopoly capitalist system. We mix culture with political activism, debate, discussion and education.
History
The Young Communist League of Canada was founded at a convention in Toronto in 1923 as the youth wing of the Communist Party of CanadaCommunist Party of Canada
The Communist Party of Canada is a communist political party in Canada. Although is it currently a minor or small political party without representation in the Federal Parliament or in provincial legislatures, historically the Party has elected representatives in Federal Parliament, Ontario...
. Since that time the YCL has been active to various degrees, in international solidarity as well as young workers and students rights.
The 1920s: A Dream Coming into Birth
The YCL was founded in 1923 as the Young Workers League. Leslie MorrisLeslie Morris
Leslie Tim Morris was a Welsh-Canadian politician, journalist and long time member of the Communist Party of Canada and, its front group, the Labour-Progressive Party....
was its first General Secretary, from 1923 to 1924. It soon became a member of the Young Communist International
Young Communist International
The Young Communist International was the parallel international youth organization affiliated with the Communist International .-International socialist youth organization before World War I:...
, part of numerous YCLs around the world, the most notable being the Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
in the USSR upon which all other Young Communist Leagues became modeled.
Despite conditions of illegality, the YCL grew in the 1920s. The League was founded as the Young Workers League because of the War Measures Act
War Measures Act
The War Measures Act was a Canadian statute that allowed the government to assume sweeping emergency powers in the event of "war, invasion or insurrection, real or apprehended"...
banning Communist and other radical organizations in Canada. In the words of one its early organizers, Dave Kashtan, the YCL "served as an educational organization for young workers and students, educating young people 'in the spirit of socialism'." Its first organizing work was in Toronto and Montreal, especially among the youth of immigrant communities.
The interest of young people in the YCL reflected the times. The "Great October Socialist Revolution," and the actions of nineteen capitalist countries — including Canada — to intervene in Russia to smash it, had a galvanizing impact on Canadian workers. Although Canada's economy was in a boom, youth of the mid-to-late 20s could well remember post-war unemployment and misery. "When I look back," Dave Kashtan wrote, "I realize that the stories of the Great War, 1914–1918, had a profound influence on my outlook. Canadians remembered the Canadian Expeditionary Force of 475,000, the 230,000 casualties, and the death of 60,000 young people. Radicalism would grow from the legacy of those years."
The YCL's purpose was to organize young workers and students to achieve better working conditions and enhance their quality of life, and while its constitution declared it to be an independent youth organization without party affiliations, it publicly supported the policies of the Communist Party of Canada
Communist Party of Canada
The Communist Party of Canada is a communist political party in Canada. Although is it currently a minor or small political party without representation in the Federal Parliament or in provincial legislatures, historically the Party has elected representatives in Federal Parliament, Ontario...
. According to Kashtan, who became a YCL organizer at age 17, "The YCL program put forward an anti-militarist stance. We believed that socialism offered the only remedy for unemployment and poverty."
By 1928 the Young Communists League apparently had 40 schools in Canada, with an attendance of 2,000 children. YCL organizers in Montreal around that time included Fred Rose
Fred Rose (politician)
Fred Rose was a Communist politician and trade union organizer in Canada. He was born in Lublin in what is now Poland, part of Russia at the time. He emigrated to Canada as a child in 1916. He became involved with the Young Communist League of Canada, and then joined the Communist Party of Canada...
and Sam Carr
Sam Carr
Sam Carr was an organizer for the Communist Party of Canada and, its successor, the Labour-Progressive Party in the 1930s and 1940s. He was born Schmil Kogan in Tomachpol, Ukraine in 1906 and immigrated to Canada in 1924, living in Winnipeg and Regina before settling in Montreal in 1925...
, who would later become famous leaders of the Communist movement in Canada. Organizing was far from easy. Kashtan describes some of the work he did as an agitator and his arrest:
Lord Baden Powell of Gilwell, the Chief Scout of the British Boy Scout movement, announced that an international Boy Scout Jamboree would take place in Liverpool in 1929 and the youth of the Empire was called upon to participate. [The YCL] campaigned against cadet training in the high schools. We reacted against the Jamboree. We responded by distributing a circular debunking Baden Powell. While distributing this circular, I was arrested by two members of the anti-red squad, a branch of the City Police Department.
The circular did not attempt to undermine the positive values of general scouting. In Canada we knew of the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton and his wondercraft principles. Although the Boy Scouts were seen to be a significant social movement, the true motive behind Baden Powell's leadership was veiled. There was more to his leadership than simply learning to tie knots, lighting a fire without a match and avoiding getting lost in the woods. He thought it was a good idea for the British Scout movement to cooperate with the Hitler Jugend. This was preached at a time when the violent, aggressive spirit of fascism was already a threat to peace.
My case came to trial in the Montreal Recorder's Court with Judge Thouin presiding. I was sixteen, this was my first arrest and court appearance, and I was without experienced counsel.
After reading the circular, Judge Thouin looked up and put the following question to me: "Do you believe in the Ten CommandmentsTen CommandmentsThe Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...
?" I was perplexed. I had been told that my arrest was simply due to a by-law infraction, but now I faced a judgement of my personal conscience. If there was any morality to consider, I thought it was militarism that led to killing. I hesitated, and the judge called out sternly, "Name them!"
