by Stefan Epp
Winnipeg, Manitoba
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During the 1930s, Winnipeg municipal political campaigns were about more than streets and sewers. Political parties espousing radically different conceptions of society competed for the votes of Winnipeg residents. This article examines the early years of the aldermanic careers of two Communist Party of Canada (CPC) aldermen in Winnipeg. Jacob Penner and Martin Forkin were elected in the early 1930s and served on Winnipeg’s City Council for several decades, leaving a significant political legacy in the city. Their election came at a significant moment for the CPC, a time when economic depression led many Canadians to consider radical political alternatives. Penner and Forkin’s first years in office illuminate interesting elements of Manitoban and communist history. In Winnipeg, and particularly the North End, a working-class neighbourhood with a large immigrant population, a significant number of people were drawn to the radical politics of Penner, Forkin, and other communists. Secondly, Winnipeg, which was also a hotbed of labour politics, proves an intriguing setting to examine conflict and cooperation between different parties on the political left. Finally, the election of Penner and Forkin and the politics they espoused while on City Council, is interesting because of what it says about the Communist Party during the Third Period, a controversial era in communist history.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 sparked considerable interest within the Canadian left, although it was not until 1921, when a secret meeting was held in Guelph, Ontario, that the Communist Party of Canada was born. The founding members of the CPC came from a range of traditions and parties including the Socialist Party of Canada (such as Jacob Penner) and the Socialist Labour Party and from radical unions such as the International Workers of the World or the One Big Union. A legal version of the party, the Workers’ Party of Canada, was launched a year later and existed until 1924, when the CPC was legalized.
Like communist parties around the world, the CPC belonged to, and took direction from, the Comintern, a body made up of the world’s communist parties, but dominated by the Soviet Union. [1] In 1928, the Comintern adopted a new position, known commonly as the Third Period. The CPC followed the policy closely, adopting it officially in 1929. It would last until 1935. This was a time when communists believed that it was necessary to “bolshevize” themselves and prepare for an imminent proletarian revolution. [2] Many Party members who did not accept the new turn, or were supporters of Leon Trotsky, were purged from the CPC. One of the significant results was that, whereas the CPC had once forged alliances with likeminded political parties and labour unions, it was now called to sever ties with non-communists. Often, this resulted in attacks against other parties on the political Left, who were deemed by the communists to be “social fascists” that duped the working class.
Several historians have criticized Communist party during this period, arguing that it lost its connection to the masses and became bound up with internal disputes. Ian Angus, for example, proposes that the Party’s disdain for all possible allies and its “go-it-alone” policy led to massive defeats. He goes on to describe the Party as being “suicidally ultra-leftist” and disconnected from the working class. [3] Bryan Palmer also critiques Third Period communism in Canada, arguing that while there are positives to be found in the communist work among the unemployed, “these were years that set the stage for the acceptance of the irrational, for blind faith in the ‘line,’ however far removed from Canadian reality it might have been.” [4] Angus, Palmer, and others have interpreted the Third Period as a time when the Communist Party lost its connection to the Canadian working class.
In his article, “Canadian Communists, Revolutionary Unionism and the ‘Third Period’: The Workers’ Unity League, 1929-1935,” John Manley rejects the idea that the Communist Party became isolated from the working class during the Third Period or put dogmatic purity ahead of the needs of Canadian workers. Although he has since become more critical of Third Period communism, Manley proposes that despite the “indigestibly provocative” style of the Third Period, the Workers’ Unity League was “unexpectedly responsive to its context and the moods and needs of its constituency.” [5] Communist unionists, Manley argues, placed flexibility above doctrinal purity and studied the local working class as much as any Comintern directive. [6]
I will provide a similar interpretation to that put forward by Manley. To paraphrase Manley, CPC aldermen in Winnipeg made “good aldermen” rather than “good Bolsheviks.” [7] Their communism was neither obscure nor isolationist. While there were unsavoury aspects to CPC activities during this period, the primary concern of the Communist Party’s elected representatives was meeting the immediate needs of the working class and the unemployed. As a result, despite the Communist Party’s efforts to distinguish itself from the Independent Labour Party and its use of revolutionary rhetoric, the communists pursued similar policies at the municipal level to their supposed enemies on the political Left.
The General Strike of 1919 was played out in municipal politics for many years after the strike was over, in an ongoing battle between “Citizens” and “Socialists.” [8] The Civic Progress Association (CPA) and, later, the Civic Election Committee (CEC) [9] were composed of Liberals and Conservatives united to fight municipal elections. [10] They were often referred to as the Citizens, in reference to the Citizens Committee of One Thousand that had been formed by the local business community to fight the General Strike. Citizens believed that municipal governments should run an efficient administration that kept taxes and costs low.
The preeminent Citizen during the period discussed in this paper was perhaps the leading opponent to communists in Winnipeg. Mayor Ralph Webb, described by the communists as a “would-be Hitler,” was popular among both the business elite and the working class. [11] He was also vehemently anti-communist. Webb once wrote to Prime Minister R. B. Bennett asking him to “deal with these agitators in the way they should be dealt with, and that is – to speak roughly – send them back to Russia, the country of their dreams.” [12] Communists accused Mayor Webb of using his position to encourage police intimidation of strikers or to ban communists from holding meetings. As mayor, Webb limited debate on communist motions in City Council meetings or declared them to be out of order. For communists, Webb became the ultimate enemy in the city, a home-grown “fascist,” who represented the suppression and intimidation that the Party faced.
To the left of the CPA/CEC stood the Independent Labour Party (ILP), the largest labour party in the city. John Queen, a leading figure in the party and future mayor of Winnipeg, revealed some of the ILP’s political philosophy when he explained that he was “interested in the organization of all the forces of society for better living for the people: not by individual, but by organized effort.” [13] ILP manifestoes regularly included statements proposing that “the social ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange is essential to the permanent solution of problems arising out of social and economic ills.” [14] A cooperative commonwealth, ILP members proposed, would eliminate the profit motive, private ownership and individual struggle and replace them with a system of cooperation in which goods would be produced for the needs of the people rather than for profit. [15] This political philosophy was influenced by British socialist traditions, as the majority of the ILP leadership was British. [16]
Communists composed the far left of Winnipeg’s municipal politics. Roughly three-fifths of Winnipeg communists lived in an impoverished, working-class neighbourhood called the North End. [17] Although the Party regularly launched membership campaigns in the central and southern regions of the city these had little success. [18] In comparison to the predominantly British ILP, over half of CPC members were Ukrainian while less than ten percent were English, Canadian, French, or Irish. The unemployed made up a majority of communist members, and nearly all members were young and male. [19]
In 1926, William Kolisnyk became the first communist elected to Winnipeg’s City Council. He continued to serve as an alderman for Ward Three until 1930. During his two terms on City Council, Kolisnyk demanded improved public transportation, an increase to relief rates, and supported the efforts of organized labour. Kolisnyk, however, was prone to controversy. In addition to several perceived missteps, there were also ethnic tensions within the Party between Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian members. As a result, there was internal Party turmoil over Kolisnyk’s suitability as a public representative and he fell out of favour with many communists. [20]
Winnipeg was divided into three wards for the purposes of municipal elections. The predominantly working class North End was in Ward Three, and became home to ongoing struggles between communists and the ILP. Stories abound of rowdy election meetings. Joseph Zuken recalled that
in the old Talmud Torah you had maybe John Queen or John Blumberg speaking at an ILP meeting. The Communists would be holding their meeting at the Hebrew Sick Benefit Hall, which is perhaps two or three minutes away. You would have a courier who would run and tell you what the competitor was saying – and then there would be an instant reply. [21]
Gloria Queen-Hughes, an ILP school board trustee, recollected how the communists would, allegedly, send numerous cadres to ILP meetings. They would leave one at a time, making a large noise on the way out to disrupt the proceedings. [22] Hecklers also frequented their opponents’ meetings. For example, when Jacob Penner condemned Section 98 during a 1932 municipal debate, a woman began heckling him from the floor, concluding with the question: “What did you do to Trotsky?” [23] Conversely, the RCMP reported that several communists planned to attend a meeting held by Alderman Thomas Flye of the ILP in 1931 to ask “questions which could not be answered” in an attempt to spoil the meeting. [24] The ILP and the communists were frequent opponents, not only in the Council chambers, but also in the streets of the North End, where election campaigns were won and lost.
