I think it's painfully obvious that too much immigration has been more or less one of the reasons why the far-right has gained so much support across the world.

We need to find ways to reduce support for far-right parties. Not exactly endorsing their nativist and racist views, but reduce illegal immigration in a way that's humane, nothing like what Trump is doing. Law and order is always needed to keep the streets safe, but it must never be brutal or unreasonable, like George Romney once said.

Discrimination in any form is bad, and I also think that the Green/Left parties all over the world ignore how discriminatory minorities can be.

Substack Version

Part XVII

October of 2026 has once again exposed the fault lines within Confederation. “Province worshippers”, in both Alberta and Quebec, have been quite victorious this month, either by virtue of there even being a quasi independence referendum in Alberta in the first place, or by the fact that the independence-referendum-wanting Parti Quebecois nearly won a majority government with 28% of the popular vote. Given the current state of Confederation, I think I should explore some of the thoughts of the Red Tory Eugene Forsey in regards to Canadian national unity. While not required reading, perhaps Part XIV of this series, where I explore how the CCF/NDP can be seen as heirs to the tradition of “Tory Democracy”, or “One Nation Conservatism”, which stems from the British Tory Prime Minster Benjamin Disraeli, may be useful.

To start, and in regards to Benjamin Disraeli & Eugene Forsey, this first excerpt from Roy Romanow, the Saskatchewan NDP Premier between 1991-2001, comes from the foreword to Helen Forsey’s 2012 biography of her father, “Eugene Forsey: Canada’s Maverick Sage”:

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From a conservative background, Forsey became one of the founders of social democracy in Canada and a proponent of social reforms, joining the League for Social Reconstruction. This apparent tension also reflects his Newfoundland beginnings.

Many of the values and principles of that place concerning constitutions, government, and public policy reflected those that prevailed in England at the time. The ethos of England was still shaped by the competing views of Disraeli and Gladstone. The latter reflected classic liberalism, faith in the unseen hand of markets, and letting enterprise dictate public policy. Disraeli, on the other hand, urged an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and the new industrialists. He promoted the view that landed interests should use their power and privilege to protect the poor from exploitation by the market.

Conditions in Canada were very different from those in England, but Atlantic Tories still had a strong sense that it was the duty of the powerful to protect the poor from exploitation. Eugene Forsey was raised in this environment. The idea of acting for the benefit of the dispossessed has continued to prevail, extending its influences to much of Canada through his voice and the voices of Maritimers such as Robert Stanfield, Allan Blakeney, and Dalton Camp.

Clearly, Eugene Forsey was shaped by these currents of opinion, and continued to uphold them. He became a strong believer in British parliamentary government and its capacity to develop responses to human need and social deprivation. He rejected the idea that the economics of the market should be granted a free hand in determining public policy or limiting the scope of public government.

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For those unaware of Eugene Forsey, who wrote the continuously updated “How Canadians govern themselves”, he wrote his Ph.D. Thesis on the King-Byng Constitutional Crisis, where he would defend the actions of the Tory Arthur Meighen, and the Governor General Lord Julian Byng, against the actions of the Liberal Mackenzie King. Forsey would become a close personal friend of Meighen, and Forsey’s thesis was later adapted into his 1943 book “The Royal Power of Dissolution of Parliament in the British Commonwealth”. Meanwhile, in addition to his activities in the League for Social Reconstruction since its founding, Forsey was a founding member of the CCF, and a founding member of the NDP, until he quit the NDP early on in the ‘60s due to its “two nations” policy in regards to Quebec.

Eventually, Eugene Forsey would later serve in the Senate as a Liberal under Pierre Trudeau from 1970-1979, although interestingly, on page 152 of Forsey’s 1991 memoir “A Life on the Fringe”, Forsey notes that his Conservative friends were “appalled” (Earlier on pg.87, Forsey noted his Conservative friends as John Diefenbaker, James Macdonnell, Davie Fulton, Donald Fleming, and George Nowlan), and that “The Liberal Party was apparently not at all pleased to have me… In retrospect I realized that I ought to have done what Madame Thérèse Casgrain did: sit as an Independent, supporting the Government’s policy on national unity”. Also worth noting, while Forsey mentioned on page 128 that Robert Stanfield “would have been a great Prime Minster”, he later argued on page 165, in the context of the 1972 minority government, that “the Conservative flirtations with the ‘two nations’ policy had convinced me that national unity would not be safe in their hands.”

For a bit of background on Forsey’s relationship with the NDP: despite being a founding member of the CCF, Forsey did formally return his NDP membership card over the party’s policy of recognizing Quebec as a distinct nation within Canada, arguing that such a “two nations” policy would eventually lead to “two states”. Forsey notes on page 206 of his memoir that he expressed these concerns to Tommy Douglas, and Douglas quite literally laughed him off. On page 130, Forsey noted David Lewis’ support of the “two nations” policy, but also Lewis’ “grand, classic style” of parliamentary speeches, with “echoes of [William] Gladstone, [the Earl of] Rosebery, and [H.H.] Asquith” (of note, all British Liberal Prime Ministers). Forsey then mentions that while he didn’t see Lewis much after he quit the NDP, he still “watched afar with admiration, his work in the House of Commons and on the hustings. His death robbed us of a really great man”. Interestingly, David Lewis, in a 1981 interview shortly before his death, said he could name “two good Senators” despite his dislike of the institution: “Carl Goldenberg is a pretty good Senator, and the former Senator Eugene Forsey, even though I could never forgive him for becoming a Liberal, was a good Senator and a very decent man.”

Very interestingly, Forsey did still support the NDP in his own ways even after quitting the party. On page 207 of his 1991 memoir, Forsey noted that he “automatically paid a small monthly contribution to the NDP” through his union work, and that “in recent years, though not in 1988” he “occasionally voted NDP, and made small contributions to its funds.” Forsey made sure to note that “In spite of everything, I felt NDP Members could and would play a useful part in the House of Commons, as indeed they did.”

With that, I thought Eugene Forsey’s 1968 book, “Our Present Discontents” based on a lecture Forsey gave to Acadia University, would be quite relevant to Canadians of 2026. Forsey gave his lecture as part of a series established in the memory of the previously mentioned Tory MP George Nowlan, who would die in office as the MP for Digby-Annapolis-Kings in 1965.

The preface to this short 44 page book, written by the then-President of Acadia University, J.M.R. Beveridge, gives a brief overview of George Nowlan’s political life, notes that he “died suddenly after a brief illness in Ottawa”, and then introduces Eugene Forsey with the following:

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We were both pleased and honoured that Dr. Eugene A. Forsey, one of Canada’s most outstanding political scientists, and a friend of the late Mr. George Nowlan, accepted our invitation to deliver the inaugural lectures in this memorial series. Dr. Forsey spent his early years in Ottawa, before proceeding to McGill University where he obtained a B.A. degree, and a Master’s degree in Economics and Political Science. In 1926, he was named a Rhodes Scholar and did graduate work at Balliol College in Oxford and later at McGill University receiving graduate degrees from both these institutions. He has served many years on the staff of McGill and Carleton Universities. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1941 and was named a Skelton-Clark Fellow in Political Science at Queen’s University in 1962. For more than a quarter century he has acted as Director of Research for the Canadian Labour Congress, and currently he is the director of a special Centennial project to write a history of the Canadian Labour Movement. In 1961, he was elected president of the Canadian Political Science Association. His public lectures and writings have won him international recognition.

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Eugene Forsey then begins on page 7 by paying homage to his friend George Nowlan, but also admits that he “cannot claim to have been more than on the outer fringe” of Nowlan’s friend group, as Nowlan’s friends “were legion”. Forsey goes on to note that Nowlan “would have been perhaps a little surprised, almost certainly amused, by my being chosen to give these lectures. I hope he would have been pleased.”

Forsey then speaks of his “hereditary connection with Nova Scotia and with the Annapolis Valley”, noting that “some of my ancestors settled here in or before 1760; a considerable number of others in 1783”. After noting that some of his ancestors from the Valley were of the Shaw and Thorne families, Forsey makes sure to note that both he and his father are actually Newfoundlanders, but that his father had taught school in the Valley for a time. Forsey eventually mentions that he “married a girl from just across the Bay of Fundy, and several of her ancestors -- Bigelows, Faulkners and Browns -- came from the shores of the Minas Basin.” After mentioning good childhood memories from the Valley, Forsey notes that despite having “passed most of my life in ‘Upper Canada’, I habitually call myself a Maritimer in partibus infidelium, and cannot feel myself a complete stranger in this Province or Valley.”.

Based on that last sentence alone, this Maritimer can vouch for Forsey calling himself a Maritimer.

Forsey then goes on to say that the title of his lecture is “an abbreviated plagiarism from [Edmund] Burke”, but that “some of you may feel I might better have stolen my title from Dorothy Sayers’ Unpopular Opinions”. After noting that the title “Present Discontents” is such a wide title that could “cover almost anything”, Forsey follows up by saying, “I shall confine myself to the discontents many people now feel with our Constitution”, and after noting that he won’t be giving a “detailed list” of “specific amendments”, he goes on to say, “What I shall attempt here is something more modest: first a statement of the main discontents as I see them; second, certain basic facts I think we must get clear, certain basic principles we must follow, if the [Constitutional] Conferences are not to end in chaos and old night; third, some things we can do, in the light of those facts and those principles.”

Starting on page 9, Forsey then notes that “The main discontents may be summed up under three heads”:

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First, all the provinces want more money, and at least the larger ones would like to get more of it by a re-division of taxing powers. At present, the Dominion’s taxing power is unlimited, while the provinces can impose only direct taxes for provincial purposes. True, the Courts have widened this by declaring that provincial sales taxes are “direct”. (Which, to the plain man, recalls Mr. Bumble [of Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”] ) But even so, with the Dominion pre-empting most of the income tax, the provinces’ resources are plainly inadequate. The responsibilities assigned to them by the British North America Act, notably roads and education, are far more expensive than anyone could have dreamed a century ago; and the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council, by its interpretation of the Act, has conferred, or imposed, on them further responsibilities, notably most of social security, which are also enormously expensive.

There are two ways of meeting this difficulty without changing the Constitution. One is conditional Dominion grants, in aid of approved provincial expenditures, the so-called “joint programs”. The other is unconditional Dominion grants: the traditional subsidies, and the equalization payments. One is grants with strings, the other grants without strings.

The grants with strings are now on the way out. Quebec wants to get rid of nearly all of them, and resume the full management of what might be her own constitutional property. Several, if not most, of the other provinces dislike the pressure to accept the Dominion’s scale of priorities which grants-in-aid involve. And the Dominion itself is anxious to get out of the whole thing as fast and as far as it can.

Every province seems willing to accept the unconditional grants. Quebec would like to see them replaced in large part, and soon, by a massive transfer of taxing power from the Dominion to the provinces. Most, or all, of the other provinces apparently regard them as a permanent feature of Canadian federalism. But at least the larger and richer of the other nine provinces would probably also like to see a considerable transfer of taxing power from the Dominion to themselves. The smaller and poorer ones are, I think, less insistent on this: they have so much less to tax.

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I would like to briefly interject here to, first, mention that CCF leader M.J. Coldwell dubbed the difficulty of the provinces’ ability to raise revenue to pay for social spending “a constitutional crisis” in his 1945 book “Left Turn, Canada”. Second, I would like to share this 1976 CBC interview with Tommy Douglas on this very problem:

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Tommy Douglas: I would propose in the act, that we say the federal government will enter into a 50/50 arrangement with the provinces to institute nursing care, home nursing care, meals-on-wheels, that we would share 50% of the costs of setting up community health clinics, we'd start a program of denti-care among school children --

Interviewer: In other words, we should dictate the services we're going to pay for.

TD: We dictate the ones we're going to pay for: we would say these are the programs we are prepared to pay for, we are prepared to share with you on a 50/50 basis. Now, there is no way in which the federal government can dictate to the provinces that it must undertake those programs, but they can say to the provinces "If you want to institute these programs, we'll pay 50% of the cost". I think what most people miss is the essential point, namely, that the provinces are even more interested than the federal government is in cutting costs down, because the provincial governments are much less able to finance their half of the costs than the federal government is. So if the federal government is worried about escalating costs, just imagine what little provinces like New Brunswick, and Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia feel about rising health costs.

I: And we get caught in the middle?

TD: You mean the public?

I: Yes.

TD: Of course the public gets caught in the middle! And the public who are going to get caught the most severely are the ones in the poorer provinces. With the federal government copping out of some of its responsibility from Medicare, the chances are that the more affluent provinces like Ontario and Alberta and British Columbia will be able to absorb the extra costs. But in the Atlantic provinces particularly -- and in the Prairie provinces if there were a few bad crops -- the only way that they could get by would be to begin reducing medical care services. And if you do that, what you're really saying is there are two classes of Canadians: those Canadians who live in well-to-do provinces that are going to have a high standard of health services, and the people who live in the poorer provinces who are going to have a very poor standard of health services. And that means that in the years ahead, there are going to be children who are going to be less healthy, children with poor teeth, children with long-staying-illnesses whose health will be impaired because they happened to have grown up in a poor province; and that surely ought not to be the kind of standard we set for Canada.

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Back to Eugene Forsey’s 1967 lecture, Forsey continues on page 10 of “Our Present Discontents”:

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The second main constitutional discontent is the discontent of French Canada with its constitutional position. Note that I say “French Canada”, not “the province of Quebec”. “French-Canada” and “Quebec” are not synonymous. There are upwards of a million French-speaking Canadians outside Quebec [ In looking at the 2021 Census, French Speakers outside Quebec numbered 992,309 by my count]; and the constitutional position of even the French-speaking Canadians inside Quebec is not the same thing as the constitutional position of that province. What is at issue here has, in fact, nothing to do, directly, with the constitutional position of Quebec; indeed, more power for Quebec could very well mean less for French Canada. We shall come to Quebec presently; for the moment, I am concerned with the very different question of the rights of French-speaking Canadians in the other nine provinces, and with the share of French-speaking Canadians in running the whole country. On both counts, French-speaking Canadians are dissatisfied with our existing arrangements; on both they want changes, whether in the written Constitution, or in the way it is worked, or both.

The third main constitutional discontent is, of course, the discontent of Quebec, or at least of its Government, its official opposition, and a highly vocal section of its people, with the constitutional position and powers of the province. Some of them want complete independence. Some want “political sovereignty” for Quebec with a “common market” or “economic integration” or some joint serves with the rest of Canada. Some want two “Associate States”, Quebec and Canada, each “independent” but with some joint organs: a sort of twentieth century North American Austria-Hungary. Most profess to want a “special status” within Confederation, with a more or less -- usually more -- massive transfer of power, in Quebec, from the Government and Parliament of Canada to the Government and Legislature of Quebec. Scarcely any voice in Quebec seems satisfied with the status quo.

Of the three constitutional discontents, the last is much more dangerous to the continued existence of this country, and to the welfare of its people, French-speaking as well as English-speaking; and very dangerous it is. It is possible that satisfactory remedies to the other two discontents might blunt the thrust of Quebec nationalism, and that is an additional reason why we need to consider them very seriously. It is also possible that Quebec nationalism will be indifferent to any remedies for the first two discontents, and satisfied with nothing less than the destruction of Canada, either at one fell swoop or by instalments.

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As the Quebec nationalist Parti Quebecois was founded a year after Forsey gave his lecture, I found Forsey’s thoughts from page 197 of “A Life on the Fringe” in regards to PQ founder René Lévesque to be quite interesting, and I think even more relevant for modern Albertan separatists of 2026:

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When the separatists were riding high in Quebec I gave my reasons for disagreeing with certain statements by Mr. Lévesque. After my speech a dear elderly lady, an English-speaking Ontarian, plaintively remonstrated that: “Mr. Lévesque is very sincere”. I said: “I never suggested he wasn’t. But what’s that got to do with it? If someone wants to burn my house down, the fact that he really believes that this is for the public good will no doubt weigh in his favour at Judgment Day. But I am not interested in his motives or his ‘sincerity’. All I want is to stop him burning the house down”

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Back to “Our Present Discontents”, with the section on constitutional discontents over, starting on page 11 Forsey then gives two “basic facts and principles” in regards to the constitution, with “the first basic fact” being that:

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Our existing Constitution is not… a Victorian system of plumbing. It is something which grew out of the needs of the pre-Confederation colonies, which gave us life as a people, which has shaped our life as a people, which has adapted itself to our changing needs as a people. It has not remained what it was in 1867. It has grown, in some respects almost out of all recognition: a little by formal amendment, much by judicial interpretation, most of all, perhaps, by the development of new habits, new customs, new “conventions”, new administrative arrangements, especially inter-governmental arrangements. Perhaps it now needs further formal amendment. But let us never forget that, because a Constitution is what it is, pervading and shaping the lives of every human being in the community, changing it by formal amendment is an immensely serious business.

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On page 12, Forsey then argues that the constitution should be taken serious, “more like a marriage”, rather than constitutional change being simple like “getting a new hair-do” or “putting in a new bathroom”.