Well, the law was the law. I started with the fifth commandment: "Honour thy father and thy mother. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife — "
"Enough," declared the judge. "Thirty days in jail or pay the fine and court costs." As I left the courtroom, I wondered whether the stern reaction of the judge had something to do with my recitation of the five commandments which related to man and his fellow man. My costs were paid by a representative from the Canadian Labour Defense League, an organization which played an important role in the defense of democratic rights.
Kastan's story captures the world the early YCL had to work in. "I was young, only seventeen.[...] I was encouraged to read and study. The people I came to know were working people of different national and cultural backgrounds. I was introduced to a world of books and the richness of different cultures. These newly formed relationships were intellectually stimulating. When one of the speakers quoted "for each age is a dream that is dying or coming into birth and in their interaction lies the secret of historical change," I began to more fully grasp the significance of the dream which we had."
And in the 1930s, the struggle for that glowing dream would intensify.
Great Depression and the On to Ottawa Trek
The onset of the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
inflicted tremendous suffering and hardship on working people. Factories closed, mass unemployment swept the country, farmers were evicted, and poverty conditions affected the lives of all toilers – in the cities and countryside alike. There was no unemployment insurance, and "relief" was doled out as charity under the most humiliating conditions. As the YCL noted in its seventh national convention, August 1934, "A whole generation is growing up that has never had a chance to earn a living and has only unemployment, hunger and misery as its perspective."
Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...
," and instead helped win youth to fight for their rights. Although the total membership was never large, the YCL influence and activities in the youth movements during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
of the 1930s were quite substantial. YCLers were involved with unemployed movements, with peace and trade union activists, and among university students. "The Y.C.L. became the mobilizing force for widening circles of young workers in strike actions," according to then Communist Party leader Tim Buck
Tim Buck
Timothy "Tim" Buck was a long-time leader of the Communist Party of Canada...
.
This was an expression of the growing radicalization and revolt of young people. "In Stratford, Flin Flon, Noranda, Sault Ste. Marie, Fraser Mills, B.C., Timmins, Cochrane, Montreal, Winnipeg, etc., youth was in the forefront of the struggle. Leaders of the youth movement were frequently arrested and imprisoned. Many of them won national recognition as strike leaders."
Under the slogan 'work and wages,' YCLers organized the unemployed in relief camps across the country, not least in western Canada. "The leading preoccupation of the YCL when I became secretary," Maurice Rush says in his autobiography, "was to organize unemployed youth." Like many other observers, Rush (who was leader of the YCL in BC after 1935) says that the YCL was very active in the Relief Camp Worker's Unions (RCWU), mobilizing the On to Ottawa Trek.
The Trek began after youth marched out of the camps all over British Columbia and assembled in Vancouver. Through the work of progressives, including the YCL and Communist Party, thousands of working people opened their homes to the protestors, and fed them - sometimes sharing the family's relief rations. Communist women in Vancouver issued a call for a solidarity action, and five thousand working-class women came out to a special "Mother's Day" demonstration on behalf of the camp workers and to demand the closing of the camps.
Vancouver's Mayor told the strikers that the Municipal Council had limited powers and therefore could not do anything about their claims. The BC YCL and CPC, together with the Camp Workers' Union, decided to undertake a great march believing that only action on a national scale could move the Bennett
R. B. Bennett
Richard Bedford Bennett, 1st Viscount Bennett, PC, KC was a Canadian lawyer, businessman, politician, and philanthropist. He served as the 11th Prime Minister of Canada from August 7, 1930, to October 23, 1935, during the worst of the Great Depression years...
Conservative government. YCL Comrade Arthur (Slim) Evans, was elected leader for a great journey across the country to Ottawa, 'riding the rails' on the tops of trains:
When they left Vancouver 800-strong the capitalist class and its press sneered. They didn't believe the boys would stand tip to the bitter hardships of such an undertaking. "Wait until they feel the nip of frost up in the mountains" wrote one hack, "and they'll be glad to get back to camp." But he was wrong. The trekkers crossed the interior of British Columbia, crossed the Rocky Mountains, crossed most of the Prairies. They reached Regina in the third week of June. They had covered a thousand miles, half of their journey, and their numbers had doubled. They were completely confident of their ability to reach Ottawa and that their numbers would double again during the remainder of their journey.
In all the larger centres along their route reinforcements were gathering and preparing to join the trek. In Winnipeg alone there were hundreds waiting to join. The feeling was growing all over the country that this great national protest would compel the Tory government to close the slave camps.
The trekkers' amazing demonstration of discipline, no less than the unprecedented support that they received from the citizenry in every town that they passed through, provided conclusive evidence that the slave camps had to go. The Bennett government stopped the trek by the bloody massacre at Regina on Dominion Day, 1935, but they could not undo, what the young camp workers' trek had accomplished. Bennett's slave camps were discredited. The camp workers had marched out of Vancouver under the slogan "Abolish the Slave Camps." Not another camp was opened after the Regina massacre and within a few months not one remained in operation anywhere in Canada.