Winnipeg Communists took municipal election campaigns seriously. The rigorous preparations made for municipal election campaigns in Winnipeg were held up by the CPC as an example for other cities to follow. [25] In 1932, The Worker reported that the Winnipeg branch had distributed 30,000 bulletins in English and an additional 7,000 in Ukrainian for the municipal election. [26] A central election committee was established and ward committees were formed to support the candidates in each ward. In Ward Three the halls of numerous sympathetic organizations were used as campaign offices, while in Wards One and Two, the houses and stores of supporters were “appropriately decorated” with communist paraphernalia. [27]
Public meetings played a significant role in the communist election campaigns. In 1932 it was reported that the Party had held over forty meetings over the course of the two week campaign. [28] Candidates used these events to expound communist doctrine and the Party platform. By 1933, the communists had learned that radio speeches were of “great value” and decided to utilize them in the future. [29] Like any other party, canvassing was also important for a communist election campaign. The Central Agitprop Department of the Party declared that, “the importance of house to house canvassing, which must commence IMMEDIATELY AND NOT AFTER NOMINATION DAY, cannot be stressed too much.” It was the goal of the Party to visit every house in Ward Three. [30]
The communist municipal platform combined the fight for the immediate needs of workers with the broader aims of the Party. In 1931, the CPC produced a national municipal election platform, but stated that each municipality should adopt the platform to suit local conditions as “the very essence of municipal elections ... (is the) direct relationship to (the) immediate living problems of the masses.” [31] A few years later, the Winnipeg Communist Election Conference adopted a platform that they argued gave “expression to the urgent, pressing needs of the working people of Winnipeg.” [32] Communists believed that they enjoyed the most electoral success when “the speeches made during the campaign... dealt with the (local problems) and raised questions of mutual interest to the workers’.” [33]
What were the local problems that the Communist Party claimed to be addressing? In 1931, for example, unemployment relief and the battle for a non-contributory unemployment insurance bill were the main points of the communist municipal platform. The programme went on to discuss other positions of significance to the Communist Party: a prohibition on the importation of strike breakers from outside the municipality, improved working conditions and hours for municipal workers, the unconditional right of free speech including an end to Section 98, increased taxes for the rich and lower taxes for workers, a program of house building to replace slum dwellings, a five-cent fare on street car and bus systems, free hospital treatment for the needy, and the granting of universal suffrage in municipal elections. [34] This platform remained relatively unchanged throughout the Third Period. Indeed, the 1934 election programme was almost identical to its 1931 counterpart. [35]
On the surface, this platform appears to support rather reformist measures, and was not significantly different than the programme of the ILP. Yet, despite the reformist elements of their municipal programme, Communists argued that they had not become a parliamentary party, or at least not one in the sense that the ILP was. In Socialism and the CCF, Stewart Smith wrote about a “revolutionary Communist parliamentarism” that differed from the “parliamentary deception” of the CCF. [36] How, then did local communists conceptualize this difference? J. Naviziwsky, the manager of the Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Publishing Association argued that the Communist Party was “not sending its representatives to City Council because it wanted a new sidewalk, but for a definite purpose of class fighting.” [37] Municipal council was not seen as a place merely for debating local issues, but part of the broader class struggle conceptualized by communists. The communist election platform in 1931, for example, recognized that while the “Communist Party program in these elections is composed of the immediate and pressing demands of the masses... only the abolition of capitalism and the rule of the workers... can solve the problem of the masses.” [38] Immediate reforms were important but such reforms could not achieve the Party’s goal, the abolition of capitalism.
Winnipeg communists began running candidates for municipal office in 1923 and were running a full slate of candidates for all municipal and school board positions by 1931. In the predominantly middle- and upper-class Ward One, communist candidates never won more than two percent of the vote. Ward Two candidates fared only slightly better, polling between three and five percent. The three times the CPC ran a candidate in the mayoral election, the candidate received between seven and eight percent. It was in Ward Three where the Communist Party was the most successful. In 1926 and 1928, William Kolisnyk had been elected as the CPC candidate in the ward. By 1935 it was winning a quarter of first choice votes in the ward, and its candidates frequently topped the polls. It was there that, in 1933, Jacob Penner was elected to City Council, beginning an aldermanic career that would last until 1960. [39]
Jacob Penner was born in Russia in 1880. After becoming involved in the Russian Social Democratic Party, his parents worried that he would be arrested and decided to immigrate to Canada. [40] The family first settled in Altona, Manitoba but Penner wanted to be closer to other political radicals and moved to Winnipeg where he found employment at “The Rosery” florist shop. Fired from his job as a florist in 1917 because of his opposition to conscription, Penner worked as a candy salesman before joining the Workers’ Cooperative, where he became a bookkeeper.
Soon after moving to Winnipeg, Penner became involved in leftist circles, was one of the founding members of the Socialist Party of Canada local in Winnipeg in 1906, taught at socialist classes and served on the Sub-Committee on Political Action during the General Strike. Indeed, in 1918, Penner would teach a Socialist Sunday School with future ILP mayor John Queen. [41] When the CPC was formed, Penner became its western literary agent. The RCMP believed that he was also the chief organizer for the CPC in the Manitoba district. [42] Penner was a passionate adherent of communism. In opening his 1932 mayoralty campaign, Penner declared that “capitalism has reached a stage of development where, like a man afflicted with a deadly disease, it cannot recuperate or bring back prosperity.” [43] It was the role of the CPC, Penner believed, to fight an “uncompromising struggle to unseat the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” [44] He remained an unwavering Party supporter until his death in 1965.
