Онтарийская секция Кооперативного содружества (CCF): История партии

The Co operative Commonwealth Federation (Ontario Section) – The Farmer Labor Party of Ontario, more commonly known as the Ontario CCF, was a democratic socialist provincial political party in Ontario that existed from 1932 to 1961. It was the provincial wing of the federal Co operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). The party had no leader in the beginning, and was governed by a provincial council and executive. The party's first Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) was elected by voters in the 1934 Ontario general election. In the 1937 general election, no CCF members were elected to the Ontario Legislature. In 1942, the party elected Toronto lawyer Ted Jolliffe as its first leader. He led the party to within a few seats of forming the government in the 1943 general election; instead, it formed the Official Opposition. In that election, the first two women were elected to the Ontario Legislature as CCFers: Agnes Macphail and Rae Luckock. The 1945 election was a setback, as the party lost most of its seats in the Legislature, including Jolliffe's seat. The party again became the Official Opposition after the 1948 general election, and defeated the Conservative premier George Drew in his seat, when Bill Temple unexpectedly won in the High Park constituency. The middle and late 1940s were the peak years for the Ontario CCF. After that time, its electoral performances were dismal, as it was reduced to a rump of two seats in the 1951 election, three seats in the 1955 election, and five seats in the 1959 election. Jolliffe stepped down as leader in 1953, and was replaced by Donald C. MacDonald. The period between the 1951 defeat and the founding of the Ontario New Democratic Party was one of much internal strife, but MacDonald managed to keep the party together, despite the constant electoral defeats. In October 1961, the party dissolved itself and became part of the New Democratic Party.

The Ontario CCF was indirectly the successor to the 1919–23 United Farmers of Ontario–Labour coalition that formed the government in Ontario under Ernest C. Drury. While in 1934 several former United Farmer Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) became Liberal Progressives aligned with the Ontario Liberal Party, the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO), as an organization, participated in the formation of the Ontario CCF, and was briefly affiliated with the party. Macphail, as president of the Ontario Provincial Council, persuaded her fellow delegates at the December 1932 UFO convention to affiliate with the CCF provincial council. Macphail served as the first chairman of the Ontario CCF from 1932 until 1934. As a UFO Member of Parliament (MP) in the Canadian House of Commons, she was forced to resign from the CCF after the UFO withdrew from the party after alleging communist influence in it. Consequently, the UFO's two candidates in the 1934 provincial election, longtime incumbent MLA Farquhar Oliver (Grey South) and former MLA Leslie Warner Oke (Lambton East) under the UFO banner rather than with the CCF (though Oke was also endorsed by the CCF). Oliver was elected and would caucus with the Liberals before joining the party several years later. Macphail later served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as the CCF Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for York East from 1943 to 1945 and again from 1948 to 1951. Samuel Lawrence, an Independent Labour Party member of Hamilton City Council, was elected to the Ontario legislature as a CCF MPP in the 1934 provincial election, the first Ontario election contested by the CCF. and served as Mayor of Hamilton from 1944 to 1949 leading a CCF slate in that city. Alderman John Mitchell of Hamilton was elected the first Ontario CCF president in 1934 as part of a reorganization of the party after its provincial council had been suspended by federal leader J. S. Woodsworth for suspected communist infiltration. The reorganization created a new provincial council and central party executive and centralized what had been a loose structure of affiliate organizations and riding clubs. It was accompanied by a purge of party clubs and affiliates suspected of having been infiltrated by Communists and the removal of suspected Communists from senior party positions. The reorganization was prompted by complaints of Communist infiltration, due to the party's previously loose structure. In reaction to alleged Communist involvement, the United Farmers of Ontario disaffiliated from the CCF. Mitchell unofficially led the Ontario CCF during the 1934 Ontario general election and conducted a province wide tour during the 1937 election campaign but failed to win a seat in the Legislature. He continued as party president until 1941. Graham Spry, a publisher and broadcaster who was also a member of the LSR, served as the Ontario CCF's vice president of its provincial council from 1934 to 1936. He was the first federal CCF candidate in Ontario, running in the September 24, 1934 by election in Toronto East. The disagreement was in regards to how much support the fledgling CCF should give Smith, leader of the Canadian Labour Defence League, who had been charged with sedition for claiming that the state had attempted to assassinate imprisoned Communist Party of Canada leader Tim Buck. The CLDC was a communist front group. The issue of what relationship the CCF should have with the Communist Party came to the fore again in 1936 when the party voted to ban any united front with Communists, over the objections of prominent CCFers such as East York reeve Arthur Henry Williams. Two candidates came forward: Toronto lawyer and Ontario CCF vice president Ted Jolliffe, and union activist and former Ontario CCF Youth Movement organizer Murray Cotterill. His office was supposed to be investigating war time 5th column saboteurs. Instead, starting in November 1943, he was investigating, almost exclusively, Ontario opposition MPPs, mainly focusing on the CCF caucus. The fact that Jolliffe knew about these 'secret' investigations as early as February 1944 led to one of the most infamous incidents in 20th century Canadian politics.

