The NDP goes further to the left in the 1970s/AKA how to make Canada more left wing

I was writing something for an RP involving a slightly altered Canada where more overtly socialist policies became popular in the 1980s, resulting in an overtly socialist state in the present, and I've been looking into ways where that could take root:

In the 1960s, a faction of the NDP arose known as the Waffle which held a mixture of radical Democratic Socialism and Canadian Nationalism as its ideology. Despite its relatively radical beliefs, in the 1971 leadership elections, it scored second place with nearly 40% of the vote. However, the victor of the election, David Lewis had most of the Waffle expelled, afterwards they attempted to form their own party but lost bitterly in the 1974 federal elections, collapsing a year later. Fast forward to the next elections in 1975, it's as if the Waffle never existed and only until the early 2000s would you see renewed large scale internal support for a more radically left wing NDP.

How would you reverse the effects of the Waffle's demise, if not undo it entirely? Could the ex-Waffle somehow regroup after the NDP's massive electoral defeat in 1974. Or was the NDP after the Waffle's destruction just kinda doomed to stay away from radical left wing policies?
 
Many of the problems of Canada's economy stemmed from regionalist protectionism that benefitted Ontario and Quebec disproportionately as opposed to the rest of the country. The Waffle was out of touch with the mostly industrial working class support element of the NDP, and that is ultimately why, despite the zeal of the group, it flamed out. It was like many early 70s radical groups in that by '76, things were mostly over for them.

The only reason the NDP has drifted back to the social left and the spectre of its current politics is because the industrial working class was largely wiped out in the 90s and 2000s in Ontario, and the party's base is now increasingly students and First Nations groups again, with a Quebec element that is very fickle in its support for the party, and could go BQ once more because of Singh.

The Waffle could perhaps have had more of a lasting impact had it come about earlier and were able to make the long march through the institutions.

But the dominant political forces in Canada from 1970 to 2000 were decidedly regionalist. The NDP's western support base was ran through by Reform, as ultimately, Westerners did not benefit at all from industrial protectionism (and other than Manitoba, they did not benefit from equalization at all). Perhaps the Quebec sympathizing wing of the Waffle gains preeminence and makes some kind of alliance with Quebec nationalists and get integrated inside Quebec into the movement. That is the only way I see this happening.
 
Many of the problems of Canada's economy stemmed from regionalist protectionism that benefitted Ontario and Quebec disproportionately as opposed to the rest of the country. The Waffle was out of touch with the mostly industrial working class support element of the NDP, and that is ultimately why, despite the zeal of the group, it flamed out. It was like many early 70s radical groups in that by '76, things were mostly over for them.

The only reason the NDP has drifted back to the social left and the spectre of its current politics is because the industrial working class was largely wiped out in the 90s and 2000s in Ontario, and the party's base is now increasingly students and First Nations groups again, with a Quebec element that is very fickle in its support for the party, and could go BQ once more because of Singh.

The Waffle could perhaps have had more of a lasting impact had it come about earlier and were able to make the long march through the institutions.

But the dominant political forces in Canada from 1970 to 2000 were decidedly regionalist. The NDP's western support base was ran through by Reform, as ultimately, Westerners did not benefit at all from industrial protectionism (and other than Manitoba, they did not benefit from equalization at all). Perhaps the Quebec sympathizing wing of the Waffle gains preeminence and makes some kind of alliance with Quebec nationalists and get integrated inside Quebec into the movement. That is the only way I see this happening.
I agree with this.

The only thing I would add where the active labour base is still important, the core of well-financed, functional unions have shifted from the auto sector in the centre and the forestry sector on the west coast into the public sector, e.g. teachers, nurses, civil servants, who as Raferty says, have a different set of interests than the traditional working-class unions.
 
Perhaps the Quebec sympathizing wing of the Waffle gains preeminence and makes some kind of alliance with Quebec nationalists and get integrated inside Quebec into the movement. That is the only way I see this happening.

This alliance wouldn't last for more than a decade or so, once the continentalism of Quebec nationalists came to the fore in the mid-80s free-trade debate.

And yes, there were anti-FTA elements on the far-left of the Quebec spectrum, but teaming up with those guys wouldn't be much of an "alliance with Quebec nationalists", since they were nowhere near the dominant tendency in the movement.
 
Many of the problems of Canada's economy stemmed from regionalist protectionism that benefitted Ontario and Quebec disproportionately as opposed to the rest of the country. The Waffle was out of touch with the mostly industrial working class support element of the NDP, and that is ultimately why, despite the zeal of the group, it flamed out. It was like many early 70s radical groups in that by '76, things were mostly over for them.

The only reason the NDP has drifted back to the social left and the spectre of its current politics is because the industrial working class was largely wiped out in the 90s and 2000s in Ontario, and the party's base is now increasingly students and First Nations groups again, with a Quebec element that is very fickle in its support for the party, and could go BQ once more because of Singh.

