Introduction by Comrade C. Boylan
Comrades and friends, today it is truly a great honour for me to call upon and introduce a Marxist-Leninist and a revolutionary worker from Vancouver to speak to us this afternoon.
This comrade and friend was born in the town of St. Vital, which is the birthplace of Louis Riel. And it is in that great revolutionary tradition of Louis Riel and the Canadian working class movement that this person fits so well.
He is a pipe fitter by trade, and as a construction worker he has worked in many projects throughout British Columbia – indeed throughout western Canada and even the United States.
He is what is called in western Canada a boomer – when the monopoly capitalist class is expanding its capital and making its investment in the mines and mills which expropriate or exploit the natural resources and the labour of the Canadian people, they herd the construction workers from one camp, one boom, to the next.
As a fighter and a revolutionary-spirited worker, this comrade and friend has always organised among his fellow construction workers to fight their day-to-day nitty-gritty struggles – for safety conditions, for the right to a decent life in the camps, for the right of a construction worker to have a decent family life, for better wages and conditions.
Having waged many militant struggles in the trade union movement, this trade unionist from Vancouver began to search for a revolutionary political form in which to express his deep hatred of the capitalist system and his great aspiration to organize proletarian revolution in order to overthrow the capitalist class which exploits him and the millions of other workers in the country. In the early 1960’s, in that search for a revolutionary expression of his sentiment, our friend moved to explore the so-called revolutionary left. It is an interesting and instructive odyssey of exploration. He spent the first period examining modern revisionism – it took him 6 months. At the end of that 6 months that part of the voyage was finished and he moved to explore the trotskyist organisations. That also took 6 months. It was after this that there arose in Canada the first anti-revisionist organised workers’ movement – the Progressive Workers’ Movement in Vancouver.
Our friend spent a considerable length of time in this organisation – indeed, it’s on this topic which he will speak to us today, on his experiences with the Progressive Workers’ Movement, which was misled and liquidated by its misleader Jack Scott.
In addition our friend has spent a great deal of time working in various reform organisations in Vancouver. He has worked in organising the unemployed and those on welfare. He has campaigned for public housing and on the question of housing he may make a later intervention and make a contribution for he has considerable experience in organising for the right of people to have a decent housing at reasonable rents.
So it is a great pleasure and a great honour to introduce to you, and to welcome to the podium, a revolutionary, a Marxist-Leninist, and a good friend of our Party, Comrade Jack Maley.
Comrade Maley:
Comrades and friends. I read my speech just a little while ago to another meeting. There some comrades suggested that it was a little bit too dramatic, that I hit a little bit too hard, that I named names, that I might have been subjective. Comrades and friends, I am angry about what happened to my comrades in the Progressive Workers’ Movement. I and others spent a good part of our lives trying to build it up – and it was dashed. A lot of us were asking why. I want to tell you why. I want to tell you in my own words, not in the words of an intellectual, because I never was that. I want to start from the beginning.
Jack Scott at the age of 7 was operating in Ireland. He and his mother would be going along in the street car and they would have to get down on the floor because bullets were spraying all over them. What I’m trying to point out here is that Jack Scott has a revolutionary background extending back to a very early age.
Jack Scott never went beyond grade five. What he learned he had to learn himself through personal education. He wasn’t an intellectual raised at the universities.
He came to Canada when he was very young and he participated in some of the demonstrations which were held during the great depression. As a young man, he was called upon to talk to the meetings – sometimes to many thousands of people – and he developed skill at that.
He joined the Canadian Communist Party and he played some role in its organisation. When the Germans attacked Russia in the Second World War, he was already in the Canadian army (he was one of the first over to England). This was contrary to Canadian Communist Party’s policy at that time. While in England, he sent messages back to people in Canada telling them to go on strike and to fight for better conditions because ’when we soldiers come back we want to be able to have a good living, not the kind of living there was during the depression’.
He became a signaller in the Canadian army. One of the duties of a signaller is to direct artillery shells on incoming troops and artillery positions of the enemy. He was decorated in action.
What I’m trying to prove is that Jack Scott did not start from an intellectual background – he had a very good working class history for a period of time.
After leaving the army he became a trade union organiser, I think in both the mines and with the boilmakers. At the time I met him he was a janitor and he was cleaning floors in the revisionist hall in Vancouver. This didn’t seem to be a very dangerous man in my opinion.
