LABOUR and POLITICS
Workers have been actively and continuously involved in politics in Canada since the 1870s. Their involvement began with the realization that government was becoming a major player in industrial relations through its intervention in strikes, the passage of factory and mining legislation, and other measures. At the same time, as workers became more numerous, politicians began to court their vote. Labour's involvement in politics has taken two forms. It began with labour representatives acting independently or associated with the traditional Conservative or Liberal parties. Towards the end of the 19th century, parties specifically organized around working-class interests also began to emerge. These groupings in turn have been of two kinds: moderate labour parties pursuing particular issues of concern to workers, and socialist parties advocating more substantial change.
Labour's first steps took place in the 1870s and 1880s. Workers elected their first independent labour representative, H.B. Witton, to the Dominion parliament in 1872. Largely ineffectual, he was soon accused of abandoning his constituents to pursue government patronage. During this decade, John A. Macdonald's Conservative government actively appealed to the labour vote, bringing in the Trades Union Bill of 1872, which represented a tentative step towards legal recognition of the right to organize. In the 1880s, working-class political action began on a wider and longer-lasting scale. The Knights of Labour in Ontario and the Provincial Workmen's Association in Nova Scotia both ran labour candidates. Some of these people remained affiliated with the old parties and ran as Liberal-Labour candidates: this pattern would continue well into the 20th century. Labour pressure resulted in political concessions, for instance, in Nova Scotia on questions of miners' safety, entry to the profession, and the right of miners to vote.
By the 1890s, working-class parties were beginning to appear, with moderate and socialist parties vying for success before the First World War. Pursuing goals such as the eight-hour day, a minimum wage, and extension of the vote, moderates attempted to form labour parties in several provinces, including Ontario, Nova Scotia, and British Columbia. They had much success in Ontario and at the municipal level in Nova Scotia, where workers' votes were concentrated in particular communities, such as the coal-mining towns. Meanwhile, socialists aimed at creating a workers' state through electoral means. Their Socialist Party of Canada, formed in 1904, made gains among coal miners and railway workers in British Columbia and Alberta and proved particularly attractive to immigrant workers such as Ukrainians, Finns, Slavs, Germans, and Italians. After 1910, however, the socialists began to lose support to a new, more moderate Social Democratic Party, influenced by skilled British immigrants.
The First World War marked a great watershed. Socialist sentiment grew tremendously due to frustration with workers' wages and conditions and to the rise of revolutionary thought elsewhere in the Western world. When the Russian Revolution took place in 1917, activists acquired a new frame of reference for their efforts. Over the next two decades and more, communists dominated the socialist point of view and exerted substantial influence on the working class, mainly through union organizing, but also by running candidates for election. Inspired by the Russian example, the Communist Party ultimately was undone by its close association with the Soviet Union. As the party followed rapidly changing Soviet policy, it gradually alienated the workers it hoped to attract. After the beginning of the 'Cold War' in the late 1940s, it was seen as part of the 'Soviet menace' and nearly disappeared altogether.
In the meantime, a credible moderate reform party had appeared. Formed in 1932, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) represented an alliance of western farmers, labour representatives, and central Canadian intellectuals. Seeking support among a wide range of the population, its goals, defined by the Regina Manifesto of 1933, advocated public takeover of key industries and other reforms to be achieved through electoral means. At the federal level, the party was headed by a fiery former Methodist minister, J.S. Woodsworth. It gained substantial support at the provincial level in Saskatchewan, Ontario, and British Columbia, reaching a peak with the election of a CCF government in Saskatchewan in 1944. The federal CCF's pressure encouraged Mackenzie King's Liberal government to introduce new social welfare measures, such as unemployment insurance and family allowances. However, the party's fortunes slumped during the 'Cold War' when the fear of communism eroded support for all left-wing groups.
To rejuvenate its image, in 1961 the CCF formally aligned itself with the Canadian Labour Congress, the voice of organized labour, and reconstituted itself as the New Democratic Party. The NDP had a stronger financial base and placed more emphasis on winning workers' votes. It still found widespread support among the farming areas of the prairies and, by the mid 1970s, had formed governments in Manitoba, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan. This party has remained a force in Canadian politics until the present day.