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Ross Jewitt Dowson (September 4, 1917 - February 17, 2002) was a Canadian Marxist, steelworker, newspaper publisher, and bookstore proprietor. He was the most prominent Trotskyist in Canada for much of the 20th Century. A pioneer of the political tactic of entryism, he was the leader of the League for Socialist Action (LSA) throughout its many iterations from 1939 to 1972. He closely associated himself with the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and its successor, the New Democratic Party (NDP), despite being rejected by those parties on multiple occasions.

Dowson reached the height of his electoral success when he received nearly twenty percent of the vote in the 1949 Toronto mayoral election. To date, it is the best result for a Trotskyist candidate in any North American election. Dowson's influence was negligible in broader Canadian politics, and even among Canadian Marxists his support for Trotskyism left him as a fringe figure; at the height of its popularity in the 1960s, his organization had at most four hundred members nationwide. Despite this, he was a vigorous supporter of various progressive and Canadian nationalist causes.

In the early 1970s Dowson lost control of the LSA to its New Left faction, ending his decades-long tenure as the singular leader of Canadian Trotskyism. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, Dowson was engaged in a prolonged legal battle with the RCMP. In 1989 he suffered a stroke which left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. His health slowly deteriorated for thirteen years until his death in 2002.

Early life
Ross Jewitt Dowson was born in Weston, Ontario on September 14, 1917. He was the third of seven children. His father Walter was a self-educated printer, militant atheist, and anarchist sympathiser. Walter encouraged his children to act independently and read radical literature, such as the works of Jack London and Upton Sinclair. From a young age Dowson was tasked with escorting his father back home from work to make sure he did not spend his paycheque on alcohol. His mother Mary was the daughter of a school principle who worked as a stenographer to supplement the family's meager income. Mary unsuccessfully encouraged the Dowson children to undergo a religious education.

Dowson came of age during the Great Depression. Due to their low income the family mostly lived off barley soup, canned beans, and bread and jam. Dowson frequently witnessed extreme poverty, strikes, hunger marches, and police repression. This, along with his father's influence, politically radicalized him. As a teenager he began accompanying his older brother Murray to meetings of the Workers' Party of Canada (WPC). The WPC was a Trotskyist organization founded by Jack MacDonald and Maurice Spector. MacDonald and Spector had been leading members of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) until they were expelled by the Stalinist majority for their support of Trotsky. Dowson began attending classes on scientific socialism at the Mount Dennis Spartacus Club, and by the age of 17 he decided he would dedicate his life to being a Trotskyist revolutionary.

As a member of the WPC, Dowson raised money for the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, a Canadian International Brigade fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He also supported various strikes, organized meetings, sold copies of the WPC's newspaper The Vanguard, and learned how to operate a Gestetner copying machine. During summers he worked at a Canada Packers plant, where he unsuccessfully sought to organize a union. Around this time he became personally acquainted with Spector.

Dowson participated in the rivalry between the WPC and CPC. Both parties believed they could be the leaders of a revolutionary movement of workers made unemployed by the Great Depression. The two parties competed with each other to be seen as that leader. This rivalry often turned violent, and WPC members selling copies of The Vanguard claimed that they were attacked by CPC street gangs. Ultimately, the unemployed never formed a single coherent political movement as the WPC and CPC had hoped. The extent of political dissatisfaction with the Great Depression were the formation of the democratic socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the right-wing populist Social Credit Party as alternatives to the traditional Liberal and Conservative parties. All four rejected the Bolshevism espoused by the WPC and CPC.

First experiment with entryism
Dowson graduated from high school in June of 1936. He took on a full-time job to support his family after his father retired. Despite working full time, Dowson remained active in the WPC.

That same year, MacDonald retired from active politics and Spector moved to the United States to take a leadership position in the Socialist Workers Party. In their absence, poet Earle Birney became the party's de facto leader.

In the mid-1930s Dowson formed an unsanctioned Co-operative Commonwealth Youth Movement (CCYM) club and unsuccessfully requested a charter from the CCYM executive committee. At a 1937 WPC convention the party's membership voted 35 to 20 to dissolve itself and have its members join the CCF to promote Trotskyism from within the party, but without openly identifying as Trotskyists. Dowson voted with the majority but was sympathetic toward the minority position. Dowson joined the CCF but quickly became uncomfortable with concealing his true beliefs, and eventually began openly identifying as a Trotskyist. Dowson, Birney, and other identified Trotskyists were expelled from the CCF in 1938.

Second World War
After their expulsion from the CCF the former members of the WPC wanted to regroup. The minority which had voted against dissolving had continued to operate the WPC but had since fallen into inactivity. Rather than reactivate the WPC it was decided a new party would be created to replace it. As a result, Dowson became a founding member of the new Socialist Workers' League (SWL). However, shortly after the SWL's formation the Second World War began. Dowson and much of the rest of the SWL opposed Canadian entry into the war, claiming it was a competition between two imperialist-capitalist cliques. Birney rejected the SWL's moral equivocation of the Axis and the Allies and left the party to enlist in the Canadian Army. Because of their anti-war position, the SWL was banned by the Canadian government under the Defence of Canada Regulations. The party was further damaged by Trotsky's assassination in 1940, leaving the party without its ideological founder.

During the war Dowson stepped in as the acting leader of the SWL and illegally continued its operations. Dowson and the SWL's remaining members took factory jobs in order to circulate Trotskyist propaganda within industrial unions. Dowson also continued writing and publishing the SWL's newspaper, Socialist Action, and distributed copies around Toronto. Additionally, Dowson travelled to Vancouver to reconnect with the Trotskyist movement there. While in Vancouver he participated in a protest against a wartime no-strike pledge made by the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada. Throughout the course of the war Dowson reportedly developed a strong suspicion against dissenters in the SWL, believing they would either abandon the party or leave it paralyzed through interminable debate.

After returning to Toronto, Dowson had to enlist in the Canadian Army as a precondition of employment. Despite his doctor's assurances that he would be rejected because of his flat feet, he surprisingly passed the physical examination and was accepted into the army. Because of his accidental enlistment Socialist Action ended publication. For the rest of the war Dowson was stationed at Camp Borden, Ontario. While there he was promoted to corporal then second lieutenant against his will. He unsuccessfully petitioned the army to be demoted back to private so that he would have more free time to promote Trotskyism among the ranks. While at Camp Borden Dowson successfully recruited two soldiers. Late into the war Dowson led a protest against the army's policy of using soldiers to do civilian work while being paid with army wages rather than the higher civilian wage. This was commonly done when the army assigned soldiers to build railroads. While on leave, Dowson attended a CCF picnic to inform party leader M.J. Coldwell of the practice. Coldwell went on to denounce it in the House of Commons, resulting in the Mackenzie King Government ending the policy and paying soldiers with civilian wages for domestic infrastructure work.

As the war approached its conclusion, the SWL prepared for the end of its wartime ban. At a convention in Montreal with about fifty members in attendance, the SWL formally elected Dowson as the party's leader pending his discharge from the army, which occurred in December of 1944.

Trotskyist leader
The election of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom and a series of major strikes in Canada inspired the SWL to rebrand as the Revolutionary Workers' Party (RWP) in 1946. Dowson began publication of a new paper, Labour Challenge, with himself as the chief writer and editor. Dowson also recruited two founding members of the CPC who had become disillusioned with Stalinism, Max Armstrong and Malcolm Bruce. However, leadership of the party remained dominated by Dowson and his siblings.

Dowson optimistically predicted that the CCF would form government shortly after the war. Instead, the Gouzenko Affair, the following Red Scare, and the beginning of the Cold War heavily damaged the credibility of the Canadian left, ruining the CCF's chances of being elected. Dowson was disappointed by the continued dominance of the Liberal Party and turned his attention to municipal politics.

