The NDP surprise (approximately 4 minute time of the video): Across all the elections, the party with the most voter share increase is the NDP. The NDP candidates are resonating with their constituents, getting in the streets to listen to Canadians and not just talk from the conservative endorsing is working, NDP are representing Canadians nuanced intimate concerns more than they did last federal election by being more democratic socialist.

I know people were pretty bummed about the results in Vancouver-Capilano and Chicoutimi, but let's be honest, we weren't likely to suddenly start doing well in either seat and I don't think the party put too much effort into either election.

On the other hand, we got 26% in a seat where last time around we polled at just 7%, that's our best result since 2015, I feel like it's good that we are seeing something some electoral momentum.

Just something to remind people there's a lot to be happy about...

For anyone who has insomnia or goes at bed late. Fingers cross.

Good for him to have principles.

The NPD should repeat the basic : we are living a real crisis down South but we cannot ignore the looming disaster that is already climate change.

Left wing parties love to say they are ‘fighting for the working class’. It’s an easy slogan, but it leaves them open to criticism. A column in the Wall Street Journal is a case in point (it’s located here and here is an archive version).

...

But let’s clear up the confusion in a way that makes sense. The ‘working class’ in an economy can be distinguished from the ‘ownership class’. If you’re not in one, you’re in the other.

It’s based on how you earn your living. Members of the ownership class earn money based on what they own. Their income comes from rent. It may be from ownership of property (the original ‘owner’ class) or the (famous) ‘means of production’. If your income does not come from ownership, you are a member of the working class.

My full post here: https://leftish.media/archives/1271

Was looking to buy this book new when it was released only 3 years ago! Lucky me.

Substack Version

Part XV

Part XIV

This essay seeks to build on an idea that I argued for in the last few parts of this series: that both the British Labour Party and the Canadian CCF/NDP can be seen as ideological heirs to the “Tory Democracy” or “One Nation conservative” philosophy that is rooted in Benjamin Disraeli’s Tory Party; whether it be through Ed Milliband’s ideal of “One Nation Labour” that took simultaneous influence from both Disraeli and Clement Attlee, or the “Social Gospel” tradition of the early leadership of the CCF/NDP. To do this, I thought it would be interesting to explore David Lewis’ thoughts on the British Commonwealth Labour Parties Conference held in London, in Sept. of 1944, from his 1981 memoirs “The Good Fight”, and parts of M.J. Coldwell’s 1945 book “Left Turn, Canada”, where he gave a history of Canada.

As the majority of this essay will be exploring a period in time towards the end of World War II from the perspectives of David Lewis and M.J. Coldwell, I think Part XIII of this series, specifically the parts where Lewis describes the original CCF caucus elected in 1935, along with the "six currents of thought and opinion which had to be accommodated" in the CCF in regards to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, would serve as a good introduction to this essay.

As geopolitics, and Canada’s role in the world, is also brought up in this essay, another good introduction may be Part VIII, where I explore the broad worldviews of both the British Labour PM Clement Attlee and the British Tory PM Harold Macmillan. I also argue for Free Trade & Free Movement within the Commonwealth Realms, preferential trade & immigration policies for the rest of the Commonwealth of Nations, along with as much simultaneous Canadian & British integration into the European Union as the Europeans (and the Canadian & British people) will tolerate.

With that, and to give better context for these stories from Lewis & Coldwell, I thought it would be interesting to explore parts of the preface to “Left Turn, Canada”, which was written by Eric Estorick of New York City (who would later permanently move to London).

Interestingly, “Left Turn, Canada” by Coldwell is part of a book series called “The British Commonwealth Series”, in which it appears series editor Eric Estorick (an art collector who had a PhD in sociology, and during WWII he worked for US Intelligence) essentially asked various other prominent Commonwealth political figures for their political thoughts. Earlier entries in this series included “New Zealand, a Working Democracy” by Walter Nash of the New Zealand Labour Party, “Toward a Better World” by Jan Smuts of the South African United Party, and “Canada and the Fight for Freedom” by Mackenzie King of the Canadian Liberal Party. Perhaps of note in regards to the “Red Tory” tradition, it appears that Sir Walter Nash of New Zealand was a Christian socialist in the Anglican tradition. But now, excerpts from Eric Estorick’s preface to “Left Turn, Canada”, where he described the CCF:

…

The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was founded by the farmers of western Canada and has within its ranks and in the leadership of the movement: industrial workers, farmers, professional and business people. The CCF -- as the party is known -- is a synthesized, functioning partnership of these groups. Its political creed is democratic socialism; consequently, it does not refer to itself as a Labour Party representing mainly industrial workers.

