When Stephen Harper "United the Right", He Solidified the Centre. Just Not For Himself.

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

How Stephen Harper became a "Tory" is the stuff of legend. Or more accurately, the stuff of fairy tales. He did have a brief stint with the PCs in the early 80's, but left the Party because they weren't right-wing enough.

The fact is, that the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada was not really right-wing at all, at least not in heart and soul. They were just right of centre. And they were 100% Canadian. And in many ways, historically, they were not unlike the Liberal Party in terms of policy.*

That doesn't mean that there weren't fierce rivalries. They were like two football teams (I don't want to use hockey because Harper has done that to death) who battle each other for the prize, but at the end of the day, both teams are in the same league, and committed to the game.

And while they both went after the same prize, the team that won it, honoured it. Showed it off and protected it for the next winner, whether it be themselves or their opponents.

They didn't win it, then smash it, to make sure that no one else could have it. That's how I see the Reformers, whether calling themselves Social Credit, Reform, Alliance or Conservative. They are the party that wants to smash the trophy and terminate the league.

Uniting the Right Was Not About Vote-Splitting

The common belief was that the PCs and Reform-Alliance joined forces to avoid splitting the vote. Sounds good but completely false. That's the way it was sold when David Frum arranged a meeting between Jean Charest then head of the PCs, and Preston Manning, then head of Reform.

In terms of bridging the differences between the parties of Preston Manning and Jean Charest, the conference made little headway ... the chasm in terms of the egos and pride of the leaders; the different attitudes that the parties have towards populist initiatives; Reform's origins in western alienation, Social Credit, and religious fundamentalism; and the fact that Reform emerged in part as an angry protest against the policies of a Progressive Conservative government made a rapprochement unlikely. (1)

A later report by Laurence Putnam confirmed the divide.

The first misconception about the Reform movement is that it is a conservative party. The Reform party has all the characteristics of a Western populist party and very few marks of a conservative party. (2)

And as to the myth of avoiding vote-splitting. In the West, many of those who voted PC did not go to Reform. Most of Reform's gain was at the expense of the NDP, another party that started out as a Western protest movement. But many also went to the Liberals.

Since the 2000 election, unity activists in both the PC and Canadian Alliance parties have preached that the PC party lost a major part of its family when the Reform Party rose to prominence, however, this is not exactly true. The PC Party did not experience a mutiny, but rather with the decline of the PC Party in Western Canada, an opportunity was extended for a new crew, the Reform movement, to come to power. In fact, many members of the Reform Party elected in 1993 had never been Conservatives at all. Preston Manning had been a member of the federal Social Credit Party prior to incepting the Reform Party. MPs Diane blonczy, Deborah Grey and Val Meredith were never members of the PC Party ... As these members were not Tories throughout the 1980's and early 1990's when the Tories were at their most successful peak since Sir John A. Macdonald ... (2)

Promoters of unity between the PC and Canadian Alliance parties had argued that if there were either only a PC or CA candidate in your average Ontario riding, they would have beat the Liberals in 2000. But what about Etobicoke North? In 2000, no PC candidate ran in Etobicoke North, but a Canadian Alliance candidate did, and yet they gained only 3.9%, and the majority of the PC votes migrated to the Liberal candidate. This despite the fact that provincially, the identical riding was held by PC M.P.P. John Hastings.

This riding is one example that proves 1+1 doesn't necessarily equal 2 when it comes to defeating a Liberal incumbent in Ontario ridings. Another interesting Ontario result was found in the riding of Markham, where Jim Jones was elected as a Progressive Conservative in 1997. Mr. Jones crossed to the Alliance in the summer of 2000, but lost re-election just months later. Why was Mr. Jones electable to the people of Markham, Ontario, as a Tory, but unelectable as a Canadian Alliance M.P.? (2)

It's because the majority of the Canadian electorate are moderates. The same people who voted for Brian Mulroney later voted for Jean Chretien, illustrating that votes between the Liberals and the PC Party were always liquid, while votes cast for ideologically-driven parties, like Reform/Alliance and NDP**, came from a "base".

The Reform movement only became palpable to Canadians when they shed their wolf's clothing and started calling themselves "Conservative", or worse yet "Tories", cashing in on a century and a half tradition. And for awhile, they were able to fool some of the people some of the time. But unfortunately for them, as their policies became increasingly un-Canadian, their level of support has drifted back to their "base".

They have no hope of drawing votes from the NDP, except perhaps in the West, but they are also losing the votes of moderates ... aka: ordinary Canadians.

So now they have a problem. Instead of eliminating what they thought was their own competition, they have eliminated all competition for the centre, and all of the "liquid" votes are now flowing away from them.

They are a right-wing fringe party. Nothing more. They came, they saw, they scared the hell out of us, and now they must leave.

This brings us to Michael Ignatieff. I see him as the perfect leader to unite the centre. And if I wasn't convinced before, a column by the widow of the late PC president Dalton Camp, has me sold. Ignatieff is not "a bleeding heart Liberal" but will lead a party that will be fiscally responsible but socially aware.

His family has a long history in this country, and come from all political stripes. His G-Grandfather, George Munro Grant helped Sir John A. and Confederation, and later promoted his railway. His uncle George Parkin Grant was also a Conservative, and author of the popular Lament for a Nation, as reaction to the defeat of John Diefenbaker. His fear was that we would become too Americanized and too beholden to corporations, and while this book was reactionary, he would later suggest that he felt that Pierre Trudeau was on the right track. (3)

Michael's father George Ignatieff was a foreign secretary under Diefenbaker, Diplomat under Pearson, and even served as acting president of the United Nations General Assembly***. He was also a peace activist, who fought hard against nuclear weapons, earning him a reputation as a "Peacemonger." (4)

Another uncle was Vincent Massey.

And though Michael Ignatieff's political views are his own, they have been nurtured in the true Canadian tradition.

So while Johannes Wheeldon may ask "Can Iggy Find His Centre?" He didn't have to. He was already there. And as Wendy Camp says: "He has come home to us." And whispering in his ear, will be family voices from the past, making sure that he doesn't screw up what they helped to build.

Footnotes:

*Stephen Harper referred to the PCs or "Red Tories" as "Pink Liberals".

**The NDP has since become more moderate and appealing, though some of their early followers feel that they had to sell out to do so. I like them and remember the greats like Tommy Douglas and Ed Broadbent, and the leader Jack Layton used to be.

***Stephen Harper and the Reformers never trusted the United Nations.

Sources:

1. The Winds of Right-wing Change in Canadian Journalism, By David Taras (University of Calgary), Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 21, No 4, 1996

2. An Analysis On The Differences Between the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada & The Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance, by Laurence Putnam As prepared for the Fraser Institute, December 2002

3. Lament For a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, By George P. Grant, McClelland & Stewart, 1970 edition with new introduction by author.

4. The Making of a Peacemonger: The Memoirs of George Ignatieff, By Sonja Sinclair, University of Toronto Press, ISBN: 0-8020-2556-0

Chapter Thirty-Six Continued: Prepared for a World That no Longer Existed

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Preston Manning grew up influenced by evangelical fundamentalism, radical free-enterprise conservatism and anti-socialism, embraced by his father. And as Murray Dobbin notes:

What these powerful influences had moulded in Preston Manning was a politician of the past: a politician for the 1940s or 1950s, a politician who was in many ways a carbon copy of his father. And Ernest Manning, so long accustomed to running Alberta more as a father figure than an active politician, had changed little if at all, in the twenty-five years he had been in office. Both men were socially and politically isolated from the changing mainstream of Canadian society. (1)

The Conservative party in Canada was becoming more progressive in their attitudes, to meet the new demands, and the old stalwarts like Diefenbaker were becoming outdated. The world was changing fast and if you didn't embrace those changes you were left behind.

For Ernest and Preston Manning, they only sought to react to the changes by offering pure ideology, based on unbridled capitalism and religious fundamentalism. They might as well have been from another planet. But that didn't stop them from trying to convince others to follow their lead. They wrote Political Realignment in 1967, as a blueprint for the past.

Who Said Conservatives Can't Have Fun?