Penner was known for his clean living and honest manner. He was frequently portrayed as a serious man who, according to the Weekly News’s tongue-in-cheek Council reporter, had “forgotten how to smile.” [45] A frustrated RCMP investigator reported that “while intemperate in his political thought, (Penner) is temperate in his habits, and might be classed as a ‘domestic fellow.’ He is not an immoral man nor a drinking man and he smokes little. He is strongly opposed to gambling...He never has been mixed up with any scandal.” [46] Another RCMP report suggested that Penner appeared to be “very smooth, intelligent in his manners, shrewd, careful, and well educated.” [47] Even those on the opposite side of the political spectrum had some respect for Penner. Charles Simonite, a Citizen alderman, described him as a “gentleman” who “wasn’t a bad fellow,” albeit one with some “peculiar ideas.” [48]
In 1934, Penner was joined on City Council by a second communist alderman, Martin Joseph Forkin. Forkin was born in the United Kingdom and immigrated to Brandon, Manitoba with his family in 1912. After serving for three years in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War, he worked for the RCMP from 1919 to 1920. He gained prominence in the One Big Union (OBU) before joining the Workers’ Party of Canada. Forkin was employed for awhile at the General Hospital in Brandon but, after losing his job, became the secretary of the Brandon Unemployed Association. He was an active labour organizer and served as the secretary of the Workers’ Unity League in the Winnipeg District. In this role, he is particularly known for his leadership role in a miners’ strike at Bienfait, Saskatchewan where he was dubbed the “generalissimo of the strikers” by the local press. [49] Stephen Endicott suggests that while Forkin may not have been the greatest orator, he had a keen political sense and could be highly persuasive. [50] Forkin served on City Council until his death in 1962.
The Worker proposed that there was an organic connection between city councillors inside the halls of power being supported by, and supporting, the whole militant movement on the outside. Elected communists were successful because they were “exposing the class nature of city government, and using their positions to further the militancy of the workers.” [51] Martin Forkin declared that the communist role was both to “assist the organized fight for the immediate betterment of workers’ conditions and also to show the working class that they cannot win their emancipation from capitalism through the city councils and parliaments.” [52] These sentiments were echoed by a local document that stated, “Penner will have to become a public figure in the sense of leading and supporting the actual struggles of the Winnipeg workers and will have to be supported in same by the whole movement.” [53] It may be a matter of semantics, but the document emphasizes “the actual struggles of the Winnipeg workers” rather than the interests of the Comintern or the larger party structure.
Jacob Penner demonstrated that he would not be a “normal” alderman early in his career when, a month into his first term, he refused to stand to honour the death of Thomas Hooper, the chief of the city’s water works department. As the other aldermen rose around him to offer his condolences to the family, Penner remained firmly planted in his chair. He explained to the shocked aldermen that “if a working man meets his death on the city’s streets in an accident we do not pass a vote in his memory. Or if a miner is killed in a mine accident we do not rise. Does this council not think it worthwhile to respect the memory of working people?” [54] This episode would repeat itself two weeks later when he refused to stand to honour the death of a prominent fire fighter. Penner was clearly going to be a very different sort of alderman.
Jacob Penner (1880-1968) came to Manitoba in 1904, joined the Communist Party in 1921, and was elected to the Winnipeg city council in 1934, around the time of this photo.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, Norman Penner Collection 3, N8915
The Communist Party of Canada was actively involved in the fight for free speech, largely because the Party was tightly circumscribed under the provisions of Section 98 of the Criminal Code, which outlawed numerous radical political groups. The struggle for legality was described as “the very essence of the Party campaign.” [55] Local election campaign materials described how “workers in Winnipeg are jailed and clubbed if they dare to assemble in mass to protest present conditions. Workers who strike against wage cuts are met with police battons (sic). Only recently Winnipeg workers were almost blinded by tear gas simply because they assembled en-masse to protest against the jobless being refused medical and hospital treatment.” [56] The Party warned its supporters that, although repression was less severe in Winnipeg than in other centres, the “rule of terror” found in Toronto would soon move westward. Increased media coverage during election campaigns allowed communists to spread this anti-persecution message broadly.
Since Section 98 was a piece of federal legislation, however, there was little that communists could do about it in City Council. Instead, the Party’s aldermen focussed their efforts on local affronts to free speech. For example, Jacob Penner vigorously attempted to have the Police Commission reverse a decision to ban the performance of Eight Men Speak. The Progressive Arts Club had intended to perform the play, which depicted the trial and imprisonment of Tim Buck and seven other prominent communists. Penner put forward three motions on the subject, the first two of which were ruled out of order by Mayor Webb. Penner argued that the Police Commission’s decision was an “infringement on freedom of expression and the rights of the legitimate stage.” [57] When his motion was finally put to a vote, it was defeated by nine votes to seven, with all ILP aldermen except John Blumberg siding with the communist.
This incident highlights two key aspects of Penner’s term on council. Despite communist propaganda to the opposite effect, ILP aldermen were largely in agreement with the communists on the issue of free speech, as six of their seven aldermen supported the motion. Thomas Flye, an ILP alderman, said that he supported the Penner motion because it was an issue of free speech and that he would not condemn people before they were proven guilty. Blumberg, meanwhile, defended his vote with the argument that the free speech that communists believed in fostered hatred. Even though communists frequently attacked the ILP for defeating their motions in council, it was often only one or two ILP aldermen who sided with the Citizens. The Eight Men Speak incident was also an example of a role that communist aldermen were supposed to play: supporting the Party’s wider activities with their work on Council. Just as Penner did in this instance, communist aldermen frequently demanded to know why their, or other organizations’, meetings had been prevented by the police. Council was, therefore, seen as a valuable forum for demanding free speech within the city.
Communist aldermen also used their platform in City Council to denounce another threat to communism, fascism. Winnipeg was home to a local variant of fascism, the Canadian Nationalist Party. The Nationalists paraded through Winnipeg streets wearing Nazi brown shirts that bore the insignia of a swastika and a beaver, and spread anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant propaganda throughout the city. [58] Communists frequently battled the Nationalists in the North End, filling meeting halls to ensure that Nationalist meetings could not take place and spreading anti-fascist propaganda. They were assisted on City Council by Jacob Penner, who pressured Mayor Ralph Webb, albeit to no avail, to prevent Nationalist meetings with as much zeal as he obstructed communist ones. Penner proclaimed before council that the greatest danger of the day was fascism, but Webb told him to sit down as, he claimed, the other aldermen did not want to hear such an ideological speech. [59] Nevertheless, by denouncing fascism in the City Council, Penner was taking the broader fight against fascism into the halls of municipal government.
On 5 June 1934, a riot broke out between communists and Nationalists in Market Square just outside the City Hall. The Free Press described the riot in fantastical terms:
battling in self-defence, the Nationalists, about fifty of whom were clad in the brown shirt uniform of that organization, drew batons from their pockets and fought furiously for their lives. Knives flashed in the fast waning sunlight, heavy clubs crashed against cap-protected skulls, and huge slabs of wood were torn from the stalls of market gardeners and used as battering rams against the tightly pressing wall of snarling humanity. [60]
With the sounds of the fighting filtering into the council chambers, Citizen Alderman James Barry described Penner as a “snake in the grass” and accused him of fomenting “race hatred.” [61] The ILP’s newspaper, the Weekly News, while an avid opponent of fascism itself, denounced Penner for being supposedly willing to demand free speech for some while denying it to the fascists. [62] Despite the hostility, Penner continued to defend the actions taken by communists against the fascists and was consistent in his demand that City Council, the mayor, and the Police Commission take the fascist threat seriously.
