Labour MP J.S. Woodsworth in his ca. 1926 book Following the gleam": A modern pilgrim's progress to date!, quoted the following statement:
"The individualist system of capitalist production based on the private ownership and competitive administration of land and capital, with its reckless profiteering and wage slavery, with its glorification of the unhampered struggle for the means of life, and its hypocritical pretense of the survival of the fittest with the monstrous inequality of circumstances that it produces and the degradation and brutalization, both moral and spiritual resulting therefrom, may we hope have received a death-blow."
And Woodsworth wrote that this was not some Soviet pronouncement but instead the policy of the British Labor Party.
His point was that there was a new feeling, a new mood and the old establishment better wake up and take notice. Because the Labour Party was not an "extremist" party but instead was the Official Opposition in the House of Commons, the second most powerful party in that chamber
He went on quoting Labour policies:
"We must ensure that what is to be built up is a new social order, based not on fighting but on fraternity - not on the competitive struggle for the means of bare life but on a deliberately planned co-operation in production and distribution for the benefit of all who participated by hand or by brain - not on the utmost possible inequality of riches but on a systematic approach toward a healthy equality of material circumstances for every persons born into the world - not on an enforced dominion over subject nations, subject races, subject colonies, subject classes or a subject sex, but in industry as well as in Government, on that equal freedom, that general consciousness of consent, and that widest possible participation in power both economic and political, which is characteristic of democracy...."
Woodsworth then asked "But what is this new social order and how it it to be brought in?"
And answered
"The Labour Party insists first of all on a minimum standard of living. Each family must have sufficient to provide for decent living - good food, clothing and shelter, opportunities for education, recreation, and culture, insurance against accident, sickness unemployment, old age. The State assumes responsibility for finding men work and providing for all their needs.
This is not continental [European] Socialism. It is not Utopian dream. Today England is paying millions of pounds in unemployment benefits.
In the second place, the Labour Party stands for the democratic control of industry. This means the progressive elimination from the control of industry of the private capitalist, individual or joint stock. It means a genuinely scientific re-organization of the nation's industry no longer deflected by individual profiteering on the basic of the common ownership of the means of production. It means the immediate nationalization of railways, mines and electric power. It means that the worker has a voice and a share in the industry in which he is engaged.
... [The Britisher proposes that the necessary revenues needed to conduct such an ambitious programme] should be raised from two sources:
1. an income tax
2. an inheritance tax...."
Meanwhile, we in Alberta seem to be going the other way.
For one, talking of increased private ownership and investment on our public parks, both provincial land Edmonton city parks. Certainly the sidewalks in Old Strathcona have been converted to private profit-making space even at the expense of driving lanes for car traffic.
The basic minimum income now being discussed may be a move toward "a minimum standard of living" that was part of British Labour Party policy a hundred years ago.
And today's discussion of electoral reform, of Citizen's' Assembly and/or quick government action to bring in a fairer, more democratic electoral system, also mimics what the British Labour Party was calling for a hundred years ago - "that widest possible participation in power both economic and political, which is characteristic of democracy." One where votes are effective and have very equal power.
Under the current system, more than half the votes may be ignored, such as in the last Edmonton city election.
Under the current system, it took 235,000 NDP votes to elect one MP while it took about 35,000 to elect a Conservative MP. The Conservative party received 1M more votes than the Liberal party but took fewer seats. That is not equal political power. And it is not fair.
And as the British Labour Party pointed out, to Woodsworth's obvious approval, this type of thing is not "characteristic of democracy."
So we have a ways to go along the route laid out more than a hundreds years ago by the British Labour Party. Woodsworth took these ideas and in 1932 brought them to a meeting of leftists held in Calgary. There was founded the "Co-operative Commonwealth Party - Worker - Farmer - Socialist." The CCF years later became the New Democratic Party, and Woodsworth's dream still beats in the hearts of many Canadians.
Thanks for reading.
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