Ben Swankey, What's New: Memoirs of a Socialist Idealist.(Book review)

Ben Swankey, What's New: Memoirs of a Socialist Idealist (Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing 2008)

BEN SWANKEY IS a charter member of that heroic generation that built the Communist Party of Canada, sustained it through the grueling days of the Great Depression, stuck with it on the roller-coaster of World War II, and persisted through the even more desperate Cold War era. Swankey and other devoted members then watched, with greater or lesser cognizance of what was happening and why, the daring project turn to dust and virtually disappear by the 1990s.

Swankey joined the party (via the Young Communist League) in 1932 and, despite occasional doubts about its specific policies, remained in it for the next 59 years, rising to the position of Alberta leader of the party. Not until April 1991, as the Soviet Union hurtled to its demise, did Swankey leave the party. Before joining and after leaving the cp, however, Swankey did not turn his back on politics. What's New is Swankey's memoir about three quarters of a century of activism, based on a constant democratic socialist perspective.

This is a memoir far stronger in its depiction of actions than in its reflection on the significance of them. Swankey is at his best when he recounts the details of the great organizing efforts of his youth. Among the first of these was the 12,000-strong Hunger March in Edmonton on December 20, 1932, which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police suppressed with sadistic abandon. But his description of that event illustrates the need for more exploration of consequences. Swankey is a great advocate of left-wing unity, and speaks with pride of his success, as Alberta Young Communist League leader in the mid-1930s, in forging a united front with the social democratic Cooperative Commonwealth Federation Youth Movement. But while Swankey mentions that the CCYM was "the junior section of the United Farmers of Alberta," (85) and that the RCMP'S violent suppression of the 1932 Hunger March came "on the authority of the UFA government," (59) he doesn't tease this out to speak to the larger question of the Communist Party's "Third Period" political strategy. Too often it is the communists who are condemned for sectarian prejudice against socialist democrats in the years 1928 to 1935. Swankey himself implicitly supports this argument. But he might well have asked why communists should have been favourably disposed to social democrats, when, in situations like the Hunger March, it was social democratic party orders that unleashed repressive police violence on starving workers and farmers.

Another significant section in What's New deals with the critical years 1939 to 1941, when the Communist Party faced the immense challenge of how to respond to World War II. From Swankey's perspective, the party failed left and right. The party's stand that the war was imperialist and must be opposed--a policy adopted, Swankey argues, out of unquestioning acceptance of the outlook of Joseph Stalin, the USSR, and the Communist International--"was a serious mistake, perhaps the most serious in its history.... The war had an anti-fascist character right from the start." (87)

This could have been an opportunity to take on a thorough review of the CP line in that critical historical moment. One element of it would be to recognize that in the midst of such a crisis flexible tactics were essential. The international bourgeoisie recognized this and acted on it. What else explains the complete reversal in policy that occurred when Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as British prime minister in May 19407 And why, in June 1941, as Nazi Germany attacked the USSR, the fiercely anti-communist Churchill embraced the Soviet Union as an ally? An international communist movement that did not similarly adjust its tactics to keep abreast of new developments would be doomed to oblivion.

In any case, before World War II communists in Canada and abroad did in fact foresee the need for tactical shifts based on political principle. On February 1, 1941 the Ottawa Clarion--just a mimeographed newsletter struggling to survive in a period when the party was illegal--laid out a strategic war vision under the headline, "Communists and the War." After 17 months of war, the paper wrote, its character in Canada was clear. Civil liberties had been suppressed, national registration and conscription legislation passed. "War profiteers are having a field day.... The rich grow richer, the poor grow poorer." The Communist Party, it added, had anticipated this, and at its Eighth Dominion Convention in 1937 it had urged Canadians to fight for peace. However, the CPC had declared in 1937, "should imperialist war none the less break out despite the struggle for peace," communists would follow the plan of the Communist International, which called on progressive people "to work for [the war's] speedy termination" and use the opportunity to

"hasten the downfall of capitalist class domination." Hence the correct line in the years 1939 to 1941. Moreover, with considerable foresight, the Communist International had also anticipated the German invasion of the USSR, advising communists worldwide that if there were "a counter-revolutionary attack on the Soviet Union," it was the duty of all progressives "to do everything possible for the defeat of the imperialist and fascist forces."

In effect, what is commonly referred to as World War II was not one war at all, but a series of wars with different characteristics at different moments. For countries like Canada, during the 8-month period of the Phony War, for instance, it was not an anti-fascist war at all, but a war by the bourgeoisie against domestic leftists, civil liberties, and workers' rights. But in 1941, the bourgeoisie's own stand on the war changed. The communists' tactics had to be based on actual conditions at any one moment in that complex, shifting situation.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Swankey's criticism of his own party's stand on the war is the extent to which it reveals that even middle-level leaders of the party were not acquainted with or did not understand the line of the party and the international communist movement. Several factors might account for this. One that comes immediately to mind is that when the party was outlawed and key militants were arrested the result was disruption in communications from leaders to the scattered sections of the country. Obviously there are other plausible explanations that ought to be explored in memoirs such as this.

Finally, this volume would have been stronger had Swankey supplemented his memory and notes by using objective historical records. Most important would be the addition of Royal Canadian Mounted Police records that he could have obtained through the Access to Information and Privacy Act.

I have to admit that my experience with Access Act requests for that generation of communists is mixed. Invariably, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service--with its determined effort to erase the historical record--rips out almost all useful evidence from the RCMP records it vets. But occasionally some details survive, and they can be fascinating and historically highly useful.

This brings me to my pitch for civic activism by historians. Every historian in Canada should be in an adopt-an-activist program. Seek out a politically engaged person of a certain age who would have a record with government departments. Sit down with the person and identify every possible department that might hold records on the person and make a request for his or her files. Don't be discouraged by the egregiously censored results. Appeal to the Information Commissioner. Eventually we will gain the opportunity to construct a court case and challenge the ignoramuses who gut our historical record using that spurious rationale known as national security.

LARRY HANNANT

University of Victoria

and Camosun College

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