During the Great Depression, Winnipeg communists faced the threat of deportation either for being on relief or for their political ideology. Under the terms of the 1907 Immigration Act, municipalities were allowed to request the deportation of any immigrant who became a public charge. Winnipeg used this provision with great regularity to deport immigrants who requested relief and occasionally used this power to rid itself of political radicals. [63] Deportations became so common in the city that the consuls of numerous European countries inquired into why so many of their citizens were being deported from Winnipeg. [64]
Prior to the Penner’s election in 1933, the ILP protested deportation on numerous occasions. ILP alderman Thomas Flye, for example, claimed that his office was “besieged” with people who had been threatened with deportation. [65] In 1932, ILP aldermen brought forward the case of three communists who had been smuggled out of the city for deportation, arguing that this was a violation of British democracy. [66] The Worker described ILP protestations against deportation as “fake protest” and the Workers’ Vanguard accused the ILP of “acquiescing” to the practice, but the CPC and ILP seemed to have had similar deportation policies.
When Jacob Penner was elected to council, he worked with the ILP to have the practice ended. [67] Shortly after his election, Penner, along with Flye, Morris Gray, and John Blumberg, inquired in the City Council about the attitude of the Dominion government towards the deportation of people on relief. By 1934, they had revealed enough evidence to convince even the Citizen aldermen that this practice should be halted. With municipal opinion turned so decidedly against the deportation of immigrants on relief, the federal government agreed to end the practice. [68] Penner, and his ILP counterparts, had won a major victory for the working class in Winnipeg.
This was a significant accomplishment because many Party members, and other immigrants residing in Winnipeg, had previously faced deportation for requesting relief. The termination of this practice relieved the immigrant community of a significant source of fear. It serves as an example of practical cooperation between the ILP and the CPC on an issue that was important for both parties. At a time when Communist policy denounced the ILP and demanded that there be no cooperation with them, Penner worked with his ILP counterparts on the issue of deportation because it was an important issue for his constituents.
Communist aldermen and the ILP also found common ground on the issue of electoral reform. The municipal franchise in Winnipeg was based on property ownership. Those who held property in more than one ward were given multiple votes in municipal elections, while those without property were not allowed to vote. Citizen argued that a person should have a financial stake in the affairs of the city before getting to vote. [69] Both the ILP and the CPC were strong proponents of the universal franchise. In 1934, Penner and James Simpkin (an ILP alderman) worked together in an attempt to prevent non-resident property owners from voting. [70] When the ILP put forward a motion that would have established a “one man-one vote” system, Penner voted in favour, but it was defeated when Mayor Webb cast the tie-breaking vote. [71] In 1935, the ILP once again pursued electoral reform and was successful in passing, with the cooperation of the communists, a motion to bring the universal franchise to municipal elections. This reform, however, was blocked by the provincial government, which had the right to veto changes to the city’s charter.
John Queen (1882-1946) came to Manitoba in 1906, served as a city councillor, MLA, and mayor of Winnipeg. Arrested for his role in the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, he served a year in prison.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, Personalities, Queen John 1, N20731
A move to eliminate property restrictions on voting would have affected working class parties the most as it was their potential supporters who were denied the right to vote. Roughly thirty thousand additional working class individuals would have been added to the voters’ list had the reforms been implemented. [72] Yet, it is peculiar that the Communist Party put so much effort into reforming a system that they believed to be corrupt. Attempts to extend the franchise suggest a willingness to accept the “bourgeois democracy” that the Party was so critical of during the Third Period. Once again, this is an example of practical cooperation between two parties that were theoretically supposed to be bitter enemies during the Third Period. Despite rhetoric describing the ILP as social fascists, Penner and Forkin worked closely with them on electoral reform, pushing a policy that may not have made sense for a revolutionary party but that would have empowered their local constituency.
In a city where nearly one in five wage earners was out of work, and in which expenditures on relief doubled between 1931 and 1935, unemployment was a contentious issue. [73] The approach of the Citizen aldermen towards the unemployed remained largely unchanged during this period. It was firmly rooted in the fear that granting too much to those on relief would result in a “dependency complex” and that the financial well-being of the city was a higher priority than unemployment relief. Citizens, therefore, passed regulations that made it difficult for Winnipeggers to get on relief and maintained low relief rates. [74]
Given that Citizen usually aldermen made up the majority of City Council there was often little that either the communists or the ILP could do to change the treatment of the unemployed. That being said, in the early 1930s, the ILP did not put forward an unemployment strategy that differed significantly from the Citizens. The Weekly News explained that “there is a genuine effort being made to extend relief as far as possible. All this, we fully admit, is of a palliative character, but in an imperfect world, it is at least something. It is at least better than fine-spun theories of cure-alls and dictatorships.” [75] The ILP’s willingness to accept the status quo, was frequently critiqued by communists, who portrayed their opponents as traitors to the unemployed who followed a policy of “peaceful waiting and quiet starvation.” [76]
As the Depression worsened, the ILP became more critical of the city’s relief apparatus and its Citizen supporters. The ILP’s 1934 election campaign focussed on attacking the treatment of the unemployed by the previous municipal government. It proposed to humanize conditions for those on relief. “Common humanity,” declared John Queen, “demands that all their requirements be met.” [77] Instead of conceptualizing the unemployed as a drain on resources, the ILP re-interpreted them as formerly contributing members of society who needed assistance due to a situation beyond their control. As such, the ILP put forward a platform that offered medical and dental services to the unemployed, established relief depots throughout the city, and increased relief rates.
Unemployment was a central issue communist parties throughout the world. The CPC took its cue from the Comintern to fight for the unemployed and launched extensive organizing efforts among the unemployed population. Through organizations such as the National Unemployed Workers’ Association and its Neighbourhood Associations, the CPC reached out to unemployed people nationwide. Since municipal governments were responsible for unemployment relief, it was at the local level that changes could be made for the unemployed. As the economic crisis worsened, the communist leaders in Winnipeg focussed increasingly on unemployment as the central feature of municipal campaigns. Although there was top-down direction on the issue of unemployment, local communists also recognized the necessity of working alongside and organizing their unemployed neighbours Communist unemployment policy in Winnipeg had two main points. The first was the nationwide campaign by the Party for non-contributory unemployment insurance. This was not strictly a municipal policy, as the CPC demanded that the Dominion government pay for the program, but it was through their representatives at the municipal level that it was fought for. After taking office in January 1935, one of Martin Forkin’s first actions was to put forward a motion, seconded by Jacob Penner, calling for the city to endorse a non-contributory plan. He argued that the burden to pay for unemployment should be on those who were able to pay. The motion was first allowed to stand and was later accepted by Council. [78] The campaign for the national noncontributory insurance scheme demonstrates how Penner and Forkin worked as part of a broader agenda dictated by the CPC. Thus, although local people were important for the communist unemployment policy, significant aspects of the Party’s unemployment programme were developed outside of the city.
Municipal support for legislation that required federal approval, however, was not a particularly practicable solution for the immediate problems faced by the unemployed. Communists were frequently advocates for increasing relief provisions. Jacob Penner, in his victorious election campaign, declared that the first goal of a communist alderman would be to increase food and rent allowances. [79] When elected, Penner, and later Forkin, put forward numerous motions calling for increases in food vouchers, rent provisions, and medical care for the unemployed. [80] Forkin, who had been an NUWA organizer, was very familiar with the plight of Winnipeg’s unemployed as well as CPC national unemployment policy. These actions both fulfilled the requirements of national policy but also gained the communist aldermen a tremendous following in the North End. They were motivated both by national commitments as well as the needs of their working-class constituents.
