CRISIS IN CANADA'S CCF

...In his opening speech at the July convention, the national chairman of the CCF admitted that today "The workers feel more sure of their jobs next week than they do of peace next week, more afraid of world war than of world depression...

...Underhill, expressing opinions which seem to be close to those held by CCF leaders, has written that "the idea of the British nations operating as a kind of 'Third Force...

...Staggering was the fact that its vote dropped almost 50% below that polled in the same district in the general election 18 months before...

...is only a dream...

...In the general elections of 1949 the CCF suffered an unexpected and (it is now clear) badly demoralizing setback, when its membership in the Canadian Parliament fell from 42 to 13 seats...

...Canada should support him in this commonsense attitude...

...Even more important have been the reverses suffered recently by the Commonwealth Labor Parties, for the CCF had fallen into the habit of using Australia, New Zealand, and Labor Britain as arguing points...

...A similar coalition in British Columbia is showing signs of restiveness now that CCF strength has passed its peak...

...It is clear enough that the Commonwealth cannot operate as an entirely separate Third Force, yet it is altogether possible that Canada, with India and Great Britain, may yet find a method for expressing opinions held in common by these three nations within the framework of a continuing alliance with the U.S...

...Admittedly, this was written before the Chinese intervention in Korea...

...CCF leaders sense this now—belatedly...

...When Canada supported the U.S...

...As Lipset shows, the CCF operates in Saskatchewan to a large extent within the traditions of Western agrarian protest movements...

...and all this in a country of two cultures and a half dozen distinct regions...

...Some of the CCF's difficulties can be related to general political trends in the democracies during the past decade...

...A few weeks after the CCF convention was held, Toronto's morning daily, the conservative Globe and Mail, wrote that "The only intelligible policy for the United States in China is to recognize Mao Tse-tung . . . The policy of defending Chiang on his island outpost...

...Crisis in Canada's CCF By Robert L. Weaver Toronto THE Cooperative Commonwealth Federation ( C C F ), Canada's third party and the most successful social democratic movement in North America, is facing a serious crisis...

...At the end of January, the CCF issued a statement urging Canada's representatives at the UN to vote against the U.S...

...Prof...

...the admission of China to the United Nations, but not under duress...

...This is the case in four of the 10 provinces at the present time...

...Last summer Canada was plunged into a nationwide rail strike, and the CCF found itself in a difficult position, since farmers in Western Canada feared wage increases would mean higher freight rates...

...The motion was defeated, and some attempt was made to label its supporters "Trotskyites...

...All this should not be taken to suggest that there is any trend towards "neutralism" in Canada, but rather that many people in this country are fearful that the United States may somehow become involved in a war with China...

...Yet the CCF lost the election...

...Moreover, the Liberal Government has introduced a number of social security measures, and while the CCF may argue that its proposals are more logical and humane, Canadian voters, including thousands of union members, remain for the most part unconvinced...

...For a number of reasons the Saskatchewan branch of the CCF now represents the reformist, not the socialist, tendencies within the party...

...resolution labeling Communist China an aggressor in Korea...

...is one which can make no sense whatever to the Asian masses...

...The CCF candidate made controls a central plank in his platform, while the Liberal sat firmly on the fence and the Progressive Conservative denied that controls were necessary...

...the emergence of Korea as a free, democratic and united nation...

...After its long silence, the CCF's present more vigorous activity is heartening, although still sadly late...

...If the same fate should someday overtake the CCF, the weakness of its policy on foreign affairs at this time may well be regarded as one of the chief reasons for its decline...

...and so forth...

...In the most recent of these, last October in Well-and County, a constituency which forms part of the heavily industrialized Niagara District, the CCF's troubles were dramatized on a small scale: A few days before the election the Canadian Gallup Poll had reported that 75% of those questioned in a national sampling were in favor of immediate price controls...

...In Ontario, which has a Progressive Conservative government and a CCF opposition, the newly aggressive Liberals would probably supplant the CCF if an election were held today...

...class parties, but must be a loosely-knit representative collection of voters from all groups...

...But in its issue of Dec...

...The recent activities at the United Nations of Lestet B. Pearson, Canadian Minister for External Affairs, are simply an expression of an attitude towards the world situation which is finding increasingly widespread support in Canada...

...Today in Canada, although living costs are at an all-time high, wages and the overall level of employment are also at a peak...