The second part includes Forsey making a reference to Samuel Johnson, an arch-Tory writer of the mid/late 1700s:

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A second basic necessity for wise constitutional change is to get our history straight. We are sometimes told now that history doesn’t matter. To those who say this, my reply must be a Johnsonian: “This is cant. My dear friends, clear your minds of cant.”

Canada is not just a piece of real estate. It is a human community, rooted in time as well as space. We cannot disregard our history. If we try, the most we shall succeed in doing is to get rid of real history and leave our heads swept and garnished for the seven devils of pseudo-history.

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Forsey then spends pages 12 through 25 listing each numbered “devil of pseudo-history” followed immediately by his response to it. Forsey then follows up by arguing that he has to spend so much time debunking bad history because “Many of the English-speaking ‘intelligentsia’… have given these gentry a guilt complex about French Canada, and Quebec, which makes it impossible for them to see straight” and that this side of the English-speaking intelligentsia “is also self-defeating. Most English-Canadians will not join in the self-flagellation of the ‘intellectuals’ ”.

With that, here are Forsey’s “seven devils of pseudo-history” and my summary of how he responded to each one, along with a few excerpts. I will note that the brackets for #4 are from Forsey in making his own quotes flow better; Forsey also gives an unnamed federal Justice Minster as his source for his quotes, who I would presume is likely either Stuart Garson or perhaps James Ilsley, both long-term Liberal Ministers in the King / St. Laurent governments:

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(1) The British North America Act was “designed by British overlords”; from which it follows, of course, that we must now scrap it and give ourselves a home-made one.

Forsey calls this “rubbish”, notes that the BNA Act “is nearly one hundred percent home-made”, and points out that the Fathers of Confederation wanted Canada to be called “The Kingdom of Canada”, only for the idea to be shot down by the British over fears of offending the Americans.

Forsey’s response here is fairly short, so I would like to add this excerpt I found on page 2 of “Freedom Wears A Crown” by the Tory philosopher John Farthing, which is a transcription of a letter Sir John A. Macdonald sent to Lord Knutsford, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in 1889:

A great opportunity was lost in 1867, when the Dominion was formed out of the several provinces.... had United Canada been declared to be an auxiliary kingdom, as it was in the Canadian draft of the bill, I feel sure (almost) that the Australian colonies would, ere this, have been applying to be placed in the same ranks as "The Kingdom of Canada".

P.S.

On reading the above over, I see that it will convey the impression that the change of title from Kingdom to Dominion was caused by the Duke of Buckingham. This is not so. It was made at the instance of Lord Derby, then foreign minister, who feared the name would wound the sensibilities of the Yankees.

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(2) The monarchy was imposed on us, or, at best, we accepted it grudgingly, absent-mindedly, or because we dare not do anything else.

Forsey says “Fudge.”, then notes that “Sir John A. Macdonald took great pains to emphasize that the delegates had been perfectly free to cut loose from Britain, and therefore, of course, from the monarchy, completely, but that not one had so much as suggested it; Sir George Cartier’s speech in the Confederation Debates is full of ardent monarchism” and that Canadians chose the monarchy “ourselves, unanimously, deliberately, and with our eyes wide open.”

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(3) The British North America Act is a Constitution for a “horse-and-buggy” age.

Forsey argues that while it “looks obviously true”, as the BNA Act was drafted in the “railway age”, it’s “in fact... glaringly untrue”. Forsey then tells a story comparing the original Canadian Fathers of Confederation, and the later “Stepfathers of Confederation”, as he calls the previously mentioned Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council:

The Fathers, recoiling from the horrors of “States’ rights”, deliberately framed our Constitution so that every power not distinctly and exclusively conferred on the provinces would belong automatically to the Dominion. So everything not mentioned must fall to the Dominion, unless it was unmistakably a merely local and private matter in a single province. And the Fathers themselves, in the new Dominion Parliament, drew exactly this conclusion. Trade unions were not mentioned and the Dominion Parliament, in 1872, passed a Trade Unions Act. Factory legislation was not mentioned; and in the early 1880s, Sir John A. Macdonald’s Government placed three successive Factory Bills before the Dominion Parliament.

Trade unions and factory bills were not new, just unmentioned, and the Fathers unhesitatingly took it for granted that they must therefore fall within Dominion jurisdiction. A fortiori, anything new, anything unforeseen, being of necessity unmentioned, must also fall within Dominion jurisdiction, again unless it was unmistakably a merely local or private matter in a single province.

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Stepfathers of Confederation, turned a good deal of the Father’s work upside down, and, in effect, handed most of labour legislation and social security, and much of the regulation of trade and commerce, to the provinces. But even after the havoc they wrought, a good deal of the original division of powers still remains. And a good many new things -- interprovincial and international highway motor traffic, interprovincial and international telephone lines, radio, television, air transport -- have in fact gone to the Dominion. Even the not-so-new grain trade, which a court decision fatuously assigned to the provinces, was rescued by means of the Fathers’ far-sighted provision in section 92, head 10, paragraph (c) of the BNA Act, by which the Dominion Parliament can assert exclusive jurisdiction over any local “work” simply by declaring it to be “for the general advantage of Canada or of two or more of the provinces”.

The Fathers, in fact, gave us a Constitution marvellously, almost incredibly, well fitted to meet the needs of a technologically advancing society. It is the Stepfathers who imposed on the provinces burdens grievous to be borne, to which the fiscal resources provided for their original, very limited, responsibilities, are inevitably woefully inadequate.

Ironically, it is usually the very people who say that our present Constitution is unfitted for the age of the jet and the sputnik, who urge us to adopt a more decentralized one: to go back, constitutionally, to the age of the ox-cart.

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(4) Confederation was a “pact”, “agreed in Charlottetown and finally in Quebec”, between representatives of “two founding peoples… relatively evenly balanced” ; “Quebec, the former Lower Canada [which] grouped the people of French origin,” and “the other three provinces, or the other two plus Upper Canada, [which] grouped those who had English as their common language and similar cultural traditions” (I am quoting a former Minister of Justice). In other words, the Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences, and the London Conference after them, were, in effect, bilateral negotiations between these two approximately equally numerous, linguistic groups.

Forsey spends the better part of two pages debunking “this… fairy-tale”, but he starts off by noting that even in “Canada East, the future Quebec”, 24% of the population was English speaking, and that on the whole across the 4 provinces, “the proportion of English-speaking to French-speaking was about two to one”. Forsey also gets into how the idea of this “pact” between Upper & Lower Canadians ignores the contributions of the Maritime delegates to Confederation, at one point noting the Maritimers “were very far from being yesmen or nodders” and that the Maritimers “took up considerably more time than most of the ‘Canadians’, and far more than the French-Canadians.” I found this part to be particularly interesting:

The Maritime provinces, and, later, Newfoundland, seem (and very naturally) to have accepted without question, and apparently without discussion, the arrangements the “Canadians” had arrived at about their purely local affairs: if they wanted the future Quebec to be officially bilingual and the future Ontario unilingual, that was their business, and no skin off any Maritime nose. The Maritime delegates seem also to have accepted without question, and without discussion, the justice, the practical necessity, the inevitability, of the French-Canadians having the right to speak their own language in the Dominion Parliament and in any Courts it might create, and to have the Acts and records of parliament and certain documents of Dominion Courts in French as well as English. The influential Hon. Joseph Cauchon, a convert to Confederation, in a contemporary booklet on the subject, devoted exactly two of his 154 pages to the language question; and the burden of what he said was, first, “How fortunate we are, compared with our poor brethren in Louisiana!” and second, “How splendid it is that we did not even have to ask for our rights: our English-speaking fellow-citizens are so enlightened and broadminded that they never even raised a question on the subject!”

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(5) Canada was intended to be, in some sense, “two nations”.

Forsey notes that the old Province of Canada that existed between 1840-1867 effectively existed in a “two nations” framework, and that “it had broken down so completely that the ‘Canadians’, in the 1864 sense of the word, came all the way to Charlottetown to ask the Maritime provinces to help them out of the mess they’d got themselves into”. Forsey then quotes phrases used by the Fathers of Confederation, including: “a new nation”, “a new and great nation”, “une nouvelle nation”, “une seule et grande nation”, as well as “in Sir George Cartier’s phrase, ‘a new political nationality’ ”. Forsey concludes:

The French-Canadians got, certainly, guarantees for the survival of their own culture, their own “nationality”, as, along with the English, the Scotch and the Irish (the last, incidentally, far more numerous than the other two), it was then generally called. But that it was to be survival within the framework of the single new political nation, no one seriously questioned.

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(6) It was agreed, in 1867, to quote again the former Minster of Justice, that French “was to be recognized and applied in all federal fields on the same footing as” English; and “Quebec believes that the contractual provisions… that guarantee French as one of Canada’s two official languages for affairs of state, for a federal Parliament, and for the federal courts… have been allowed to lapse.”

Forsey calls this one “perhaps the wildest piece of pseudo-history in the whole lot”, and notes that the French Fathers of Confederation “Cartier, Langevin, and Chapais” were content with the language situation, as well noting “men like Dorion, Laurier, Masson, Caron” being in the same boat. After giving many examples of old-style bilingualism, including having unilingual English banknotes & cheques alongside unilingual French banknotes & cheques, Forsey then goes on to say:

I am not arguing that the rights of the French-language as set forth in the BNA Act ought to have been, even then, precisely what they were, let alone that they should now be only what was laid down in 1867. They are now much wider than they were in 1867, and I am glad of it. I am heartily in favour of the general lines of the present Government’s policy on bilingualism in the Dominion Public Service. I am in favour of as much bilingualism all across the country as is practicable. But all this is quite different from saying that what, in my judgement, ought to be done now was in fact laid down in a statute, or in any extra-legal understanding, a hundred years ago.

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(7) French schools outside Quebec were guaranteed in 1867

Forsey spends the better part of a page correcting an apparent misconception of the bilingualism debate of the 1960s, that the constitutional protections for minority religious education rights really meant constitutional protections for minority language education rights. This might be the place to mention just how controversial official bilingualism in the modern sense was back then. In the 1974 election, the anti-bilingual Mayor of Moncton, New Brunswick, Leonard Jones attempted to run for the Progressive Conservatives, but PC Leader Robert Stanfield refused to sign Jones’ nomination papers over the language issue; Jones won the seat as an independent running against equal language rights.

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The last half of the book, or the second lecture, “Some Possible Remedies”, is quite progressive for its time in advocating for a new biculturalism & bilingualism, and reminding English-Canadians that French-Canadians are surrounded by an ocean of English, but seems rather dated in the modern sense that it makes absolutely no mention of the indigenous contribution or sacrifice towards Canada’s founding. For an older example this, I can't help but think of the title of a whistle-blowing pamphlet on the state of residential schools published in 1922 called, “The Story of a National Crime: An Appeal for Justice to the Indians of Canada; The Wards of the Nation; Our Allies in the Revolutionary War; Our Brothers-in-Arms in the Great War”

Perhaps relevant, it was the great Tory Harold Macmillan in arguing for decolonization in Africa who once said in 1960, "The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact."

With that, I thought I should finish with a few excerpts from from Helen Forsey’s “Eugene Forsey: Canada’s Maverick Sage” to round things out. This first one comes from pages 217/218, and it’s a 1990 speech Eugene Forsey gave on the question of “le grand nord” in regards to the rights of the Cree, Inuit and Innu in northern Quebec if Quebec were to actually separate; a fair warning, the 1912 Hansard Record where Forsey quotes Sir Robert Borden uses derogatory language by modern standards:

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[Ungava] was given to Quebec in 1912 by the Quebec Boundary Extension Act, as a province of Canada, and at a time when there was not one single French Canadian living in the whole territory.

Now you may say, “That’s an extreme statement, what warrant has he for that?” I had, years ago, repeatedly made speeches in which I had said, “I don’t think there were ten French Canadians in the whole territory.” And then I thought, “My boy, you’d better be careful. Somebody may look up the figures, and show you that there were twenty or twenty-five.” So I went to the census of 1911, and all I could find on national or ethnic origin were figures on the whole of the Territories. No good. Then I remembered what Professor Jim Mallory said about Sir Robert Borden: “Sir Robert Borden never left anything to chance.” I said, “That’s it. I remember Borden well; that’s right.”

So I went to Hansard and looked up the proceedings on the Bill. There, sure enough, was Borden. And I could just hear the old man saying: “Mr. Chairman, it occurred to me that it might be of advantage to have some figures on the national or ethnic origin of the inhabitants of this territory. I have therefore applied to the Department of the Census, and they have furnished me with the following figures: Indians 663, Eskimos 543, Halfbreeds 46, English 8, Scots 2.” Period. Not one French Canadian in the whole territory. If you doubt me, go and look at Hansard for 1912, page 6161, and you will find precisely the figures I’ve given you.

---

In regards to Nunavik in Northern Quebec, Forsey is quoted on page 345 as saying, “The aborigines in that territory might say, ‘You want to secede from Canada? Well, we want to secede from Quebec’. And on what grounds could the most fervent Quebec nationalist deny them the right to self-determination, [after] preaching self-determination for Quebec, world without end?”

But to close, and to change gears slightly, I thought this perspective from Eugene’s daughter Helen from page 190 was quite illuminating:

---

Many of the differences that arose between my father and me were relativity minor questions of degree or approach on matters where our common ground was evident. My feminism, however, opened up a more significant gap.

Sitting incognito in the audience at Memorial University during our 1983 trip to Newfoundland, I listened as Dad gave the inaugural lecture in a series on Canadian labour history. When questions were invited from the floor, I raised my hand, trembling a bit with my own audacity. "I haven't heard you mention women workers," I asked politely. "Were there women involved in the trade union movement?"

The chair -- a man -- rose in consternation and began reassuring Dad that he need not answer, that the question was out of order, or some such thing. Dad motioned him back graciously. "No, no, that's fine," he said. "My daughter has every right to ask that question, and it's a good one. I'll be glad to answer it." Which, with his customary courtliness, fairness, and honesty, he proceeded to do.

It wasn't that my father didn't care about women's issues, he just didn't always notice them. When he did notice, there was seldom a problem. He was definitely pro-woman, particularly on the big, obvious issues like equality in the workplace, equal opportunities for education, and access to non-traditional occupations.

---

This is an important moment in Canadian and Tory history. This is the battle that was won decisively won by the British/Mohawks in Southern Ontario and is part of the reason why Canada is not apart of the United States. This is also the battle that the “Saviour of Canada” Sir Isaac Brock was shot and killed in.

Canada carries on the tradition of British Toryism because the American invaders were fended off. This historical moment is not well known enough by Canadians but, it should be. Today, I am reminded how lucky I am to be Canadian and reminded about the sacrifices the fathers of this country made🍁.

Public healthcare in Canada is looked on with great pride in Canada. However, an issue for an uncomfortable number of years has been how the Canadian system keeps producing measurably worse results than other equally developed nations. Its certainly better than the American system but thats like winning a foot race against a man with no legs. Against European systems we routinely come up short.

I make the comparison to the US intentionally as they are the main hinderance towards adopting ideas from any number of European healthcare systems as their systems have a level of private care and any move towards private care brings up the boogieman of us adopted the trash heap American system. There is also a certain irony in that in the US the failures of the Canadian system are held up as why they can't abandon the privatized model. The below are a few thoughts I've had on the matter:

• We should create a crown corporation to handle the production of generic medications. This would be both to fill our own needs and for export.

• Medications should be completely free (which would be easier if Canada had the above crown corp.)

• Likewise, dental care (which has effects on other health areas) should be free without the added headache of applying for government-supported insurance.

• We should allow private options to exist and funnel the taxes on them back into the public system. By funneling those willing to pay into another stream we reduce wait times in the public system while taxes on those businesses allow the public system to be better.

The biggest problem about putting the above ideas into place is as soon as you try to fix our system (especially the last point) you get accused of trying to create the American system. It would probably take a massive expenditure of political capital to even put the legal framework in place and even more time for businesses to get set up and more time after that for the benefits to become measurable. That is a lot of time where vested interests would be able to pressure a reverse course.

The ‘limits to growth’ described by Donella and Dennis Meadows in their 1972 report of that name are now more apparent than ever. Resources are finite and the idea of continuous economic growth is untenable because its own ecological and social consequences greatly outweigh any transient material benefits enjoyed by relatively few people. One of the tenets of traditional Toryism has been the stewardship of the natural world and the pragmatic management of the economy. Therefore this is surely a good moment for the reassertion of the environmentalist strand of Tory thought, which has for too long been eclipsed by neoliberalism and populism.

Toryism would seem to be the natural philosophy for post-growth politics. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this and suggestions for ‘what is to be done’?

The world has been dealing with neoliberalism for 40 years. But it's also lazy and misguided to believe that recreating the post-war consensus has the keys to curing the world of the evils of neoliberalism.

Examining what works is better than believing a restoration of the post-war consensus will fix everything. I believe government programs and communities should go hand in hand instead of the former supplanting them, crown corporations have their benefits as well as unions. I'd advise the CPC to support cooperatives too.

Government is necessary for what communities can't do for themselves, but the government can't manufacture relationships. That's what communities are for.

I suppose I believe in communitarianism and a role for government intervention. Maybe it's nothing really new, but something that actually works for everyone than rehashing nostalgianomics is superior IMO.

