Young Communist League of Canada

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Young Communist League of Canada Ligue de la jeunesse communiste du Canada
Secretary General	Ivan Byard
Founded	July 22, 1922 (1922-07-22)
Headquarters	290 Danforth Avenue Toronto, Ontario M4K 1N6
Ideology	Communism Marxism–Leninism
International affiliation	WFDY (since 2008) YCI (1922–1943)
Other affiliation	Communist Party of Canada Canadian Peace Congress Canadian Network on Cuba
Magazine	Rebel Youth
Website	www.ycl-ljc.ca

The Young Communist League of Canada (YCL-LJC) is a Canadian Marxist–Leninist youth organization founded in 1922. The organization is ideologically aligned with, but organizationally independent from, the Communist Party of Canada. The organization's members played a leading role in the On-to-Ottawa Trek and made up a significant portion of the Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion, which fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.

History

1920s

The Young Communist League of Canada first organized on July 22, 1922, under the direction of the Communist Party of Canada. It was formally established as the youth wing of the Communist Party of Canada in 1923, at a convention in Toronto. The YCL later became affiliated with the Young Communist International.^[1]

Originally known as the Young Workers League (YWL) due to the

According to early organizer Dave Kashtan, the YCL "served as an educational organization for young workers and students, educating young people 'in the spirit of socialism'."[2] Some of the League's earliest organized efforts took place in major cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver, finding notable success among the youth of immigrant communities.^{[citation needed]} The interest of young people in the YCL reflected the times. The recent success of the October Revolution (which established the USSR) and the Western response to it had great impact on some Canadian workers. Although Canada's economy was in a boom, some youth could still remember the post-war unemployment and misery which abounded immediately after the First World War.

The YCL's stated purpose was to organize young workers and students toward achieving better working conditions and an enhanced quality of life; though its constitution declared it to be independent and without party affiliation, it publicly supported the policies of the Communist Party of Canada. According to Kashtan, who became a YCL organizer at age 17, "We believed that socialism offered the only remedy for unemployment and poverty."^[2]

By 1928, the League operated 40 schools in Canada with an attendance of 2,000 children.^[3] YCL organizers in Montreal around that time included Fred Rose and Sam Carr, who would later become leaders of Canadian Communism.^[4]

1930s

The onset of the Great Depression inflicted great suffering and hardship on Canadians. The YCL noted in its seventh national convention of August 1934, noted the conditions of "unemployment, hunger and misery".^[5]

Although the total membership was never large, the YCL's influence and activities in youth movements during the Great Depression were notable.^[6] YCL members were involved with unemployed movements, peace activism, trade union activism and campus organizations.

Under the slogan "Work and Wages", YCL members worked to organize the unemployed who populated relief camps across the country. "The leading preoccupation of the YCL when I became secretary," Maurice Rush says in his autobiography, "was to organize unemployed youth".^[7] Like many other observers, Rush (who was leader of the YCL in British Columbia after 1935) claims that the YCL was active in the Relief Camp Workers' Unions (RCWU), and played a role in mobilizing relief camp youth to participate in the On-to-Ottawa Trek. During the Trek, many working people opened their homes and cupboards to the protestors, sometimes sharing family relief rations.^[8] Communist women in Vancouver issued a call for a solidarity action, and five thousand working-class women came out to a special "Mother's Day" demonstration on behalf of the camp workers and to demand the closing of the camps.^[8]

Informed by Vancouver's mayor that the limited scope of the Municipal Council was ill-equipped to address their claims,^[9] the British Columbia branches of the YCL and the Communist Party of Canada together with the Camp Workers' Union decided to march on Ottawa, believing that only action on a national scale could motivate the Bennett Conservative government to hear their concerns. YCL member Arthur (Slim) Evans was elected leader for the cross-country journey.

