Vancouver Province
for February 25, 2000

Ye Gods and Little Fishes! What was that I attended last weekend - a living (barely) tribute to the relics of 19^th Century socialism? Any who thought the NDP leadership convention would provide from the candidates some thoughts about the future were sadly mistaken. It was all chants and mantras from the past.

We heard sung, to a hushed convention, the ballad of Joe Hill, the member of the International Workers of the World, aka the "Wobblies", who in 1915 was executed by a Utah firing squad for murder. Yes murder. He killed a man in a grocery store in what was an act of revenge arising out of a labour dispute. He had an alibi, he said but he refused to disclose it. I watched in amazement as this song about an 85 year old labour union martyr brought tears to the eyes of at least one cabinet minister. And, I thought, is this the mood of a party that wants to be re-elected to solve the problems of the 21^st century – which, of course, starts on January 1, 2001?

Then I listened to the candidates – it was incredible. There was virtually nothing about the future – no words of encouragement for the long suffering citizens of this province. No, each candidate, even Gordon Wilson, fell all over himself establishing his trade union roots and love of poverty. For those with a sense of humour, there was Wilson telling us how several generations of Wilsons were really socialists after all. I remarked on air that you would have thought, to hear him talk, that he had been brought up in a 19^th century Welsh mining town by his poor mother, widowed by the negligent hand of rapacious capitalism.

The candidates, in what looked like that famous skit in Monty Python "you were poor! Why we were so poor …" tried to out humble each other. We learned about little Ujjal’s rides with his grampa in oxen drawn carts on the dusty roads of India and about Gordon’s great grandfather’s schoonering through the wild waters off the coast of British Columbia. Touching stuff.

Each speech started out "my sisters and brothers", never the other way around, making me wonder how many addresses to his other political parties Mr Wilson started in that manner. If you were deaf there was a translator on the stage giving you every tiresome utterance though nothing, so far as I could tell, for the blind.

There were notable absences. Remember last year when Dave Barrett came out swinging for Gordo? Many thought that it a bit dicey for the Chairman of a quasi-judicial look into leaky condos but Dave shouted his tormentors down. Well, something must have happened because he didn’t even attend the convention much less speak for the fast fading Wilson. He decided, evidently, that it would be unseemly for the Chairman of the Leaky Condos Commission to be seen mixing in party politics. Um, yes.

And there was the conspicuously absent Glen Clark who didn’t even make the brief cameo appearance when the caucus was introduced. The man Dan Miller called courageous hadn’t the guts to face the party he so badly let down.

This convention gave the public an interesting peek into the real thinking of the New Democratic Party. It was turn of the century stuff all right – but the centuries were the 19^th to the 20^th. Anyone who listened in the hopes of hearing how the new leader would get us out of the pickle we’re in was sorely disappointed.

The real players at this convention were Tommy Douglas (who, the last time I looked, was dead) Ralph Klein and Gordon Campbell. Tommy was, of course, the saint who stood up to the Doctors strike in Saskatchewan over Medicare (please don’t be so churlish to state, correctly, that it was his successor, Woodrow Lloyd, who did that). Ralph Klein is the man who has made Alberta such a hell-hole to live in. Gordon Campbell, it was repeatedly alleged, will Klien-ize the health care system and bring in an American style plan.

It was an old convention both in years and ideas. About the only socialists not resurrected were the Tolpuddle Martyrs and Keir Hardie. No apologies. No plans. No vision. Just please vote for Joe Hill and Tommy Douglas and we promise all will be well.

It was pathetic.