Remembering the Waffle

This is probably kind of nitpicking, because I'm only taking exception with Judy's flight of fancy on this particular bit.

But in expelling Waffle the NDP only expelled some youth. For that matter, a large portion of Waffle adherents, maybe most even, did not themselves leave the NDP.

Has anyone heard how the 40th anniversary conference went yesterday in the Peg?

Funny, I was a radical NDP youth and I did not get expelled way back then, for my radicalness, nor ever actually.

And I am trying to think of someone I know who did get "expelled", and can't think of anyone.

Nor was it just the women of Waffle who fought for women's rights within the NDP framework, nice expropriation. :rolleyes:

Emotive with no substance.

Broadbent was in the Waffle he seemed to do quite well for himself.

She didn't say all radicals got expelled from the NDP - she said the WAFFLE got expelled from the NDP.  Are you saying that didn't happen, remind?

The Wafflers were expelled at the insistence of some labour elements and some of us lost interest in activism for many moons.

Just to be clear- not to underplay what happened:

No one was expelled. Whatever the technical terms, Waffle as an organization was banned. It was up to individuals whether or not that left them wanting to still be members of or close to the NDP.

Exactly Ken.

Michelle, she personalized it with her use of "the youth",  and "them".

Thereby implying that actual people were expelled, when that was not the case.

What occured was an organization within the organization was barred from operations.

All that cutting the heart out  emotive stuff is just embellishing...well nothing.

She herself tesifies that the women who had been in Waffle went on to, do what they did, within the NDP framework, so they were not the heart that was cut out.

The youth were not rejected, they have always had a voice at the table, so they were not the heart that was cut out...

Really, who has been cut out, that could be considered to be the "heart" of the NDP? The mysterious youth, or "them" over there in some mysterious direction that was not specified?

Every which manner of activist has been, and is being, represented witin the NDP.  Those who want to be that is.

The NDP has always been ahead of the societal curve on social justice issues, and environmental issues, so if the heart was/is gone, torn out by self, how could that be happening?

Yes, the activist element was banned - Canucks outlawed. You'd hafta re-read Watkins, remind, and nationalist opinion generally, from that time.

Ooh, a bat-signal. 

The ONDP ordered the Ontario Waffle ginger group to disband as an organized caucus within the party -- other provincial organizations and the federal party weren't part of what happened -- well, unless they were feeling supportive or something.

Shortly thereafter (summer of 1972), the Waffle itself split. The faction (probably a majority) led by Jim Laxer and Mel Watkins (I'm speaking very loosely here when I say "led") decided to remain an organized caucus and therefore to leave the party. Another group remained within the party for a time but kept heading towards a new kind of Trotskyist formation. At that point, some of us just floated away.

I do think that Lewis (Stephen) was mistaken to move against us. I've been in and out of the party several times since (I'm in right now), always vote for them, but I'm pretty sceptical about the party bureaucracy, having watched it up close 'way back then. I'm one of those people they take for granted because they know I have no one else to vote for, and they made that pretty clear at the time.

Jackie and Varda were good friends of mine back then. So were Krista Maeots and Kelly Crichton, partners to Laxer and Watkins respectively. So was Gord Laxer, who has gone on to do wonderful things at the Parkland Institute at U of A. And I should stop listing people -- there were too many wonderfully creative and committed people. I would love to see any of them again, although that's not possible in the case of the luminous Krista, who died in 1978. So many were shaken so deeply.

I'll always remember Pauline Jewett, who had just left the Liberals (over the War Measures Act) and become a New Democrat, speaking up at that provincial council meeting for us Wafflers, and then walking past us on the risers we were sitting on as observers, giving us a big smile of solidarity. The NDP needs more Pauline Jewett, always has.

Good article from Judy. I want to read it again and come back with further thoughts.

You guys act like this is a new thing. You have to remember that in the 40's the CCF went to induvidal memberships so that the Ontario party could kick out the communists.

What was done was expulsion of anyone who was a member of another political formation. Expulsions of (members of) leftist groups began as early as 1955 and continued after the Waffle banning, for instance members of the Forward group were forced out in the early 1970s.

The effect of this policy was to make it really hard to caucus outside the party, in effect splitting dissenters into those willing to work only within party structures, and those who had to leave the party to continue their organization.

The policy had an effect on people wishing to join the party. The application form had a clause that more or less forced you to sign off that you were not a member of any other political formation (I can't remember the exact wording). Now the clause says neither "member nor supporter of any other federal political party".

That one stopped me from joining at the time, and it probably stopped many others as well.

__________________________________
One struggle, many fronts.

Yup. I hesitated to put Stephen Lewis's move against us down to the lessons he learned from his commie-hunting dad, but yes, there's a tradition.

It was also true, though, that a lot of the unions didn't like us. I'd have to work on my memories to explain that better.

Judy puts her finger on the key problem with the Waffle - its bourgeois nationalism:

How wrong they were when they wrote in their Manifesto:

Nationalism is largely a progressive force in neo-colonial countries, where the struggle for national sovereignty inevitably comes to pose a challenge to the rule of the native comprador class. But in imperialist countries (like Canada) that have established their national independence, nationalism is fundamentally reactionary. It serves to obscure the role of the domestic ruling class as exploiters and oppressors in their own right, and deters the working class from developing a class consciousness and its own independent forms of politics. Instead, it tends to throw the workers of one country into an unholy alliance with their own ruling class against the workers and ruling classes of other countries.

Mockery and name dropping, and admitting to name dropping, all in one fell swoop, sweet, it makes it a double bonus for our reading pleasure.

Good to have ya back skdadl, keeps one on their toes. ;)

But we will have to agree to disagree about Judy's article, even though you are the professional in the field, and others should...well...I'll just leave it..at that.

I do not think any women have , or had, individual power within the NDP, with out all the other women standing with them.

Taking ownership of other women's endeavours in their home communities, that translated into a greater national movement, in order to name drop, as if things were only done by their efforts alone, and thus they were special, and thus those who know/knew them are special too, is extremely distasteful, to me.

It is classist, divisive, and patronizing.

remind, I have no idea what all that means.

Krista and I were close friends from the time we met in Calgary at sixteen. I loved her very deeply. I don't care whether other people know her name, and I don't use it to "drop" it, believe me. One of her other close friends and I place memorial notices for her even now, so many years later, because we still miss her.

So stuff whatever hostility you are carrying over from other threads. I spoke up because no one else had pinned this down to an event that occurred in the ONDP, and I am not apologizing to you for my life.

So is it safe to say that those who were in the Waffle thought it was significant while those were not don't see it as significant? I turned 15 in 1969 and was not part of any of it. By the mid-70's when I did begin to get involved with politics, it seemed like the national question (including aboriginal rights to varying degrees of lip-service) was one of the defining debates/issues of the new (sectarian?) left. The other major defining factor for many left formations at the time was how long it would take them to split or disintegrate. I would suppose that for every person who left politics altogether in disgust, there was another who joined the NDP. 

Whoa, transfered hostility or what....skdadl

Will try to word it better, if you are having difficulties, getting what I meant...

though, I thought it pretty clear, and indeed not hostile at all, nor even written in the spirit of feeling that apologies should be given for any reason. As there is no reason to apologize, it was just your expression of your opinions.

