There have been various groups in Canada that have nominated candidates under the label Labour Party or Independent Labour Party, or other variations from the 1870s until the 1960s. These were usually local or provincial groups using the Labour Party or Independent Labour Party name, backed by local labour councils made up of many union locals in a particular city, or individual trade unions. There was an attempt to create a national Canadian Labour Party in the late 1910s and in the 1920s, but these were only partly successful.
The Communist Party of Canada (CPC), formed in 1921, fulfilled some of labour's political yearnings from coast to coast, and then the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) – Worker Farmer Socialist was formed in 1932. With organic ties to the organized labour movement, this was a labour party by definition. Prior to the CCFs formation in 1932, the Socialist Party of Canada was strong in British Columbia and in Alberta before World War I, while the Dominion Labour Party and the Canadian Labour Party were strong in Alberta through the 1920s and 1930s, and the Independent Labour Party led by J. S. Woodsworth was strong in Manitoba in the 1920s and 1930s.
An Edmonton-based Independent Labour Party ran candidates in the 1921 Alberta general election. It was independent in the sense that it was separate from the Edmonton Labour Council, which was dominated by international craft unions. Later, many of its proponents joined the CPC. A number of local Labour parties and clubs participated in the formation of the CPC in 1921. The Independent Labour Party (Manitoba), the Canadian Labour Party, the Dominion Labour Party, and other labour groups helped found the CCF in 1932.
Ralph Smith, a miner, ran as an Independent Labour candidate in Vancouver in the 1900 federal election but took his seat in the Canadian House of Commons as a Liberal. He was subsequently re-elected as a Liberal in the 1904 and 1908 before being defeated in 1911.
Alphonse Verville was elected as a Labour candidate in a 1906 by-election in Maisonneuve, Quebec. He was re-elected in 1908 and 1911. He grew close to the Liberals during his service as MP, and he ran and was re-elected as a Laurier Liberal in the 1917 federal election.
James Lockwood ran as a Labour party candidate in the 1917 federal election in Algoma West, but was defeated.
William Irvine, a close friend of J.S. Woodsworth, represented the riding of East Calgary (Calgary East), Alberta as a Labour MP from 1921 to 1925. He also served as a United Farmers of Alberta MP for Wetaskiwin from 1926 to 1935, during which time he helped found the CCF. He sat as a CCF MP for Cariboo, British Columbia from 1945 to 1949.
Joseph Shaw represented West Calgary (Calgary West), Alberta as a Labour MP from 1921 to 1925. (He later also sat as a Liberal MLA from 1926 to 1930.)
Angus MacInnis was an Independent Labour Party MP from 1930 to 1935 and sat as a CCF MP from 1935;
A. A. Heaps was elected as a Labour MP for Winnipeg North in 1925, 1926 and 1930 and was re-elected as a CCFer in 1935;
J. S. Woodsworth founded the Manitoba Independent Labour Party in December 1920. He served as an MP from 1921 until his death in 1942, at first as an ILP MP, later as a CCF MP. He was the first leader of the CCF after its founding in 1932.
Humphrey Mitchell was elected as a Labour MP representing Hamilton East in a 1931 by-election. Close to William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberals, he did not get along with other Labour and Independent Labour MPs and refused to join the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation when it was founded in 1932. The CCF ran a candidate against Mitchell in 1935 (the Liberals did not) and the vote split resulted in Mitchell's defeat by the Conservative candidate. In 1941 he was appointed to the federal Cabinet as Minister of Labour and soon after returned to the House of Commons as a Liberal MP via a by-election in Welland.
MacInnis, Heaps and Woodsworth joined the Ginger Group of left wing MPs prior to forming the CCF. Alberta Labour MPs Irvine and Shaw, and its UFA MPs, also were in the Ginger Group.