For those most threatened by the Treker's demands like the Bennett government, the failure of the "On to Ottawa" Trek was a tough blow. Bennett was widely criticized for his handling of the situation. However, for the unemployed young workers, the strike was a tremendous gain. It was a Communist-led struggle, and an historic struggle. Later that year, the hated federal government was disbanded in an election, and major imputus was given to the movements for public health care, education, unemployment insurance and other social safety-net reforms.
Through such work, the YCL grew in force. A "Pioneers" movement of young children with Communist Parents or sympathisers, organized in the 1920s, extended its membership of more than 6,000. Under the leadership of the YCL, the Pioneers published its own magazine with a circulation of more than 4,000.
The YCL's interests were not just limited to the plight of unemployed youth. In 1935, an official Communist club was established at the University of Toronto. As BC YCL leader Maurice Rush noted, "The members realized that the struggle for a decent life for the young generation of the Thirties required broad, united public action by all sections of young people. We worked tirelessly to build that unity, with considerable success.
Together with changing conditions domestically and internationally with the rise of Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, this led to a new conception of the YCL and its role in the struggle.
The Rise of Fascism and the Canadian Youth Congress
At the same time the "class struggle" was intensifying in Canada, the menace of fascism was growing in Europe, Asia, and in North America itself. Starting with the Japanese imperialist invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, Canadian Communists joined those sounding an early alert to Canadians of the growing danger.YCLers and Communist Party members at the time saw Fascism's influence first-hand in Canada. In Montreal, YCL organizer Dave Kashtan wrote, "the newspaper Le Devoir worked in alliance with key members of the Catholic hierarchy, [promoting] the ideology of Mussolini's Italian fascist government. Between 1932 and 1938, numerous articles and editorials in Le Devoir provided a platform for the fascist-influenced youth organization, Les Jeunes Canada."
Many of the YCLs members had Jewish ancestry. Kashtan recalls right-wing students at the University of Montreal who were encouraged to organize demonstrations against the YCL and all local opponents of fascism. "They resorted to violence when three representatives from the democratic Spanish republican government came to address the students at McGill. McGill students stationed on the entrance stairs of the Students' Union building where meetings were held had bricks hurled in their direction."
At the same time, Kashtan wrote, "the Mayor of Montreal banned protest meetings supported by labour organizations. The Quebec Board of Censors was hailed by corporatist supporters when it refused permission to screen the film The Life of Émile Zola starring Paul Muni. Confronted by the growing fascist corporatist campaign, the development of the anti-fascist youth movement among young Canadians became a compelling necessity."
In November 1935, at the ninth plenum of the Communist Party, November 1935, Dave Kashtan's brother Bill Kashtan, then secretary of the YCL, reported on the gains made through the On To Ottawa Trek, but he emphasized the fact that, encouraging though they were, this progress lagged far behind the rising temper and the extending militancy of the Canadian youth.
According to Tim Buck, Kashtan reiterated that "the youth movement is the heart of the movement for social emancipation," and called upon the party and the YCL to raise their sights and measure up to the needs of the youth. Kashtan advocated simultaneously a reorganization of the Y.C.L. along the lines of a more flexible educational youth organization, and also charged it with the task of leading the masses of students, young workers and intellectuals, in an independent united front organization to defend the immediate interests of the youth:
In general, I think we can work along the lines of building up a federation of youth organizations, on a platform of struggle for the immediate economic and political needs of the youth, against war and fascism, for socialism. Essentially such a federation would unite all youth prepared to stand on a working-class program, to work for the transformation of society. Such a federation could draw into its ranks the youth organizations which already exist in the working-class movement, unemployed youth organizations, student organizations, sports clubs, the Y.C.L. and probably also the Cooperative Commonwealth Youth Movement.
Together with the Communist Party, the YCL began outreaching to youth organizations in all parts of the country with a view to such united youth action. A joint youth council sprang up in Winnipeg and was followed by others in various parts of the country. On May 23–25, 1936, the Canadian Youth Congress was founded at a national conference at Ottawa, called to prepare delegates for the World Youth Congress held in Geneva later that summer and discuss major youth concerns: peace, employment and education.
Violet Anderson reported on the 1936 Congress in Toronto's Saturday Night Magazine:
Delegates from all over Canada came to this Congress, representing religious, political, occupational, cultural and recreational organizations ... the United Church delegation was the largest group representing any single organization. Other religious bodies were represented, among them the Anglican Young People, the Unitarians, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Jews. The two main political parties had delegates there, though a larger representation came from the Canadian Cooperative Youth Movement and the Young Communist League. There was a delegation of fifty from the various Ys. Eighteen French-Canadian organizations were represented, sixteen Youth Councils, and twenty-three cultural and recreational organizations. The interests of the League of Nations Society, of unions, farmers, unemployed, cooperatives, and even of children, all had their exponents.