So my apologies, for not wording it better and making you feel like you needed to apologize, or making you think I am bringing something over, when I am not.

I was addressing both, what I disagreed with in Judy's article, and with your re-enforcement of it, which I have every right to do. My lived experience was different. Broader awareness when  trying to speak about the NDP nationally is required, or one needs to make it area specific.

 So, as I said, we will have to agree to disagree, both about Judy's article, and about how we viewed life in the NDP framework in the 60's and 70's.

That is what freedom of conscience is, no? The ability to indicate one's own opinions and life's experiences, and accept others as being different.

For example, I grew up knowing both Dief, and Tommy,  but that is just the way life was,  because they both were from Sask, its a small province, and my parents were politically active.  But I do not use them to give authority to my voice, to control public optics, and opinions, when I am speaking to NDP broad based FAQ's.

My voice and lived experience has that authority on its own. Because that is what freedom of conscience and self determination is, at its essence.

Thus, for me personally it is distasteful, when I see people needing to add authority to their words, by name dropping and settingup hierarchy. But hey, I fully recognize that others need to see what they believe are bona fides...it is just that I, do not.

And I only mention it because I believe that Judy's article did that, when it needed not to have, again my opinion of her article, and that is what I was doing, giving my opinion of her article, and part of that was her detailing of what she believes is "herstory" within the NDP. And I do not  mean "herstory" in singular.

I believe the "herstories" within the NDP are much greater, than the select group  she indicated, as  the only ones doing something for the cause of women.  Aka, "tore the heart out".

They were just one of the many, just as you and I were, and indeed just as my mother and grandmother were.

Thus implying they, those specific women, did it all for Canadian women, and no one  else did anything, is divisive and alienating. It creates a power structure, by setting up hierarchy, where there should not be any. And it is a decidedly classist and patriarchial.

The NDP has no "royalty",  as a socialist party, no?

So...when your response opinion was registered, I merely rebutted those very same points that you were making, which Judy made, that I disagreed with.

Albeit, I could have worded it better.

Hope that is clearer, but if not, please do feel free to get me to try again...

Thanks for clarifying, remind.  I also felt like it sounded like you were saying that skdadl was name-dropping and mocking, and so did a number of others who wrote to me to complain about what sounded like an attack on her.  As someone who knows Judy well, I also personally don't believe she was "name-dropping" (since she's a "name" herself) - she was just writing about her experiences, and they include having interacted with the people she mentioned - but of course, you're free to interpret her article as you please, that's why I posted it.

I think it's great that skdadl's posting about her experiences here too, and I think it would be a shame to dismiss her first-hand historical account as mere "name-dropping".  If no one was allowed to post their firsthand experiences with significant events for fear of name-dropping, it sure would be difficult to learn our history.

Anyone have a link to the podcast??

It's my understanding that Canada's billionaire class thought they would gain access to US markets with the trade deals of 1988 and 1994. Hurtig says some of them realize now that they were wrong. None of Canada's oligarchs have controlling interest in any sector of US economy. Meanwhile superrich Americans and supranational corporations have scooped up key sectors of our economy, energy and natural resources. Some on the pro-free trade side of things have switched sides and are now against NAFTA. As a socialist, I think the first step in regaining our economic sovereignty is to curb foreign takeovers of Canada and to dissuade our big banks from financing those US and foreign takeovers of Canadian corporations and crown assets and using Canadians' savings to finance those foreign takeovers. It's hard to tax profits once they've been carted off to another country or banks in the Caribbean, and-or used by supranationals to buy even more of Canada's precious resources and crown assets, infrastructure, health care amd other public services etc, paid for and maintained with Canadians' tax dollars. Once it's gone it's that much harder to get back. If Canadians insist on capitalism, then why can't we at least be more like capitalist China and dozens more, and declare certain key sectors of our economy off limits to controlling interest ownership and control by absentee corporate landlords?

Couple points.  Economic nationalism was and is an issue in Canada, CAW and Free Trade, for example.

The expulsion of the Waffle hurt the ability of the NDP to credibly engage in the Free Trade debate.

The ONDP did not expel youth, but if you look at the age structure of the NDP there is a missing cohort.  I was 19 in 1972.  A few years after that, when I did get involved with party structures, I realized that there was nobody just younger than me in the party.  I don't have anything beyond that small sample to offer, but I strongly suspect that if you mapped the NDP age structure against the population age structure the gap would be very visible.

That is my point actually, cliques of "names", or even education . We all know that they are more than just names. They indicate whose who, and who is worth what, when used publically. It sets class parameters.

Yes, they are lived experiences, but not when used to indicate lines of power and authority by education or class, to dominante an opinion or set a conceptual framework.

A hierarchy, if you will, is definitely lacking,  by way of socialist thought,  and setting up the notion of one, is especially significant, when one is decrying lack of socialist thoughts and actions in others, as mentioned in the article, being critiqued, in this thread

When people start carrying on about their being the heart of the NDP and the NDP tore out their own heart, I pay attention, and do some thinking.

I know people who are the heart of the NDP,  some post here even, and they were most definitely not torn out. Nor would they make claims of being  either the heart, nor torn out.

In fact, I would bet many women NDPers in BC, would not have a clue who Rebick is. Only those who are political geeks, or into women's studies, would have any idea.

I give no more weight to Judy than I would EMay, both did things for the good of the cause they were involved in way back when, as a product of the times.

Their actions now, matter most to me as a woman, and a environmentalist. Their place on some hierarchial level of public worth means nothing in a socialist world.

I critique based upon what they say and do in the NOW, not based on emotional appeal from the past. Thus when someone comes up and supports that emotional appeal to the past, that may not be valid, nor appropriate, I pay attention too. It matters not one witt who it is.

Skdadl and I have never had any issues, that I am am aware of, so...I do not get where people are coming from with that.

Clique formation is never good, it creates  problems that have far reaching consequences politically and socially.

And people might as well be Liberals, if they want to go that grade school clique route. ;)

I defy anyone to explain what that sentence means.

It is a bit awkward alright, but it embodies what I am getting at I think.

Setting up the notion of a hierarchy, like rock royalty, hollywood royalty, political royalty, literary royalty, is not a socialist endeavour.

My premise is that Judy's article, set a tone of hierarchial structure in respect to social causes in Canada, and the author, positioned herself clearly in the midst of this alleged hierarchy. While decrying socialist abscence in the NDP.

It is discontinuity of  thought and action. Talking the talk, but not walkin the talk in other words.

It is not socialist, nor feminist, to accept such as a acceptable way of life.

Well, if you think that Judy's not really well-known outside of feminist or NDP circles (and that may be true), then how can you say she's name-dropping?  I would submit that neither of those two women's names she mentions in her blog posting (Jackie and Varda) are well-known outside NDP circles either - in fact, I've never heard of them, personally, and I'm willing to bet the vast majority of Canadians haven't, either.

How can it be namedropping if no one's ever heard of them unless they're political junkies from the 70's?

I don't know much about the Waffle either, and I'll bet the majority of Canadians don't, much less know any of the names supposedly being "dropped". 

Also, how is it "dropping names" when you're asked to speak about your first-hand experiences?  Or, more clearly, how is it you're supposed to talk about your first-hand experiences with a historical event or time without mentioning any of the names of the people who were involved?

