Canwell Committee

The Interim Committee on Un-American Activities, most commonly known as the Canwell Committee, (1947-1949) was a special investigative committee of the Washington State Legislature which in 1948 investigated the influence of the Communist Party USA in Washington state. Named after its chairman, Albert F. Canwell, the committee concentrated upon communist influence in the Washington Commonwealth Federation and its relationship to the Democratic Party in Washington, as well alleged Communist Party membership of certain faculty members at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The Canwell Committee is remembered as one of a number of state-level investigative committees patterned after the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) of the United States Congress. The committee ultimately published two printed volumes collecting the testimony of witnesses before it. The committee was terminated by the Washington legislature in 1949, following the electoral defeat of its chairman and several of its members in the elections of 1948.

Becoming a state only in November 1889, Washington was a relative latecomer into the United States of America. As was the case in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the Dakota Territory, an indigenous frontier radicalism was prevalent in the state, making the Socialist Party of Washington one of the largest state affiliates of the Socialist Party of America on a per capita basis of the pre-World War I progressive era. Seattle had been the site of a General Strike in February 1919 which had captivated the attention of the nation.

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