Communist League (Canada)
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The Communist League in Canada was founded as the "Revolutionary Workers League/Ligue Ouvrière Révolutionnaire" (RWL) in 1977 as the result of a merger of the League for Socialist Action (LSA), the Revolutionary Marxist Group (RMG) and the Groupe Marxiste Revolutionaire.
Originally a Trotskyist party, the RWL was the Canadian section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI). The group followed the US Socialist Workers Party's (SWP) trajectory away from Trotskyism in favour of a view of Fidel Castro's Cuba as the vanguard of world revolution. The RWL purged members who did not support the new orientation, many of whom went on to form Socialist Challenge and Gauche Socialiste.
In the late 1980s, the RWL left the USFI to become part of the new Pathfinder tendency based around the SWP. It changed its name to the Communist League in 1990. The new group ceased publication of the English Socialist Voice in favour of selling The Militant, published in New York City by the SWP.
Michel Prairie is the group's general secretary and primary spokesperson. Previous secretaries of the group are John Riddell, who was a leading figure in the LSA and the RWL, and Steve Penner, formerly of the RMG and a grandson of Jacob Penner.
In early 2004, two former leading activists in the group, Roger Annis and former leader John Riddell, left the CL over a dispute regarding protests against the US invasion of Iraq, and started the Socialist Voice website, taking the name of the RWL's old newspaper.
The group now operates a Pathfinder Bookstore in Toronto.
As of the party congress held in 2000, the CL's Central Committee consisted of Carlos Catalán, Christian Cournoyer, Michel Dugré, Maria Isabel Le Blanc, Michel Prairie, and Joe Young. [link]
The Communist League should not be confused with the Young Communist League which is youth wing of the Communist Party of Canada and is marxist-leninist
Candidates for public office
The Communist League has run candidates in some federal, provincial and municipal elections in Canada, most notably in Ontario and Quebec. They are fielding three candidates in the 2006 federal election, Beverly Bernardo in Parkdale—High Park, Michel Prairie in Toronto Centre and John Steele in Eglinton—Lawrence.[link] As the Communist League has not registered as a political party with Elections Canada, their candidates are listed as "non-affiliated" on the ballot.
Steele was the Communist League's nominal Ontario leader in the 1995 provincial election, and was the CL's candidate for Mayor of Toronto in 2000. He won 1,412 votes out of approximately 550,000 votes cast in Toronto. See his biography page for further details.
Young is a longtime member of the radical left in Canada. He has campaigned for federal, provincial and municipal office in Ontario and British Columbia. See his biography page for more information.
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Young is a longtime member of the radical left in Canada. He has campaigned for federal, provincial and municipal office in Ontario and British Columbia. See his biography page for more information.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.