I enjoyed reading skdadl's posts, as they help me with faded memories of the Waffle and indeed the NDP from an interesting political period of this country.

I'm not a supporter of "commie-hunting", but it's likely that David Lewis was driven to it in part by the way that the CP hunted HIM in the Cartier byelection.  Their literature there actually depicted Lewis wearing a Nazi uniform, for God's sake. 

What was the issue with the unions?  Were they just excessively obsessed with looking "respectable"(I.e, moderate, bland and useless0?

The labour movement in this country largely CARRIED OUT the witch-hunting anti-Communist policies of government. Anything that "looked Communistic" was just another target to attack. So it doesn't seem all that surprising.

I do see what you are saying michelle, well sort of.

But the article here, is not addressing the majority of Canadians, it is addressing a select audience.  There is an audience she is targeting  and it isn't Canadians at large, and I think both, you and I know that.

And I indicated my other points,  other than naming one, that also give the overall inference of hierarchy being touted.

For example this statement is about as divisive and alienating, as you can get:

Really?

who knew, certainly not the rest of the women who were in the NDP, and not Waffle, spread across Canada.

They did not believe they were doing anything less than playing a critical role too.

And their role was critical, the women of waffle had no greater weight within the party,  some just were able to promote themselves into a higher public profile later, if only regionally, or in select groups.

As I stated, the article created a hierarchy with "the women of Waffle" in the "critical" aka,  top role.

This display of the class distinction effect, tacitly accepted hierarchial positioning, was enhanced by naming names, poorly worded by me before as, name dropping.

What I meant was, willingness to provide names, as in cite references,  infers a must be true, kinda testimony.

When indeed the names only provided cover for how intensely hierarchial and expropriating  the article was.

WOMEN were critical to the women's movement in Canada, and within the NDP, not just the "women of waffle",  which actually sounds like a floater for a new book title, to me.

And all of this  was enhanced by the drama of heart ripped out, thought-terminating cliché.

Definitely not socialist wording, nor an appropiate depiction of that time, it diminishes all other women who were critical to the woman's movement, at that time and even prior to that,  within the NDP and indeed across ALL parties lines.

It is a sloppy rendering of Canadian women's herstories,  with outright appropriation of all other women's roles in the women's movement and I do not appreciate it.

Writes them ourt of existence so to speak.  As "they" were not 'important' as they were not "critical", and that is just nonsense. It is not about who can promote themselves the best.

Every free thinking woman was needed back then, to take direct action in all spheres across the nation, it was not a a handful of women in an organization, within an organization, in a fairly regional setting, who  were critical to bringing women rights forward in Canada.

ALL women were critical.

Women of Saskatchewan  and Manitoba, were a lot more radical, a lot sooner, than woman in Ontario and indeed Alberta. But we do not need to run around saying this.

What would it mean?

Because ALL women  were and are needed for equity  change to occur.

If women just want to become, or stay, a part of  the patriarchial hierarchial system, fine, it is their choice, and I am good with that,  hell I have friends who do not even know there is patriarchy, let alone choose to be in it, so I am not a picky person, associate wise, but do not claim you are socialist,  and feminist, while doing it.

PS: no one should be talking this personally, cause it is Judy, as it is no different to me than any discussion on Heathers' or Antonia's public writings, that were/are posted here.

There is no sacred ground, as it just means hierarchy and privilege.

Well, I doubt women who were to the RIGHT of the Waffle were that critical.  Once you get into "party establishment" mode, you pretty much check your principles at the door, no matter who you are.

You can't be serious can you?

You just imposed a patriarchial mindset upon women's rights actions and took our personal fight for agency away, and gave it to someone else, and you felt you had the knowlege  and right to do so.

You have neither ken, and I do not mean that nastily.

It is a herstory, not a history.

There were lots of women to the right of the waffle and they were every bit as critical, to the development of the woman's movement if not more. Some actually had national public visibility.

It was a universal statement about anyone who gets into political leadership.  And it was based on last year's campaign, when we had a woman here who ran as the establishment candidate and whose victory would thus no longer have had any femnist implications.

Having said that, I'll said no more.

It's only the people working from below who really matter.

I can't tell from Judy's piece whether she was in Winnipeg or is referring to another seminar? Anyway, like Unionist, I would like to listen to the podcast too when it becomes available. From what she says, the discussion might help to answer some of the questions people have above about the interaction of the Waffle and the labour movement, which was complex.

People may know that Laxer was already a serious student of the Canada-U.S. Auto Pact. I can't fairly summarize his analysis any longer, but his arguments in defence of economic nationalism grew out of that work, and some of the labour movement would have been reacting to him/us on that score. I assume that the podcast will explain that better than I can, especially if Jim was on the panel with Judy.

The Waffle took on a broader life of its own, though. Briefly, we were still able to pretend that the sixties would never end, so we were just generally being a New Left group, doing the things New Lefties did. I think it's interesting that Judy stresses how strong the women's caucuses became, because that's not the first thing that outsiders would have known about the Waffle, although it was indeed a central experience for me, and sometimes a very difficult experience with the male heavies -- typical for the times.

I sit to be corrected, but as I recall, there were a number of active Waffle groups across the country, notably in Saskatoon and Regina, in Ottawa, and in Toronto, where there were three sections, each with a distinct character. I was one of the West Metro Crazies.  The others called us that because there was a growing interest among some in the West Metro group in Trotskyist politics, and the leadership did not want that. Mel and Kelly had the thankless task of trying to keep us in line, but at the end I'm sure they welcomed the split. I don't want to say more about that because it was a long time ago, it feels gossipy, and most people here will know how these things keep happening on the left.

I believe that Judy had begun working on Central and South American politics at the time -- the one time I met her in those years she was giving a seminar on the topic. It would have been Jackie Larkin who told us about her and got us to that meeting. Like Judy, Jackie was (and is) a formidable socialist feminist. In the mid-seventies, she moved to BC, qualified in a skilled trade, and became a feminist labour activist. It's funny to hear someone like Jackie referred to as being treated like a rock star; she's one of the most radical socialists I've ever known and she has really lived her politics. She also has a huge heart, and I will admit that she used to remind me a bit of Janis Joplin, although there was nothing self-destructive about our Jackie.

Remembering Judy's long commitment to Central and South American politics brings me to M. Spector's first comment above, about the contrasting roles of economic nationalism in neo-colonial and imperial societies:

Judy was certainly more knowledgeable than many of us were about neo-colonialism in this hemisphere, more focused on those problems, so I can see why she found Canadian economic nationalism harder to take seriously, or however she would put that. I disagree with M. Spector (and perhaps Judy) that the opposition is as stark as he puts it -- I see ranges or sliding scales when I think of Canada's place in imperial oppression; to me, the reality of the U.S. (and now of China) trumps just about anything anyone else can even attempt, one reason it is so hard for us to convince people to believe in socialist political possibilities here (which clearly we have failed to do -- see our current NDP). But it is the economic nationalists I know who are most likely to recognize our own compradors when they see them (everyone stick out tongues at John Manley). That kind of class understanding was always very much present in the Waffle as I knew it, and nobody had any illusions about our own ruling class. We definitely weren't promoting unholy alliances with them, which might have been one of the reasons we acquired our very own RCMP moles. I even knew one of them -- I'd drop his name if I could remember it.