The last Labour MLA elected to the legislature was Earl Hutchinson who was elected in Kenora in 1929 and re-elected in 1934. He agreed to resign shortly after his re-election to allow former Labour MLA Peter Heenan to seek the Kenora seat in a by-election so that he could be appointed to the provincial cabinet by the newly elected Liberal government of Mitchell Hepburn. Hutchinson accepted an appointment by Hepburn to the post of vice-chairman of the Workmen's Compensation Board shortly after leaving politics.
John Queen was a Manitoba MLA from 1921 to 1941 under various Labour labels, most significantly he was leader of the ILP from 1923 to 1935 and joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation upon the ILP's affiliation to it. He was also Mayor of Winnipeg for much of the time between 1934 and 1942.
Alex Ross, Labour MLA for Calgary from 1917 to 1926, elected in Calgary in 1917 (as a candidate for the Alberta Labor Representation League), was re-elected as Dominion Labour Party candidate in 1921,[3] was named to the provincial cabinet of the United Farmers of Alberta government, when it was elected in 1921, as Minister of Public Works. Helped form the Alberta wing of the Canadian Labour Party in 1922, was defeated in the 1926 general election.
Philip Christophers, Labour MLA for Rocky Mountain, elected in 1921 and re-elected in 1926.
William Johnston, Labour MLA for Medicine Hat from 1921 until 1926.
Fred J. White, Labour MLA for Calgary from 1921 until 1935. elected to the legislature in 1921 for Calgary, re-elected in 1926 and 1930; leader of the Labour caucus in the Alberta legislature from 1926 to 1935; president of the Alberta Federation of Labour from 1926 to 1941 as well as a long-serving secretary of the Calgary Trades and Labour Council and a Labour alderman in Calgary until 1939.
Andrew Smeaton, Labour MLA for Lethbridge elected in 1926, re-elected in 1930 and defeated in 1935.
As well, Alberta Labour candidates, under the labels of the Dominion Labor Party and Canadian Labor Party, ran with some success at the civic level in Edmonton, Calgary, Medicine Hat, and Lethbridge and coal-mining towns, such as Drumheller and Blairmore (which even elected a Communist Party-dominated town council in the 1930s).[4]
In British Columbia
Although there were no parties in the British Columbia legislature until 1903, various candidates began to declare for labour parties in the 1890s. In 1894 Robert Macpherson, running for the leftist Nationalist Party, won a seat in Vancouver City.[5]
The first to succeed, in the 1898 election, was Ralph Smith, in the coal-mining riding of South Nanaimo. Once the party system was introduced, Smith joined the Liberal Party and was re-elected as a Liberal in the 1903 and then won a seat as MP in the House of Commons of Canada in the 1904 and 1908 elections, but was defeated for his seat in the 1911. He returned to provincial politics and won his seat again as part of the province's first Liberal government in the wake of the general election of 1916. He served as Finance Minister in that government until his death in 1917, and was succeeded by his wife, Mary Ellen Smith, who won the resulting by-election and sat as an Independent Liberal, later becoming the first female cabinet minister in the British Empire.
Thomas Uphill was the Labour MLA for Fernie in the British Columbia Legislative Assembly from 1920 until 1960. He was elected as a Federated Labour Party candidate in the 1920 British Columbia general election, re-elected as part of the Canadian Labour Party slate in 1924 continued to run and win as an Independent Labour or Labour candidate rather than join the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation until his last victory in 1956. Uphill retired, undefeated, in 1960. From 1941 until 1952 the CCF unsuccessfully ran candidates against him. They did not stand against Uphill beginning in the 1953 election. The Labor-Progressive Party, with which Uphill had sympathies, never stood candidates against him.
In 1917, the Trades and Labour Congress (TLC) national convention in Toronto passed a resolution calling on provincial labour federations to establish a political party which would unite socialist and labour parties in the province and eventually form a national party. A Canadian Labour Party was formed, and endorsed several candidates in the 1917 federal election. The leadership of the TLC changed in 1918, however, and the new leaders favoured the "non-partisan" approach of American Federation of Labor leader Samuel Gompers. The CLP was abandoned, as such.
