Labour candidates and parties in Canada

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Labour candidates and parties in Canada" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

There have been various groups in

The Communist Party of Canada (CPC), formed in 1921, fulfilled some of labour's political yearnings from coast to coast, and then the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) – Worker Farmer Socialist was formed in 1932. With organic ties to the organized labour movement, this was a labour party by definition. Prior to the CCFs formation in 1932, the Socialist Party of Canada was strong in British Columbia and in Alberta before World War I, while the Dominion Labour Party and the Canadian Labour Party were strong in Alberta through the 1920s and 1930s, and the Independent Labour Party led by J. S. Woodsworth was strong in Manitoba in the 1920s and 1930s.

An Edmonton-based Independent Labour Party ran candidates in the 1921 Alberta general election. It was independent in the sense that it was separate from the Edmonton Labour Council, which was dominated by international craft unions. Later, many of its proponents joined the CPC. A number of local Labour parties and clubs participated in the formation of the CPC in 1921. The Independent Labour Party (Manitoba), the Canadian Labour Party, the Dominion Labour Party, and other labour groups helped found the CCF in 1932.

Members of Parliament

The first Labour

• Ralph Smith, a miner, ran as an Independent Labour candidate in Vancouver in the 1900 federal election but took his seat in the Canadian House of Commons as a Liberal. He was subsequently re-elected as a Liberal in the 1904 and 1908 before being defeated in 1911.
• Laurier Liberal in the 1917 federal election
  .
• James Lockwood ran as a Labour party candidate in the 1917 federal election in Algoma West, but was defeated.
• John Wilfred Kennedy was elected as a United Farmers of Ontario-Labour MP for Glengarry and Stormont in a 1919 by-election. He was re-elected as a Progressive MP in the 1921 federal election and was defeated in 1925.
• William Irvine, a close friend of J.S. Woodsworth, represented the riding of East Calgary (Calgary East), Alberta as a Labour MP from 1921 to 1925. He also served as a United Farmers of Alberta MP for Wetaskiwin from 1926 to 1935, during which time he helped found the CCF. He sat as a CCF MP for Cariboo, British Columbia from 1945 to 1949.
• Joseph Shaw represented West Calgary (Calgary West), Alberta as a Labour MP from 1921 to 1925. (He later also sat as a Liberal MLA from 1926 to 1930.)
• Herbert Bealey Adshead was Labour MP for Calgary East from 1926 to 1930.
• Angus MacInnis was an Independent Labour Party MP from 1930 to 1935 and sat as a CCF MP from 1935;
• A. A. Heaps
  was elected as a Labour MP for Winnipeg North in 1925, 1926 and 1930 and was re-elected as a CCFer in 1935;
• Manitoba Independent Labour Party
  in December 1920. He served as an MP from 1921 until his death in 1942, at first as an ILP MP, later as a CCF MP. He was the first leader of the CCF after its founding in 1932.
• Welland
  .

MacInnis, Heaps and Woodsworth joined the Ginger Group of left wing MPs prior to forming the CCF. Alberta Labour MPs Irvine and Shaw, and its UFA MPs, also were in the Ginger Group.

• See also List of Labour MPs (Canada)

Members of provincial legislatures

In Nova Scotia

Four Independent Labour Party (ILP) MLAs and one Farmer-Labour MLA (all but one from

• D. W. Morrison, ILP, (Cape Breton), 1920-1925
• Arthur R. Richardson, Farmer-Labour, (Cape Breton), 1920-1925
• Joseph Steele, ILP, (Cape Breton), 1920-1925
• Arthur Forman Waye
  , ILP, (Cape Breton), 1920-1925
• Archibald Terris, ILP, (Cumberland), 1920–1925, 1928-1933

The

A number of members of the

• Joseph Béland, MLA for the district of Montréal n°1 from 1890 to 1892;
• Saint-Sauveur
  from 1909 to 1916;
• Aurèle Lacombe, MLA for Montréal-Dorion from 1919 to 1923;
• Adélard Laurendeau, MLA for Maisonneuve from 1919 to 1923;
• Joseph Gauthier, MLA for Montréal-Sainte-Marie from 1921 to 1923;
• Pierre Bertrand, MLA for Saint-Sauveur from 1923 to 1927;
• William Tremblay, MLA for Maisonneuve from 1927 to 1931;

In Ontario

• Daniel John O'Donoghue was the first Labour candidate elected to a Canadian legislature when in 1874 he was elected to the Ontario legislature as the candidate of the Ottawa Trades Council.
• Allan Studholme was elected the first Labour Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in the Ontario legislature in a 1906 by-election in Hamilton East. He remained in office until his death in 1919.