Bennett was widely criticized for his handling of the situation.^[9] Later that year, the Bennett government fell in the election, providing impetus to the movements for public health care, education, unemployment insurance and other social safety-net reforms.^[10]

In the same period, a Pioneers movement of young children with Communist or sympathetic parents was organized with membership numbering around 6,000.^[8] Under the leadership of the YCL, the Pioneers published its own magazine with a circulation of roughly 4,000.^[8]

The YCL's mandate was not limited to the plight of unemployed youth. In 1935, an official Communist club was established at the University of Toronto. As British Columbia YCL leader Maurice Rush noted, "The members realized that the struggle for a decent life for the young generation of the Thirties required broad, united public action by all sections of young people. We worked tirelessly to build that unity, with considerable success.^[7]

Together with changing conditions domestically and internationally with the rise of fascism, this led to a new conception of the YCL and its role in the struggle.

Rise of fascism and the Canadian Youth Congress

As the 1930s progressed, Fascism was growing in Europe, Asia, and in North America itself. With the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and Fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, Canadian Communists joined those sounding a warning against the growing threat fascism presented.

Some right-wing students at the

Together with the Communist Party, the YCL began reaching out to youth organizations across the country. A joint youth council sprang up in Winnipeg, followed by others around the country. In May 1936, the Canadian Youth Congress was founded at a national conference in Ottawa and prepared delegates for the World Youth Congress held in Geneva later that summer.[12]

Among the Congress's aims was the intention to act as a lobby group on issues of peace, education and unemployment. To that end, the Ottawa conference produced the Declaration of Rights of Canadian Youth, resolutions on Canadian youth and world peace, and the proposed Canadian Youth Act.

At its peak, the CYC had a constituent membership of over 400,000 and its annual national conferences were attended by over 700 young people.[14] The second Canadian Youth Congress in Montreal in May 1937 saw a drive to broaden the scope of the movement and to increase participation among French-Canadian youth. British Columbia organized their own BC Youth Congress, which was initiated by the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in conjunction with the League.^[15] Annual conferences were held from 1936 to 1940 where CYC members continued to speak out against the rising tide of fascism until 1942.

Spanish Civil War

The first major battle against fascism occurred in Spain, when

Throughout the

But help came in all forms. For example, YCLers active in the Workers Sports Association helped organize support:

The majority of the members (of the Workers Sports Association) were young needle trades union members. ... The largest crowd ever at the games in Fletcher's Field took place at a soccer game between the Toronto and Montreal WSA clubs in support of Dr. Norman Bethune's Blood Unit in Spain. Many thousands of Montrealers rallied to give their support to the struggle to "Save Democracy in Spain."^[16]

Actions like this earned the WSA the attention of the police in cities like Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver, where WSA clubs were under police surveillance. "A boxing event was arbitrarily cancelled. In Toronto, hall owners were warned that their hall licences would be cancelled should the premises be rented for WSA functions. A police raid of the Vancouver WSA club led to the confiscation of its membership lists and the club's equipment."^[16] In BC, League members organized "Girls Brigades" to raise aid for Spain, a solidarity effort which won worldwide attention.

After the Spanish Civil War, the YCL continued its anti-fascist actions and published a newspaper, "

A cross-country protest was planned for May 3. The protest was quelled, however, by the Toronto Telegram's accusations that the National Federation of Labor Youth was a communist front determined to "plant a few of the seeds of Marxism."^[21]

Around the same time, the Federation also launched a campaign in support of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and worked with organizations like the Student Christian Movement to bring youth to the World Festival of Youth and Students in Prague (1947), Budapest (1949), Berlin (1951), Bucharest (1953), Warsaw (1955), and Moscow (1957).^{[citation needed]}

End of the Cold War

In 1958, a divide appeared at the Labor-Progressive Party congress following the

Cuban Revolution, Vietnam War and YCL

In 1968, the Communist Party of Canada officially restarted the Young Communist League.^{[citation needed]}