When Jacob Penner was elected in 1933, he quit his job at the Workers’ and Farmers’ Cooperative to become a fulltime alderman, much to the disappointment of his wife Rose, who now had to manage the home with considerably less income. [81] Since alderman received very little remuneration for their work, it was assumed that aldermen would continue working in their previous jobs. Penner, however, decided to dedicate his attention to the needs of his constituents, and particularly their needs when it came to unemployment relief. The Worker reported that although Penner was not on the Municipal Relief Committee, he attended every meeting and regularly brought a long list of individual relief cases for the committee to address. [82] The Penner home became “virtually a drop-in centre” as anyone with a problem would come by for assistance. [83] Michael Harris recalled that Penner “never refused a single [person]: a request to him to do something in the City Council when they had a problem whether it was their homes or their jobs or anything like that that needed City Hall assistance.” Regardless of their political allegiance, Penner helped Winnipeg’s unemployed navigate the hostile channels of the municipal relief department. Even the local Conservatives knew that, if they had a problem, Penner was the man who would solve it. [84]
Communists were not only particularly attuned to the interests of the unemployed but also to workers and organized labour. When the Winnipeg Free Press reported on the daily activities of mayoral candidates in 1933, they discovered that Martin Forkin spent most of his time meeting with union officials. [85] Similarly, the communist election press bragged that “the only two aldermen on the City Council who have been on a picket line during the past two years, and more, are Penner and Forkin.” [86] Communist aldermen regularly behaved as an extension of the labour movement through the motions they put forward on council. During a lengthy strike at the Western Packing Company, Jacob Penner raised the plight of the strikers at the council table and put forward a motion (seconded by the ILP’s James Simpkin) to condemn sweatshop conditions at the company. [87] Penner twice put forward motions to protect strikers from police intimidation while picketing. In 1935, during a strike by the typographical unions at the Free Press and the Tribune, Penner and Forkin requested that the council cease from doing any business with the newspapers that was not required by law. This motion passed with the support of the ILP aldermen and elicited praise from the unionists who, while admitting that they did not always agree with the communists, still appreciated their consistent support on City Council. [88] As Jacob Penner wrote in 1935, “whenever such strike struggles took place we brought out the workers’ side of the dispute on the floor of council.” [89] Communist aldermen advanced the cause of organized labour, even if in doing so they were assisting mainstream unions opposed by the communistorganized Workers’ Unity League. This demonstrates a degree of flexibility within the Party, and that the Party was not as sectarian and isolated as some historians will have us believe.
While Communists could make an indirect contribution to the cause of organized labour, they had more opportunities to challenge the treatment of the city’s own workers. The CPC claimed that their aldermen were the only people fighting wage cuts for civic employees. [90] All municipal employees had been forced to take a ten percent wage cut in 1933, a decrease that the ILP had promised to reverse. In 1935, however, when working-class parties held a majority of the seats on council, the ILP decided that the city could not afford to provide the promised amount. Penner and Forkin, though, continued to fight for a full wage restoration and also demanded that the minimum wage for civic employees be increased from 38.5 cents per hour to fifty cents. [91] Repeatedly, the civic employees found their most consistent support on council coming from the Communist aldermen, who were not always particularly concerned if their proposals were financially practicable for the city. [92] Despite a Party declaration that it would “carry forward a determined drive to smash the influence of the hypocritical ILP and OBU leaders,” [93] the communist aldermen continued to fight on behalf of an OBU union, the Federation of Civic Employees.
Another point of contention between the ILP and the communist aldermen relating to the treatment of workers and the unemployed as the handling of the On-To-Ottawa Trek in 1935. Unlike Regina, Winnipeg avoided rioting when acting mayor John Blumberg convinced the RCMP not to intervene and refused to read the Riot Act to strikers who had seized a dining hall on Princess Street. [94] This is not to suggest that the ILP was particularly amicable to the trekkers. Indeed, John Queen suggested that the trek was a communist scheme and that he would “not be a party to driving the boys into conflict with the government.” [95] Steven Hewitt proposes that Queen’s analysis was accurate and that the communists indeed were the driving force behind the trek movement in Winnipeg. [96] Communists used their council positions to publicize their concerns about the treatment of the trekkers. A month after the near riot on Princess Street, Penner and Forkin put forward a motion in council condemning the police commission for their handling of the trek participants. [97] There was no support for the motion, however, and it was defeated by thirteen votes to two. Despite the loss, communist aldermen had once again used their positions on council to further the broader agenda of the Party, thus linking Council activity and mass action.
Support for communist aldermen was rooted in their commitment to the issues that directly affected the lives of their working-class constituency. As Michael Harris remembered, “the Communist candidates had a big vote because the Communists helped them. They were devoted to the working peoples’ welfare.” He recalled how people would go and vote for Penner because “he was their friend; he helps them. Not anybody else.” [98] The communist press had a similar interpretation of the Party’s success. The Voice of Labour, a communist newspaper published for a few months in 1934, declared that,
these workers and hard pressed members of the lower middle class who voted communist did so not only because they had before them the example of Alderman Penner’s record in City Council, but also because the communists have shown, through their policy in the City Council and their day-to-day work outside the council, that they have fought for the everyday interests of Winnipeg workers. [99]
In addressing these immediate needs, Penner and Forkin often demonstrated flexibility in being able to work with and for numerous types of people, including those specifically condemned by Third Period ideology. Undoubtedly, they also remained tied to national and international policy decisions. Yet, despite Party instructions that the program of communists must be “contrasted sharply with those of Labour parties,” [100] Penner and Forkin demonstrated a willingness, at times, to adapt to local conditions in their engagement with non-communist unions or the ILP.
Ralph H. Webb (1886-1945) came to Manitoba in 1906, served seven terms as mayor of Winnipeg between 1925 and 1934, and also two terms as an MLA.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, Personalities, Webb Ralph H
Despite agreement on policy and similar voting records on particular issues, the Communist Party was still very much in the Third Period, and denunciations of the ILP as “social fascists” remained the status quo. National CPC leaders such as Stewart Smith energetically followed the Comintern line and equated “social fascism” with fascism, arguing, as late as 1934, that the two represented the “ideological superstructures of decaying monopoly capitalism.” [101] Winnipeg communists eagerly followed the Party line, and focussed much attention on a “concerted offensive against the social fascist leaders...to draw (the workers) into the revolutionary movement.” [102] Both at the national and the local level, social democrats and labourite politicians, represented in Winnipeg by the ILP, were a target for communist attacks.
