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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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

---

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.

The old Sovereignist-Federalist debate has one again become a central theme in Québec as the spectre of a Parti Québécois government and another referendum hovers over the province. What's fast become a major point too is who's best positioned to defend Québec against the American tariff threat and Canada-US trade war.

Neither the Coalition Avenir Québec after it's 8 years of government mismanagement or the Parti libérale that suffers from a serious corruption problem deserve my vote, but I feel forced to make the decision to vote for one above the other. It's gross and I hate it.

There exists no alternatives and even if there were it would be a vote thrown away. The parti conservateur might as well be called the parti libertarien, Québec Solidaire has some interesting ideas but are very much a hard-left and Sovereignist party, the parti vert is irrelevant, so on and so forth.

This is a horrible election cycle to be a Red Tory and a federalist.

Thanks for listening!

Here is this week's essay: Retirement natural to a great mind.

Here is last week's thread: Rambler Reading Group, Week 6: Happiness not local. : r/Toryism

Substack Version

Part XV

Part XIV

This essay seeks to build on an idea that I argued for in the last few parts of this series: that both the British Labour Party and the Canadian CCF/NDP can be seen as ideological heirs to the “Tory Democracy” or “One Nation conservative” philosophy that is rooted in Benjamin Disraeli’s Tory Party; whether it be through Ed Milliband’s ideal of “One Nation Labour” that took simultaneous influence from both Disraeli and Clement Attlee, or the “Social Gospel” tradition of the early leadership of the CCF/NDP. To do this, I thought it would be interesting to explore David Lewis’ thoughts on the British Commonwealth Labour Parties Conference held in London, in Sept. of 1944, from his 1981 memoirs “The Good Fight”, and parts of M.J. Coldwell’s 1945 book “Left Turn, Canada”, where he gave a history of Canada.

As the majority of this essay will be exploring a period in time towards the end of World War II from the perspectives of David Lewis and M.J. Coldwell, I think Part XIII of this series, specifically the parts where Lewis describes the original CCF caucus elected in 1935, along with the "six currents of thought and opinion which had to be accommodated" in the CCF in regards to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, would serve as a good introduction to this essay.

As geopolitics, and Canada’s role in the world, is also brought up in this essay, another good introduction may be Part VIII, where I explore the broad worldviews of both the British Labour PM Clement Attlee and the British Tory PM Harold Macmillan. I also argue for Free Trade & Free Movement within the Commonwealth Realms, preferential trade & immigration policies for the rest of the Commonwealth of Nations, along with as much simultaneous Canadian & British integration into the European Union as the Europeans (and the Canadian & British people) will tolerate.

With that, and to give better context for these stories from Lewis & Coldwell, I thought it would be interesting to explore parts of the preface to “Left Turn, Canada”, which was written by Eric Estorick of New York City (who would later permanently move to London).

Interestingly, “Left Turn, Canada” by Coldwell is part of a book series called “The British Commonwealth Series”, in which it appears series editor Eric Estorick (an art collector who had a PhD in sociology, and during WWII he worked for US Intelligence) essentially asked various other prominent Commonwealth political figures for their political thoughts. Earlier entries in this series included “New Zealand, a Working Democracy” by Walter Nash of the New Zealand Labour Party, “Toward a Better World” by Jan Smuts of the South African United Party, and “Canada and the Fight for Freedom” by Mackenzie King of the Canadian Liberal Party. Perhaps of note in regards to the “Red Tory” tradition, it appears that Sir Walter Nash of New Zealand was a Christian socialist in the Anglican tradition. But now, excerpts from Eric Estorick’s preface to “Left Turn, Canada”, where he described the CCF:

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…

The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was founded by the farmers of western Canada and has within its ranks and in the leadership of the movement: industrial workers, farmers, professional and business people. The CCF -- as the party is known -- is a synthesized, functioning partnership of these groups. Its political creed is democratic socialism; consequently, it does not refer to itself as a Labour Party representing mainly industrial workers.

In the broadest sense it is a people’s movement. Thus, it has been able to avoid the major pitfalls of socialist parties in Europe which contested themselves with fighting the day-to-day issues of the industrial working-class movement for trades unionism and higher wages while ingoing the plight of the farmer, his mortgage state, and security of tenure.

