Ross Dowson - Knowledge

696:. This group came to be known as the "Forward Group" after the name of its newspaper. The group grew initially, but soon declined. By 1989, it had been reduced to a small group of friends around Dowson when he suffered a devastating stroke that left him unable to speak or write for the rest of his life. 232:

in 1942 and rose to the rank of second lieutenant. He recruited two other soldiers to the Trotskyist movement and organized a successful strike for better pay by soldiers who had been assigned to lay and tamp train tracks in southern Ontario. Dowson was discharged from the army in December 1944.

760:

Professionally, Dowson was a machinist as a youth and later a lithographer and printer by training, but spent almost his entire working life as a full-time paid staffer (at times the only one) for the organization, for many years living in the organization's bookstore. For the new generation of

708:, which labelled Dowson a "subversive" and monitored and attempted to interfere with his activities. As part of a 1972 action code named "Operation Checkmate", the RCMP engaged in an attempt to disrupt and break-up the LSA and destroy the credibility of Dowson and another LSA leader, 31: 343:

rejected the offer saying, "In the unlikely event of Mr. Dowson winning the by-election he would certainly find no welcome from the CCF and no opportunity of aligning himself with us." Running under the "Labour" label, Dowson received only 266 votes in a two-way race against

190:

that Dowson "got his politics from the hungry thirties, seeing working-class people share what they had while the upper class kept what they had to themselves... "He believed in the social ownership and democratic control of the wealth of society."

221:, dropped out to focus on being a poet and because he disagreed with the Trotskyist position on the war. The movement suffered a further blow when the Socialist Workers League (as the Workers party was now called) was declared illegal under the 177:

and brought Ross along to meetings. The pair set up the York Memorial High School Spartacus Club. The younger Dowson joined the party and declared to his mother at the age of 17 that he intended to spend his life as a

405: 761:

recruits in the 1960s and early 1970s, he was the major link to the older generation of class-struggle militants and Marxists who had built the labour and socialist movements in previous decades. He suffered a

251:

nine times in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. He campaigned openly as a Trotskyist under the slogan “Vote Dowson, Vote for a Labor Mayor, Vote for the Trotskyist Candidate” and garnered 11% of the vote in the

723:

called a "secret war" against Dowson and the LSA since 1960 and that these actions involved what the OPP described as "at least the apparent commission of crime ... by the RCMP security service."

616:(NDP) at its founding. In that year, the Trotskyist movement relaunched itself as the "League for Socialist Action" (LSA), with branches in Toronto and Vancouver and Dowson as national secretary. 398: 733:

intervened to quash attempts by Dowson and Riddell to lay charges against the RCMP on the basis that such a prosecution was not in the public interest and had no chance of success. The

680:

movement in the NDP. Dowson moved towards a position that held that Canadian nationalism was progressive against American imperialism, a view that put him in the minority in the LSA.

500: 391: 745: 639: 284:, run by Dowson, where they would also hold meetings and organize their activities. In order to save money, Dowson lived in the bookstore and lived a spartan lifestyle. 628: 1124:

Last-Minute Entry: Smith's Acclamation Thwarted by Dowson The Globe and Mail (1936-Current); Oct 22, 1957; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail pg. 1

493: 913:

Palmer, Bryan D. (Spring 2015). "A Tate Gallery for the New Left: Portraits, Landscapes, and Abstracts in the Revolutionary Activism of the 1950s and 1960s".

651: 1160:

Results in Ontario Ridings Can Decide Federal Vote The Globe and Mail (1936-Current); Mar 31, 1958; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail pg. 1

300: 627:. The LSA grew during the student radicalization of the late 1960s, bringing youth into the movement. He helped shape the national movement in Canada 339:, in which the CCF decided not to run a candidate. After Dowson said that he would be willing to join the CCF caucus should he be elected, CCF leader 1151:

Smith Is Winner In By-Election By Big Margin The Globe and Mail (1936-Current); Nov 5, 1957; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail pg. 1

486: 737:

overturned McMurtry's decision in 1983 allowing Dowson to commence a private prosecution but in 1985, the charges were dismissed by lower courts.

689: 1142:

Dowson Finds No Welcome To CCF Ranks The Globe and Mail (1936-Current); Oct 28, 1957; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail pg. 2

1196: 291:

in 1953 had ramifications in the RWP and in Dowson's own family. Ross Dowson and the majority of the group sided with the faction led by

1385: 1291: 643: 534: 442: 296: 1133:

The Price of Democracy The Globe and Mail (1936-Current); Oct 23, 1957; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail pg. 6

315:

minority, and split from the RWP in 1954 to form a Trotskyist tendency within the CCF. It disappeared by the end of the decade.

1370: 749: 688:

Dowson's faction was defeated at the LSA's 1973 convention and, in early 1974, he and about 20 supporters left the LSA and the

513: 359: 150:

Dowson was born on September 4, 1917, the third of what was eventually a family of seven children in a working-class family in

139: 566: 345: 273: 237: 199: 170: 106: 97: 1380: 236:

Dowson was elected secretary of the Socialist Workers League in October 1944, and reorganized the movement, founding the

174: 1335:

Ross Dowson v. RCMP : a vivid episode in the ongoing struggle for freedom of thought and social justice in Canada

1375: 1365: 1274: 1109: 1059: 1009: 984: 377:

by-election but withdrew when Elwood Smith entered the race as an independent candidate with informal NDP backing.

257: 253: 806: 790:

and his sisters Joyce (Dowson) Rosenthal and Lois (Dowson) Bédard were also active in the Trotskyist movement.

613: 508: 355: 1360: 705: 222: 369:

Dowson also filed his nomination papers as a "Labour" candidate against new Progressive Conservative leader

217:

had already left due to factional disputes and disagreements and the leader at the time the war broke out,

748:, that were instrumental in the eventual replacement of the RCMP's security service with a new agency, the 362:. He placed fourth with 477 votes. This time he ran as a "Socialist" candidate, despite the fact that the 727: 332: 324: 210: 179: 158:. His father was a printer, an atheist and an anarchist sympathizer and his mother was a stenographer. 1222: 802: 716: 693: 647: 583: 101: 1025: 308: 734: 551: 1267: