14 Facts About Tim Buck

Timothy Buck was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada from 1929 until 1962.

Together with Ernst Thalmann of Germany, Maurice Thorez of France, Palmiro Togliatti of Italy, Earl Browder of the United States, and Harry Pollitt of Great Britain, Buck was one of the top leaders of the Joseph Stalin-era Communist International.

Tim Buck became involved in the labour movement and joined the International Association of Machinists and radical working-class politics in Toronto.

Tim Buck claimed to have been present at the founding convention of the Communist Party of Canada, though this is disputed.

Not initially a leading member of the party, Tim Buck came to prominence as a supporter of Joseph Stalin, and became General Secretary in 1929, after the old party leadership had been purged for supporting Leon Trotsky, and others removed for supporting Bukharin.

Tim Buck remained General Secretary until 1962 and was a committed supporter of the Soviet line throughout his tenure.

In 1928, Tim Buck was expelled from the International Association of Machinists for being a member of the Communist Party of Canada.

Tim Buck was imprisoned from 1932 to 1934 in Kingston Penitentiary where he was the target of an apparent assassination attempt in his cell the night after a prison riot.

Tim Buck ran for a seat in the House of Commons on five occasions and once for the Toronto city Board of Control, all unsuccessfully.

Tim Buck lost to Cooperative Commonwealth Federation candidate Abraham Albert Heaps.

Tim Buck retired as general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada in 1962 but remained in the largely ceremonial position of party chairman until his death in 1973.

Canadian Trotskyist Ian Angus criticized Yours in Struggle with regards to accusations that Tim Buck had stated misinformation with regards to the purging of alternate voices during his early rise in the party.

Tim Buck continued this criticism with his 1981 book Canadian Bolsheviks: The Early Years of the Communist Party of Canada, which analyzed the formation and rise of the party, but felt that Tim Buck had betrayed it by promoting himself and a strongly pro-Soviet line.

Tim Buck died in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on March 11,1973, at age 82.