Between 1929 and 1932, a number of economic, political, and social events coalesced to focus F.R. Scott’s attention upon the deteriorating social conditions of early twentieth-century Canada. On August 11, 1931, the attorney general of Ontario justified the arrest of Tim Buck, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC), as well as that of a number of other prominent Communist Party members, by applying a long disused amendment to the Criminal Code originally designed to combat seditious revolutionaries following the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 (Horn, Headnotes 4-5). The draconian Section 98 and its blanket proscription of what it calls "unlawful association[s]" (qtd. in Scott, "Freedom" 176) was anathema to Scott because it essentially resulted in a "permanent restriction of the rights of association, freedom of discussion, printing and distribution of literature…unequalled in the history of Canada and probably of any British country" ("Trial" 512-13). For Scott, the very existence of such an oppressive piece of legislation underlines the need for a close re-examination of "the nature of our right to free speech and the extent of the present restrictions upon it" ("Freedom" 169). On December 11, 1931, the British Parliament enacted the Statute of Westminster, a piece of legislation designed to clarify the heretofore ill-defined powers of the Dominion governments and to provide the former colonies with greater legislative autonomy. For Scott, however, the statute was far from ideal because it neither replaced the Privy Council as the court of last appeal for Canadians nor provided the Canadian Parliament with the unilateral power to repeal or amend the British North America Act. "[H]andicapped by its ignorance of Canada" ("Development" 246) and its insensitivity to the intentions of the Fathers of Confederation for a strong central government (232-33), the Privy Council was often at odds with the opinions of the Supreme Court of Canada (see "Privy Council and Minority"), and thus it became a source of injustice and bureaucratic confusion ("Constitutional Law" 665). Of course the most significant event of the 1930s for Scott and his contemporaries was the Great Depression. The pre-existing maldistribution of wealth, the woefully inadequate social welfare structure, and the ill-conceived laissez-faire policies of the King and Bennett governments [Page 33] exacerbated the economic collapse in Canada and gave rise to a constellation of socialistic political reform movements (Horn, League 10), including the League for Social Reconstruction and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. By endeavouring to educate a disillusioned citizenry about the benefits of a socialised economy, Scott and his colleagues hoped to offset the capitalist rhetoric of the nation’s mainstream leaders¹ and to promote genuine social change. Scott writes:

The day of "rugged individualism" and "private enterprise" has gone, Scott adds, "destroyed as much by big business itself as by direct governmental interference" (5).

Although on his own and under the auspices of the LSR Scott published thousands of pages of letters, articles, pamphlets, and books devoted to his ideas about the constitution, civil liberties, and a socialised economy, the economic crisis of the Great Depression resulted in a dearth of poetical publications by Scott (and his contemporaries) throughout the 1930s. Scott did manage, however, to publish two important sequences of poems in the Canadian Forum, one of the few organs during this time that continued to provide "ample space to poetry, fiction and the best work of Canadian artists" (Granatstein 374; compare Heenan 95). "An Anthology of Up-to-Date Canadian Poetry" and "Social Notes" received mixed reviews. Although some critics applaud Scott’s "sharp, controlled irony" (MacKay 97) and his prudent avoidance of the "dreary [rhetorical] apparatus" of some of his contemporaries (Brown 271), others contend that the poetry is little more than "C.C.F. propaganda…divided into irregular lines" (Burns 262). One anonymous reviewer, who disparagingly refers to Scott as "one of the C.C.F.’s chief Brain-trusters" (Rev. of Overture 33), is particularly uncharitable:

To charge Scott with class hatred or propagandism, however, is to misread the "Anthology" and "Social Notes" and to misunderstand radically their place in the poet’s oeuvre. It is much more accurate to recognize these pieces as a manifestation of Scott’s growing conviction that, because "[e]verything in Canada was shifting and changing" during the 1930s, poetry too must shift and change if it is to "reflect or deal with the dreadful conditions" of this "very formative period" of Canadian history. By dispensing with the obfuscating "décor" of poetry—its inhibiting "niceness," its antiquated preoccupation with rhyme and syntax—in favour of a "more stark, more direct" kind of writing—one in which "vividness and intensity" supercedes rhetorical gimmickry (qtd. in Wayne and MacKinnon 16)—Scott hoped to lay bare in the "Anthology" and "Social Notes" the often ugly social results of the economic crises infecting Canadian society, to eliminate supererogatory verbal impedimenta and "write…damn plain words nude" ("O Tempora" 12). Scott’s use of satire as a "serious poetic element" (qtd. in Wayne and MacKinnon 16) both magnifies the horror of these crises and tacitly suggests a more socially just alternative. In his interview with Vincent Tovell, Scott explains:

