Young Communist League of Canada

During the 1930s, YCL members participated in unemployed-worker, student and anti-fascist organizing, including activities associated with the On-to-Ottawa Trek and the Canadian Youth Congress. YCL activists also supported the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War.

History

Formation and 1920s

The Young Communist League was organized on July 22, 1922, under the auspices of the Communist Party of Canada and later became an affiliated section of the Young Communist International.

The organization recruited among young workers and students. Communist organizer Dave Kashtan later described the YCL as an educational organization intended to introduce young workers and students to socialist ideas. Its activities included political education as well as involvement in labour, student and youth organizations.

Great Depression

During the Great Depression, the YCL became involved in organizing unemployed young people and participated in labour, student and relief-camp movements.

YCL members were active among unemployed workers in government relief camps. Communist activists participated in the Relief Camp Workers' Union and in the movement that culminated in the On-to-Ottawa Trek of 1935. The trek began in Vancouver and travelled east before being stopped by federal authorities in Regina.

YCL members also participated in workers' cultural and recreational organizations and in student organizing during the decade.

Canadian Youth Congress and anti-fascism

During the mid-1930s, the YCL participated in efforts to organize broader coalitions of young people around unemployment, education, peace and opposition to fascism. These efforts included the Canadian Youth Congress, founded at a national conference in Ottawa in May 1936.

YCL members were among the organizers and participants in the Congress. The Congress brought together representatives of organizations with differing political, labour and religious affiliations and campaigned on issues including youth unemployment, education and peace.

As international tensions increased during the latter half of the decade, anti-fascism and support for the Spanish Republic became prominent issues among communist youth activists.

Spanish Civil War

During the Spanish Civil War, YCL members participated in campaigns supporting the Spanish Republic. YCL members active in the Workers Sports Association organized fundraising and solidarity activities. In Montreal, the association organized a soccer match in support of Norman Bethune's medical work in Spain. Workers Sports Association organizations were also subject to police surveillance, and their activities were restricted on some occasions.

The Communist Party and associated organizations were banned by the federal government in 1940 under the wartime Defence of Canada Regulations.

Postwar period and the National Federation of Labor Youth

By the postwar period, communist youth activity was organized through the National Federation of Labor Youth (NFLY). The organization became involved in youth, labour and political campaigns during the early Cold War.

One of the best-known campaigns involving the NFLY occurred in 1947, after the retail price of a chocolate bar increased from five to eight cents. Young people organized protests and boycotts in communities across Canada.

NFLY activists participated in the campaign, although the protests were not exclusively organized by the federation. The involvement of communist youth attracted hostile press coverage. The Toronto Telegram portrayed the NFLY as a communist organization attempting to exploit the protests, and the controversy contributed to the decline of the national boycott.

1956–1960 crisis and reorganization

The crisis that affected the international communist movement following Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech in February 1956 and the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 produced a major division within the Labor-Progressive Party (LPP). The dispute concerned the party's relationship with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, its internal organization and the extent to which Canadian communists should reassess policies associated with Joseph Stalin.

The controversy had particular significance among Jewish members of the party. J. B. Salsberg, following a visit to the Soviet Union in 1956, criticized both antisemitism in the Soviet Union and the Canadian party leadership's relationship with the Soviet Communist Party. The dispute culminated at the LPP's sixth national convention in April 1957, where Tim Buck and his supporters retained control. Salsberg, Stewart Smith, Harry Binder and Sam Lipshitz publicly resigned the following month.

The crisis produced substantial membership losses and also affected the communist youth movement. In 1957, the National Federation of Labor Youth was reorganized as the Socialist Youth League of Canada (SYLC).

The Labor-Progressive Party continued under that name until 1959, when it returned to the name Communist Party of Canada.

1960s and Vietnam War

The Young Communist League name was subsequently restored. Library and Archives Canada records that the organization was temporarily disbanded in 1964 and replaced by a National Youth Commission the following year. The Young Communist League was reinstated in 1969.

The re-established YCL operated during a period of significant change in Canadian youth politics. Historian Ian Milligan describes the period from the mid-1960s into the early 1970s as one in which university-based activists increasingly embraced the New Left, while radicalism also spread among young workers. The Canadian Union of Students and other student organizations became centres of New Left activism during the latter part of the decade.

Opposition to the Vietnam War was among the issues taken up by Canadian communists and the YCL. In late 1965 or early 1966, YCL secretary Rae Murphy, who was also editor of the League's magazine Scan, spent 15 days in North Vietnam. After returning to Canada, Murphy spoke publicly about the visit, during which he had met North Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh. Murphy subsequently published accounts of his observations of the war.

According to the League's publication history, Scan was converted to a broadsheet around 1968 and resumed the title The Young Worker. The publication subsequently returned to a magazine format and was renamed New Horizons in the late 1970s.

1980s

During the 1980s, the YCL was active in peace and international-solidarity campaigns. The organization's current program identifies nuclear disarmament, opposition to apartheid and solidarity with Nicaragua and Grenada among its activities during the decade.

According to the League's publication history, its principal publication had previously appeared as New Horizons, later shortened to Horizons. Around 1983 it adopted the title Rebel Youth, a name influenced by the Cuban communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde.

Political changes in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, including glasnost and perestroika, contributed to debate within the Canadian communist movement during the latter part of the decade. The YCL's publication history records increasing internal debate within both the League and the pages of Rebel Youth during the late 1980s. These disagreements preceded the wider organizational crisis that affected the Communist Party of Canada as communist governments in Eastern Europe collapsed and the Soviet Union approached dissolution.

Dissolution in the early 1990s

The political changes in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union coincided with a major dispute within the Communist Party of Canada over its ideology and future direction. Library and Archives Canada records that a group associated with party leader George Hewison supported a new program that abandoned Marxism–Leninism, while an opposing group led by Miguel Figueroa, Elizabeth Rowley and former leader William Kashtan resisted the change.

The dispute eventually became both political and legal. Members of the opposition were expelled and subsequently brought legal proceedings against the party leadership. A negotiated settlement in 1992 resulted in the Hewison group relinquishing the Communist Party name while retaining the Cecil-Ross Society and approximately half of the party's assets, including the rights to its newspaper, the Canadian Tribune.

The crisis also affected the YCL. The League's current program dates its dissolution to 1991, while Rebel Youth also ceased publication in the early 1990s amid the internal disputes and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Young Communist League subsequently remained inactive as a national organization until efforts to re-establish it began in the following decade.

Re-establishment

Following the dissolution of the YCL in the early 1990s, several attempts were made to re-establish a national communist youth organization. According to the League's account of its history, attempts in the late 1990s and around 2000 were unsuccessful, while a more sustained reorganization began in 2004.

The process culminated in the League's 24th Central Convention in Toronto in 2007, which the organization regards as its refounding convention. The convention adopted a constitution, political program and organizational structure based on democratic centralism.

The re-established organization subsequently rebuilt local clubs and relaunched its bilingual publication, Rebel Youth–Jeunesse militante. It also became active in the World Federation of Democratic Youth and international youth-festival movement.