John Diefenbaker was a good Prime Minister, but like the Mannings, the world was passing him by. In 1967, with the wonderful Dalton Camp leading the charge, the Conservatives themselves were in the mood for new leadership.

Flora MacDonald had been named national secretary and Camp the party president.

The annual meeting had set a date in 1967 for a leadership convention. Conservatives identifying with Dalton Camp's position on leadership review were anxious to see candidates offer themselves who would have some hope of rescuing party leadership from Mr. Diefenbaker. (2)

Camp himself had considered running and had MacDonald's support, but when Robert Stanfield threw his hat into the ring, they both lined up behind him.

It has been said that Robert Stanfield was the best prime minister that never was, but I think that can be said of many great politicians over the years, including Tommy Douglas and Ed Broadbent. But I think it also applies to Flora MacDonald and Dalton Camp. Both had a genuine love of this country and everything that Canadians stood for.

But in 1967, as Canadians were celebrating centennial year, the Conservatives were going to do it big for this important leadership convention:

The Conservative leadership convention was an extravaganza that deserved all the superlatives heaped on it. For the first time, a Canadian political party had set out to emulate in scale and style an American presidential nominating convention. It had marching bands and balloons and pretty girls by the hundreds, floor demonstrations, and lavish cocktail parties for thousands. It was a great show and it made great television. More than that, it had great drama. Would John Diefenbaker attempt one last stand? Or would he accept the inevitable and quietly receive the honours due to him, allowing the party to choose his successor? Could the Conservatives find any man with the patience, understanding, and tact needed to reverse the centrifugal forces that seemed determined to tear the party to pieces? Partly because it was the first convention of its kind and partly because of the Diefenbaker drama, the Conservative convention occupies a special place in the memories of the people who were there. It had an excitement that not even the Liberals could match seven months later when they met to elect Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the most intriguing political figure of the age. The Tory convention is the yardstick by which all other leadership conventions must be measured.' (2)

The Turning Point

There were others at that convention with a keen interest in the outcome. Preston Manning and his friend Erick Schmidt, were there on behalf of Ernest Manning, who hoped to join the Social Credit with the Conservatives to present a right-wing federal option.

However, Ernest Manning had over estimated his important, and the idea was soundly rejected. Besides, with Stanfield being named the new leader, beating out Diefenbaker 271 votes to 519 on the first ballot, (2) they knew the time wasn't right. Robert Stanfield was a Red Tory and the Mannings hated Red Tories as much as they hated Liberals. When Stephen Harper joined the movement decades later, he would call Red Tories 'Pink Liberals' and was determined to eradicate them from the party.

Preston Manning decided that they would have to wait for the next big wave of anger, that brought Social Credit to power. It would take twenty years.

Sources:

1. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 21-22

2. Flora MacDonald, By Alvin Armstrong, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1976, ISBN: 0-460-91698-X. Pg. 102-104

Chapter Thirty-Six: Passing the Torch

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Preston Manning was born on June 10, 1942, in Edmonton, Alberta. His godfather was William Aberhart, then premier of Alberta.

Within a year, Aberhart would be deceased and Ernest Manning, Preston's father, would become premier, and hold that position for 25 years.

The influences that have been brought to bear on Preston Manning could only have been created in Alberta. His father, Ernest Manning, was not just premier for twenty-five years but premier of what was often called a one-party state. Revered almost as a saint by many, he dominated Alberta political life during the years he was in power. Through Ernest Manning and his predecessor and mentor, William Aberhart, evangelical Christianity played a role in Alberta politics for which the only Canadian parallel is Catholicism in Quebec. Ernest Manning was both spiritual and political leader of Alberta. Preston Manning grew up under the tutelage and the shadow of his larger-than-life father. (1)

And by Preston's own admissions his father was often distant and cold, but he grew up in a household dominated by Social Credit politics*.

While he has said that his father did not bring politics into the home, Preston Manning acknowledges that the political influence was nonetheless felt early on: "The family itself did not play that great a role in politics in those days. But at a very early age, I began looking at things from a governing point of view because my father was the leader of the government." (2)

But he also grew up sheltered for most of his early life.

Ernest Manning was also intensely private — and very formal. John Barr writes in The Dynasty, his book on the Social Credit Party: "Everyone knew that Mr. Manning (as he was almost universally known; probably no more than half a dozen people ever called him 'Ernest') was Premier and that he was 'there' somehow, but his public appearances were sufficiently rare that he was neverover-exposed. Manning did not invite familiarity." (2)

Every day he was expected to go straight from school to his father's office, where he did his homework, and most of his life was centred around school, family and church. His one sibling, Keith, was born with Cerebral Palsy, and spent much of his time away, so Preston focused on his studies.

By the time he went away to university in the early 60's, he realized that the world had changed, but that he and his family had not changed with it.

At university in the early sixties he gave the impression of a rural kid completely isolated from the ways of urban society. He presented an odd image. "He was part of the Youth Parliament's Social Credit caucus at the same time Joe Clark, Grant Notley (the late, former leader of the New Democratic Party in Alberta), Jim Coutts (who became prominent in the Liberal Party under Pierre Trudeau), and others were representing their respective parties. He was a good speaker, but you never saw him on campus. People knew who he was, and the rumour was that his father didn't want him to hang around the university too much because it would be a bad moral influence on him," recalls Fred Walker, a student at that time. "He looked very out of place — odd enough in his mannerisms and physical appearance and dress to be the occasional subject of ridicule. He gave the impression of being a very serious and committed young man — but more an apologist for his father's party and policies. He didn't play a very prominent role." (2)

Continued: National Public Affairs Research Foundation

Footnotes:

*Stockwell Day's mother said the same thing of her son's upbringing

Sources:

1. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 1

2. Dobbin, 1992, Pg. 3-4

Chapter Thirty-Four Continued: Wallace Klinck and the Bookstore Incident

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Though Robert Thompson, then head of the national Social Credit Party had been able to quiet the press somewhat after the Carmichael affair, the stain of anti-Semitism remained: The Toronto Telegram stated: "Neil Carmichael's words are a reflection on the Social Credit Party that is capable of attracting such men." The Globe and Mail remarked: "If Mr. Thompson expects his good faith to be accepted, it is not enough to dismiss remarks like those of Mr. Carmichael as indiscreet." The paper subsequently added that "even if the Social Credit Party now expels Mr. Carmichael, the question will remain whether he is being fired for anti-Semitism or indiscretion." (1)

This method of handling these kinds of situations would continue with the Reform Party under Preston Manning and the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper, though Harper no longer apologizes, he just demands that we accept it.

Then in 1965, another incident would take place that would once again prove that antisemitism was alive and well and living in the Social Credit Party.

In January 1965 Wallace Klinck, a thirty-year old University of Alberta student and campus chairman for the Social Credit party, obtained the approval of Professor Grant Davy, head of the political science department, to make Social Credit literature available in the university bookstore. Klinck approached the manager of the bookstore, N.S. Howe, with a number of books and pamphlets on Social Credit, including six copies of the Protocols. He told Howe that "Social Credit had come under a lot of fire lately on campus and ... students should be given the opportunity to read explanations of exactly what it stands for." Howe accepted the literature.

Once it was discovered that the bookstore was selling anti-Semitic literature the provost of the university immediately ordered the withdrawal of the Protocols. Howe defended his actions by stating: "I didn't know what kind of a publication the Protocols of Zion was. And I didn't expect [the political science department] did either." In fact, Professor Davy was aware of the contents of the Protocols and vehemently disagreed with them. "Nevertheless," he argued, "it seemed to me that it would be useful for students to know the sort of background upon which the Social Credit Party developed. I understand that Premier Manning has disavowed the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' as a part of the philosophy of his government, but there is little doubt ... that Social Credit movements and parties in other areas still refer to it as a basis of their philosophy." (1)

Manning, Orvis Kennedy, the Alberta Social Credit League president, and Owen Anderson (leader of the campus Socreds) immediately cancelled Klinck's membership, and began doing damage control. Anderson declared that Klinck "violated Social Credit party principle" by distributing the Protocols. "We ... do not hold the Protocols' views, and we repudiate people who distribute racist literature." Kennedy declared that the Protocols were "scurrilous, anti-Semitic writing, a forgery" and (falsely) claimed that they had "never been part of the Social Credit literature."

