The 20th Anniversary of the Waffle An Introduction
BY REG WHITAKER
The 20th Anniversary of the Wafne
Introduction REG WHITAKER t was only a very brief moment in Canadian political history. It began at the very end of the 1960s and vanished within just a few short years. Yet the Waffle movement had a power and a resonance which far outstripped any other New Left movement in postwar English Canada. The Waffle began as an attempt by left-wing elements of the New Democratic party to recall the party to its more radical origins. They were initially inspired by an uneasy sense that, in the search for electoral respectability, the party was forgetting its mission to transform the society. They were also inspired by the New Left experiences of the 1960s, given particular Canadian expression in the magazine Canadian Dimension, launched by Cy Gonick in 1964. Integral to the Waffle's position was an insistence upon the priority of the national question which was linked directly to socialism. This political agenda was captured in the Waffle Manifesto, For an Independent Socialist Canada, presented at the 1969 NDP convention in Winnipeg. The principles enunciated in the Manifesto attracted the support of a few NDP provincial MLAs and electrified many rank and file party members. They quickly polarized the national party, however, and the party leadership mobilized opposition to the Manifesto and defeated it at the convention. This initiated a brief period of less than three years in which the Waffle constituted itself as a distinct movement within the party. During this period the movement emerged as a strong minority voice within the Ontario and Saskatchewan parties, with some strength in the Manitoba and BC wings of the
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party, and a smattering of support in other provinces. Two personalities stood out: Jim Laxer and Mel Watkins. Both academics, the former came to the movement from roots both in the New and Old Lefts, the latter from the position of a liberal anti-nationalist economist, who was radicalized by writing a report for the economically nationalist Liberal minister, Walter Gordon, on foreign ownership of the Canadian economy. Behind Laxer and Watkins, a new generation of political activists, along with some older militants, rallied to the banner. Wafflers attempted to advance their views within the party at the same time as they tried to mobilize as a broader movement outside the party. The party establishment was enraged at this 'party-within-aparty' strategy. Older party leaders, some with memories too long for their own good, viewed it in Cold War terms as Communist-type boring from within. More modem electoralist NDP leaders fretted about the bad image the party could be given by the presence of radicals. Few in the party establishment paused to seriously consider the infusion of new and important ideas which the Waffle represented. The issue of Canadian economic nationalism was in a very real sense placed on the public agenda by the Waffle's efforts. The Committee for an Independent Canada, grouping explicitly non-socialist nationalists, was formed following the Waffle's initial success at bringing the issue of American domination of the Canadian economy to the fore. Public opinion, as indicated in polls in the early 1970s, moved toward a more nationalist position on foreign ownership. The Waffle's insistence on socialism as the only viable means for recapturing national control found echoes in the wider public: for instance, a majority of Canadians expressed a willingness to use public ownership to reclaim energy resource industries. The NDP moved toward this position, and even the Trudeau Liberals adopted some of the ideas with the creation of PetroCanada and the National Energy Program. The Waffle also took an 'advanced' position on another national question, that of Quebec. Wafflers sponsored resolutions on Quebec's right to national self-determination which predated the rise to office of the Parti Quebecois 168
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and the referendum on sovereignty-association in 1980. Again, the Waffle lost in the NDP but it forced a debate in a national forum. Wafflers also tried to mobilize within the labour movement. This took various forms, from educational activity for rank and file members to strike support, such as the memorable Texpack struggle in Brantford and Toronto. In effect, the Waffle tried to widen the range of participants in debates about the place of labour in the national struggle. This soon led to direct conflict with the conservative labour leadership, especially in the American-dominated internationals. This in turn gave rise to further difficulties for the Waffle within the NDP, given the strategic positions held in the party by the union brass. In 1971 Jim Laxer ran for the leadership of the national party. This campaign was the high point for Wafflers as participants in the NDP. Laxer forced David Lewis to a fourth ballot and collected 40 percent of the vote in the final showdown. This relative success was, however, the signal for the establishment of the party to end a relationship which right-wing social democrats increasingly viewed as an intolerable affront to their domination. With trade union leaders weighing in heavily, the Ontario party finally ordered the Waffle to disband or leave. At an Orillia meeting in the summer of 1972 the Waffle was expelled. Wafflers subsequently left the NDP in