One of the aims of the Congress was to act as a lobby group on questions of peace, education, and unemployment. Out of the Ottawa meeting came the Declaration of Rights of Canadian Youth, resolutions on Canadian youth and world peace, and the proposed Canadian Youth Act. The YCL played a leading role in the fight for the Youth Bill: prepared by the Youth Congress, submitted to the cabinet and made a subject of public discussion by committing members of parliament to support of it. RCMP security bulletins show leading members of the YCL to have been enthusiastic proponents of the CYC and key organizers. As the menace of war became increasingly acute, the fight to mobilize the youth of Canada for peace took front rank along with the fight for the Youth Bill, economic protection of the youth and repeal of the Military Service Act. Along with the Communist Party, the Youth Congress movement became one of the fighters for a policy of national reconstruction. As its national secretary, Kenneth Woodsworth pointed out in his booklet, "Canada's Youth Comes of Age":
Four or five years ago, it could have been said with truth that youth, by and large, was apathetic. The force of the depression had not served at that time to stimulate youth to action. Young men and women still lived and acted in the pre-depression ways: enjoyed sports, dances, movies, etc.; and were not interested in 'serious' questions like economics, and social and political issues. As more and more left school or graduated from colleges and there was no work and no immediate prospect of security, youth began to waken up. There was a hardening that was healthy. Pessimism is giving way to calmer, more deliberate study of the situation and planning of action. Youth is becoming serious-minded as it faces more frankly and honestly the world in which it has to live, the world it has to change. Youth is realizing that its own future is at stake. Youth is assuming responsibility for decision and action. Quickly youth is training for citizenship and administration. Perspective is being regained. The certainty of our natural wealth and the calibre of our people are great encouragement for young Canadians; the pioneer past is remembered; the future is for us to build.
The Congress rejected the claim that they were part of a 'lost generation'—instead, as it said, Canada's youth are 'waking up.'
At its peak, the CYC had a constituent membership of over 400,000 and its annual national conferences were attended by over 700 young people. The second Canadian Youth Congress in Montreal in May 1937 saw a drive to broaden the scope of the movement and to involve participation from French-Canadian youth. Youth in British Columbia organized their own BC Youth Congress, which was initiated by the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) working with the YCL. Annual conferences were held from 1936 to 1940. CYC members continued to speak out against the rising tide of fascism and to work for Canadian youth until 1942.
Antifascism became a major position of the Congress, and Congress representatives became involved in activities that supported Loyalist Spain, a cause the YCL strongly championed.
The Spanish Civil War and cultural work
The first major battle against the fascist threat in Europe itself arose in Spain, when Franco's troops, with the direct aid of Mussolini and Hitler, turned on the democratically-elected government and launched the Spanish Civil War. Internationalist assistance to the beleaguered democratic forces in Spain came from around the world, including Canada.Throughout the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, the YCL joined with other progressive organizations and played an important role in organizing the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion
Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion
The Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion or Mac-Paps were a battalion of Canadians who fought as part of the XV International Brigade on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Except for France, no other country gave a greater proportion of its population as volunteers in Spain than Canada. The...
in which many YCL members fought on the Republican
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
side.
With the assistance of the CPC, 1,200 young Canadians made their way to Spain to form the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion of the International Brigades. Many perished on its blood-soaked battlefields, the first to fall in the struggle against fascism, and for the cause of democracy and freedom. These "pre-mature anti-fascists" – as they were wrongly dubbed by the Canadian establishment – were true selfless heroes whose sacrifices and contribution to Canadian history must never be forgotten.
But help came in all forms. For example, YCLers active in the Workers Sports Association helped organize support:
The majority of the members [of the Workers Sports Association] were young needle trades union members. The combination of sports and interest in international current affairs enhanced the quality of the club's program. [...] The integration of the WSA soccer team in the City soccer league was greeted with enthusiasm by soccer fans. The blue and white uniforms with the Red Star logo had a significant meaning for our team's followers. Collections taken at the games on Fletcher's Field were often donated to the Montreal Council of Unemployed Organizations. The largest crowd ever at the games in Fletcher's Field took place at a soccer game between the Toronto and Montreal WSA clubs in support of Dr. Norman Bethune's Blood Unit in Spain. Many thousands of Montrealers rallied to give their support to the struggle to "Save Democracy in Spain."
Actions like this earned the WSA the attention of the police. In cities like Lachine, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver, WSA clubs were under police surveillance. "A boxing event was arbitrarily cancelled. In Toronto, hall owners were warned that their hall licences would be cancelled should the premises be rented for WSA functions. A police raid of the Vancouver WSA club led to the confiscation of its membership lists and the club's equipment." In BC, YCLers organize Girls Brigades to raise aid for Spain, a solidarity effort which won world-wide attention.
After the Spanish Civil War the YCL was involved in various anti-fascist activities, union organizing, and work in youth cultural associations such as baseball teams. It also published a newspaper, The Young Worker. However, the YCL was banned along with the Communist Party in 1941 . Canadian Communists organized themselves as the Labour-Progressive Party
Labour-Progressive Party
For the Labour-Progressive Coalition Government in New Zealand see the Fifth Labour Government of New ZealandThe Labor-Progressive Party was the legal political organization of the Communist Party of Canada between 1943 and 1959....
while the YCL was transformed into the National Federation of Labour Youth.
Initially, the NFLY was not an explicitly Marxist-oriented organization, but rather formed along the concept of the 'popular front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
.' In some instances it merged with chapters of the Co-operative Commonwealth Youth Movement, the youth wing of the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was a Canadian political party founded in 1932 in Calgary, Alberta, by a number of socialist, farm, co-operative and labour groups, and the League for Social Reconstruction...
