Woodsworth-Irvine Socialist Fellowship carried socialism into the new party - the NDP
- Tom Monto
- Jun 19
- 2 min read
The NDP had one non-union affiliate, the Woodsworth-Irvine Socialist Fellowship, a carry-over from the old Alberta CCF. (The other affiliates were all labour unions - by 2012 the affiliate arrangement was nullified.)
In 1960s W-ISF organized summer seminars in Banff.
monthly meetings in the basement of Betty and Tony Mardiros' house on 120 St. in Windsor Park.
(Tony was author of biography of William Irvine.)
Betty and Tony carried the W-ISF banner in peace marches in downtown Edmonton.
Nellie Peterson was often in attendance. She was referred to as a person in the old CCF who might have made a good premier.
perhaps W-ISF's last fling was bringing Tony Benn, leader of the Labour Party's leftist Chesterfield movement, to speak at Edmonton, in September 1988.
Myself (Tom Monto) wrote a transcript of Benn's speech with explanatory footnotes and published it for the W-ISF under title Discussions on The Road Ahead - Strategies for Democratic Socialism Report on "The Road Ahead" Conference.
Ross Harvey, Alberta's sole NDP MP, addressed the gathering on the subject of "As a socialist, what I do in power?"
Shortly thereafter (October 1989?), W-ISF held "The People's Agenda for Health" in UofA rooms.
One-time NDP leadership contender Rosemary Brown was in attendance and thanked W-ISF for being one of the first bodies to endorse her try for top post.
Betty was on committee that formulated a leaflet for the NDP anti-War Committee, which included myself (Tom Monto), Ricci Lake, the communications director at the NDP provincial office (later editor of the short-lived Strathcona Times), and others.
The leaflet called for NPD to withdraw from NATO, which Strathcona MLA Gordon Wright once referred to as the party's most-contentious policy. (A wag pointed out that if it was not that, then some other policy would be "our most-contentious policy" and where do you stop?)
Betty died around 1995, and she had been the motor behind W-ISF.
W-ISF in existence up to 2007.
It still provides funding for the Parkland Institute's annual meet. In 1980s it received a fair sum of money in the form of a bequest from an old Saskatchewan farmer who shared out his inheritance between W-ISF, the Communist Party, and another group.
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see ''Democracy and Socialism Essays in honour of Grant Notley''
Mack Penner, "Socialist Survival: The W-ISF and the Preservation of Radical Thought in Alberta" in Bear, Hannant and Patton, ''Bucking Conservatism'' (2021), p. 171-186
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