Scott feels compelled to call into question what he sees as the injustices of his society—in his interview with Michael Heenan he remarks, "you couldn’t live in the 1930s and look at the world around you and not have some form of contrary statement to make" (qtd. in 96)—and satire enables him to do so subtly, without having to resort to propaganda or inflammatory rhetoric (see Scott and Smith xv-xvi). The "Anthology" and "Social Notes" thus complement Scott’s expository writing of the 1930s by offering an amplification and distillation of the ideas he articulates at greater lengths in the voluminous letters, articles, pamphlets, and books.

That the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council did not cease to be the court of last appeal in Canada even after the promulgation of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 was a problem for thinkers like Scott because, by privileging provincial powers over Dominion jurisdiction, its unappealable decisions contradicted the intentions of the Fathers of Confederation for a strong central government. In "The Development of Canadian Federalism," [Page 35] Scott draws liberally from the Confederation Debates to show that "[t]he basis for the distribution of legislative powers" is "clear and definite" (232). By "consistently favour[ing] the provinces at the expense of the Dominion" (247), however, the Privy Council "forces upon Canada the American type of constitution with its state residuary power, which we carefully and particularly avoided in 1867" (240). For Scott, the Privy Council fares even worse in the complex domain of minority rights. In "The Privy Council and Minority Rights," Scott systematically reviews the Privy Council decisions of a number of landmark minority rights cases (670-73) to show that "no additional protection has ever been secured for the minority in Canada by the appeal to the foot of the throne" (674). It is provincial rights, not minority rights, that the Privy Council seems preoccupied with safeguarding:

Scott contends that the Supreme Court of Canada would be a more impartial arbiter of justice, since its geographical proximity "compels a more cautious attitude and a more thorough deliberation" (677), it commands a greater understanding of Canada’s complex federalism ("Development" 246), and it results in less jurisdictional confusion and fewer wasted public resources ("Constitutional Law" 664-65).

In "Coming Home," a poem from "Social Notes," Scott highlights the names of two oceangoing vessels to emphasize that Canada’s subservience to Great Britain seems less inherently democratic than even the Communist system:

Whereas the Soviets, arguably, can rely upon internal co-operation to sail their ship of state with autonomy, Canada must depend upon the good will of the Old Country to help it navigate the uncertain waters of 1930s geopolitics.

The need for Canada to make its own constitutional decisions became increasingly important as Europe drew towards another major war. The First World War was still a vivid memory for Scott, whose brother perished at the Somme in 1916 (Djwa, Politics 38; see Scott, "For R. A. S."), and in "The Hero" he articulates how futile an endeavour that conflict was for Canada:

The poem ends on this line, suggesting that for his troubles the ex-soldier has only joblessness and violent memories as recompense. Scott’s fear is that future conflicts will be even less fulfilling for Canadians, whose allegiance to the Empire was becoming increasingly tenuous (see "Policy" [Page 37] 406). In an article on the Canadian constitutional issues arising from the abdication of King Edward VIII, Scott shows that he was thinking about Canada’s role in European conflicts as early as the mid-1930s:

Although the Statute of Westminster allows Canada to enact legislation conferring upon the Governor-General the sole power to issue declarations of war and peace, and thus Canada "may be considered to have the right to neutrality," Scott points out that Parliament has yet to exercise this power, and thus "foreign countries would seem to be free to consider that…a declaration of war by Great Britain automatically makes Canada a belligerent" ("Policy" 415). Prime Minister King’s ambiguous rhetoric about letting "the Parliament of Canada Decide" the extent of Canadian involvement (qtd. in "Canada’s" 438-39) is "unpardonably inaccurate and misleading" ("Canada and the Outbreak" 86); by "confus[ing] the right to neutrality with the right to ‘passive belligerency,’" his "language of political dodgery" does nothing more than "stave off an open fight on the issue" ("Canada’s" 439; see also "W. L. M. K." 18ff). Scott argues that Canadian citizens "under a democratic form of political government…have not only a right, but a duty, to share in the decision" as to the extent of Canadian participation in future hostilities abroad ("Canada and the Outbreak" 86). Especially when Canadian companies began to profit from the sale of raw materials to the enemy for the manufacture of armaments, a practice Scott condemns in "Canada the Ammunition Dump" as "colonialism with a vengeance" (139), this duty became even more pressing:

Scott therefore calls on the government immediately to introduce legislation to give the Canadian Governor-General royal prerogative over Canada’s foreign affairs. Scott points out that such a move "could take place without touching the B.N.A. Act" ("Canada and the Outbreak" 87), and thus would continue Canada’s "movement towards…complete constitutional freedom" (Scott, Plaunt, and Ferguson 6-7) without "commit[ting] a gross breach of faith with Great Britain…at such a [politically sensitive] time" ("Canada and the Outbreak" 86). After all, both South Africa and the Irish Free State have made such declarations, and their respective policies of neutrality are clear ("Canada’s" 430).