. This policy was contrary to that of the CCF, the main left force which a popular front would have been formed, and resulted in the expulsion of numerous Communists from the social democratic party. While the new NFLY grew rapidly, the Federation reconsidered this approach after the war and re-oriented itself as a communist youth organization. In November 1945, the NFLY was a founding member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth
World Federation of Democratic Youth
The World Federation of Democratic Youth is a progressive youth organization, recognized by the United Nations as an international youth non-governmental organization. WFDY describes itself as an "anti-imperialist, left-wing" organisation...
.
Post World War II, Korea and the Cold War
At the end of the Second World War, the Communists were at a high point. The NFLY and the Labour Progressive Party had both seen their membership grow, while support for the Soviet Union, policies of peace, and progressive ideas in general were widely held by Canadian people. The effect of the Cold War, however, was to change all this.The NFLY began the post-War era on an optimistic note, organizing for the first World Youth Festival, which was held at Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1947 under the banner of "Youth Unite, Forward for Lasting Peace" and attended by 17,000 participants. One of the delegates was long-time Metis fisherman and trade unionist, Homer Stevens. In his oral autobiography, Homer Stevens: A Life in Fishing, Stevens recounts organizing for the youth festival: "You might figure that with everything I'd been involved in, going to a World Youth Festival would seem a little juvenile... In fact, it turned out to be one of the most important experiences in my life."
Raising funds through voluntary donations from fishing families, Homer helped put together a delegation from BC composed mostly of young working people who were politically active. "There were ten of us from British Columbia in the Canadian delegation of some ninety-odd people, thirty of whom were students from McGill University, which included people from a wide range of political inclinations." Delegates had to raise at least $500, and most were not communists. This gives a good impression of the NFLYs organizing ability.
On return from the festival, Stevens writes,
The Canadian delegation as a whole gathered in Toronto to give our report before we scattered to our homes. The cold war atmosphere was emerging prior to our departure but all of us noticed how strong it had become on our return. Everybody had the impression that a major change had taken place just in the four months that we'd been away. We had been out of touch with what had been appearing in the Canadian press during that period and then to step into this barrage of cold war propaganda—the view that we had been behind the Iron Curtain and that either we were a bunch of dupes or agents of a foreign country. All that kind of thing coming down on our heads.
The NFLY, along with the LPP and the left in general faced serious repression during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. The NFLY attempted to fight growing anti-Communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
sentiment and isolation through efforts in the peace movement, campaigning in solidarity with the Korea peoples during the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. Still, the NFLY continued working on issues effecting youth. One of the most exciting stories is of the 8-cent candy-bar strike.
The price of a candy bar in 1947 was 5 cents, exactly one Nickel. But when the war ended controls were removed from prices. Protests were when the price of chocolate bars rose by 60 per cent on April 25, 1947, officially to do with the increase in the price of Coca beans. According to CBC news, "Young people informally affiliated with the National Federation of Labour Youth flood[ed] the streets bearing placards protesting the 3-cent candy bar price hike." Young people across Vancouver Island protested outside confectionery shops, and demonstrations were not limited to big cities. One such action was in Ladysmith:
The Wigwam in Ladysmith raised the price from 5 cents to 8 cents, a 62% price increase! Sixteen year old Parker Williams and his school chums were outraged. That increase represented a significant cost increase when the average allowance for a teenager was less than a dollar. Signs were painted, Parker actually decorated his old car, a 1923 McLaughlin. A parade was staged, and it was so successful they actually turned around and went back up the street.
The protest gained steam and spread across the country. On April 30, 1947, approximately 200 children stormed the Victoria legislature demanding action. A day later in Toronto, students from three different secondary schools staged a mass protest. In Fredericton, children combined their sugar rations to make large masses of homemade fudge. There was a demonstration in every major city. "The kids' national boycott of more expensive candy was no laughing matter for stunned proprietors who watched their sales fall eighty percent overnight. Child pickets besieged storeowners with whistles, armbands and placards bearing slogans like 'Don't be a Sucker! Don't Buy 8 Cent Bars!'"
A cross-country protest was planned for May 3. The protest was quelled, however, by the Toronto Telegram's accusations that the National Federation of Labour Youth was a communist front determined to "plant a few of the seeds of Marxism."
In a widely circulated attack, the sour-grapes Toronto Telegram blasted the youthful dissidents as stooges of Moscow. The paper labeled candy strikers "another instrument in the Communist grand strategy of the creation of chaos," and charged that "Communist youth organizers have been instructed to use every possible means of developing and encouraging the chocolate bar agitation." Cheaper candy, some thought, was just the first step on the path to communist tyranny.
Such cold war paranoia defused public support for the children. Cowed by allegations of communist involvement, grown-ups worked to short-circuit the drive for the nickel bar. In Vancouver, the 2,500 member Sat-Teen Club caved in to pressure from priests, parents, teachers and city officials to terminate the group's involvement with the candy boycott, glumly declaring that "mob demonstrations and strikes are not consistent with the ideals of the club."
workers, campaigning against rising prices, organizing a nation-wide '10 cent candy bar' strike of youth. It also published a monthly newspaper for youth.
