New Democratic
Party fiasco sparks
International Viewpoint #155 • January 23, 1989 cial programmes and government intervention in the economy.
A week after Gerrard's criticisms, Robert White, president of the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) and a vice-president of the federal NDP, issued a seven-page letter that bitterly attacked party electoral strategists for ignoring labour's ideas and leadership. Seen as the opening salvo in White's bid for the NDP leadership(leader Ed Broadbent is expected to step down after leading the party to four third place finishes,) the letter accuses party
THE NOVEMBER 21 federal election in Canada was an upset victory for the Progressive Conservative Party - or Tories — led by Brian Mulroney. The Tories swept into power for a second consecutive term despite all predictions that the Liberal Party under John Turner would carry a majority, or at least be in a position to form a coalition government based on its protectionist opposition to the recent free-trade agreement signed with the United States.
But even more spectacular than the unexpected conservative victory was the abrupt rise and equally sudden fall of the traditionally last place social-democratic and labour-linked New Democratic
Party in the period preceding the election.
BARRY WEISLEDER
T
HE NEW DEMOCRATIC Party
(NDP) blew it - and now an unprecedented debate on election strategy is underway in the party and its affiliated unions leading up to the
NDP federal convention next August in
Winnipeg.
Over a fifteen month period the NDP tumbled from first place and over 42% popular support according to opinion polls, down to its traditional third place and 20% in the November 21 federal election in the
Canadian state.
The party's lacklustre, timid performance allowed the scandal-plagued Progressive Conservative Party to form a second consecutive parliamentary majority government. Despite a 7% decline from their 1984 results, the Tories captured 169 of the 295 seats.
The NDP's slide particularly benefited the Liberal Party which miraculously recovered from a nearly paralytic internal leadership crisis to grab second place and double its parliamentary representation to
82 seats.
Although the NDP vote showed a 2.4% increase and elected 43 members of parliament (its largest ever caucus) this result fell far short of all pre-election projections. In fact, NDP gains, which were concentrated in the western provinces, were largely the
8 product ies such of Tory votes to far-right wing parties such as the wester separatist
Reform Party, the Confederation of Regions Party and the anti-abortion Christian
So how did the NDP manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? How did it fail to make the much-anticipated breakthrough, especially in Quebec?
Canada-United States trade deal
Labour leaders, social-democratic commentators and bourgeois pundits have not hesitated to advance various explanations. Unfortunately most of them miss the mark; worse, their analysis points the NDP in the wrong direction for the future.
The public soul-searching for New Democrats began at the Ontario Federation of Labour Convention in Toronto on November 28 where United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Canadian District 6 Director Leo Gerrard complained that the NDP had downplayed its opposition to the recently negotiated Canada-United States trade deal during the election campaign.
The pact, which will be ratified by parliament early in January, aims to eliminate most tariffs and duties on goods crossing the border over a ten-year period. It became the central issue in the election, evoking both chauvinist anti-Americanism and legitimate concern about the future of soofficials of structuring the NDP's campaign so as "to distance itself from the labour movement, both in appearance and issues."
Significantly, there is much truth to what White wrote. Canadian social democracy has consistently sought to downplay the NDP's identity as a labour party and appeal instead to supposedly classless "average Canadians." This election was no exception.
International employers' offensive
But the kind of leadership White has in mind offers no genuine alternative. It puts "nation" ahead of "class". He would line up workers behind their Canadian imperialist bosses and favor inflationary protectionist policies, rather than correctly portraying the so-called "free-trade" deal as part of an international employers' offensive led by Thatcher and Reagan to drive down wages, social benefits and working conditions in the interest of profit maximization - an offensive that can be defeated only by the mass mobilization of the working class.
Class collaboration, rather than class struggle, is the logic of the position of Bob White and his colleagues in the Pro-Canada Network, an umbrella organization of antifree trade groups including Canadian businessmen and Liberal politicians.
Consider one of their major post-election criticisms. White and the Network took the NDP leadership to task for focusing their attacks on Liberal Leader John Turner in the final weeks of the campaign. "All we did was move votes to the Tories," wrote White.
But the opposite is true. NDP leader Broadbent stressed his party's opposition to the trade deal both before and during the election campaign. Next to the rather vacuous demand for "honesty and integrity in government," opposition to the trade deal was the major plank in the NDP campaign.
The problem was that the NDP's position was barely distinguishable from that of the Liberals, who reverted opportunistically to a left-nationalist stance reminiscent of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the late 1970s. (Remember the man who created PetroCanada and the National Energy Programme?)
NDP and labour leaders simply echoed Liberal claims that the trade deal would lead to a US takeover of Canada (Canada is
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CANADA debate
itself one of the seven leading imperialist countries in the world,) and with it the loss of Canadian sovereignty and culture. To this was added the usual social democratic prescriptions for band-aid tax reform and "fiscal responsibility." The Liberals actually promised to spend much more to meet social needs than did the "responsible" NDP.
