Morton, Desmond

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

158 HISTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL HISTORY suggested. The "grosser forms of political pressure" (p. 220) such as tractor marches and public displays are employed by the National Farmers Union, who also present briefs to the federal government. Both books provide an insight into the activities of organized labour and both suffer from concentrating on the upper echelon of the labour movement at the expense of the rank-and-file. Additional biographical information, even in footnotes, on labour leaders in· volved in the protracted struggles, and a consideration of the class lines that may have been reflected in these contests would have assisted both studies. Kwavnick's work retains much of the thesis structure and academic jargon. It is not d1e final word on the CLC as a pressure group. Abella's study is essential for understanding the struggles that punctuated the Canadian Labour scene, the evolution of the CLC's relationship with the AFL-CIO, and the emasculation of a Canadian national union movement. • • • Foster GRIEZIC, Carleton University . GERALD L. CAPLAN.-The Dilemma of Canadian Socialism: Tha CCF in Ontario. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1972. Ontarians have a deserved reputation as a politically staid kind of people. A reasonably stable prosperity has made them conservative reformers, complacently content to nibble at innovation. How, therefore, can one explain the fact that, in 1943. without significant prior warning, one Ontario voter in three supported an avowedly socialist party? Except in fiction, politics is a relatively predictable business. The "first past the post" system may give some wild maldistributions of seats but voting percentages do not normal-ly fluctuate widly. Even the few exceptions in Ontario history - the United Farmers' vic-tory in 1919 or Mitchell Hepburn's upset in 1934-were due to political forcei; which represented, in somewhat exaggerated form, Ontario's combination of progressivism and conservatism. Whatever time might have done to the CCF, there was little apparent restraint in its demand for a radical transformation of the social and economic system or in its appeal to a class consciousness hitherto deemed alien to Canada. Not even in the depths of the depres-sion had the CCF collected more than a derisory handful of votes : seven percent in 1934. five per cent in 1937. With wartime prosperity, it must have seemed inevitable that the socialists were on the road to oblivion, marching to the discordant tune of their own clamorous but tiny factions. That did not happen. Instead, despite all the cruder assumptions about the politics of wartime and prosperity, socialism stormed back out of the shadows and to everyone's astonishment, including its own, almost captured the government of Canada's richest and most industrialized province. Ontario's political history can be ransacked in vain for com· parable examples of electoral turn-around. Almost certainly, the history of Canada as a whole would have been dramatically altered if the CCF under E. B. JOiliffe had managed to form a government in 1943. Yet the sole serious attempt to examine this strange episode has been a master's thesis for the University of Toronto submitted in 1961. 1 Apart from two articles in academic journals, 2 Professor Caplan's pioneering work has remained in· 1 Gerald CAPLAN, "Socialism and Anti-Socialism in Ontario, 1932-45" (unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1961). 2 ID., "The f<ailure of Canadian Socialism: The Ontario Experience, 1932-1945." Canadian Historical Review, XLIV (June, 1963), and "The Ontario Gestapo Affair, 1943-1945," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science. XXIX (August, 1964). COMPTES RENDUS - BOOK REVIEWS 159 accessible to all but the most knowledgeable students. Though he is now better known as an historian of southern Africa (and as an influential backroom advisor to the New Democratic Party), Caplan has been persuaded to revise and edit his thesis for publication. With the growing interest in regional history, both he and his publisher deserve to do well for their efforts. Although the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation has been most commonly associated with the Canadian west and though, like its successor, it experienced its greatest successes in that region, its founders realized that the party's national goals could never be accomplished without the allegiance of Ontario. However, instead of building on a healthy network of farm and co-operative organizations, the CCF's roots in Ontario were few and shrivelled: the cantankerous remnants of the United Farmers, squabbling socialists in a variety of sects, mildly arrogant novices in middle-class CCF Clubs. With considerable narrative skill and a saving wit, Caplan traces the splits, expulsi041s, defections and set-backs which made the party one of the minor disasters of the Depression years. On its way to the historical boneyard, the CCF had paused only to denounce the ad-vent of world war-largely from an isolationist and utterly unworldly standpoint. However, no Canadian institution owed more to the war for its survival and expansion. Since 1933, CCF leaders, if not all of their followers, had hammered the crude, Stalinist philosophy and tactics of the Communists and struggled to keep them out of the party. From 1941, Stalin, the Soviet Union and his local admirers, were all gallant allies in the patriotic war effort and a basic theme in the anti-socialist propaganda against the CCF was destroyed. Wartime prosperity also fostered a massive expansion of trade unionism, expos-ing innumerable Canadian workers to CCF (and Communist) propaganda for the first time. Even that astonishing 1942 by-election upset in York South occurred largely because Arthur Meighen, the loser, was fighting the First World War on the hustings. Wartime at-titudes paved the way, as nothing else could, for CCF gains. The heady ascent to August, 1943, was followed by almost as rapid a descent -though not to the earlier abysmal depths. Able detective work enabled Caplan to re-create the