Klinck denied that the Protocols were anti-Semitic but asserted, quite correctly, that they were an integral part of social credit theory originated by Douglas. "The book is a terrible outline for world conquest ... The events that have occurred in the world since it was written would make any thinking person incapable of dismissing it without serious consideration." As for accusations that he was antiSemitic, Klinck said he believed in the dangers of an international financial conspiracy which could lead to a Third World War, but stressed he was not racist or anti-Jewish. "The nucleus of international financiers has its share of Jews in it ... Many records suggest there are a substantial number of Jews involved but this does not in any way involve the entire Jewish people." He also believed that the Alberta Social Credit government "doesn't do enough to bring the truth of Douglas Social Credit philosophy to the people"; hence his decision to distribute the Protocols and other Social Credit literature. It seemed to have worked--by the time the university ordered the books removed the bookstore had sold all six copies of the Protocols.

Premier Manning seemed relatively unperturbed about Social Credit's recurring intolerance. When questioned about the campus bookstore incident on CBC television a year later, he responded only with "deft side-stepping and restrained answers." According to one critical observer: "It was interesting to watch the Premier repudiate the anti-Semitic past of the Social Credit movement ... The anti-Semitic line has now been quietly relegated to the inner circles of the Social Credit Party, where the conspiracy theory of history is far from dead." (1)

Wallace Klinck is still very much a disciple of Social Credit and appears to work tirelessly to promote monetary reform. Says Wallace:

Were consumers paid a measured dividend and retailers adhered to a measured markup there would be in each production cycle ample monetized demand for accountants to feel content that their measures were useful in our struggle to end poverty, recession and forced loss of wages.. (2)

He also continues to support the notion of a Jewish conspiracy theory, though his attacks are limited to the Jewish Lobby. I would hesitate to call that antiSemitism. I myself have often criticized the Israeli Apartheid, but not based on religion, only a country's foreign policy.

However, when notions of a Jewish Conspiracy surface, I'm not OK with that.

Sources:

1. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

2. Wallace Klinck's brief lesson, By John Gelles, February 2003

Chapter Thirty-Four Continued: Neil Carmichael and Flying Saucers

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In the spring of 1963 the Social Credit Party would again be in trouble over antisemitic remarks made by one of their members. This time it was Neil Carmichael, a coin and stamp dealer and five-time federal Socred candidate in the Toronto riding of St. Paul's.

Carmichael declared that Baron de Rothschild was attempting to buy up Canadian mining interests through a non-Jewish agent. The Rothschild family, Carmichael declared, was part of an international financiers' circle which was attempting to acquire all Canadian business enterprises. Moreover, the Rothschilds and other financiers were able to borrow money from the International Monetary Fund, which was supported by Canadian tax dollars. "The public is being taken for a ride by the moneychangers," announced Carmichael, "and their money is being taken from them by the bigshots in the money world." (1)

The Globe and Mail reminded it's readers: "From its earliest days the Social Credit Party has been suspected of having anti-Semitic inclinations ... [Carmichael's speech] comes very close to the familiar anti-Semitic propaganda dealing with Jewish financiers and their alleged machinations to enslave the world ... Unless Mr. Thompson at once disowns Mr. Carmichael, the public will be entitled to conclude that the Socreds are willing to harbor men of such unpleasant opinions within their ranks."

And the Toronto Telegram remarked: "Mr. Carmichael's expose smacks of the wilder accusations dredged up from time to time by the former Social Credit member from Lethbridge, John Blackmore. And, of course, it also smacks strongly of the anti-Semitic canards spread by the Nazis. If this surprises, we should remember that the deputy leader of the party, Real Caouette, has more than once expressed his admiration for the economic policies of Hitler and Mussolini."

Party president Robert Thompson was again forced to step in. He denounced Carmichael's comments and stated that the party did not condone antisemitism. And yet at about the same time he was praising Ronald Gostick on official party stationary (2)

The Brotherhood of Faithists

Carmichael was a controversial figure, known for more than just his antisemitism. He belonged to a religious cult known as the Brotherhood of Faithists, started in the late 1800's by Dr. John Ballou Newbrough, and believed by it's followers to be the only true faith. (3)

The Toronto group would meet in the drawing room at the Casa Loma where they would engage in the building of a "cosmic pyramid". They also distributed pamphlets about flying saucers, something they devoutly believed in. The pamphlets were signed "Michael", but it is believed that they were written by Neil Carmichael. (4)

The Social Credit Party like the Reform Party that followed, did little to discourage these right-wing fringe groups. They recognized that they had a following and a passion that could be tapped into for votes.

When they were eventually outed by the press, they would simply distance themselves and go through all the right motions to appear ignorant of the situation. Carmichael ran for the party five times. His views were well known for years.

And after Carmichael's remarks were made public he again went on the attack:

As had happened before, assurances by the national leader were undermined by further anti-Semitic utterances. Shortly after his censure Carmichael addressed a Social Credit candidates' meeting in Toronto and shouted: "I'm being persecuted by the Jews ... I'm a martyr ... I think it was a Jewish reporter from the Globe and Mail who started this whole thing." Then, in words reminiscent of Caouette, Carmichael declared that Hitler's economic system was "a very good and sound system of money" and that the Nazis "had it all figured out so that there was no unemployment." The Toronto Star deftly made the connection, remarking: "It seems clear that [Carmichael] holds strong anti-Semitic views and--like Real Caouette himself--is an admirer of Adolf Hitler." The newspaper then asked a most telling question: "Why has Social Credit, throughout its history, attracted men of this type? It was a question few Social Crediters were willing, or perhaps able to answer. The fact was that the undercurrents of Douglas's ideology could never be completely expunged. (1)

It was clear that the national Social Credit party leaders were more interested in sweeping the issue aside than confronting it.

Notwithstanding his obvious anti-Semitic predilections, Carmichael was permitted to continue as the party's nominee in St. Paul's riding (his fifth bid for a seat in the House of Commons) although he was encouraged not to stand for election again. Even then, the party did not condemn his anti-Semitism. The Socred investigating committee, led by national leader Thompson, ruled that Carmichael had been "careless and indiscreet" in his comments but not anti-Semitic. It will be noted that this ruling came after Thompson's promise to "kick out" any Social Crediter who was anti-Semitic. Another member of the national executive emphasized that Carmichael was an isolated incident: "Fortunately there is little of this sort of thing left. [Carmichael] is a leftover from an era we would sooner forget about." But as David Lewis, deputy leader of the federal New Democratic Party, commented: "Carmichael is only a symptom. The disease goes much deeper." (1)

Ernest Manning would dismiss it by saying that bright lights attracted bugs, but why did they continue to shine such a bright light to lure them in? In this case it was anti-semitism, but would later under Reform, include anti-gays, anti-women's rights, anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism, anti-Muslim ... the list goes on.

The only difference between the Social Credit Party then and the Conservative Party of Canada now, is that the latter no longer apologizes.

Sources:

1. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999.

2. Jew-haters and red-baiters: The Canadian League of Rights, By David Lethbridge, AntiFa Info-Bulletin, February 2, 1999

3. Faithism: God's True Church

4. UFOs over Canada: personal accounts of sightings and close encounters, By John Robert Col, Hounslow Press, 1996, ISBN-13: 978-0888821386, Pg. 13

Chapter Thirty-Four Continued: Norman Jaques

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Norman Jaques was a farmer and horse breeder who was first elected as a Member of Parliament for Social Credit in the 1935 sweep.

In a party known for it's antisemitism, Jacques was widely regarded as the most anti-Semitic member of the party's parliamentary grouping. He promoted C.H. Douglas's belief in an international financial Jewish conspiracy, and attempted to read excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into the Canadian parliamentary record.

He once suggested that "the Jews control all means of gathering news and of propaganda" and like many in the movement believed that an international Jewish conspiracy was responsible for both communism and Zionism. He opposed allowing Jewish refugees into Canada prior to World War II on the argument that they constituted a communist invasion force, and once dismissed the charge of anti-Semitism against him as a "communist smokescreen". He was a vocal opponent of the creation of the State of Israel in 1947-48, and described Zionism as "a political movement ... to dominate the world". (1)

Like William Aberhart, Jaques became interested in the politics of Father Charles Coughlin, co-founder the Union Party, who had written several columns for Aberhart's newspaper, the Social Credit Chronicle. The Union Party was formed to protest Roosevelt's "New Deal", believing they had a better option.

