Labour Party (Canada)

There have been various groups in Canada who have nominated candidates under the label Labour Party or Independent Labour Party or other variations from the 1870s until the 1960s. These were not national parties, but local or provincial groups using the Labour Party or Independent Labour Party name. These groups were usually backed by local Labour Councils (made up of all the union locals in a city) or individual trade unions.

A number of local Labour parties and clubs participated in the formation of the Communist Party of Canada in 1921. The Independent Labour Party and other labour groups helped found the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in 1932.

The first Labour MP was Arthur Puttee who founded the Winnipeg Labour Party, and was elected to the House of Commons from Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1900.

Other MPs elected under the Labour or Independent Labour label include:

Angus MacInnis who was an Independent Labour Party MP from 1930 to 1935 and sat as a CCF MP from 1940;
A. A. Heaps, who was elected as a Labour MP for Winnipeg North in 1925, 1926 and 1930 and was re-elected as a CCFer in 1935;
J. S. Woodsworth, who founded the Manitoba Independent Labour Party in 1921. Woodsworth as sat as an Independent Labour Party MP from 1921 until he became the founding leader of the CCF in 1932.

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 soicalist and labour parties in the province and eventually form a national party. The leadership of the TLC changed in 1918, however, and the new leaders favoured the "non-partisan" approach of American Federation of Labor labour Samuel Gompers while [J. S. Woodsworth opposed the creation of a party that would be dominated by the labour union bureaucracy.

Nevertheless, between 1920 and 1926 provincial parties 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.

The Ontario Labour Party was created in 1922 with James Simpson of the Independent Labour Party and Reverand A. E. Smith of the Communist Party of Canada as leaders.

In 1924, the Canadian Labour Party was formed by a coalition of the Federated Labour Party, Workers Party of Canada (the legal face of the Communist Party of Canada), the Ontario Labour Party and local labour councils. It never elected a candidate at any level and collapsed by 1929 with Communists being expelled from the Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia sections of the party and non-Communists withdrawing from the Ontario section and refusing to participate in the Manitoba section.

From 1906-1909, there was also a Canadian Labour Party of B.C. that ran candidates in the early years of the twentieth century and 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.

Table of contents

1 Liberal-Labour
2 Farmer-Labour
3 External Link

Liberal-Labour

At various times in political history of Canada and of Ontario, candidates have sought election as Liberal-Labour candidates. (Please see linked article.)

Farmer-Labour

In Ontario, Labour and Independent Labour Party MPPs joined with members of the United Farmers of Ontario to form a Farmer-Labour coalition government from 1919 to 1923 with E. C. Drury as Premier.

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.

In Alberta, several Labour MLAss joined the initial United Farmers of Alberta government.

In Saskatchewan, the United Farmers and the Independent Labour Party merged to form the Farmer Labour Group in 1932, which, two years later, became the Saskatchewan section of the CCF.

Federally, Agnes Macphail, who was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons as a Progressive, was re-elected in 1935 as a UFO-Labour candidate before being defeated in 1940. She was, at the time, a member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, but ran as UFO-Labour for tactical reasons.

See also:

External Link

Labour Party (Canadian Encyclopedia article)