The 1945 campaign was anything but genteel and polite. Jolliffe replied by giving a radio speech – written with the assistance of Lister Sinclair – that accused Drew of running a political Gestapo in Ontario. In the speech excerpt below, Jolliffe alleged that a secret department of the Ontario Provincial Police was acting as a political police – spying on the opposition and the media. Jolliffe's inflammatory speech became the main issue of the campaign, and dominated coverage in the media for the rest of the election. Drew, and his Attorney General Leslie Blackwell vehemently denied Jolliffe's accusations, but the public outcry was too much for them to abate. On May 26, 1945, during his own radio speech, Drew announced that he would be appointing a Royal Commission to investigate these charges. Jolliffe's CCF and Mitchell Hepburn's Ontario Liberal Party wanted the election suspended until the commission tabled its report. Hepburn sent Drew a personal telegram stating he would stop campaigning if the commission were held immediately. Drew ignored these requests and continued to hold the election on its original date, despite it being many months before the commission's findings would be made available.

Jolliffe's CCF went from 34 seats to 8, but almost garnered the same number of votes cast, though their percentage of the popular vote dropped from 32 to 22 percent. A Gallup poll done a month earlier showed the CCF at essentially the same percentage, making it questionable whether or not the "Gestapo" speech had an effect on the campaign. Drew, with his attack campaign, successfully drove the voter turn out up, thereby driving the CCF's percentage and seat totals down. Nineteen forty five was one of Ontario's most important elections in the 20th century, according to Caplan and David Lewis. It shaped the province for the next 40 years, as the Conservatives won a massive majority in the Legislature, and would remain in government for the next 40 consecutive years–most of that time with majority governments until the mid 1970s. For Jolliffe, another election consequence was his tenure as the MPP from York South ended, at least for the time being. He lost the election but did better than any other CCF candidate in Toronto or in the outlying Yorks.

On May 28, Drew appointed Justice A. M. LeBel as the Royal Commissioner, thereby forming what has become known as the LeBel Royal Commission. His terms of reference were restricted to the question of whether Drew was personally responsible for the establishment of "a secret political police organization, for the purpose of collecting, by secret spying, material to be used in attempt to keep him in power." Wider questions like why the OPP, Ontario civil servants, were keeping files on MPPs were not allowed. Jolliffe acted as his own counsel throughout the commission, but was assisted by fellow CCF lawyer, Andrew Brewin. He and Brewin were able to establish, from several eyewitnesses, that agent D 208, Dempster, was spying on the CCF. What they could not prove, because they did not have access to the information in 1945, were the letters that Drew wrote to his supporter M. A. (Bugsy) Sanderson suggesting that he would finance any lawsuits or other charges stemming from the information provided by Dempster in his advertisements. Sanderson was, in late 1943 to 1945, along with Gladstone Murray, leading the libellous advertisement campaigns against the CCF in newspapers and billboards, with information gleaned from Dempster's briefings. Jolliffe presented several witnesses that claimed to have seen these documents. But Jolliffe could not produce the letter, and Drew denied ever writing it. On October 11, 1945, Justice LeBel issued his report that essentially exonerated Drew and Blackwell. Because Jolliffe presented only circumstantial evidence that linked Drew to Dempster, Murray and Sanderson, the Commissioner found the information unconvincing, even though LeBel believed Dempster's interaction with Sanderson and Murray was inappropriate. Jolliffe's motives regarding his accusations, and his choice of words, were questioned for many years afterwards. In the late 1970s, when David Lewis was doing research for his Memoirs, he came across archival evidence proving the charge. Because of Lewis's discovery, Drew's son Edward, placed extremely restrictive conditions on his father's papers housed in the Public Archives of Canada. As Lewis pointed out in his memoirs, "We found that Premier Drew and Gladstone Murray did not disclose all information to the Lebel Commission; indeed, they deliberately prevaricated throughout. The head of the Government of Ontario had given false witness under testimony The perpetrator of Ontario's Watergate got away with it."

After the LeBel Report was published, the Ontario CCF still had to go on with the business of running the party, and hold its annual convention. It had been over 18 months since the previous provincial convention was held. The convention was held from Thursday, November 22, to Saturday, November 24 at the Toronto Labor Lyceum on Spadina Avenue. After that, the party's establishment candidates held on to their positions: University of Toronto professor, George Grube remained as president, while Jolliffe remained leader. In 1946, there was major labour strife in Ontario, and the CCF made it clear they were on the side of the unionists. The party's annual convention was held outside of Toronto for the first time. The convention was held at the Royal Connaught Hotel in Hamilton, Ontario from December 9–11, 1946, the city where the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) went through a long protracted strike about reducing the work week to 40 hours. Jolliffe faced a leadership challenge at this convention from former Toronto Controller Lewis Duncan. There were rumblings in 1945 that Duncan would take over from Jolliffe, but that was rumoured to be only if he were able to defeat Drew in the High Park constituency, which he failed to do. As party chairman John Mitchell stated at the time, it wasn't even close, as Jolliffe was easily re elected CCF leader again for the fourth time. The CCF were able to rebound from their previous dismal election performance in 1945, and this time managed to get 21 members elected, including Jolliffe in York South, to again form the Official Opposition. The real surprise was that Premier Drew lost his seat, even though his Progressive Conservatives won a majority. In his High Park constituency, Drew was up against his local nemesis William (Bill) Temple. Temple was a temperance campaigner and made Drew's cocktail bar legislation the main campaign issue. Temple castigated Drew for softening Ontario's liquor laws, claiming the Premier was the captive of "liquor interests" because of the government's decision to allow liquor sales in cocktail bars.