In the broadest sense it is a people’s movement. Thus, it has been able to avoid the major pitfalls of socialist parties in Europe which contested themselves with fighting the day-to-day issues of the industrial working-class movement for trades unionism and higher wages while ingoing the plight of the farmer, his mortgage state, and security of tenure.

On June 15, 1944, the CCF came to power in the province of Saskatchewan with the overwhelming majority of forty-seven seats out of fifty-two, establishing the first Socialist government on the North American continent. The Liberal party machine which had maintained an almost unbroken reign for forty years, ever since the Province was first established, was swept out. The composition of the CCF members elected to the Legislature -- twenty-six farmers, eight teachers, one housewife, one lawyer, one minister, seven wage workers, two merchants -- reveals how clearly the CCF is a people’s party and not a party representing merely one class or section.

…

Alarmed at the rapid increase in the CCF support through-out Canada, the Liberal and the Conservative-Progressive parties in the House of Commons, together with their press across the country, have conducted a virulent campaign against the CCF. To a large extent Canadians were swinging to the CCF because it advocated an all-out, total war effort, together with equality of sacrifice.

The CCF believes that only a fundamental reconstruction of society, based on the social ownership and control of banking and key industries, can solve the economic problem of the modern democratic capitalist state. From its inception, it has consistently emphasized this belief. Although the CCF does not believe that social reforms alone can solve the basic problems of modern capitalism it has always supported social reforms designed to improve the immediate lot of the Canadian people.

Such reforms, which the CCF regards as necessary, are instituted not only on moral grounds to alleviate suffering, but also on political grounds. It is their belief that only when the people are given greater security and independence will they develop the necessary courage and vision to take political and economic power to themselves -- away from monopoly interests. Thus, they contend, social reforms are actual steps toward the organization by the people of the democratic socialist society.

For these reasons, the CCF supports reforms, even those initiated by other parties; yet it does not believe that such reforms can avoid the base inequalities, the periodic crises, and the general threats to democracy and peace for which the capitalist economic system is responsible. A socialist organization of society, democratically controlled and directed with complete and ever-expanding freedom of speech, organization, and religion, can establish equal opportunity for all, eliminating injustice, depression, and war itself.

The CCF believes in democracy as strongly as it does in socialism. If a socialist society has attained economic security without political and social democracy, then its socialism has only been partly achieved. It is the party’s view that political democracy without economic democracy is inadequate and often sham, that economic security without political democracy is also inadequate, as is freedom without political democracy.

The society which the CCF seeks to build is one in which socialism and democracy, or economic freedom and political freedom, will be one and indivisible. In short, the CCF believes that democracy needs socialism: that socialism needs democracy. Without socialism, democracy cannot live: without democracy, socialism is not a complete social system.

...

David Lewis, CCF national secretary, has advanced two principles which have governed the developing structure of the CCF, and which account, in part, for the phenomenal growth of the CCF on the Canadian political scene. He writes:

“We did not lay down at first any kind of doctrinaire conception of a complete thing; we did not say that this is the way the CCF structure must look or else! We have from year to year and from month to month developed our organization and structure; we have adapted them in accordance with the experience which we are engaged, always relating the development to the first set of principles regarding the concept of democracy in the CCF. The second controlling idea . . . is our deep belief on which the entire work of the CCF is based, in the necessity, in the urgency of wide popular education as an instruction of political democracy and as a major function of a democratic political movement. This set of two principles -- the approach based on experience and the emphasis on popular education both inside and outside the party -- also govern the nature of the structure of the party. The aim of our party is unity on the basic objectives of democratic socialism but not uniformity of opinion.”

It is a thrilling augury, as Canada is shaking off her final ties of colonialism to develop those of mature responsibility in the world community, that a dynamic party such as the CCF should appear on the political scene. This is heartening to the people of the British Commonwealth of Nations, who have expressed their desire for dynamic democracy by electing Labour Governments in Australia and New Zealand, who support the powerful Labour Party of Great Britain, and who are building a Labour Party in South Africa. Indeed, to peoples everywhere who are striving and dying for a democratic way of life what will be honoured in the practice rather than in the breach, to those who reject the thesis that brute force is the criterion of what is right, the growth of the CCF places a sharp, constant focus on the objective of all democracy-believing people: a free society.