The Federation also launched a campaign in support of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...
and worked with organizations like the Student Christian Movement
Student Christian Movement of Canada
The Student Christian Movement of Canada is a youth-led ecumenical network of student collectives based in spirituality, issues of social, economic, and environmental justice, and building autonomous local communities on campuses across the country...
to bring youth to the World Festival of Youth and Students in Prague (1947), Budapest (1949), Berlin (1951), Bucharest (1953), Warsaw (1955), and Moscow (1957).
The End of the Cold War and the Socialist Youth League
By the mid-to-late 1950s conditions had again changed in Canada and internationally. For the Communists, the Cold war had begun with the major threat of another world war—as well as a renewed attack on both socialism, and the anti-colonial struggles across the world. To be sure, the capitalist economy had grown in the west. But now, it looked like the danger of World War III had been narrowly averted. With the Chinese and Cuban revolutions as well as events in Africa and Asia, it was clear that the socialist and national liberation forces had not 'surrendered to imperialism.'The Communist Parties recognized, however, that they had sustained heavy and damaging blows. Both leftist sectarian approaches, failing to see what was new, and right-opportunist capitulation aggravated anti-Communism. In 1958, the Labour-Progressive Party essentially split at its congress, following the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....
, Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's Secret Speech and allegations by J.B. Salsberg about anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union under Stalin and Khrushchev. As the Party re-named itself the Communist Party, after the law banning the Communist Party was finally lifted, the Communists faced a challenge of broadening connections with people's movements, analysing what was new, and adapting to those changes.
Among the young Communists changes were also afoot. The NFLY been weakened by the cold war, and was now re-organized as the Socialist Youth League of Canada. It began publishing a newspaper called "Scan." And while the Communists faced internal challenges, youth struggle was growing. After over a decade Cold-war attitudes were changing.
"Young people [are reacting] quickly to events and are unhampered by prejudices built up through the years," Rae Murphy, a leader of the SYL wrote heading into the SYL's second National Convention in May 1960. By 1964, then General Secretary of the Communist Party, Leslie Morris, could say that "this [younger] generation is interested in socialism and the Communist viewpoint, and is not as conservative and prejudiced towards new ideas as its parents often are. Most of our public meetings—and the most active public debates—are now marked by the attendance and participation of young people."
Changing attitudes were part of the times—and troubles of youth. At its 1960 convention the SYL could point to many problems facing student, worker and farm youth that seemed. About "70% of all high-school students leave school before completing grade 12"; while in Quebec "47% of the population between the ages of 14 and 17 are not in school at all," Murphy wrote, adding that the vast majority of Quebec highschool girls dropped out for financial reasons according to recent surveys. On farms, more and more youth are leaving to the cities for jobs, while less than 50% of students in Universities come from working-class homes, cut out by rising tuition fees.
But resistance was also growing. "The peace demonstrations that have begun to sweep the universities, and the student demonstrations against the savagery of South African government, are signs of a health change and reflect the democratic instincts of young Canadians," Murphy noted. Four years down the road, Morris would note that "Young Canadians are slowly winning the vote at 18 [...] they are full of protest and challenge, full of their own special forms of rebellion, and the contribution they have made to the cause of peace is outstanding."
It is "not we 'against the world,' but we with all who want changes" the Party declared—but putting that into practice was not easy. "Today in Canada we can see the beginnings of a of a change," Murphy wrote, but added:
Sections of young people are rebelling against the deluge of 'rock and roll' which has been offending the ears and insulting the intelligence. This shows itself in many ways—the rebirth of folk song in a mass way, the rise of the 'folkniks' coffee clubs (although this has many phony and 'arty' connections it is a healthy thing), the 'Angry Young Men' we hear so much about...
While this was very true—there was a resurgence of folk with musicians like Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
and
the Seekers
The Seekers
The Seekers are an Australian folk-influenced pop music group which were originally formed in 1962. They were the first Australian popular music group to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States...
—today's readers can chuckle about Murphy's 'offending rock and roll.' What the Cold war had effectively attacked was the Communists organic ties with the masses. Like the YCL and NFLY before it, SYL expressed a sincere revolutionary concern with the future of young Canadians and put forward a program of resistance to big business. But turning that humanist, revolutionary and Communist commitment into a fight for a better future for youth was hard.
At the SYL's convention these issues were front and centre. The main question facing the League was "How to get into the fight? How do we develop the broadest and most diversified approach to young Canadians and yet maintain our character and identity?" Concretely, the young Communists would deal with this question when organizing the Canadian youth delegation to the 1962 Youth festival in Helsinki. What about other struggles? In general, Murphy argued, the SYL must "by example [...] move young people into action around the issues of the day." Easily said—but at the same time those problems facing youth seem "almost insurmountable," he noted elsewhere.
Throughout the early to mid-1960s, Communist youth wrestled with these questions, and experimented with a variety of organizing models, including some along the lines of the New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
. By 1964 they were again working generally under the name of the Young Communist League. But it wasn't until the late 1960s that the YCL would really begin re-organizing into a more structured pan-Canadian body, having gained momentum from new youth struggles inspired events like the Cuban Revolution, and what they say as the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people.