Communist municipal candidates often spent t h e i r e n t i r e c a m p a i g n attacking the ILP, not even mentioning their Citizen opponent. Martin Forkin’s mayoralty campaign in 1933 is an excellent example of this. He confined his remarks in election debates to challenging the ILP’s positions on City Council, without criticizing his other opponent, the notorious Ralph Webb. Forkin explained to the audience that it would be merely a side issue to attack bourgeois politicians, as communists “make no pretence of appealing to the whole of society.” Communists, unlike the ILP, never appealed for support outside of the working class. They were a class-based party seeking power for the workers. In a direct attack on the leadership of the ILP, Forkin explained that he was “for a labour movement led by workers and not by ex-clergymen.” [103] After the election, the CPC celebrated their perceived victory over the ILP, and emphasized that the votes they had won had been taken away from ILP candidates. Gaining votes at the expense of their labour opponents seemed to be as significant an accomplishment to the communists as actually winning a seat on council. [104]
The ILP responded to these attacks in two ways. First, it argued that communists merely split the labour vote and allowed bourgeois candidates to win. The ILP also denounced the communists for purportedly advocating dictatorship. The Weekly News, for example, posited that “communism is simply a new form of a very ancient evil, namely the evil of dictatorship.” [105] Attacking communists served two purposes. First, the ILP believed that it was the more effective representative of Winnipeg workers. Secondly, it hoped to win seats in Wards One and Two. The ILP was concerned that, if associated too closely with communists, they would forgo any chance of electoral success in Wards One and Two.
The relationship between the two parties gradually thawed despite the ongoing exchange of insults. As Norman Penner remarked, the ILP and CPC emphasized similar issues and developed similar solutions to them. [106] Even though the 1933 campaign highlighted previously was focussed almost exclusively on the ILP, the Weekly News noted that Martin Forkin’s mayoralty campaign “kept away from [the] abusive attacks on the ILP which have characterized communist campaigns in recent years.” The paper also assumed that despite attacks by the communists on the ILP, Penner (who was elected that same year) would “as spokesman for a section of the working-class ... be bound to fall into line [with the ILP] on a great many issues of immediate concern, regardless of the fundamental differences in philosophy, political theory, and tactics.” [107] At the council table, the communists were also described in terms that minimized their anti-ILP rhetoric. The Free Press, in depicting Penner’s first council meeting, said he “left his soap-box oratory outside the council chamber and his moderate utterances held the attention of the other aldermen. [He] voted as a member of the ‘leftist’ group.” [108]
The 1950 Winnipeg city council retained long-serving Communists Joseph Penner and Martin Forkin.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, C. E. Simonite Fonds #5, N689
Cooperation with the ILP, as far as the communists were concerned, could have reached its apex in 1934, when they offered their support to the ILP’s mayoral candidate, John Queen. The Third Period may have been thawing by 1934, but the offer of such an alliance remains remarkable considering that Stewart Smith’s vehemently polemical Socialism and the CCF was published that very year. The communists provided the ILP with a list of six demands on which to build a common platform. They requested that Queen pledge to struggle against fascism in Winnipeg, fight cuts in relief and provide adequate relief for all the unemployed, repeal the decision to cut off family relief vouchers for single men over the age of 18, end the deportation of the unemployed, oppose the Bradshaw Report, [109] and provide the same medical care to war veterans as was given to the unemployed. [110] The communists agreed that, were Queen to accept this minimum platform, they would actively campaign on his behalf in the mayoralty race against Citizen candidate John McKerchar.
The ILP viewed the coalition offer quite differently. Queen replied to the communists that he was “at a loss to understand your actions” and questioned why a unity offer would be made after a communist newspaper had allegedly provided encouragement to his bourgeois opponent and when the communists were running Saul Simkin against the ILP’s James Simpkin to confuse voters. [111] To the ILP, the communist offer was incomprehensible after years of hostile attacks. For Queen, the victim of vicious verbal assaults for years at the hands of communists, there understandably was to be no unity.
Winnipeg communists reacted angrily to the rejection of their offer. They proposed that Queen feared losing middle-class votes by accepting a coalition and that his refusal meant that the ILP had “exposed themselves not as champions of unity, but as splitters in the ranks of Labour.” [112] In sharp contrast a 1927 proclamation that communists should vote for Queen in the mayoralty race of that year, the Party declared that both Queen and the CEC candidate, John McKerchar, represented bourgeois interests. Members were advised to spoil their mayoralty ballot by writing “COMMUNIST” across it. Martin Forkin went farther, saying that if communists really wanted to vote for one or the other, “they might as well vote for McKerchar rather than for that Labor demagogue.” [113] Formal cooperation with the ILP, which briefly had appeared a possibility, albeit on the communists’ terms, was now completely off the table. The two parties would remain bitter enemies on Council for years to come.
The coalition offer did, however, confirm in the minds of many Citizens that the ILP was linked to the Communist Party, likely another reason why the ILP might have been so reticent about accepting the offer. Looking back on municipal politics a year after losing the mayoralty election to Queen, McKerchar remarked that “Winnipeg is now at the mercy of communists. There is no particular difference between the ILP and the (Communist) party. They all get their inspiration from Moscow.” [114] Despite the vast ideological gulf that separated the two parties on the Left at times, they were lumped together by their rightist opponents.
Communist aldermen on Winnipeg’s City Council, and CPC efforts to elect and support these aldermen, demonstrated the powerful connection that the Party could have with a working-class neighbourhood. North End Winnipeg would continue to elect communists to council until 1983, [115] particularly remarkable given the anti-communist Cold War rhetoric that dominated political dialogue for most of those years. Although the Communist Party clung to much of the rhetoric and ideology of the Third Period, especially through its verbal attacks on the ILP, its members in places such as Winnipeg demonstrated a willingness to adapt the party line to local conditions and work with significant flexibility within a local setting.
The communist’s relationship with the other party on the political left, the ILP, was complex. Despite frequent antagonism and distrust, aldermen from the two parties managed to work together on issues of common interest. The two parties frequently found themselves voting together on issues such as unemployment, deportation, and public transportation, issues which were vitally important to the everyday needs of working-class Winnipeggers. This is not to say that there were not disagreements. Communists frequently accused their ILP opponents of betraying the working class, while the ILP accused communists of dictatorial tendencies. Nevertheless, despite the public rhetoric, the two parties appear to have shared, in some ways, a similar vision for Winnipeg’s municipal government, a vision that stood in profound opposition to the policies of their collective opponents on the political Right.
1. Indeed, much of the best archival material on the Communist Party of Canada from this era is to be found in a collection from the Comintern, now available at Library and Archives Canada. The CPC reported many details of its local activities to the Comintern in Moscow.
2. Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1996, p. 69.
3. Ian Angus, Canadian Bolsheviks: The Early Years of the Communist Party of Canada. Victoria: Trafford Publishing, 1981, pp. 264, 241, and 292.
4. Bryan Palmer, Working-Class Experience: The Rise and Reconstitution of Canadian Labour, 1800-1980. Toronto: Butterworth & Co, 1983, p. 206.
5. John Manley, “Canadian Communists, Revolutionary Unionism, and the ‘Third Period’: The Workers’ Unity League, 1929-1935,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 16 (1994), p. 189.
6. Manley, p. 175.
7. Manley, p. 167. Manley argues that the local WUL organizers were “good trade unionists” rather than “good Bolsheviks.”
8. J. E. Rea, Parties and Power: An Analysis of Winnipeg City Council, 1919–1975. Winnipeg: Department of Urban Affairs, Province of Manitoba, 1976, p. 1; Brian McKillop, “The Socialist as Citizen: John Queen and the Mayoralty of Winnipeg, 1935,” Manitoba Historical Society Transactions Series 3 (1973–1974), p. 6.
