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Stewart Smith (politician)
Encyclopedia
Communist Party of Canada
The Communist Party of Canada is a communist political party in Canada. Although is it currently a minor or small political party without representation in the Federal Parliament or in provincial legislatures, historically the Party has elected representatives in Federal Parliament, Ontario...
. He also served on Toronto City Council
Toronto City Council
The Toronto City Council is the governing body of the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Members represent wards throughout the city, and are known as councillors....
for a period in the 1930s and 1940s.
Smith was the son of Reverend A. E. Smith, a social gospel
Social Gospel
The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada...
minister who became a leading figure in the Communist Party. Stewart Smith was one of the main figures in the faction, led by Tim Buck
Tim Buck
Timothy "Tim" Buck was a long-time leader of the Communist Party of Canada...
, that took over the party leadership in 1929. Smith was elected to the party's Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
and continued to serve on it (and the party's Political Bureau
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
) for decades. He supported the expulsion of Trotskyist
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
and Right Opposition
Right Opposition
The Right Opposition was the name given to the tendency made up of Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky and their supporters within the Soviet Union in the late 1920s...
factions from the party. In 1934, Smith wrote the pamphlet Socialism and the C.C.F. which promoted the Communist Party's view that the newly formed democratic socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was a Canadian political party founded in 1932 in Calgary, Alberta, by a number of socialist, farm, co-operative and labour groups, and the League for Social Reconstruction...
was an obstacle to socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
which served as a buffer between the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
and the capitalist class
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
that needed to be defeated.
In 1935, Smith led the Canadian delegation to the world congress of the Communist International held in Moscow. When he returned, he echoed the Comintern's new line rejecting the previous Third Period
Third Period
The Third Period is a ideological concept adopted by the Communist International at its 6th World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928....
sectarianism of the party and advocating class unity and ultimately Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
ism in its stead resulting in the dissolution of the party's red union, the Workers' Unity League
Workers' Unity League
The Workers' Unity League was created in 1929 as a labour central operated by the Communist Party of Canada on the instructions of the Communist International....
into the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organizations
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
.
Smith was elected to Toronto City Council
Toronto City Council
The Toronto City Council is the governing body of the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Members represent wards throughout the city, and are known as councillors....
as an alderman
Alderman
An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members themselves rather than by popular vote, or a council...
beginning in 1937 and, in the 1945 municipal election
Toronto municipal election, 1945
Municipal elections were held in Toronto, Canada, on January 1, 1945. Controller Robert Hood Saunders defeated incumbent Frederick J. Conboy to be elected mayor.-Toronto mayor:...
, was elected to the powerful Toronto Board of Control
Toronto Board of Control
Toronto Board of Control was a part of the municipal government of Toronto, Canada from 1904 until its abolition in 1969 and served as the executive committee of Toronto City Council. It consisted of four councillors elected city wide and was presided over by the mayor. Each voter could vote for up...
and was elected again in 1946 before being defeated in 1947 as the result of a strong anti-Communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
campaign.
Smith, Stanley Ryerson and Leslie Morris
Leslie Morris
Leslie Tim Morris was a Welsh-Canadian politician, journalist and long time member of the Communist Party of Canada and, its front group, the Labour-Progressive Party....
were propelled into the leadership of the party in 1940 when the Communist Party was banned and Tim Buck
Tim Buck
Timothy "Tim" Buck was a long-time leader of the Communist Party of Canada...
, Sam Carr
Sam Carr
Sam Carr was an organizer for the Communist Party of Canada and, its successor, the Labour-Progressive Party in the 1930s and 1940s. He was born Schmil Kogan in Tomachpol, Ukraine in 1906 and immigrated to Canada in 1924, living in Winnipeg and Regina before settling in Montreal in 1925...
and Charles Simms fled to New York City to escape arrest. Smith, Ryerson and Morris were made leaders of the party's "operations centre" and effectively led the party until Buck, Carr and Simms returned from exile when the German invasion of the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
brought the USSR into World War II as an Allied Power
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
.
Smith remained a prominent member of the Labour-Progressive Party of Canada (as the Communists were known), and leader of the Labour-Progressive Party of Ontario, until the crisis that hit the international Communist movement in 1956. The combined shock of Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's Secret Speech at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
and the Soviet invasion of Hungary led Smith to join the exodus from the party, led by the resignations of Smith, J.B. Salsberg, Harry Binder and Sam Lipshitz, that reduced the LPP to a small rump. He was subsequently written out of the party's history.
After leaving the party Smith found success as an entrepreneur in the pharmaceutical industry.
In the 1990s he authored his autobiography Comrades and Komsomolkas, My Years in the Communist Party of Canada ISBN 0-921633-55-6 .