NDP purges Toronto Young New Democrats

Ken Burch wrote:

Remember, also, that the battle to drive the Waffle out occurred in the same era when, to the party's eternal shame, David Lewis AND Tommy Douglas were working the floor of the NDP convention to stop the party electing a black woman, Rosemary Brown, as leader.

Fat lot of good that victory for the Caucasian phallocracy did, since all the party gained by electing the bland white guy instead was a trivial increase in votes from 15% to 20%.  There's no way the NDP would have done worse with Rosemary, since nobody who would even have thought of voting for the party would have insisted that its leader be white and male.  And as a result of that choice, people of color stayed away from the NDP for another generation.

Those were TWO chances the NDP had to matter, and both times, it chose to be irrelevant and meaningless instead.

I'm trying to understand your point here. Are you trying to claim that the ONLY reason why anyone might have thought Ed Broadbent would make a better leader for the NDP than Rosemary Brown was that they didn't want a black woman leading the party??? You don't think that maybe just maybe people were impressed with Broadbent's experience having been an MP for seven years and intellectual rigour as a political philosopher - and weren't sure about giving the national leadership of the party to someone whose only political experience at the time was to have served two years as a backbencher in the BC legislature?

Not the ONLY reason, and not a reason for EVERY Broadbent supporter(some of them just thought the party HAD to have a bland, mundane leader), but a major one for some, and anyone who isn't a Tory should feel ashamed for even letting such a consideration come into their minds(just as the party should still feel ashamed for keeping Howard McCurdy off the founding National Executive of the NDP in 1961 out of fear that some people couldn't handle the NDP NOT having an all-white face).  Broadbent had been an MP, but, outside of the federal NDP caucus, had anyone actually HEARD of the guy?  Had he actually had any national influence as a "political philosopher"?  In 1988, when it mattered, Ed Broadbent refused to express ANY political philosophy at all and reduced the NDP message to nothing but defending the social welfare state-a message guaranteed NOT to move the party to a new level.

And was there anything about Broadbent, who was an adequate leader, that was worth LOSING the enthusiasm that Brown's supporters would have brought to the party?  Her backers showed genuine passion and were actual activists for social change.  Broadbent didn't want a radically different Canada and never fought for one.

I don't think anyone was ever actually a passionate Broadbent supporter, other than those at the far right of the party, the ones who(like neo-Tory Stephen Lewis), fought the Waffle and fought the idea that the NDP should actually stand for anything beyond making the status quo slightly more humane(unless said slight increases in humanity offended Bay Street).  Ed was all about bringing the bland.  He was safe.  And a five-point gain in thirteen years shows where safe gets you.

If he'd actually been able to lead the party into government or at least Official Opposition status by the time he left, it'd be one thing, but a five point swing over thirteen years really wasn't THAT impressive.  In the end, Broadbent wasn't worth it.  ANY NDP leader would have brought the party from 15% to 20%-that didn't involve any real gains at all.  That was just the default growth that the party would have seen from people casting protest votes against the old parties.

And I guess what bothers me is the image of past NDP leaders working the floor of the convention just to stop Rosemary Brown.  Why shouldn't left people feel deeply uncomfortable about that?

Lewis and Douglas should have done the honorable thing and stayed the hell out of it.  Especially David Lewis, who was solely responsible for the party's miserable 1974 showing and as such forfeited any right to try to influence the choice of his successor at all.

Broadbent was ok, but really, in the end, was he worth having Douglas AND Lewis both fighting to stop the party from choosing a leader who actually represented the NEW face of Canada?

The NDP is SUPPOSED to be the party that challenges the existing order and says "it doesn't HAVE to be this way-we can reshape life and make it better-we can recreate society on OUR terms".  When it doesn't do that, the NDP has NO reason to exist.  The Manitoba NDP government, a government that does nothing a Liberal or Tory government wouldn't have done, proves that.

And when the tea gets weak enough, it's just warm murky water with leaves in it.

If you put balancing budgets before everything else, you let the financial sector have a veto over what you can do in government.  Taken far enough, you let business outvote the people.

Ultimately, what the left has to do is to natiionalize the financial sector.  That is the only way to create enough space to allow left-of-centre governments to actually BE left-of-centre.

If you don't do that, you end up where Manitoba and Nova Scotia are today-NDP governments that checked all NDP principles at the door.

