The International Labour and Radical History Pamphlet Collection at Memorial University of Newfoundland

IN THE SPRING 1990 issue of Labour/Le Travail Greg Kealey alerted readers to the existence of a radical pamphlet collection at the University of Prince Edward Island. The pamphlets had arrived at the University Library as part of its purchase in 1970 of the stock of the Blue Heron Bookstore in Toronto. It was suggested that the collection had remained unorganized during the succeeding years because the Library's interest had been primarily in the literary titles. Perhaps it is not surprising therefore that subsequent to Kealey's visit the University Librarian at UPEI approached his counterpart at Memorial University and offered to sell the Tim Buck titles included in the collection. I was asked to prepare a response to the offer and I recommended the purchase, noting that it represented a rare opportunity to acquire a significant body of die work of a leading member of the Communist Party of Canada, spanning almost 40 years. By summer 1991 the Queen Elizabeth II Library had acquired the Buck pamphlets (along with an indication from the upm University Librarian that die Library would be willing to part with the rest of die collection as well) and by fall 1991 they had been catalogued and placed in die Rare Books area of die Library. The collection consists of 64 titles, plus five duplicates. Two of the titles acquired, that do not appear in Weinrich's bibliography of Buck's work, are published platforms of die Labor-Progressive Party, each of diem containing a

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