When trouble broke out between India and China – the great border dispute – it was Jack Scott who led the split from the Communist Party. He took a clandestine organisation, a secret club of the Communist Party and from this was formed the embryo organisation of the PWM. The PWM led by Scott, then called on other militants to join as individuals, some of them coming in from Trotskyite organisations. It must be recognised that at that time the revisionist line of peaceful coexistence had been officially adopted by the Canadian Communist Party. Therefore to inexperienced people the Trotskyists, who had not officially adopted the peaceful coexistence line in theory, although in practice they were the work horses of the NDP, for whom they ran candidates, provided meeting places, and election campaign headquarters. They distributed leaflets and solicited money from both donations and membership. Because the Trotskyists at that time were not advocating peaceful coexistence, they thereby appeared to the eyes of a political novice to be the more militant leaders of the proletarian vanguard.
Comrade Stalin had been dead for a number of years and Khrushchevite revisionism was being accepted nearly all over the world without challenge from anyone except the Trotskyists. Many, out of the party were unable to stomach the new conditions of membership; were unable to accept democratic centralist leadership from people spouting this line of profane garbage of peaceful coexistence; and were unable to stand in the ranks of a group which was launching vicious attacks on the name and memory of Joseph Stalin. Stalin, the former chairman of the Communist Party of Russia had led successful struggles against Trotsky; the armies of 22 nations seeking to destroy the proletarians of Russia; the consolidation of the first advanced communist state in the history of the world; and finally it was Joseph Stalin who led the Russian people’s fight against the fascists from Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and the white Russian elements during the Second World War. Again it was Stalin, who as a final gesture just prior to his death gave the support to the North Koreans in their heroic defence of their fatherland against the combined onslaught of the capitalist armies operating under the authority of the United Nations.
After Stalin’s death Russia’s support was largely withdrawn from the North Korean struggle. Parts were not arriving for combat airplanes, replacement aircraft were not arriving and General MacArthur was massing an army along the border of North Korea for the final assault. Sorties were already being made across the Yalu River and generals of the U.S. army, seeing that the Khrushchev revisionists were prepared to accept things with folded arms, were openly boasting that they would have the war done quickly and would all be home for Christmas. Things looked dark for communism. Only one communist leader of stature arose to lead the fight against this terrible state of affairs – Mao Tsetung.
When MacArthur’s armies rushed across the Yalu River to overcome North Korea, a painful surprise awaited them. There were new troops standing there, not with folded arms, but gun in hand. One million Chinese soldiers, fresh from chasing out Chiang Kai-shek across the waters to Formosa, now took on the chore of chasing the United Nations forces and the reactionary forces of South Korea. They nearly succeeded. The combined attacks of the Chinese and North Koreans army along with the guerrilla tactics of a people’s war and movement, smashed, terrorized and routed all UN forces on North Korean territory.
Unable to overcome this powerful opposition on ground not suited for naval support from their 7th fleet, U.S. militarists fell back in disarray and were forced to sign a peace treaty. North Korea was preserved by the staunch efforts of its people assisted by the Chinese army and by Mao’s great challenge against revisionism and world imperialism.
Challenged by Mao, exposed to discerning eyes as a trembling traitor to world communism, Khrushchev decided to include Mao on his hate list. Russian technicians were withdrawn from China; engineering projects, such as dams and fuel plants were stopped; even the blueprints were destroyed. Khrushchev tried to achieve thereby the paper destruction of the Chinese means of production. He failed. Building projects were completed without his blueprints, without his technicians. Khrushchev’s attacks on his challenger Mao in China became even more heated even to the point of inciting India to launch an attack on China. A new state of affairs therefore now existed in world communism. Revisionism was being ideologically and physically attacked in the heat of revolutionary discussion. Revisionist leaders were in the frying pan. They were sweating and they didn’t like it. They became vilifiers of Joseph Stalin and Mao. They also began to rewrite the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. The stage was set for a break in the ranks of world communism to become the issue of the day.
New leaders in the countries with communist parties were being pushed or were jumping into the chairmanships of the Marxist-Leninist movements throughout the world. Mao had started the ball rolling and now it was ricocheting from one country to the other, creating sparks throughout the international communist movement. The stage was right for new people’s leaders to step up onto. Unfortunately it was also a perfect moment for an opportunist to jump up there also. Such an opportunist was Jack Scott.
Heretofore, as I explained, his record had seemed above reproach. His position of supporting China in the Chinese-Indian border dispute and his denunciation of Russian revisionism were 100% correct at that time. He was listened to right across Canada. He was touted in the Star Weekly as a dangerous radical bent on establishing the dictatorship of the Canadian proletariat. All over Canada splits were occurring throughout the revisionist party and its dissidents were joining his PWM. It seemed that a clean fresh breeze of revolutionary energy was sweeping the nation.