Ken Burch wrote:

Not the ONLY reason, and not a reason for EVERY Broadbent supporter(some of them just thought the party HAD to have a bland, mundane leader), but a major one for some, and anyone who isn't a Tory should feel ashamed for even letting such a consideration come into their minds(just as the party should still feel ashamed for keeping Howard McCurdy off the founding National Executive of the NDP in 1961 out of fear that some people couldn't handle the NDP NOT having an all-white face).  Broadbent had been an MP, but, outside of the federal NDP caucus, had anyone actually HEARD of the guy?  Had he actually had any national influence as a "political philosopher"?  In 1988, when it mattered, Ed Broadbent refused to express ANY political philosophy at all and reduced the NDP message to nothing but defending the social welfare state-a message guaranteed NOT to move the party to a new level.

And was there anything about Broadbent, who was an adequate leader, that was worth LOSING the enthusiasm that Brown's supporters would have brought to the party?  Her backers showed genuine passion and were actual activists for social change.  Broadbent didn't want a radically different Canada and never fought for one.

I don't think anyone was ever actually a passionate Broadbent supporter, other than those at the far right of the party, the ones who(like neo-Tory Stephen Lewis), fought the Waffle and fought the idea that the NDP should actually stand for anything beyond making the status quo slightly more humane(unless said slight increases in humanity offended Bay Street).  Ed was all about bringing the bland.  He was safe.  And a five-point gain in thirteen years shows where safe gets you.

If he'd actually been able to lead the party into government or at least Official Opposition status by the time he left, it'd be one thing, but a five point swing over thirteen years really wasn't THAT impressive.  In the end, Broadbent wasn't worth it.  ANY NDP leader would have brought the party from 15% to 20%-that didn't involve any real gains at all.  That was just the default growth that the party would have seen from people casting protest votes against the old parties.

And I guess what bothers me is the image of past NDP leaders working the floor of the convention just to stop Rosemary Brown.  Why shouldn't left people feel deeply uncomfortable about that?

Lewis and Douglas should have done the honorable thing and stayed the hell out of it.  Especially David Lewis, who was solely responsible for the party's miserable 1974 showing and as such forfeited any right to try to influence the choice of his successor at all.

Broadbent was ok, but really, in the end, was he worth having Douglas AND Lewis both fighting to stop the party from choosing a leader who actually represented the NEW face of Canada?

The NDP is SUPPOSED to be the party that challenges the existing order and says "it doesn't HAVE to be this way-we can reshape life and make it better-we can recreate society on OUR terms".  When it doesn't do that, the NDP has NO reason to exist.  The Manitoba NDP government, a government that does nothing a Liberal or Tory government wouldn't have done, proves that.

- all of this is quite interesting - is there anyone who can give the other side of the story about this? That is - why, from the other perspective, were Douglas and Lewis telling people not to go for Brown? (if indeed, of course, they were..)

siamdave wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Not the ONLY reason, and not a reason for EVERY Broadbent supporter(some of them just thought the party HAD to have a bland, mundane leader), but a major one for some, and anyone who isn't a Tory should feel ashamed for even letting such a consideration come into their minds(just as the party should still feel ashamed for keeping Howard McCurdy off the founding National Executive of the NDP in 1961 out of fear that some people couldn't handle the NDP NOT having an all-white face).  Broadbent had been an MP, but, outside of the federal NDP caucus, had anyone actually HEARD of the guy?  Had he actually had any national influence as a "political philosopher"?  In 1988, when it mattered, Ed Broadbent refused to express ANY political philosophy at all and reduced the NDP message to nothing but defending the social welfare state-a message guaranteed NOT to move the party to a new level.

And was there anything about Broadbent, who was an adequate leader, that was worth LOSING the enthusiasm that Brown's supporters would have brought to the party?  Her backers showed genuine passion and were actual activists for social change.  Broadbent didn't want a radically different Canada and never fought for one.

I don't think anyone was ever actually a passionate Broadbent supporter, other than those at the far right of the party, the ones who(like neo-Tory Stephen Lewis), fought the Waffle and fought the idea that the NDP should actually stand for anything beyond making the status quo slightly more humane(unless said slight increases in humanity offended Bay Street).  Ed was all about bringing the bland.  He was safe.  And a five-point gain in thirteen years shows where safe gets you.

