Ross Dowson

Ross Jewitt Dowson (September 17, 1917 – February 17, 2002) was a Canadian Trotskyist political figure.

Dowson joined the Trotskyist movement as a teenager during the Great Depression. The Canadian Trotskyist movement collapsed at the beginning of World War II as leaders such as Jack MacDonald, Maurice Spector and Earle Birney dropped out due to factional disputes. Dowson reorganized the movement near the end of World War II with the founding of the Revolutionary Workers Party (RWP).

Dowson ran for mayor of Toronto nine times in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. He campaigned openly as a Trotskyist, and garnered over 20% of the vote in 1949.

The RWP declined however due to the pressures of the Cold War and ended its activities. Its members joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) as an entrist faction. A split in the Fourth International in 1953 had ramifications in the RWP and in Dowson's own family. His brother Murray and brother-in-law Joe Rosenthal formed a pro-Michel Pablo minority, and split from the RWP to form a Trotskyist tendency within the CCF. It soon disappeared.

Ross Dowson ran for the Canadian House of Commons on two occasions. He was a candidate in a 1957 by-election in the rural riding of Hastings—Frontenac, in which the CCF decided not to run a candidate. Running under the "Labour" label, Dowson received only 266 votes in a two-way race against External Affairs minister Sidney Earle Smith. In the 1958 general election, Dowson was again a candidate in the Toronto riding of Broadview. He placed fourth with 477 votes. This time he ran as a "Socialist" candidate, despite the fact that the democratic socialist CCF also stood a candidate. Dowson also filed his nomination papers as a "Labour" candidate against new Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield in the 1967 Colchester—Hants by-election but withdrew when Elwood Smith entered the race as an independent candidate with informal NDP backing.

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