“Love and Solidarity” depicts the struggle of the social democratic movement to present a vision of a society that represents, nationally and internationally, the true democracy of the people.”
Audrey McLaughlin, Leader of the NDP, 1989-1995.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1992.
ISBN: 9780771082092
Inside dust jacket, written in 1992: “Cameron Smith, a former managing editor of The Globe and Mail, has long been fascinated by the history and achievements of the two parties—the CCF and the NDP—that consecutively have dominated the Canadian left for sixty years.
“In his first book, the bestselling and highly acclaimed Unfinished Journey, Smith mined the history of the Lewis family, whose names are almost synonymous with democratic socialism in Canada. In Love & Solidarity, Smith paints the bigger picture—that of the origins and fortunes of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and its direct descendant, the New Democratic Party. And he does so in an unconventional and wholly successful way by using images to show and their captions to tell the roller-coaster story of the parties’ changing fortunes.
“Through this extensive collection of photographs, cartoons, posters, and handbills, Smith shows more than the simple story of the party. He has captured the original and enduring vision, the determination, and the spirit that have inspired generations with the conviction that we can build a fairer and more decent society in Canada.
“In the sixty years since the CCF was founded in Calgary amid the prairie dust of drought and ecnomonic depression, the party has thrived despite attacks from both the left and right, and even from within. Most of its policies, adopted and implemented by other parties, are now the mesh of the social safety net that most Canadians consider makes this country the best place on earth to live.”
Excerpt from Introduction:
…Why should we have to look abroad to validate socialism in Canada? We’ve got a socialist party that’s been in government and opposition for sixty years, and by and large it has worked just fine.
It was in opposition in the House of Commons in 1932. It formed the government in Saskatchewan in 1944 and stayed in office for twenty years. It has been the government nine times—in four provinces and one territory. It should be judged as unique, not as a copy.
J.S. Woodsworth, the party’s first federal leader, made that point in 1933, almost a year after the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was formed – at the time when the CCF’s guiding document, the Regina Manifesto, was adopted. He said: “I am convinced that we may develop in Canada a distinctive type of socialism. I refuse to follow slavishly the British model or the American model or the Russian model. We in Canada will solve our own problems along our own lines.”
In 1989 I published a book about the Lewis family called Unfinished Journey. David Lewis was federal leader of the party in the 1970s (by then it was called the New Democratic Party), and his son Stephen was the leader of the Ontario party. The book dealt with them and their family roots in Russia, which go back a couple of hundred years. One of the most common questions I was asked during the publicity tour for the book was, “Why did you want to spend so much time and effort writing a book about people who were failures?”
“What do you mean?” I would say.
“Well they never formed a government.”
A variation on this theme came from a University of Toronto professor who was one of a group of three reviewing the book for “The Journal” on CBC. Pursing his lips, he said he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to write such a big book on people who’d never held government office. As an oldtimer I used to work with in the mines around Sudbury would say, “They were so thick-headed you couldn’t get past the bone with a jackhammer.”
Success for the CCF and the NDP has always meant achieving a revolution in fairness. The measure of success was not so much the number of times the party made it into government, it was how much it improved fairness for everyone. You can make a start on it if you form a government. But you can also do it without ever holding office, by changing the value system. And changing the value system, in or out of office, is an enormous accomplishment. And that’s exactly what the CCF and NDP have done over a period of sixty years.
[End of excerpt.]