NDP tries to beat the Liberals at their own game
NDP strategists had to scramble to salvage their traditional bases of support in the face of a Liberal resurgence following the televised leaders' debate. This rescue operation could be carried out only by attacking the Liberals as one of the twin parties of Canadian imperialist big business. Of course Broadbent should have been doing this from the beginning, instead of promoting the possibility of a coalition government with the Liberals (even with the Tories!) which he did "in the interests of parliamentary stability."
But the NDP shift in tactics was too late to reverse the trend to the Liberals by mid-November. The Pro-Canada Network (including the arch-reformist Communist Parcandidates, few of whom received even 200 votes) helped to create an "anyone but Brian" (Mulroney) atmosphere among working people. This was bound to benefit the Liberal Party, the traditional party of government this century, with its superior apparatus and regional bases. The NDP, as a social-democratic labour party, could not hope to beat the Liberals at their own game - campaigning on a liberal-nationalist
Unfortunately, much of the left was lured down the same blind alley. For example, several editors of the respected independent socialist magazine Canadian Dimension explicitly called for an NDP-Liberal alliance to defeat the Tories and the dreaded trade deal - a classic case of a cure that is worse than the disease!
More Canadian nationalism would not have helped the NDP campaign. But a little Quebecois nationalism (the ideology of the oppressed, French-speaking working class majority in Quebec) would not have hurt.
Instead, Broadbent publicly attacked his own candidates in Quebec when they spoke out in defense of pro-French language Law 101 (subsequently declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada on December 15.) He also disowned them when they criticized federal Bill C-72, legislation to authorize the expenditure of millions of dollars to promote the use of English in Quebec, which, to its disgrace, the federal NDP caucus voted for.
By once again demonstrating its hostility to the national aspirations of Quebecois workers, the NDP squandered a truly historic opportunity to make a breakthrough, despite having dozens of well-rooted francophone candidates and, also for the first time, the active support of the Quebec Federation of Labour. Such is the price of abject loyalty to the Canadian state.
A more strongly Canadian nationalist campaign would have gotten the NDP nowhere in Quebec. The Liberals tried it in the province and fared miserably. But the Tories, who campaigned openly and proudly for the trade deal with the US, did better in Quebec than in any other province (53% of the vote and 63 out of 75 seats.) They even had the support of the Quebec provincial Liberal government, much to the chagrin of federal Liberal Leader Turner.
Another, albeit indirect, indication that a less Canadian nationalist, more independent, working class-oriented campaign would have better served the NDP is to be found in the results of the City of Toronto municipal election held November 14, one week before the federal vote. There the NDP, the only party to openly and independently field candidates, captured a slim majority both on City Council and the Board
So the federal election results cannot be attributed to a marked shift to the right by voters. As was pointed out, the Tory vote fell 7%, the NDP's rose, and 53% voted for parties claiming to be opposed to the free enterprise-oriented trade deal.
For the NDP the election was a missed opportunity, a debacle to put it bluntly, but not the product of a right wing sea change. The party put personality in command. The leadership hoped to coast to power on the basis of Ed Broadbent's personal popularity (and the continuation of scandal and infighting in the bourgeois camps.)
The NDP brass took working people for granted. It overlooked the gains made by the party in the wake of the 1986 strike
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CANADA wave. It tried to coddle conservative petty bourgeois opinion by distancing itself from NDP anti-NATO policy, by advocating increased expenditures on Canada's armed forces, by attacking Quebec's language law, and by promising to be a willing partner in a capitalist coalition government. The only positive aspect of the NDP campaign was its promise to preserve social programmes like medicare, which unfortunately only the elderly can recall were first established provincially by the NDP or its predecessor party, the Cooperative Com-
Frankly, this approach did not work because it could not work. That is not what people who would newly consider voting for a labour party are looking for.
Need to strengthen NDP as a labour party
Bourgeois commentators, like the Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson, resolve the dilemma for the NDP by urging the party to sever its ties to the labour movement. "Unless the NDP breaks out of that rut, it's going to remain with its trade union friends at the margin of Canadian politics", wrote
Of course, if the NDP took his advice, the party would simply wither and die, for its raison d'être would be gone. The Canadian bourgeoisie does not need three strong federal parties. Then again, Jeffrey Simpson
To the contrary, workers need to strengthen the NDP as a labour party, not only by affiliating more unions to the party, but by actively taking part in its internal life. As workers we can assert our class interests in the party, even though they are
MONTH CLATTE
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Results of November 21, 1988 general election
Seats
International Viewpoint #155 • January 23, 1989
CANADA
1988%
Progressive
Conservative 43
Liberal 31.8
NDP 20.4
Other 4.8 bound to conflict with the pro-capitalist, Canadian nationalist and protectionist policies of Broadbent and White. We should promote socialist policies that correspond to our needs. We should organize support for our struggles, both within and without the NDP, demanding that the party become an activist, fighting force that campaigns on the side of all the oppressed and
This will be part of the process by which we take control of our class destiny by forging a revolutionary leadership capable of leading the working class to the seizure of state power and the construction of a new social order based on justice and equality. Without thinking for a moment that the NDP will play such a leadership role, we know that a majority of the workers who support the NDP today must be won to such a perspective if it is to be
Helping to win workers to a revolutionary perspective, and working to construct the necessary revolutionary organization to lead workers' struggles is the aim of Socialist Challenge/Gauche Socialiste, whose members promote these ideas in the unions, the NDP, movements for women's rights and international solidarity, and other social protest movements.