As the last two essays in my “Red Tories and the NDP” series were focused on exploring condensed popular histories of Canada since European colonization, and indeed the entire Western political system back to "ancient Greece, Rome, and the Church", I thought I should do a brief piece here exploring Eugene Forsey’s thoughts on early Canadian trade unions from around the time of the War of 1812 into the Victorian era, in his book “Trade Unions in Canada 1812-1902”. Interestingly, Forsey started this book in the mid ‘60s as a Centennial project for the Canadian Labour Congress, with the book finally being published in 1982.

For those unaware of Eugene Forsey, he wrote his Ph.D. Thesis on the King-Byng affair, where he would defend the actions of the Tory Arthur Meighen, and the Governor General Lord Julian Byng, against the actions of the Liberal Mackenzie King. Forsey was also involved with the League for Social Reconstruction, was a founding member of the CCF, and of the NDP, before he eventually quit the NDP in the ‘60s due to its policy towards Quebec. Forsey would later serve in the Senate as a Liberal under Pierre Trudeau, although in his 1991 memoirs “A Life on the Fringe”, Forsey would express regret about joining the Liberal Party, noting he should have remained an independent; interestingly, David Lewis, in a 1981 interview shortly before his own death, said he could name “two good Senators” despite his dislike of the institution: “Carl Goldenberg is a pretty good Senator, and the former Senator Eugene Forsey, even though I could never forgive him for becoming a Liberal, was a good Senator and a very decent man.”

I first became aware of Forsey’s 1982 book “Trade Unions in Canada 1812-1902” when I originally read Forsey’s 2012 biography by his daughter Helen, “Eugene Forsey: Canada’s Maverick Sage”. This description of Trade Unions by Forsey (in an unpublished first-draft introduction of the book) from page 145 of Maverick Sage always stuck with me:

---

To scholars, this will be a most disappointing book. Four of them who read the manuscript were unanimous: it left undone those things which ought to have done, and did those things which it ought not to have done. It ought to have been a totally different book by a totally different person.

As to the last, I could not agree more … I should have told the Congress to forget the whole thing. But if I had followed that sensible and prudent course, much material might have been lost … As it was, primary records had often disappeared, or survived only in bits and pieces. Fire, floor, and fecklessness had taken their toll.

[…]

[The critics] complain of my description of union dinners, picnics, parades, and concerts. I thought, and still think, that they give a certain colour in work otherwise rather short of it. Our nineteenth century unions were not always engaged in battle. They had other activities, other sides; several. Class warriors may consider this beneath contempt, but I don’t. Besides, I tried to give a picture of what it was, not what some modern pundit might think it ought to have been.

[…]

All I would claim for this book is that I think it will give people a lot more information, more accurate information, better documented and more clearly written than they ever had before; and I think it will materially help those who want to go father. All the rest I cheerfully leave to my younger and betters.

---

Forsey would later describe Trade Unions in Canada 1812-1902 as “dull”, but I think a better word would be “dense”. While I'm certinally not a scholar, I did enjoy flipping through the book to read the brief summaries of labour struggles from centuries gone by as a layman. While the main text of the book is 503 pages, once you include Forsey’s references and the index, the total page count comes to an even 600 pages; the index of individual place names and individual persons are 3-and-a-half pages each. I can certainly understand why it took Forsey the better part of 20 years to write the thing.

After reading a much more positive preface from Forsey in his book expressing a similar train of thought as above, I thought Forsey’s proper introduction in his book expressed a philosophy that would be relevant to those of either a democratic socialist or traditional tory persuasion. I personally can’t help but think that either Robert Stanfield or Harold Macmillan could have perhaps written something similar. From pages 3-6:

---

We are apt to think of labour unions as a feature of a relatively advanced industrial society. So it comes as something of a shock to most people to find out how far back in Canadian history they actually go. That there could have been anything of the kind in the primitive, frontier, predominantly rural British North America of the early nineteenth century seems almost incredible. But there was, as early as the War of 1812; nor, on reflection, is it so surprising at all. There were towns and cities. They had to have construction workers. They had to have tools, and stoves, therefore foundries and foundry workers. They had to have boots and shoes and clothes, therefore tailors and shoemakers. They had to have printers. And even in the simple society there were employers and employed, and their interests were not identical. The employed soon found that out, by experience; found out also the employer’s strength and their own weakness in individual bargaining on terms and conditions of employment, and so started organizing to prevent their employers from taking advantage of them.

This the employers were only too ready to do. The first half of the nineteenth century was the heyday of laissez-faire, and quite as much in America as in Britain. "Each, seeking only his own interest, was led as by an Invisible Hand to promote the interest of society": so ran orthodox economic theory, and nothing could have been more to the tease of the enterprising capitalists, big and little, who set out to develop the remaining British North American colonies. Ruthless competition was right, its results were good, for everyone, and it was inevitable. Any attempt to thwart it was not only reprehensible; it was senseless, sense it was bound to fail

Then as development proceeded there grew up some really big industries, notably the timber trade, and with it shipbuilding, and shipping, with large labour forces, where the harshness of laissez-faire could not be softened by the close contact between the employer and the employed on the small construction job or in the small factory.

Moreover, much of the working force, even in Quebec (in Montreal and Quebec City) was made up of British or American immigrants, who had already tasted the experiences of laissez-faire, and who brought with them, increasingly as time went on, experience of unions in those countries.

Another factor which helped to build up Canadian unions was the mobility of labour across the border between British North America and the United States. There were none of the later legal obstacles to this movement, and both employers and employed found it to their advantage. The employers were able to drive a reciprocal trade in strikebreakers. The employees, finding work slack on one side of the line, went to the other: the records of transfer cards given and accepted by locals of such unions as the Typographers and the Molders read like a lesson in North American geography.

What were early unions? Mutual benefit societies? Often they were, in part, as in Britain and the United States. But, from the beginning, they were essentially concerned with negotiating, or (where they were strong enough) imposing, terms and conditions of employment: wages, hours, safety precautions, exclusion of non-unionists. Very soon, finding that the method of collective bargaining (as the Webbs were later to call it), even when supplemented by the method of mutual insurance, was inadequate, or too slow, to give them what they wanted and felt they had a right to, they started using also the method of legal enactment. This meant demanding a wider franchise and reforms in the electoral machinery in order to give union members the power to influence political decisions; otherwise, they would ask in vain for legal protection of the unions’ existence and funds, and laws to prevent the exploitation of at least women and children, the swindling of men, the killing or maiming of workers by industrial accidents or negligence, and the destitution of the dependents of those so killed or injured. Generally, the method of legal enactment took the form of putting pressure on the existing parties; but from the 1870s on, increasingly there was an insistent demand for independent political action through working-class representatives (even if ‘Lib-Lab’ or ‘Cons-Lab’) or a working-class party; and in spite of repeated rebuffs and disillusionments the idea would not die. It was to become one of the things that distinguished Canadian from American trade unionism, even when the Canadian unions concerned were locals of international unions with their headquarters and the bulk of their membership in the United States.

Why did certain unions spring up first in certain places? Why did they grow, or dwindle, or die, in this, that, or the other place? Why were most early unions organizations of skilled crafts? Why did certain unions disappear? Why did local unions gradually give way to international in most occupations and industries?

At least partial answers to some of these questions are easy, even obvious. For example, unions of longshoremen sprang up in large ports, unions of miners in mining camps, unions of the building trades or the clothing trades in large towns. Some unions dwindled or disappeared because technological progress knocked them out: the saddlers, the Leather Workers on Horse Goods, the Horseshoers, the Cigar Makers, the Shipwrights, the Sailmakers, the Riggers, the Piano and Organ Workers, the Carriage Workers. Others were created by technological progress: Electricians, Telephone Workers, Automobile Workers, Rubber Workers, Oil Workers. Unions rose here because new resources were discovered, died there because the resources were exhausted or more profitable ones had been discovered elsewhere. Changes in tariffs, our own or other people’s made and broke industries, and unions with them. Transcontinental and trans-border railways made the great railway unions. Skilled craft unions usually came before unions of the unskilled because the skilled workers were usually scarcer and therefore in a better bargaining position. International unions generally supplanted local, regional, or national unions because of the mobility of labour across the border (down to the late 1890s) and because the international unions usually had more money, more experience, more organizers, and more skilled negotiators and so could do a more effective job of representing the workers concerned.

More detailed answers are unlikely to be forthcoming till there is a much more extensive literature on Canadian economic and social history than we now possess, as well as a special studies of particular places, regions, industries, and unions. The sheer task of finding out which unions were where, when, and for how long is gargantuan, and far from accomplished, even for the period which this volume details.

What does emerge, unmistakably, and most surprisingly, from the knowledge we have is the persistence of problems, of attitudes towards them, of methods of dealing with them, of arguments about them. There have been so many changes, especially in the last 40 years, notably in labour relations legislation (which hardly existed before 1940), that one might have expected to find the account of unions and their activities in the last century of almost antiquarian interest: "old, forgotten, far off things, and battles long ago"; what the victories and defeats were all about, obscure or undiscoverable. On the contrary, what one finds is, over and over again, startling contemporary. It is only necessary to change a few names, dates, and absolute figures, and the tale might have come from yesterday’s newspaper. The unions were so often fighting for the same things they are fighting for now, wielding the same weapons, using the same arguments; employers were so often resisting exactly the same things, wielding the same weapons, using the same arguments. Governments were so often acting, or not acting, for precisely the same reasons, or lack of reasons, as now. Of course there are also vast differences. But the similarities are more numerous, more striking, more important. There was no golden age when unions were unnecessary because employers, and economic conjectures, were so benevolent; when such unions as there were were too "moderate" or "responsible" ever, to strike; when union demands were generally recognized as "reasonable" and "justified"; when employers were always rational and "gentlemanly" in their dealings with employees. The world of the nineteenth century, and the early twentieth, was in these respects basically the same as the world of today.

---

With that philosophy in mind, and considering Forsey once wrote that "The Church and Labour... can be powerful allies in a common cause", perhaps I should end this post with the lyrics to an old '60s folk song called "The Ballad of the Carpenter". I first became aware of this song through Phil Ochs' version, but I personally prefer the original version by Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger:

---

Jesus was a working man

A hero you shall hear

Born in the slums of Bethlehem

At the turning of the year

Yes, the turning of the year

/

When Jesus was a little lad

The streets rang with his name

For he argued with the older men

And put 'em all to shame

Yes, he put them all to shame

/

His father he apprenticed him

A carpenter to be

To plain and drill and work with skill

In the town of Galilee

Yes, the town of Galilee

/

He became a roving journeyman

And he wandered far and wide

And he saw how wealth and poverty

Live always side by side

Yes, always side by side

/

He said "Come all you working men

You farmers and weavers too

If you will only organize

The world belongs to you

Yes, the world belongs to you"

/

So the fishermen sent two delegates

And the farmers and weavers too

And they formed a working committee of twelve

To see the struggle through

Yes, to the struggle through

/

When the rich men heard what the carpenter had done

To the Roman troops they ran

Saying put this rebel Jesus down

He's a menace to God and man

Yes, a menace to God and man

/

The commander of the occupying troops

He laughed and then he said

"There's a cross to spare on Calvary hill

By the weekend he'll be dead

Yes, by the weekend he'll be dead"

/

Now Jesus walked among the poor

For the poor were his own kind

And they wouldn't let the cops get near enough

To take him from behind

Yes, to take him from behind

/

So they hired a man of the traitor's trade

And a stool-pigeon was he

And he sold his brother to the butcher's men

For a fistful of silver money

A fistful of money

/

Jesus lay in the prison cell

And they beat him and offered him bribes

To desert the cause of own poor folk

And work for the rich men's tribe

Yes, work for the rich men's tribe

/

The sweat stood out upon his brow

And the blood was in his eye

And they nailed his body to the Roman cross

And they laughed as they watched him die

Yes, they laughed as they watched him die

/

Two thousand years have passed and gone

And many a hero too

And the dream of this poor carpenter

At last it is coming true

Yes, at last it is coming true

---

In part one of this post I gave a brief overview of the career of WAC Bennett with comparisons to the career of RB Bennett. In this second part of the essay I wanted to try and give a full overview of RB Bennett's legislative initiatives. I will, where appropriate, note how far along each initiative got and whether these initiatives were later re-visited and whether they've come up recently. This list will by necessity be incomplete as changes large and small were made during his term.

Bank of Canada - Probably RB Bennett's signature achievement. The chartered banks fought him on this every step of the way but in the end he created one of Canada's greatest assets in regulating the economy. The bank initially had private ownership through shares as a means of preventing political interference. This was unpopular with basically everyone and Mackenzie King had the shares bought out. To this day the shares still exist and are owned by the Minister of Finance. Bennett's original ownership structure seemed prescient recently when Pierre Poilievre mused about sacking certain officials at the bank - just the sort of thing Bennett was worried about.

Public Broadcasting - The other major achievement of Bennett's term was the creation of the CRBC, the predecessor of the CBC. Once again Bennett faced opposition, this time from newspapers and American radio channels. His own cabinet tried defunding the crown corporation at least twice while Bennett was otherwise occupied. Each time Bennett restored funding but did not sack the ministers responsible (showing an uncharacteristic level of grace towards those who went against his wishes). Mackenzie King would tighten the mandate of the crown corporation but otherwise left it alone to do its job.

1930 Unemployment Relief Act - The largest stimulus package the government had ever done to that point amounting to 20 million of a 500 million dollar total government budget. Unlike past smaller stimulus packages Bennett set up oversight to ensure the money reached those in need rather than padding the budgets over lower levels of government. This proto-Keynesian approach of stimulus during economic downturns would return as a debate in 2008 which incidentally saw Bennett's star rise a bit from the rock bottom it had been sitting at.

1930 Counter Tariffs - Bennett came to power just as about everyone was raising tariff barriers. Rather than see Canada's economy hollowed out he followed suit but crucially kept negotiating for greater access for Canadian goods in other markets on a tariff-by-tariff quid pro quo basis.

1931 End of Cabinet By-Elections - Bennett ended this practice which had long since stopped being at all useful and was a contributing factor in the King-Byng Affair (Bennett was a bit player in that drama as he was away at the time and the opposition member he was paired with voted when he shouldn't have). Its easy to imagine the mischief opposition parties would be able to get into if government ministers still had to run in a by-election to enter cabinet.

1931 Statute of Westminster - Bennett saw through the final negotiations and had to walk a fine line between going too fast (and angering the provinces) and delaying Canada's path towards independence. Perhaps unfortunately the judicial committee of the privy council remained Canada's highest court of appeal and this fact would gut much of Bennett's legacy.

1931 Raised corporate taxes and cut the bureaucracy - I'm hard-pressed to think of a government of any stripe that would do both of those things concurrently.

1931 Had the government underwrite all farm loans - The banks had stopped extending credit during the Great Depression which threatened to collapse the entire agricultural system in Canada. Bennett would go further and subsidize wheat production.

1931 Completed the Welland Canal - This project was started under Bordon and completed under Bennett. It was a crucial first step in creating the St. Lawrence Seaway - a project Bennett attempted to negotiated but which was scuttled by Governor Roosevelt and special interests in Congress.

1932-1935 Attempts made to get US tariffs lifted - The US was prepared to lift tariffs shortly before the 1935 election but Mackenzie King convinced the new Roosevelt administration to postpone until after King was prime minister. This occurred days after the election along the terms Bennett negotiated.

1932 public works program - These are the work camps which would later spawn the On-To-Ottawa Trek. The premise was good. There were many unemployed young men - with all the dangers that entailed - wandering the country. Why not pay them to build public works and strengthen Canada's economic infrastructure? Kill two birds with one stone. A third advantage is it would keep these desperate men away from the corrupting influence of the communists. The plan hit its first snag when the army was put in charge of the camps. This is understandable in that they were the only organization with experience organizing large numbers of men. However, their experience was with prisoners of war or soldiers in a strict hierarchy. Complaints started almost immediately. The camps are an entire discussion on their own but they largely failed. Communists infiltrated the camps and sowed unrest. The pay given out was seen as too low. And there was no over-arching vision given for how these projects were going to help Canada.

1932 Increased eligibility for old age pensions - Increased the federal portion of the fund from 50 to 75%.

1932 Established a committee to oversee the CNR and CPR railways with representatives from labour on the committee

1932 Imperial Conference - This saw many bilateral trade agreements signed and a great increase in trade but not the comprehensive trade treaty Bennett sought. The UK delegation was notably disorganized and dysfunctional (I'm starting to think this might be a cultural trait of the British ruling class). However, Bennett did himself no favours by both chairing the meeting and leading the Canadian delegation. CANZUK can in many ways be seen as the spiritual successor of the idea of imperial preferential trade.

1932 Trade deals with Bolivia, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, and Haiti - In a bit of a mirror of the current situation, trade disruption with the US seems to be the only time we as a nation really go full steam getting other trading relationships.

1933 joined other wheat producing nations in limiting production in hopes of ending the glut in the market and raising prices - We stayed within our quota due to declining production brought on by the Dust Bowl but prices also didn't recover. Efforts to control the price of wheat would eventually lead to the creation of the Canadian Wheat Board (abolished by Harper).