For Scott, one of the most pernicious aspects of Section 98 of the Criminal Code of Canada was the way in which most members of the public thought of it as a protective but benign barrier against the evils of illegal organisations (see Thomas 397). Scott argues that this "notorious" statute ("Trial" 512) actually "goes much farther than that" by constraining the civil liberties of Canadians in several fundamental ways. Not only does Section 98 impose "unnecessarily severe penalties" upon persons convicted under the statute, but it also places the burden on those individuals to convince a judge and jury of their innocence, thus reversing "the [basic] rule of British law that every man is innocent until he is proved guilty." By imposing equally harsh penalties upon owners of halls who allow unlawful meetings, the statute "threatens the freedom of speech and association" of law-abiding citizens ("Civil" 7), since few landlords will risk imprisonment ("Communists" 128) to permit on their property the meetings of any new or controversial organization, however lawful. The statute gives almost limitless powers to the police to seize without warrant any property belonging to a so-called unlawful association, "so that no man’s home is safe from arbitrary search" ("Civil" 7). By prohibiting industrial change by threat of force, it "endangers the workers’ [democratic] right to strike" ("Civil" 7). Section 98 ranges so wide and creates so many new crimes, Scott suggests, that "[e]ven a private conversation would seem to be covered by [it]" ("Section" 476). The unjustified 1931 arrest, trial, and conviction of eight members of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC)—"a lawful and recognized political party in almost every civilized country to-day" ("Trial" 512)—convinced Scott even more completely of the totalitarian potentialities of Section 98. As Scott makes clear in "The Trial of the Toronto Communists," the eight CPC members were convicted not on the basis of evidence, of which there was none (516), but on the basis of a jury’s oversimplified misinterpretations of various CPC pamphlets (521ff). The only reason the Toronto Communists were convicted, Scott [Page 39] concludes, was because their proletarian belief system threatened the privileged position of the bourgeoisie in Canada (526-27). Their imprisonment was a form not of justice but of political persecution (see "Political"), which for Scott sets a very dangerous precedent:

Scott facetiously suggests that "the best thing for every good Canadian to do, if he wants to keep out of gaol, is to cling to the stock of reliable and well-tried ideas which have made Canada exactly what she is today" (129).

Scott was particularly critical of the way in which insidious pieces of legislation like Section 98 gave "statutory backing for the police" ("Trial" 513) to seize property or to break up meetings arbitrarily and without warrant. In Montreal, the law against sedition was "degenerat[ing] into an instrument for police tyranny" ("Montreal" 760): in a letter to the Montreal Gazette, Scott describes the "clearly high-handed…and apparently illegal" tactics the Montreal police used to disperse various orderly meetings of unemployed workers ("Criticizes" 12), and in the Canadian Bar Review he surveys a number of cases in which men and women were tried for sedition "solely on the [circumstantial] evidence of semi-literate police constables who [took] down in longhand isolated remarks from speeches delivered in a language with which they [were] very imperfectly familiar" ("Montreal" 761). Scott maintains that such tactics amount to "a pre-judging of the case" ("Criticizes" 12) and represent a clear violation of the "rights of free speech and assembly" ("Montreal" 756). In an article in the Canadian Forum, Scott criticises the way in which the police themselves incited riots in cities like Hamilton and Sudbury by deliberately charging into crowds of people celebrating May Day ("May" 326), and elsewhere he condemns the Montreal police for their heavy-handedness in dealing with workers who exercise their democratic right to strike ("Peaceful" 8). In "British Traditions," Scott plainly and succinctly summarises this growing problem of police corruption. As in many of the poems in the "Anthology" and "Social Notes," the poet articulates the issue at hand without recourse to the potential obfuscations of metrical or rhetorical devices, but instead [Page 40] relies on the inherent violence and social injustice of the issue itself to retain the attention of the reader: