Preaching the Red Stuff

During the early 1920s the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) established a significant presence in industrial Cape Breton, based on support from the militant minority of the district's unusually combative coal mining union, UMWA District 26, and its charismatic Secretary-Treasurer James Bryson McLachlan. The latter's early recruitment was centrally important in forging what would become enduring political links with rank-and-file militants; it was largely thanks to McLachlan that, through all the ebb and flow of social context and human agency, the party survived the vicissitudes of deteriorating structural conditions and its own tactical blunders (most notably during the third period), to emerge in the mid-1930s with genuinely optimistic prospects. The Scot did not always lead his forces well: like many revolutionary contemporaries his bolshevik temperament was ill-suited to defensive struggle. He nevertheless perceived, and to a limited extent acted upon, the need to construct a defensive communist counter-culture within the struggle for workers' power in the community and the workplace. The embodiment of bolshevik intransigence, McLachlan offered a fixed rallying-point for class fighters, especially those who shared his internationalist perspective. Having drawn a new layer of younger militants towards him in 1934-35 — and having seen off the CCF in the process - McLachlan could claim to have placed the CPC in its strongest position for a decade. Resume Au debut des annees 1920, le Parti communiste du Canada (PCC) s'implante de facon significative dans les centres industriels du Cap Breton grâce a l'appui d'une minorite militante au sein du syndicat regional des mineurs de charbon, l'UMWA District 26, et de James Bryson McLachlan, son charismatique secretaire-tresorier. L'enrolement rapide de McLachlan dans le PCC se revela capital a la formation de liens politiques durables avec les militants de la base; c'est surtout grâce a McLachlan que le parti survecut aux vicissitudes de la deterioration des conditions structurelles regionales et de ses propres erreurs de strategie (particulierement au cours de la troisieme periode), pour pouvoir enfin envisager l'avenir du parti avec un optimisme veritable au milieu des annees 1930. Tout comme plusieurs revolutionnaires contemporains dont le temperament bolcheviste supportait mal une strategie defensive, le leader ecossais n'a pas toujours su bien mener ses forces. Il a neanmoins reconnu le besoin et parfois meme contribue a l'essor d'une contre-culture communiste defensive dans la lutte pour le pouvoir ouvrier au sein de la communaute et du milieu de travail. Ayant attire dans son orbite une nouvelle generation de militants, tout en abandonnant le part: CCF, McLachlan pouvait se feliciter d'avoir place le PCC, en 1934-35, dans sa plus forte position politique depuis une decennie

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Cape · Communism · Political science · Politics · Canadian Identity and History · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law

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