1935 Met with the leaders of the On-to-Ottawa Trek - In a stormy meeting Bennett, with his cabinet at his back, laid out why the leaders of the protesters were wrong, how they were communist agitators, and why the men needed to return to the camps. It would have been interesting to see Trudeau do this to the Convoy protesters, but then again Bennett also managed to keep the Trek from getting to Ottawa. The failure of this meeting likely led directly to the clearing of the protesters from the streets of Winnipeg.

Created the first national list of electors - Door-to-door registering of electors had always been prone to missing voters and a permanent list was hoped would be cheaper, easier, and more accurate. However, the technology to oversee such a list did not exist and it would be killed in 1938 by Mackenzie King.

Restored the practice of granting knighthoods - Pearson, who worked under Bennett in the bureaucracy, was almost knighted but when he saw his boss wasn't set to be honoured he asked his name be removed. Had be accepted I think he would have been the only example of someone in Canada knighted before becoming prime minister. After Bennett's term ended the long, cold years of Mackenzie King saw the practice ignored again with the length of said term having made non-issuance permanent - although only via custom, not law.

Price Spreads Commission - Looked at corporate profiteering which led to a tightening of when loss-leading could be done.

Oil sanctions on Italy - In the dying days of his term Bennett authorized oil sanctions against Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia. This would be reversed by Mackenzie King upon taking office and the League of Nations effort fell apart.

"I am not interested in politics. I am here as Prime Minister today, I may be gone tomorrow! I don't care! Life has given me about everything a man can desire. I am sixty-one, old enough to sit back and enjoy what I have. But what I have, I owe in a considerable degree to Canada, and if I can do anything for Canada, that is what I want to do. When the Canadian people are finished with my services, I am also content." ~ RB Bennett, 1931

I don't know if this is related to Toryism per se, but I just thought to post this here because I feel like people here would kinda "get it" and have something good to contribute to these thoughts I've been mulling over.

So for a while now, I've been thinking we need reform of our education system (coming from Canada fwiw, but I think it'd apply more broadly too since we all have similar systems). It seems to me that many degrees are kind of useless. Even ones that supposedly prepare you for some kind of vocation, they can be constructed in such a way as to focus on academia at the expense of practical skills, or maybe not even truly teach you practical skills in any meaningful way.

I think probably part of this issue comes down to the history of things like universities - to my understanding, anyway, while they were about pursuit of knowledge, for a long time they were also about a "classical education", where one learned about all sorts of cultural and historic knowledge to become a cultured, educated person.

I feel like we've been in a weird in-between place, where that perception of becoming a cultured, educated person through obtaining a degree still lingers, as well as the pursuit of new knowledge... while at the same time university has been increasingly pushed as a career-training program. Many degrees ultimately land us somewhere in between those two goals, and so they're not as useful as they could be, especially on the training end. Many degrees have a lot of superfluous requirements that ultimately just waste people's time and money, and those reflect the older goal of cultured learning. And many people go in debt over it to boot. But then, I've heard some understandable hesitance to toss the cultured learning stuff, because it is valuable in its own right.

So for a while, I've been thinking - maybe it'd be good to restructure university. People do expect this to be relevant to careers, so I think we should roll with that. Make as many degrees as possible follow something like an apprenticeship program, where the focus is on learning theory and skills that have practical job applications, and after each year you're accredited to a certain level to do certain roles. That way, if you quit after a year or two or three, you still come out of it with some kind of defineable skill set that can land you a decent job.

But of course the cultured learning and expanding knowledge parts are important too - so maybe we could do things like, let's say, after-degree programs that let people with those core work-related skills go into academia to pursue research - after all, to do research well you'd need those skills anyway, right. So once you have them, maybe have worked in the field a bit, you can come back to pursue research at the university. That'd also be better for teaching - some professors are excellent teachers but have to focus on research output too; others are good researchers but have to put that aside to teach. I think it's silly, why not use each skill set to its full potential? Restructuring the programs could do that.

Maybe things that are more purely about the pursuit of cultural learning should be relegated to a different part of the educational experience. I think this would be good in junior high and high school - sort of like what we have now, but make it more obvious that this stuff is about gaining a familiarity and grounding in our own culture and history. I do think it's important, so teaching it to kids is good.. but I think a lot of teenagers don't quite understand the purpose of learning this stuff, but could if it was made more obvious to them. So that way, everyone gets some level of cultural grounding.

Then, you could also offer courses through college/university dedicated to this type of learning and personal growth, but have them be separate from the career stream, without some expectation that it should land you a job worth going into debt over.

These are are my thoughts on the matter, I'd love to hear what you guys think.

Hello everyone!

Its been roughly a year and a half since we reached 100 members (a milestone which itself took about a year to reach) and we've finally crossed the 200 member mark. As always its been great seeing new commenters and posters. I'm happy with the level of weekly activity and is probably on par (if not higher) than other similarly-sized subreddits.

I just want to bring up a small piece of housekeeping. There has been a slight uptick in the rate of downvoting as we've grown. We aren't making an explicit rule against downvoting as its unenforceable. However, it is frowned upon. This is a forum for open discussion. Downvoting does not help create such a forum. If you disagree with something you read we are all better served by you replying to the specified post/thread with your contrary view. This is more a gentle reminder than anything else as the rate of downvoting is still very low.

~ToryPirate

So, I've written about R.B. Bennett a great deal on this subreddit. Partially because I consider him to be a quintessential tory and party because he was, as I am, a son of Albert County, New Brunswick. However, there is actually a second prominent Bennett from Albert County, possibly a third cousin once removed of R.B. Bennett; W.A.C. Bennett. This Bennett would become premier of British Columbia 20 years after R.B. Bennett became prime minister and become arguably the most popular premier BC ever had.

In this first post I wanted to examine the toryism of W.A.C. Bennett and do a bit of compare and contrast with R.B. Bennett. The second half of this post will be an attempt to create a comprehensive overview of R.B. Bennett's political initiatives as prime minister. The thesis statement - as far as this two-part post has one - is that W.A.C. Bennett is what R.B. Bennett's time as prime minister could have been without the Great Depression.

W.A.C. Bennett was born in the community of Hastings which no longer exists, expropriated years ago to create Fundy National Park. The similarities of the early lives of the two Bennetts is quite intriguing. Both ended up taking careers early (WAC at 14 in his family's hardware store at, RB at 19 as a school principal). Both would head out west to Alberta in their twenties (WAC in Edmonton and RB in Calgary). Both were strict teetotalers (although neither were the judgemental sort with RB happily serving his guests alcohol and WAC owning a winery). Both would also end up as elected members of Conservative Parties. This is where things diverge because while RB's political successes would be with the federal Conservatives, WAC would get his big break provincially as the leader of the Social Credit Party of BC (although it should be noted that he did try previously to become leader of the provincial PC party).

When WAC entered BC politics the Liberals and Conservatives were in an ad-hoc coalition under a preferential voting system designed to keep the CCF out of power. This would inadvertently give Social Credit its chance to gain a minority government in 1952. They didn't expect to win and WAC was one of the few MLAs with government experience. He was made leader. He engineered a new election where Social Credit got a majority. He then did something that electoral reform proponents might curse him for; he ended preferential voting. He torpedoed the very system that had let his party win, the system that had been designed to keep the CCF out of power. It allowed the NDP to win their first election after WAC's tenure - an honest win.

WAC's government is often described as a populist conservative government but I don't know how accurate this is. A short list of his accomplishments are as follows: Oversaw rapid expansion of the province's highway system and BC Rail, creation of BC Ferries, BC Hydro, and the Bank of British Columbia, hydro-electric dam-building projects on the Columbia and Peace Rivers and the creation of the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University. I'm pretty sure at least some of those things are targets for modern populist conservatives. Also, this means in a nice bit of history rhyming both Bennetts ended up creating banks.

WAC led a party with a fairly coherent political ideology. He largely ignored it as their policies couldn't be implemented at the provincial level. WAC served as his government's finance minister (something RB also did). He controlled spending while investing and in 1959 declared the province debt-free. In 1955 WAC would advocate for universal health coverage with the federal government's response being Medicare. He introduced a retail sales tax to cover the provincial share of the program (and the neo-liberals retired to their fainting couches). He also built up the 'idea' of BC, bringing in the province's so-bad-its-good flag which was the second provincial flag in Canada. He also promoted the idea of BC being equal to Ontario and Quebec.

WAC actually requested the Queen open the provincial legislature but was turned down as it was 'constitutionally impossible' to replace the lieutenant-governor in this capacity (which would spark a debate about the provincial relationship with the crown). He frequently invited the king and Queen to BC for royal tours and used a royal naming scheme for BC ferries. There are certain parallels here with RB's monarchist views and his effort to restore knighthoods for example.

The Social Credit Party would begin drifting almost immediately after his time. Although it should be noted that former short-lived PM Kim Campbell started off in the BC Social Credit Party. WAC's son Bill (who became the next leader) would, as premier, cut social services and education spending while continuing his father's legacy of building up infrastructure, but on a much smaller scale. That said, increasingly the party became dominated by social and economic conservatives. It would limp on till the 2000's when it finally died.

Substack Version

Part XVI

As it was recently announced that Canada is attempting to achieve a yet-to-be-defined “Associate Membership” with the European Union, perhaps a continuation to Part VIII, which explored the original definition of “Red Tory” by Gad Horowitz, and the concept of “fragment theory” used to describe how certain European political ideologies spread across the world, may be useful. That essay explores Harold Macmillan’s pro-EU “Disraelian Tory Democracy” in contrast with Clement Attlee’s pro-Commonwealth Labour Party socialism.

Part XII explores Harold Macmillan’s 1966 thoughts on his 1938 book “The Middle Way: A Study of the Problems of Economic and Social Progress in a Free and Democratic Society”, and his later critiques of Margaret Thatcher’s laissez-faire attitudes. I also personally argue that because of Harold Macmillan’s association with socialist-leaning pressure-groups in the 1930s, he may well have associated himself with the League for Social Reconstruction or the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation were he a Canadian instead of a Briton. In an interesting co-incidence, in the 1982 lecture further explored in this essay, at one point Macmillan notes that after the slaughter of the First World War, “life was reconstructed”, both “industrial life” and “social life”.

For those interested in the philosophy behind WWII-era Disraelian conservatism, Part XIV explores a 1943 paper called “The Tory Tradition”, which roots the modern tradition of “Tory Democracy” with Winston Churchill, Benjamin Disraeli, Edmund Burke, and Henry St. John the 1st Viscount Bolingbroke; I also attempt to root the founding document of the CCF, “The Regina Manifesto”, in the tradition of Disraeli. In regards to Disraelian conservatism and Harold Macmillan, it may be especially important to note that Harold Macmillan would consider himself to be a “Disraelian radical” to the end of his political career. Perhaps these later speeches Macmillan gave to the Conservative Party, to pressure-groups, and especially to the House of Lords as Lord Stockton until his death in 1986, may give us a glimpse into the “last gasp” of genuine Victorian Toryism.

For a brief editing note, being someone who has a stutter himself when speaking, I noticed Harold Macmillan had quite a severe stutter at times when giving his lecture; as such, my transcription of Macmillan is slightly edited, in the spirit of the Hansard Record in attempting to avoid "repetitions, redundancies, and obvious errors". I have also condensed some parts for the sake of brevity, usually when Macmillan sets up a new topic to talk about.

With that, Harold Macmillan’s 1982 lecture “Civilisation Under Threat” starts at the 1:00 mark of this ITN Youtube Archive video. After being introduced, the former Tory Prime Minster, then-aged 88, sets the tone by telling a couple of jokes at his own expense, with hearty laughter from the audience throughout:

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My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen: At my extreme old age, I find myself in a curious dilemma. From time-to-time, people write and ask me to do something. Usually a long time ahead.

One possible reply is to say, “Yes, I’d like to come, but I should probably be dead”. A more difficult answer is to say, “I would love to come, but that week, some months ahead, I should probably have a bad cold”. On this occasion, I could have made either of them, they would have almost been true. Four weeks ago I had a very serious attack of pneumonia, and now I have a bad cold. And yet I have to speak.

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Macmillan then goes on to say that he had a hard time coming up with a name for his speech, and what to speak about. Macmillan then mentions he thought about speaking about the 150th anniversary of the Carlton Club’s founding, and how the history of politics has changed since then, but thought against it as that would be “well known to everybody, rather banal, and perhaps trite”. Macmillan then says, to a fair bit of audience laughter:

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Or one can take subject nearer to modern politics, but that for me is dangerous ground, on which I have to tread very delicately. And so, I thought, something very vague and meaningless, and a little pompous, would be about right.

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After the audience settles back in, Macmillan starts the lecture proper:

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When we speak of civilization, I don’t think we always quite realize -- especially when we speak of this Western civilization in which we are now living -- how short, and fragile, has been the history of civilized man on Earth.

We all know, and find our minds almost overwhelmed, by the immense periods [of time] since creation. The vast areas of space to which we travel, without, as far as I can see, much advantage to everybody; we send up rockets who only come back with information of interest to specialists. But we know, and we can hardly imagine it was so long, millions and millions and millions of years. To us, it means little.

Even this Earth, this little tiny, fragile, piece thrown off -- or so they now tell us -- by some explosion or other. Even its life is terribly long. Even the beginning of life on Earth, the fish, the birds, the animals, and so forth. I read the other day, that the Ichthyosaurus and the… uh... other one, lived for about two million years. They roamed about the valley of the Thames, happily, not knowing that within due course they would give way to Dons and undergraduates.

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After laughter from the audience, Macmillan then suggests that the dinosaurs would likely have been offended had someone told them that their “civilization” would only last 2 million years, before noting that the age of dinosaurs did eventually come to an end.

Macmillan then speaks on the history of human civilization at 5:50; in retrospect, I find it very interesting that he starts off by describing a civilization indigenous to the American continent, the Maya:

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But anything that would be called “man” is perhaps, what they tell us now, two-hundred-thousand years old, not more -- three-hundred-thousand perhaps. Something called “men”, who got together into some little clans, perhaps for hunting purposes or for defence, but nothing more.

And in Professor Arnold Toynbee’s great book [“A Study of History”], with all the criticisms that have been made against it, is still the most marvelous, in my view, marvelous picture of the history of civilization. He tells us, and we know, that in this vast area of time, civilization has existed for what? Ten, perhaps twelve-thousand years. They’ve come and gone. Some mysteriously arisen, like those cities in Guatemala, and then for some unknown reason come to an end. With a very high of degree civilization, organization: the building of temples, and buildings, and roads -- and then ended. Others have passed on some to their successors.

But what we are interested in, is what I would call the European civilization, or the Western civilization. Which perhaps beginning with Greek thought and Greek effort in Ionia, Greece proper, and the islands -- its literature, its art, its philosophy -- and then the organization of the whole into the Roman Empire.

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Macmillan then notes the current-day world powers have lasted about as long as the Roman Empire did, and then he notes that the Western Roman Empire lasted until around the 4th century, and that the Eastern Roman Empire lasted until the middle of the 15th century. He also notes the permanent loss of Imperial territory in Asia Minor and North Africa before continuing:

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Still there remained the great tradition of the Roman Empire, and when it fell, or was overwhelmed, by the invasion of massive tribes seeking somewhere to live, moving for reasons we hardly know how to explain, across the great Euro-Asian Plain, it fell under under a weight which it could not resist. But it fell gradually: many had been absorbed, many had been Romanized or Hellenized. And when the official end, as it where, of the Empire came, the settlers had already, for some centuries even, been effected by the great tradition of Greco-Roman civilization upon which everything we enjoy ultimately springs.

At the same time, another immense force came to us in the spread of Christianity. That civilizing power was the second great reason why even after the fall of the Imperial system as such, the traditions of Europe were maintained. Sometimes through Dark Ages, and difficult times, but by the great power of the Church, the missionary, the monk, the priest.

And so we pass on all its ups and downs, all its strange changes, there was still a theme below it all. And to the Age of Faith, the 12th century, and so far as the Reformation has left them untouched, we still see probably the most beautiful things, buildings, and certainly the most beautiful glass, that has ever been made by men; and the great cathedrals and prières and abbeys of the world.

In the ensuing period, as I read it, there were always two forces at work: one centrifugal, and one centripetal force. One, the attempt to make or set-up small states or authorities, to which the feudal system gave great help: when the great feudal nobles, nominally under the authority of the King, in fact became independent powers. The other, centrifugal, and with the rise of nationality, we move into the period that begins to interest us from modern conditions: the creation in Europe, of great, centralized powers. They fought their wars, they had their great disputes, and except alas for the wars of religion, which left such a terrible trace over central Europe, on the whole, those wars were wars of armies rather than of peoples; and happily, the weapons of which they were armed were only destructive to themselves.

As we move on to perhaps the century in which we most think of -- at least I do -- as the highest point of Western civilization, it is the 19th century, when the last effort to dominate Europe by a single power, that of Napoleon, had been defeated. Many efforts had been made before by the Spanish, by the Habsburgs, and by others; but the most dangerous, the most successful, with its combination of Jacobinism and militarism, was finally defeated. And from the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, there was throughout the world a relatively stable system.

