The Labor-Progressive Party (french: Parti ouvrier-progressiste) was the legal front of the

Communist Party of Canada The Communist Party of Canada (french: Parti communiste du Canada) is a federal political party in Canada, founded in 1921 under conditions of illegality. Although it does not currently have any parliamentary representation, the party's can ...

from 1943 to 1959.

Origins and initial success

In the 1940 federal election, the Communist Party led a

popular front A popular front is "any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties", including liberal and social democratic ones, "united for the defense of democratic forms" against "a presumed Fascist assault". More generally, it is "a coalition ...

in several constituencies in

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...

and

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest T ...

under the name

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a ...

, 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 wartime '' Defence 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 the 1945 election when she ran for re-election as an LPP candidate. Only one LPP

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

(MP) was elected to the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

under that banner, Fred Rose, who was elected in a 1943 by-election in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...

, sitting with Nielsen. Rose was re-elected in 1945. In 1947, he was charged and convicted for spying for the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, and was expelled from the House of Commons. The leader of the party was

Tim Buck Timothy Buck (January 6, 1891 – March 11, 1973) was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada (known as the Labor-Progressive Party from 1943 to 1959) from 1929 until 1962. Together with Ernst Thälmann of Germany, Maurice Tho ...

. Other prominent members were

Margaret Fairley Margaret Adele Fairley born Margaret Adele Keeling (1885–1968) was a British-born Canadian writer, educator, and political activist. From 1936 until her death, she was a member of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). She was deported from the USA ...

, Stewart Smith, Stanley Ryerson and Sam Carr.

Provincial campaigns

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, two LPP members,

A. A. MacLeod Alexander Albert "A. A." MacLeod (April 2, 1902 – March 13, 1970) was a political organizer and a prominent member of the Communist Party of Canada and, later, of its legal group, the Labor-Progressive Party. He was an elected Member of Provin ...

and J. B. Salsberg, sat in the

Legislative Assembly of Ontario The Legislative Assembly of Ontario (OLA, french: Assemblée législative de l'Ontario) is the legislative chamber of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. Its elected members are known as Member of Provincial ...

from 1943 to 1951 and 1955 respectively. The LPP also jointly nominated several Liberal-Labour candidates with the

Ontario Liberal Party The Ontario Liberal Party (OLP; french: Parti libéral de l'Ontario, PLO) is a political party in the province of Ontario, Canada. The party has been led by interim leader John Fraser since August 2022. The party espouses the principles of li ...

Alexander Parent Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...

, who was also president of UAW Local 195, was elected as the Liberal-Labour MPP for Essex 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. He did not run for re-election in 1948. The Manitoba party had amongst its leading members

Jacob Penner Jacob Penner (August 12, 1880 – August 28, 1965) was a popular international socialist politician in Canada. A founder of the Social Democratic Party of Canada and the Communist Party of Canada, Penner was elected to the Winnipeg city counci ...

who was a popular

aldermen An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members the ...

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749 ...

, Manitoba, as well as Bill Kardash who was a

Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...

Member of the Legislative Assembly A member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is a representative elected by the voters of a constituency to a legislative assembly. Most often, the term refers to a subnational assembly such as that of a state, province, or territory of a country. S ...

. The party also ran candidates in

Quebec general elections This article provides a summary of results for the general elections to the Canadian province of Quebec's unicameral legislative body, the National Assembly of Quebec (and its predecessor, the Legislative Assembly of Quebec). The number of se ...

from 1944 to 1956 as the ''

Parti ouvrier-progressiste The ( en, Labor-Progressive Party) was the name under which the Parti Communiste du Québec ran candidates from 1944 to 1956, after the banning of the Communist Party of Canada in 1941. Its English counterpart was the Labor-Progressive Party, whose ...

''.