Unlike the NFLY, the new YCL was largely sidelined by more radical youth groups aligned with the New Left. This was especially true in the student movement, where it was unable to play an effective role in preventing the dissolution of the Canadian Student Union in the late 1960s.^{[citation needed]} With offices across the country, the YCL resumed publishing The Young Worker, which became New Horizons.^{[citation needed]}

1980s

The YCL benefited from the proposals of the USSR which were understood as calling for an end the arms race and for disarmament by the resurgent and broad anti-war movement in the early 1980s. The League changed the name of its publication to Rebel Youth, following the Cuban revolutionary youth group by that name.^{[citation needed]} The 80s also saw renewal of YCL leadership in many areas, leading to a more open and active approach by the League to youth struggles.^{[citation needed]}

The YCL also supported the developments in El Salvador and Nicaragua, sending a delegation to help with the 1989 Nicaraguan coffee harvest. The YCL also sent a member on a fact-finding mission to Palestine about the situation in the Gaza strip. Several members also toured the Soviet Union, and the YCL organized for the 1985 and 1989 youth festivals in Moscow and Pyongyang, respectively.^{[citation needed]}

But the late 1980s were also a time of growing political and ideological disagreement within the League over the new policies of the Soviet Union, with Glasnost and Perestroika. But they were also a time when the YCL began to fight for queer-rights and take a more militant pro-feminist standpoint.^{[citation needed]}

Ten-year liquidation

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1990 saw a major debate develop in the YCL around the changes in the international socialist movement that were taking place at that time. This had also lead to a deep crisis in the CPC that followed the counter-revolution or

Merle Terlesky's leadership saw the closing of the central YCL office after he returned from a 3-month trip to the USSR in 1991. Seeing little interest across the country in carrying on any form of youth organization, he did little to rebuild after the divisive convention. When Terlesky spoke at a YCL-USA convention and informed them that the YCL Canada has given up on Marxist and Leninist ideals, it was not received well. For a short time Terlesky even attended meetings of the I.S. ( International Socialists) in Toronto after the YCL ended, and then quit the Toronto left scene entirely and returned to his home province of Alberta. Shortly after, Terlesky denounced his involvement in Communist politics, as well as his queer-positive and pro-feminist views and became involved in the right-wing populist Reform Party of Canada, anti-abortion groups.^[citation needed]

Terlesky's leadership appeared to have marked an end to the Canada's organized communist youth. While some members joined the Cecil-Ross organization, many former YCLers simply left communist politics altogether. A smaller core group of former YCLers chose to stay with the CPC, putting most of their efforts into rebuilding the party. In a few short years, the YCL had gone from a dynamic and active youth organisation to not existing. For the next eleven years, from 1992 to 2003, there would be no active YCL in Canada.^{[citation needed]}

Reorganization

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While the break-up and dissolution of the Young Communist League of Canada in the early 1990s was widely understood as a symbolic of a permanent defeat of Leninist ideas in the youth and student movement, both the currency of revolutionary politics among Canadian youth and the YCL's inactivity proved to be temporary.^{[citation needed]}

The 1990s saw a major push of student activism as labour and social movements were invigorated to fight the massive cut backs initiated by the governing Liberal Party of Canada. In Quebec, the 1995 referendum exposed the crisis of confederation, which the communists argued was rooted in the capitalist inequality of nations and included the oppression of aboriginal nations. Indigenous youth were at the fore-front of the rise in aboriginal militancy from the east to the west with the so-called Oka Crisis on Mohawk land, and the Guftason Lake Standoff in uncieded Secwepemc territory.^{[citation needed]} On the other hand, the problems of ideological clarity which had not been resolved in the 1980s continued. Opportunist ideas such as anarchism had filled the gap left by the Leninist left with a strong hostility to political parties, which intersected with opportunist social democratic ideas rejecting revolutionary change.^{[citation needed]} In fall of 2003 a conference in Vancouver was held which formed a Young Communist League Preparatory Committee. In 2004–2005, the YCL was among a leading group which came together to organized a delegation to the 16th World Youth Festival in Caracas. Soon after the YCL requested to be readmitted to the World Federation of Democratic Youth, and began re-organizing in Quebec.^{[citation needed]}