It is not surprising, therefore, that when the Canadian delegation finished its work at the first meeting of the British Commonwealth Labour Parties Conference (held in England, in September, 1944) that Harold Laski, world famous political scientist, wrote to M.J. Coldwell: “I don’t want you and your colleagues to leave England without putting on paper my own sense of the deep debt we owe the Canadian delegation to this conference for the clarity and courage with which it has expressed its views -- if I may say so, this was the outstanding achievement of the Conference.”

Left Turn, Canada is the substance of these views.

With that bit of background, David Lewis begins his recollection of the 1944 British Commonwealth Labour Parties Conference on page 237 of his memoirs “The Good Fight”, in which he writes that “The spirit of co-operation between the national and the provincial levels of the party had its place on the international stage as well.”. Lewis then notes that he had been corresponding with officials from the various Labour Parties of the Commonwealth in order to organize an international meeting. Lewis also notes that both he and M.J. Coldwell had been corresponding with the New Zealand Labour Party in particular as they had been governing since 1935, before then going on to briefly write of the Australian Labour Party forming a government in 1941, and the British Labour Party entering into a coalition government with Winston Churchill’s Tories during the war against Hitler.

Lewis then notes on page 238 that the “officers of the CCF… underlined the value and importance of a conference of Labour Parties of the British Commonwealth, for it seemed that these parties would play a significant role in the peace and post-war”, and Lewis then included part of a letter he sent to the general secretary of the British Labour Party where he “gave two reasons for our anxiety to see a meeting held”:

“As we see it, it is a matter of the utmost importance that the Labour Parties of the Commonwealth meet in good time, and that they arrive at some common policy regarding the peace negotiations and international order which will follow the defeat of the Nazis in Europe. It seems clear to us also that such a Conference of the Commonwealth Labour Parties could, and perhaps, should serve as the forerunner of a similar Conference of Labour and Democratic Socialist Parties of all countries.”

I realize now how much easier it was for us, an ocean away from the battlefield, to give most of our attention to the future. Finally, partly due to our insistence, a meeting was convened in London in September 1944.

Lewis then goes on to write that while the “results of the conference were not earth-shaking”, it was still “an exciting experience”, and mentions that the CCF delegation flew over the Atlantic in a converted bomber, passing the time by telling “endless stories” to each other. Lewis then describes the group who went to England:

Our delegation was a representative one. [M.J.] Coldwell and [F.R.] Scott were obvious choices; Clarie Gillis came as the Labour representative and Percy Wright, a successful Saskatchewan farmer MP, as farm spokesman. I was the fifth member of the delegation by unanimous choice of the Executive, since I had carried on most of the correspondence about the event.

Once in London, Lewis mentions that the group was housed in a Hotel called “the Goring”, which had the “unfortunate echo of ‘Goering’ ”, the head of the Nazi Luftwaffe. Lewis then writes that it was difficult for himself “to overcome the urge to insist that [the hotel name] be changed”, especially after a hotel employee was killed after his shift in a V2 rocket attack the first night the group was in London. On page 239, Lewis then begins writing of the conference itself:

The conference enabled me to renew the acquaintance of British leaders who had befriended me during my student days in England. Instead of being members of a dispirited opposition, they were now respected leaders of a country at war. Despite their demanding duties as key ministers in Churchill’s cabinet, they participated fully in the meetings. Thus we heard statements by [Clement] Attlee, [Herbert] Morrison, [Hugh] Dalton, [Manny] Shinwell, and Ellen Wilkinson as well as the trade-union leader Sir Walter Citrine, all of whom I had had the privilege of knowing.

Lewis then notes that the “discussions were necessarily general in nature, but they dealt with all aspects of the problems which were bound to face the victorious allies in general and social democratic parties in particular”, and mentions that the delegates from the British Labour Party were “aware of the strong possibility that they might be in power” after the next election, and thus “spoke with authority on every subject”. Lewis then writes that:

The CCF delegation took full part in all debates. We stressed particularly our unhappiness at the situation in India where Mahatma Gandhi was in jail again, and politely but firmly insisted that India and other colonies had to be given their freedom once the war was won. Coldwell made this a central theme of his opening major presentation.

