page_title: People's Voice (newspaper)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: People's Voice (newspaper) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The doorway of the newspaper "La Clarte", a weekly communist newspaper, padlocked by the police in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Padlock Law (officially called "Act to protect the Province Against Communistic Propaganda") was an Act of the province of Quebec, passed on March 24, 1937 by the Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis, that was intended to prevent the dissemination of communist propaganda. Français&#160;: Un cadenas apposé sur la porte du siège du «Clarté», un journal dont l'orientation idéologique prônait le communisme. Les locaux de cet hebdomadaire étaient situés au 254, rue Sainte-Catherine Est à Montréal (Québec, Canada). Il a été fermé à cause de la Loi du Cadenas promulguée par le Premier ministre Maurice Duplessis dans le but d'enrayer la progression du communisme.
context_page_description: People's Voice is a Canadian English-language newspaper published biweekly by New Labour Press Ltd. The paper's editorial line reflects the viewpoints of the Communist Party of Canada, although it also runs articles by other left-wing voices. Established in 1993 under this name, the paper and online service have a history of ancestral publications dating to the early 1920s, when the first paper of this line was founded by the new Communist Party of Canada.
  Produced in Vancouver and printed at a union press in Hamilton, People's Voice contains news and editorial content related to Canadian and international political issues of government, social movements, and class struggle. It claims to have "the news the corporate media won't print."
context_section_description: Progressive, socialist and trade union newspapers have a long history in Canada, going back to the 19th century. Throughout this history of the socialist and communist press, newspapers have been closed down, restarted, and had many name changes. The development of the "red press" is therefore more complex than normal.
  Various Canadian publications printed translations of Marx, Engels and other radicals and revolutionaries. Many of these publications were attached to local labour movements or ethnic groups. But there was no all-Canada, English-speaking left-wing press until the Communist Party of Canada was founded in 1921, and its leaders decided to publish a newspaper.
  In 1922, The Communist was the first attempt. It was an underground publication that was harassed by the police. The paper never got off the ground and closed after only a few issues. The first successful and legal paper was launched on March 15, 1922, as a broadsheet named The Worker.  During the 1930s, the paper was renamed The Clarion.
  When the paper grew from a weekly into a daily on May 1, 1936, it was renamed as The Daily Clarion, and remained so until June 17, 1939. At that time the Party decided that the fluctuating circulation of 6,000 to 12,000 was not high enough to continue as a daily.  Two weeklies replaced the daily, The Clarion to cover from Ontario eastward, and The Mid-West Clarion from Manitoba westward, excluding British Columbia. In addition, Clarté was the French-language leftist paper in Quebec. State efforts against it began in 1937 with the enactment of the Padlock Law.
  In British Columbia, the only paper distributed was the People's Advocate.  Before being published as the People's Advocate, the paper also went through many changes: it was first known as the B.C. Worker's News; the first edition of that paper appeared on January 18, 1935. It was changed to the People's Advocate on April 2, 1937. It was banned in May 1940, with the successor Vancouver Clarion publishing illegally until summer 1941. The People, a newly emerged legal paper, was first published on October 13, 1942. This paper changed its name to the Pacific Tribune.
  The Clarion was banned on November 21, 1939. The ban was due to publishing an anti-war editorial during wartime, breaking regulation 15 under the Defense of Canada Regulations. This was several months before the Communist Party was banned in June 1940, when the Canadian government issued an Order in Council.
  Shortly after being shut down by the Dominion government, the paper began printing (at first) underground under the name Canadian Tribune. The first copies were mimeographed. Officially the Canadian Tribune began on January 20, 1940. The B.C paper changed its name to the Pacific Tribune to appear as a local edition. The two publications were weeklies. The Canadian edition was briefly a daily before returning to the previous weekly schedule and was later converted to tabloid format.
  "The Trib", as it was known to supporters and detractors, became a standard voice of the left over several decades. It maintained a base of subscriptions in Canada and internationally that reached wider than the membership of the Communist Party of Canada.
  The present incarnation of the paper began, first, with the amalgamation of the Canadian Tribune and its second Pacific edition in the early 1990s, during the internal crisis in the Communist Party. The combined paper became The Tribune.  During this time, the paper became part of a legal battle and as a result, only several issues were printed. With the split in the Communist Party and the establishment of the Cecil-Ross Society, two publications resulted: The New Times or "TNT" for short, was the direct continuation of The Tribune. Its publication was very short lived.
  Having lost its newspaper, the Communist Party decided to start its own version of Canadian Tribune. The remaining staff still in the party began to publish People's Voice in March 1993 as a tabloid; it continues to the present. The paper was published on a monthly basis until 1998, when it began to print
caption: Persecution of Clarté under the Padlock Law
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