Mayoral bids, 1948-1952
Murray Dowson had run in several municipal elections in Toronto for a variety of positions. After he moved out of town, Ross Dowson took his place as the RWP's perennial candidate.

In the 1948 Toronto mayoral election Dowson was the only opponent of Mayor Robert Hood Saunders. An enormously popular incumbent, the Globe and Mail quipped that the only way Saunders could lose would be if he robbed a bank, pushed an old lady into Toronto Bay, or declared himself a communist. Dowson ran on a platform of putting the entire tax burden on the wealthy and abolishing taxes for the working class. Dowson also made an issue of the fact that the election's ballots were printed by non-unionised workers, which violated a city by-law. Dowson believed he could win the election if the city's unions supported him, but they collectively chose not to endorse a candidate despite a "sizeable minority" advocating for him. As the campaign progressed, Dowson protested that two of his canvassers had been arrested and that their campaign literature had been confiscated. The Toronto Police Service denied the claim. In a separate incident, two CPC campaign workers attacked Harry Clairmont, the RWP candidate for the board of control (the attackers were unaware of Clairmont's identity). As expected, Saunders won a landslide victory. Dowson partially attributed his defeat to a "media blackout" of his campaign.

Following the election, Dowson went on a tour of western Canada. On the return trip he tried to pass through the American Midwest as a shortcut but was denied entry into the United States.

Dowson encouraged RWP members to strategically vote for the CCF in the 1949 Canadian federal election.

Dowson made a second attempt at the mayoralty in the 1949 Toronto mayoral election, running as the only opponent of Mayor Hiram E. McCallum. The main issue of the campaign was a proposal supported by McCallum to hold mayoral elections biannually instead of annually. Dowson was strongly opposed to the change, calling it "[an] ugly trend toward totalitarianism." Dowson also campaigned on low taxes and high wages for Toronto's workers and removing property ownership as a requirement to vote. Dowson made a point of distancing himself from CPC-endorsed candidates running for down-ballot positions. On election day Dowson won nearly twenty percent of the vote. His unusually high total was attributed to McCallum's unpopular stance in favour of a biannual term rather than it being any show of support for Trotskyism.

Dowson ran for mayor once in again in the January 1950 Toronto mayoral election, campaigning on rent control and union empowerment. The Globe and Mail described Dowson's third bid as being "purely for propaganda purposes; to keep his objective of 'the overthrow of capitalism' before the community." The city's unions once again refused to support his candidacy. With his re-election practically guaranteed, McCallum instead campaigned against Marxists running for city council or the board of control. McCallum won a landslide victory, easily defeating retired police officer Charles Mahoney and Dowson, who placed third.

Dowson announced he would not run in the December 1950 Toronto mayoral election so that the RWP could focus its resources on Ford Brand's campaign to be elected to the board of control. When asked to comment on the candidates for mayor, Dowson stated that "For the workers there is no choice between the windy Liberal demagogue, Lamport, and the incumbent, Tory Mayor McCallum."

Split in the Fourth International
The RWP and Labour Challenge officially dissolved in 1952. Dowson announced that the Canadian political environment was unfavourable to a revolutionary organization, and that the former RWP membership would continue to push for Trotskyism from within the CCF. The former members of the RWP who continued to remain active in the Trotskyist movement were informally known as The Club.

The following year, the Fourth International suffered a major split which in turn caused a schism within The Club. Following the Second World War, the Fourth International had been led by Greek Trotskyist Michel Pablo. By the 1950s Pablo believed that a Third World War was imminent, and called on Trotskyists to dissolve their parties and join more mainstream leftist parties in order to influence foreign policy as much as possible to avert war. Pablo's position was especially controversial in Western Europe and North America, where there were more developed Trotskyist parties. Pablo's opponents formed a new faction named the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The ICFI ultimately withdrew from the Fourth International, forming an independent Trotskyist organization. Dowson supported the ICFI, but many within The Club did not. A faction including Murray Dowson and Joe Rosenthal split from The Club to form their own Trotskyist group loyal to the Fourth International, the Committee for the Socialist Regroupment of Canada. The split reduced The Club to a handful of members across the country, with the Toronto branch consisting mostly of Dowson and his immediate family.