Norman Jaques went to visit another founder of the Party, Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith in 1947, and upon his return was quoted in the Montreal Gazette:

"Gerald Smith is truly a great Christian gentleman who has been cruelly maligned. He stands for Christian nationalism. But, of course, the Communists have smeared him as anti-semitic... Smith believes in America for the Americans and in the American way of life... I have tried to do the same with the Canadian way of life and Canadian freedom and I will keep right on trying". Jaques later retracted his support for Smith, and said that most of the quotations attributed to him by the Gazette were fabrications. He did, however, describe Smith as having "done more to expose communist plots that any other public man in the United States of America", and said that he would try to do the same in Canada.

The Anti-Defamation League described Jaques as a "notorious anti-semite who has abused the privilege of entry into the United States by stirring up misunderstanding and tensions among racial and religious groups." (2)

Norman Jaques died in 1949 while still in office.

Sources:

1. Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response, By Janine Stingel, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press ISBN 0-7735-2010-4, 2000, Pg. 91-92

2. Stingel, 2000, Pg. 183

Chapter Thirty-Four: From Darkness to Darker Still

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

By the late 1950's*, the federal Social Credit wing was in trouble. The Diefenbaker sweep of 1958 knocked many out and they were never able to fully recover.

Finally in 1962, they decided to form a coalition with a Quebec nationalist party, the Ralliement des créditistes, then led by charismatic leader, David Réal Caouette.

After the Percy Young incident the Social Credit movement experienced a lull, both in electoral success and incidents of anti-Semitism. This changed in 1962,however, when the national party experienced a massive geographical transfer of power to Quebec. A vibrant resurgence in Social Credit's electoral success occurred under Real Caouette, a car salesman from Pontiac, Quebec, who had long been involved in the Quebec wing of the national movement. In the 1962 federal election, Caouette linked his Ralliement des Creditistes with the national Social Credit party and, by invoking Social Credit's traditional bogeys of an anti-Christian conspiracy and the plot of the "moneyed interests," helped twenty-six Quebec Social Credit MPs (out of a national total of thirty) get elected." (1)

This presented a bit of a problem for the party, since only 4 of the 30 Social Credit MPs were from outside Quebec, yet their leader was Robert N. Thompson from Alberta. The year before that, while Caouette actually won the leadership race, Ernest Manning stepped in, saying that his province would never accept a francophone Catholic as party leader.

So while Thompson was officially the national leader and Caouette only deputy leader, Caouette wielded far greater power than Thompson and he knew it. He also got most of the press:

The surprise of Canada's inconclusive national election in June was the emergence of a fiery back-country French Canadian politician named Real Caouette, 44, whose right-wing Social Credit Party unexpectedly won 26 House of Commons seats from Quebec. Since then he has been filling the air with eccentric, if not demagogic, remarks. His fellow Social Credit-ers in English Canada explain that what the French-speaking auto dealer says often gets lost in translation. But last week, Caouette came through loud and clear in an interview in Le Magazine Maclean.

"Who are your political heroes in history?" he was asked. Caouette's brisk rejoinder: "Mussolini and Hitler." The storm broke, and it wasn't helped any by what Caouette had gone on to say in the magazine: "I admire Mussolini's qualities as a leader and I regret that he was a fascist. I admire in Hitler his economic reforms and I consider that he brought his people out of misery. I regret that he employed for war instead of for peace the ideas which he had."(2)

His comments drew praise from several sources including a letter from Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, who had been president of the Reichbank during the earlier part of Hitler's regime.

Schacht had written to Caouette: "I am very pleased to read in our press about your courageous statements and laudable opinion about the ideas of Adolf Hitler. I was happy to have served under his leadership in one of the key positions in our economy before the war and owing to that I had an opportunity to become acquainted with his greatness." In a conversation with a newspaper correspondent, Caouette remarked that Schacht was a Jew but despite his origin had not been liquidated by Hitler. When the correspondent expressed doubt about Schacht's Jewishness, Caouette responded that Hitler exterminated only "useless Jews." (1)

Only "useless Jews"?

Caouette was a federalist who fought for bilingualism in the House of Commons, winning a symbolic victory when he got the Parliament's restaurant to produce bilingual menus. Interesting, since the Reformers always claimed it was Trudeau who first sought to make Canada bilingual, and indeed he did with great success. But it began with Social Credit.

This marriage was doomed to failure from the start and they would soon part ways. Running separately in 1965**, the Quebec party was more successful, and by the 1968 election, Caouette's party won 14 seats while Social Credit won none. They would reunite again briefly in 1972 but the party would never again win seats outside Quebec.

One longtime Social Credit member, disenchanted with the Quebec wing of the Party, left the province with his wife Gwendolyn and six children, and headed west. He was a supporter of Thompson and in fact, Thompson's children had stayed with him for awhile when attending school.

He would then try his hand at adding to the party's English speaking wing by running as a Socred candidate against none other than Tommy Douglas in the riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan—The Islands. I think we already know the outcome of that.

His name was Stockwell Day and his son, also named Stockwell; would later enter politics, with far more success. The senior Day had joined the Western Canada Concept, a western separatist party that wants all western provinces and territories to split and form their own nation.

Continued: Norman Jacques

Notes:

*James Keegstra joined the party in 1957

**Another federal Social Credit Candidate in 1965 was Preston Manning. According to Alf Hooke:

Manning campaigned actively on behalf of a full slate of Social Credit candidates, one such candidate being his son, Preston Manning, who ran for election in the Constituency of East Edmonton. The Conservative candidate secured 13,596 votes to Mr. Manning's: 6,762. Having spoken on young Mr. Preston Manning's behalf myself, I found the overwhelming vote against him hard to believe. I was one of those many who looked forward to hearing the voice of young Preston Manning on behalf of the Social Credit movement in the House of Commons. (3)

Sources:

1. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

2. Canada: Hitler, Mussolini & Caouette, Time Magazine, August 31, 1962

3. 30+5 I know, I was There, A first-hand account of the workings and history of the Social Credit Government in Alberta, Canada 1935-68, by Alfred J Hooke, Douglas Social Credit Secretariat

Chapter Thirty-Three Continued: Solon Low and Anti-Semitism

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"Our Jewish friends should recognize that the cause of the growing anti-Semitism ... is not due to propaganda alone ... anti-Semitism is spreading, because people cannot fail to observe that a disproportionate number of Jews occupy positions of control in international finance, in revolutionary activities, and in some propaganda institutions, the common policy of which is the centralization of power and the perversion of religious and cultural ideals. This gives people the impression that therefore there must be a Jewish conspiracy to gain world control." Solon Low (1)

After the resounding success of Social Credit in the Alberta provincial election of 1935, a Western Social Credit Party was established to run in the federal election later that year. They won 17 seats, and John Horne Blackmore would act as their leader.

In 1939, the federal branch of the Socreds joined with former Conservative William Duncan Herridge and his supporters, to create the short lived New Democracy movement. The Social Credit Party ran in the 1940 election under the "New Democracy" name but in 1944 held their first national convention and Solon Earl Low, the Alberta treasurer, would be elected the federal party's first official leader.

Like most in the Social Credit Party at the time, Solon Low was antisemitic, believing that there was a Jewish conspiracy that had infected international finance.

Social Credit publications propagated typical Jew-baiting propaganda. Aberhart bought into the theories of Social Credit's English founder, Maj. C.H. Douglas, who blamed the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the 1940s - and the British government's efforts to control it through mass slaughtering of all infected cattle - as a "Jewish-socialist plot" against English cattle owners.Using his own words, Aberhart melded his Christian fervor with Douglas's political conspiracies to create a stereotypical portrayal of the financial system."

The principles of the old-line politicians and their henchmen are like those of the man who betrayed the Christ," Aberhart said. "Gold was his god and millions have suffered because of it. The moneychangers upheld his right and crucified the Christ and they have been crucifying everyone since who follows in the steps of the Savior."