More serious, and therefore more worrisome than Jeffrey Simpson's free advice are the observations of former NDP national secretary Gerald Caplan.
A "realist," and an open advocate of NDP-Liberal coalition, Caplan does not question the NDP's vital labour link. He has even made his peace with the party's foreign policy..."Fiddling with its NATO policy persuaded no new target groups, yet distressed party loyalists."
Deadly diversions for workers
Caplan's point of departure is economic policy - from the right. Favorably citing austerity-minded social-democratic governments in Spain, New Zealand, France, Australia and Sweden, he urges the NDP to be more concerned with creating wealth than with re-distributing it (as if wealth is created by attacking workers' incomes and benefits.) In Caplan's view, "That means moving well beyond outdated Keynesian1sm as well as discredited left wing panaceas of wholesale nationalization." (As if 10 the NDP ever advocated the latter!)
So Bob White wants the NDP to be more
1984 % Seats 169 50 209 83 28 43 43 18.6 30
0 3.2 0 nationalist than the Liberals, and Gerald Caplan wants the party to embrace economic policy that will crowd out the Tories to the right. Both prescriptions are a deadly diversion for workers.
The main result of the November 21 federal election, yet another Tory majority government, gives the Canadian ruling class the green light to step up its antiworker offensive. What forms will this
Implementation of the trade deal is just part of it. Five or six years down the road, unemployment insurance, medicare, regional development grants or minimum wage laws may be declared "unfair subsidies" and outlawed. But that will take time, and provoke fierce social struggles.
In the meantime, plant closures and plant down-sizing are taking place (three shutdowns — involving the loss of over 1000 jobs — happened just days after the election,) and whether these occur because of the anticipated terms of the trade deal or for other factors inherent in capitalist accumulation, the loss of jobs and incomes must be
Tory agenda of privatization
Waiting in the wings is the new federal sales tax, which Tory Finance Minister Michael Wilson would not outline during the election, but which promises to be a substantial re-distributor of wealth from workers to government and corporations. The fight over this new tax could prove to be the next major test of the balance of class
The Tory agenda of privatization (including Air Canada, PetroCanada, the Canada Post Corporation, and so on,) deregulation of industry and social expenditure cutbacks will forge ahead. It must be stopped.
An attempt to impose a new, anti-choice, anti-woman abortion law can be expected too. And instead of a much-needed expansion of childcare services, we can anticipate a bigger budget for the military, complete with multi-billion dollar nuclear-
Following the Supreme Court ruling of language Law 101, the Quebec Liberal provincial government showed that it will bend to the pressure of the privileged anglophone minority with respect to commercial signs within places of business. Meanwhile the federal Tories will continue to drive for ratification by the provinces of the Meech lake constitutional amendments which fail, despite appearances, to guarantee Quebec control over its own language and culture, while weakening federal social programmes and blocking future progressive reform - just like the trade deal.
Labour and the NDP should take the lead in defending Law 101 and stopping Meech Lake for these reasons, and build crosscountry working class unity by combatting
The challenge is clear. The employers' offensive on all levels can be effectively halted only by mass active resistance. The focus of the labour movement, and the NDP for that matter, must shift from the parliament of elections to the parliament of the streets. To wait four years for the next election is to court disaster. Now is the time to act, to organize our resistance as working Production for social use not private profit
The Tories do not have a mandate to destroy workers' rights and benefits, yet that is precisely what they intend to do. The labour movement's leaders say we should monitor the government, hold it to its promises to preserve social benefits, demand measures that will help workers to adapt to economic change. There will be no concession bargaining, say the bureaucrats.
But if our response is truly to be no concessions, labour should serve notice that we intend to fight back.
Plant closures are not effectively fought by demanding more shutdown notice, and retraining for jobs that do not exist. We need to demand public ownership of runaway plants. We need to defend workers who are forced to occupy their plants to protect their jobs. Production should be organized for social use not private profit. We should demand, "Open the books. For workers' control."
In 1981, over 100,000 trade unionists marched in Ottawa to oppose high interest rates. A massive popular coalition worked to rally forces from across the country.
In 1975, Prime Minister Trudeau introduced wage controls after promising not to do so in the 1974 election. The labour movement responded in October 1976 with a general strike in which over one million workers participated.
Is today's Tory agenda any less threatening than Trudeau's? Can we afford to respond to it in any way less militant, less massive, less determined than our fight
Labour should place the government and employers on notice that we will defend jobs, rights and services with mass protest actions, up to and including industrial action. These are some of the ideas that revolutionary socialists will raise for discussion in the unions and the NDP as working people confront the continuing Tory offensive. *