(We need not have worried; Attlee’s government gave India its independence as early as 1947, through peaceful negotiations, although the border which London imposed on India and on a divided Pakistan produced serious conflicts some years later)

The meeting also considered at some length the racist tendencies in South Africa and expressed fears which were fully justified by later developments.

My major task was to describe the origins, structure, and prospects of the CCF. I did this with the gusto and optimism which all of us felt in 1944. What amazed the delegates from other countries was the fact that the CCF was as much a farmer as a labour party, despite its socialist objectives. There were therefore many questions and a lengthy discussion which was revived when Percy Wright made a presentation about the place of agriculture in the post-war world. Scott dealt with the “world assembly” which should be established after the war. He outlined the suggested structure and purpose in considerable detail and with his customary clarity, drawing on many CCF discussions and statements on the subject. During his presentation he suggested what the future nature of the Commonwealth should and would be in a forecast so accurate that it deserves to be quoted here:

“The Commonwealth of the future is a Commonwealth of absolutely independent nations, whose associations is not based on a constitutional tie, but a voluntary and free association, which is the standard definition of our relationship.”

This reflected not only Scott’s own views, but the thinking of the Executive and Council of the CCF, which had often discussed the future of the Commonwealth and Canada’s place in it.

Lewis then spends the better part of a page describing his experiences in a “subcommittee of Britain and Canada” where he and the previously mentioned Harold Laski had to draft a statement for adoption by the conference. Lewis writes the following on pages 241/242 to finish his story on his travels to England during the war:

My weekend with Laski also gave me a taste of direct war experience. Late Saturday night Laski and I sat in chairs facing each other before a roaring fire. Suddenly there was a deafening explosion, the house shook to its foundations, and we were thrown out of our chairs, banging our heads together mid flight. Mrs. Laski came running, while Laski grabbed my hand and pulled me after her; together we ran into a deep ditch a few metres from the house. To my surprise I learned later that the missile had fallen a mile away. For the Laskis this had been a common experience for months since the V1s and V2s began to land on British soil and even earlier when the Battle of Britain was at its most severe. For a civilian from Canada it was a much more traumatic experience. Sadly, I recalled hiding as a small boy in the cellar of a home in Svisloch during the First World War. Man’s inhumanity still ruled, except that it had become more efficient in it’s cruelty.

Ellen Wilkinson, a lively and striking redhead, was a leading Labour MP who was attached to the Home Office, of which Herbert Morrison was the minister. Wilkinson was assigned the task of showing us war-torn London and the volunteer emergency organization which operated day and night in the underground quarters at a number of locations across the metropolis. She did so with both sorrow and exultation, as she took us to locations which had suffered the devastation of an air raid the night before. This is not the place to try to describe the havoc caused by the blitz or the ordeals of a silently determined and incredibly brave people. I want merely to record those of my reactions which may be relevant to this chronicle.

Simply put, I felt humbled. I recalled almost with shame the days that we of the CCF spent arguing about the nature of the war and about Canada’s part in it. I did not feel proud of those debates, even though I knew that they had been unavoidable. I learned more sharply than ever before how intellectually treacherous doctrinaire abstractions can be, if they are not subjected to personal experience and rigorous factual analysis.

Nor could I fail to wonder where Sophie and I would then have been, what role we would have been playing, if we had decided in 1935 to accept the invitation to remain in England. I did not feel any regret, but I did feel that Canadians had reason to be grateful to the British and Soviet peoples for withstanding the Nazi assault at such cost. Dry eyes were my most touching impression; people who had lost a sister or a daughter, a brother or a son, told of their loss with fury but without tears.

Even the most accomplished orator has his off-days, and Winston Churchill himself was no exception. The delegates from the Dominions were naturally taken to the distinguished visitors’ gallery of the House of Commons on an afternoon when the prime minister was scheduled to speak. As I remember it, he was to report on the war in North Africa as well as in Europe. Since victory was already in sight, one expected a speech of tribute to the forces and of exaltation and hope, as only Churchill could articulate it. Instead, we heard a deadly dull recital of names and battles with little order and less excitement. Scott and I had the same irreverent reaction; we took it for about half an hour and decided to leave. Coldwell and the others, particularly the Australians and New Zealanders, thought us rude to walk out while the great Churchill was still speaking, but we eased away quietly and without guilt. After walking for a little while, we came on a theatre which was featuring a matinee performance of Peer Gynt. That’s where Scott and I passed the rest of the afternoon before joining our colleagues for a scheduled dinner, when we were informed that the speech had not improved during our absence. I am sure that in one of his less stodgy moods, Churchill would have forgiven our truancy.

