Margaret Crang (1910-January 5, 1992) was a Canadian politician. She served on the Edmonton city council from November 1933 to 1937. She also twice was a candidate for the Alberta Legislature.
Born in Edmonton, Alberta to Dr. Francis and Margaret Crang, she attained degrees in law and education from the University of Alberta. Following in her father's footsteps, (he was a long-serving Canadian Labour Party member of the Edmonton public school board and an advocate of human rights and the rights of labour, the sick, the young and the poor), she ran for a seat on the Edmonton city council as a Labour Party candidate.
She was elected, becoming only the second woman on city council, the first Edmonton-born person and the youngest ever in the city's history. She joined several CLP-ers already on council, and they held a majority of the seats on council.
She was a strong independent-minded socialist. The Edmonton Bulletin described her as being "eager to see the present economic system changed into a socialistic state so thousands of people now suffering might have a better lot in life."
Speaking in Lacombe in June 1934 on behest of the United Farmers of Alberta she said "men do not begin life on an equal basis under capitalism for the young man cannot find a market for his manpower...Capitalism has had its day and has come to the time when it must be discarded along with the other systems that have had their day."
When the city brought in a new tax during the depth of the Depression, she viewed it as no real solution to the problem of short city funds and real social needs. The Edmonton Bulletin quoted her as saying she was in favour of changing the whole economic system without further delay.
She was re-elected at the top of the polls in the 1935 Edmonton municipal election.
In provincial by-elections in 1936 and 1937, Crang ran as a candidate for a seat in the Alberta legislature. She was not elected. One of her opponents was Harry Ainlay, a top executive of the Alberta Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) party. For this she, and her father, were thrown out of the CCF.*
In 1936 she travelled to Spain, at the time engulfed in a civil war. She was in support of the Republican government fighting against right-wing rebels. She symbolically fired a rifle in the general direction of the rebel front-line. For this she was criticized by many Canadian newspapers. (Only a few years later they applauded those who fought against the same fascists.)
She was not re-elected in the 1937 Edmonton municipal election. She failed to get re-elected for a third term on city council. That year all Labour Party candidates failed to be elected, including her father, Francis Crang running for the school board. By the time of the 1937 election Margaret was the sole Labour member on council so her lack of success helped cause the pro-business Citizens Committee to hold unopposed power there. (Reasons for Edmonton voters turning away from Crang and other Labour candidates at that time include the world was emerging from the Depression and also the Social Credit government was meeting editoral criticism from many of the province's major newspapers.)
She left Edmonton and as a lawyer pursued the rights of Hindu Indian refugees/ immigrants on the West Coast.
She returned to Edmonton to run for city council again in 1941 but was not elected (although was the most popular of the un-elected candidates).
She pursued a journalistic career but suffered from ill health.
She died of old age in January 1992 in Vancouver.
Source of this information and future reading:
Tom Monto. Protest and Progress. Three Labour Party Radicals in Early Edmonton (Rice Sheppard, Harry Ainlay, Margaret Crang) is available from Alhambra Books in Edmonton, Alberta and through abebooks.com.
*Prov. byelections
Margaret is blamed for splitting of the left vote but IRV ws used so Left was safe from perils of vote splitting.
She ran in a June 22, 1936 by-election to fill the seat left empty by the resignation of William R. Howson. But met with defeat.[2][5] Liberal candidate Walter Morrish took the seat with a majority of the votes. (Instant-runoff voting was used but as it happened, no votes were transferred as Morrish took a majority of votes on the first count.) No Conservative ran in this by-election so Morrish picked up most of the anti-SC votes, while Crang ran on a united front-style platform of both labour and SC, finding common ground in their respective reforms meant to address the Depression. She ran as a candidate for a Alberta Social Credit group and several unemployed organizations. Her former teacher, Harry Ainlay, later mayor of Edmonton, ran under the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation label.[2] Due to her running against him, Margaret and her father were kicked out of the CCF.[2][5]
Crang ran again in an Edmonton provincial by-election held October 7, 1937. But here too she was unsuccessful. She ran under the Progressive Labour label. Edward Leslie Gray, a Liberal running for the anti-SC "Unity League", took the seat. Like Morrish the previous year, he won with a majority of the votes on the first count.
(from Wiki "Margaret Crang")
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