The first full Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) convention was held 75 years ago, July 19 to 21 in Regina.The price of wheat that year was 39 cents a bushel, the lowest in history, and the Queen City was preparing to welcome the World’s Grain Exhibition and Conference, which drew an incredible 200,000 participants, from 40 countries.

General Motors had opened an assembly plant in Regina in 1928. Bad timing.The Depression followed, triggered by the stock market crash, a yearlater. By 1932, relief camps were being organized to keep the prairieunemployed out of sight. No wages, just 20 cents a day for sundries, plusbed and board. The largest was in Saskatchewan.

Regina was where the police met the on-to-Ottawa trekkers in 1935, threwthem off the trains, and put them into the relief camps. A riot ensued, twomen died. The Ottawa trek started up again.

The CCF had been formed the previous yearin Calgary. In Regina, J.S. Woodsworth, the Independent Labour MP waselected party leader. He was part of the Ginger Group, the 12 remainingradical MPs representing the prairies, which included Agnes Macphail, thefirst woman MP. Most of those elected in the 1920s under the banner of theProgressives, or United Farmers had ended up with the Liberals who cleverlytook up rural issues. Meeting May 26, 1932 in the sixth floor Centre Blockoffice of Alberta MP Wiliam Irvine, the Ginger Group agreed as to the needfor a new farmer, labour party.

The CCF convention of 1933 is remembered largely because of the party’sfounding document, the Regina Manifesto. Speaking at his memorial service,longest serving MP Bill Blaikie recalled that Les Benjamin, elected in1968 as NDP member for Regina, used to refer fondly to the Manifesto as”pure poetry.” Ottawa historian and archivist John Smart and his wife, notedliterary critic Patricia Smart are inviting people to a public reading ofthe Manifesto at the Glebe Community Centre in Ottawa August 18. TheKingston and the Islands NDP riding association wanted the party to hold a75th birthday party celebration of the Regina Manifesto.

If you want to put down socialism, the CCF, and the NDP, you sure do notwant people to know about the history of Canada under capitalism. The lasting value of the manifesto is its account of how things went soterribly wrong in the 20th century, the bloodbath of World War I, theimpoverishment of farm communities and working people, the speculativeexcesses of finance capitalists and the march of fascism. The initial draftof the manifesto was prepared at the request of Woodsworth by members of theLeague for Social Reconstruction (LSR). In the early 1930s, the Depression and thespreading fear of fascism had inspired some academics in Montreal and Torontoto create the socialist LSR, a membership circle of activist intellectuals,which flourished for over a decade, with chapters established across thecountry.

The leading figures in the LSR, Frank Underhill, a historian fromUniversity of Toronto and Frank Scott, a McGill law professor, were importantfigures in the CCF, though Underhill eventually became a Liberal. Scott became party president, and with national secretary David Lewis, wroteMake This Your Canada an important account of the party that appeared in1943 when it briefly led in national polls.

Six years and two months after the adoption of the Regina Manifesto, Canadahad entered the war against fascism. In a dramatic moment in parliamentaryhistory, party leader J.S. Woodsworth, a leading pacifist handed over toM.J. Coldwell. The party voted for the entry of Canada into the war,following a powerful pacifist attack on war by J.S. Woodsworth who thenvoted against entry into the war.

The Regina manifesto famously promised in its conclusion: “A CCF governmentwill eradicate capitalismâe¦.” The irony is that because of the war, Canadaadopted large slices of the Regina Manifesto inspired CCF programme. Largescale economic planning, so much laughed at after the war, was needed tobuild an efficient and effective economy in order to win it.

Full employment co-existed with stable prices, thanks to Regina Manifestostyle planning, a package later sneered at as unworkable because it includedwage and price controls. And, yes, to meet the challenge of war, thegovernment went deeply into debt by having the Bank of Canada lend to thegovernment and allowing citizens to buy war bonds. This was one of thefavoured policy planks of the manifesto, the socialization of finance. Afterthe war, the national debt equaled about 120 per cent of GDP. Canada thenstruggled under what the right would label, the “burden of the debt,” to itsbest economic performance in history, arriving in 1975 with a debt equal to20 per cent of GDP.

The CCF gave way to the NDP in 1961, but its founding manifesto was full ofideas that are familiar today, such as unemployment insurance, Medicare, anda charter of rights and freedoms. Of particular interest is the detailedaccount of what needs to be done to build a country where people can befree.

In order to warm up the audience for readings of the Regina Manifesto acrossthe country, you can do no better than show the remarkable film about theCCF by Barbara Evans. Her title captures what the delegates in Regina mostwanted Canada to become: “A Heaven on Earth.”

Duncan Cameron

Duncan Cameron

Born in Victoria B.C. in 1944, Duncan now lives in Vancouver. Following graduation from the University of Alberta he joined the Department of Finance (Ottawa) in 1966 and was financial advisor to the...