In the gap period after the dissolution of the RWP and the split in the Fourth International, Dowson was active as a member of the Toronto Tenant-Ratepayers' Association.

Dowson made a fourth bid for mayor in the 1955 Toronto mayoral election. His campaign was described as a "sideshow" to the race between Nathan Phillips and Roy E. Belyea, two longtime rivals on city council who were both running for mayor. During the campaign Dowson accused nearly every candidate for mayor, city council, and board of control of being criminally negligent. Dowson campaigned on slum clearance, strict enforcement of health and housing by-laws, affordable housing, and opposition to a two-year mayoral term and the construction of a new city hall. Because of his frequently expressed support for the CCF during the campaign, the party's executive issued a public statement denouncing any attempt by Dowson to associate with them. Dowson placed a very distant third behind runner-up Belyea and winner Phillips.

After the 1955 election and the expulsion of 15 Trotskyists from the CCF, Dowson founded the Socialist Education League (SEL), a non-party organization designed to advocate for Trotskyism while supporting the CCF during elections. The former Vancouver branch of the RWP formed the Socialist Information Centre (SIC) in conjunction with the SEL. Dowson created an accompanying newspaper to the SEL titled Workers' Vanguard, but for the first time since the 1930s he did not serve as chief editor. During this period he also dedicated much of his time and energy to supporting the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Dowson's organization was not the only leftist group to suffer in the 1950s; it had also been compromising for the CPC. The Soviet invasion of Hungary, a report on widespread antisemitism in the Soviet Union by J.B. Salsberg, and Nikita Khrushchev's rejection of Stalinism in his Secret Speech all prompted widespread abandonment of the CPC. Dowson tried to recruit former CPC members to little success. Dowson also tried to expand SEL membership by travelling from city to city with supporters to sell subscriptions of Workers' Vanguard. During the trip the RCMP broke into their vehicles, stealing subscription records and other material.

Dowson ran for mayor yet again in 1956 as the only opposition to Phillips. The election was characterized by very high voter apathy and low turnout. As the only anti-Phillips candidate Dowson did relatively well with eleven percent of the vote.

Parliamentary bids, board of control bid, and mayoral bid
In the absence of any other candidate, Dowson declared he would run against Progressive Conservative Sidney Earle Smith in the Hastings—Frontenac by-election. Dowson announced that he would caucus with the CCF if elected, prompting M.J. Coldwell to issue a statement stating "In the unlikely event of Mr. Dowson winning the bye-election [sic] he would certainly find no welcome from the CCF and no opportunity of aligning himself with us." Smith won with nearly nighty-eight percent of the vote.

Dowson announced his intention to run in Broadview in the 1958 Canadian federal election. A highly conservative riding, Dowson called on the CCF to not run a candidate in the riding so that he could serve as a symbolic socialist candidate. The CCF ran their own candidate, with Dowson ultimately placing a very distant fourth.

Rather than run for mayor again, Dowson ran for board of control in the 1958 Toronto municipal election. Running on a platform of anti-corruption and eviction protections, he placed second-to-last.

By the late 1950s, most member of Committee for the Socialist Regroupment of Canada had rejoined Dowson's organization in its SEL iteration.