In a similar vein, Solon Low, the provincial treasurer, had some advice for Jews in combating anti-Semitism ... Ending anti-Semitism, he said, would require Jews to denounce those "arch-criminals" in their midsts who are responsible for these initiatives.This argument would continue for years, with the CJC calling on Social Credit to reject its anti-Semitism, and Social Crediters responding that they would be happy to do so as soon as the CJC rejects the perpetrators of world domination, and so it went.Later, in 1947, when Low was federal leader of the Social Credit party, he used a national CBC broadcast to lambaste "the international power maniacs who aim to destroy Christianity" and the "international gangsters who are day-to-day scheming for world revolution." He also couldn't resist the "close tie-up between international communism, international finance and international political Zionism." (2)

William Aberhart and Ernest Manning were not innocent either.

One of the leading officials in the CJC, Louis Rosenberg, had some comments about Manning’s repudiation. “Evidently the leader of the Social Credit Party in Alberta does not like to be called an anti-semite, although he has done nothing to repudiate the repeated anti-semitic remarks which appear regularly in his official paper Today and Tomorrow and the anti-semitic statements made by the Social Credit members in the House of Commons.” Moreover, stated Rosenberg, the only difference between blatant anti-Semites in the Social Credit movement and “more circumspect and careful men” like Manning and the late Aberhart was that the former invoked the word “Jewish” in their fulminations about the international financial conspiracy, whereas the latter “use the same arguments and the same phraseology but omit the word Jewish, leaving their true meaning to be understood.” (3)

The Canadian Jewish Congress decided to meet with the new national leader Solon Low, to voice their concerns.

Notwithstanding the CJC’s uneasiness with Manning’s ‘repudiation,’ it was not until December 1944 that Alberta CJC officials attempted again to confront Social Credit on the issue of anti-Semitism. That month CJC officials H.A. Friedman and John Dower met with Solon Low, leader of the newly-created national Social Credit party. Friedman and Dower met Low at the legislative buildings in Edmonton and talked with him for nearly two hours about Social Credit’s attitude on the “Jewish question.” They showed him several issues of the party organ (now renamed the Canadian Social Crediter) which were anti-Semitic. On the surface, the meeting went well. Low was conciliatory, assuring both Friedman and Dower that he strongly opposed anti-Semitism and that it definitely was not part of Social Credit policy. He gave them “his personal assurance that he would no longer tolerate the type of articles that we brought to his attention in the party’s paper ... that he would disavow any member of the party who indulged in Anti-Semitic statements
... that he would ... make a public statement to the press on the question of Anti-Semitism, which he assured us we would find fully satisfactory.”

Shortly thereafter, Low gave a public address in Lethbridge, Alberta in which he discussed Social Credit’sstance on anti-Semitism. Unfortunately for the CJC, Low’s statement was blatantly anti-Semitictements ... that he would ... make a public statement to the press on the question of Anti-Semitism, which he assured us we would find fully satisfactory.” Shortly thereafter, Low gave a public address in Lethbridge, Alberta in which he discussed Social Credit’s stance on anti-Semitism. Unfortunately for the CJC, Low’s statement was blatantly anti-Semitic.

“Some Jewish friends of our movement have told me that we are being identified with anti-Semitism because of our persistent and outspoken exposures of a group of international financiers and world plotters who are engaged in a criminal conspiracy to destroy democracy and Christianity and to enslave mankind to their rule.” By construing his meeting with Friedman and Dower in these terms, Low simultaneously refuted and reaffirmed Social Credit’s anti-Semitism. “Some of these men happen to be of Jewish racial origin,” he commented, “and to be more specific, of German-Jewish origin.” However, they were not exclusively Jewish, Low qualified, and although many were this was no reason to condemn Jews as a whole. Accordingly, it was important to clarify for everyone, including Canada’s Jews, Social Credit’s stance on anti-Semitism: We very definitely are not anti-Semitic or anti any race or religion ... The only times when the Canadian Social Credit movement can possibly be brought into conflict with any racial or religious group would be if those comprising such a group conspired together as a group in an organized attack on democracy and Christianity. I am sure that our fellow Canadians of Jewish origin recognize that a truly democratic and Christian society ... alone will give them the social objectives they seek as individuals in common with all Canadians ... it is fantastic for anybody to suggest that as Social Crediters we are anti-Semitic. I will go further and point out to our fellow Canadians of Jewish origin that actually the Social Credit movement is the most powerful influence in the country working for their emancipation.

Low’s speech had made a mockery of his meeting with Friedman and Dower and was the absolute antithesis of what they had hoped for. Not surprisingly, Western CJC officials were extremely dismayed by Low’s address and the entire CJC leadership became extremely wary about openly confronting Social Credit’s anti-Semitism in the future. What the CJC needed, but was not yet ready to create, was a public relations approach which did not rely on the goodwill of those who promoted anti-Semitism. (3)

And as Janine Stingel points out "... while anti-Semitic sparks were emerging throughout the country at the time, they differed from the Social Credit experience, which represented an institutionalization of Jew-hatred within a legitimately elected Canadian government." (2)

And:

Stingel laments that Manning has gone down in the annals as the man who purged the anti-Semites from Social Credit, something she considers a generous assessment from what she knows of the machinations around the issue. She also sees a direct ideological (and blood) relationship between Social Credit and the Reform party/Canadian Alliance, which was formed by Ernest Manning's son,
Preston. (2)

Solon Low would visit Israel in 1957 and change his opinion drastically. He died in 1962 at the age of 62.

Sources:

1. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

2. The Social Credit's darker side: Canadian Jewish Congress cut its teeth fighting Socreds, By Pat Johnson, The Jewish Independent, April 6, 2001

3. FROM FATHER TO SON: CANADIAN JEWRY’S RESPONSE TO THE ALBERTA SOCIAL CREDIT PARTY AND THE REFORM PARTY OF CANADA, By Janine Stingel, 2001

Chapter Thirty-Three Continued: Ernest Manning and Percy Young

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In Western Canada several groups publicly disseminated antisemitic vitriol. The most notable was the Social Credit Party, which had a political stranglehold on British Columbia and Alberta. Percy Young a delegate to the B.C. Socred convention in 1957, declared, "Zionism has completely destroyed Christianity ... and it will destroy Social Credit, too, unless the people have proper education."

B.C. premier W.A.C. Bennet did not disassociate himself from this comment. Writing in the Dawson Creek Star on 15 November 1957, Young denounced Zionists, not Jews" Ernest Manning the long time premier of Alberta, refused to act as honourary chairman for Brotherhood Week in 1957 "unless all Jews converted to Christianity." (1)

Young's comments were not unique within the party, given that it was founded on the notion of a Jewish conspiracy. The Canadian Jewish congress did lodge a complaint:

At the October 1957 convention of the British Columbia Social Credit League in Vancouver a delegate named Percy Young made a violent anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist attack in addressing the convention. The CJC immediatelyprotested to Solon Low, leader of the Social Credit party in theFederal Parliament, and to the premiers of the Social Credit governments in British Columbia and Alberta, adding that "in view of the past disavowals ofanti-Semitism by the Social Credit Movement, it was disheartening. . . ." Low issued a statement that "Mr. Young was not expressing the views of theSocial Credit Association of Canada, and I wish most strongly to disassociateour movement from the references he made to Zionism and the Jews. . . ." (2)

And according to Janine Stingel:

He [Young] defined Zionists as "people who call themselves Jews, but are really Russians from outer Mongolia who went to Israel in 952 BC." Delegates to the convention applauded loudly when he declared: "Christianity was thoroughly destroyed by improper education ... Zionism has a very underground way of getting destruction. You have to know your enemy to fight it." Young later told a reporter for the Victoria Daily Colonist that Zionism controlled communism, Nazism, socialism, labour unions, banks, the press and radio--"everything in fact except Social Credit." According to the Vancouver Sun, "no one [at the convention] spoke a gainst [Young's] comments, but later he received a private scolding from Noel Murphy, league president." The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix likewise noted that Young's remarks went unchallenged at the convention, even though national leader Solon Low and British Columbia premier Bennett addressed the delegates after Young. (3)

The anti-Semites had not been purged, but still clearly planted in the Social Credit movement.