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Macmillan then describes the European Great Power system of the 1800s, while mentioning the British imperial conquest of India, and the French imperial conquest of Indochina. He notes that the Great colonial powers which “ruled the world” maintained the peace in Europe, and that there were very few European Wars in this century. Macmillan notes the Crimean War “was the most foolish” of these small wars, and that in the long run the Crimean War “was of no great importance except to set some term to the imperialist expansion of Russia.”.

Macmillan also gets into how Europe was able to unite for the purpose of colonizing and taking over the world, and how European power was expanded globally through “the trader, the missionary, and the administrator”. After noting that the political system of global European domination eventually came to an end after a century, Macmillan then describes his own experiences witnessing the tail-end of that system, including briefly mentioning his service in WWI on the Western Front, starting at around 16:25:

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I can remember the last physical and material appearance of it; Queen Victoria’s second jubilee in 1897. I was a child of three, but I remember it very well. The great procession, led by the troops of what were then called “The Colonies”: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and then detachments from every part of the world, some of them just discovered, in Africa and Asia. And then the British regiments. And then at the end, a little tiny lady in a little open carriage, in black with her black bonnet, to whom this vast organization owed fealty, and who played the role as summit of it all.

And then, very soon, it ended. When I was a boy this sense of security, which was in every class, was still strong. It could never change. Just as the dinosaur in his two million years no doubt thought he would go on forever, so did we think that everything would go on, more-or-less as it was. There would be the British Empire, the French, the Russian, the new German Empire. Italy had just been made a country from a geographical expression, but it would go on.

I remember well the summer of 1914. I was an undergraduate, I had just done one examination with reasonable success, and was taking that happy term of leisure, faced with another one two years away. I remember packing up my books -- I have them still: Herodotus, and Plato, and the rest -- to go for a reading party with some of my friends. But that’s not what happened. Suddenly, out of the blue, we weren’t on a nice reading party in a Swiss chalet, we were on the barracks square.

And suddenly, the whole of this great structure appeared to collapse. The First War, where death, to a frightful extent, swept with his awful scythe through whole ranks of the youth, and middle aged, of every nation. It left something that could never be quite replaced. Yet, so strong was the tradition, so powerful that of world order, of civilized life, that after the war, slowly and with difficultly, but still with remarkable success on the whole, life was reconstructed. Industrial life began again, social life was resumed, some countries very hard hit began to recover.

And I think, with all the faults that were made, some attempt was at any rate, by power-seeking men, to create some kind of world order again. To replace that which had been so gravely stricken. And it failed.

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Macmillan then argues that a fault of the “modern parliamentary and democratic society” is “the lack of the power” afforded to “great men” who “had the vision to make their power effective”, and uses the examples of David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill as being examples of “really great men” who each had an international vision that may have created a truly stable post-war world order.

At 22:20 Macmillan indirectly criticizes the laissez-faire attitudes of the inter-war years, as well as indirectly comparing Hitler with Napoleon; this part of Macmillan’s lecture reminds me at times of a speech Tommy Douglas gave to the NDP in 1971 on fighting Nazism where Douglas declared “We don’t have to choose between unemployment and inflation”:

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And yet [the Second War] itself was brought about largely by economic difficulties which might have been controlled. The American collapse, the large unemployment, its effect upon Germany where the combination of an attempt to get reparations, although never effective, created the vast inflation and great unemployment. And led therefor to the possibility of a demagogue of enormous genius in the shape of Hitler to create a fresh, new, instrument to destroy the balance of the world.

The Second War, unlike the First, didn’t come like a boat from the blue. We knew it was coming. Everyone knew, really; and when it came, it was almost a relief. But the Second War, lasting so long, covering the whole world, had its effects which put us today into one of these crises of civilization, in which it is still in the balance in my view. So that we can recover ourselves, or whether we shall bend and ultimately collapse under the pressures.

For the first period, we didn’t do badly. We tried hard. The creation of the United Nations, above all the creation of its most valuable instruments: those for social and educational work. The Bretton Woods system, and GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade] to create a maximum of trade throughout the world without undue restriction. All these were moving forward, and I would have said until 20 or 25 years ago, much as they harassed us, they didn’t overwhelm us. But then of course, the Great Division.

The period when the old European Civilization came to an end in its full sense, was not some economic trouble. It was the breakdown of the Conference of Potsdam in 1945, and the division of Europe and of the world, as a result, into two warring groups: the Communists, and what we like to call ourselves, the Free World. So long as that division remains, it will be impossible to restore the power of the old European countries. Now, so freighted are each group of the other, they dare not exercise their power. This, together with the breakup of the Empires, which resulted partly from the First War and President Wilson’s doctrines, has, as it were, “Balkanized” the world.

Every little power thinks itself at liberty to attack its neighbour, to enforce some claim, and with almost perpetual warfare going on somewhere or other, which in the old days the Great Powers would have suppressed. But how can they dare move? Because each is so frightened; if one moves, the other will move against it. So they’ve had to create their kind of clientele: Russia very successfully, we not altogether unsuccessfully. But the old concept of a civilization that was single and unique has gone.

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In regards to that last part on “little powers” attacking their neighbours to “enforce some claim”, it may be important to note that by this point in time, in October 1982, the Falklands War had only been ended 4 months prior to this lecture.

Harold Macmillan then notes that the Cold War will unfortunately “dominate all our thinking and all our problems” so long as it continues. In what looks like Macmillan being briefly interrupted by club staff to let him know that his time is half up, he then continues at 27:35, giving a philosophy which I think is relevant for modern Canadian/British relations with the EU, and potentially Canadian/British relations with China one day:

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It’s true that the military reaction on the part of Western Europe -- of the Western World, which I include the United States, because it is really part of the Western tradition -- was rapid, and the creation of NATO was the attempt to set up, on the military side, to generate some kind of barrier. But on the [political] side, the Western World has not made the progress that when I was young we dreamed of. United Europe has not been what we meant it to be.

One of the tragedies of history, was that Churchill, almost the founder of European thought, was unable in his second administration to put England in the position of taking the lead, when we could have molded and created the machinery of Europe as one of its founders. And held back, partly by old age and weakness, partly by the opposition in nearly all his colleagues, and I’m bound to say, of all what is called expert opinion. The foreign office, the treasury, the board of trade, the Bank of England, the whole establishment; whereas a result of a very long life, I’ve come to the conclusion, that when all the establishment is united, they’re always wrong.

The tragedy therefore is that Europe has not come into being; it’s a society which has useful purposes. But it is not become what we dreamed it to be: a confederation of the civilized powers of Europe that remain, with a single military policy, a single foreign policy, and a single monetary policy. That would have been a real counterbalance to the powers as which we were faced. But that has not happened.

On the political side, I still think, that unless we can reach some kind of method of living side-by-side with Communism -- and it may be that it is within our grasp. I got somewhere towards its in the late ‘50s and the early ‘60s, when the concept of Khrushchev himself, and the phases used, suggested that we might reach some kind of stabilized situation. “Peaceful coexistence” I think the phrase was given to it, but it broke down in a series of tragic events. It ought to be revived; but it cannot be revived, unless we on our side are equally powerful politically. Until Europe is remade into the organization of which we dreamt of. Not necessarily a federal system, but a confederation, which will be united upon only the things that matter: military policy, foreign policy, and monetary policy. Instead, we have drifted on, and not so badly, but the warnings began.

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At around 31:20, Macmillan then notes that he’s “old-fashioned in this” but then spends the next little while arguing for a return to the convertible gold standard that’s “fixed in value”, and argues that the global fluctuation in currency exchanges ultimately adds to the prices paid by the consumer.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not an economist, but I can’t help and think that the biggest “risk” of a globally used gold standard would be the potential for even a sustainable economy to outpace its ability to obtain gold for convertibility or silver for coinage. But I got curious in what the pre-1967 Canadian silver coins are worth in scrap value, and as of September 2026, dimes are about $5 and silver-dollars are about $54.

Back to “Civilisation Under Threat”, after at one point critiquing Richard Nixon for also ditching the gold standard in America, Macmillan continues at 33:12:

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But then came the blow on which we are still reeling, and which we still do not I think wholly understand. The sudden and enormous rise in the price of oil; not 5, 10, 15 percent, but a vast rise, put the western world and the oil using countries into an enormous difficulty. In the nineteenth-century at least, our predecessors, whether by chance or by good fortune, built our industrial society upon a commodity which they controlled: coal. Britain had the coal, France had the coal, Germany had the coal. The whole basis of nineteenth-century development was upon a commodity within the actual control of those who wished to use it. Now, it is passed, and some of the oil producing states, who under no particular influence, now that ours is withdrawn, who were woo’ed, in turn, by Russia and the Free World, can play one off against the other. And then we had this enormous rise in the cost to manufacture, which had two immediate effects.

First, the biggest blow to the undeveloped world that could be thought of. For what we call the poor undeveloped world, cannot be saved by occasional doles or loans or gifts, however generous. They depend upon the prosperity of the developed world; the poor countries depend upon the wealth of the rich countries. What do they sell them? They sell them minerals, they sell them all kinds of commodities. And it is the price of copper that matters much more to Zambia than some dole we may make of a few million pounds for some purpose.

Surely, the price of cocoa made in New York makes much more difference to the prosperity and future of Ghana than anything we can give them by way of aid. Therefore, the first effect was not only the beginning of what was called “the depression” in the developed world, but a terrible blow to the undeveloped world, because everything they had to sell became less easy to sell, and brought them less money.

The third effect, which I am now approaching more dangerous ground, is I still think not quite understood. The third effect was the vast amount of money paid by the oil using states in terms of money were transferred, but not invested, or not naturally invested, to the western banks. Huge sums of money lent on short term and just weighing down the system. For some curious reason, although there are only about three financial centres in Europe that could take this money, we set up a great rivalry to attract it, and pushed up interest rates for the purpose of getting it, at great trouble and difficulty to ourselves. However I’ll let that pass.

Lord [John Maynard] Keynes, I remember saying once, or writing, that the cause of a depression is nearly always simple. If the rate of savings, he wrote, is not equaled by the rate of investment, then there is bound to be a depression. In other words, if money is taken out and just kept useless, hanging, and not reinvested in realities, not put into ships, harbours, railways, schools, the draining of desert lands and all the rest, if it just sits there, there is bound to be a continual depression.

Now for some reason or another, it has crept into economics a curious imitation of what we hear daily on the television, “The Weatherman’s News”. We are told, “Oh, well, there’s a depression coming from the Atlantic, it will be followed in a week or two by a high-pressure, and then we shall be fine, and everyone will be able to get on and play golf again, it’ll be alright.” A kind of automatic process of nature. Now, we are told, if we can tighten our belts and keep quiet, the depression will somehow pass away. How? Nobody knows. And even these changes of nature have a reason, a cause. We’re back in the age of the witch-doctors who tried to make the weather change by making the right kind of speeches to their constituents. But it is not so. And so long as this mystique which we’ve inherited goes on, we shall be no where near to our purpose.

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Macmillan then notes that “some governments will throw -- and this government has been, on the whole, very generous in spite of its so-called monetary policy -- quite large sums of money in to the revival of industry, both public and private”. Then at 40:06:

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Other governments propose still larger sums, 4 or 5 billion, others 20 billion. But my prophecy is that if this were done, it would have very little effect upon the employment of those unemployed who earn their living in productive industries. It will be quite easy, of course, to re-engage a very large number of teachers and even Dons. It will be quite easy to expand the civil service, to expand the local service, and so cause employment. But the result will be the same. Since they will not be creating wealth, but using wealth.

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Before getting too far into the topic of this kind of government spending and inflation, Macmillan then asks the fellow beside him what time it is, is told “It’s just 8:00”, while multiple voices from the crowd of gathered Conservatives enthusiastically call out “Go on! Go on! Go on!”. At 41:16 Macmillan, then starts to conclude his lecture, dealing with topics such as actual slavery, wage slavery, and automation:

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And yet, I do not like to leave you with just another note that seems rather sad. There’s another vision. In the 15 or 18 or 20 civilizations or whatever there may be, which Professor Toynbee has described, and in our own which has lasted now, let us say two-thousands years or more, they have all in fact been based on slavery.

All the ancient civilizations, all the great pyramids, all the vast buildings which we discover, were built by slaves. The Roman and the Greek was a slave system. We’re shown, of course, the beauty of the Parthenon; we’re not shown the silver mines at Laurion where the slaves earned the money that made it possible. They were built on slavery.

The Middle ages, the serf system, was almost a slave system. And I would say that the enormous power that was in the hands of wealth of any kind, amounted to something of the sort. Even in the first industrial revolution, where the great economists of the day, the names who for some strange reason are coming back into fashion, [James] Mill and [Richard] Cobden and all the rest of them, who said that you couldn’t run England successfully unless children would work 12 hours in the factories and 10 hours underground. It was a slave system, to some extent.

Now for the first time in man’s history, in this short, tiny period, ten or twelve-thousand years, what we call anything like civilized life, compared to the eons and eons of his life of some kind on the Earth. For the first time, modern science, applied science, modern technology, have put into his hands a weapon, if properly used, could alter the whole character of daily life. We all know it. We all shrink from it.

What would happen if a government came in, and said it would builds lots and lots of factories for this-and-this particular trade. How would they build them? As they do now? No. They would build modern factories, which would employ probably less than a quarter of the number of people that the old systems employed. It is the machines that we must make our slaves. Now this is an enormous change in attitude of mind, and yet we know its coming. If it doesn’t come in the Western world, it will come, using Western technology, from the Eastern world. It will come from Korea, and Japan, and perhaps from China.

Either we’ve got to recognize that you can build as high a pyramid as you like, as it were, upside down, resting on a very small base -- with universities and schools and medicine and all the luxuries of civilization with leisure -- but there must be a wealth producing base to justify it. The question is: must that be the old one that we’ve inherited, or the new one the lies within our grasp? Anyone who’s seen the results of modern computer controlled robots, and the rest of it, realizes what is bound to happen. But we don’t talk about it; it’s not thought good taste.

We’re talking about the old system: “Throw more money into the system and it will automatically arise.” It won’t. Change the system, with all that’s involved. Which means, of course, the combination of every person involved. The trade unions, the labour, the managers, the owners, into a world which, it may take 25 or take 50 years to develop, will be as different as the world in the second great industrial revolution, as was the last century from the world of the dinosaurs. This is what lies before us.

If I were 18 and not 88, I wouldn’t be depressed. I wouldn’t think the game is up. I wouldn’t read or write nostalgic stories about how jolly the past was. It’s a marvelous, wonderful picture that opens it up. The organization of Europe is vital, with close combination of the United States, and the new system vital. The co-operation, if possible, some kind of détente with Communist society. Every effort to be made.

But above all, the creation of a society in which leisure -- not merely as it used to be when I was a boy, leisure for the rich -- but leisure for everyone. “Oh”, say some of my friends, “Won’t that be very bad for them? What will they do with their leisure?” And I’m bound to say they’re brought up rather old-fashioned; I feel that sometimes. I also sometimes look at my own interrogative, and said, well, what have you done with your leisure? Play bridge a bit, drink a bit, go for a walk and enjoy your dividends. No. It isn’t leisure, it’s a different kind of occupation.

And look what is open to us, not merely of the mind: universities, the teaching, the study what could be developed. But of the body: the Japanese have attempted to solve it by all them playing golf; perhaps we all play golf. But there are plenty of other occupations for mankind in the countryside, in the garden in all the most rewarding of efforts. How to organize it, how to decide whether to be lots of short shifts, how to divide up the labour, and all that. It’s going to be an immense problem, but we must do it.

And I dare say if I was a young man, I don’t think I would take a sum of, what I’m sorry to see some people tend to do, a rather nostalgic and backward looking view. I would rather say we’re in one of those crisis of civilization, which if it faces, can create a great new period of wealth and strength. If it shrinks from it, it will gradually decay, and become out of date, and some other peoples, perhaps who’s civilization has been long stagnate, will rise, and take our place.

That is the choice. It lies before the youth, and the middle aged, and the governing classes of every nation. But before they make it, they must face the truth, and not content themselves with just repeating the old slogans that we learned or repeated 30 or 40 years ago.

---

The interview with Harold Macmillan by ITN after his lecture is also quite interesting, which starts with Macmillan noting the Egyptians and the Hittites, and “the Egyptian system” which “lasted 3,000 years”. Macmillan also notes “the wild, and really mad, speculation in the United States” that lead to the global 1929 Great Depression, and how the last time Britain caused such a speculative depression was during the South Sea Bubble of the early 1700s. He then speaks highly of David Lloyd George and his proposed new deal, and notes “a curious Paradox; it was Hitler that solved our unemployment problem” in regards to being forced to spend on re-armament to the fight the war rather than on roads and infrastructure. Macmillan then argues that some kind of world financial system is needed to save civilization. I found these last couple of Questions & Answers to be extremely interesting, from 57:00 on:

---

Interviewer: But do you really believe in the shape of the world at the moment? Something like that is practical?