On June 15, 1944, the CCF came to power in the province of Saskatchewan with the overwhelming majority of forty-seven seats out of fifty-two, establishing the first Socialist government on the North American continent. The Liberal party machine which had maintained an almost unbroken reign for forty years, ever since the Province was first established, was swept out. The composition of the CCF members elected to the Legislature -- twenty-six farmers, eight teachers, one housewife, one lawyer, one minister, seven wage workers, two merchants -- reveals how clearly the CCF is a people’s party and not a party representing merely one class or section.

…

Alarmed at the rapid increase in the CCF support through-out Canada, the Liberal and the Conservative-Progressive parties in the House of Commons, together with their press across the country, have conducted a virulent campaign against the CCF. To a large extent Canadians were swinging to the CCF because it advocated an all-out, total war effort, together with equality of sacrifice.

The CCF believes that only a fundamental reconstruction of society, based on the social ownership and control of banking and key industries, can solve the economic problem of the modern democratic capitalist state. From its inception, it has consistently emphasized this belief. Although the CCF does not believe that social reforms alone can solve the basic problems of modern capitalism it has always supported social reforms designed to improve the immediate lot of the Canadian people.

Such reforms, which the CCF regards as necessary, are instituted not only on moral grounds to alleviate suffering, but also on political grounds. It is their belief that only when the people are given greater security and independence will they develop the necessary courage and vision to take political and economic power to themselves -- away from monopoly interests. Thus, they contend, social reforms are actual steps toward the organization by the people of the democratic socialist society.

For these reasons, the CCF supports reforms, even those initiated by other parties; yet it does not believe that such reforms can avoid the base inequalities, the periodic crises, and the general threats to democracy and peace for which the capitalist economic system is responsible. A socialist organization of society, democratically controlled and directed with complete and ever-expanding freedom of speech, organization, and religion, can establish equal opportunity for all, eliminating injustice, depression, and war itself.

The CCF believes in democracy as strongly as it does in socialism. If a socialist society has attained economic security without political and social democracy, then its socialism has only been partly achieved. It is the party’s view that political democracy without economic democracy is inadequate and often sham, that economic security without political democracy is also inadequate, as is freedom without political democracy.

The society which the CCF seeks to build is one in which socialism and democracy, or economic freedom and political freedom, will be one and indivisible. In short, the CCF believes that democracy needs socialism: that socialism needs democracy. Without socialism, democracy cannot live: without democracy, socialism is not a complete social system.

...

David Lewis, CCF national secretary, has advanced two principles which have governed the developing structure of the CCF, and which account, in part, for the phenomenal growth of the CCF on the Canadian political scene. He writes:

“We did not lay down at first any kind of doctrinaire conception of a complete thing; we did not say that this is the way the CCF structure must look or else! We have from year to year and from month to month developed our organization and structure; we have adapted them in accordance with the experience which we are engaged, always relating the development to the first set of principles regarding the concept of democracy in the CCF. The second controlling idea . . . is our deep belief on which the entire work of the CCF is based, in the necessity, in the urgency of wide popular education as an instruction of political democracy and as a major function of a democratic political movement. This set of two principles -- the approach based on experience and the emphasis on popular education both inside and outside the party -- also govern the nature of the structure of the party. The aim of our party is unity on the basic objectives of democratic socialism but not uniformity of opinion.”

It is a thrilling augury, as Canada is shaking off her final ties of colonialism to develop those of mature responsibility in the world community, that a dynamic party such as the CCF should appear on the political scene. This is heartening to the people of the British Commonwealth of Nations, who have expressed their desire for dynamic democracy by electing Labour Governments in Australia and New Zealand, who support the powerful Labour Party of Great Britain, and who are building a Labour Party in South Africa. Indeed, to peoples everywhere who are striving and dying for a democratic way of life what will be honoured in the practice rather than in the breach, to those who reject the thesis that brute force is the criterion of what is right, the growth of the CCF places a sharp, constant focus on the objective of all democracy-believing people: a free society.

It is not surprising, therefore, that when the Canadian delegation finished its work at the first meeting of the British Commonwealth Labour Parties Conference (held in England, in September, 1944) that Harold Laski, world famous political scientist, wrote to M.J. Coldwell: “I don’t want you and your colleagues to leave England without putting on paper my own sense of the deep debt we owe the Canadian delegation to this conference for the clarity and courage with which it has expressed its views -- if I may say so, this was the outstanding achievement of the Conference.”

Left Turn, Canada is the substance of these views.

