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| Issue No 121 |  |
30 November 2001 |
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InternationalSoul SearchingBy Andrew Casey
The party of labour in Canada - the NDP - is right now undergoing a massive struggle for its heart and soul.
*********************** As in Australia, with the ALP, much of the soul-searching is focused on rumblings and grumblings about the union bloc votes at party conventions. Unlike the ALP the NDP has never come close to winning government - at the federal level - in Canada. The most seats it has ever won was in 1988 with 43 seats out of 295 seats. At the moment in the Canadian Federal parliament the NDP holdx 13 seats. The key issue at last weekend's national NDP convention for the 1400 delegates was what percentage of the votes at the convention should be given to trade union delegates in the vote for leadership positions. The delegates from thoughout Canada met to debate what had been characterized as the party's troubled relationship with the unions who helped set it up some 40 years ago. Those who wanted to push the NDP into the 'middle ground' - the group supported by the national party leader Alexa McDonough - wanted to completely abolish the trade union delegate vote. The huge Canadian Auto Workers union had threatened to walk out of the party if the NDP turned its back on the union movement. The CAW activists at the convention were part of a 'socialist bloc' which advocated the creation of a new party, a name change and a discernible left turn - making it more popular among young people, greens, gays and social activists. This group has set up the by New Politics Initiative to promote their alternative 'socialist' and pro-union Canadian political party. This so-called 'socialist bloc' was in the minority at the weekend convention but NDP leader McDonough compromised at the last moment by offering to keep a union bloc vote at the national convention. On the opening day of the NDP convention Ms McDonough stepped back from her original position and publicly acknowledged the importance of the unions. She was quoted in the Canadian media stating that: ' trade unions are the key to social-democratic parties and it is important the NDP have a strong relationship with labour.' The convention endorsed a compromise that gives 25 per cent of the vote to trade-union delegates while the rest of the party uses the one-member one-member one-vote system in the election of leaders of the NDP. The NDP Convention website gave a good report on the debate about one-member one-vote - with a pr�cis of the arguments from delegates for and against the effective role of unions in the NDP. The debate ended with a rousing speech from former NDP federal party leader, Ed Broadbent who was strongly for the continuing relationship with the union movement. Greeted to the microphone by a standing ovation from delegates. Broadbent pointed out that labour had a long association with the party, starting with a union local in his hometown of Oshawa. In 1937, that union local's president was also president of the local Co-operative Commonwealth Federation branch ( a precursor party to the NDP). Ed Broadbent pointed out that in 1961 labour and the CCF came together to form the NDP and that if one looks at the social democratic parties in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, all those parties had a special relationship with workers and their unions. "I am a feminist, I was the first federal feminist leader in Canada, but other groups are not like labour unions work for equality and fairness in the workplace and they cut across more issues and walks of life than any other group".
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   Interview: Back to the BattleFederal Labor's new industrial relations spokesman Robert McClelland outlines the challenges for the next three years. Politics: The Baby and the Bath WaterACTU secretary Greg Combet gives his take on the debate over the ALP's relations with the union movement. Unions: We're SolidBradon Ellem charts the history of the Pilbara dispute, and finds a revitalised grass-roots unionism challenging BHP's individual contracts bulldozer Organising: Benidgo Pioneer Comes Up TrumpsACTU Delegate of the Year, Leonie Saunders, is living proof of the way unions are adapting to life under the strictures of a hostile Government. Technology: India: Cricket, Computers and CorruptionRussell Lansbury cuts through the hype to look out the so-called hi-tech revolution on the sub-continent. International: Soul SearchingThe party of labour in Canada � the NDP - is right now undergoing a massive struggle for its heart and soul. History: A Timeless DebateThe ALP and unions - it's a debate that's raged for years as this extract from a 1947 Lloyd Ross pamplet shows. Review: In Fear of SecurityLaunching his new book, Anthony Burke argues that the cry of "security" is the last refuge of the political scoundrel
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