Canadian Labour Party - Relationship With Communists

Relationship With Communists

In its earliest years, the Communist Party of Canada supported a united front against the capitalist class. Its provincial organizations joined the CLP in various stages between 1922 and 1924, and the leaders of the Communist Party believed that they would eventually be able to shift CLP policy to reflect their own policies. By the late 1920s, Communist groups had come to dominate the CLP in some regions of the country. (It may be noted that the Communist Party seems to have accepted the CLP's ban on electoral competition between affiliated groups, even to the point of endorsing some rightist labour candidates in whom they had little confidence.)

The Communist presence did not always provoke internal dissension (several Communist delegates were greeted with cheers at CLP conventions), but it did prevent some moderate social democrats from joining. In 1927, social democrats in the Ontario CLP withdrew from the organization to create their own Independent Labour Party. In the same year, J.S. Woodsworth accused the CLP of being controlled by Communist interests, and called for a new national alliance of Independent Labour Parties to take its place.

The CLP's alliance with the Communist Party ended in 1928-29, following a shift in Comintern policy away from the "united front" strategy. The provincial Communist parties either left the CLP during this period, or were expelled.