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With that bit of background, David Lewis begins his recollection of the 1944 British Commonwealth Labour Parties Conference on page 237 of his memoirs “The Good Fight”, in which he writes that “The spirit of co-operation between the national and the provincial levels of the party had its place on the international stage as well.”. Lewis then notes that he had been corresponding with officials from the various Labour Parties of the Commonwealth in order to organize an international meeting. Lewis also notes that both he and M.J. Coldwell had been corresponding with the New Zealand Labour Party in particular as they had been governing since 1935, before then going on to briefly write of the Australian Labour Party forming a government in 1941, and the British Labour Party entering into a coalition government with Winston Churchill’s Tories during the war against Hitler.

Lewis then notes on page 238 that the “officers of the CCF… underlined the value and importance of a conference of Labour Parties of the British Commonwealth, for it seemed that these parties would play a significant role in the peace and post-war”, and Lewis then included part of a letter he sent to the general secretary of the British Labour Party where he “gave two reasons for our anxiety to see a meeting held”:

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“As we see it, it is a matter of the utmost importance that the Labour Parties of the Commonwealth meet in good time, and that they arrive at some common policy regarding the peace negotiations and international order which will follow the defeat of the Nazis in Europe. It seems clear to us also that such a Conference of the Commonwealth Labour Parties could, and perhaps, should serve as the forerunner of a similar Conference of Labour and Democratic Socialist Parties of all countries.”

I realize now how much easier it was for us, an ocean away from the battlefield, to give most of our attention to the future. Finally, partly due to our insistence, a meeting was convened in London in September 1944.

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Lewis then goes on to write that while the “results of the conference were not earth-shaking”, it was still “an exciting experience”, and mentions that the CCF delegation flew over the Atlantic in a converted bomber, passing the time by telling “endless stories” to each other. Lewis then describes the group who went to England:

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Our delegation was a representative one. [M.J.] Coldwell and [F.R.] Scott were obvious choices; Clarie Gillis came as the Labour representative and Percy Wright, a successful Saskatchewan farmer MP, as farm spokesman. I was the fifth member of the delegation by unanimous choice of the Executive, since I had carried on most of the correspondence about the event.

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Once in London, Lewis mentions that the group was housed in a Hotel called “the Goring”, which had the “unfortunate echo of ‘Goering’ ”, the head of the Nazi Luftwaffe. Lewis then writes that it was difficult for himself “to overcome the urge to insist that [the hotel name] be changed”, especially after a hotel employee was killed after his shift in a V2 rocket attack the first night the group was in London. On page 239, Lewis then begins writing of the conference itself:

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The conference enabled me to renew the acquaintance of British leaders who had befriended me during my student days in England. Instead of being members of a dispirited opposition, they were now respected leaders of a country at war. Despite their demanding duties as key ministers in Churchill’s cabinet, they participated fully in the meetings. Thus we heard statements by [Clement] Attlee, [Herbert] Morrison, [Hugh] Dalton, [Manny] Shinwell, and Ellen Wilkinson as well as the trade-union leader Sir Walter Citrine, all of whom I had had the privilege of knowing.

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Lewis then notes that the “discussions were necessarily general in nature, but they dealt with all aspects of the problems which were bound to face the victorious allies in general and social democratic parties in particular”, and mentions that the delegates from the British Labour Party were “aware of the strong possibility that they might be in power” after the next election, and thus “spoke with authority on every subject”. Lewis then writes that:

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The CCF delegation took full part in all debates. We stressed particularly our unhappiness at the situation in India where Mahatma Gandhi was in jail again, and politely but firmly insisted that India and other colonies had to be given their freedom once the war was won. Coldwell made this a central theme of his opening major presentation.

(We need not have worried; Attlee’s government gave India its independence as early as 1947, through peaceful negotiations, although the border which London imposed on India and on a divided Pakistan produced serious conflicts some years later)

The meeting also considered at some length the racist tendencies in South Africa and expressed fears which were fully justified by later developments.

My major task was to describe the origins, structure, and prospects of the CCF. I did this with the gusto and optimism which all of us felt in 1944. What amazed the delegates from other countries was the fact that the CCF was as much a farmer as a labour party, despite its socialist objectives. There were therefore many questions and a lengthy discussion which was revived when Percy Wright made a presentation about the place of agriculture in the post-war world. Scott dealt with the “world assembly” which should be established after the war. He outlined the suggested structure and purpose in considerable detail and with his customary clarity, drawing on many CCF discussions and statements on the subject. During his presentation he suggested what the future nature of the Commonwealth should and would be in a forecast so accurate that it deserves to be quoted here:

“The Commonwealth of the future is a Commonwealth of absolutely independent nations, whose associations is not based on a constitutional tie, but a voluntary and free association, which is the standard definition of our relationship.”

This reflected not only Scott’s own views, but the thinking of the Executive and Council of the CCF, which had often discussed the future of the Commonwealth and Canada’s place in it.

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Lewis then spends the better part of a page describing his experiences in a “subcommittee of Britain and Canada” where he and the previously mentioned Harold Laski had to draft a statement for adoption by the conference. Lewis writes the following on pages 241/242 to finish his story on his travels to England during the war:

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My weekend with Laski also gave me a taste of direct war experience. Late Saturday night Laski and I sat in chairs facing each other before a roaring fire. Suddenly there was a deafening explosion, the house shook to its foundations, and we were thrown out of our chairs, banging our heads together mid flight. Mrs. Laski came running, while Laski grabbed my hand and pulled me after her; together we ran into a deep ditch a few metres from the house. To my surprise I learned later that the missile had fallen a mile away. For the Laskis this had been a common experience for months since the V1s and V2s began to land on British soil and even earlier when the Battle of Britain was at its most severe. For a civilian from Canada it was a much more traumatic experience. Sadly, I recalled hiding as a small boy in the cellar of a home in Svisloch during the First World War. Man’s inhumanity still ruled, except that it had become more efficient in it’s cruelty.

Ellen Wilkinson, a lively and striking redhead, was a leading Labour MP who was attached to the Home Office, of which Herbert Morrison was the minister. Wilkinson was assigned the task of showing us war-torn London and the volunteer emergency organization which operated day and night in the underground quarters at a number of locations across the metropolis. She did so with both sorrow and exultation, as she took us to locations which had suffered the devastation of an air raid the night before. This is not the place to try to describe the havoc caused by the blitz or the ordeals of a silently determined and incredibly brave people. I want merely to record those of my reactions which may be relevant to this chronicle.

Simply put, I felt humbled. I recalled almost with shame the days that we of the CCF spent arguing about the nature of the war and about Canada’s part in it. I did not feel proud of those debates, even though I knew that they had been unavoidable. I learned more sharply than ever before how intellectually treacherous doctrinaire abstractions can be, if they are not subjected to personal experience and rigorous factual analysis.

Nor could I fail to wonder where Sophie and I would then have been, what role we would have been playing, if we had decided in 1935 to accept the invitation to remain in England. I did not feel any regret, but I did feel that Canadians had reason to be grateful to the British and Soviet peoples for withstanding the Nazi assault at such cost. Dry eyes were my most touching impression; people who had lost a sister or a daughter, a brother or a son, told of their loss with fury but without tears.

Even the most accomplished orator has his off-days, and Winston Churchill himself was no exception. The delegates from the Dominions were naturally taken to the distinguished visitors’ gallery of the House of Commons on an afternoon when the prime minister was scheduled to speak. As I remember it, he was to report on the war in North Africa as well as in Europe. Since victory was already in sight, one expected a speech of tribute to the forces and of exaltation and hope, as only Churchill could articulate it. Instead, we heard a deadly dull recital of names and battles with little order and less excitement. Scott and I had the same irreverent reaction; we took it for about half an hour and decided to leave. Coldwell and the others, particularly the Australians and New Zealanders, thought us rude to walk out while the great Churchill was still speaking, but we eased away quietly and without guilt. After walking for a little while, we came on a theatre which was featuring a matinee performance of Peer Gynt. That’s where Scott and I passed the rest of the afternoon before joining our colleagues for a scheduled dinner, when we were informed that the speech had not improved during our absence. I am sure that in one of his less stodgy moods, Churchill would have forgiven our truancy.

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As it was mentioned in the preface to Coldwell’s 1945 book “Left Turn, Canada”, that the book “is the substance of [the] views” expressed by the Canadian delegation to that very Commonwealth Labour Parties Conference, I thought it would be interesting to explore parts of that book. I found the first half of Chapter Two, “Canada’s New Political Party”, to be particularly interesting as Coldwell essentially gives a condensed history of Canada up to 1945.

Coldwell starts the chapter on page 8, writing:

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Seen from the outside, Canadian politics must have appeared in the past to possess the virtue of stability and the vice of dullness. There have been no revolutions in Canada for a century, but neither have there been any adventures in politics such as the American New Deal or Sweden’s “Middle Way”. Very little has come out of Ottawa that is politically colourful or economically imaginative.