...Canadians of all political beliefs have in the past few months been increasingly disturbed by American policy in the Far East, as well as by such internal issues as the McCarthy "investigation," and the recent speech by Herbert Hoover...

...The CCF's sudden growth began about 1941-42, and reached a high point around the end of the war, thus roughly corresponding with the revival of social democracy in Western Europe...

...9 the Toronto business weekly, the Financial Post, wrote that "Listening to Britain's Attlee and Canada's Pearson will do Washington a lot of good...

...While the minority resolution was probably devised partly to embarrass the party's leaders, the latter have done little in the past few months to amplify the general statement finally adopted by the convention ("complete support for the principle of collective security through the United Nations...

...resolution a few days later, the CCF parliamentary group moved a vote of want of confidence in the Liberal Government, which was defeated...

...Attlee suggests that facts should be faced, that there is no merit in cutting off contacts with a sixth of mankind and losing all chance of making Western views known to China's rulers...

...Since then, of course, European socialist parties have moved through a difficult five years...

...If the CCF is suffering from the effects of a political climate which is everywhere intolerant of moderation, it is also faced with a problem which seems still to be peculiar to this continent...

...In other words, the CCF's great problem at the moment is foreign affairs...

...Meanwhile, the CCF has been losing ground in the three provincial legislatures in which it forms the official opposition...

...Here the CCF might have played an important role, by advocating earlier the more vigorous foreign policy which Pearson and the Liberal Government now seem prepared to follow...

...II For a decade and a half CCF leaders have had to take into account the difficulty of holding together an organization committed to certain basic principles, which has yet tried to represent farm, labor, and middle-class groups...

...ROBERT L. WEAVER, on the staff of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has written for The Nation, New Republic, and a number of Canadian magazines, most frequently the Canadian Forum...

...Twenty-five years ago the Liberal Party, ever sensitive to public opinion and adept at politics, managed to absorb and destroy another Canadian protest movement, the Progressive Party...

...This issue—socialism versus reform—occupied CCF delegates at the party's national convention last July, when it was decided to revise the CCF's basic theoretical document...

...but by presenting our point of view vigorously within the North Atlantic Alliance...

...For it is debatable whether a political party committed to socialism can win a national election in North America...

...The attitude of those who believe that the Manifesto must be revised was expressed in the September issue of The Canadian Forum by Frank H. Underhill, professor of history at the University of Toronto and a longtime gadfly within the CCF, when he argued that in Canada, as in the United States, "political parties that aspire to the responsibility of government must not be...

...As this date suggests, the CCF was very much a child of the depression, and now for the first time it is submitting its fundamental policies to a thoroughgoing reconsideration...

...The Regina Manifesto, drawn up in 1933...

...At the July convention a small minority within the party urged the CCF to call for "the seating of the new government of the Republic of China," a cease-fire in Korea, and "a United Nations Commission . . . headed by Pandit Nehru of India, to devise a permanent settlement of the Korean situation...

...From the beginning of the war in Korea, Canada rejected the American policy regarding Formosa, and it is an open secret that, except for an unwillingness to embarrass the United States, this country would long ago have followed Great Britain's lead and recognized the new regime in China...

...Since that time the CCF's difficulties have multiplied, until now, weary and confused, it seems in danger of becoming an ineffective minority organization...

...During the past few months CCF candidates fared poorly in several important by-elections...

...In Canada minority parties have frequently come to power in one of the provinces, although unable to win a national election...

...Unfortunately, the bitterness stirred up at the convention has left the CCF apparently incapable of adapting itself to a rapidly changing international situation...

...This development has been perceptively analyzed in a recent book, Martin Lipset's Agrarian Socialism, (University of California Press), which is the best study of the CCF yet published...

...These two men have a deep sense of history . . . Fighting China is a confusion in policy . . ." At about the same time the Ottawa Citizen argued that "in explaining Britain's recognition of the Peiping Government, Mr...

...In Manitoba, where the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives had continued a wartime coalition through fear of the CCF, the two old parties recently decided to go their separate ways...

...It may seem that the Province of Saskatchewan, which has a CCF government, stands as evidence that a socialist party will someday come to power in Canada, but in actual fact the reverse is true...

...and that "such separate individual interests as we may have can . . . best be protected not by trying to stand aloof from the U.S...