Harold Macmillan: Well, I don’t know, I’m not a prophet or a professor. But I think if it isn’t done, this civilization, like many others -- after all, there’s been about 20 -- may easily collapse and leave very little to trace. It doesn’t mean that it won’t leave some trace, because it’s spread much further than any previous civilization, with most of them confined to their area: the Valley of the Nile, the cities in Guatemala, or Sumeria, or somewhere. But it’s spread to the world, and the world will take it up. And what I ended by saying, the modern methods of producing wealth -- it’s quite easy to spend wealth, the important thing is to produce it. The history of civilization is like a pyramid, when it begins, it has a very narrow top, and a very broad base. At the top there’s perhaps a King, a couple of witch-doctors, two or three civil servants, and that’s all; at the base everybody is producing wealth, they’re plowing the fields, or looking after the cattle or sheep, they’re all wealth producers. As it develops, it turns into a pillar: more and more effort is spent on things which don’t reach the market, on monarchies, on churches, on universities, on philosophy, on writing, on art, on everything that makes civilization. But it’s supported by the base. Now what’s happened is, that the base has got very narrow; if you take in the total working class, working population of it, how many are producing wealth? Many others employed in civil service, in hospitals, in all sorts, but the actual thing on which it all rests is the production of wealth. All I’m saying is, that instead of trying to cling to old-fashioned methods of producing wealth, we should seize these sudden opportunities that’s come to us from applied science, and use the machine to produce wealth. The machine itself.

I: You suggested that there might still be witch-doctors about, running the economy?

HM: No, I mean, these are very difficult concepts, but you can’t stand away from them. You ever read that wonderful book by Bronte, I suppose, about ever since man existed cotton had been produced by the spinning wheel in every village. When Odysseus got back to Attica, he found his wife spinning cotton. And they were spinning it up to 1830 in the same way, every woman had a wheel; and then they invented the spinning jenny, and the whole system was destroyed. But of course there were riots, of course there was trouble, because suddenly the whole of this employment had disappeared. Taking power, when Stevenson invented steam, whole vast massive power producing things got put out of work. But if civilization is to move on, it’s got to face that and deal with it. Now, I don’t think we did deal with it in a very humane way in the 20th century, that’s its weakness. But we’ve got to deal with it. We’re not the most intelligent people in the world or all that, there are plenty of other intelligent people in China, the whole of east, everywhere, who can do these things just as well. And so, we either go static, which means you go back; it’s exactly like everything in life, you either go up, or you go down. You’re on a moving staircase, you’ve got to go up, if not, you’re going down on it. And this is the choice. It may well be that we’ll break, and it will be written about by archaeologists in 3 or 4 thousands years time as a quite interesting result of the break-up of the civilization which had, really, ultimately, was based upon Greece, and Rome, and the Church. We’ve got many disadvantages, but we have some advantages. I was saying that if I were a young man, I wouldn’t be frightened of it, at any rate, I’d work at it.

I: If you were a young man, 18 and not 88 as you said, do you think Britain can do anything on her own to improve things?

HM: No, no, nobody can. It’s just like Europe. That was the whole fallacy of those who wanted us not to go into Europe. Look what we’ve suffered. If we’d gone in in the beginning, we could have created it, we could have shaped it, we could have made it into the organization that we wanted. No, no, of course not. How can a country of 60 million people have… in… in the nineteenth-century, it at least had a great Empire, it had the Indian Army, it had colonies, it had power! But we haven’t power of that kind. We’ve either got our brain, and our goodwill, and our tradition. But for the kind of adjustments that would have to be made – if you could imagine a world in which the machines did almost everything. It’s fascinating, it’s H.G. Wells; but it’s coming!

I: In your day, the leaders of the world met to talk about disarmament and The Bomb. Do you think this is a time when they should meet to talk about the economy more often?

HM: Well, there’s no point in talking about The Bomb, because whether Britain has The Bomb or not, America is not going to disarm. The only question is whether Britain has some kind of contribution or not. If she has none, then she becomes a purely client state of America.

I: But now about the economy, is it worth the leaders of the world trying to do something about it? When they meet, they don’t seem to get anywhere.

HM: The leaders of the world must do it! If Lloyd George was alive today, do you think he wouldn’t be doing something? I mean, it needs people to do these things. And America is a country that’s very easily swayed by individuals, actually; if FDR were alive I think he’d be doing something. But it seems to me that we’ve become into a new society which is, and perhaps when the historian writes it, it may even be the reason that marvelous city in Guatemala came to an end. It had too many civil servants. See, we’ve become a country when if you want to do anything it isn’t a chap does it, you say: let’s have a committee do it; let’s have a council do it. The greatest movement in the history of the world, the only one with any strength left in it, was made under God’s grace by twelve men -- whom one was a traitor.

---

They certainly don’t make Tories like Lord Stockton anymore.

Tomorrow is the first day of advanced voting for the Québécois provincial election. I have made up my mind on which party I shall be voting for and therefore this post serves as a follow-up to my previous one published a few weeks ago.

The previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Toryism/comments/1w72wrn/corruption_mismanagement_or_the_sovereignists/

Over the past few weeks I have concluded I can not in good conscience vote for either the Parti Liberale or give my support to the CAQ as I had in 2022. Initially I was considering Vert or QS, and settled for the QS after taking the time to read through their ideas and their platform. Throughout this time as well it has become apparent beyond a doubt that this election is clearly one between the CAQ and the PQ. The Liberals have zero shot at power this election, and the more I look into and think about voting QS the more I get cold feet.

Since strongly considering voting Québec Solidaire opened the door to voting for Sovereignists, I permitted myself to take the time to listen to the Parti Québécois as well across the various debates and read their updates and their 51 page environmental platform (which I am very happy with). If I'm going to vote for sovereignists, I might as well give both a fair shake, is my logic.

Reiterating again that there exists no proper Red Tory option in Québec, I must concede however that the closest party to come close to it in spirit, in practice, and historically in a weird Québec politics sorta way is the Parti Québécois. I see myself in their soc-dem economic tendencies, cultural conservatism, grounded ecological platform, and so on and so forth. It is also worth noting that some of the Québécois institutions we are most proud of are the legacy of the PQ. The local PQ candidate is also a solid candidate; a retired clinical nurse and health care consultant. Given the context in the Outaouais, perspectives like hers are extremely valuable.

It is really such a shame that instead of inheriting the best tendencies of the Liberals and PQ that the CAQ seems to have inherited the worst of both. They squandered a generational opportunity to truly move Québec beyond the Federalist-Sovereignist axis Québec politics has been trapped in for decades.

So all this to say, I will be casting my vote for the Parti Québécois.

Merci!

There have been a few threads here on the topic of viewing Toryism more as a way to describe a part of human nature, rather than describing a doctrinaire political ideology: one from 10 months ago by /u/Ticklishchap , and another one from 2 months ago by /u/ToryPirate .

I thought I should try to contribute to this conversation by sharing a song, that is interestingly enough, sung by an American Anarchist folk singer inspired by Woody Guthrie, with the words being from a poem written by an Englishman who wrote newspaper pieces in support of Sir Robert Borden's Tory Party in the 1911 Canadian federal election.

Rudyard Kipling wrote "The Quest" in 1896, and Leslie Fish released her recording of "The Quest" in 1983:

---

The Knight came home from the quest

Muddied and sore he came

Battered of shield and crest

Bannerless, bruised, and lame

/

In fighting we take no shame

Wiser is man for a fall

Merrily borne, the bugle-horn

Answered the warder's call:

/

"Here is my lance to mend

And here is my horse to be shot!

Ay, they were strong, the fight was long

But I paid as good as I got!

Yeah, I paid as good as I got!"

/

"Oh, dark and deep their van

That mocked my battle-cry

I could not miss my man

But I could not carry by"

/

"Utterly whelmed was I

Flung under horse and all"

Merrily borne, the bugle-horn

Answered the warder's call!

/

"Here is my lance to mend

Here is my horse to be shot!

Ay, yes, they were strong, the fight was long

But I paid as good as I got!

Yeah, I paid as good as I got!"

/

"My wounds are noised abroad

But theirs my foe-men cloaked

You see my broken sword

But never the blades she broke"

/

"Paying them stroke for stroke

Good bargaining over all."

Merrily borne, the bugle-horn

Answered the warder's call!

/

"Here is my lance to mend

And here is my horse to be shot!

Ay, yes, they were strong, and the fight was long

But I gave as good as I got!

Yeah, I gave as good as I got!"

/

"My shame you count and know

You say that my quest is vain

But you have not seen my foe

You have not counted his slain"

/

"Surely he fights again, again

But when you prove his line

There will come to your aid, my broken blade

In this last, lost, fight of mine!"

/

"So here is my lance to mend

And here is my horse to be shot!

Ay, yes, they were strong, and the fight was long

But I paid as good as I got!

Yeah, I gave 'em as good as I got!"

---

I can’t help but think that the idea of “giving them back as good as you got it” must be a central pillar of the ‘Tory disposition’.

Upon first listening to this song, I couldn’t help but think of learning about the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine back in 2022. I was working night shifts then, and when one of my friends on day shift came in early, he told me about the Russian tanks going over the border into the Donbas; I recall us concluding that Kyiv would likely fall Baghdad-style, but that we both hoped that the Ukrainians could at least give the Russians a bloody nose in the process.

Fast forward a couple of days, and I remember watching the news with my old-school Tory father, and they were playing clips of Russian tank columns being bogged down by Ukrainian soldiers, armed with little more than shoulder-mounted Javelin missiles given to them by the British. Considering the general wisdom back then, that Kyiv would fall within a couple of weeks at most, I can’t help but recall the absolute pride we both had in the Ukrainian people standing up to the Russian Bear. There has to be a comparison somewheres between the spirit of the Ukrainian people in the Russo-Ukrainian War and the spirit of British people during the Blitz.

I also can’t help but think of the history of my hometown and surrounding area during the American Revolution when listening to this song. My hometown was occupied in 1776 by “Patriots” from Massachusetts during their siege of Fort Cumberland. In their siege of the fort, those “Patriots” would burn the homes of those Loyalists who fled to the fort for their safety against an angry Massachusetts mob led by local traitors. The siege would eventually be broken by a detachment of British Marines that arrived from Halifax; following the fighting, and after a tea-break if I remember correctly, the homes of those traitors were then burned in retaliation. For over a century, both Cumberland County, N.S. and Westmoreland County, N.B. would experience waves of arson because of whose-grandfather-did-what in the Revolution.

Perhaps I should end this post with a small piece Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1911, in support of Robert Borden’s Tories, in an election fought over Free Trade with the United States:

---

It is her own soul that Canada risks today. Once that soul is pawned for any consideration, Canada must inevitably conform to the commercial, legal, financial, social and ethical standards which will be imposed on her by the sheer admitted weight of the United States.

---

There is something comforting in the idea, that even in the year 2026, Canadians on the whole still refuse to go down without a fight.

I'm LIVING for this Jacob Rees-Mogg–Suella Braverman feud 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

For context, this is what Suella Braverman had previously said:

As I’ve said before, I’m not English.

I’m proud to be British. My family and ancestors have a link to Britain which spans centuries.

But in no way are we English. Yes, I was born in England, speak English and support the England football team. And indeed, I love England and the English people.

But to say I’m English is to take a ‘laissez-faire, anything-goes’ attitude to ethnicity, citizenship and identity. It also denies me my Asian heritage. The liberals (many of them in today’s Conservative Party) take this cosmopolitan approach to Englishness. They’re terrified of being called racist so they say that anyone, as long as they’re born here, can be English.

I take the conservative approach. Englishness is an ethnicity. There have been English people for centuries and we need to recognise this more if we are to start taking a more muscular approach to citizenship and nationality. And no, it’s not racist to say this.

Other countries have no qualms in limiting who can be part of their citizenry and use ethnicity and culture as criteria. Here, the dogma of multiculturalism has been so corrosive that some people don’t actually know who we are anymore.

I'm a Basque Spaniard so I'm not the most well-versed in the history of Toryism, but would you agree this is a good example of the conflict between old-school Toryism & this new brand of MAGA Toryism represented by Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Nigel Farage/Reform UK, Restore Britain, Pierre Poilievre, Danielle Smith...?

Hello Tories! I, like many of you I’d imagine, am a fan of the Canadian monarchy. However, I often have difficulty explaining why I support it to skeptics (which there are many) beyond pure practicality (it would be very costly for Canada to become a republic). I was wondering what reasons you might have for Canada to retain its monarchy and reasons that could potentially sway republicans.

If one watched the closing speech at the Investment Summit this week, they may have been positively impressed with just how on-side the former Prime Minister Stephen Harper was with the current Prime Minister Mark Carney.

The speech he gave was warm and kind toward the Prime Minister. He praised the Summit, joking that it's such a great idea he is envious he did not think of it. He echoed Mark Carney's justification for walking away from the Americans. Stephen Harper even referred to Mark Carney's government as Canada's NEW government; not a continuation of Trudeau's government.

Reading between the lines, it almost sounded like in some ways Stephen Harper sees Mark Carney as practically his successor.

Meanwhile you look at the Conservatives and they cannot seem to find the right footing. They have been trying to throw everything at the Prime Minister to see what sticks and it is all very incoherent. What's more, the caucus is divided, Jivani has gone rogue, and Pierre Polievre has failed to present a viable alternative for Canadians. Yes, the Official Opposition's job is to oppose, but that's just the bare minimum. You must also present yourselves as a government-in-waiting.

Absent from Stephen Harper's speech was all of the present rhetoric and partisanry. He briefly criticised Trudeau, but got right back on track thereafter.

It's been truly fascinating and puzzling seeing some CPC partisans and members of the conservative movement give Stephen Harper the "secret liberal" and "CINO" treatment.

What do you fellas make of this?

The Liberals have no true opposition if even Stephen Harper himself, godfather of the modern CPC is now viewed with contempt by partisans of his own party.

I stumbled upon an interesting piece of Tory history for you all! A documentary on the 1976 PC Leadership election specifically looking at Flora Macdonald’s run to be leader. The documentary plus other primary source documents I've read on the subject have made me think that this leadership election officially marked the end of traditional Red Toryism being the dominant force in the PC party.

The convention also was notable as practically every big conservative name of the post war era was present. Future PMs Joe Clark, and Brian Mulroney, the chief himself John George Diefenbaker, who was still noted as the best PC orator even at 80, Robert Stanfield, the best Prime Minister we never had, and Bill Davis along with the majority of his big blue machine.

It was a fascinating leadership race as Flora's campaign and the convention itself was a clash of old and new. Traditional conservativism vs blue Toryism and classical liberalism. Old Canada and new Canada.

We see the encroachment of classical liberalism and blue Toryism into the conservative movement with the likes of Paul Helleyer (infamous for the amalgamation of the Canadian forces and the destruction of our British military traditions) who in his speeches attacked the Red Tories quite viciously. Attacking their economic and cultural policy, while going after the moderate Red Tory social policy. Foreshadowing what was to come in the coming decades. Mulroney, as the documentary would note, bought his way in using huge amounts of corporate money, and a PR firm to run a sleek modern campaign that had little in common with the Tories of old.

Flora, on the other hand as the documentary shows, would run a campaign based on tradition but her support was almost populist. Her campaign signs depicted her as the heir of John A Macdonald. She would invoke ideas of traditional Canada and continue the vision for Canada that the Fathers of Confederation had. She combined this tradition with more moderate social policy, and interventionist and protectionist economic policy.

She had a bagpipe band and east coast fiddlers that played patriotic music and hymns ahead of her speeches and at events. And even sung and spoke in Canadian Gaelic. A clear way of connecting herself with the past.

Her support was quite eclectic, relying heavily on young conservative delegates, she fundraised money from more Canadians than any other candidate, and also had a collection of hardened political figures backing including PC Premier of Nova Scotia Richard Hatfield, member of the big blue machine and lawyer Eddie Goodman, David Crombie Mayor of Toronto and quite possibly Premier of Ontario Bill Davis himself.

Despite being seen as a front runner, strong speeches, having 300 committed delegates, a popular platform and the best polling amongst all Canadians Flora Macdonald would come in a distant 6th. She was behind her two fellow front runners Mulroney representing the Blue Tories, Wagner representing Quebec & Diefenbaker style Tories, but also behind Joe Clark and his moderates, Horner’s more right wing supporters and Helleyer’s classical Liberals.

Looking back on this election it was quite a shame that support for Flora never materialised from a Tory perspective; she was one of the last defenders of traditional Toryism. If sentiment going into the convention was to be believed she should have won as the compromise candidate not Joe Clark. Some including many at the time may say it was just a matter of it being too soon for a female leader of the PC party but in my eyes that does a disservice to her.

Rather it was a matter of the decline of traditional Red Toryism in the party that caused her defeat. Joe Clark’s brand, while moderate, was far more economically liberal and less culturally conservative when compared to Flora’s. It's what allowed him to succeed over both Flora and later in the convention the more right wing Diefenbaker style Red Tory in Claude Wagner.

The winds of conservatism were shifting away from traditional Toryism just as Canada was evolving from old to new. Whereas, in the 1967 PC Leadership election each of the main candidates Stanfield, Roblin, Fulton and Diefenbaker each represented a form of traditional Red Toryism the 1976 leadership election would mark the beginning of the decline of both socially progressive and socially conservative Red Tories. As they would begin to be supplanted by liberal conservatism, neoconservatives and classical liberalism.