Similarly, I'm a bit befuddled when Judy says that she could see Canadian cultural nationalism ("so that we were not totally overwhelmed by US culture") but not economic nationalism. How do you separate them? Culture is an industry in this country, a huge industry (for us). Try surviving in it for a while, and you'll learn international economics very quickly. Our cultural industries,  which used to employ so many skilled trades and craftworkers, have long been an early-warning system of what is happening to our economy. Watch them slowly sink beneath the horizon -- I've been watching that my entire working life.

As I say, though, I can see where Judy and M. Spector are coming from, and I stick my tongue out at John Manley too.

Please forgive the long post, but a lot of questions arose above. I know this history mainly as a foot soldier, one of the bodies who showed up. I've never minded being just one of the bodies who show up, since without us there is no point, but I've never understood the resentment against inspirational leaders who were able to do much more than I ever did, partly because of their special knowledge or talents, partly just because they put in more time and effort.

When Judy says that Waffle women played "a critical role" in shaping the women's movement in this country, I don't think she is denying that many other women also played critical roles, not at all. She can't mean that -- she wasn't in the Waffle. She wrote an entire book on the women's movement(s) in Canada, Ten Thousand Roses, and it is not mainly about Waffle women, as you'll know if you've read it. It is definitely true, though, that even in 1970, to be one of the thirty women of the Abortion Caravan (few if any Waffle women) who chained themselves to the seats in the gallery of the Commons (and forced its first closing in history) took exceptional guts. Just organizing that caravan took commitment above and beyond what most of us ever can or will do. So how does it hurt me to say that those women played "a critical role" in waking the public up about a crucial issue? Or: have you watched the video of Judy herself protecting Dr Morgentaler from an attacker with a weapon? How does it hurt me to acknowledge the heroism of that moment?

Of course the women's movement gained its power from all the women who began to change their own lives and communities and riding associations; of course it did and does. If anything, I thought that Judy's book was valuable because it countered the North American pop perception of feminism as conveyed, as usual, through glossy USian publications and personalities -- not that I've got anything against Gloria Steinem, but there's something wrong if that's the first association young Canadian women were making, and for a long time, it was.

I've done my time fighting pretentious political heavies, but I've also done some time watching very fine people sniped away at jealously simply because they put in the time and effort to accomplish something, and I think the left is very mistaken to give in to that kind of pettiness.

And a PS: Judy didn't mention the one attempt that has been made since (that I know of) to form a socialist ginger group in the NDP, although it was very much a presence on rabble/babble during our first year or so. I can't write much about that because it happened just at the time that I became a full-time caregiver, but I think that its history would be an interesting postscript to the story of the Waffle, would tell us a lot about the social/political differences between then and now. Perhaps Judy or rasmus could be talked into talking about same?

Indeed, how to separate cultural and economic nationalism.  And yesterday, the argument for monetary union with the U.S., a common currency, was again raised in a Globe article.

A major force in Peterborough New Democrat circles invited me (then heading the riding association) to a dinner with Jim Laxer, and from the discussion that took place, it seemed we might be making headway.  And then came the banning.  One does not easily get over such events. 

From my review of Christina McCall's postumous work in the Book Lounge: January 23, 2009 - 9:30am #7 (permalink) [38]

"As noted, Christina McCall wrote a piece "How Mel Watkins brought socialism to the NDP", sympathetically written in the age of nationalism, and obviously included by husband Stephen Clarkson, liberal, in a jibe at New Democrats - since Watkins was banned from the party as a Waffle leader.

Today, Mel Watkins appears again in The Globe and Mail's lead letter to the editor. "Not since the heady days of left natiionalism in the 1960s and 1970s has one read such compelling statements of the abject dependency of Canada on the U.S. as those of Jeffrey Simson...and Michael Kergin and Allan Gotlieb."

"Canada's elite," writes Watkins, continue to sell out "Canadian sovereignty and morality."

But Watkins is not anti-American: "It is vastly discouraging to see the election of an American president who is a breath of fresh air after decades of staleness being seen as simply a challenge for Canada," he concludes.

One wonders how McCall would respond to Canada's political situation today.  Sure like to see an article on Stephen Clarkson's views on the Liberal Party of Canada - not a tome, just a little retrospective by a top-notch journalist like his late partner.

Wow.  Amazing post, skdadl.  Nothing to add, just answering a question raised - yes, Judy was in Winnipeg speaking about the Waffle  - and I believe she did speak about the NPI as well while she was there, at another event later that day.

George, were you also involved in the Waffle?

A supporter in the Peterborough riding, Michelle (it was easier there, with the UE still the strongest union presence in town, a strong nationalist presence in itself, like the communist party  :) ). Sitting down to dinner  with James Laxer (I was a mature "re-tread" student) and taking political mental notes for use later at U of T grad school, was a political high point.

Oh... how I have missed your wonderful ability with words,  editor that you are, to infer without infering.

It would be hoped that the moderators will so over look others posts, who  may want to do the same style of attacking.

Now, I find it very unusual, that people here can excoriate,  the words of Mallick, or Herbert, or Antoina, without being childishly accused of "jealousy" and "pettiness".  I mean seriously.... those words come straight out of the Republican hand book, on why people do not like the USA for gawd's sake.

Talk about thought terminating cliches. :rolleyes:

"The left" really need not go there.

But now we see, when it comes to Judy, one cannot take exception to her turn of phrase, and portrayal of the lived events of other women across Canada. Without it for some reason being personalized.

Is she so far "up" there, that her words cannot be looked at critically?

Of course not....no correct thinking socialist, or feminst would agree with that.

When one uses thought terminating cliches like "tearing the heart out" one must think about this and what is evoked mentally.

First thing I saw mentally was Tommy and Stephen Lewis standing on a Meso-American pyramid, ripping the hearts out of women members of the NDP, sacrificing them of the alter of patriarchy and NDP advancement.

That portrayal of events at that time, with that kind of terminology, is insulting to people who actually lived through it too, and saw things very differently.

And  those who did, have every right to  freedom of conscience to say so, no matter who said it,  without fear of childishly being labelled jealous, or petty.

And on that note, I can handle attacks like that, they roll off of me, but what about another woman  here who lived through that times, and who may to express her alternate views of it? She would be silenced now, out of fear of  being labelled petty and jealous.

Class solidarity closing ranks, image being made; the underclass must be feeling jealous and want to strike out at their betters.

Good grief and for shame, seriously!

People have a right to their opinions on other's public words!

Critiques on them are not personal attacks.

If I can laud Judy most of the time, here, and in real life, I most certainly can take exception to her words, when I do.

And I expect that when I do, I should not be personally attacked over it.

I am biting my tongue, because there was a lot of pain at the time, and I wasn't part of that, because I had opted out of the Waffle, agreeing with most of what was being said, but fearing that it was organizationally a dead-end.

As indeed it turned out to be. But that sounds like "I told you so" which is not the case -- I didn't tell many people so. I just was busy with other things. Anyway, I expect almost everyone involved understood the risks of sectarianism, but thought they could dance creatively along the edge of it -- as indeed they did for a while.