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After noting that only two parties, “the Liberals and the Conservatives (latterly rechristened the Progressive-Conservative Party)” have ever governed “since Canada became a Confederation in 1867, save for a brief period of Union government during the last war”, Coldwell goes on to write that the Liberal Party has dominated Canadian politics since 1896, with Mackenzie King himself dominating personally since 1921.

Coldwell then mentions that “All third-party movements in the past… have failed to create more than a temporary or local disturbance in the political arena”, using the examples of “French-Canadian Nationalists led by Henri Bourassa in 1911, the Progressives who had a meteoric career after the last war, or the late Mr. Aberhardt’s Social Credit Party”.

Interestingly, later on page 21, Coldwell describes the death of the Progressive Party:

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The Progressives did not survive because they had no political philosophy to distinguish them from their opponents; they had the tactics of political revolt but no strategy of social change. To secure the future success of the CCF, it was necessary for its principles and objectives to be clearly defined in Canadian terms, and clearly distinguished from mere Liberal reformism. This definition was achieved at the first annual convention of the party held in Regina in 1933, when the now famous Regina Manifesto was adopted.

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Back to pages 8/9, Coldwell then briefly argues that “The barrenness of the social philosophies of both the Liberal and Conservative parties since the last war” lead to both of them failing in practice as “channels for new social ideas”:

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The truth of the matter is that Canada, the “Tory Dominion” as it has well been called in the past, has until very recently presented strong opposition to imaginative and progressive social change. For Canada is a country where private monopoly has long been firmly entrenched and where sectional divisions have always obstructed national reforms. It was not without justice that a distinguished American liberal columnist writing in the early years of the war could describe Canada as “the most reactionary country yet conquered by Hitler.”

The reasons for the political and economic conservatism are not hard to find. Canada is a young country. As in the United States, opportunities for the expansion of capitalist enterprise lasted longer than in most European countries. Until the first world war, indeed up to 1929, the Canadian economy operated moderately well under the so-called private enterprise system, despite its lack of intelligent, national planning. It was still possible for a few people to rise from poverty to comparative wealth. And the belief that persons suffering from poverty and want had only their own lack of initiative and ability to blame persisted long after that argument had been completely shattered by facts and experience.

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After writing of “the complete domination of the country by big business and industry”, Coldwell continues on page 10:

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The experience of the first great war demonstrated to Canadians what might be done through even rough and ready planning for a national purpose. That experience was reinforced by the Great Depression when the planlessness and anarchy of social policy begot such widespread misery and suffering. And it has been further strengthened during the present war when over-all planning, inadequate though it has been in many respects, dedicated to a common national objective, has wrought such miracles of production. As a result, increasing numbers of Canadians today realize that only democratic socialism can make possible social progress and security in this country after the war.

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Over the next couple of pages, Coldwell writes of the democratic socialist successes of the New Zealand Labour Party winning three general elections, “which has made the most striking advances in the social ownership and control of the principle economic functions”, and he also makes note of Australia re-electing its sitting Labour government in 1943 with “an overwhelming majority”. After briefly noting how socialism can be a way to connect with “underground movements in Europe… those directing affairs in China… Nehru and the younger Congress leaders in India”, Coldwell writes -- rather optimistically -- that Russia will likely become more democratic because of its association with the western democracies.

In regards to Western/Soviet relations in the post-World War II world, I think Clement Attlee himself said it best in a 1963 interview in response to a question on how well the United Nations had developed since 1945:

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Well, it’s developed to some extent not as far as it aught to have, and that was partly due to the fact that very soon after its formation, the Russians took their own line, and you got the Cold War. Secondly, looking back now, although it was impossible at the time, the essential for a real United Nations is some degree of surrender of sovereignty: particularly on war, and peace, and armaments. We couldn’t affect that at the time, I’m hoping we are yet to go on that line.

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In regards to Western/Russia/China relations: it may be important to note that when the Korean War broke out in 1950, M.J. Coldwell was later described by David Lewis to have supported the war effort so “vigorously and in tones which excluded the possibility that the [National CCF] convention might change that”, which lead to quite the bitter fight at the 1950 CCF policy convention. Both Lewis & Coldwell supported the UN, and later NATO, on anti-isolationist grounds; a “defensive power bloc” if I may briefly editorialize.