Between 1920 and 1926, provincial parties (or provincial wings of national bodies) were founded in British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.
From 1906 to 1909, there was a Canadian Labour Party of B.C. (CLP(BC)). This party was a split from and rival to a group calling itself the Independent Labour Party.
A later Independent Labour Party was organized in British Columbia in 1926 by the Federated Labour Party and Canadian Labour Party (B.C. section) branches. In 1928, it severed its CLP(BC) connections. In 1931, it reorganized, and was renamed the Independent Labour Party (Socialist). The following year it became the Socialist Party of Canada.
The Alberta wing of the Dominion Labour Party was formed in 1920. Unlike the Manitoba DLP, radicals did not lose control of this group. and it was not split by a radical-versus-reformist schism. It remained a viable organization until the 1930s, in an alliance with the Canadian Labour Party (see below). It elected a few MPs in Calgary in the 1921, 1925, 1926 and 1930 federal elections. Both the DLP and the CLP helped found the CCF in 1932.
The Ontario Labour Party was created in 1922, led by James Simpson of the Independent Labour Party, and the Reverend A. E. Smith, later of the Communist Party of Canada.
In 1921, Simpson also revived the Canadian Labour Party. The CLP was intended to be an umbrella organization for the various labour parties throughout the country. It formed alliances with the Federated Labour Party, Ontario Labour Party, Dominion Labour Party and other groups, including local labour councils, (although not with the Manitoba ILP). The Alberta wing of the CLP was founded in 1922. Between 1922 and 1924, the provincial and city branches of the Workers Party of Canada (the legal face of the Communist Party of Canada) also joined the CLP. It was never a strong central organization, however, and never elected a candidate at the national level. The CLP ceased to exist in most parts of the country after 1929, when the Communists withdrew. In Alberta, the CLP survived until 1942, in arms-length alliance with the Alberta Co-operative Commonwealth Federation after 1932.
Liberal-Labour
At various times in political history of Canada and of Ontario, candidates have sought election as Liberal-Labour candidates. (Please see linked article.)
Conservative Labour
Conservative Labour was the label used by Conservative Party of Canada politician Henry Buckingham Witton as a candidate in Hamilton, Ontario from 1872 to 1875. Witton may have added "Labour" to the Conservative Party name because Hamilton is a largely industrial city. The first workingman ever to sit in parliament in Canada, Witton was elected largely on the strength of the Hamilton labour movement. Indeed, his candidacy was aided by workers throughout southern Ontario, as can be seen by the very supportive coverage he received in the (Toronto) Ontario Workman.
Across Canada, labour and the farmers movements, particularly the United Farmers, formed alliances, and often ran joint candidates. The Progressive Party of Canada was effectively a coalition of farmer and labour groups.
Agnes Macphail, who was first elected to the House of Commons as a Progressive, was re-elected in 1935 as a UFO-Labour candidate before being defeated in 1940. She was a supporter of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, but ran as UFO-Labour because the UFO, of which she was a member, had disaffiliated from the CCF in 1934 after a brief association.
A small number of candidates ran under the "Farmer-Labour" banner in federal elections of the 1930s and 1940s, although there was no organized party. None of these candidates ever won election to the House of Commons. One of these candidates was Beatrice Brigden who was the first Farmer-Labour candidate from Brandon, Manitoba. She ran in 1930, but was defeated by David Wilson Beaubier.[6] Farmer-Labour co-operation would be enshrined as a guiding principle of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, founded in 1932, and of its successor, the NDP.
The Labour MLAs elected in 1921 (six at the most at any one time) worked with the United Farmers of Alberta government during its 14 years in power, and one even sat as a cabinet minister in the UFA cabinet for five years.
Alberta's Labour MPs and its UFA MPs, who together held all the Alberta seats from 1921 to 1925, were active in the Ginger Group.
^Campbell, Allison (1 August 1991). Beatrice Brigden: the formative years of a socialist feminist, 1888-1932 (Thesis). Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba. pp. 138–139. hdl:1993/3625. ocm72817817.
