Summary Of Six Decadess: A History Of The Ontario New Democratic Party

Six Decades: A History of the Ontario New Democratic Party Chapter 1: Growing and Shedding Roots Founding and Relationships 1961 was an interesting year with the construction of the Berlin Wall, the first human in space, and finally the dropping of the farmer rights roots of the former CCF. Before we discuss this however, we must discuss what brought us here.

The CCF didn’t come in slowly, as the party's main goal set out in the Regina Manifesto was to “replace the present capitalist system”. Yet despite this, the CCF still shared the modern-day NDP’s core values, on the left of the Liberals and in a Third-Party position, with its position as a social-democratic party, which advocated for worker's rights; a major issue at the time. The Federal

The Electoral History of the CCF The CCF ran campaigns Federally and Provincially, with its most successful provincial party being in Saskatchewan, where the party would rule for a vast period of time starting in 1944, when they attained 50.31% of the popular vote, and they would continue for the rest of the CCF’s history and a couple years into the NDP’s. However, the province we are going to focus on is Ontario — Canada’s most populous province. Provincial Success The Ontario CCF’s first campaign was in 1934, the party was new and wasn’t very successful in the aforementioned campaign, winning only one seat with approximately 7% of the popular vote. The one seat that they won — Hamilton East, was a typical urban riding in Hamilton, having a large number of factory workers and unionists. The seat was also won with no Liberal candidate which led to the CCF being the only mainstream left-wing party, artificially bumping their vote share to larger proportions. However, this move did make sense as in the riding’s last election the Conservative candidate won almost double the share of the Liberal, this was one of the reasons that the Liberal party decided to leave the riding with no Liberal candidate, with the other being as the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix would describe the CCF candidate “is thought to have a good chance of winning the riding.” The CCF also had success in other ridings mainly in Toronto and Hamilton, with the party coming 3 points off the winning margin in the riding of Wentworth in a