9. Throughout the paper, the terms Citizens and CPA/CEC are used interchangeably and have the same meaning.
10. Stanley Knowles, interview with Brian McKillop, 14 June 1969, University of Manitoba Archives (UMA) Ed Rea Collection, MSS 73, Box 1 File 1; “Report Re Manitoba Provincial Elections – 1927; Communist Activities,” 18 June 1927, Jacob Penner RCMP File 117- 89-57 Supp. H, p. 192.
11. The Worker, 20 June 1931. Webb was mayor of Winnipeg from 1925 to 1927 and again from 1930 to 1934.
12. Ralph Webb to R. B. Bennett, 25 February 1931, LAC R. B. Bennett Papers, MG16 K Series F, No. 141.
13. Winnipeg Free Press, 23 November 1934.
14. Winnipeg Free Press, 8 November 1934.
15. “Independent Labour Party of Manitoba Provincial Elections, 1932,” LAC, A. A. Heaps Fonds, MG27 III C22, Reel H2271.
16. McKillop, “Citizen as Socialist: The Ethos of Political Winnipeg, 1919–1935,” MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1970, p. 220; Rea, p. 2-3.
17. In 1933, it was reported that 226 of 389 Party members in Winnipeg belonged to sections in the North End. “District 7 Report,” 18 February 1933, LAC CI Fonds, Reel K286, File 152, p. 1.
18. “Resolution on the Situation and Tasks of the P. in District No. 7, 1933,” LAC CI Fonds, Reel K286, File 152, 3; “Letter from Charlie to Sam,” 22 October 1931, LAC CI Fonds, Reel K281, File 121.
19. “Membership Analysis, Winnipeg,” 22 April 1934, LAC CI Fonds, Reel K284, File 140; Interview with Andrew Bilecki by Doug Smith, PAM, Doug Smith Collection, C407; Stefan Epp, “A Communist in the Council Chambers: Communist Municipal Politics, Ethnicity, and the Career of William Kolisnyk,” Labour/Le Travail 63 (Spring 2009), p. 83.
20. Epp, p. 79-103.
21. Quoted in Smith, p. 27.
22. Gloria Queen-Hughes interviewed by Paul Barber, January 1970, UMA Ed Rea Collection, MSS 73 Box 1, File 6.
23. Winnipeg Free Press, 19 November 1932.
24. “Special Report Re Communistic Activities,” 10 November 1931, PAM, Communist Activity, 1931-1936, Attorney-General Miscellaneous Files, G1542A, File 43.
25. Communist Party of Canada Central Agit-Prop Department, “Letter to All District and Local Party Organizations,” 1931, LAC CI fonds, Reel K282, File 125.
26. The Worker, 26 November 1932.
27. “Letter from Charlie to Sam,” 22 October 1931, LAC CI Fonds, Reel K281 File 121.
28. The Worker, 29 October 1932.
29. “Resolution on Winnipeg Municipal Elections, November 1933,” LAC CI Fonds, Reel K286, File 152.
30. “Directives for the Municipal Election Campaign, 1931,” LAC CI Fonds, Reel K282, File 125; “Letter from Charlie to Sam,” 22 October 1931, LAC CI Fonds, Reel K281, File 121.
31. “Directives For the Municipal Election Campaign,” LAC CI Fonds, Reel K282, File 125, p. 1.
32. The Worker, 10 November 1934.
33. “Resolution on the Winnipeg Municipal Elections, November 1933” LAC CI Fonds, Reel K286, File 152, p. 2.
34. “Program of the Communist Party For the Municipal Elections of 1931,” LAC CI Fonds, Reel K282, File 125.
35. “Communist Planks in ‘Peg Civic Election Voice Demands of Poor,” The Worker 10 November 1934.
36. G. Pierce [Stewart Smith], Socialism and the CCF. Montreal: Contemporary Publishing Association, 1934, p. 207.
37. Manitoba Free Press, 16 November 1929.
38. “Program of the Communist Party for the Municipal Elections of 1931,” LAC CI Fonds, Reel K282 File 125, p. 4.
39. Voting data has been compiled from the City of Winnipeg’s Municipal Manuals available at the City of Winnipeg Archives. The voting percentages refer to first preference selections under Winnipeg’s system of proportional representation.
40. Jacob Penner and Norman Penner, “Recollections of the Early Socialist Movement in Winnipeg,” Histoire sociale – Social History 14 (November 1974): pp. 366-378.
41. See unnumbered picture in Roland Penner, A Glowing Dream: A Memoir. Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford, 2007.
42. “Report Re Communist Party of Canada – Winnipeg, Man. Penner – Organizer for District,” 22 July 1922, Jacob Penner RCMP File 117- 89-57, Supp. H, p. 152.
43. Winnipeg Free Press, 15 November 1932.
44. Quoted in McKillop, “Citizen as Socialist: The Ethos of Political Winnipeg, 1919–1935,” p. 97.
45. Weekly News, 5 January 1934.
46. “Report Re J. Penner,” 19 July 1919, Jacob Penner RCMP File 117-89-57 Supp. H, p. 36.
47. “Crime Report Re Bolshevism in Winnipeg District,” 11 June 1919, Jacob Penner RCMP File 117-89-57 Supp. H, p. 21.
48. Charles Simonite interviewed by Paul Barber, January 1970, UMA Ed Rea collection, MSS 73, Box 1, File 2.
49. Stephen L. Endicott, Bienfait: The Saskatchewan Miners’ Struggle of ‘31. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002, p. 47.
50. Endicott, p. 46; The Worker, 2 March 1935; The Workers’ Vanguard, July 1930; Winnipeg Free Press, 12 June 1934; “Re: M.J. Forkin – Communist Party,” Martin Forkin RCMP File, 119-91-22, p. 3; “Report on Conclusion of Case,” Martin Forkin RCMP File 119-91-22, p. 3.
51. The Worker, 7 November 1934; The Worker, 21 April 1934.
52. Voice of Labour, 29 November 1934.
53. “Resolution on Winnipeg Municipal Elections, November 1933,” LAC CI fonds, Reel K286, File 152, p. 2.
54. Winnipeg Free Press, 30 January 1934.
55. “Directives for the Municipal Election Campaign, 1931,” LAC, CI Fonds, Reel K282, File 125.
56. “Unite At the Polls On Your Own Behalf,” Workers Election Bulletin 11 November 1933, located in CPC-MA, Election Bulletins Scrapbook, 1930–1935.
57. Motion 605, 6 June 1934, CCM, 360; Winnipeg Free Press 6 June 1934; Winnipeg Free Press 9 May 1934.
58. The RCMP estimated that approximately five hundred Nationalist Party members lived in Winnipeg. It should be noted that, despite Winnipeg’s reputation as a “left wing city,” the Nationalist Party had more members than the Communist Party in the city if these figures are accurate. Gregory S. Kealey and Reg Whitaker, eds., RCMP Security Bulletins, The Depression Years, Part I, 1933-1934. St John’s: Canadian Committee on Labour History, 1993, p. 27; McKillop, “A Communist in City Hall,” Canadian Dimension (April 1974), p. 46.