ac-ti vities of B. A. Trestrail, " Bugsy" Sanderson, the Society for Individual Freedom and a cast of individual and corporate characters who give jealous Ontarians every right to boast that they, too, have had a scandal to match Watergate. Unhappily, until the sole copy of the LeBel Royal Commission report on Jolliffe's "Gestapo" charges is found, Caplan may be the last historian to have access to the materials needed to tell the story properly. Of course, as Caplan points out, the anti-socialist campaign did not make the whole difference to the CCF's fortunes. He is critical of complacent leadership, feeble organiza-tion and a return of the internal divisions which had plagued the party's earlier years. In all too brief a concluding section, he begins to consider a problem which is the "dilemma" of his title: how does a party like the CCF (or the NDP) relate to the political culture of On-tario? For a third of a century, Ontario voters have kept the CCF-NDP as a strong third party without ever showing any inclination to move it closer to power. As an active par-tisan, Caplan obviously regards his book as a text for fellow New Democrats-a warning against complacency arid against the sectarianism which he, himself, recently fought in the Waffle Movement. However, the deeper questions remain unanswered for him and for his party. For historians, too, some questions remain unanswered. As political history, based on records, newspapers and interviews with the politically active. ThP. Dilemma of Canadian Socialism is an excellent first step in examining Ontario politics in the early 1940's but Professor Caplan himself would probably admit that there is a great deal more to be done. Building on his groundwork and insights, social historians should be encouraged to apply their techniques to the fascinating problems of politir.al behaviour. We now have a history 160 HISTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL HISTORY from the viewpoint of many of the actors but it is the spectators, through their ballots, who make the entertainment possible. We already know from other studies how wildly different the perspectives of politicians and people can be. How real was the impact of the anti-socialist campaign on individuals? How important was abstention as a factor in the CCF ad-vance in 1943 - or decline in 1945? Can electoral geography tell us more about the precise nature of CCF support? Professor Caplan's excellent little book does not dispose of a fascinating historical problem. lnbtead, it makes it far more accessible to different and perhaps more powerful historical techniques. • • • Desmond MORTON, University of Toronto . HEREWARD SENIOR.-Orangeism : The Canadian Phase. Toronto: McGraw-Hill-Ryerson , 1972. This is the fourth publication in the Frontenac Library, a series whose purpose ap-parently is briefly to incapsulate important historical subjects and to make them cheaply available to secondary school and university students. Doubtless students, and their teachers as well, will learn a good deal from this interesting and simply written study of Orangeism, yet those with a particular interest in the subject will be disappointed. Professor Senior in 1966 published a volume on Orangeism in Britain and Ireland 1795-1836 and for some time he has been doing research on the Order in North America; one might have expected, therefore, that he would have used this publication as a vehicle for presenting more of the results of that work. He disclaims, however, any intention of providing a formal history of Orangeism and provides instead a hasty, almost cursory, canter through some of the familiar highlights of the Order's nineteenth century history. . Evidently Professor Senior is most familiar with events in the first half of that period. Concentrating on Upper Canada, where Orangeism was most significant as a social and political force, he presents some fascinating material within a framework of provocative new interpretation. Rejecting previous assessments of Orangemen as the rowdy and bigoted shocktroops of a narrow Toryism, he successfully demonstrates that they were an independent force, an immigrant democracy alternately wooed and rebuffed by both Tories and reformers. Ogle Gowan, their greatest leader, is sharply drawn as a shrewd moderate, resentful of the nativist sentiments voiced by some of the Mackenzie reformers but suspicious as well of Family Compact rigidity and exclusivism. With his ef-forts hindered by the Order's dubious legal position, Gowan attempted with some success to rally both Protestants and Catholics behind him in his assertion of immigrant rights and in a determined campaign to destroy the comfortable clientage system which benefited the older inhabitants. Orangemen, Professor Senior argues, possessed a significance out of proportion to their numbers because their lodge organization brought men together in an age deficient in formal political structures. Almost from his arrival, then, Ogle Gowan was a power in the land and the foundation in 1830 of the Grand Lodge of British North America introduced a new element into the Upper Canadian political equation. Senior compares the Orange political stance with that of Ryerson's Methodists . Orangemen tend-ed to be moderates who possessed reform sympathies in the early 1830's, proved suscept-ible to Bond Head's loyalty cry in 1836, gave support to Durham and responsible govern-ment in 1839 but were attracted by Sir Charles Metcalfe's later efforts to avoid the full consequences of that system. Not all Orangemen, however, followed the Gowan lead, and in criticism of earlier interpretations which viewed the Orange vote as a bloc, Professor Senior emphasizes the diversity of opinion within the Order. For him tht' lodgt>s provided invaluable forums for political debate in pioneer communities, and he suggests that as numbers grew opinion became increasingly diffuse. The growing cultural strife which 

Gerald L. Caplan, The Dilemma of Canadian Socialism: The CCF in Ontario

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Gerald L. Caplan, The Dilemma of Canadian Socialism: The CCF in Ontario

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)