By the end of the decade, Murphy's comment in 1960 that the SYL must not underestimate the "possibilities and the role the youth movement can play," turned out to be prescient.
The Cuban Revolution, The Vietnam War and the YCL
1968, the Communist Party of Canada (the name the LPP readopted in 1959) restarted a communist youth organization, again calling it the Young Communist League. Leaders of the YCL during the late 1960s and early 1970s included Elizabeth Hill and Mike Gidora.Unlike the NFLY, the new YCL was largely sidelined by more radical youth groups aligned with the New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
. This was especially true in the student movement, and was unable to play an effective role in preventing the dissolution of the Canadian Student's Union in the late 1960s. But while not leading the movement, the YCL was still an active part of the youth radicalization of the 1960s and 1970s and it did succeed in attracting many new youth into social movements, the labour movement, and the Communist Party.
The re-founded YCL was active in campaigns such as support for the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
, opposition to the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, and solidarity with the people of Chile and South Africa which was also built through the World Youth Festivals in Berlin (1973, just before Pinocet's coup) and Havana (1977). The YCL had offices across the country, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Hamilton, Toronto, and Montreal. Internationally, YCLers served as staff on WFDY in Budapest.
The YCL again began publishing The Young Worker, and then "New Horizons." It also staged campaigns for lower transit rates and picketed a the few white-only restaurants operating in Canada. Unlike the older YCL, the new YCL contained a nationally autonomous unit within itself for Quebec, the LJC(Q). By the late 1970s and into the early 1980s many members of the LJC(Q) were playing leading roles in the Quebec student movement including Quebec National Association of Students, while English-Canadian YCLers were active in the National Union of Students.
1980s
In the 1980s, the YCL saw somewhat of an upsurge with the developments in the anti-war movement and anti-nuclear movements. The League changed the name of its publication to "Rebel Youth," following the Cuban revolutionary youth group by that name. The League in Quebec also began publishing its own French language magazine for youth.In international solidarity, the YCL supported the developments in El Salvador and Nicaragua, sending a delegation to help with the 1989 Nicaraguan coffee harvest. The YCL also sent a member on a fact-finding mission to Palestine about the situation in the Gaza strip. Several members also toured the Soviet Union, and the YCL organized for the 1985 and 1989 youth festivals in Moscow and Pyongyang, respectively.
At the time of the 1989 festival, the YCL claimed to have re-built contacts across the country, including the North West Territories, and its magazine had apparently a readership of several thousand. The pages of its magazine also document the YCL's active role in the student movement, especially around helping organizing the Canadian Federation of Students
Canadian Federation of Students
The Canadian Federation of Students is the largest student organization in Canada. Founded in 1981, the stated goal of the CFS is to work at the federal level for high quality, accessible post-secondary education.-Structure:...
. The political focus of the YCLs domestic campaigns was centered on the concept of a "Charter of Youth Rights," and by the late 1980s the YCL was beginning to help construct a broad coalition of groups to fight the Brian Mulroney
Brian Mulroney
Martin Brian Mulroney, was the 18th Prime Minister of Canada from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993 and was leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1983 to 1993. His tenure as Prime Minister was marked by the introduction of major economic reforms, such as the Canada-U.S...
Tories with this document as a basis of unity.
Collapse of the USSR and Crises in the Party
The YCL was liquidated around 1991 due to a deep crisis in the CPC that followed the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet UnionDissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...
. The Communist Party split, with a group nominally led by George Hewison
George Hewison
George Hewison is a former long-time member of the Communist Party of Canada and trade unionist. A second-generation member of the party, Hewison grew up selling the party press and joined the party at the age of 17...
forming the Cecil-Ross Society
Cecil-Ross Society
The Cecil-Ross Society was a revisionist educational foundation operated by some former members of the Communist Party of Canada after they were forced to terminate their association with the party in 1992 in a political and legal dispute following the fall of the Soviet Union...
. The Party office, within which the YCL office was held, the Party's printing press, and much of the Party's savings went with the Cecil-Ross Society. A few YCLers and Party members joined the short-lived Cecil-Ross group, while most dropped out of communist politics altogether.
The Young Communist Press
Working on a Leninist principle of organization, the YCL almost always published a newspaper or magazine. While the name and frequency of publication changed, the press was an important YCL activity.In the 1930s the official organ of the YCL was The Young Worker. A monthly publication, it was under the editorial guide of Stanley Ryerson in 1932 and then John Boyd).
During Boyd's time as editor the paper changed into a new weekly called Advance which was not to be an explicitly Communist publication.
Over-optimistically, the YCL tried to transform the Young Worker from an official organ of the YCL to a broader publication, working with the CCYM (Canadian Commonwealth Youth Movement – the CCF's youth wing. John Boyd recounts working with Murray Cotterill, the CCYM's representative:
He played along with the idea of getting together with the Communists to put out a left-wing magazine, but that didn't last long. The truth is he didn't trust us and we didn't trust him. It was a somewhat artificial effort to carry through the Comintern's Seventh Congress line of building a united front. But I think it was a tongue-in-cheek exercise for both sides. I only met Cotterill twice while we were planning the magazine we called Advance. We produced only two issues of it and then it fizzled out.