other provinces as well. There were clearly problems of maintaining a 'partywithin-a-party', although other parties such as the French Socialists have lived quite comfortably with organized leftwing factions since the early 1970s. But the expulsion was ultimately fatal to the Waffle. Its post-NDP life was even shorter than its life within the party; within two years it had disintegrated. In some ways, life outside the NDP need not have been fatal to the Waffle. As a non-partisan movement it could broaden its role without having to tie itself narrowly to electoral politics (although a few Waffle candidates did contest ridings in the 1974 federal election, as one means of reaching people). The political practice of the Waffle was progressive (for instance, gender parity was a fundamental and unquestioned requirement on all committees). Unfortunately, the taste for media prominence, 169
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generated by the Laxer leadership campaign, was too strong for some, who afterward could not accept the more modest profile assigned to a social movement. Moreover, the bane of left movements, ideological factionalism, reared its head. The Waffle finally came apart in late 1974. The NDP leadership took comfort from this failure, but they failed to recognize that they had lost something precious when they expelled the Waffle. The NDP lost energy, youth, new ideas, and above all that vision, not restricted by electoralism, of the kind of society that ought-to-be. The NDP wanted to be seen as a party like other parties, and it has succeeded in producing a miniature replica. David Lewis, no friend of the Waffle, years later remarked to me in exasperation at the party's me-too performance over the constitutional debate in the early 1980s, "When the Waffle left the NDP, most of the brains left with them." The depressing truth of this observation became all too apparent during the great Free Trade election of 1988. At no other point in Canadian history has the question of national survival been posed so dramatically, and the NDP failed the test dismally. The political opposition to Free Trade was led not by the social democrats but by the Liberals under John Turner. A broad coalition of workers, farmers, women, senior citizens, Greens, artists, writers and ordinary Canadian patriots grouped under the Pro-Canada Network offered exactly the kind of progressive nationalist movement which the Waffle had envisaged almost two decades earlier. The NDP, its eyes fixed firmly on its own petty partisan interests, joined the Tories in denunciation of the Liberals and ensured that Free Trade would be foisted upon the 53 percent of Canadians who voted against it. The 1988 election was, on the one hand, a vindication of the Waffle vision, and, on the other, depressing proof that the NDP cannot fill the role of a left-nationalist party. Twenty years after its inception, there is much that remains of the Waffle's legacy. The Waffle stepped out of the ghetto in which most such left movements have been trapped and, for a few moments at least, made radical socialist ideas visible to the wider society. The Waffle raised the issue of Canadian nationalism but insisted on its social content and insisted as well on the integrity of Quebec's national 170
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struggle. The Waffle argued that socialism could not come from a political party alone, but only from a party that was supported by a broad popular movement mobilized outside Parliament. And the Waffle insisted upon the sincere attempt to devise a political practice appropriate to its goals for the society. The ideas of the Waffle have taken root in Canadian society, most notably in the lively and distinctive school of political economy which has flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. Studies in Political Economy, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 1989, is a lasting monument to the important contribution of the new political economy to the understanding of Canada. For all these reasons, the Waffle will remain an important page in contemporary Canadian political history. For those who were involved in the movement, memories remain compelling, an evocation of a moment when many things seemed possible. And of course there are the enduring friendships, political and personal, formed in those days. In October 1989 a Waffle reunion was organized in Toronto which brought back together many of the old Wafflers to reminisce, but also to analyze what had happened and to discuss the impact of the Waffle twenty years after its inception. SPE is pleased to present some of the contributions made that day, in this and in the next issue of the journal. One very sad note must be added. One of the people who came to the Toronto reunion was John Bullen, a young labour historian who had written the definitive history of the Waffle as his thesis. Subsequently, he had taught at the Labour College in Ottawa, and was eager to begin an academic career. Many of us who had not seen John for some time were delighted to renew our acquaintance with him, to learn of his young family and look forward with him to his future plans. Just a short time after this, we were shocked to learn of his tragic and senseless death in an automobile accident. Labour history and democratic socialism have suffered a great loss in John Bullen's terrible and untimely passing.
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