Since most intelligent people in the Waffle went on to do very worthwhile work, in most cases within the NDP, I don't get as excited as some about rehashing that history. But as to the conflict with unions, from my perspective that was largely a conflict of workstyles: the "academics" versus the "real world." Many unionists were just as militant as Wafflers, but would have said they were more grounded. 

exactly...

I did not see any waffle women working the green chain, or outside picking ice in -50 weather under the stacker, at  saw mills here in BC, so women could get into a leg into the well paid male union world of the forest industry.

Nor did I see them when home care workers fought and struggled to be a recognized industry requiring specialized training, and unionization to stop exploitation.

And numerous industries could be listed for other examples here, too.

All done by women on the front lines of life, so women could have jobs that paid well, to get them out poverty cycles they were in.

These were the critical actions for the majority of women, and they mirrored ones going on in other provinces inother industies, across the nation.

It was not the educated elite who did that, it was the front line women workers,  who did it, in a hands on manner, not those who were just speaking about it as theory, in cafe's, located in trendy areas.

For the educated elite to try and co-opt these herstories, is......

There was some of that -- there always is. Sometimes it's justified; sometimes it's just an easy way to undermine the left.

But some of the unions were with us; many union members were. And it's kind of hard to dismiss people like the Laxers and the Penners, with their labour and political histories in Canada, as "academics." I knew a number of other Wafflers with a lot of labour cred -- Joe Flexer, eg, who worked for the CP organizing Palestinians on the West Bank in the sixties, not a job for the faint of heart, eh? Not that any of those CP backgrounds would have helped with a lot of union leaders, as we discussed above.

Anyway, that's one of the reasons I'd like to listen to the podcast.

I would never dismiss academics. That's why I put quotations marks around the word. That is, so-called "academics."

And in fact I was trying to avoid sounding dismissive. That's why I was afraid to post anything in this thread. I was, and am, in no position to dismiss anything or anyone, which is just what I tried to say.

I don't even remember the excuse for ordering the Ontario Waffle to disband. Was it that it had started to collect membership fees, or in some other way was a parallel structure? But the Left Caucus had been allowed to operate ever since 1961, and soon continued, or at some point took the name "Socialist Caucus." It wasn't that caucuses per se were banned. So Stephen Lewis and the rest of the leadership felt it had gone too far, presumably for a combination of several reasons, and most people I worked with agreed. But I don't recall anyone wanting any individuals expelled.

In that way it was quite different from previous discipline events. Around eight years earlier I had been on the Ontario Youth Section executive when we expelled a dozen or so Trotskyites from the Youth Section, and the party copied. They were expelled for being actual members of another political party -- the clause in the constitution never changed -- and we actually planted a spy in the Young Socialists, the youth wing of the League for Socialist Action. We discovered that one woman who looked like a fellow-traveller with the Trots was not a member -- they discussed at their meetings their failure to get her to join -- so she was not expelled. But that was nothing like the disbanding of the Ontario Waffle. 

Well, that was the strange thing, Wilf. No, nobody was expelled. We were ordered to "disband" if we wanted to stay in the party, and then it seemed to be up to us to decide what that meant.

You'd have to ask Jim or someone who was still privy to his thoughts why he decided not to disband but to take the Waffle as a group (more or less) out of the party. In a way, that was a decision not to fight the party establishment, if you see what I mean. Defying them by staying in the party would have meant forcing expulsion, and he did not do that. I've always believed he did not want to do that, but I don't know.

Why did we bother Stephen Lewis so much? Well, you might remember that Jim had given David Lewis a serious run for the leadership of the national party in 1971; I think that that really bothered a lot of ... what should we call them? the party establishment? All that Stephen ever said publicly was that we had become a party within a party. There were a lot of old political histories banging up against one another, but I don't know how much that was still influencing the Lewises. I think it's significant that Jim decided not to challenge them any further, but I don't know what that means either. Maybe he just recognized that he'd lost.

I was quite young when I met him. His name was "Yossy Flexer" at that time, and he was organizing in the anti-war movement. He had served in the IDF and been wounded - in the Suez War, I would imagine. He ended up in the CAW, I believe. He was an extremely vibrant personality. Brings back memories.

Would this be the League of Young Socialists in the 1960s? I flirted with joining them for a while, and sat in with them in a demo against the Viet Nam war in front of the US Embassy in Ottawa, and was detained by Ottawa Police for a while.

Jackie Larkin recently developed this climate change course for union audiences (working with a number of people). 

For me, that does add weight to what Judy (and anyone else who's hung in all these years) has to say about past, present and future. Doesn't automatically mean we have to agree with everything. 

Wikipedia says that in 1972 "Stephen Lewis (David's son) accused the Waffle of being a party within a party and the party's Provincial Council passed a resolution ordering the Waffle to either disband or leave the NDP."

That corresponds with my recollection. 

Somebody above mentioned Joe Flexer. Barry Weisleder recalls: [51]

So let's settle an old score and bring down the NDP! Then what?

No one's attacking the NDP here, Fidel. It was Stephen Lewis, following in his father's footsteps, who carried out the purge. Someone should ask him if he would have done the same thing today, or if he had it to do all over again.

There's at least one very good memorial tribute to Joe around online somewhere -- I'll see if I can find it.

Yes, Joe was special. As you might imagine, we had a bit of a time edumacatin' him about teh women's lib, but he learned to do a kind of shuffle and blush when we all suddenly shouted at him for one infraction or another -- he had a good heart. His partner in those days was a terrific younger woman who didn't put up with nonsense but somehow managed to make it all work -- she and I used to dance together at parties, laughing at all the guys, and Joe would roll his eyes, but I think he clued in to the joke.

Hindsight is always 20-20, and the Lewis' weren't the enemy then.

Fidel, I am certainly not wishing to bring down the NDP or see it brought down, and I suspect that Laxer and Lewis have long since made their peace, as have many others.

That's the thing about getting old -- you get all sentimental and friendly. 

So you think that in hindsight, Stephen would acknowledge that his actions were wrong? Or do you think they were right?

I linked to one above, already.

You're talking about the good old days when the cold war liberal-fascist propaganda machine was in high gear?

I doubt very much that he would make such an acknowledgment today. But then, I don't care much what he thinks. What's important is what he thought and did back then.

I think David Lewis decided that it was his calling in life to come to Canada and build a social democratic movement, and to try and manouver around the cold war bs at the time. He could have taken the easy route and become a high ranking politician with British Labour. And we're talking about a period when right-rightists in North America were in a state of high alert for the red menace. I still think FLQ was Canadian Gladio. I know only what I've read about that general period. I am reading your comments, Skdadl. Thank you, and I'ev always appreciated what you've had to say here. I think very highly of your opinion and am reading with interest.

I missed the Waffle by just a few years.   My activity didn't start until after that.

I'm 50, and I don't understand the older union and some NDP activists sensitivity to charges of being "Commies".  To me, it's laughable.  But, I wasn't knocking on doors in the 50's or 60's.   And, even at that, as a kid I remember my parents and others connecting the NDP to the Red Mennace.

I got an inkling though, when, as a newly elected union rep in our plant, I suggested to my Plant Chairperson (also newly elected)  that John Clark's call for us to endorse May Day be endorsed by us.