Continuing my jaunt around the early years of toryism we come at last to Robert Filmer. He began his political writing when he was middle aged due to the dispute beginning between King and Parliament. His greatest work 'Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings' set about dismantling the idea of the social contract as an abstract fabrication which has never existed outside of thought experiments. Instead, Filmer argued that authority has always existed and has its origins in the family structure. His ideas were so influential that Locke had to spend a fair amount of his treatise on government dealing with his argument. While Filmer grounds his view on authority in the patriarchal succession of Adam, the argument can stand on its own. W.L. Morton (who I will one day get to) comments on this very idea of the superiority of allegiance over contract; "Not life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but peace, order, and good government are what the national government of Canada guarantees. Under these, it is assumed, life, liberty, and happiness may be achieved, but by each according to his taste. For the society of allegiance admits of a diversity the society of compact does not, and one of the blessings of Canadian life is that there is no Canadian way of life, much less two, but a unity under the Crown admitting of a thousand diversities." In Filmer's thought you can see a few common themes that pop up in toryism; 1. Practical experience is preferable to abstract theory, 2. the importance of order and hierarchy, and 3. monarchism as the most natural government.

As /u/Ticklishchap mentioned in a recent thread the American Farmer-Labour influences within the old CCF, I thought the good people here may be interested in another music post, this time exploring the similarities between the “Social Gospel” of the CCF/NDP, Canadian "Red" Toryism, and the American Farmer-Labor / Progressive / Democratic Socialist movements, and even the Anarcho-Syndicalism of the Industrial Workers of the World. Nearly all the musicians featured here were/are associated with those movements.

Perhaps this playlist is the result of someone growing up in a post-industrial Nova Scotian town in Northern Nova Scotia: in a county which was the lone Tory stronghold in Nova Scotia during the Canadian Confederation debates of 1867, and in a town which later organized a General Strike in 1919 with the help of the One Big Union associated with the Industrial Workers of the World. Interestingly, the Industrialists in Cumberland County essentially agreed to the strike demands, and the General Strike of 1919 was ended relatively peacefully, co-cooperatively, and quickly. On the other side of the province, a few years later in 1925, in a coal miner’s strike in Industrial Cape Breton, an immigrant coal miner named William Davis was shot dead by company police during that labour dispute. The date of Davis’ murder, June 11, is commemorated every year in Nova Scotia as “Davis Day”.

I personally became aware of most of these songs as a High School student in the early/mid 2010s:

---

• All I Want

• Cold Iron

• The Man Who Burned The White House Down

• Automation Song

• Remember Me

• Denmark, 1943

• Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation

• The Men Behind the Guns

• The High Sheriff of Hazard

• Which Side Are You On?

• The Ballad of Joe Hill

• There is Power in a Union

• Failed State

• Crucifixion

• Too Many Martyrs

• William Moore

• The Ballad of Sharpeville

---

“All I Want” by Pete Seeger was originally released in 1941, and it contrasts the human suffering of the average person in the great depression with the luxuries enjoyed by the wealthy. I always loved the verse “Take the two old parties, Mister / No difference in them I can see / But with a Farmer-Labour Party / We could set the people free”. Pete Seeger would later support FDR’s former Vice President Henry A. Wallace in the 1948 U.S. Presidential Election, when Wallace ran for the Progressive Party; interestingly, Wallace’s family political background involved preaching the Social Gospel in Iowa.

---

Chorus: *

I don't want your millions, Mister

I don't want your diamond ring

All I want is the right to live, Mister

Give me back my job again

---

*

Now, I don't want your Rolls-Royce, Mister

I don't want your pleasure yacht

All I want's just food for my babies

Give to me my old job back

/

We worked to build this country, Mister

While you enjoyed a life of ease

You've stolen all that we built, Mister

Now our children starve and freeze

*

Think me dumb if you wish, Mister

Call me green, or blue, or red

This one thing I sure know, Mister

My hungry babies must be fed

/

Take the two old parties, Mister

No difference in them I can see

But with a Farmer-Labour Party

We could set the people free

*

---

“Cold Iron” by Leslie Fish (lyrics by Rudyard Kipling) is a very interesting song that I only very recently discovered. Leslie Fish, who recently passed in 2025, appears to have been an Anarchist folk singer inspired by Woody Guthrie (and who was associated with the IWW). Most interestingly, she set many poems by the English poet Rudyard Kipling to music. Perhaps relevant to Canadian Toryism, in the 1911 Canadian Federal Election, which was fought over free trade with the United States, Kipling wrote in support of Sir Robert Borden’s Tory Party: “It is her own soul that Canada risks today. Once that soul is pawned for any consideration, Canada must inevitably conform to the commercial, legal, financial, social and ethical standards which will be imposed on her by the sheer admitted weight of the United States.". Kipling wrote his poem “Cold Iron” in 1910.

So here’s a song played by an American Anarchist with the words written by an Englishman associated with Canadian Toryism: it describes a medieval Baron who starts a rebellion against his King for wealth, said Baron is eventually captured by the King’s forces, and realizes that said King is actually Jesus Christ in the flesh:

---

Gold is for the mistress, silver for the maid

Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade

"Good," cried the baron sitting in his hall

"But iron, cold iron, is the master of them all"

/

So he made rebellion against the king his liege

Camped before his citadel and summoned it to siege

"Nay," said the cannoneer on the castle wall

"But iron, cold iron, shall be master of you all"

/

Woe for the baron and his knights so strong

When the cruel cannonballs laid ‘em all along

He was taken prisoner, he was cast in thrall

And iron, cold iron, was master over all

/

Yet his king spake kindly, "Ah, how kind the lord

What if I release thee now and give thee back thy sword?"

"Nay," said the baron, "mock not at my fall

For iron, cold iron, is the master of men all

/

Tears are for the craven, prayers are for the clown

Alters for the silly neck that cannot keep a crown

As my loss is grievous, so my hope is small

For iron, cold iron, must be master of men all"

/

Yet his king made answer, few such kings there be:

“Here is bread and here is wine, now sit and sup with me

Eat and drink in Mary's name while I do recall

How iron, cold iron, can be master of men all"

/

He took the wine and blessed it, he blessed and broke the bread

With his own hands he served them and presently he said:

"See these hands they pierced with nails outside my city wall?

Show iron, cold iron, to be master of men all

/

Wounds are for the desperate, blows are for the strong

Balm and oil for weary hearts all cut and bruised with wrong

I forgive thy treason, I redeem thy fall

For iron, cold iron, must be master of men all

/

Crowns are for the valiant, scepters for the bold

Thrones and powers for mighty men who dare to take and hold"

"Nay," said the baron kneeling in his hall

"But iron, cold iron, is the master of men all"

---

“The Man Who Burned The White House Down” by David Rovics recalls the burning of York (now Toronto) during the War of 1812, and how the British retaliated by sacking Washington. David Rovics, an Anarchist associated with the Industrial Workers of the World, mentioned in this live introduction to the song in a 2014 show in Belfast, that he was partly inspired to write the song because “The first time I went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, a labour organizer named Tony Tracy, wonderful guy, brought me to a cemetery where a man named Robert Ross was buried”, and also notes how because of the “complicated phenomenon of Ireland” he had a hard time understanding why Canadians would simultaneously refer to Ross as being either Canadian, British, or Irish. Also worth mentioning, it appears that a certain Tony Tracy has recently wrote a few articles for the socialist Spring Magazine on the legacy of Industrial Cape Breton for modern Cape Breton.

---

Robert Ross was from Rostrevor, he was born there in County Down

His family was given land there, by the British Crown

He was a man born of the gentry, born with wealth and fame

But he joined the British Army, to serve his Queen and make his name

/

In the Napoleonic Wars he fought in many lands

In Holland and in Spain, and on the far-off Egyptian sands

He was wounded there in battle, came back to fight another day

And he was sent off to attack the USA

/

York had been sacked and burned, by invading Yankee men

But the Canadians regrouped, chased the Yankees home and then

The British Navy made its way to the shores of DC town

Where General Ross burned the White House down

/

The year was 1814, the US was in retreat

It was a Canadian victory, an American defeat

Without the French to help them, they got their ass whipped by the Crown

When General Ross burned the White House down

/

The place had just been constructed, only twelve years before

But it had to be rebuilt, soon after this disastrous war

The President turned tail and ran like a raggedy clown

When General Ross burned the White House down

/

He was killed a few months later, Irish rebels stopped him in his tracks

He was buried in Nova Scotia, in the town of Halifax

He might have been forgotten, but he’ll forever be renowned

He’s the man who burned the White House down

/

He’s the man who burned the White House down

---

The “Automation Song” by Phil Ochs is a song from 1964, and it is perhaps more relevant than ever with it detailing of the human cost of automation. As Phil Ochs’ music makes up a large proportion of this playlist, it may be relevant to note that Ochs’ contemporary (and part-time-rival) Bob Dylan once called Ochs more of a journalist than a musician in a heated argument in the early ‘60s. With that, here’s one of my favourite songs from the album “All The News That’s Fit To Sing”:

---

Chorus: *

For the wages were low and the hours were long

And the labour was all I could bear

Now you've got new machines for to take my place

And you tell me it's not mine to share

---

Oh, I laid down your railroads, every mile of track

With the muscles on my arm and the sweat upon my back

And now the trains are rolling, they roll to every shore

You tell me that my job is through, there ain't no work no more

/

Though I laid down your highways all across the land

With the ringing of the steel and the power of my hands

And now the roads are there like ribbons in the sky

You tell me that my job is through, but still I wonder why

*

Though I laid down your factories and laid down your fields

With my feet on the ground and my back to your wheels

And now the smoke is rising, the steel is all aglow

I'm walking down a jobless road and where am I to go?

*

Though I laid down your factories and laid down your fields

With my feet on the ground and my back to your wheels

And now the smoke is rising, the steel is all aglow

I'm walking down a jobless road and where am I to go?

/

Tell me, where am I to go?

---

“Remember Me” by Phil Ochs describes an unnamed American soldier who was killed in the Second World War, and urges the listener to remember his sacrifice during all the social strife that followed the war:

---

Chorus: *

Remember me, when the crosses are a burnin'

Remember me, when the racists come around

Remember me, when the tides of peace are turnin'

Remember me and please don't let me down

---

Oh, I am the unknown soldier who died in World War Two

Didn't want to fight, it was the only thing to do

I was the victim of a world that went insane

Will you show me that I didn't die in vain

*

On the south pacific islands and the Iwo Jima sands

We raised the flag of freedom over many distant lands

Every time I killed a man my own heart felt the pain

Will you show me that I didn't die in vain

*

And I carried my old rifle to the European shores

And every friend that died made me die a little more

Have pity on the man who put a bullet through my brain

And show me that I didn't die in vain

*

When the fascists started marching many millions had to pay

We saw them come to power but we looked the other way

It happened once before and it can happen once again

Will you show me that I didn't die in vain

*

---

“Denmark, 1943” by David Rovics describes the emergency boatlift of Danish Jews to neutral Sweden in late 1943; an act of organized resistance against Nazi tyranny that ensured nearly all of Denmark’s Jews would survive the Holocaust:

---

Chorus: *

I thank God for the fishermen who gave us a ride

And took us over, to the other side

---

When we heard the news we were to be arrested

We had no doubt exactly what our fate would be

We had hours to get out, only hours to be tested

For five thousand people to cross the Baltic Sea

/

We had to go at night in the cover of the darkness

There’s no way I could exaggerate the threat

We tried not to make a sound, wore nothing that would mark us

But no one knew how far across we’d get

*

To find so many boats ready for the journey

To find so many prepared to risk it all

Not everyone could read the stars, not every boat was worthy

Not everyone prepared to heed the call

*

Some risked everything for free, accepting nothing but a handshake

Some charged enough to live on for a year

But such details don’t matter when so much is at stake

When all that matters is a boat that you might steer

/

We lived out the war in Sweden while so many others didn’t

And most people now would easily agree

To say we deserved asylum would simply be redundant

In the boat lift of 1943

*

And took us over, to the other side

---

“Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation” by Tom Paxton, a contemporary of Phil Ochs, describes the mission creep that happened during in the Vietnam War in this 1967 song. Given how the current President of the United States campaigned on ending American Wars abroad only to start a War against Iran with no long-term end-goal, these lines seem particularly relevant in 2026, “Yet how sadly I remember / Way back yonder in November / When he said I'd never have to go”. Although unlike the bigot Donald Trump who purposefully stirs up racial hatred in his country, at least Lyndon Johnson’s ideal of a Great Society, and his support for Civil Rights legislation despite being a Southern Democrat himself, were commendable acts of statesmanship:

---

I got a letter from L.B.J.

It said, "This is your lucky day

It's time to put your khaki trousers on!

Though it might seem very queer

We've got no jobs to give you here

So we are sending you to Vietnam”

/

And Lyndon Johnson told the nation:

“Have no fear of escalation

I am trying everyone to please

Though it isn't really war

We're sending fifty-thousand more

To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese”

/

I jumped off the old troop ship

I sank in mud up to my hips

I cussed until the captain called me down

Never mind how hard it's raining

Think of all the ground we're gaining

Just don't take one step outside of town

/

And Lyndon Johnson told the nation:

“Have no fear of escalation

I am trying everyone to please

Though it isn't really war

We're sending sixty-thousand more

To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese”

/

Every night the local gentry

Slip out past the sleeping sentry

They go out and join the old V.C.

In their nightly little dramas

They put on their black pyjamas

And come lobbing mortar shells at me

/

And Lyndon Johnson told the nation:

“Have no fear of escalation

I am trying everyone to please

Though it isn't really war

We're sending seventy-thousand more

To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese”

/

We go round in helicopters

Like a bunch of big grasshoppers

Searching for the Viet Cong in vain

They left a note that they had gone

They had to get down to Saigon

Their government positions to maintain

/

And here I sit in this rice paddy

Wondering about Big Daddy

And I know that Lyndon loves me so

Yet how sadly I remember

Way back yonder in November

When he said I'd never have to go

/

And Lyndon Johnson told the nation:

“Have no fear of escalation

I am trying everyone to please

Though it isn't really a war

We're sending a hundred-thousand more

To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese”

---

“The Men Behind the Guns” by Phil Ochs is an anti-war song rooted in a pro-war poem. Here, Ochs’ took an old poem from the time of the Spanish-American War by John J. Rooney in 1898, and changed a few verses to emphasize how poorly enlisted sailors can be treated compared to officers. Given the current US War in Iran, I can’t help but think of how poorly both the officers and crew aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln were treated in their nearly 1 year long deployment at sea without a port stop:

---

Let's drink a toast to the admiral

And here's to the captain bold

And glory more for the commodore

When the deeds of might are told

/

They stand to the deck through the battle's wreck

When the great shells roar and pound

And never they fear when the foe is near

To lay their orders down

/

But off with your hats and three-times-three

For every sailor, son

For the men below who fight the foe

The men behind the guns

Oh, the men behind the guns

/

Their hearts a-pounding heavy

When they swing to port once more

With never enough of the greenback stuff

They start for their leave ashore

/

And you'd think perhaps the blue-blouse chaps

Had better clothes to wear

For the uniforms of officers

Could hardly be compared

/

Warriors bold with straps of gold

That dazzle like the sun

Outshine the common sailor boys

The lads who serve the guns

Oh, the men behind the guns

/

But say not a word till the shot is heard

That tells the fight is on

And the angry sound of another round

Says there must be guns

/

Over the deep and the deadly sweep

For the fire and the bursting shell

Where the very air is a mad despair

The throes of a living hell

/

But down and deep in a mighty ship

Unseen by the midday sun

Oh, you'll find the boys who make the noise

The lads who serve the guns

Oh, the men behind the guns

/

And well they know the cyclone blow

Loosened from the cannon's steel

And they know the hull of the enemy ship

Will quiver with the feel

/

And the decks will rock with the lightning shock

And shake with the great recoil

While the sea grows red with the blood of the dead

And swallows up her spoil

/

But not until the final ship has made her final run

Can we give the rest to the very best

The lads who serve the guns

Oh, the men behind the guns

/

So, let's drink a toast to the admiral

And here's to the captain bold

And glory more for the commodore

When the deeds of might are told

/

They stand to the deck through the battle's wreck

When the great shells roar and pound

And never they fear when the foe is near

To lay their orders down

/

But off with your hats and three-times-three

For every sailor, son

For the men below who fight the foe

The men behind the guns

Oh, the men behind the guns

---

“The High Sheriff of Hazard” by Tom Paxton is about a 1964 coal miner’s strike in Hazard, Kentucky:

---

Now the High Sheriff of Hazard is a hard-working man

To be a fine sheriff is his only plan

With his hands in our pockets, he'll take what he can

For he's the High Sheriff of Hazard

/

He went through my pockets and searched them with care

But nary a nickel or penny was there

So I got thirty days and some bumps in my hair

God bless the High Sheriff of Hazard

/

He caught me one evening and here's what he said:

"You look like a Russian, you look like a Red

And if you are fond of your skin and your head

Beware the High Sheriff of Hazard!"