As it was mentioned in the preface to Coldwell’s 1945 book “Left Turn, Canada”, that the book “is the substance of [the] views” expressed by the Canadian delegation to that very Commonwealth Labour Parties Conference, I thought it would be interesting to explore parts of that book. I found the first half of Chapter Two, “Canada’s New Political Party”, to be particularly interesting as Coldwell essentially gives a condensed history of Canada up to 1945.

Coldwell starts the chapter on page 8, writing:

Seen from the outside, Canadian politics must have appeared in the past to possess the virtue of stability and the vice of dullness. There have been no revolutions in Canada for a century, but neither have there been any adventures in politics such as the American New Deal or Sweden’s “Middle Way”. Very little has come out of Ottawa that is politically colourful or economically imaginative.

After noting that only two parties, “the Liberals and the Conservatives (latterly rechristened the Progressive-Conservative Party)” have ever governed “since Canada became a Confederation in 1867, save for a brief period of Union government during the last war”, Coldwell goes on to write that the Liberal Party has dominated Canadian politics since 1896, with Mackenzie King himself dominating personally since 1921.

Coldwell then mentions that “All third-party movements in the past… have failed to create more than a temporary or local disturbance in the political arena”, using the examples of “French-Canadian Nationalists led by Henri Bourassa in 1911, the Progressives who had a meteoric career after the last war, or the late Mr. Aberhardt’s Social Credit Party”.

Interestingly, later on page 21, Coldwell describes the death of the Progressive Party:

The Progressives did not survive because they had no political philosophy to distinguish them from their opponents; they had the tactics of political revolt but no strategy of social change. To secure the future success of the CCF, it was necessary for its principles and objectives to be clearly defined in Canadian terms, and clearly distinguished from mere Liberal reformism. This definition was achieved at the first annual convention of the party held in Regina in 1933, when the now famous Regina Manifesto was adopted.

Back to pages 8/9, Coldwell then briefly argues that “The barrenness of the social philosophies of both the Liberal and Conservative parties since the last war” lead to both of them failing in practice as “channels for new social ideas”:

The truth of the matter is that Canada, the “Tory Dominion” as it has well been called in the past, has until very recently presented strong opposition to imaginative and progressive social change. For Canada is a country where private monopoly has long been firmly entrenched and where sectional divisions have always obstructed national reforms. It was not without justice that a distinguished American liberal columnist writing in the early years of the war could describe Canada as “the most reactionary country yet conquered by Hitler.”

The reasons for the political and economic conservatism are not hard to find. Canada is a young country. As in the United States, opportunities for the expansion of capitalist enterprise lasted longer than in most European countries. Until the first world war, indeed up to 1929, the Canadian economy operated moderately well under the so-called private enterprise system, despite its lack of intelligent, national planning. It was still possible for a few people to rise from poverty to comparative wealth. And the belief that persons suffering from poverty and want had only their own lack of initiative and ability to blame persisted long after that argument had been completely shattered by facts and experience.

After writing of “the complete domination of the country by big business and industry”, Coldwell continues on page 10:

The experience of the first great war demonstrated to Canadians what might be done through even rough and ready planning for a national purpose. That experience was reinforced by the Great Depression when the planlessness and anarchy of social policy begot such widespread misery and suffering. And it has been further strengthened during the present war when over-all planning, inadequate though it has been in many respects, dedicated to a common national objective, has wrought such miracles of production. As a result, increasing numbers of Canadians today realize that only democratic socialism can make possible social progress and security in this country after the war.

Over the next couple of pages, Coldwell writes of the democratic socialist successes of the New Zealand Labour Party winning three general elections, “which has made the most striking advances in the social ownership and control of the principle economic functions”, and he also makes note of Australia re-electing its sitting Labour government in 1943 with “an overwhelming majority”. After briefly noting how socialism can be a way to connect with “underground movements in Europe… those directing affairs in China… Nehru and the younger Congress leaders in India”, Coldwell writes -- rather optimistically -- that Russia will likely become more democratic because of its association with the western democracies.