A number of Labour MLAs were elected in the 1919 provincial election which led to the formation of a United Farmers of Ontario-Labour coalition government. Labour MLAs included:

• James Bertram Cunningham, Labour, Sault Ste Marie
• John Govenlock, Labour, Huron Centre, (1919)
• Frank Greenlaw, Labour, St. Catharines, (1919)
• George Grant Halcrow, Labour, Hamilton East, (1919)
• Liberal-Labour
  ))
• Karl Homuth
  , Labour-UFO, Waterloo S., (1919, as Labour 1923, 1926, Conservative 1929, d. 1930)
• Morrison MacBride
  , Labour, Brantford (1919, 1923, returned as Independent 1934, Ind. Liberal 1937 d. 1938)
• Harry (Henry) Mills
  , Labour, Fort William, (1919)
• Walter Rollo, Labour, Hamilton W., (1919) Minister of Labour and leader of the Labour group in the legislature (1919-1923)
• Hugh Stevenson, Labour, London, (1919)
• Charles Swayze, Labour, Niagara Falls, (1919)
• Thomas Tooms, Labour, Peterborough W., (1919)

The last Labour MLA elected to the legislature was

The

In Manitoba

• Reverend A. E. Smith was a Dominion Labour Party (DLP) MLA in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1920 to 1922. In 1925 he joined the Communist Party of Canada and was a prominent party leader until his death.
• Fred Dixon was the DLP's leader in the early 1920s and a Manitoba MLA from 1914 to 1923.
• Independent Labour Party
  MLA in Manitoba from 1920 to 1926.
• Mayor of Winnipeg
  for much of the time between 1934 and 1942.

In Alberta

• Donald McNabb, elected from Lethbridge in a 1908 by-election to become the first Labour MLA in Alberta. Defeated in the 1909 general election.
• Charles M. O'Brien, Socialist Party of Canada MLA for Rocky Mountain from 1909 to 1913. He was defeated in 1913.
• Alex Ross, Labour MLA for Calgary from 1917 to 1926, elected in Calgary in 1917 (as a candidate for the Alberta Labor Representation League), was re-elected as Dominion Labour Party candidate in 1921,^[3] was named to the provincial cabinet of the United Farmers of Alberta government, when it was elected in 1921, as Minister of Public Works. Helped form the Alberta wing of the Canadian Labour Party in 1922, was defeated in the 1926 general election.
• Philip Christophers, Labour MLA for Rocky Mountain, elected in 1921 and re-elected in 1926.
• William Johnston, Labour MLA for Medicine Hat from 1921 until 1926.
• Fred J. White, Labour MLA for Calgary from 1921 until 1935. elected to the Legislature in 1921 for Calgary, re-elected in 1926 and 1930; leader of the Labour caucus in the Alberta legislature from 1926 to 1935; president of the Alberta Federation of Labour from 1926 to 1941 as well as a long-serving secretary of the Calgary Trades and Labour Council and a Labour alderman in Calgary until 1939.
• Andrew Smeaton, Labour MLA for Lethbridge elected in 1926, re-elected in 1930 and defeated in 1935.
• Charles Lionel Gibbs
  , Labour MLA for Edmonton from 1926 to death in 1934.
• Robert Parkyn, Independent Labour MLA for Calgary from 1926 to 1930.
• Christopher Pattinson, Labour MLA for Edson from 1926 until his defeat in the Social Credit landslide of 1935.
• Angus James Morrison, Labour MLA elected for Edson in 1940 defeating Joseph Unwin. Did not run for re-election.
• See also The Rise and Fall of the Labour Party in Alberta, 1917-42

As well, Alberta Labour candidates, under the labels of the Dominion Labor Party and Canadian Labor Party, ran with some success at the civic level in Edmonton, Calgary, Medicine Hat, and Lethbridge and coal-mining towns, such as Drumheller and Blairmore (which even elected a Communist Party-dominated town council in the 1930s).^[4]

In British Columbia

• Although there were no parties in the British Columbia legislature until 1903, various candidates began to declare for labour parties in the 1890s. In 1894 Robert Macpherson, running for the leftist Nationalist Party, won a seat in Vancouver City.^[5]
• The first to succeed, in the
  Liberal Party and was re-elected as a Liberal in the 1903 and then won a seat as MP in the House of Commons of Canada in the 1904 and 1908 elections, but was defeated for his seat in the 1911. He returned to provincial politics and won his seat again as part of the province's first Liberal government in the wake of the general election of 1916. He served as Finance Minister in that government until his death in 1917, and was succeeded by his wife, Mary Ellen Smith
  , who won the resulting by-election and sat as an Independent Liberal, later becoming the first female cabinet minister in the British Empire.
• British Columbia Legislative Assembly from 1920 until 1960. He was elected as a Federated Labour Party candidate in the 1920 British Columbia general election, re-elected as part of the Canadian Labour Party slate in 1924 continued to run and win as an Independent Labour or Labour candidate rather than join the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation until his last victory in 1956. Uphill retired, undefeated, in 1960. From 1941 until 1952 the CCF unsuccessfully ran candidates against him. They did not stand against Uphill beginning in the 1953 election. The Labor-Progressive Party
  , with which Uphill had sympathies, never stood candidates against him.