If he'd actually been able to lead the party into government or at least Official Opposition status by the time he left, it'd be one thing, but a five point swing over thirteen years really wasn't THAT impressive.  In the end, Broadbent wasn't worth it.  ANY NDP leader would have brought the party from 15% to 20%-that didn't involve any real gains at all.  That was just the default growth that the party would have seen from people casting protest votes against the old parties.

And I guess what bothers me is the image of past NDP leaders working the floor of the convention just to stop Rosemary Brown.  Why shouldn't left people feel deeply uncomfortable about that?

Lewis and Douglas should have done the honorable thing and stayed the hell out of it.  Especially David Lewis, who was solely responsible for the party's miserable 1974 showing and as such forfeited any right to try to influence the choice of his successor at all.

Broadbent was ok, but really, in the end, was he worth having Douglas AND Lewis both fighting to stop the party from choosing a leader who actually represented the NEW face of Canada?

The NDP is SUPPOSED to be the party that challenges the existing order and says "it doesn't HAVE to be this way-we can reshape life and make it better-we can recreate society on OUR terms".  When it doesn't do that, the NDP has NO reason to exist.  The Manitoba NDP government, a government that does nothing a Liberal or Tory government wouldn't have done, proves that.

- all of this is quite interesting - is there anyone who can give the other side of the story about this? That is - why, from the other perspective, were Douglas and Lewis telling people not to go for Brown? (if indeed, of course, they were..)

Rosemary Brown's own biography, BEING BROWN, documents the disgraceful role Lewis and Douglas(men who once SUPPORTED social change)played at the '75 convention.

Ken Burch wrote:

And was there anything about Broadbent, who was an adequate leader, that was worth LOSING the enthusiasm that Brown's supporters would have brought to the party?  Her backers showed genuine passion and were actual activists for social change.  Broadbent didn't want a radically different Canada and never fought for one.

I guess that according to you the NDP learned from its mistake the next time it chose a leader in 1989 when it rejected a very experienced white male who had been premier of BC in favour of a neophyte woman from Yukon who had been in parliament for all of two years. Thanks to all the "enthusiasm" that Audrey McLaughlin's vast army supporters brought to the party and thanks to the incredible novelty of being the fist party to have a woman as leader in Canada - the NDP went on to win - drumroll please - 6.7% of the vote and 9 seats!

Ken Burch wrote:

Rosemary Brown's own biography, BEING BROWN, documents the disgraceful role Lewis and Douglas(men who once SUPPORTED social change)played at the '75 convention.

In other words, she says - either you had to support her leadership bid or else you must be opposed to social change of any kind. Talk about ideological blackmail. Does that mean that if I vote for Joe Pantalone instead of Geotrge Smitherman - i must be a homophobe who doesn't want Toronto to have a gay mayor??

Back to the OP - my remarks are intended to address the question in principal, not the particulars of the case.

That having been said, having experienced first-hand how disruptive entryism can be (my touchstone being the WCP and CPC(M-L) disruptions of campus based anti-Apartheid/divestment campaigns in the 1980s) I have no problem at all with a periodic de-lousing. I don't believe in pre-emptively banning anyone/group, but nor would I support the argument that any group should be forced to play host to what are essentially parasites (and there is a clear distiniction, in my mind at least, between parasites and symbiotes).

Or smoke.

I don't deny that Tommy was great on social justice issues for most of his life. 

It was just this moment that was disturbing.  Past leaders of a party aren't supposed to intervene like that in a leadership convention.

I was involved with the anti-apartheid movement when the IS were purged Autumn 1985. I was an IS fellow traveller in those days. A lot of people were surprised to find me still present in the meeting after they had voted to expel the IS members. I see this is the battles on the Left that go back to the days of David Lewis and the fear of real change in society. Is there really a parliamentary party out ther in which the Left can put its trust?

I wasn't a member of the IS; that's the point, Cueball.

Caissa wrote:

I wasn't a member of the IS; that's the point, Cueball.

Who cares, everyone thought you were and still did not kick you out.

KenS wrote:

You mean, they arent supposed to participate?

Out of several leadership races I can think of in the last while, there was one ex-leader participant. But I have no idea about the norm 35 years ago.

Guess Ed Broadbent didn't know that as he endorsed Jack Layton's leadership candidacy in 2003. The custom is usually that an outgoing leader doesn't endorse their immediate successor but often they will support someone tacitly. I don't know if David Lewis openly endorsed Broadbent or did so quietly. If it was the latter it wouldn't be terribly unusual.