I joined in Vancouver. Previously I think someone said, I’d spent six months in the revisionists and later six months in the trotskyists getting my political education. Just off hand, I can count twenty two people who at that time in Vancouver were earnest and dedicated followers of Marxism-Leninism. Most of them had never however, read a single line of Mao Tsetung. I myself was just starting to read Mao’s works and I was amazed to find the revisionist book store in Vancouver peddling Mao’s bound volumes for twenty five cents a piece. They were also selling the works of Stalin for two dollars for the whole 13 volumes. I mentioned this to my comrades and they began to snap these up at these rummage sale prices.
At about that time, Mao’s pamphlets and books began arriving at our organisation directly from China, due to the contact we had made with Chinese. The new books of Mao were bringing much more money than the revisionists were charging, by the way. I understood that the original works of Stalin for which I paid the revisionists two dollars now fetch about one hundred and seventy dollars on the open market. Of course the real value is a million times that inflated price. The Mona Lisa is a rag in comparison.
I shall now get back to the point from which I seemed to have been diverted. Jack Scott was a voracious reader. Jack Scott has been described as a walking encyclopaedia on Marxist-Leninist affairs. When I approached him as a pupil and asked him for his comments on Mao’s works he would shrug off the question in irritated fashion and then launch into an attack of the cult of the individual. In the process of doing which he accused Mao Tsetung as attempting to set himself up as a god.
I was inexperienced at the time and under the democratic centralism of the PWM so I accepted a lot of the decisions of Jack Scott and the leadership without question. I was not able to judge at that time, this irritated rhetoric for what it really was, namely that Jack Scott was consciously, deliberately and maliciously allying himself with none other than Nikita Khrushchev; using the same smokescreen of the cult of the individual to attack the greatest living Marxist-Leninist of the movement, that is Mao Tsetung himself.
It was not until many years later that I discovered that Jack Scott had the very same type of assessment of Stalin. That follows. It was strange, or was it, that the only Chinese author studied, and I may say studied repeatedly, and in great detail was the man who wrote How To Be A Good Communist, Liu Shao-chi himself. Time and time again the PWM study circles were forced to defend the theories of that horrible book. At that time I was living in the headquarters and cleaning up and all. I would go cook a pot of stew for my comrades or something like that trying to get away from this study session. Years later, Mao himself exposed this childhood playmate before the eyes of the world and this great individual fell. The other personality, Mao is still around, despite the numerous choruses from hounds shouting cult of the individual. While those doing the shouting are those people interested in listening to their own noise, their slanderous attacks on Chairman Mao, Comrade Stalin, and now in Canada, Hardial Bains – he too is on their hate list, and has the honour to be there.
When Jack Scott, riding on Mao Tsetung’s coattails became the leader of PWM, that group at that time was the vanguard of the Marxist-Leninist groups in Canada. The majority of its members were workers and many of these actual fighters for workers’ rights in trade unions. At least eight of them were delegates to the Vancouver Labour Council and many of them, myself included, participated in many strikes and picket lines.
Together they collected their savings and even mortgaged their property to get the necessary funds together to buy a printing press, a linotype, and all the other publishing equipment required[for a workers newspaper before it can exist. They brought revolutionary films for which China had given them two movie projectors and they showed films about Chinese struggles to thousands of people in Vancouver and across Canada. They held educational and large public meetings as well as small public meetings. They distributed agitational pamphlets. They attended united front demonstrations. They allowed people/groups access to their printing facilities. They published a monthly magazine with a circulation of two thousand. During one federal election they ran a candidate.
During this period there was great enthusiasm and a lot of people were doing active work. I believe this state of affairs also existed in other Canadian cities as well. The time was ripe all across Canada to create a Canadian Communist Party (M-L). The stage was set for Jack Scott to call a national convention to which other M-L groups would be invited and at which he would of course be forced to throw his hat into the ring and try to be elected chairman. Jack Scott, by his very nature, was totally incapable of doing this. This man would rather be chairman of a small sect than a worker in a serious M-L movement that he wasn’t leading. He is incapable of taking his chances in a free election for fear that he may be defeated.
In desperate fear of such a circumstance arising, Jack Scott began to lash out at comrades all over Canada. He was seeing rivals everywhere and attacking them, alienating them and driving them into a state where they would either resign individually or split off in groups.
