Nelson Clarke

Nelson Clarke (1914 – 1982) was a Canadian politician. Clarke was born in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1914.

Clarke studied at the University of Saskatchewan. Clarke was later expelled from the CCF due to his Communist Party membership.

As the Communist Party was banned after Canada's entry into World War II (specifically due to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), Clarke became a leader of its new front organization, the Labor-Progressive Party. He contested the 1953 Canadian federal election from the Moose Jaw—Lake Centre riding. In the internal wrangles of the LPP, he belonged to the Tim Buck-led majority wing. In 1972 he contested the Toronto mayoral election. During the 1970s, Clarke and his wife Phyllis became leaders of a current in the CPC influenced by Eurocommunism, advocating for a more pluralist approach to socialism and criticizing what they saw as the party's sectarianism towards mass movements. By 1979, increasingly skeptical that the CPC would be able to make the necessary changes, Clarke circulated a document influenced by socialist feminist ideas, raising the possibility of forming a new organization out of existing popular movements. Clarke died in 1982. His funeral was attended by some one thousand people.