Remembering Allan Blakeney

Given his ideological limitations, Blakeney could not see how an anti-scab law, or measures to speed up the organization of the unorganized, could be justified as being in the general public interest. Labour disagreed, arguing that if Douglas had embraced such attitudes back in 1944, progressive labour laws that had become standard fare across the industrialized world would never have been passed. Relations between labour and the Blakeney government accordingly deteriorated.

Blakeney’s fall from grace and Romanow’s recovery

Despite these differences, labour loyally worked to re-elect the Blakeney government in 1975 and 1978. But in the 1982 election, Blakeney miscalculated, convinced that labour remained the political captive of the NDP regardless of the deepening differences. Faced with a militant strike by hospital workers in the spring of that year—-when Blakeney and his advisers saw a window for re-election before growing economic problems got worse—-Blakeney abruptly ordered the strikers back to work and called the snap election that led to the worst defeat of the party since the 1930s. Grant Devine’s Tories reaped the rewards.

Even the NDP’s working class vote collapsed in ’82, as angry hospital workers and their supporters picketed Blakeney relentlessly throughout the campaign. Even though organized labour officially supported and worked for Blakeney, the continuing estrangement between labour and the NDP government led to a spontaneous protest vote among the working class over which neither the NDP nor organized labour had any control.

I generally avoid spelling and grammar flames, but Brachina: who is this socialist and what is she hoarding?

janfromthebruce wrote:

[..] the Liberals love to boast that they balanced the federal budget after the Mulroney years. This is true but they did so by "stealing workers' money from Employment Insurance" which was in surplus. [..]

I actually think you're being too kind to the Liberals.  They didn't balance the budget at all.  They simply downloaded debt to the provincial and municipal governments.