59. Winnipeg Free Press 27 February 1934.
60. Winnipeg Free Press 6 June 1934.
61. Winnipeg Free Press 6 June 1934.
62. Weekly News 8 June 1934.
63. Barbara Roberts, “Shovelling Out the Unemployed,” Manitoba History 5 (Spring 1983), p. 12.
64. Roberts, Whence They Came: Deportation From Canada, 1900-1935. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988, p. 172.
65. Winnipeg Free Press 9 December 1933.
66. Manitoba Free Press 11 May 1932. Roberts also wrote that some Winnipeg Poles were deported for reputedly being “members of organizations connected with the Communist movement.” See Roberts, “Shovelling out the ‘Mutinous’,” p. 98.
67. The Worker 14 May 1932; The Workers’ Vanguard July 1930, located in J. S. Woodsworth Fonds, LAC, MG27 III C7, volume 7, file 13; The Workers’ Vanguard 17 November 1931.
68. Roberts, “Shovelling Out the Unemployed,” p. 20.
69. Winnipeg Free Press 23 February 1935.
70. Weekly News 2 March 1934.
71. Motion 239, 27 February 1934, CCM, p.125.
72. City of Winnipeg, Committee on Legislation and Reception Files, City Archives of Winnipeg, CL+R File 152 (12). The voters’ list would have grown from 99,595 voters to 132,400.
73. Report of the Royal Commission on the Municipal Finances and Administration of the City of Winnipeg, 1937, H. C. Goldenberg, Chairman (Winnipeg: King’s Printer, 1939), 6; Michael R. Goeres, “Disorder, Dependency, and Fiscal Responsibility: Unemployment Relief in Winnipeg, 1907 – 1942.” MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1981, pp. 284-285.
74. Goeres, “Disorder, Dependency, and Fiscal Responsibility,” p. 272.
75. Weekly News 5 December 1930.
76. Workers Election Bulletin 22 November 1932 located in CPC-MA, Election Bulletins Scrapbook, 1930–1935.
77. Winnipeg Tribune 17 November 1934.
78. Motion 76, 14 January 1935, CCM, 27; Winnipeg Free Press 29 January 1935. The non-contributory unemployment insurance plan received support from the ILP.
79. Winnipeg Tribune 23 November 1933.
80. In 1935, Penner wrote an article in which he celebrated communist achievements on behalf of the unemployed on city council. He said that Martin Forkin and himself had gained provisions for babies to receive full relief provisions to that they could be properly nourished, household utensils were now included in relief support, they had the lien notices that the unemployed were compelled to sign cancelled, and had abolished compulsory work for relief. Additionally, he credited communist efforts with defeating an attempt to reduce relief rates. See Jacob Penner, “Communist Councillors Show Good Record for Work in City Council,” The Civic Elector 18 November 1935, located in CPC-MA, Election Bulletins Scrapbook, 1930–1935.
81. Roland Penner, pp. 38-39. Jacob Penner had been making $25 per week at the Cooperative and only received a $30 monthly honorarium in his position as alderman. His response to Rose was that “I was elected to serve the people and I cannot do that part-time!”
82. The Worker, 7 November 1934.
83. Roland Penner, interview with the author.
84. Michael Harris interview with Brian McKillop 24 June 1969, UMA Ed Rea Collection, MSS 73, Box 1, File 3.
85. See Winnipeg Free Press, 16 November 1933; Winnipeg Free Press, 15 November 1933.
86. The Civic Elector, 18 November 1935.
87. Motion 348, 26 March 1934, CCM, p.186. The motion was amended to state that an investigation would be made into working conditions.
88. Winnipeg Typo News, 31 July 1935; Motion 758, 29 July 1935, CCM.
89. The Civic Elector, 18 November 1935.
90. The Worker, 5 May 1934.
91. This motion was defeated by sixteen votes to two (the two communists). Instead, an amendment was made calling for the issue to be studied further. The amendment was defeated by the combined votes of the Citizens and communists. Motion 343, 8 April 1935, CCM, p. 167.
92. The Home and Property Owners’ Association, a pro-business organization that fought to reduce municipal spending in order to reduce taxes suggested that “Ald. Penner has a penchant for making motions without any thought of the financial consequences to the city and its taxpayers, and letting others do the worrying.” (“The Unemployment Relief Committee,” The Home Owner 15 December 1935, located in CPC-MA, Election Bulletins Scrapbook, 1930–1935.
93. “District Seven Report,” 18 February 1933, LAC, CI Fonds, Reel K286 File 152, 4.
94. Winnipeg Tribune, 15 November 1935.
95. Quoted in Steven Hewitt, “‘We Are Sitting at the Edge of a Volcano’: Winnipeg During the On-to-Ottawa Trek,” Prairie Forum 19 (1994), p. 60.
96. Hewitt, p. 54.
97. Motion 759, 29 July 1935, CCM, 410; Winnipeg Free Press 30 July 1935.
98. Michael Harris interviewed by Brian McKillop 24 June 1969, UMA Ed Rea Collection, MSS 73, Box 1, File 3.
99. Voice of Labour, 29 November 1934, 4.
100. “Directives for the Municipal Election Campaign, 1931,” LAC, CI Fonds, Reel K282, File 125.
101. Smith, Socialism and the CCF, p. 157.
102. “Resolution on the Situation and Tasks of the P. In District No. 7,” LAC CI Fonds, Reel K286, File 152, p. 4.
103. Winnipeg Free Press, 21 November 1933.
104. “Resolution on Winnipeg Municipal Elections, November 1933,” LAC CI Fonds, Reel K286 File 152, p. 2.
105. Weekly News, 18 May 1934.
106. Norman Penner, The Canadian Left: A Critical Analysis. Scarborough: Prentice Hall Canada, 1977, p.156.
107. Weekly News, 1 December 1933.
108. Winnipeg Free Press, 3 January 1934.
109. The Bradshaw Report was completed at the behest of city council by Thomas Bradshaw in 1934. Bradshaw recommended that Winnipeg should decrease business taxes and offset this with a sales tax, a rent tax, and an increase in the price of water and electricity. Since the working-class was the most affected by an increase in rent, water, and hydro rates the plan was strongly opposed by both the Communists and the ILP. See City of Winnipeg, Report of Commission on Assessment, Taxation, Etc. (Winnipeg, 1934), pp.14-16.
110. The Worker, 21 November 1934; “Information on the Election Campaigns and the United Front Tactic,” 22 November 1934, LAC CI Fonds, Reel K287, File 161.
111. The Worker, 21 November 1934; “Report Re Communist Party of Canada – Winnipeg Civic Election Campaign,” 19 November 1934, Communist Party of Canada – Winnipeg RCMP file 117-91-67, p. 989.
112. The Worker, 21 November 1934.
113. “Report Re: Communist Party of Canada – Winnipeg Civic Election Activities,” 8 November 1934, Communist Party of Canada – Winnipeg RCMP File, 117-91-67, p. 988 and 994; Winnipeg Free Press, 19 November 1934.
114. Winnipeg Free Press, 19 October 1935.
115. Joseph Zuken would win Jacob Penner’s seat upon his retirement and sat on council from 1961 to 1983.
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