Continued: Solon Low and Anti-Semitism

Sources:

1. Delayed Impact: The Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community, By Franklin Bialystok, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000, ISBN-13: 978-0773520653, Pg. 75-76

2. Canada, By Louis Rosenberg, American Jewish Congress Archives

3. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

Chapter Thirty-Three Continued: Ernest Manning, Orvis Kennedy and the Communists

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past." George Orwell, 1984

In 1956, the Social Credit national organizer Orvis Kennedy, was addressing a crowd at a community hall in Nokomis, Saskatchewan, when he stated: "I think if they had left Hitler alone, he'd have been alright." His statement was part of a broader speech in which he condemned communists and international financiers for their world-wide manipulations.

The media immediately jumped on it. For a decade or so, Social Credit had been trying to reinvent itself from the party of extremists, to a moderate conservative option.

The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix claimed that Kennedy's statement was "strange and disquieting. But it is no stranger and no more disquieting than many other things about the Social Credit organization." The Calgary Herald remarked: "no better summation of the basic, sinister philosophy of Social Credit has been made openly in recent years. With Social Credit's move toward respectability, and its effort to woo financial support from big interests, some people have forgotten this ... No wonder Mr. Kennedy sees no harm in Hitler. Social Credit and Hitlerism are 'spiritual' soul-mates." (1)

Was this a fair assessment? Maybe not. However, for Canada I suppose Social Credit was the closest thing to fascism we had (other than of course the short-lived Fascist Party of Canada). In Lloyd Mackey's book, Like Father, Like Son, he addresses the many accusations of fascism during Ernest Manning's time:

Finkel's The Social Credit Phenomenon in Alberta some of the ideological issues that had been part of the 1944 election rhetoric are explored. Manning never made too fine a point of it, but he and some of his MLAs let it be known that they believed socialism had more of a connection with fascism and Nazism than did Social Credit-style conservatism. At the time, of course, young Canadian men were fighting the Nazis in Europe. Stung by the charges against them with respect to their views on the banking system, the Socreds began to remind Albertans that "Nazi" was short for "National Socialism." (2)

However, Ernest Manning like many others were wrong. Adolf Hitler hated socialism.

Journalist Konrad Heiden who followed Hitler's career from his days in the Munich beer halls, wrote several books on the man and his party long before the Holocaust was brought to light.

In 1923 he joined the staff of the Frankfurter Zeitung, with the special assignment of covering the National Socialist movement in Munich. He is credited with coining the word "Nazi" — as a term of contempt, because in Bavaria "nazi" was a slang term for a country bumpkin. (3)

Hitler only added 'socialist' to the German Workers Party to appeal to the masses. His party was originally referred to as the Fascist Brown Shirts.

What is interesting though, is that Social Credit got some help from Canada's Communist Party back in the early days, and in fact contributed to the one and only election victory of Orvis Kennedy, the man who suggested that Hitler would have been OK if they'd just left him alone.

Flirting With Communism?

When William Aberhart first decided to push for the adoption of social credit principles to help Alberta to weather the Depression, his motives were pure. One of his former students had committed suicide because of his dire straits, leaving him wondering why there was so much poverty in the 'midst of plenty'. So Social Credit principles were originally about sharing the wealth.

I think that if Aberhart had still been alive when oil was struck at Leduc in 1947, there would have been a fairer distribution of the wealth. For all of his faults, he was a caring man. I also believe that had oil not been discovered, Ernest Manning would not have been premier for as long as he was. He was running out of ideas by 1947.

And a decade earlier, in 1937, the Party was in trouble. The Bankers' Toadies Incident was threatening to topple the government. This referred to pamphlets that were printed (at taxpayers' expense. Sound familiar?) that read: My child, you should NEVER say hard or unkind things about Bankers' Toadies. God made snakes, slugs, snails and other creepy-crawly, treacherous, and poisonous things. NEVER, therefore, abuse them—just exterminate them! Along with this was a list of nine "toadies" that needed to be exterminated.

One of them was the leader of the Conservative Party, Dave Duggan, who brought up the issue in legislature. The Social Credit offices were raided and the two men responsible arrested. There was concern that someone could take the "extermination" seriously and take matters into their own hands.

Aberhart did everything in his power to stop the trial from going through, even firing the Crown Prosecutor, but the two men were charged and imprisoned. In the meantime, the opposition parties had formed a coalition to oust Aberhart, creating a new party called the People's League.

The story drew a lot of press and was brought to the attention of the Communist Party of Canada, and they called for a "united front" against the People's League, feeling more solidarity with the Socreds, than the parties representing "big business".(4)

On March 21, 1938, a federal by-election was being held in East Edmonton, and hoping to gain support for the Liberals, then prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, announced the release of the one socred still in jail, Joseph Unwin.

Upon receiving the news of his impending release, the Socred M.L.A.s broke into jubilation and performed a snake-dance in the Legislature. The Liberals' hopes of winning support, however, failed. Social Credit candidate Orvis Kennedy won the election, and that night a huge victory rally was held in honour of Kennedy and Unwin. Joining them on the platform was Jan Lakeman, leader of the Communist Party in Edmonton, who had helped with the Social Credit campaign. Lakeman was thanked by Kennedy for his support, and Lakeman in turn thanked the voters "for giving an overwhelming defeat to the forces of reaction in the dominion.'' Leslie Morris, secretary of the Canadian Communist Party and correspondent for Pravda, who had also helped in the campaign, took part in the victory celebrations. (5)

Manning would later purge the party of 'socialists' and adopt a very pro-business attitude, often speaking out against socialism that threatened his centralized power. He also believed that capitalism was a better option, a true neoconservative before neoconservatism became a household word.

This evangelical view of humans as essentially alone in the struggle for salvation leads to a gospel of the individual and also, naturally enough, "in the world" to the gospel of free enterprise and capitalism. It compels many of its adherents to elevate capitalism to the level of Biblical command. Richard Neuhaus, an American evangelist, says it is "imperative for Christians to support capitalism. It is an amazing thing ... It comes from the grace of God."

This fundamentalist view commands its adherents to promote capitalism as the "best hope" of the poor. According to Reverend Ben Smillie, using Ernest Manning as an example, these evangelical sects "have religiously sanctified the privileges of the economically powerful." The multi-millionaire Ernest Manning could denounce the "Godless materialism" of the communist system, while materialism sanctioned by God allowed him to "equate [his] wealth with the blessing of God."

The party would continue it's reputation for intolerance and anti-Semitism would often rear it's ugly head. But the revisionist history that gives Ernest Manning saintly powers, is mostly the stuff of legends, and as Helen Hayes once said: Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.

Continued: Ernest Manning and Percy Young

Sources:

1. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

2. Like Father, Like Son: Ernest Manning and Preston Manning, By Lloyd Mackey, ECW Press, 1997, ISBN: 1-55022-299-6, Pg. 41-42

3. Books: Master of the Masses, Time Magazine, February 7, 1944

4. The Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of Social Credit in Alberta, By John J. Barr, McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1974, ISBN 077101015X, Pg. 110

5. Bible Bill: A Biography of William Aberhart, By: David R. Elliot and Iris Miller, Edmonton: Reidmore Books, 1987, Pg. 276

6. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, Pg. 9

Chapter Thirty-Three Continued: John Horne Blackmore

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

After the stunning victory of William Aberhart and Social Credit in Alberta in 1935, the party decided to capitalize on the wave, and ran candidates in the federal election.

Taking place on October 14 of that year, they had very little time to organize, yet were able to win 17 seats, 16 of which were in Alberta; on the promise of monetary reform.

R.B. Bennett's Tories took a trouncing, partly because of internal rifts, while William Lyon MacKenzie's Liberals won a majority with 173 seats.
One of the Social Creditors who would make his way to Ottawa was John Horne Blackmore, a school teacher and principal in Lethbridge, Alberta. He would assume the role of federal party leader, and hold that position until 1944, when a convention elected Solon Low.

Blackmore was born on March 27, 1890 in Sublett, Idaho and came to Canada in 1892 with his parents as part of the Mormon emigration.