In regards to Western/Soviet relations in the post-World War II world, I think Clement Attlee himself said it best in a 1963 interview in response to a question on how well the United Nations had developed since 1945:

Well, it’s developed to some extent not as far as it aught to have, and that was partly due to the fact that very soon after its formation, the Russians took their own line, and you got the Cold War. Secondly, looking back now, although it was impossible at the time, the essential for a real United Nations is some degree of surrender of sovereignty: particularly on war, and peace, and armaments. We couldn’t affect that at the time, I’m hoping we are yet to go on that line.

In regards to Western/Russia/China relations: it may be important to note that when the Korean War broke out in 1950, M.J. Coldwell was later described by David Lewis to have supported the war effort so “vigorously and in tones which excluded the possibility that the [National CCF] convention might change that”, which lead to quite the bitter fight at the 1950 CCF policy convention. Both Lewis & Coldwell supported the UN, and later NATO, on anti-isolationist grounds; a “defensive power bloc” if I may briefly editorialize.

Back to Chapter Two of “Left Turn, Canada”, M.J. Coldwell writes on pages 11/12 that “Since the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation is a distinctly Canadian political movement, it will be well to review here some of the salient facts of Canada’s history”. After noting that foreign trade is likely Canada’s future, Coldwell then writes on pages 12/13:

The history of modern Canada may be said to date from the year 1763. By the Treaty of Paris of that year the French monarch, by a mere stroke of the pen, ceded the French colonies in North America to the British. Thus years of intermittent warfare between the French and English for supremacy in North America, culminating in the capture of Quebec by General Wolfe in 1759, came to an end.

The early settlers in what later became Canada were for the most part Frenchmen, engaging in fishing for the fur trade, and in founding colonies along the Atlantic seaboard and up the reaches of the St. Lawrence River. But there had been English settlers too, father in the interior, who established outposts and traded with the Indians. It was not, however, until the American Revolution had driven into exile those colonists who were determined to keep their allegiance to the Crown, that the regions of Canada were really settled by people of British descent. These people who fled before the American Revolution, known as the United Empire Loyalists, found their new homes in the Maritime Provinces, where government already existed, and in the unsettled wilderness of what is now Ontario.

Shortly after the Treaty of Paris, in the year 1774, the British Parliament passed an act which is considered by French-Canadians to be their Bill of Rights. This was the Quebec Act and it guaranteed the French-Canadians the preservation of their way of life, their religion, their civil law, and their unity as a people. More than anything else this act led the French-Canadians to refuse to join the thirteen colonies in the American War of Independence.

While it’s certainly disappointing to read Coldwell describe First Nations territory as being “unsettled wilderness” (I’m sure Joseph Brant and Tecumseh would be disappointed), over the next several pages he then briefly writes of early British settlers, the struggle for responsible government in the 1840s, and of Confederation starting in 1867. Coldwell also notes the transcontinental railway, describes the natural resources of Canada, and notes newer communities of German, Ukrainian, and Scandinavian immigrants.

Coldwell then writes of what he calls a constitutional crisis on pages 15/16, which I think is almost word-for-word applicable to today’s Canada as well:

The salient political fact about Canada is that, like the United States, it is a federation. At the formation of the new Dominion in 1867, the Fathers of Confederation left to the Provinces jurisdiction over matters that could then be described as of local interest: such as education, health, municipal government and property and civil rights. Matters affecting the country as a whole, such as trade and commerce, defence, and banking, were assigned to the Federal Government, and in addition, any matters not specifically provided for in the Constitution were to be within the federal powers.

Judicial interpretations since that time have consistently reduced the powers of the Dominion Government, while expanding the “property and civil” rights of the Provinces to include almost anything. The result today is a severe constitutional crisis in Canada, for the Dominion Government has been deprived of those functions which, because of modern social and economic complexities, it alone can undertake, while the Provinces are without the finances to discharge their powers satisfactorily. Thus there is neglect of the public welfare services, and a grave absence of intelligent economic planning.