In 1917, the Trades and Labour Congress (TLC) national convention in Toronto passed a resolution calling on provincial labour federations to establish a political party which would unite socialist and labour parties in the province and eventually form a national party. A Canadian Labour Party was formed, and endorsed several candidates in the 1917 federal election. The leadership of the TLC changed in 1918, however, and the new leaders favoured the "non-partisan" approach of American Federation of Labor leader Samuel Gompers. The CLP was abandoned, as such.

Between 1920 and 1926, provincial parties (or provincial wings of national bodies) were founded in British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

The Federated Labour Party was created by the British Columbia Federation of Labour in 1920, absorbing the Social Democratic Party and part of the Socialist Party of Canada.

From 1906 to 1909, there was a Canadian Labour Party of B.C. (CLP(BC)). This party was a split from and rival to a group calling itself the Independent Labour Party.

A later Independent Labour Party was organized in British Columbia in 1926 by the Federated Labour Party and Canadian Labour Party (B.C. section) branches. In 1928, it severed its CLP(BC) connections. In 1931, it reorganized, and was renamed the Independent Labour Party (Socialist). The following year it became the Socialist Party of Canada.

In Manitoba, a

The Ontario Labour Party was created in 1922, led by James Simpson of the Independent Labour Party, and the Reverend A. E. Smith, later of the Communist Party of Canada.

In 1921, Simpson also revived the Canadian Labour Party. The CLP was intended to be an umbrella organization for the various labour parties throughout the country. It formed alliances with the Federated Labour Party, Ontario Labour Party, Dominion Labour Party and other groups, including local labour councils, (although not with the Manitoba ILP). The Alberta wing of the CLP was founded in 1922. Between 1922 and 1924, the provincial and city branches of the Workers Party of Canada (the legal face of the Communist Party of Canada) also joined the CLP. It was never a strong central organization, however, and never elected a candidate at the national level. The CLP ceased to exist in most parts of the country after 1929, when the Communists withdrew. In Alberta, the CLP survived until 1942, in arms-length alliance with the Alberta Co-operative Commonwealth Federation after 1932.

Liberal-Labour

At various times in political history of Canada and of Ontario, candidates have sought election as

Conservative Labour

Conservative Labour was the label used by

Across Canada, labour and the farmers movements, particularly the United Farmers, formed alliances, and often ran joint candidates. The Progressive Party of Canada was effectively a coalition of farmer and labour groups.

John Wilfred Kennedy, a farmer, was elected as a United Farmers of Ontario-Labour MP for Glengarry and Stormont in a 1919 by-election. He was re-elected as a Progressive MP in the 1921 federal election and was defeated in 1925.

Agnes Macphail, who was first elected to the House of Commons as a Progressive, was re-elected in 1935 as a UFO-Labour candidate before being defeated in 1940. She was a supporter of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, but ran as UFO-Labour because the UFO, of which she was a member, had disaffiliated from the CCF in 1934 after a brief association.

A small number of candidates ran under the "Farmer-Labour" banner in federal elections of the 1930s and 1940s, although there was no organized party. None of these candidates ever won election to the House of Commons. One of these candidates was Beatrice Brigden who was the first Farmer-Labour candidate from Brandon, Manitoba. She ran in 1930, but was defeated by David Wilson Beaubier.^[6] Farmer-Labour co-operation would be enshrined as a guiding principle of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, founded in 1932, and of its successor, the NDP.

Ontario

Labour and Independent Labour Party

The Labour MLAs elected in 1921 (six at the most at any one time) worked with the United Farmers of Alberta government during its 14 years in power, and one even sat as a cabinet minister in the UFA cabinet for five years. Alberta's Labour MPs and its UFA MPs, who together held all the Alberta seats from 1921 to 1925, were active in the Ginger Group.

Saskatchewan

The United Farmers and the Independent Labour Party merged to form the Farmer-Labour Group in 1932. In the

• List of Labour MPs (Canada)
• List of political parties in Canada
• Fisherman's Protective Union
  – an early-20th-century political party in Newfoundland
• Conservative Labour
• New Democratic Party

References