Comrades and Scoundrels

In Comrades and Scoundrels, William Krehm is presented as the leader of the League for a Revolutionary Workers’ Party, an organization that broke away from mainstream Trotskyism in the early 1930s and was composed largely of young Jewish intellectuals in New York, Toronto, and Montreal. With detailed records secretly preserved by the children of party members, this book traces the group’s persistent conflicts with rival Trotskyist factions, the Communist Parties of Canada and the United States, and local police forces.

Comrades and Scoundrels follows Krehm’s departure for Europe at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, his arrest by Spanish Republican authorities during the revolutionary moment evoked in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, and his continued activism despite months of imprisonment. Upon his return to Canada, Krehm organized an anti-fascist resistance movement and was arrested for protesting a National Unity Party rally at Massey Hall. Through this carefully reconstructed account, the book offers a rich portrayal of political struggle and organizational practice within small revolutionary groups during the Great Depression.