Stanley Brehaut Ryerson - in Leadership

In Leadership

Following the outlawing of the CPC in 1940, General Secretary Tim Buck along with Sam Carr and Charles Sims fled Canada for the safety of New York where they would reside under the protection of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). The leadership of the now underground party was placed in the hands of an Operations Centre, which was headed by Stewart Smith, Leslie Morris, and Stanley Ryerson. This new leadership decided upon a slogan for the CPC’s anti-war protests: “Withdraw from the British Empire.” Signalling a more radical approach to their anti-Imperialist protesting, the Operations Centre authorised Stanley Ryerson to write and publish two pamphlets in Quebec. French-Canada, A Nation in Bondage and French-Canada and the War, described the French Canada as a subjugated nation held in colonial slavery to English Canadian rulers, who were acting as surrogates for the real rulers in Britain. This new approach to the issue of French Canada enabled Ryerson to develop close contacts among important nationalists who opposed the war. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in July, 1941 the CPC’s stance on the war changed quickly. Now that they supported the war, Tim Buck called Ryerson, Smith, and Morris before a CC meeting held on January 22 and 23, 1943. During this meeting, Buck assailed the position of Ryerson, which had become the position of the CPC during their anti-war period. According to Buck, “English-Canada as a nation does not oppress French-Canada, nor impose inequality upon it. The national inequality from which the workers and farmers of Quebec suffer, is a heritage of the past.”