Did. We. Ever. Catch. Shit.  from the old trade unionists.  I think even Bob White got wind of it.

So, even if I don't agree with the expulsion of the Waffle as a movement, I can see why the older gaurd thought it was a necessary step towards making the party more "respectable".  Unfortunately, by the time they did this there was a newer generation coming along eclipsing the old, which had no experience with red baiting, or the McCarthy era, making the point rather moot.

And, predictably, the MSM just found something else to scare the public with, anyway.  Every time the NDP tries to make itself look mainstream, the media will just move the goal posts on us anyway.  

I think if I was older, I would have been part of the Waffle.  Not because I know a Trotskyite from anything else, or that I'm a resolute believer in Marx. But because that's where the revolutionary spirit would have been.

And, I don't care what flavour of ism you want to call it, but it's that spirit that is missing from the NDP, and really strains my allegiance to it.

Hey Tommy - you said

"I don't understand the older union and some NDP activists sensitivity to charges of being "Commies".  To me, it's laughable.  But, I wasn't knocking on doors in the 50's or 60's."

One doesn't have to go back to the 50's or 60's to be called a communist in running for the NDP - one just has to run in a rural Ontario riding - I was called a communist and the party called communist in the 1997 election.

Old myths and propaganda take a long time to fade away particularly from the older folk.

I was called a communist at one house when I was canvassing during the last election. I didn't blame communists, but I did shrug my shoulders and think that it would be a good day when the old fart at that house goes on to meet his maker, and longing for  a day when all of the cold war bullshit is put to rest once and for all.

I was too young for the Waffle but was a member of the Movement for an Independent Socialist Canada actually the West Toronto branch. The problem when the NDP and the Waffle  parted ways is it discouraged a new generation of leftists from being involved in the NDP. The same can be said when the NPI disbanded. The fault of my generation lies in the fact that we did not create a Canadian Socialist Party. The NDP, even though I vote for them, is social democratic and is unlikely to ever change.

I think it is more truthful, and more exact, to say that the NDP has been very successful at destroying any socialist buds that blossomed within that party, and has also contributed to a political climate hostile to such a formation outisde the NDP. Babble itself has plenty of articulate NDP supporters with nothing but venomous antagonism to socialist ideas.

Yes, it is the fault of socialists not to have succeeded in building their/our own party. But others, and not just the old line parties of the Liberals and Conservatives, have made their "contribution" to this lamentable result.

Delusions of [modest] grandeur.

The fact there are Dippers who relish in dissing socialists says nothing about what the party as a whole is doing. While they do get dissed- those 'socialist buds' just don't have any oomph. The same thing would happen to them if they were simply ignored.

The days of David Lewis feeling a need to keep the commies at bay are long over.

I've even read some babblers' claiming that the NDP is a political force for neoliberal doctrinaire. And those are considered offensive, fighting words for most NDPers.

I'm way too young for the waffle, but I went to most of the conference in the peg.

It seemed to me that while there was a lot of remniscing going on, there was also some malaise in the room.  It seemed as though there were a lot of the people were saddended with the realization that the NDP is not going to ever represent their views, or be the "the parliamentary wing of a movement dedicated to fundamental social change", and seemed as though they have been lost and drifting ever since.  Some of them drifted back into the NDP, I guess because they were the least of the evils, but still seemed depressed at the realization that the NDP is not and is incapable of becoming what they want it to be.

My favourite comment of the day:  "And we thought Ed Schreyer was bad.  After Doer, he's looking better and better all the time."\

Also, there were some interesting debates on economic nationalism, between those who took the more traditional waffle position of Canada as a colony, and those who took the position of Canada as an imperialist state.  I definitely fall into the latter and still do, but at least I learned about some of the logic behind the former.

I thought the last panel, on where the left should go in Canada was interesting.  I thought the timing of the conference was especially interesting as well - right after the provincial NDP convention at which a status quo candidate was overwhelmingly elected, and a challenger from the left was turned down.

At the last panel, the speakers and audience talked about the NPI for a little, and the idea of social movements being kind of integrated into the NDP.  One of the panelists, Rebecca Blaikie, really got my blood boiling, and I must admit to a profanity-laced tirade after the conference due to her disingenuous dismissals of the student movement in Manitoba or practically any sort of extra-parliamentary action (especially when the NDP is in power).  Essentially, my concern was that social movements being integrated into the NDP could result in them being cynically exploited by the party, something which I think has happened to some extent in Manitoba which has been harmful for the left.

My conclusion remains that the NDP is not a vehicle for the left or "the parliamentary wing of a movement dedicated to fundamental social change", and I'm basing that on my personal experience and the history and collective experience of those in the room, who were involved with various reform movments from the waffle to the NPI.

A classic statement, I'm sorry to say, of sectarianism.

Look at successful leftists: Lula, Chavez, and others. They built broad-based movements. Lula comes from a militant background, an indigenous left-socialist party built during the military regime, at odds with the official social democratic party led from exile. Yet when he ran for president he led such a broad-based coalition that his VP was a Liberal, radical mainly by being a minority Protestant (they call them evangelicals in Brazil, but it doesn't mean what we mean by that term) in a Catholic country.

Would you say his winning campaign was not a vehicle for the left in Brazil? Some said so at the time. I thought they were being sectarian. History shows that was so.

The left is not defined by any individual. The left in Canada is the proportion of the population who are left of centre. Pollsters could help us define whether that amounts to 33% of the population, or what. If you define it as the universe of those whose interests and attitudes make them potentially part of the left, I'd take the attitude that the majority of the population would benefit from a left government and should be considered potentially part of the left. Certainly any organizing campaign to unionize a workplace aims to appeal to the large majority.  

I'd also say that any less inclusive attitude is defeatist.

I'm not trying to be sectarian, I'm just looking at my experiences and the experiences of others and basing my conclusions on those.  And I'm not a sectarian guy, I work in my student union with folks from all sorts of political or apolitical backgrounds.  I've worked on campaigns with anarchists, communists, socialists, social democrats, feminists, economic nationalists, peace activists, Palestinian solidarity activists, environmentalists, liberals, and probably even a Red Tory or two.  I've worked on campaigns with people from at least six political parties that I can think of, including the NDP.  And I've been in and out of the NDP.  I just look at the NDP, and I see a constant rightward shift (see quote about Schreyer and Doer above), not only in the NDP but also in any comparable party in the world, and I look at the repeated failure of reform movements, and I think we need to stop pretending the NDP is something it isn't and banging our heads against a wall.  It seems quite frankly absurd that in 2009, after the waffle, the NPI, the governments of Rae, Romanow and Doer, that we're still asking the question "should anti-capitalists be in the NDP?"

This conference was a good example of that.  One of the panelists was complaining about the student movement in Manitoba not rolling over when the NDP government decided to increase tuition.  If that's not sectarian, then what is?

But, if you're going to define sectarian as not clinging to the NDP when they have repeatedly shown themselves to be incapable of becoming a vehicle for the change we need and have been downright hostile to reform movements, social movements like the student movement, and even moderately left candidates like Steve Ashton, then yeah, I'm sectarian.