In 1882, the Edmunds Act forbidding polygamy was passed in the United States and many Mormon families came north to Canada, settling in southern Alberta. Initially Albertans were worried about this immigration, hearing of clashes between the American government and the Mormons over the issue of polygamy, and did not want to have such conflicts in Alberta. But in 1890, the Mormon Church banned the practice and the Canadian government began to encourage their settling here, as they were considered to be good farmers. (1)

Blackmore himself would take up the cause for "plural" marriage, even urging Parliament to repeal the anti-polygamy law. As a result he was excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Blackmore never had more than one wife. But he was thrown out of the church for "teaching and advocating the doctrine of plural marriage" at secret meetings in southern Alberta where men debated whether Mormon leaders were wrong to have renounced Joseph Smith's revelation that it's okay for men to have multiple wives.

A year before Blackmore was excommunicated, one of his 12 children, Harold, bought property outside Creston and settled there with his two wives and a growing brood of children. Soon, John's brother, Ray, bought property there as well and took up residence with his first two wives. Eventually, he had five wives and more than 30children, including Winston. (2)

Winston Blackmore is the nephew of John Horne Blackmore and leader of polygamist town of Bountiful, that has had many run ins with the law.

Made up of as many as 1,000 adherents of a fundamentalist Mormon sect, Bountiful has been home to clans of polygamists since the arrival in the late 1940s of the homestead's founder, Harold Blackmore, who — according to one account — was drawn to the valley after envisioning it in a dream. Blackmore was part of the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was expelled from mainstream Mormonism in the 1930s. For generations, local farmers co-existed with the polygamists of Bountiful. But this relationship, based on the country tenet "live and let live," grew increasingly uneasy over time as strange stories of life within the settlement leaked out and found their way into the media, with accounts of a power struggle between Winston Blackmore, the sect's leader in Bountiful, and Warren Jeffs, the leader of the FLDS Church. Jeffs, now incarcerated in the U.S. for being an accomplice to rape, is facing charges in the aftermath of the raid on the polygamist Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado. (3)

Ironically, many of the current Reform-Conservative MPs claim that same-sex marriage will lead to polygamy, and yet in the case of Bountiful, it's religious fundamentalism.

Both communities follow the preachings and directives of a ninety-one-year-old " prophet " named Rulon T. Jeffs. His Canadian lieutenant is forty-five-year-old Winston Blackmore. These men, according to former UEP members, have an iron grip on their flock, dictating who lives where, who is shunned, which man is to be blessed with his third, fifth, or fifteenth wife, even what style of undergarments are to be worn. Jeffs and Blackmore deny such extensive control over members' lives but freely admit to polygamy.

Blackmore maintains that the freedom of religion provision in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms shields the men of Bountiful from charges of polygamy. Last October at his first meeting with the press in a decade, he called the Charter "a wonderful piece which protects all people. . . [it"s] the same Charter that protects the gay and lesbian community and the same one that protects common-law relationships and the same one that protects unfaithful husbands . . . unfaithful wives . . . unfaithful everybodies." (4)

John Horne Blackmore and the Protocols of Zion

John Blackmore would also get himself into trouble when copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were mailed out from his constituency office in the fall of 1953.

Alberta Socred MP John Blackmore, an ardent supporter of the rabidly anti-communist United States Senator, Joseph McCarthy, was distributing from his office in the House of Commons the notorious Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Moreover, Blackmore's secretary, Doris Moore, had been using House of Commons stationery and the MP's postal frank to distribute anti-Semitic literature.

According to Moore: "I made the discovery about Communism being Zionism and heading the great banking systems of the world ... the evidence is here." Blackmore stated that Moore mailed the material on her own volition six days before he arrived for the parliamentary session. Whether he was using his secretary as a scapegoat is debatable, but when asked if he agreed with her actions, Blackmore replied: "I wouldn't disagree. I won't say I would have sent the material out but she did. I'll take a neutral attitude." Yet he also emphasized that neither he nor the Social Credit party was "responsible for what Miss Moore does." In response to whether the books in question were anti-Semitic, Blackmore commented: "They are anti-Communist ... [there] are traitors who are seeking to destroy our civilization ... if the Jews get mixed up in it, can that be helped?" To other reporters, Blackmore asked: "if you tell the truth about Jews, are you anti-Semitic?" and "If the Jews get mixed up in a Communist conspiracy, can they hope to escape censure?" (5)

While he allowed her to take the fall, this was not contrary to the beliefs of Ernest Manning himself. He warned his listeners to "keep your eye on that strange little country, Israel" and in "a radio broadcast discussed the relationship between Russia and the State of Israel, invoking biblical prophecy to claim that Russia would be ruled by the Anti-Christ, that Israel would ally itself with Russia and consequently Israel would be betrayed and crushed." (5)

Then national Social Credit leader, Solon Low told the press: "If she were my stenographer, I'd have got rid of her long ago. I'm surprised at her attitude. I wouldn't condone the use of my frank by my secretary for this sort of thing. As a party we're certainly not having anything to do with it." And yet days later he told a meeting of the Ontario Social Credit party in Toronto, that regarding the material itself, he couldn't see how "by any stretch of the imagination it could be remotely identified as anti-Semitic"; rather, it was simply anti-communist and nothing more. (5)

Blackmore would remain as Social Credit MP until 1958, when he lost the election during the Diefenbaker sweep. He died on May 2, 1971.

Continued: Ernest Manning, Orvis Kennedy and the Communists

Sources:

1. Mormon Immigration to Alberta, Understanding Canadian Diversity in Alberta, Celebrating Multiculturalism

2. Polygamy issue runs deep in the Blackmore family, By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun, February 17, 2009

3. Raiding the Polygamists: An Eldorado North of the Border, By John Nadler, Time Magazine, January 9, 2009

4. Bountiful, B.C., By Daniel Woods, Saturday Night, August 4, 2001

5. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

Chapter Thirty-Three: Ernest Manning and Anti-Semitism

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"Anti-Semitism in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s involved an image of Jews as international conspirators, secretly plotting world domination through an inchoate combination of international banking, communism and Zionism. In the mythology, based on the forged but widely circulated Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Jews thus posed a threat to national sovereignty, property, peace and prosperity.

"Anti-Semitism was not a coincidental adjunct to this right-wing populist movement, but resided at the core of a paranoid vision of bankers and money-lenders swindling honest Canadians out of the wages of their toil. Depression-era Alberta was fertile ground for such a message, particularly when it came through the medium of a popular radio-preacher turned politician, "Bible Bill" Aberhart.

"Alberta thus became home to the only North American jurisdiction with a government that officially endorsed anti-Semitism." (1)

When Ernest Manning took over the premiership after Aberhart’s death in the spring of 1943, he was well aware of Social Credit’s anti-Semitic elements, which had become entrenched in the Social Credit movement.

Throughout the Second World War, party literature increased it's alarms over a Jewish conspiracy, especially since Major Douglas's views were becoming more erratic. As David Elliot states: "Douglas was extremely anti-Judaic in the tradition of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. His conspiracy ideas became more pronouncedly paranoid as time progressed and there developed a great similarity between Douglas's and Hitler's analysis of economics and banking... He further claimed that no politician could "hope to attain office except by permission of Finance, " finance being a common epithet in Anti-Semitic literature, referring to international Jewish bankers, whose power was more imagined than real." (2)

And at a time when they should have been alarmed by news of the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, the Canadian Social Crediters instead believed that the stories were fabricated to further the aims of the Jewish world plotters. As a result, they were vehemently opposed to the acceptance of Jewish refugees. This prompted accusations of Nazism by both the media and their political opponents, forcing the new Premier, Ernest Manning to take a stand.

With an election looming, on March 2, 1944, he issued a public statement in which he “unequivocally” repudiated anti-Semitism within the Alberta Social Credit movement, though his statement only brought more confusion over his party's position.

