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The Liberal Convention of 1893*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

John W. Lederle
John W. Lederle*
Affiliation:
The University of Michigan
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Extract

The year 1948 goes down in the history of Canadian politics as the year of national party conventions. Meeting at Ottawa, both the Liberals and the Conservatives used national party conventions to select new national leaders, to revitalize their national party organizations, and to revamp their party platforms. The C.C.F., meeting in Winnipeg, although not in the throes of change of party leadership, likewise used a national convention as a vehicle for discussion of organization and platform problems. That the questions of leadership, organization, and platform are properly subjects for deliberation by representative assemblies of party stalwarts is today unquestioned in Canada.

Yet, so far as the Liberal and Conservative parties are concerned, acceptance of the convention procedure for consideration of important party matters is based upon limited experience. While national party conclaves have not been uncommon, national party “conventions” especially designed to include delegates selected by and representing the individual federal ridings have been infrequent. Actually, the first truly representative national convention after confederation was that of the Liberal party in 1893.1 In 1919, Mackenzie King was selected as leader of the party at another great convention2 and it was not until 1948 that the Liberals met again. As a party in opposition, whose path back into office has been far from smooth, the Conservatives have in recent years had more occasion to use national party conventions. They assembled in 1927, 1938, 1942,3 and again in 1948.

The national party convention appears to have challenged the role of the party’s elected members of parliament as the dominating ruler of the party in selecting the party leader and formulating the party platform and organization. Of course the parliamentary party group plays a prominent part in convention proceedings, but the significant thing is that the parliamentary group now must, in some instances, exercise its influence through the medium of a representative convention in which the members of parliament can be outvoted by the local delegates.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , February 1950 , pp. 42 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1950

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Footnotes

*

Acknowledgment is made to the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan, for a research grant to study Canadian party organization.

References

1 Wilfrid Laurier, the party leader, said to the convention, “Nothing like this Convention has yet taken place since Confederation, and to find anything of the kind or approaching it you must go back to the days of old Canada—to the famous Liberal Convention which met in Toronto in 1859.” Official Report of the Liberal Convention: Held in Response to the Call of Hon. Wilfrid Laurier, Ottawa, Tuesday, June 20th, and Wednesday, June 21st, 1893 (Toronto, 1893), p. 25.Google Scholar This volume will hereafter be cited as Official Report On the 1859 gathering see Brown, George W., “The Grit Party and the Great Reform Convention of 1859” (Canadian Historical Review, vol. XVI, no. 3, 09, 1935, pp. 245–65).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 On this convention see Lederle, John W., “The Liberal Convention of 1919 and the Selection of Mackenzie King” (Dalhousie Review, vol. XXVII, 04, 1947, pp. 85–92).Google Scholar

3 For a description of the 1942 Conservative party convention see Lederle, John W., “National Party Conventions: Canada Shows the Way” (Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, vol. XXV, 09, 1944, pp. 118–33).Google Scholar

4 Quoted by Underhill, F. H. in an article “Laurier and Blake, 1882–1891” (Canadian Historical Review, vol. XX, no. 4, 12, 1939, pp. 404–5).Google Scholar

5 Premier Blair of New Brunswick, who had been one of the leaders in the movement to get the federal parliamentary party to call the provincial elements to a national conclave, indicated some of his own doubts when he told the Convention, “I very well knew that there were difficulties which now and then surround conventions of this character, but I had faith in the judgment, the discretion and the patriotism of the Liberals of Canada which led me to believe that they would not allow dissensions to arise, that though they might have strong opinions on many questions, yet with a view to presenting a solid front in the next campaign. we should lay aside our differences and unite in putting forward the strong and important issues upon which we are united. …” (Official Report, p. 19).

6 See Official Report, p. 143.

7 Ibid., p. 3.

8 Ibid.

9 The Globe (Toronto), 06 21, 1893, p. 9.Google Scholar

10 The Gazette (Montreal), 06 20, 1893, p. 1.Google Scholar

11 The Globe, 06 20, 1893, p. 1.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., June 21, 1893, p. 4.

13 Ibid., June 22, 1893, p. 4.

14 Ibid., June 23, 1893, p. 1.

15 Official Report, pp. 147–58.

16 The Gazette, 06 22, 1893, p. 1.Google Scholar

17 The Globe, 06 20, 1893, p. 1.Google Scholar

18 Official Report, p. 5.

19 Ibid., p. 14.

20 Ibid., p. 15.

21 Ibid., p. 23.

22 Ibid., p. 24.

23 The Globe, 06 22, 1893, p. 1.Google Scholar

24 Official Report, p. 73.

25 Ibid., p. 78.

26 As another indication of the dominating influence of Laurier, the party leader, at the Convention we may note one sentence in Longley’s discussion: “All who have attended this great Convention must recognize the fact that the leading issue which the leader of the Liberal party proposes to place before the people in this great contest before us is the issue of tariff reform and reciprocity with the United States” (Official Report, p. 97).

27 Joseph Tait among others commented: “Those of us who live in Ontario, and those who live in other portions of the Dominion are apt to think that we are the whole Liberal party and to forget the number of good Liberals who live in other parts of the Dominion. It does us good to come together, to see in the flesh those men with whose names we have become familiar” (Official Report, p. 68).

28 Premier Mowat in his keynote address emphasized the convention as binding provincial units in a national bond: “The Provinces of the Dominion are bound together by a common Constitution, and a common relation to the Empire whose citizens we are; and the representatives of the Liberal party of every Province have met today to take counsel together as to the best devisable policy for the Liberals of all Canada to pursue as a party, in order to [bring] the largest practicable prosperity and greatest possible welfare in all respects of every Province of the Dominion and therein of the Dominion as a whole. Ontario Liberals are not for Ontario only; are we, my friends? (Cries of ‘No’) And Quebec Liberals, though they love Quebec much, are not for Quebec only; is it not so my brothers of Quebec? (Cries of ‘It is’)” Asking similar rhetorical questions from the other provinces and getting similar replies, he concluded: “Yes; all of us from every Province and part of Canada are Canadians, and all of us are bent on doing our best for all Canada” (Official Report, p. 6).

29 The Globe, June 20, 1893, p. 1.Google Scholar

30 Official Report, p. 49.