/

I thanked him politely, I thanked him for all

And five minutes later, I made a phone call

To call a strike meeting at our union hall

And damn the High Sheriff of Hazard!

/

Now men there are many who sweat out their lives

To scratch out a living for children and wives

They sweat for their pennies while the mine owner thrives

With the blessings of the High Sheriff of Hazard

/

And when union men strike and the troubles come on

The High Sheriff's word is the mine owner's bond

He's a mine owner, too; you know which side he's on

He's the wealthy High Sheriff of Hazard

/

Well, it seems to be so since this world first began

That some men are willing to scheme and to plan

To gouge out a fortune from the poor working man

For example: the High Sheriff of Hazard

/

But the answer is simple, the answer is clear

We'll all get together with nothing to fear

And throw the old bastard right out on his ear

Farewell to the High Sheriff of Hazard

---

“Which Side Are You On?” by Pete Seeger, was referenced in Paxton’s “High Sheriff of Hazard”, and is a 1941 version of the song which was originally written in 1931 by Florence Reece, the wife of a Kentucky coal miner during the deadly and bitter Harlan Country Coal Wars of the 1930s. I have a very funny feeling that the Cape Breton coal miner Clarie Gillis likely would have liked this song given what happened to William Davis in 1925:

---

Chorus: *

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

---

Come all of you good workers

Good news to you I'll tell

Of how the good ol' union

Has come in here to dwell

*

My daddy was a miner

And I'm a miner's son

And I'll stick with the union

'Til every battle's won

*

They say in Harlan County

There are no neutrals there

You'll either be a union man

Or a thug for J. H. Blair

*

Oh, workers can you stand it?

Oh, tell me how you can

Will you be a lousy scab

Or will you be a man?

*

Don't scab for the bosses

Don't listen to their lies

Us poor folks haven't got a chance

Unless we organize

*

---

“The Ballad of Joe Hill” by Phil Ochs is a song that tells the life story of the Swedish-American Wobbly Martyr Joe Hill, who was executed by firing squad in Utah on November 19, 1915. This live version of Ochs’ playing the song in Sweden is an abridged version, believe it or not:

---

Joe Hill come over from Sweden’s shores

Looking for some work to do

And the Statue of Liberty waved him by

As Joe come a sailing through, Joe Hill

As Joe come a sailing through

/

Oh his clothes were coarse and his hopes were high

As he headed for the promised land

And it took a few weeks on the out-of-work streets

Before he began to understand

Before he began to understand

/

And Joe got hired by a bowery bar

Sweeping up the saloon

As his rag would sail o'er the bar-room rail

It sounded like he whistled on a tune

You could almost hear him whistling on a tune

/

So he headed out for the California shore

There things were just as bad

So he joined the Industrial Workers of the World

'Cause the union was the only friend he had

'Cause the union was the only friend he had

/

Now the strikes were bloody and the strikes were black

As hard as they were long

In the dark of the night Joe would stay awake and write

In the morning he would raise them with a song

In the morning he would raise them with a song

/

And he wrote his words to the tunes of the day

To be passed along the union vine

And the strikes were led and the songs were spread

And Joe Hill was always on the line

Yes, Joe Hill was always on the line

/

Now in Salt Lake City a murder was made

There was hardly a clue to find

Oh, the proof was poor, but the sheriff was sure

Joe was the killer of the crime

That Joe was the killer of the crime

/

Joe raised his hands but they shot him down

He had nothing but guilt to give

“It's a doctor I need!” and they left him to bleed

But he made it 'cause he had the will to live

Yes, he made it 'cause he had the will to live

/

Then the trial was held in a building of wood

And there the killer would be named

And the days weighed more than the cold copper ore

'Cause he feared that he was being framed

'Cause he found out that he was being framed

/

Oh, strange are the ways of the western law

Strange are the ways of fate

For the government crawled to the mine owner's call

And the judge was appointed by the state

The judge was appointed by the state

/

For thirty-six years he lived out his days

And he more than played his part

For the songs that he made, he was carefully paid

With a rifle bullet buried in his heart

With a rifle bullet buried in his heart

/

Yes, they lined Joe Hill up against the wall

Blindfold over his eyes

It's the life of the rebel that he chose to live

It's the death of the rebel that he died

It's the death of the rebel that he died

/

Now some say Joe was guilty as charged

And some say he wasn't even there

And I guess nobody will ever know

'Cause the court records all disappeared

'Cause the court records all disappeared

/

Say wherever you go in this fair land

In every union hall

In the dusty dark these words are marked

In between all the cracks upon the wall

In between all the cracks upon the wall

/

It's the very last lines that Joe Hill wrote

When he knew that his days were through:

"Boys, this is my last and final will:

Good luck to all of you

Good luck to all of you"

---

“There is Power in a Union” by Utah Phillips is a 1983 recording of a song originally written by Joe Hill in 1913. It should be no surprise that Utah Phillips was a Wobbly:

---

Chorus: *

There is power, there is power, in a band of working folk

When we stand, hand in hand

That's a power, that's a power, that must rule in every land

One industrial union grand!

---

Would you have freedom from wage slavery?

Then come join the grand industrial band!

Would you from misery and hunger be free?

C'mon do your share, lend a hand!

*

Would you have mansions of gold in the sky,

And live in a shack that's way in the back?

Would you have wings up in heaven to fly,

And starve here with rags on your back?

*

If you like sluggers to beat-in your head:

“Don't organize, all unions despise!”

If you want nothing before you are dead:

“Shake hands with your boss and look wise!”

*

Oh come all ye workers from every land,

And come join the grand industrial band!

Then, we our share of this earth, shall demand,

C'mon do your share, lend a hand!

*

---

I think Failed State by David Rovics is an excellent take-down of the modern American Empire from 2018, interestingly from the album “Ballad of a Wobbly”:

---

When you’re working two jobs and living in a tent

When a house costs a million bucks and you can’t pay the rent

When politicians say they’ll help but it keeps getting worse

Each time the landlord lobby pulls the strings of the purse

When the human right to housing isn’t even part of the debate

You know you’re living in a failed state

/

When millions of citizens are spending half their lives

Locked up in a prison for trying to survive

When laws must be broken just to have a place to stay

When the prisons pay the senators to look the other way

If you have to be a criminal to put food on your plate

You know you’re living in a failed state

/

When you’re facing climate breakdown, when the trees are all on fire

When half the country’s underwater, when a climate change denier

Runs the nation and the opposition party

Votes for oil rigs and pipelines, this is not so much a country

As it is a corporation, buckling under its weight

You know you’re living in a failed state

/

When your nation is an empire facing daily blowback

And the only thing your leaders can think to do is attack

Bipartisan consensus that we need to spend

700 billion before the year’s end

On a military budget To Make America Great

You know you’re living in a failed state

/

When almost every day some psycho with a gun

Has to open fire on a crowd before it’s done

When a music festival becomes a free fire zone

And all they can say is: “It’s OK now, he was acting alone!

Buy some armour, pray to God and hide behind a gate!”

You know you’re living in a failed state

/

You know you’re living in a failed state

---

Crucifixion by Phil Ochs is a 1966 song which indirectly compares the assassination of John F. Kennedy with the Crucifixion of Christ, in a cyclical view of history; Phil Ochs once played this song for Bobby Kennedy in ‘67, who tearfully made the connection with his late brother, a year before his own assassination in ‘68:

---

Chorus: *

So dance, dance, dance

Teach us to be true

Come, dance, dance, dance

'Cause we love you

---

And the night comes again to the circle-studded sky

The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie

'Til the universe explodes as a falling star is raised

Planets are paralyzed, the mountains are amazed

But they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blaze

With the speed of insanity, then he dies

/

In the green fields a-turning, a baby is born

His cries crease the wind and mingle with the ‘morn

An assault upon the order, the changing of the guard

Chosen for a challenge that is hopelessly hard

And the only single sound is the sighing of the stars

But to the silence of distance they are sworn

*

Images of innocence charge him to go on

But the decadence of destiny is looking for a pawn

To a nightmare of knowledge he opens up the gate

And a binding revelation is laid upon his plate

That beneath the greatest love is a hurricane of hate

And God help the critic of the dawn

/

So he stands on the sea and he shouts to the shore

But the louder that he screams, the longer he's ignored

For the wine of oblivion is drunk to the dregs

And the merchants of the masses almost have to be begged

'Til the giant is aware, someone's pulling at his leg

And someone is tapping at the door

*

Then his message gathers meaning and it spreads across the land

The rewarding of his fame is the following of the man

But ignorance is everywhere and people have their way

Success is an enemy to the losers of the day

In the shadows of the churches, who knows what they pray?

For blood is the language of the band

/

The Spanish bull is beaten, the crowd is soon beguiled

The matador is beautiful, a symphony of style

Excitement is ecstatic, passion places bets

Gracefully, he bows to ovations that he gets

But the hands that are applauding are slippery with sweat

And saliva is falling from their smiles

*

Then this overflow of life is crushed into a liar

The gentle soul is ripped apart and tossed into the fire

First, a smile of rejection at the nearness of the night

Truth becomes a tragedy limping from the light

All the heavens are horrified, they stagger from the sight

As the cross is trembling with desire

/

And they say they can't believe it, it's a sacrilegious shame

Now, who would want to hurt such a hero of the game?

But you know, I predicted it, I knew he had to fall

How did it happen? I hope his suffering was small

Tell me every detail, for I've got to know it all

And do you have a picture of the pain?

*

Time takes a toll and memory fades

But his glory is growing in magic that he made

Reality is ravaged, it's the freeing from the fear

The drama is distorted, to what they want to hear

Swimming in their sorrow, in the twisting of a tear

As they wait for the new thrill parade

/

Yes, the eyes of the rebel have been branded by the blind

To the safety of sterility, the threat has been refined

The child was created, to the slaughterhouse he's led

So good to be alive when the eulogies are read

Climax of emotion, the worship of the dead

As the cycle of sacrifice unwinds

*

And the night comes again to the circle-studded sky

The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie

'Til the universe explodes as a falling star is raised

Planets are paralyzed, the mountains are amazed

But they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blaze

With the speed of insanity, then he died

---

“Too Many Martyrs” by Phil Ochs is another song from his 1964 album “All The News That’s Fit To Sing””, and this song commemorates Medgar Evers: a combat veteran of the D-Day landings in Normandy, and later a civil rights activist with the NAACP who was assassinated by the Ku Klux Klan in 1963. While Evers was buried with full military honours at the Arlington National Cemetery, two different juries refused to convict his known assassin in 1964; it wouldn’t be until 1994 that Evers’ assassin would be convicted.

---

Chorus: *

Too many martyrs and too many dead

Too many lies, too many empty words were said

Too many times for too many angry men

Oh, let it never be again

---

In the state of Mississippi many years ago

A boy of 14 years got a taste of Southern law

He saw his friend a-hanging, his colour was his crime

And the blood upon his jacket put a brand upon his mind

*

His name was Medgar Evers and he walked his road alone

Like Emmett Till and thousands more whose names we'll never know

They tried to burn his home and they beat him to the ground

But deep inside they both knew what it took to bring him down

*

The killer waited by his home, hidden by the night

As Evers stepped out from his car, into the rifle sight

He slowly squeezed the trigger, the bullet left his side

It struck the heart of every man when Evers fell and died

*

And they laid him in his grave while the bugle sounded clear

Laid him in his grave when the victory was near

While we waited for the future, for freedom through the land

The country gained a killer and the country lost a man

*

Oh, let it never be again

Oh, let it never be again

---

“William Moore” by Phil Ochs is another song about a murdered civil rights activist: this time William L. Moore, a WWII combat veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, who was shot during a protest walk where he attempted to hand-deliver a letter to the Governor of Alabama requesting an end to racial segregation. Despite it being known which Klansman shot Moore in 1963 during his protest walk, there was “not enough evidence” to even indict the shooter for a trial.

---

Chorus: *

What price the glory of one man?

What price the glory of one man?

What price the hopes?

What price the dreams?

And what price the glory of one man?

---

Walkin' down an Alabama road

Rememberin' what the Bible told

Walkin' with a letter in his hand

Dreamin' of another southern land

Walkin' down an Alabama road

/

And he went by the name of William Moore

“Now what are you doing, William Moore?”

“Why the letter in your hand?”

“There is only one southern land”

“And he went by the name of William Moore”

*

Remembering what his grandfather done

Fought for the South in '61

A hundred years have passed by since then

Now Moore is fighting’ for the South again

Remembering what his grandfather done

/

Remembering the time in World War Two

And the South Pacific Island that he knew

Remembering the young men that he killed

And the praying that the guns of hate be stilled

Remembering the time in World War Two

*

And they shot him on the Alabama road

Forgot about what the Bible told

They shot him with that letter in his hand

As though he were a dog and not a man

They shot him on the Alabama road

/

Did you say it was a shame when he died?

Did you say he was a fool because he tried?

Did you wonder who had fired the gun?

Did you know that it was you that fired the gun?

Did you say it was a shame when he died?

*

---

The Ballad of Sharpeville by Ewan Maccoll & Peegy Seeger, British brother-in-law and sister of Pete Seeger, is a 1978 recording of an Anti-Apartheid protest song about the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa. In regards to Canadian Toryism more broadly, the Disraelian “Red” Tory John Diefenbaker would take a stand against Apartheid South Africa a year later at the 1961 Commonwealth Prime Minster’s Conference in which South Africa was forced to leave the Commonwealth. Two decades later, the “Blue Tory” Brian Mulroney would use his personal influence with Margaret Thatcher & Ronald Reagan to continue the fight against Apartheid South Africa, against the wishes of the latter two, until Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990; Mulroney worked with everyone from the Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu to the NDP’er Stephen Lewis in helping to organize the final fight against Apartheid in South Africa.

---

From the Cape to Southwest Africa

From the Transvaal to the sea

In farm and village, shanty town

The Pass Law holds the people down

The pass of slavery, “DOM PASS!”

The pass of slavery

/

The morning wind blows through the land

It murmurs in the grass

And every leaf of every tree

Whispers words of hope to me

This day will end the pass, “DOM PASS!”

This day will end the pass

/

The sun comes up on Sharpeville Town

And drives the night away

The word is heard in every street

Against the Pass Law we will meet

No one will work today, “DOM PASS!”

No one will work today

/

It was on the Twenty-First of March

The day of Sharpeville's shame

Hour by hour the crowd did grow

One voice that cried, “The pass must go!”

It spoke in freedom's name, “DOM PASS!”

It spoke in freedom's name

/

Outside the police headquarters fence

The Sharpeville people stand

Inside the fence, the white men pace

Drunk with power, and pride of race

Each with a gun in hand, “DOM PASS!”

Each with a gun in hand

/

The Sharpeville crowd waits patiently

They talk and laugh and sing

At 11:15 the tanks come down

Roll through the streets of Sharpeville town

To join the armoured ring, “DOM PASS!”

To join the armoured ring

/

Neighbour talks to neighbour, and

The kids play all around

Until, without a warning word

The sound of rifle fire is heard

And men fall to the ground, “DOM PASS!”

And men fall to the ground

/

The panic-stricken people run

To flee the wild attack

The police reload and fire again

At running children, women, men

And shoot them in the back, “DOM PASS!”

And shoot them in the back

/

Sixty-seven Africans

Lay dead there on the ground

Apartheid's harvest for a day

Three times their number wounded lay

Their blood stained all around, “DOM PASS!”

Their blood stained all around

/

There's blood on the men who fired the guns

On the men who made the laws

There's blood on the hands of the Whitehall ranks

Who gave the thugs their guns and tanks

Who help in oppression's cause, “DOM PASS!”

Who help in oppression's cause

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So I recently found this new youtube channel which is looking at different stories of the rise/fall/revival of different Canadian businesses.

Two particular themes occur over and over in the downfall of Canadian companies; 1. American buy-out (often by private equity firms) and 2. the use of loss-leader pricing to break Canadian businesses.

Co-ops are an interesting idea to me (whether consumer-owned, employee owned, or operator-owned) not because they tend to allow greater profits to stay in a local area, give workers a greater say in operations, or because they produce lower prices (although they can do these things). Rather, its because I think the co-op structure insulates the business in question from takeovers - especially American takeovers. A&W in Canada is an example of a franchisee-ownership model which has allowed it to put the unconnected American branch of A&W to shame. This isn't a total protection, however, Mountain Equipment Co-op was customer-owned but through its board of director's strategic use of bankruptcy protection (CCAA) they were able to sell the company and abolish the co-op element of the company without consulting the members. Given the organization and unhappiness of Tim Hortons franchise owners I could totally see them following A&W's example at some point and attempting to take control of the company for themselves (Tim Hortons itself being an example of buy-out by private equity).

A somewhat less frequent theme is the use of loss-leader pricing to drive a competitor out of business. This was a contributor in the end of Sam the Record Man when HMV began its effort to break into the Canadian market. Its also one of the pillars of Walmart's battle plan whenever it opens a new store to break local - often independent - competition. For this reason I think there should be some kind of limit on loss-leader pricing as it turns honest competition into who can absorb a loss for longer.