Municipal strength

The LPP had strong pockets of support in working-class neighbourhoods of Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg as well as in the

Crowsnest Pass Crowsnest Pass (sometimes referred to as Crow's Nest Pass, french: link=no, col du Nid-de-Corbeau) is a low mountain pass across the Continental Divide of the Canadian Rockies on the Alberta– British Columbia border. Geography The pass is ...

mining region of

and British Columbia

elected a number of its members to local city councils and school boards. In Winnipeg,

was a long-time member of the city council while Joe Zuken sat on the school board. In Toronto, Charles Simms and Norman Freed served as aldermen while Smith was elected to the city's powerful Board of Control. From

1944 Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 2 – WWII: ** Free French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny is appointed to command French Army B, part of the Sixth United States Army Group in ...

to 1947, Helen Anderson Coulson sat on Hamilton's City Council as an Alderman (from 1944–1946) and, after the 1946 municipal election, as a member of the city's highest decision making body, the Board of Control. She played a significant role in the

Stelco Stelco Holdings Inc. (known as U.S. Steel Canada from 2007 to 2016) is a Canadian steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario. Stelco was founded in 1910 from the amalgamation of several smaller firms. It continued on for almost 100 years, until it ...

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 in

1946 Events January * January 6 - The first general election ever in Vietnam is held. * January 7 – The Allies recognize the Austrian republic with its 1937 borders, and divide the country into four occupation zones. * January 10 ** The ...

. She would unsuccessfully seek election numerous times over the next decade, most prominently opposing Mayor Lloyd Jackson in 1950. 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, including ten years as chair.

World War II

Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the Canadian Communist Party reversed its earlier position urging Canadian neutrality in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and instead urged full support for the Soviet, not Canadian, war effort. The party formed the "

Plebiscite Committees" urging support for

conscription Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to Ancient history, antiquity and it continues in some countries to th ...

in the 1942 referendum. After the vote the committees were renamed the Dominion 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.

Cold War

The LPP faced repression during the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...

anti-Communist Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...

sentiment increased in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

, particularly after the revelations of Igor 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.

1956–1957 crisis

An almost fatal blow for the party was the crisis that enveloped it following

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

's Secret Speech to the

Twentieth Party Congress The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held during the period 14–25 February 1956. It is known especially for First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech", which denounced the personality cult and dictatorship ...

of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union " Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspape ...

and the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, the first event shattered the faith many LPP members had in the Soviet Union and

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...

while the second caused many to doubt that the USSR had truly changed. Aggravated as well by revelations of widespread

antisemitism in the Soviet Union The 1917 Russian Revolution overthrew a centuries-old regime of official antisemitism in the Russian Empire, dismantling its Pale of Settlement. However, the previous legacy of antisemitism was continued by the Soviet state, especially under Jo ...

(a serious blow to Jewish members of the LPP such as Salsberg and Robert 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. The

United Jewish Peoples' Order The United Jewish People's Order is a secular socialist Jewish cultural, political and educational fraternal organization in Canada. The UJPO traces its history to the founding of the Jewish Labour League Mutual Benefit Society in 1926. Histor ...

, 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 systemic

antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

and repression of

Jewish culture Jewish culture is the culture of the Jewish people, from its formation in ancient times until the current age. Judaism itself is not a faith-based religion, but an orthoprax and ethnoreligion, pertaining to deed, practice, and identity. Jewis ...

.Gerald Tulchinsky
Family Quarrel: Joe Salsberg, the 'Jewish' Question, and Canadian Communism
Labour/Le Travail, 56 (Fall 2005)

Decline

The LPP last ran a federal candidate in a December 1958 by-election and ran nine candidates in the 1959 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 the

Young Communist League The Young Communist League (YCL) is the name used by the youth wing of various Communist parties around the world. The name YCL of XXX (name of country) originates from the precedent established by the Communist Youth International. Examples of Y ...

. 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.

References

{{Ontario provincial political parties Defunct political parties in Canada Communist Party of Canada mass organizations Federal political parties in Canada Labour parties in Canada Political parties established in 1943 Political parties disestablished in 1959 Defunct provincial political parties in Ontario Provincial political parties in Manitoba 1943 establishments in Manitoba 1959 disestablishments in Canada