Well said, genstrike - and Wilf's comment was offbase in my view. The worst sectarianism is practised by partisans of an organization (any organization) who defend the organization, right or wrong, and attack those who criticize its policies.

Very well said, Wilf. I think we also have to realize that Canada's triple layering of government is not common among countries, and especially not countries where social democrats were able to create social democracy when in strong central government roles, ie the Nordic countries. Chavez is a national level leader as well, and still he has faced much opposition from that country's elites backed by the US.

And we could do with a Canadian version of Venezuela's MMP before very long, too. Perhaps the NDP will also win federally by campaigning on a platform of anti-poverty and anti-corruption. I think the NDP has solid platform planks on both of those issues.

Sure. But criticism of NDP policies was not the topic.

The question was, is the NDP left, and a vehicle for the left? Which to my mind is like saying "Are unions left, and a vehicle for the left?" One can criticise Steel, the CAW, and the CLC, on various points. But to say "unions are useless right-wing organizations" is sterile left sectarianism.

Lula's "indigenous left-socialist party" (the Workers' Party) during the dictatorship period was denounced by the "official social democratic party" as sectarian.

In fact, your example actually supports genstrike's thesis, not yours. The Brazilian Democratic Labour Party, which, like the NDP, is the "official" representative of the increasingly-inappropriately-named Socialist International, is not part of Lula's "vehicle for the left". So who are the sectarians in that scenario?

Lula's success came in spite of Brazil's NDP-counterparts.

I'll belabour this for a second - you're wrong, Wilf. Sectarianism, in this context, would be something like: "We won't work with the UE because they're communists", or, "We won't support that strike because they're Teamsters, who are right-wingers, and anyway they raided us last year...", or, refusing to find fault in one's "own" union while finding the same in others.

If someone says unions are useless right-wing organizations, I may disagree with them; I may think they're too prone to applying labels; I may think they're bowing out of some tough work; but I'll only call them "sectarian" if they go one step further and refuse to join with unions (or any other organizations) in common cause.

I know that Chavez has promised military support to Hondurans waiting to declare that the streets belong to them. But where is the backup now that the chips are down?

When social democrats were expropriating foreign capital in the 50's and 60's, there was strong US-backed opposition to democratic socialism. Arbenz seized land from United Fruit, Allende tookover Anaconda copper, and Goulart nationalised ITT. Social democrats in Central and Latin America have never blamed anyone but the gringos for those very undemocratic reversals.

And just umpteen months ago, Donald Rumsfeld announced increased US aid to Latin America's militaries. The fascists in Chile and Venezuela, A rgentina, Brazil etc, are still there and laying in wait for the signal from Warshington. The war on democracy is still on.

.

There, edited. We can resume our sectarian positions now.

genstrike wrote:"My conclusion remains that the NDP is not a vehicle for the left  . . ."

Watkins and Laxer chose it as the best posssibility then. Don't think they've shifted a helluva lot.

And I'm trying to answer that question with my opinion, which is based on my experiences living in a province with a strong NDP, my interpretation of the history of the NDP, my interpretation of the history of other parties similar to the NDP in other countries, and a bit of a theoretical background.

And, regarding unions, these are totally different questions - this is asking if a political party is a vehicle for the left or not, a perfectly valid and highly important question for anyone interested in advancing the radical social change which is looking more and more necessary all the time.  Out of curiosity, which of the following statements are "sterile left sectarianism" and which aren't:

The Communist Party is not a vehicle for the left

The NDP is not a vehicle for the left

The Bloc is not a vehicle for the left

The Green Party is not a vehicle for the left

The Liberal Party is not a vehicle for the left

The Conservative Party is not a vehicle for the left

I really appreciated your report, genstrike, and I thought that was such a funny line.

So funny, in fact, that I'll give you a trade. A week or so ago, when pogge wrote about Doer's silly apologia for the oil sands (which were always the tar sands when I were a tad in Alberta), friend Alison from Creekside (who I'm sure won't mind being quoted) wrote this in comments to pogge's post:

Doubled me up, anyway.

So, I'm in disagreement with Watkins and Laxer.  Your point being?

And if we keep pushing that line, we'll have everyone believing that is was Gary Doer who rubberstamped all of the Canadian energy giveaways dating back to St Laurent and Diefenbaker through to CUSFTA & NAFTA. What a great achievement for the left. Divided we fall. I can't read anymore of this ongoing anti-NDP vendetta thread. It's caustic.

Yes, that is exactly what people are saying in this thread.  How about you try reading things before you respond to them?  I challenge you to find a single post in this thread accusing Gary Doer of whatever you are accusing the rest of us of accusing him of.

Then don't.

#80 was not a reply to you. And don't bother.

The NDP ain't perfect, but who else is there to vote for?

I'm sorry, Fidel. I didn't mean to upset you.

Oh I think most of us in this thread vote NDP. It's the I'm NDP with reservations that tends to get to me. I was not part of their experiences with the party, so I can't say too much about it. I think we should concentrate on the here and now at this opportune time when the neoliberalama is failing Canadians more than ever.

Who said anything about voting?

Perhaps it's Gary Doer that upsets me. But I'd still prefer to think the NDP as well as the Waffle are more than the sum of Gary Doer,  or even a David Lewis who donated his life's work to trying to build an inclusive social democratic movement during an unprecedented time of cold war propaganda and nearsightedness of the social democrats in Canada. I realize the Waffle was hard done by, and that's something that can never be reversed. But in 1972-74, there were no food banks in Canada -  homelessness almost unheard of in Canada - and almost everyone had jobs that would support their families. It wasn't perfect, but the right was somewhat on its heels then and still quite dangerous. Since 1984 it's been one victory for the right after another in Canada.

See, this is what I mean about why we should be clear on who we're talking to when we're attacking each other.  This is exactly what I was talking about in the "Is snark killing babble" thread.  Maybe instead of what looks like swipes against everyone.  If we can be honest and straight up, and communicate clearly who and what we're talking about, maybe we can deal with the inevitable issues directly and more respectfully than with passive aggressive comments directed at no one in particular but really directed at someone which do nothing to add to the discussion and just raise the tension.

Fidel, what can I say? These days, I hang out a lot with people like Alison and pogge, who do serious work on the SPP. I've been known to pitch in a bit. If I weren't mocking Gary Doer, I couldn't face my best political allies and friends, and worse, I couldn't face myself.

It hasn't bothered me for a long time to recognize that politics happens at many levels at once. I can support the NDP while being bored out of my skull by party politics. The short term matters, which is why I always vote, but the long term matters too, and the long term is edumacation.

I always vote, though. Diderot would never forgive me if I didn't. I take Diderot with me every time I go to vote, and I tells ya, we bounce and laugh the whole way.

I don't blame people like Buzz all that much for betraying the NDP the way he has. Afterall he's simply acting on the wishes of union members. I know that certain municipal workers tend to vote a certain way, and they cite the Liberals for upholding certain hiring practices for unionized workers. But what they gain on the swings everyone else loses on the roundabouts. NUPGE says that since 1982 there have been 170 repressive anti-labour legislations enacted across Canada. Something's got to give, and I think it's time that trade unions in Canada really encouraged their members to get behind the NDP. 

How's the whiplash coming along?

