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Memories of the Manitoba NDP, as told by a young leftist
So, Today’s NDP (something like New Labour) is now looking to the past, asking for people’s fondest memories of Yesterday’s NDP (or is that Old Labour?). On their website, they say they would “like to hear your story about the NDP in your life” and offer a text box where NDP partisans can type up some fawning, ingratiating tripe about their favourite capitalist party.
This may be before my time, but thirty years ago, Sidney Green split from Yesterday’s NDP and ran to the right over anti-scab legislation, among other things. Now, it is Gary Doer and the New Labourite Today’s NDP which is refusing to implement anti-scab legislation because prior to his election, Doer promised the business community that he wouldn’t bring it in (1).
In an ironic twist of fate, it is now the very same Sidney Green criticizing Today’s NDP from the left for their plans to increase user fees for post-secondary education (2). My, how times change. I guess the NDP has managed to outrun Green in the race to the right. But that is simply what Today’s NDP has been up to: replacing principles with pragmatism; pragmatism being defined as folding like laundry whenever the wants of the business community, corporate media or the political right come into conflict with whatever idealized version of social democratic values that exists in the minds of certain intellectual heirs to the murderers of Rosa Luxemburg (3). You may call Doer a populist or a pragmatist, but he is anything but principled.
But the people’s flag has been palest orange long before Doer came around. Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow was known for cutting services, closing hospitals, privatizing SaskOil, and before New Labour was completely discredited, openly boasted that he was “Blairite” before Blair. Our neighbours on the other side also know this story only too well; they had to deal with Rae Days, abandonment of even the mildest of reforms (public auto insurance), and increasing user fees, particularly university tuition. After being completely discredited, the Ontario NDP has been out in the cold ever since. It is also no surprise, then, that Bob Rae went on to author the Rae Report and became one of the biggest foes of the student movement (4).
As a student, my fondest memory of the Manitoba NDP was the tuition freeze. Sure, it didn’t go nearly far enough, but for a while I thought it was a great thing because at least it was something (even though a freeze is technically nothing). Maybe in an alternate universe where the Manitoba NDP actually tried to reduce or eliminate tuition I might have wound up putting up orange signs and cheering on the NDP on rabble. Of course, this was before I became acquainted with one of the loopholes in the tuition freeze; the one that allowed for 38% increases in my tuition. And now, even this tuition freeze is nothing more than a memory: university Presidents must have gotten sick of exploiting loopholes and the new policy at least allows them to be honest about increasing tuition (5).
I have other memories of the NDP as well. I remember the Manitoba NDP removing a billion dollars from the public purse through tax cuts which primarily benefit for the rich and corporations (remember that the next time someone tells you that the NDP really does want to help, they just don’t have enough resources on a provincial basis). I remember the Manitoba NDP not raising welfare rates until the situation got so bad that the bastion of socialism known as the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce called for an increase. I remember Gary Doer opposing the granting of the Order of Canada to Henry Morgentaler, a man whose struggle for abortion rights was nothing short of heroic. I remember that damn yellow ribbon garden on Broadway, and NDP MLAs speaking at pro-war and pro-Israel rallies (6).
Utah Phillips said that “the long memory is the most radical idea in America.” I believe that this can be applied to Manitoba as well. My memory may not be particularly long, but it’s a good one and it’s long enough to remember at least a few betrayals and acts of pure conservatism by the NDP.
I would close with the traditional greeting “In Solidarity,” however I am not sure the NDP knows what that means. This is a party that values “caucus solidarity”, a term for the rigid ideological and political discipline that MLAs suffer (although I do not feel sorry for any of them) at the hands of the people who really run the show, over actual solidarity with workers, students, and oppressed people.
Now, lets wait and see if the NDP dares publish the memories of this young leftist.
(1) The Dear Leader in his own words: “Before the election I was asked by the business community ‘Are you going to bring in anti-scab’ and I said no,”
(2) “Tuition reforms create worst of worlds”
(3) These values typically include some sort of minimalistic socialist reforms in order to curb some of the excess suffering of capitalism, but don’t include a coherent critique of the capitalist system (although neoliberalism, one form of capitalism, can be criticized, although seemingly nothing can be done about it when elected) itself or any ideas regarding class struggle. Ergo, I am not a social democrat.
(4) After 57% tuition increases during his term, Bob Rae went on to author the Rae Report calling for deregulation of tuition fees and the introduction of a regressive income contingent loan repayment program. It is therefore no surprise that Rae isn’t exactly the most popular figure to the student movement.
(5) For an overview of the Doer government’s tuition policy, see this recent article I wrote
(6) For another litany of the sins of Doer, see this article written around the time of the 2007 election by Cy Gonick:
Brian Latour is a student, activist, and student activist living in Winnipeg. Read more by Brian Latour.
NDP = Failure.
Saskatchewan realized they needed change, maybe someday we will.
#1. Posted by wade in Winnipeg on June 9th 2009 at 12:01pm
That is a really excellent article - big ups!
G
#2. Posted by Greg H. in regina.sk on June 12th 2009 at 11:51pm
re: Greg
Thanks!
re: wade
The only problem there is that Saskatchewan didn’t get any meaningful, positive change. The government that replaced the NDP is even more right-wing, anti-worker, anti-student, etc. I’m not even sure we can get any sort of meaningful, positive change through our bourgeois liberal capitalist parliamentary system.
#3. Posted by Brian in Winnipeg on June 18th 2009 at 1:17pm