During most of this period I was working in various provinces – booming, as has been pointed out. In 1969 I returned to Vancouver and again became active in Jack Scott’s PWM. But what a change! Every meeting seemed to offer only one more resignation. The films from China were lost. The film projectors, donated from China, were lost. There were no more public meetings. There were no more educational meetings either. Although there were 3,000 PWM magazines being printed every month, only 100 of these had a local circulation. In other words the PWM magazine was no longer the popular workers’ magazine. Most of the local subscribers were right wingers – the CIA and whatever – who were trying to keep informed.
After that I became an organiser in the Unemployed Citizens’ Welfare Improvement Council (UCWIC). The council held many demonstrations in Vancouver against the Social Credit government, against unemployment, and against Manpower, etc. When I suggested that more could be done if more Marxist-Leninists became involved in organising around unemployment and welfare and in organising the unorganised, I was told there was no-one free to help me. They could not help me because they were engaged in creating a “great masterpiece” of ideology on the history of the Canadian labour movement. They could not engage in anything.
After nine months of gestation, they came out with a magazine on the cover of which there was a picture of an eagle eating a maple leaf. This magazine did not become an instant best-seller, although I am informed that some 6 years later they did finally get rid of the last copies. I found the magazine uniquely dreary. I had lost a lot of faith in the authors by then.
When I returned to PWM in early 1969, the Internationalists were being discussed at every meeting. Some of Jack Scott’s close adherents, – and I am supposed to leave out the names – were boasting of their “revolutionary” actions undertaken against Hardial Bains’ people. No other struggle – except the one for “pure” Canadian unions – had so much attraction for these people. Any move, any offer for common meetings to discuss unity and common actions, was side-stepped, as one would quickly side-step the threatening lunge of a rattlesnake. Jack Scott’s pathological fear of losing his influence if his group was exposed to different leadership ruled out any possibility of this group advancing along Marxist-Leninist lines. The extent to which hatred of a rival would take this man was made most vivid to me one foggy night in North Vancouver.
A car load of us were proceeding to a meeting. En route, somebody looked out the car window and said that Robert Cruise was out there standing, waiting for a bus. A discussion followed between Jack Scott and the people unnamed here as to whether they should turn the car around that cold foggy night and return to the spot where Robert Cruise was standing and beat him up. I was the only one there to argue against this. Although I had never met Robert Cruise (and still don’t know him), I likely would have supported him against my own comrades if they had turned that car around.
One week after this incident, I quit the PWM. I had been advocating that forums and educationals be held in their headquarters – which had a small hall capable of holding some 60 people. For nine months, a whole pregnancy, they had refused saying that they couldn’t possibly hold such a meeting until their line was right, and that their line couldn’t possibly be right until they produced that magazine with the bird’s head eating the maple leaf. At last the thing got printed; at last a meeting could be held. Some friends of mine found a picture of Che Guevara. Che Guevara being recently killed, and we having respect for this fellow who had erred in his assessment of the state of affairs in Bolivia and had paid for this mistaken judgement with his life; we therefore defended his memory and demanded to know why his picture was taken down. At a meeting held that evening, I protested that action – an action of people who had themselves done very little of consequence. Jack Scott said, “I don’t know why there is all this fuss about a picture.” I pointed out that both my friend and myself still thought highly of the memory of Che to which Scott replied that he didn’t think much of such pictures. Gabor Mate suggested (Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that name). Somebody suggested that the picture of Comrade Stalin should also be taken down – and Jack Scott agreed. At this point I got up and resigned – from a group that I had been in for some four years.
To sum up, Jack Scott has always taken the position of trying to stop the formation of a Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). He has consistently fought against those who might have organised, and those who did organise such a party in Canada – namely, Hardial Bains and the Internationalists. And he has consistently, although not always openly, adopted an anti-Mao Tsetung stand. Therefore, he is nothing else but a single-minded, calculating, contemptible reactionary of the first order. His leadership destroyed an embryo Marxist-Leninist party of Canada. The effects upon my good comrades who didn’t know what was going on was nothing less than murderous. Comrade after comrade took to dope or heavy drinking. They became useless skid roaders. Some of them lost their sanity. Some, wounded deeply by the whole experience, attempted to crawl off into obscurity. The possibility of a Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) was not allowed to develop by Jack Scott. It was as if he had embraced the knees of a woman pregnant with new life attempting to stop the life within her body from being born and developing.
It was Hardial Bains who tore his hands away. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), breathed, grew, and is flourishing.