On page 16, Coldwell describes another “salient fact”: that Canada has “long since achieved nationhood”, and that “the British Dominions are formally united only by a common allegiance to the Crown.” Coldwell then writes on the next page:

Meanwhile, the British Commonwealth of Nations is strengthened, not weakened, by becoming in every sense a free association of equals, and in no sense a power bloc in world affairs. Future Commonwealth relations will develop along lines of fruitful co-operation and positive achievement, or not at all.

To finish his general history, Coldwell writes of US/Canada relations, noting that they have “become increasingly cordial ever since the long-forgotten warfare of 1812”, and writes positively of continental defence and economic planning to defeat the Axis.

This is where I feel I must push back against Mr. Coldwell’s historical narrative, as the War of 1812 was not the last time the USA tried to force Canada into the Union, against the wishes of Canadians. In the process, I hope to help define that ideal pre-World War I “ ‘Tory Dominion’ as [Canada] has well been called in the past” that Coldwell alluded to on page 8.

To do that, I would like to briefly explore the memoirs of Canada’s last surviving Father of Confederation, Sir Charles Tupper of Nova Scotia, in his 1914 “Recollections of Sixty Years”.

For those unaware of Sir Charles, he was the Tory Premier of Nova Scotia (1864-1867) who introduced Nova Scotia’s first form of public education, and he brought Nova Scotia into Confederation despite it being extraordinarily unpopular in the province. As a Minister in John A. Macdonald’s first cabinet, Tupper then managed to convince the arch Nova Scotian Anti-Confederate MP Joseph Howe to eventually join cabinet, and Tupper himself would eventually briefly become Prime Minister for 69 days in the summer of 1896. Tupper would resign as Tory leader after the 1900 election and two losses to Wilfrid Laurier, and would relocate to England until his death in Oct. 1915, at age 94.

Chapter 8, on the National Policy, starts with Tupper defending the actions of Macdonald’s government during “the so-called ‘Pacific Scandal’ ” over several pages, which Tupper at one point refers to as “the Pacific Slander”. Tupper mentions that he accidentally coined the term “National Policy” in “the heat of a prolonged debate in the House of Commons in February of 1870”.

On pages 158-160:

The various Canadian provinces enjoyed phenomenal prosperity under the Elgin Reciprocity Treaty negotiated in 1854. This treaty was abrogated by the United States in 1866. Times were especially good during the American Civil War period. The United States, owing to the vast population withdrawn from industrial pursuits, proved to be Canada’s best customer, and there was no question of a tariff issue as the abnormal conditions existing south of the boundary gave us all the protection we needed.

But this situation was not to last for ever. With the close of the Civil War was inaugurated a nationwide movement for the encouragement and protection of American labour and American industries by the imposition of heavy duties against foreign competitors. That policy has only recently been modified. The Hon. W. H. Seward, probably one of the ablest Secretaries of State, felt confident that the abrogation of the Elgin Reciprocity Treaty would force Canada into the American Union. In a famous speech just after the close of the Civil War he declared that Canada, owing to its geographical position, with Halifax on the Atlantic and a stretch of country extending to the Pacific, must inevitably dominate the trade with the Far East. He was a man of vision, and his prophecy in that respect has since been verified.

In those days, owing to the lack of railway facilities, there was little inter-provincial trade. The bulk of the trade of the Maritime Provinces was then with the New England States. The termination of the Reciprocity Treaty hit us a hard blow, and but for that circumstance we should probably have been unable to convince the people of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick that our future was in a union with the Upper Canadian provinces. Gradually the restrictive policy of the United States tariff -- a policy wisely directed to the upbuilding of American industry -- began to be more acutely felt in the Dominion, and its full effects were experienced by the time the Liberals got into power in 1873.

[Alexander] Mackenzie did nothing to relieve the situation. His low revenue tariff permitted the American people to gain access to our market, while Canadians were virtually excluded from that of their neighbours. The effect of the American high tariff was not only felt by the Canadian farmers and manufacturers, but it produced a largely increased demand in Canada for American manufactures, and a more than corresponding increase in the demand for the manufactures of Great Britain, of which the trade returns of Canada showed abundant proof.

After spending several pages going over his time in opposition, including the various places he practiced medicine while in Parliament, and noting that he would attend Liberal meetings to challenge their ideas, Tupper gives his thoughts on Tory policy after the 1878 election on page 170:

Sir John was, of course, called upon to form an Administration, in which I accepted the portfolio of Public Works. I subsequently had the department divided, creating a new department -- that of Railways and Canals, of which I took charge. To this day [1914] that arrangement still exists, other public improvements other than railways and canals being under the direction of the Minister of Public Works.

