Georgia Straight
for November 1994, Article 2

A very strange thing happened to me a year ago.

Every election, on my radio program, I do an all candidates show around the Province giving candidates a one minute opportunity to say their piece. Most of the calls last election were from the Natural Law Party pushing Transcendental Meditation" but near the end of the show I took a call from Margaret Mitchell, then NDP MP for the hitherto always safe NDP seat of Vancouver East. I said to her, "Margaret, if you have to call up on a show like this, the NDP must be in a lot of trouble." It was.

As everyone knows, the NDP went into the dumper right across Canada. Moreover, in two of the three Provinces where they hold power, Ontario and B.C., they are seen as being in trouble. What's gone wrong?

I think it is a fundamental problem. The NDP, though since 1961 a coalition of the left, has always been the most doctrinaire of all parties. While it has its share of pat phrases and political cliches, more than any party to the right of them they have held certain principles to be the underpinning of the party. One is the age old notion that the state should control the means of production and stuff like that. A second is that it is a party of Organized Labour. And it has always been against Capitalism and for something else, though just precisely what, often has been a mystery.

In one sense, comparisons between the NDP and the British Labour Party are inapt. Because the Liberal Party, the center party in Britain collapsed, largely through in-fighting during World War I between Asquith and Lloyd George, the Labour Party has had considerable governing experience and has since the late 20s been considered the effective alternative to the Tories. In Canada, because the Liberals, the party of the center (in theory at least) has been the natural governing party, the NDP has never been more than an 2. influence for social reform, much of which likely would have been initiated by the Liberals anyway, though the NDP will never admit to that.

Despite this, there are apt comparisons between the NDP and the Labour Party. The latter has gone through a massive reassessment since they lost power in 1979 and the NDP, since it's wipeout in 1993, is trying with all its might to get one launched now. (Though it has had these exercises before, usually the options have been left, lefter, or far left.)

The Labour Party came to a crucial realization - the rank and file of the organized labour voted Tory in preference to it. The NDP have likewise reluctantly recognized that in 1993, only 22% of the Union movement voted for them. The question, of course, is why?

The answer is not easy to find. Certainly the party rhetoric cannot be faulted. If mere words satisfied labour, the NDP would be high and dry.

I suppose it is presumptuous of me, a non socialist, to try to explain the NDP dilemma but perhaps some outside thoughts might have some validity.

Let's start with the Canada-U.S.A. Trade Agreement - Free Trade. The NDP opposed it. Fair enough, so did the Liberals. The fact was that it was passed, and, by 1993, so firmly in place that only a dreamer would think that it could be materially altered, much less repealed. Yet in the run-up to the '93 election, Free Trade was about all the NDP could talk about.

They heard plenty of applause, of course, because many Canadians didn't like it either. Trouble was, most Canadians understood what the NDP was not prepared to recognize, namely that like it or not, it was here to stay.

Many Canadians didn't like the notion of extending free trade into NAFTA either. And the NDP made a hell of a fuss about it. But again a public which applauded the NDP weren't going to vote for them over that issue because

they knew in their gut that NAFTA was also here to stay.

3. The NDP are very good at articulating the problems - not so good at coming up with workable solutions. The public know that there is little sense simply railing at the ravages of the new worldwide industrial revolution we are in - we must find answers. Moreover, they don't see the answers in the Trade Union movement or "Concerned Citizens" groups.

I do not presume to know what the NDP should do but I can tell you that the Labour Party in Britain is way ahead in the polls despite a very good economy under Tory rule. Granted that the Tories have had plenty of steamy scandals and the like, but I would argue that Labour has become powerful because they have carefully and deliberately cast off the shackles of the past and, ironically, it was done with the considerable help of Margaret Thatcher. That redoubtable lady, by bringing in trade union democracy, trimmed the wings of the radical leftwing labour leaders like like Arthur Scargill thus helped Neil Kinnock marginalize the far left, led by Tony Benn, and move the party towards the center. The late John Smith broke the Trade Union control of the party machinery. Tony Blair has added youth and charisma to the mix, making the Labour Party the "government in waiting".

The NDP must do what in the 70s we called a "zero based" assessment of what they stand for. They can, of course, opt for philosophical purity - the old "Marxist principles married to a free society" bit. That may make a lot of doctrinaire socialists feel good, but it sure as hell won't elect a government.

They also have another problem - they must find a leader; someone who can keep their many geographical and philosophical wings together while appealing to the average voter.

From this perspective, if the NDP is to survive as a national party, instead of allowing the Liberals to occupy all of the center left which both parties need, they have a lot to do and not that much time within which to do it.