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.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Labour Party
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)