It has been brought to my attention that an erroneous impression has been created in certain quarters that the Social Credit movement is anti-Semitic. Nothing could be further from the truth ... Social Credit is not opposed to any religion or race, as such. It is only when the adherents to any religion, or the people of any race take collective action as a group to attack the principles of Christianity and democracy which are fundamental to Social Credit that conflict arises ... In exposing and opposing the conspiracy of individuals and corporations seeking to impose a state of financial and economic dictatorship upon all nations the advocates of Social Credit consider it most important that the facts of the case be placed before the people irrespective of the color, race or creed of the conspirators. (3)

In other words, while denying the party promoted anti-Semitic views, he still believed that Jews were the “enemy” of Christianity and democracy. He then went on to compare Social Credit’s battle against the international financial conspiracy with the fight against Nazism. He argued that, because Nazi Germany attacked Christianity and democracy, this necessarily brought it in conflict with Social Credit, ignoring the fact that they were murdering Jews.

According to Canadian Jewish Congress official, Louis Rosenberg:

“Evidently the leader of the Social Credit Party in Alberta does not like to be called an anti-semite, although he has done nothing to repudiate the repeated anti-semitic remarks which appear regularly in his official paper Today and Tomorrow and the anti-semitic statements made by the Social Credit members in the House of Commons ... the only difference between blatant anti-Semites in the Social Credit movement and “more circumspect and careful men” like Manning and the late Aberhart was that the former invoked the word “Jewish” in their fulminations about the international financial conspiracy, whereas the latter “use the same arguments and the same phraseology but omit the word Jewish, leaving their true meaning to be understood.” (3)

Sources:

1. Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response, By Janine Stingel, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press ISBN 0-7735-2010-4, Pg. 13

2. Anti-Semitism and the Social Credit Movement: The Intellectual Roots of the Keegstra Affair, By: David Elliot, Canadian Ethnic Studies, 1985

3. FROM FATHER TO SON: CANADIAN JEWRY’S RESPONSE TO THE ALBERTA SOCIAL CREDIT PARTY AND THE REFORM PARTY OF CANADA By: Janine Stingel

Chapter Thirty-One Continued: Flirting With Fascism

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Aberhart's plans for Alberta seemed focused on anti-politics: reducing the role of the elected opposition and blurring the lines between party and state. Politics-as-usual was suspended during Alberta's war on scarcity, and an authoritarian political culture flourished. Bible Bill's charisma mixed populist rebellion with paternalism in equal parts, pushing the need for benevolent authority onto a weary, anxious electorate.

Aberhart's plans for Alberta seemed focused on anti-politics: reducing the role of the elected opposition and blurring the lines between party and state. Politics-as-usual was suspended during Alberta's war on scarcity, and an authoritarian political culture flourished. Bible Bill's charisma mixed populist rebellion with paternalism in equal parts, pushing the need for benevolent authority onto a weary, anxious electorate. (1)

Though Social Credit monetary theories were never really implemented in Alberta, it created a unique style of government for Canada. Based very much on the popularity of fascism at the time, which was viewed as the best way to combat Communism, Aberhart adopted the notion of a strong leader and a compliant populace.

After his death Ernest Manning was content to simply pick up where his mentor had left off, but when oil was discovered and members of caucus saw an opportunity to implement real reform, Manning saw it as a threat, and began cleaning house.

Alf Hooke Explains:

It disturbed me, however, after my return to Edmonton, to learn that Mr. Tanner had visited the home of Mr. [Dennis] Byrne, and called him from his bed where he was suffering from a bad case of flu, to inform him that the Government was no longer desirous of his services. It seemed to me that a man who had given up what undoubtedly were prospects of a successful and lucrative business career in England and who had come to Alberta to render assistance to a strife-torn Social Credit government at nothing more than a subsistence allowance of twelve dollars per day and who had become a close confidante of Premier Aberhart, had risen to the post of Deputy Minister and had proven that his adherence to Social Credit was uppermost, was worthy of more considerate treatment.

This episode had come to the notice of the British papers, the February 22 issue of the Sunday Times of London reporting as follows: "Sacking in Alberta. The Premier of Alberta, Mr. E. C. Manning, announced yesterday," say Reuters, "that Mr. L. D. Byrne, British-born Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs and Mr. Earl Ansley, Education Minister, had been dismissed from office because their policies 'were at variance' with those of the Province's Social Credit Government." Social Creditors are unalterably opposed to Socialism, knowing that, under a program of Socialism, individual freedom is reduced to a minimum. (2)

Byrne was proposing a populist style of direct democracy, where Manning, like Aberhart, wanted control. And to maintain this control he instead, like Aberhart, gave the people the illusion of democracy.

Both Aberhart and Manning believed that the ordinary citizen was incapable of actually making policy: participatory opportunities lay strictly in the areas related to winning elections, spreading propaganda, and building the party organization. Once the general will of the people had been expressed, experts chosen by the party and leader would be used to determine how that would be achieved.

The illusion of democracy was created by a number of political techniques, including "straw votes" and "voice votes." At his huge rallies, Aberhart would call for voice votes on the general results desired by the people — usually very broad universal goals such as "prosperity" or the end to insecurity. Thousands of people, already mesmerized by Aberhart's oratory, shouting out their desire for particular goals, created the feeling of participation even if the goal was predetermined by Aberhart.

Within the party, the straw vote was used extensively at the constituency level and was presented as a test of their support for Social Credit candidates. But it was also a subtle way of making supporters feel that they were genuinely involved in movement building — as well as a method of repeatedly endorsing Aberhart as the leader. The straw votes never failed to achieve the desired objectives. Aberhart would also ask his constituency organization, by radio broadcast, to direct him to carry out a certain course of action, convincing them that he wanted to know their feelings on an issue when he was simply orchestrating support for his own plan.

Laycock describes two other important aspects of Aberhart's leadership: his authoritarian style and the control exerted by his party organization and "...
the portrayal of [his own] leadership and organizational activity as transcending the sordid world of `politics.' "

By the time Ernest Manning took over the Social Credit League in 1943, it had already been transformed from a mass-based, populist party and movement to a party electoral machine dominated by an increasingly autocratic leader and premier. Ernest Manning perpetuated that autocratic leadership and also moved the party further to the right. Realizing that the party was widely ridiculed as the "funny money" party because of its preoccupation with monetary policy, he replaced it with what J.S. and J.T Osborne, in their guide to Social Credit, describe as "the paranoid rhetoric of 'free enterprise and anti-socialism.' (3)

Much has been made of Manning's anti-Semitic purge, and I'm going to get into that in a separate chapter, but the purge was more for political expediency. While neither Aberhart nor Manning were overtly anti-Semitic, the elements remained and helped define the Party throughout it's history. But for now it served Manning's purpose.

In 1948, he purged the party of its openly anti-Semitic elements, which had allowed critics to attack the league as a Nazi party in disguise. This faction included not only neo-Nazis, but a group called the Douglasites, who were named for the intellectual hero of the League and the advocate of wealth redistribution. The Douglasites denied being anti-Semites, claiming only to be against "a cutthroat gang of thugs known as the International and Political Zionists."

Manning moved decisively to block the Douglasites at the 1948 convention and most of them left the party. "The departure of the Douglasites left Manning in complete control of the party and government ... he had used their views to push out the socialist-leaning elements of the party ... Now ... that the Douglasites' public views had become too extreme, he used them as the lever to push them out of the league." (3)

Alf Hooke also discusses another method that Manning used to create the illusion of democracy.

I have seen this Manning magic working at the annual Social Credit convention year after year. Resolutions were often hotly debated while Mr. Manning sat passively in the front row, as though completely unconcerned, yet listening to every word. Always careful to impress upon the delegates that the decisions of the convention would form the basis of government policy, he was more astutely careful to see the vote upon any resolution was in keeping with government policy already decided upon.

The same kind of thing would happen with the Reform Party, which was supposed to be a form of direct democracy. The people were given the illusion of their opinion mattering, while most decisions were made by what was referred to as the 'Calgary Clique', which included Preston's lieutenant, Stephen Harper.

Continued: Manning, Aberhart and the Stain of Eugenics

Sources:

1. Slumming it at the Rodeo: The Cultural Roots of Canada's Right-Wing Revolution, Gordon Laird, 1998, Douglas & McIntyre, ISBN: 1-55054 627-9, Pg. 47-48

2. 30+5 I know, I was There, A first-hand account of the workings and history of the Social Credit Government in Alberta, Canada 1935-68, by Alfred J Hooke, Douglas Social Credit Secretariat

3. Preston Manning and the Reform Party, By Murray Dobbin, Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing, 1992, ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, Pg