A party may see the benefits to be gained by joining in a working arrangement with another party to hold power together (say in a minority government situation) but it may not see the real risks.
Alberta farmers saw the risks in 1920. The governing Liberal Party, seeing the rise of farmers' political activities, adopted a platform similar to the UFA demands, promising to implement it if elected. (Liberals, many would later say, act like NDP when trying for power and as Conservatives when in power.)
The Liberal government contacted the UFA and a veteran's organization to put forward a joint slate, but the UFA voted to stay separate from any other party, instead to put forward its own candidates.
The United Farmers soon saw success in two by-elections: electing MLA George Moore and MP Robert Gardiner. And In the next general election, the UFA ran in a majority of constituencies and the UFA was elected and replaced the Liberal government.
M.J. Coldwell, leader of the CCF, too saw the trap in 1940 at the start of WWII.
An article in the Liberty magazine entitled "Can Coldwell Lead the CCF to Power?" describes Coldwell as a schoolteacherish, excedingly capable middle-aged man "...but the main thing is that the CCF is a revolutionary party opposed to capitalism and dedicated to knocking the props out from under it - that is within the realm of law and constitutional order. The CCF-ers are the mildest-mannered revolutionists in the world. They pray daily for the advent of the New Order that they espouse. but Coldwell will never be seen leading a band of bloodthirsty rebels at the barricades...
Coldwell said that the CCF would never be trapped as the British Labour Party was during the 1920s. "We won't take office without power," he said.
As well, the NDP suffered after it propped up Bob Rae's Liberal government in Ontario. It found itself defending its former ally while also attacking it and trying to differentiate itself from the Liberals. Rachel Notley, I recall, similarly criticized that government, saying the Liberals do not know how to share out, re-allocate, the wealth that is created in society -- the NDP though knows how to do that. And when she was elected she achieved that through many programs. This included a carbon tax on gasoline with the much of the tax money going equally to all through a rebate.
The article quoted Coldwell making several other interesting statements, as well. It recounted that progress for the CCF had been slow in the Depression but with the war it had spurred forward.
[The article reads:] ... Many factors are contributing to the party's growing prestige - the eclipse of the Chamberlain regime in Britain, the rise of British Labour in the Empire's wartime Cabinet, the almost daily broadcasts by J.B. Priestly who talks unendingly about the new order and the economic levelling-out that will follow the war - all those assist the CCF.
Democracy and capitalism appear to have become separated in the public mind, and almost everybody admits today that a new order is coming...
J.S. Woodsworth [who had retired as CCF leader one year before] said he hated war but firmly denied being a pacifist. ...fortunately for the sake of his value to the CCF cause, ill health caused him to retire shortly after the outbreak of war. He would not have been understood by the majority of Canadians, not even by his own followers.
One thing in addition to his personality and his sincerity Woodsworth has left to the CCF is a one-sentence politic creed: "Some day co-operation for the common good must replace competition for private gain."...
Coldwell has the happy faculty rare among his followers of being able to present the CCF case as a lesson in pure logic.
On the war Coldwell said "as the war approached, Canada and the CCF and Woodsworth was isolationist, mostly because of who was in power in London.
After war's outbreak, the party adopted the policy that Canada should contribute to the war effort by organizing its economic life to supply all the needs of Britain without profit to this country."
On socialism, Coldwell said, the CCF was socialist - it believed in state control of public utilities, monopolies and big business. He said that at the CCF founding it was proposed that it come out openly as such and call itself the Socialist Party.* This was rejected because of the unfortunate associations with socialism resulting from the misuse of the term in other countries, particularly by Adolph Hitler who termed his party National Socialist.
A part of the party's optimism is the fact the CCF has been successful in melding farmers and workers together. Coldwell said he thought this had been possible because the CCF had its beginnings among the co-operative groups made up of mechanized agriculturalists on the prairies who are actually industrial farm workers and who appreciate the problems of Eastern industrial workers.
"The Western farmer and Eastern labour are oppressed by exactly the same economic system," he said.
Coldwell said the strength of the CCF lay largely in its groups of humanitarian and intellectual people who have become associated in a desire to perform a public service. "Man for man, the CCF members have made greater studies of social and economic questions than the members of any other party, and that is the party's strength...
Behind them stand the power of the organized labour and farm and co-operative movements. However labour has not supported CCF as much as was hoped, in part, Coldwell said, because the labourers in the East still think they can rise up and become an employer. Not more than 20 per cent of all Canada labour is unionized today.
Coldwell said the CCF has the support of no daily newspaper in the land, but, he said, the press has always given the CCF a square deal in its reportage although "it attacks us editorially."
He said optimistically but conservatively that he felt Canada would drift into a two-party system with the rightist members of the Conservative and Liberal parties drifting together and the progressive joining the CCF. Then through natural rotation usually experienced by alternate political parties, the CCF would eventually rise to power. [MONTO: This may happen in Alberta but a two-party system is unlikely at the federal level as Greens and other parties further splinter the vote beyond the three-way Liberal/Conservative/NDP dogfight. However the 2019 federal election may show something of this - perhaps the NDP's expected advances are due to natural rotation as voters have tried the other two parties, found them wanting and now will try the NDP.]
And Coldwell said the party had already prepared what it would do in power.
First, abolish the Senate which was seen as archaic, and substitute a form of revision committee in the single chamber along the lines of the Norwegian system.
Then nationalization of the banks.
Banks ought to be instruments of national economic policy and should be entirely owned by the nation. He said he was not Social Credit and in the interview did not say how he would like it if the Social Credit, or from his standpoint as bad an outcome, the Conservatives, were returned to power and thus fell heir to these powerful economic weapons. [In truth, the Conservatives would probably have privatized them to reward their corporate supporters, and to deprive the CCF of easy use of them at least in the short term if the CCF should have come to power again.]
In closing, Coldwell said "We believe in an orderly and ordered program. We believe in a planned economy...We are not out to destroy; we are out to create.
In regards to the province of Quebec, we realize that the French-Canadian outlook is essentially Canadian. As the rest of Canada becomes more Canadian and more North American-conscious which is inevitable as a result of this war, the differences between French and English Canadians will disappear." [Nowadays it is just the opposite -- English Canada, or at least its privately-owned media, is almost totally dedicated to the U.S., while any viewing of the French-language CBC TV news will give you more international news than those all put together. And using closed caption makes deciphering the spoken word easier - I would recommend listening and reading closed caption on TV at the same time for anyone learning French.)
"Can Coldwell Lead the CCF to Power?" (May 31, 1941 Liberty magazine) is included in Ernest Brown's collection at the Provincial Archives of Alberta (1965.124, 270h(i))).
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