Back to Chapter Two of “Left Turn, Canada”, M.J. Coldwell writes on pages 11/12 that “Since the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation is a distinctly Canadian political movement, it will be well to review here some of the salient facts of Canada’s history”. After noting that foreign trade is likely Canada’s future, Coldwell then writes on pages 12/13:

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The history of modern Canada may be said to date from the year 1763. By the Treaty of Paris of that year the French monarch, by a mere stroke of the pen, ceded the French colonies in North America to the British. Thus years of intermittent warfare between the French and English for supremacy in North America, culminating in the capture of Quebec by General Wolfe in 1759, came to an end.

The early settlers in what later became Canada were for the most part Frenchmen, engaging in fishing for the fur trade, and in founding colonies along the Atlantic seaboard and up the reaches of the St. Lawrence River. But there had been English settlers too, father in the interior, who established outposts and traded with the Indians. It was not, however, until the American Revolution had driven into exile those colonists who were determined to keep their allegiance to the Crown, that the regions of Canada were really settled by people of British descent. These people who fled before the American Revolution, known as the United Empire Loyalists, found their new homes in the Maritime Provinces, where government already existed, and in the unsettled wilderness of what is now Ontario.

Shortly after the Treaty of Paris, in the year 1774, the British Parliament passed an act which is considered by French-Canadians to be their Bill of Rights. This was the Quebec Act and it guaranteed the French-Canadians the preservation of their way of life, their religion, their civil law, and their unity as a people. More than anything else this act led the French-Canadians to refuse to join the thirteen colonies in the American War of Independence.

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While it’s certainly disappointing to read Coldwell describe First Nations territory as being “unsettled wilderness” (I’m sure Joseph Brant and Tecumseh would be disappointed), over the next several pages he then briefly writes of early British settlers, the struggle for responsible government in the 1840s, and of Confederation starting in 1867. Coldwell also notes the transcontinental railway, describes the natural resources of Canada, and notes newer communities of German, Ukrainian, and Scandinavian immigrants.

Coldwell then writes of what he calls a constitutional crisis on pages 15/16, which I think is almost word-for-word applicable to today’s Canada as well:

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The salient political fact about Canada is that, like the United States, it is a federation. At the formation of the new Dominion in 1867, the Fathers of Confederation left to the Provinces jurisdiction over matters that could then be described as of local interest: such as education, health, municipal government and property and civil rights. Matters affecting the country as a whole, such as trade and commerce, defence, and banking, were assigned to the Federal Government, and in addition, any matters not specifically provided for in the Constitution were to be within the federal powers.

Judicial interpretations since that time have consistently reduced the powers of the Dominion Government, while expanding the “property and civil” rights of the Provinces to include almost anything. The result today is a severe constitutional crisis in Canada, for the Dominion Government has been deprived of those functions which, because of modern social and economic complexities, it alone can undertake, while the Provinces are without the finances to discharge their powers satisfactorily. Thus there is neglect of the public welfare services, and a grave absence of intelligent economic planning.

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On page 16, Coldwell describes another “salient fact”: that Canada has “long since achieved nationhood”, and that “the British Dominions are formally united only by a common allegiance to the Crown.” Coldwell then writes on the next page:

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Meanwhile, the British Commonwealth of Nations is strengthened, not weakened, by becoming in every sense a free association of equals, and in no sense a power bloc in world affairs. Future Commonwealth relations will develop along lines of fruitful co-operation and positive achievement, or not at all.

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To finish his general history, Coldwell writes of US/Canada relations, noting that they have “become increasingly cordial ever since the long-forgotten warfare of 1812”, and writes positively of continental defence and economic planning to defeat the Axis.

This is where I feel I must push back against Mr. Coldwell’s historical narrative, as the War of 1812 was not the last time the USA tried to force Canada into the Union, against the wishes of Canadians. In the process, I hope to help define that ideal pre-World War I “ ‘Tory Dominion’ as [Canada] has well been called in the past” that Coldwell alluded to on page 8.

To do that, I would like to briefly explore the memoirs of Canada’s last surviving Father of Confederation, Sir Charles Tupper of Nova Scotia, in his 1914 “Recollections of Sixty Years”.

For those unaware of Sir Charles, he was the Tory Premier of Nova Scotia (1864-1867) who introduced Nova Scotia’s first form of public education, and he brought Nova Scotia into Confederation despite it being extraordinarily unpopular in the province. As a Minister in John A. Macdonald’s first cabinet, Tupper then managed to convince the arch Nova Scotian Anti-Confederate MP Joseph Howe to eventually join cabinet, and Tupper himself would eventually briefly become Prime Minister for 69 days in the summer of 1896. Tupper would resign as Tory leader after the 1900 election and two losses to Wilfrid Laurier, and would relocate to England until his death in Oct. 1915, at age 94.

