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During the early 1920s the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) established a significant presence in industrial Cape Breton, based on support from the militant minority of the district's unusually combative coal mining union, UMWA District 26, and its charismatic Secretary-Treasurer James Bryson McLachlan. The latter's early recruitment was centrally important in forging what would become enduring political links with rank-and-file militants; it was largely thanks to McLachlan that, through all the ebb and flow of social context and human agency, the party survived the vicissitudes of deteriorating structural conditions and its own tactical blunders (most notably during the ‘third period’), to emerge in the mid-130s with genuinely optimistic prospects. The Scot did not always lead his forces well: like many revolutionary contemporaries his bolshevik temperament was ill-suited to defensive struggle. He nevertheless perceived, and to a limited extent acted upon, the need to construct a defensive communist counter-culture within the struggle for workers' power in the community and the workplace. The embodiment of bolshevik intransigence, McLachlan offered a fixed rallying-point for ‘class fighters,’ especially those who shared his internationalist perspective. Having drawn a new layer of younger militants towards him in 1934-35—and having seen off the CCF in the process—McLachlan could claim to have placed the CPC in its strongest position for a decade.
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The resignation of J.B. McClachlan from the Communist Party of Canada in 1936 is one of the more controversial episodes in the biography of a well-known Canadian labour radical. He was one of the few party leaders to enjoy wide recognition and popular support. His resignation was a difficult personal decision as well as a significant episode in the history of the party. In previous accounts his resignation has been presented ultimately as a repudiation of labour radicalism generally and the Communist Party in particular, as a protest against the adoption of the united front in 1935, or as a form of local and personal political exceptionalism. McLachlan himself made no formal public announcement of his resignation and, except for an impromptu speech at a public meeting in September 1936, he remained largely silent. In response to a letter from party general secretary Tim Buck he prepared a personal explanation of his withdrawal from the party in June 1936. This document, which is reproduced at the end of this article, remains the most important single piece of evidence concerning his resignation. An analysis of the circumstances leading to McLachlan's resignation shows that he did not regard his resignation as a repudiation of basic principles. He had supported the move towards the united front both internationally and domestically but disagreed with the implementation of the policy by the party leadership, especially sa demonstrated in the case of the Amalgamated Mine Workers of Nova Scotia. McLachlan's view of the united front, which he considered to be consistent with the position of the Communist International, stressed the principles of internal democracy and local autonomy in the construction of the united front. In McLachlan's view there were already enough indications to show that leaders such as John L. Lewis had not been fundamentally transformed and that in the long run the decision to endorse an alliance of convenience with the established labour bureaucracy was an ambiguous legacy for the class struggle. In 1936 McLachlan was overtaken by events, but given his own history he was in a position to perceive the difficulties ahead more clearly than most of his contemporaries.
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- Journal Article (2)