The Waffle could perhaps have had more of a lasting impact had it come about earlier and were able to make the long march through the institutions.

But the dominant political forces in Canada from 1970 to 2000 were decidedly regionalist. The NDP's western support base was ran through by Reform, as ultimately, Westerners did not benefit at all from industrial protectionism (and other than Manitoba, they did not benefit from equalization at all). Perhaps the Quebec sympathizing wing of the Waffle gains preeminence and makes some kind of alliance with Quebec nationalists and get integrated inside Quebec into the movement. That is the only way I see this happening.
It sounds like the Waffle could've fared better had it built inroads into communities in Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC, rather than just being a place consisting largely of Ontario intellectuals. What would be an ideal place in time for a radical socialist faction in NDP (And by "radical socialist", think less Lenin and more Jeremy Corbyn) that can help cement ties to the working class out in the west and maybe Quebec nationalists?
 
It sounds like the Waffle could've fared better had it built inroads into communities in Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC, rather than just being a place consisting largely of Ontario intellectuals. What would be an ideal place in time for a radical socialist faction in NDP (And by "radical socialist", think less Lenin and more Jeremy Corbyn) that can help cement ties to the working class out in the west and maybe Quebec nationalists?

The ideal time for any radical political movement is a time of great economic distress. The problem is that the neoliberal reforms that Paul Martin pushed through as finance minister took care of most of the structural and chronic problems in the Canadian economy, and so the most prescient period, the run up to the 1993 election, would be the last one I can think of, but Reform had siphoned off the Prarie Populist aspect of the NDP in that period.

Howver, the western base of the party was more likely to be opposed to their economic nationalism as most Western Canadians were free traders. The Waffle was out of touch with the Ontario industrial base on social issues (embrace of radical feminism, pandering to Quebec, etc.), rather than on the economy, in which nationalizations and union power were perfectly compatible with that base. The Waffle was mostly a student radical movement, and those movements in the late 60s and early 70s had a pretty defined lifeline.

A more aggressively left wing NDP is not hard to bring about. The Waffle specifically, eh, it kind of is. Its structure and organization did not fit well into the party at whole (which really did want to act as the so called "conscience" of the two centrist parties in the PCs and Liberals who traded power).

Ultimately, the Waffle represented what the NDP would later become, but the two big groups of NDP blocs in the 70s, industrial union voters and western prarie populists (some of which were even ex-Social Credit supporters), had nothing to say to the Waffle, who were truly a minority, even if they were a loud one.

The volatility of regionalism ultimately did not favor transnational movements. The fury of Alberta over the NEP and equalization, and the anger of Quebec over patriation, were issues that favored the right (or in Quebec's case, the nationalists, who you can call left or right depending on the issue). Canada was governed by a largely centre-left consensus after WW2, with the differences between the PCs and Liberals being amorphous (the PCs were once the protectionist party, and then flipped; vice versa for the Liberals; the Liberals were the Catholic Party and the PCs the Protestant party, but they flipped on abortion a few times, etc.).
 
I'm a little bit puzzled by the topic: "The NDP goes further to the left in the 1970s/AKA how to make Canada more left wing." Those are two different things, aren't they? I would think that moving the NDP to the left only moves Canada to the left if the NDP wins elections...
 
Raferty wrote:

The Waffle was out of touch with the Ontario industrial base on social issues (embrace of radical feminism, pandering to Quebec, etc.),

Given the general direction of left-wing currents at the time, I think it was inevitable that the NDP, with or without the Waffle, would embrace what is known as "radical feminism".

That said, I do remember a time when the NDP was, for example, less uniformly pro-choice on abortion than it is now. I think the early 80s was the time when they made the right to choose an official part of their policy book. If the Waffle was ahead of the rest of the party on those sorts of issues in the 70s, I guess that is something that would have stuck out like a sore thumb for blue-collar social conservatives.
 
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I'm a little bit puzzled by the topic: "The NDP goes further to the left in the 1970s/AKA how to make Canada more left wing." Those are two different things, aren't they? I would think that moving the NDP to the left only moves Canada to the left if the NDP wins elections...

Well, there's also minority governments with the Liberals, in which the NDP exercised a certian amount of influence in the 1970s. If the NDP as a whole is further to the left, that could effect the influence they have on the Liberals.
 
I'm a little bit puzzled by the topic: "The NDP goes further to the left in the 1970s/AKA how to make Canada more left wing." Those are two different things, aren't they? I would think that moving the NDP to the left only moves Canada to the left if the NDP wins elections...
Oh, it was meant to signal I wasn't necessarily dedicating the topic to the NDP moving left and more a simple Canada becomes a socialist state timeline. It's just that the NDP is the easiest party where this could emerge from.
 
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