Peak of influence
In 1961 the CCF merged with the Canadian Labour Congress to form the NDP. Dowson attended the new party's founding convention, where he supported the leadership bid of Hazen Argue. Dowson supported Argue because of his opposition to Canadian involvement in NATO, and because of a mistaken belief that Argue had generally further left policy positions than the other leadership candidate, Tommy Douglas. In fact, while he supported active Canadian membership in NATO, Douglas was generally to the left of Argue on other issues; after losing to Douglas in the leadership race, Argue defected to the Liberal Party in protest of what he saw as the NDP's overly-sympathetic attitude toward organized labour.

That same year the SEL reunited with the SIC to form the League for Socialist Action (LSA). Yet another new publication, Labour Challenge, was also created. The purpose of the reunification was to create a single Trotskyist organization to better coordinate entryism within the NDP. An autonomous youth branch, the Young Socialists (YS), was also established. Because of his visibility as a Trotskyist, Dowson no longer personally engaged in entryism, but advised LSA and YS members in their own attempts.

The LSA enjoyed greater success in the 1960s than any of its previous iterations had achieved, with membership expanding to between 350 and 400. Just as he had begun to delegate the management of Workers' Vanguard in the 1950s, Dowson began to delegate the day-to-day operations of the party, with Pat Schulz became the LSA's chief organizer in Toronto.

Encouraged members to go overseas

Camp Poundmaker

Loss of leadership
In the late 1960s, Dowson decided to retire as the Executive Secretary of the LSA to make way for a younger generation. Former YS member John Riddell succeeded him in the office.

After stepping down, Dowson moved to France to work fulltime for the Fourth International. However, he continued to monitor LSA and YS activities, and quickly grew dismayed at the ideological changes being displayed in Labour Challenge. He returned to Canada after less than a year abroad in an effort to ideologically correct the LSA.

After stepping down Dowson moved to Europe where he began to work fulltime for the Fourth International. From Europe he kept a close eye on proceedings of the

Legal battle with the RCMP
In late 1977 it was revealed that the RCMP had spied on members of the Waffle faction of the Ontario New Democratic Party (ONDP). The RCMP had been investigating "subversive elements penetrating the NDP through the Waffle in order to gain more respectability, credibility, and influence." An RCMP report named the LSA as an example of subversive influence, and made a reference to Dowson as its leader. Dowson retained the services of lawyer Harry Kopyto and sued the RCMP for slander for labeling him a subversive.

In order to pay his legal fees, Dowson created the Socialist Rights Defence Fund and solicited donations. The case became a civil rights cause célèbre and Dowson received donations from

The RCMP retained Pierre Genest as its lawyer in the slander case. Genest claimed that the charge was vexatious and frivolous. He requested that the charge be dismissed on the grounds that the statement had been made between state officials and was therefore legally privileged. Judge Campbell Grant ruled in favour of the RCMP. Grant agreed with Genest that RCMP business fell within parliamentary business, and therefore received absolute privilege. As a result, the contents of any statement made by the RCMP could not be used as the grounds for a lawsuit.

Concurrent with the slander case was an investigation into the RCMP by the Royal Commission on Confidentiality of Health Records (RCCHR). Dowson accused the RCMP of illegally obtaining John Riddell's medical records and sending anonymous letters to LSA members detailing the psychiatric treatments that he had received. Despite the accusation, Dowson also claimed that Riddell had not actually undergone psychiatric treatment. During the investigation the RCMP admitted to distributing the letters. Likewise, a RCMP superintendent testified that the letters had been written based on information provided from private medical records, and that it could not be ruled out that an RCMP informant had access to the medical records. However, according to the Official Secrets Act and previous Supreme Court rulings, the RCMP could not be compelled to release any documentation, nor could the RCCHR inquire into RCMP methods or policies. Based on the documentation the RCMP chose to provide, Judge Horace Krever ruled that they had not accessed Riddell's medical records, although he stated that "[there was still] some question in my mind about the validity of some conclusions drawn."

Stroke and death
Words go here.

Personal life
Dowson had various hobbies. He was a skilled amateur photographer and tennis player. He was interested in architecture, especially the Bauhaus school of design.

Electoral record