Rebuilding convention

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In March 2007 the Young Communist League of Canada held a small three-day convention in Toronto, the 24th Central Convention of the YCL and the first since the 1991 dissolution.^{[citation needed]} The convention adopted the framework for the re-establishment of the YCL especially a Constitution continuing the principles of democratic centralism. A Declaration of Unity and Resistance recognized among other things the dynamic and militant contribution of youth in the movement; the urgency of united action against war, environmental and ecological crisis; the multi-national character of Canada; the necessity for socialism; and the relationship of the YCL with the CPC.^{[citation needed]}

Current policies and campaigns

At its 2007 Convention, the YCL laid-out a 12-point agenda in its "Declaration of Unity and Resistance"^[23] stating that its short-term goal was to help build youth resistance, and its long-term goal was to build socialism. The 12 immediate points of resistance are:

1. Peace
2. Jobs
3. Free, Accessible, Quality Education
4. Equality
5. A Democratic Solution to the National Question
6. Organize Young Workers
7. Internationalism and Solidarity
8. Freedom and Democracy
9. Stop Privatization! Protect and Expand Social Services
10. Defend and expand Canada's sovereignty including indigenous sovereignty and self-determination for Quebec
11. Culture and Leisure
12. Environmental Sustainability

The YCL organizes regular summer camps, schools, conferences and seminars on topical issues like the economic crisis and youth.

The YCL joined the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) on 3 February 2008.^[24]

Recent central conventions

The Young Communist League held its 25th Central Convention in September 2010 at the University of Toronto.^{[citation needed]} In May 2014 the YCL held its 26th Central Convention, again at the University of Toronto. The purpose of the convention was to elaborate the YCL-LJC's policy on current questions, debate updates to the constitution, set an organizational plan of work, elect a renewed central leadership, and develop a united, militant and activist strategy for the youth fightback. The slogan of the Convention adopted was "with militancy and unity we will build the youth and student fightback".^{[citation needed]} In order to reverse the attacks and shift to a counter-offensive it is necessary that these struggles develop further and move beyond spontaneous protest towards an even broader united, militant and organized extra-parliamentary fightback with the labour movement at its core.^{[citation needed]}

Concerning Canada, the delegates outlined the role played by the YCL-LJC in the fightback against austerity and neo-liberal policies imposed by federal and provincial governments. Outlining what they characterized the end of the "honeymoon" between certain labour and social movements and the Trudeau government, the young communists insisted on what they see as the importance to mobilize for a fundamental change in favour of policies that guarantee the interests of the youth and the people instead of the interests of the monopolies. The delegates passed a series of votes criticizing what they described as the corporate policies of the Trudeau government and shared their concerns about the danger of the rise of the ultra-right and of fascism. They supported what they labeled "a democratic and voluntary solution to the national inequality moving from the actual status quo based on the genocide of indigenous nations and the oppression of Québec and Acadian nations.".^[25]

In August 2020, following the cancellation of the 28th Central Convention due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an "Extraordinary Convention" was held. The convention sought to address the worsening health crisis, as well as immediate issues of organizing both within the League and surrounding the worsening environmental crisis, housing crisis, and issues surrounding police brutality and racism. In addition to drafting a new political resolution and plan of work, a new Central Committee and Central Executive Committee was elected. Due to the passing of Pierre Fontaine, longtime leader of the Parti communiste du Québec, and his succession by then-YCL-LJC General Secretary Adrien Welsh, a new General Secretary was due to be elected; this position was filled by Toronto club organizer Ivan Byard.^[26]

References

External links

• Young Communist League of Canada
• La ligue de la jeunesse communiste du Québec