Chapter 8, on the National Policy, starts with Tupper defending the actions of Macdonald’s government during “the so-called ‘Pacific Scandal’ ” over several pages, which Tupper at one point refers to as “the Pacific Slander”. Tupper mentions that he accidentally coined the term “National Policy” in “the heat of a prolonged debate in the House of Commons in February of 1870”.

On pages 158-160:

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The various Canadian provinces enjoyed phenomenal prosperity under the Elgin Reciprocity Treaty negotiated in 1854. This treaty was abrogated by the United States in 1866. Times were especially good during the American Civil War period. The United States, owing to the vast population withdrawn from industrial pursuits, proved to be Canada’s best customer, and there was no question of a tariff issue as the abnormal conditions existing south of the boundary gave us all the protection we needed.

But this situation was not to last for ever. With the close of the Civil War was inaugurated a nationwide movement for the encouragement and protection of American labour and American industries by the imposition of heavy duties against foreign competitors. That policy has only recently been modified. The Hon. W. H. Seward, probably one of the ablest Secretaries of State, felt confident that the abrogation of the Elgin Reciprocity Treaty would force Canada into the American Union. In a famous speech just after the close of the Civil War he declared that Canada, owing to its geographical position, with Halifax on the Atlantic and a stretch of country extending to the Pacific, must inevitably dominate the trade with the Far East. He was a man of vision, and his prophecy in that respect has since been verified.

In those days, owing to the lack of railway facilities, there was little inter-provincial trade. The bulk of the trade of the Maritime Provinces was then with the New England States. The termination of the Reciprocity Treaty hit us a hard blow, and but for that circumstance we should probably have been unable to convince the people of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick that our future was in a union with the Upper Canadian provinces. Gradually the restrictive policy of the United States tariff -- a policy wisely directed to the upbuilding of American industry -- began to be more acutely felt in the Dominion, and its full effects were experienced by the time the Liberals got into power in 1873.

[Alexander] Mackenzie did nothing to relieve the situation. His low revenue tariff permitted the American people to gain access to our market, while Canadians were virtually excluded from that of their neighbours. The effect of the American high tariff was not only felt by the Canadian farmers and manufacturers, but it produced a largely increased demand in Canada for American manufactures, and a more than corresponding increase in the demand for the manufactures of Great Britain, of which the trade returns of Canada showed abundant proof.

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After spending several pages going over his time in opposition, including the various places he practiced medicine while in Parliament, and noting that he would attend Liberal meetings to challenge their ideas, Tupper gives his thoughts on Tory policy after the 1878 election on page 170:

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Sir John was, of course, called upon to form an Administration, in which I accepted the portfolio of Public Works. I subsequently had the department divided, creating a new department -- that of Railways and Canals, of which I took charge. To this day [1914] that arrangement still exists, other public improvements other than railways and canals being under the direction of the Minister of Public Works.

The next four years represented years of ceaseless activity and constructive statesmanship, inuring to the agricultural and industrial development of the Dominion. True to our promises, we adopted the National Policy at the earliest moment, got under way a vast programme for the deepening of the waterways and canals of the St. Lawrence system, and after the completion of surveys, entered into an agreement for the building of a national transcontinental railway from Eastern Canada to the Pacific coast.

The effect of the substitution of a protective tariff for the Mackenzie revenue law proved magical. It restricted the exodus, gave employment in the factories to our own idle working man, stimulated every branch of manufacturing, led to the establishment of many new industries, and preserved the home market for our own people. The farmer was also given substantial protection. During the Mackenzie Administration Canada became the dumping ground for the surplus manufactured products of the United States, which, enjoying the benefit of a high tariff, rigidly excluded Canadian products of every description.

The National Policy, in my judgment, is one of the bulwarks of Canadian national life. It made possible the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, stimulated inter-provincial trade, and developed a solidarity of sentiment that has been growing stronger since Confederation was brought about.

We are to-day a self-contained people, and recent years have witnessed the spectacle of millions of foreign capital being invested in Canadian manufacturing industries. The farmer, too, enjoys his home market. Earlier experiences of Canadian statesmen showed the futility of efforts to induce the United States to negotiate an equitable reciprocity agreement. Our tariff, while ensuring reasonable protection for all our people, has never had the almost restricted character of the American fiscal system.

