CKNW Editorial
for September 10, 1999

The interview yesterday with Svend Robinson combined with the one some days ago with Alexa McDonough serves to underscore the fundamental difficulty being faced by the New Democratic Party.

It’s problem goes back to its roots which are the same as those of the Communist party. This was never meant to be a party in the accepted sense of that word but a movement. It was, for the longest time, a movement which gave very little, if any, thought to actually governing. They were a movement cum party of principles, which principles included the central control of the means of production and capital. This is the famous Clause 4 that haunted the British Labour Party for a century and in fact haunts it a bit today.

The true socialist will not compromise in order to obtain electoral victory. In this they are the very opposite of the Liberal Party which would never, ever, under any circumstances let a principle stand in the way of getting a vote.

This position taken by the traditional socialist is, of course, admirable but impractical as hell.

Now of course there have been changes in Socialist parties over the decades. In the provinces of Saskatchewan and British Columbia the NDP have, sensing victory after years in opposition, made policy designed to get the vote. But nevertheless, even the provincial parties fall back on principle to their electoral detriment.

A good example is the NDP’s formal ties with labour. Center and Right Wing governments also have ties with big business or other members of the community at large but they are never formal ones. To use the language of the Ronald Reagan era they always have “deniability” available to them. Organized Labour, on the other hand, is an integral part of the NDP.

This was the struggle the reformers in the British Labour Party had to wage. There the unions had block votes – they do in the NDP as well but to as large a degree – and the fight started when Neil Kinnock began the struggle for one person, one vote, a struggle that wasn’t won until his successor, John Smith actually got the job done five or six years ago. Once this happened, ancient principles were shunted aside for what the moderns like to call Social Democracy. But the legacy remains and the far left in the Labour Party has not given up. It manifests itself now in an interesting fight for the mayorality of  London. Ken Livingstone, a hard line leftie, wants the Labour Party endorsement but Prime Minister Tony Blair is trying to stop it. Why? Because the last thing Mr Blair wants to have to deal with is the city of London being led by a guru of the loonie left.

In Canada this manifested itself in the pallid results of the recent National NDP convention. There the struggle between the conservatives, led by Svend Robinson and the moderates, shakily led by Ms McDonough led to a dish of pabulum being dished out at the end of the exercise.

In British Columbia the NDP leadership may well reflect this national dichotomy – it certainly will if Svend Robinson is one of the candidates. Even without Mr Robinson, and even given her modern countenance, Joy McPhail will pay lip service to the conservative element if only to ensure a fair share of the labour vote. The modernists will be represented by Ujjal Dosanjh and, even more so, by Gordon Wilson both of whom see the need to get elected as being more important than philosophical purity.

Understand that I’m talking in relative terms here. The philosophical lodestone of all socialists be they social democrats or traditionalists is the left wing as represented, in olden times at any rate, by the Trade Union Movement. But there is this obvious cleavage between the philosophically pure and the pragmatists. That’s why, when I cited the 1986 Socred leadership convention and asked if the NDP delegates would be swayed by last minute polls, as the Socreds were, he said not very much … certainly not like the Socreds were. Within the NDP there is still a strong strain of traditionalism which essentially says that elections are not really nearly as important as keeping alive the ideals. And that’s why the NDP leadership convention will be so very interesting.