Advance was quickly replaced by New Advance, edited by Robert Laxer, and then a more successful magazine, Challenge, was launched "and it made a serious effort to broaden its appeal to young people."
Challenge stayed on as the NFLY's publication, until the dissolution of that organization. The communist Youth organizations of the early 60s were replaced by Scan, and then another broadsheet called The Young Worker took its place as the YCL re-constituted itself in the late 1960s.
The Young Worker was replaced by New Horizons, later Horizons, and then Rebel Youth Magazine in the 1980s. When the YCL began re-organizing in 2003, it took up the name Rebel Youth
Rebel Youth
Rebel Youth is the bilingual magazine of the Young Communist League of Canada published in the late 1980s and restarted in 2005. The name Rebel Youth is from Cuba's youth newspaper, Juventud Rebelde...
for the YCL press again.
The New YCL in Canada
An attempt was made to refound the YCL in 1994 but was unsuccessful, as was a subsequent attempt, around 2000. Instead a youth group called the Red Star Youth Collective was formed in TorontoToronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
. It soon renamed itself Young Left and after differences emerged, it split with the Party.
In fall of 2003 a conference in Vancouver was held which formed a Young Communist League Preparatory Committee. When interest was expressed by youth across the country, the YCL expanded to Ontario. In 2004-2005, the YCL was among many groups, including Young Left, who organized a delegation to the 16th World Youth Festival in Caracas.
Rebuilding Convention
In March 2007, the Young Communist League of Canada held a three-day refounding convention in Toronto (this was the 24th Central Convention of the YCL, and is the first since the YCL was split up in 1989). The convention was delegated at a one to three ratio, with close to forty guests and delegates over the course of the weekend attending. Delegates came from British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. The convention heard from international guests representing the Portuguese Communist YouthPortuguese Communist Youth
The Portuguese Communist Youth is the youth organization of the Portuguese Communist Party and was founded on November 10 of 1979, after the unification of the Young Communist League and the Communist Students League....
, the Young Communist League, USA
Young Communist League, USA
The Young Communist League USA is the fraternal youth organization of the Communist Party USA. Although the name of the group has changed a number of times over the years, it dates its lineage back to 1920, shortly after the establishment of the first communist parties in America.-Early years:The...
, the KNE (Greek YCL), the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas
Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas
The Young Communist League is the youth organisation of the Communist Party of Cuba. Its membership is voluntary and selective, and counts more than 600,000 active members.-History:...
(Communist Youth Union of Cuba), as well as the President of the World Federation of Democratic Youth
World Federation of Democratic Youth
The World Federation of Democratic Youth is a progressive youth organization, recognized by the United Nations as an international youth non-governmental organization. WFDY describes itself as an "anti-imperialist, left-wing" organisation...
.
The convention approved a political report, action plan, Declaration of Unity and Resistance, and Constitution. The main direction of these documents are largely encapulated in the conventions slogans: Youth and Students, Join the Fight—Defeat the Harper Ultra-Right, and: Build the Fightback, Rebel Youth and the YCL—Organizationally, Politically, and Ideologically. (The documents for the convention can be found on the League's website.)
The convention adopted a Constitution, Declaration of Unity and Resistance, Political Report, and an Action Plan. A Central Committee of ten was elected, consisting of two members from British Columbia, one from Alberta, one from Manitoba, three from Ontario, two from the national constituency of Quebec, and one from the Atlantic region. The Committee also elected a Central Executive of two women and two men, including one member from Quebec. Ontario YCL organizer Johan Boyden was elected General Secretary, and BC YCL organizer Stephen Von Sychowski was elected Central Organizer.
Current Policies and Campaigns
At its 2007 Convention, the YCL laid-out a 12-point agenda in its "Declaration of Unity and Resistance" stating that its short-term goal was to help build youth resistance, and its long-term goal was to build socialism. The 12 immediate points of resistance are:- Peace!
- Jobs!
- Free, Accessible, Quality Education!
- Equality!
- A Democratic Solution to the National Question!
- Organize Young Workers!
- Internationalism and Solidarity!
- Freedom and Democracy!
- Stop Privatization! Protect and Expand Social Services!
- Defend Canada’s Sovereignty!
- Culture and Leisure!
- Environmental Sustainability!
In its political report, the YCL stated that "The most urgent challenge facing our League is to help mobilize and strengthen resistance on the broadest possible basis, and forge together a united combative fight back of youth and students, together with the working class and the people, against the current offensive of the ruling class and its governments, beginning with the Harper Tories." Since that time, the YCL has released statements that expand this critique of the Harper Tories.
The YCL is active in campaigns against military recruitment, the war in Afghanistan, global warming, and for reduced tuition fees, higher minimum wages, and justice for non-status and (im)migrant workers, solidarity with Palestine and Colombia. It also joins campaigns against sexism, homophobia and racism. Within these campaigns the YCL puts forwards its own demands like the elimination of tuition, cutting the military budget by half, and nationalizing energy.
The YCL organizes regular summer camps, schools, conferences and seminars on topical issues like the economic crisis and youth. It has or is working to build clubs in about fifteen cities and about four non-urban areas across Canada. It is planning its next convention for 2010.