It was a great day for the Dominion when the people rejected the [1911] Taft-Fielding reciprocity agreement, for under the radical revision of the United States tariff Canada, without giving any equivalent, will reap enormous advantages. As a people we have demonstrated to the world our ability to develop along national lines. Who is there that does not recall with pride the attitude of Canada at the time of the enforcement of the [1890] McKinley tariff, many of the clauses of which were specifically aimed at our common country?

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Tupper ends the chapter with his speech that coined the phrase “National Policy”.

Interestingly, Tupper’s final chapters are titled “Empire Confederation” and “How to Federate the Empire”. With the Empire now transformed, what will we do with its legacy?

Recently, Trump 'ordered' Canadian companies doing business with the US to move down south. Certainly some will. This lead me to think; supposing this trade war goes on for a while and the Canadian business environment essentially hollows out, does it weaken the argument that Canada should remove its tariffs on the US if the US decides they want to play ball again?

Because, if at the end of this trade war a lot of Canadian businesses have moved south and we get some sort of free trade deal (either under this president or the next one) there isn't much incentive to move back in the short term as the border is no longer an issue.

Historically, Canada's tariff barrier is what led to branch plants popping up in Canada (in many cases the very same businesses Trump wants back in the US) as much as it protected Canadian businesses.

A secondary issue is that if Canada is serious about diversifying away from the US then leaving the tariffs up makes sense in order to direct Canadian companies towards other markets.

As much as I can be accused of being anti-American I don't think tariffs should be left up permanently. Rather, assuming this trade war does become ruinous, we should leave them up long enough for Canada's trade patterns to change, Canadian alternatives to get established, and branch plants to reopen. Then, and only then, should the tariffs we imposed on the US come down. If Trump is going to present an opportunity to move away from reliance on the US market we may as well take it.

But what do other people think our strategy should be?

I'm jumping around a bit chronologically as Henry St. John predated the previous man in this series, Samuel Johnson, by a generation. He is also the first to be a politician and, indeed, a leader of the tory faction. In his youth he was licentious which his marriage did little to tame.

He became an MP in 1701 when he took over the rotten borough of Wootton Bassett. He actually rose quickly on the strength of his elegance. However, he was a Jacobite and thus opposed to the Hanover succession. He briefly served as editor of The Examiner (1710–1714) which was a tory paper founded to counter the Whig papers of the time. His politics did intersect with Canada a little bit as he supported a failed naval expedition to take Quebec. While he did take leadership of the tories in the 1710s, he couldn't effectively control the backbenchers and Queen Anne's declining health had the tories correctly predicting the Whigs would be returning to power. With the accession of King George I Henry was dismissed from office. He would briefly join the Pretender in France as a member of his court for which he was voted a traitor by Parliament. He would eventually be pardoned and allowed to return.

His contribution to politics is mixed. Disraeli credited him as the founder of modern toryism and credited him with stopping the Whigs from turning England into an oligarchy but his time as party leader was fairly lacklustre and he had no influence in his later career. Perhaps his most lasting contribution was the idea that there should always be an organized opposition party to counter the excesses of the governing party.

In perhaps an ironic twist he was influential among republicans in the colonies. His vision of history as cycles of birth, growth, decline and death of republics was popular in the colonies. It should be noted that this cyclical view of history is directly opposed to the Whig view of history as ongoing progress.

The authors are, as far as I can gather, not fans and are likely the Continentalists George Grant warned often lurked in official circles. So, while it is a biased portrayal I think it does given an idea what Bennett was trying to do when he brought in reciprocal tariffs on the US (even if it did hurt 'friendship' with the Americans as the authors put it.

I'm curious to hear from everyone here about what Tories would think of Identity Politics. The knee jerk reaction is probably that Identity Politics is bad, since it tend to elevate one group or identity over others in a community. But writers like George Grant argued (without explicitly talking about Identity Politics) that local communities and traditions are important, so from that perspective, it is preferable to have local representatives of a community in government? He was very sympathetic to Quebecois rights, for example, and how it is important to have Quebecois representing their culture and traditions in government. At the same time, Grant was also skeptical of using identity as a will to power, and overriding the common good for a community.

So what does everyone think? How should modern Tories or Red Tories respond to Identity Politics as we know it today? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to see what this group thinks.

Recently Canada announced that it was further winding down its peacekeeping operations by a further 40-50 personnel. This has provoked a discussion regarding a conflict between what has been termed 'two mythologies of peacekeeping'. Since I don't think we've had a discussion on it before I thought it might be interesting to look at Peacekeeping, and the UN more broadly, from a tory perspective. What is its future? What, if anything, needs to change?