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Intra-Party Democracy: A Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

David Hoffman
David Hoffman*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
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Extract

The principle of intra-party democracy underlying the so-called constitutional crisis within the Labour party in Great Britain—a struggle between the party conference and the parliamentary party over the creation of defence policy—has for some time been the subject of widespread discussion in academic journals and the “responsible press.” This paper examines the difficulties within the organization of the United Farmers of Ontario when intra-party democracy resulted in a clash between the parliamentary and mass sections of the party, and attempts to relate the implications of this study to the general question of the distribution of power in parties of extra-parliamentary origin.

The domination of the Legislative Assembly from 1919 to 1923 by an alliance of the United Farmers of Ontario and the Independent Labor party provided Ontario with its unique experience of “third-party” government. The suddenness of the intervention of these parties into the traditional order of Ontario's Conservative-Liberal politics was matched only by their equally rapid exit after less than four years of power. Standing as it did at the forefront of a wave of protesting third parties in the following two decades, the event is of considerable significance both for its contribution to a general understanding of the problems of third parties and for the opportunity it affords as a case study of farmer-labour co-operation. Although intra-party democracy was important for both members of the union, this paper deals with its effects on only one of the parties—the United Farmers.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , May 1961 , pp. 223 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1961

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References

1 The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Mr. W. C. Good, Mr. G. Halcrow, and especially the late E. C. Drury, in the preparation of an MA dissertation for the University of Toronto, from which this paper is largely drawn.

2 See the introduction of Duverger's, M. Political Parties (London, 1959), xxiii–xxxvii Google Scholar, for a discussion of the origins of parties and of extra-parliamentary parties in particular.

3 Extract of Minutes of the Conventions of the United Farmers (University of Toronto Library), 1.

4 Staples, M., ed., The Challenge of Agriculture (Toronto, 1921), 42–3.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 116.

6 In the first by-election at Manitoulin the UFO candidate, Beniah Bowman, was successful. His victory, with a slight majority of 240 votes, was followed by that of J. W. Widdifield in North Ontario with a majority of more than 400 votes.

7 Staples, , Challenge of Agriculture, 147.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 147–50.

9 The attitude of the UFO towards the older parties is clearly revealed by the following extract from The United Farmer of Ontario, convention issue of 01, 1919, (Toronto), 5 Google Scholar: “No class of people ever submitted so long, so patiently and so quietly to deliberate and gross misrepresentation of their affairs …. The farmers of Ontario are awake. They have dropped the policy of ‘turning the other cheek,’ and they are ready and able now to hit back, not in defiance but in defence, and to return at par, if not with interest, the debit that has been piling up.”

10 There is no unanimity with respect to the exact number of successful candidates from all parties elected in 1919. During the last session of the Legislative Assembly before the election a Redistribution Act was passed creating five new constituencies and increasing the number of seats from 106 to 111. The election results used here are derived with certain corrections for internal consistency from information provided in the Canadian Parliamentary Guide, 1920, and are the same as those given in the Annual Report on Labour Organization in Canada, 1919 (Ottawa, 1920), 57.Google Scholar

11 For the ILP platform in 1917 and 1923 see Annual Report, 1917, 41 Google Scholar, and ibid., 1923, 206.

12 Drury continually had trouble with George Halcrow, easily the most radical of the ILP's parliamentary group. Halcrow, who had opposed an alliance with the UFO from the start, crossed swords with Drury over prohibition, social and labour legislation, and particularly over his support of Adam Beck, in the teeth of Drury's opposition, in the hydro-radials controversy.

13 Buckley, letter to the editor of the Toronto Daily Star, 03, 1943, in his Scrapbook, vol. III (Toronto Reference Library), 83 Google Scholar; see also Scrapbook, vol. IV, 64.

14 Globe (Toronto), 05 22, 1923, 13.Google Scholar The Association formed by the Canadian Labor party, the ILP and the Workers' party, was created early in 1923 as a result of an amendment to the Dominion Elections Act which made it illegal for groups other than those incorporated for political purposes to contribute to the expenses of parliamentary candidates. Annual Report, 1923, 263–4.Google Scholar

15 See Farquharson, R. A., “The Rise and Fall of the U.F.O.” in Saturday Night, 06 21, 1952.Google Scholar Much of the information in this and the following several paragraphs has been drawn from an interview with the late E. C. Drury.

16 Canadian Annual Review, 1920 (Toronto, 1921), 544.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 543.

18 Ibid., 544.

19 Ibid., 545.

20 Wood, L. A., A History of Farmers' Movements in Canada (Toronto, 1924), 336.Google Scholar

21 Farmers' Sun (Toronto), 04 14, 1923.Google Scholar

22 Several weeks after the election the ILP representation was actually reduced to three. Karl Holmuth, who had received a plurality of only fifteen votes, had his election declared void on the grounds of irregularities, although no corrupt intent was established. See: Annual Report, 1923, 205.Google Scholar

23 Farmers' Sun, June 27, 1923.

24 See Michels, Robert, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (Glencoe, Ill., 1949).Google Scholar