He's off on his own tangent now, Gary Doer is. And I'm not hoping for big things from him now he's spending so much time in Warshington. Could suprise us, but I doubt it. Maybe Gary's just found himself some gold and decided that he should sit on it. Whatever his priorities are at this point in his life, I will never be under the illusion that Gary or the NDP were responsible for the Yanks dictating national energy policy to Ottawa and the provinces. And it goes so much deeper than just energy and timber, doesn't it. Many Canadians still don't fully realize how much of the rug has been pulled out from under them and their children.

I think he was trying to hold a union movement together and merely expressing the political will of a large part of the unionized workforce apparently. We can't force them to vote NDP. It's something they'll have to decide on themselves, one lesson at a time.

Ouch! more whiplash!

Ya whatever. Let's let Wafflers speak, shall we?

Ha! "Get gold and sit on it." That's the dragon in John Gardner's Grendel. Fantastic novel.

I knew you'd recognize it, Skdadl. Deja vu.

Fair enough; that was what I meant too.

Yes, the PDT has been sectarian. In the first round in 2002 Lula was far less sectarian than the PDT, since he had the broader coalition. Even so, Ciro Gomes, whom the PDT supported in the first round, supported Lula in the second round, and joined his cabinet. The PDT remained in sterile sectarian opposition. Even worse was the ex-communist PPS (Popular Socialist Party) which actually supported the conservative candidate in 2006 against Lula. Brazil has strange politics, very personalized and regionalized. This is partly because it is such a large country, with different local alliances in different states, and partly because of its voting system, a pure-open-list system that encourages local "barons" and party-hopping.

My point is that Lula's broad front approach won in 2002 and in 2006.

Waffle on Wiki Is the article entirely correct?

The nationalist movement was also Walter Gordon's (Liberal cabinet minister) thing, and Mel Watkins was somehow associated with him earlier, as I recall. Heck, George Grant - Conservative historian - was also lamenting the loss of Canadian autonomy at the time. The United Steelworkers of America were rabidly nationalist!! I really think that these facts should be added to what is really an attenuated history.

And attenuated at the more recent end. Stephen Lewis is a beautiful human being, but when Lyin' Brian appointed him to the U.N. he caved in not opposing the U.S. testing of cruise missiles along the valley of the Mackenzie River. One can appreciate how those guidance systems have come to be used today. Totally involved in an anti-war movement at the time, I haven't been able to forget it. But that's just one of history's little vagaries, part of the oh-so-much-more-complex reality than what's customarily served up.

An ambassador represents the government, not her/himself. We would not want an ambassador freelancing on foreign policy set by an NDP government either.

Anyone remember the League of Young Socialists from about the same time period as the Waffle?

I remember the acronym "LSY". Must have been League of Socialist Youth. Don't remember anything about them though.

ETA: Could be wrong about that. Oh well.

Why are you trying to remember that, BB?

I was very briefly engaged with the group during the protests against the Viet Nam war in Ottawa in front of the US embassy a couple of times. I was curious about their roots and who their leadership were.

Actually, now I'm remembering something called LSA (League for Socialist Action) - so I'm totally confused - and maybe the other was YSL?

People's Front of Judaea...

Because economic globalism has panned out so well for everyone.  Well...for some.  But it surely must have dawned on us by 2009, or did we miss out entirely on that blip from the earlier part of the decade, otherwise known as the anti-globalization movement?  I think we need an open discussion to see if there's a requirement to continue weighing ourselves down with certain anvils from 19th century, industrial revolution era dogmatism; to see they still need dragging around like drunken buddies.  We might as well hook up with Grandmother Nature from palliative care while we're at it, to get her final thoughts.

Contrarianna described the situation very well, Sj, in the thread The Virtues of Nationalism Over Globalization:

"Conversly, a non-belicose, nationalist oriented state, that put the welfare and justice of its people before international corporate interests would be the best one could hope for in this age; it would be infinitely better than the only real operation of "internationalism" today.

But that is not the direction of the modern corporatized state. Don't hold your breath."

I agree with you that "we need an open discussion to see if there's a requirement to continue weighing ourselves down with certain anvils from 19th century, industrial revolution era dogmatism..." Or did you think the arguments by John Ralston Saul in the other thread's link not worth bothering with? Judy KNEW what was "good" for Canada. Care to take a shot at it?

In that other thread - the National News forum - not here on memory lane?

Apparently the arguments and thread are not even worth linking to.

:)

Boy, that would be some "open discussion" you're after.

But what are we discussing?

  Do you have the collection?

A peek at John Ralston Saul's The Collapse of Globalism: and the Rebirth of Nationalism in the March, 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine would not be a bad place to start, perhaps. It convinced me - along with the idea of peak oil, etc. - that this must happen.

The Collapse of Globalism: and ... - John Ralston Saul : Other Writings

www.johnralstonsaul.com/eng/articles_detail.php?id=6〈=eng

- Block all www.johnralstonsaul.com [117] results

ARTICLES BY JRS. The Collapse of Globalism: and the Rebirth of Nationalism Harper's Magazine March 2004. Grand economic theories rarely last more than a ...

There you go (I hope) I was trying to preserve the integrity of this thread .

You did just say "we need an open discussion to see if there's a requirement to continue weighing ourselves down with certain anvils from 19th century, industrial revolution era dogmatism..." ?

I don't know how long ago Judy Rebick made those comments.  Discourse generally maintains faith with people's contemporary analysis, and even to a certain extent with such assessment as the future will allow for.  But it seems to me that we're still talking about 19th century anvils being dragged around.  Because Canadians especially need our green skinned plantains in February?  I think today there needs to be a dialogue first and foremost about sustainability coincided with the transfer of technologies, and much less about physical transfers in bulk.  If not this, what else should we be implicating out of the lineup for discussion.

Ok I see it now G.  Thank you.  I'll take some time with it. 

dp

Great. Be looking to see you in The Virtues of Nationalism Over Globalization !

Obviously nationalism is somewhat of a tainted word.  I'm not convinced that it can be accurately used to describe a lean towards environmental stewardship in matters of trade and economic independence.  It's not as if we have to pull a Copps and start handing out free flags as part of the discussion.

I'm getting old, and I've already lost most of my hearing, but did I hear the Alberta premier (Redford) last week call for a national energy plan???

Sorry...where are you coming from with that? There are so many "nationalisms" eh? Posst on the suggested thread before this one meets the fate of us all, why don't you?

I will, because I do want to get around to discussing Saul's article. In the meantime, you should really ask yourself a few honest questions about this fixation on authorship, and why it is so important to know who wrote what? Where do thoughts and extrapolations come from? What makes one train of thought more valid than another? etc. Competitive nationalism of the kind that informed the 19th and 20th centuries was what I was referring to. For a progressive discussion to do with comparing globalization to some alternative alter ego, using the word Nationalism with its historic connotations left dangling should be seen as a straw man.

You did indeed, Boom Boom! Redford and Harper preparing to give away whatever little is left to the oil barons

Shes sniffing around for a nice convevial 'strategy' of lets all be nice and support each others export strategies.

You know like:

"Quebec you have your hydro projects, we have our oil sands...."

Which is just a little ptina rubbed onto the normal "bug off everybody."

[With the hand covering the mouth from view while thanking the federal government for running interference.]

Closing for length.