Canadian Labour Party - History

History

The CLP was founded in 1917, on the initiative of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC). It was intended to be the Canadian equivalent of the British Labour Party, and endorsed a variety of reformist labour initiatives. In this sense, it was ideologically closer to A.W. Puttee's original Winnipeg Labour Party than to the revolutionary Socialist Party of Canada.

The CLP endorsed a number of candidates in the 1917 election, although none were elected. In 1918, the Canadian TLC leaders adopted a "non-partisan" policy advocated by the American Federation of Labor, and the CLP was largely abandoned.

The party was revived in 1921 by James Simpson. It again espoused a reformist platform, including the nationalization of banks and public utilities, major extensions in social and labour legislation, and lower taxes on the working-class.

The CLP was intended to be an "umbrella" organization for the various regional labour parties within Canada. Its primary failure on this front was its inability to convince the leaders of Manitoba's Independent Labour Party to affiliate. Initially, this was due to a local split in the Winnipeg labour movement -- the regional Dominion Labour Party had been taken over by rightist elements, and the parliamentary labour caucus had retaliated by creating a separate ILP organization. When the DLP affiliated with the CLP, the ILP refused to do the same. ILP leaders such as J.S. Woodsworth and Abraham Albert Heaps remained outside the CLP network throughout the 1920s.

In other regions, the CLP was more successful. The Alberta DLP did not fall into the hands of rightist labourites, and there was no controversy when this party became part of the CLP. The Federated Labour Party of British Columbia also joined the CLP, and many other reformist labour organizations throughout the country had some connections to the larger organization.

In spite of this, the CLP never became a coherent national party. Most provincial labour parties remained focused on their own local concerns, and the national party organization was comparatively weak (though it was usually successful in preventing vote-splitting among its affiliated groups). The national CLP was also weakened by controversies concerning the role of Communists within the party.