While Stephen Lewis may have remained quiet in the convention that chose his immediate successor (though I believe he was known to be supporting Deans) he helped recruit Bob Rae to succeed Michael Cassidy and endorsed him as I recall.

So is the ONDY Executive intending to kick everyone out who publicly promotes "causes that [are] not those of Ontario's New Democrats"?

Like supporters of the BDS campaign against Israeli apartheid? Or opponents of public funding for separate schools? Or 9/11 "truthers"?

Or is this just an old-fashioned anti-communist witch hunt?

If simply anti-communist witch hunt is what it was about, plenty of others would be kicked out... including some who have more potential as opposition within the party.

The NDP could hardly explicitly say in the formal criteria given "we're kicking these people out because they are entryists."

Taking over an organization is not the sole goal of entryism. And in the case of the NDP, its obvious even to people that operate differently, that takeover is not going to happen.

For the organizations that practice it, entryism is win-win.

Because they operate on perpetual turnover except for the people at the top, entryist organizations rely on new recruits to keep going. And their rhetoric is always going to impress a few people. So they always get some recruits.

Its about the jorurney, not the destination.

The claims about Rosemary Brown's views on the leadership race didn't ring true to me.  So I went back and re-read my copy of Being Brown.  The claims around Brown do not match her stated views.  In fact they are a complete mischaracterization.

"The claims about Rosemary Brown's views on the leadership race didn't ring true to me.  So I went back and re-read my copy of Being Brown.  The claims around Brown do not match her stated views.  In fact they are a complete mischaracterization."

Thanks, BA.  I don't have a copy, and only hoped that was the case. 

So that this:

"And I guess what bothers me is the image of past NDP leaders working the floor of the convention just to stop Rosemary Brown.  Why shouldn't left people feel deeply uncomfortable about that?

Lewis and Douglas should have done the honorable thing and stayed the hell out of it.  Especially David Lewis, who was solely responsible for the party's miserable 1974 showing and as such forfeited any right to try to influence the choice of his successor at all."

...can be treated as the creative, slanderous bullshit that we suspected.

The likelihood of "winning" the NDP to socialism is slim to none so I think groups like Fightback are either deluding themselves or lying to people by telling them that.

However, while the NDP itself is not ripe to be "taken over" even in a revolutionary situation, ONDY and other youth groups in the NDP are tempting targets simply because the NDP does such a poor job of recruiting youth or giving them resources or any real role. Participation in the NDYs is generally so low that a dedicated and well organized group of 50 people could quite easily take over a provincial youth wing. How long the NDP would let them have control is another issue entirely. I fully expect that were Fighback or another group succeed in taking over ONDY and were open enough about their politics the NDP executive would shut down the youth wing fairly quickly. In fact, the NDP has done just that several times.

Of course, if the NDP were serious about activist politics and tried to play a role in the broader movement rather than seeing politics in purely parliamentary and electoral terms and if ONDY were given significant resources to organize and was therefore attractive to large numbers of serious young activists a small group like Fightback would just be another voice in a large chorus and would not wield very much influence or be able to engineer a takeover. The fact that the NDP feels it's necessary to essentially expel Fightback is not a sign of Fightback's strength or the NDP's strength but entirely a product of the NDP's weakness - just in the way that David Orchard's ability to wield a lot of influence in the federal PC party in its last months, so much so that he was able to play kingmaker and, given time, may have been able to take over the party, was more a sign of the PC Party's weakness than anything else.

Quote:

Of course, if the NDP were serious about activist politics and tried to play a role in the broader movement rather than seeing politics in purely parliamentary and electoral terms 

While I've agree with this for a long time, and still do, as I mentioned above, a quick look at the Fightback website showed an aloofness to electoral politics altogether. It's strange to read absolutely nothing about the civic election on their website. It's even stranger to read a critique of proportional representation in favor of the undemocratic status quo with the caveat that a more radical platform will win elections. It just doesn't look like a "fit" to me. 

Polunatic2 wrote:

It's strange to read absolutely nothing about the civic election on their website.

Please provide us with a link to the civic election coverage on the Ontario NDP website. 

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

The claims about Rosemary Brown's views on the leadership race didn't ring true to me.  So I went back and re-read my copy of Being Brown.  The claims around Brown do not match her stated views.  In fact they are a complete mischaracterization.

Thank you BA, debunking "whispers in the ear" is always welcome.