The League for Socialist Action (LSA) was the principal Trotskyist organization in Canada for much of the 20th century. Throughout its history the LSA went through many different names and iterations. In chronological order it was known as: the International Left Opposition (Trotskyist) of Canada, the Workers Party of Canada, the Socialist Policy Group, the Socialist Workers League, the Revolutionary Workers Party, The Club, the Socialist Education League, and the League for Socialist Action.

Origins

The Canadian Trotskyist movement originated in the late 1920s as the left faction within the Communist Party of Canada. Maurice Spector, editor of the Communist Party newspaper The Worker, had been a Canadian delegate to the 1928 Comintern Congress in Moscow when he and American James Cannon inadvertently came across the suppressed platform of Trotsky's Left Opposition. Spector was won over to Trotsky's position and returned to Canada determined to build support for Trotsky in the party. He and his supporters were expelled 1928 and, with American Trotskyists, formed the Communist League of America and then a Canadian section called the International Left Opposition (Trotskyist) of Canada in 1932. Jack MacDonald, the expelled National Secretary of the Communist Party, joined. The Canadian Trotskyist movement went through a number of splits and reorganization through the 1930s.

In 1934, most of the Montreal branch and about half a dozen members of the Toronto branch, led by William Krehm, left to form the Canadian section of the Organizing Committee for a Revolutionary Workers Party led by B. J. Field who had led a split from the Communist League of America. The Fieldite group, under Krehm's leadership in Canada, published Workers Voice and was, for a time, more active than the Trotskyists but faded away by the outbreak of World War II.

In 1934, the ILO, led by MacDonald and Spector, abandoned its attempts to reform the Communist Party of Canada and became the Workers Party of Canada, which published a monthly newspaper, The Vanguard. It became a fortnightly paper in 1935. The Workers Party also published a twice-monthly Ukrainian newspaper, Labor News, and a youth magazine called first October Youth and then Young Militant. Birney dropped out by 1942, according to Dowson because of his support for the war, and the group became inactive.

Revolutionary Workers Party

The group was relaunched in 1946 as the Revolutionary Workers Party (RWP), Canadian Section of the Fourth International, under the leadership of Ross Dowson. The foundations of the party had been laid two years earlier, in 1944, when Canadian supporters of the Fourth International met in Montreal for their first national convention. Dowson ran for mayor of Toronto as an open Trotskyist at the end of the war and won over 20% of the vote.

Members of the former RWP (whose National Committee did not dissolve and whose branches continued to hold meetings) had difficulty working within the CCF. Dowson's application for CCF membership was rejected while other ex-RWP members and their sympathisers found themselves facing persecution within the CCF.

Socialist Education League

In 1955, following the expulsion of 15 supporters from the CCF, the Toronto group reconstituted itself as the Socialist Education League (SEL), pledging itself to support the election of the CCF and with the goal of supporting the growth of the CCF's left wing. To this end, they resumed publication of a regular periodical, Workers Vanguard. Meanwhile, the Vancouver branch, which had developed some disagreements with its Toronto co-thinkers, became the Socialist Information Centre (SIC).

Outside Toronto near Orono, Ontario, the LSA had a camp property called Camp Poundmaker named after the famous Plains Cree leader. The camp song was a comic parody and it went like this: Camp Poundmaker's the place for me/Far away from the bourgeoise/Steady and true/I'll be to you/Loyal to the LSA-LSO/Raise on guard the red flag/Cheer it with all your might/Hurray for Camp Poundmaker/Hurray for Camp Poundmaker, maker, Camp Poundmaker!

The LSA marked the resumption of open Trotskyist activities in Canada after almost a decade of underground work. In 1964, a branch was established in Montreal under the name Ligue Socialiste Ouvrière with the YS setting up as well, using the name Ligue des Jeunes Socialistes.

Supporters of Ernest Mandel, many of whom were active in the student movement, coalesced at the 1973 convention of the LSA as the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, a minority tendency that ultimately left the LSA to join the Revolutionary Marxist Group which supported Mandel internationally. Amongst its leadership, Alain Beiner, Ruth Bullock, Al Cappe, Joan Newbigging, John Riddell, Ernie Tate and Art Young were signatories of the 1973 Declaration of the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency, supporting the SWP position in the USFI. In 1976, Bullock, Riddell, Tate and Young, as well as Dowson (no longer a member of the LSA at this point) were among the signatories of a document, "The Verdict", supporting the SWP leadership against allegations made by Gerry Healey.

Dowson and his supporters, meanwhile, found themselves reduced to a minority within the LSA due to criticism of Dowson's sympathy with Canadian economic nationalism. They left the LSA in 1974 to form the "Socialist League" which became known as the "Forward Group" after the name of its publication.

In 1977, supporters of the Revolutionary Marxist Group and a separate Quebec organization, the Groupe Marxiste Revolutionnaire, united with the League for Socialist Action and the Ligue Socialiste Ouvrière to form the Revolutionary Workers League/Ligue Ouvrière Révolutionnaire which became the new Canadian section of the USFI.

Also in 1977, the League for Socialist Action ran Therese Faubert, one of the first two known LGBT candidates in Canadian history to run in a provincial election, as its candidate in Brampton for the 1977 Ontario provincial election.

A feature-length documentary film, Let's Rent a Train!: Life in the Toronto Branch of the League for Socialist Action, 1961 – 1977 recalls Canadian socialist activism of the 1960s and 1970s and deals extensively with the antiwar and reproductive rights movements.

See also

  • League for Socialist Action (UK)

References

  • Canadian Socialist History Project
  • Canadian Trotskyism 1928–61
  • League for Socialist Action/Ligue Socialiste Ouvrière, 1961–1977
  • Ross Dowson's web site edited by Forward Group, copyrighted owner
  • "Let's Rent a Train!" Life in the Toronto Branch of the League for Socialist Action, 1961–1977