The next four years represented years of ceaseless activity and constructive statesmanship, inuring to the agricultural and industrial development of the Dominion. True to our promises, we adopted the National Policy at the earliest moment, got under way a vast programme for the deepening of the waterways and canals of the St. Lawrence system, and after the completion of surveys, entered into an agreement for the building of a national transcontinental railway from Eastern Canada to the Pacific coast.

The effect of the substitution of a protective tariff for the Mackenzie revenue law proved magical. It restricted the exodus, gave employment in the factories to our own idle working man, stimulated every branch of manufacturing, led to the establishment of many new industries, and preserved the home market for our own people. The farmer was also given substantial protection. During the Mackenzie Administration Canada became the dumping ground for the surplus manufactured products of the United States, which, enjoying the benefit of a high tariff, rigidly excluded Canadian products of every description.

The National Policy, in my judgment, is one of the bulwarks of Canadian national life. It made possible the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, stimulated inter-provincial trade, and developed a solidarity of sentiment that has been growing stronger since Confederation was brought about.

We are to-day a self-contained people, and recent years have witnessed the spectacle of millions of foreign capital being invested in Canadian manufacturing industries. The farmer, too, enjoys his home market. Earlier experiences of Canadian statesmen showed the futility of efforts to induce the United States to negotiate an equitable reciprocity agreement. Our tariff, while ensuring reasonable protection for all our people, has never had the almost restricted character of the American fiscal system.

It was a great day for the Dominion when the people rejected the [1911] Taft-Fielding reciprocity agreement, for under the radical revision of the United States tariff Canada, without giving any equivalent, will reap enormous advantages. As a people we have demonstrated to the world our ability to develop along national lines. Who is there that does not recall with pride the attitude of Canada at the time of the enforcement of the [1890] McKinley tariff, many of the clauses of which were specifically aimed at our common country?

Tupper ends the chapter with his speech that coined the phrase “National Policy”.

Interestingly, Tupper’s final chapters are titled “Empire Confederation” and “How to Federate the Empire”. With the Empire now transformed, what will we do with its legacy?

Charges and court dates for workers accused of theft; toothless bureaucracy and the benefit of the doubt for the employing class. The state and it's legal system serve capital.

These are two ridings in rural British Columbia that stood with the NDP for a very long time, and flipped to the conservatives in the most recent election by a pretty large margin. Skeena-Bulkley Valley went conservative by eight points, going to Ellis Ross, and North Island-Powell River going to Aaron Gunn by 6 points.

Skeena-Bulkley Valley did not have a substantial liberal voting bloc, but North Island-Powell River did. Do you think that Lewis' message and character is going to resonate well with these voters? As we see the NDP vying to reclaim voters from the Liberals, what will happen to seats like Skeena-Bulkley Valley where there was not much of a shift from which we can reclaim votes?

Any ideas for candidates in Skeena-Bulkley Valley? Is Tanille Johnston going to run again in North Island-Powell River? What strategy should the party at large take in trying to reclaim them?

A sad day in BC politics. We lost a good one.

Most of us are fairly deep political junkies hah

We all know the BC Conservatives have been a complete mess. There has been an incredible amount of drama with John Rustad as leader and now Kerry-Lynne D. Findlay as leader.

I've said before that MAGA/Maple MAGA is nothing more then stereotypical snake oil salespeople and con-artist grifters hustling fools.

A type of lowest common denominator style populism (I.e A mob) that is useful to misinform, manipulate, and downright brainwash.

This sums up reactionary/regressive politics in general. It has kind of been this way since the beginning... People need to look up where the terms "left-wing" and "right-wing" originated...

Anyway...

I just finished listening to the rumored Apollo Chung audio and he just flat out says it is a complete and utter scam and the whole movement is just to steal as much as is possible. He literally says that lol.....

Ohhh and the Fossil Fuel Industry is the real controller of the Conservative movement. The same industry that hired many of the same individuals and organizations that use to be involved with the old Tobacco companies campaigns around "Alternative Science/Facts & Messaging".... Yes this sphere is literally stuffed full of bad predatory actors of the worst of the worst type.