Freedom Socialist • Vol. 20, No. 2 • July-September 1999
Rank and file challenge rightward path of New Democratic Party
by Marcel Hatch
Revulsion gripped working people in Canada when the party that is supposed to be theirs, the New Democratic Party, voted in Parliament at the end of March in favour of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
NDP leader and Member of Parliament Svend Robinson justified the war and the vote as “regrettable but necessary.”
Overnight, the party’s youth organization, the Young New Democrats, condemned the war and disassociated themselves from the leadership’s decision. NDP offices were flooded with calls and e-mails demanding that the party uphold its longstanding positions against NATO and offensive wars.
Robinson quickly moderated his stand. He expressed “anguish,” described the bombing as a “humanitarian disaster,” called for a settlement negotiated by the U.N., and then hopped onto an airplane to “check out” the scene in the Balkans.
Two faces of social democracy.
The NDP is part of the Second International, the organization of social democrats (reformist socialists) worldwide. The NDP’s approval of the war was duplicated all over Europe, as 13 other social democratic parties blessed and joined in the assault by Bill Clinton and NATO.
But whereas in Canada the NDP is a minority in Parliament, these other parties were at the head of government. Their support is what made the war possible; had they said no to the bombing, Clinton would have been forced to act alone or not at all.
The betrayal of principle by the NDP and other parties of the Second International in regards to the war is a wrenching example of the contradiction at the heart of social democracy.
Social democratic parties attempt to serve two incompatible masters. On the one hand, they win the backing of working people by claiming to stand for an end to exploitation and oppression. But on the other, they show over and over again that they are not willing to do anything that would really upset the bosses and threaten the capitalist system.
NDP officials disloyal to party’s radical origins.
The NDP grew out of a coalition of farmers and labour during the Great Depression. By standing for fair distribution of wealth, a living wage, and nationalisation of resource industries, it attracted generations of community activists and workers to its rolls. At the same time, it also recruited battalions of preachers, lawyers and union bureaucrats, many of whom rose to prominence in the party. Although polished at articulating dreams, these new leaders lacked the ideological militancy of the party’s founders.
In the early 1990s, stung by austerity measures enacted by the ruling Tory party, voters put the NDP into power in the provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and the Yukon. In the flush of the 1990 victory in Ontario, party members put forward bold resolutions that were adopted at NDP conventions.
But once installed as Ontario premier, provincial NDP head Bob Rae simply ignored these decisions and did the opposite. He hiked university tuition, rejected Black community demands for civilian control of the cops, refused to create a single state-owned auto insurance corporation, abandoned a gay benefits bill, and turfed labour’s proposals for improving government efficiency without sacrificing jobs.
The NDP was rewarded with resounding defeat in the 1995 election.
A similar dynamic of treachery and repudiation unfolded in Saskatchewan, where the NDP came to power on a platform promising pay equity. When nurses went on strike this year, however, the response from the NDP government was the passage of anti-labour legislation and an order to go back to work.
Shouting “Hell no, we won’t go!” 2,000 nurses voted to defy the law, risking fines of $400 each for every workday missed. Ordinary Saskatchewans threw their support to the nurses, whom they recognise as the mainstay of socialised medicine.
Saskatchewan unions are re-evaluating their relationship to the NDP; many are endorsing either rival parties or independent candidates in the next election.
Duplicity punished.
Today, unapologetic, Bob Rae in Ontario tells NDP members: “Forget socialism and embrace global capitalism or become irrelevant.” No national NDP leader refutes him, but the ranks are recoiling.
In this year’s Ontario elections, on June 3, much of organised labour cast their votes for the anti-union Liberal Party. The NDP won only 14 percent of the ballots, down from 21 percent in 1995. As a consequence of losing nearly half its seats in government, it lost official party standing, which means relinquishing government funding and office space.
A fight worth waging? Yes!
Understandably, thousands of NDP members have quit the party because they can’t stomach the rightward drift of its leadership. Yet labour obviously needs a party of its own, and the NDP still holds the allegiance of most working people who are politically minded.
Although they are appalled by present-day sellouts, workers still remember a chain of past successes — socialised medicine, crucial pro-labour legislation, measures for women’s equality and protection of the environment — that the NDP has helped them win.
As long as this is true, socialists and militants shouldn’t jump ship, but should push the NDP to return to its radical, anti-big business roots. At stake are the real-life conditions of millions of working people, which have been immeasurably improved by the actions of the NDP and could be again.
Whatever the outcome of a fight over the NDP’s future, the debate will provide education and invigoration that will move the labour movement forward.
Socialist Caucus injects vitality.
Last fall, radical NDP members in Ontario struck a bold, optimistic course.
After months of consulting with NDP rank-and-filers and hammering out a strongly multi-issue, anticapitalist programme, they formed the Ontario NDP Socialist Caucus. Their aim is to move the NDP to champion the interests of all workers aggressively and consistently.
The ONDP caucus has extended an invitation to all NDP members to join with them in launching a cross-Canada socialist caucus at the NDP National Convention in Ottawa in August. For more information, contact <flexerj@web.net> or call 416-463-8641. Other radicals in NDP should follow their good example and not mourn, but organise!
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