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Remembering the Waffle
Remembering the Waffle
Yesterday I did something I rarely do. I participated in an academic seminar. It was to mark the 40th anniversity of The Waffle, a radical youth movement inside the NDP. Hardly anyone under 50 knows what The Waffle was, unless you have ever tried to organize an opposition in the NDP where it remains a scary ghost. But it was a significant and almost unique formation of the 1960’s in Canada. Apparently scholarship on the 1960’s is the hottest thing in academe these days. Who knew?
The Waffle was a youthful, radical, left nationalist and socialist formation within the New Democratic Party. Formed in the heady days of 1969, the Waffle Manifesto was incredibly radical when read with today’s eyes.
Our aim as democratic socialists is to build an independent socialist Canada. Our aim as supporters of the New Democratic Party is to make it a truly socialist party.
Sigh…I wonder when the last time anyone in or around the NDP used the word socialist. It is, of course, a document of its time, referring to “men” as a word covering everyone, ignoring Indigneous people altogether in its formulation of the founding two nations, and without a mention of equality for women, or women’s liberation, as we called it in those days.
What was extraordinary about the Waffle was its economic nationalism. Even as a young woman who was attracted to the Waffle because of its strong female leadership, I never agreed with the idea that the main problem was that Canada was economically subordinate to the United States. In those days, the Waffle argued that Canada was basically a branch plant of the US and would only be able to be independent though a democratic socialist society.
I never really understood Canada as a subordinate power. A lesser power, yes, but not really under the thumb of the US. I understood cultural nationalism that sought to promote and protect Canadian culture so that we were not totally overwhelmed by US culture, but economic nationalism never made sense to me. In studying to counter their arguments at the time, I learned about Marxism, which made a lot more sense, and argued that nationalism in an advanced capitalist country was reactionary, while it could be progressive in a developing country.
Yet the Waffle’s nationalism was progressive in many ways. Yesterday I finally understood the economic nationalism, listening to both proponents and scholars. I won’t go into detail here because a podcast of the event will soon be available. I still don’t agree with it, but at least I understand it, and no doubt the left nationalism of the Waffle and others helped the Canadian Left and social movements to respond quickly to free trade when it first reared its ugly head in the Free Trade Agreement with the US.
On the surface, this discussion seems a bit archaic and not of much interest to young people now who are more likely to see Canada as a colonial power itself and an equal partner in global corporate governance. With some of the most important social movements taking on the abuses of Canadian mining companies and the exploitation of Canadian banks, it is hard to imagine anyone accepting the nationalist arguments of the Waffle, however rooted in a radical analysis.
Yet the Waffle was an important factor in the development of these very social movements. It was women in the Waffle who fought for the NDP to accept women’s liberation and women in leadership. They uniquely worked both inside and outside the party, creating a model of work that they also brought into the trade union movement. The Waffle women played a critical role in the shaping of the Canadian women’s movement. As a result, Canada’s women’s movement included working class women and Canada has among the most feminist unions and social democratic parties in the world.
As a young woman I was attracted to the powerful women in the Waffle like Jackie Larkin and Varda Burstyn, both of whom remained active on the Left and in the women’s movement. Waffle leaders like economist Mel Watkins and political scientist James Laxer continue to be relevant critics of the NDP.
In my view when the NDP expelled the Waffle, they cut out their heart by expelling the youth. It is true that the Waffle was sectarian towards the NDP, as was the culture of the time, and that the remnants of Cold War ideology made a rational response to this highly active opposition difficult, but still, it is hard to look back on the energy and creativity of the Waffle and not conclude that the NDP slit its own throat when they threw them out.
What was interesting about the roundtable was the richness of discussion about the Waffle in the context of the times in which it lived, and the decline of that discussion as soon as we started talking about the future of the Left, and everyone retreated to their usual nostrums.
I am sorry more people didn’t attend the event, and I hoping they will listen to at least some of the podcast. If we don’t pay attention to our own history, no one else likely will.
“Richness of discussion”. Those words stand out, for me. It is possible to control all interaction, all process of communication in a group of people, in this case the NDP party. In theory you would then have control of the agenda, of the definition of the situation. It is my impression that leaders do not want spontaneous input from the grassroots members of the NDP. I mean spontaneous discussion in a public place. This is how people could start to formulate their own ideas of where and HOW they want the NDP party to go. You can control people, and what gets said, and where, but what do you lose thereby? You lose energy, and passion, and commitment. “Communications” from leaders sound like slick advertising gimmicks, as in “Partner with us…......by sending us money.” That is insulting.
#1. Posted by Madeline Bruce in Nanaimo, B. C. on October 28th 2009 at 1:02am
I was there (Judy, you probably remember me as the cranky young guy who was pissed off at Rebecca Blaikie), and thought the conference was interesting. I think the evening talk had the most potential on that one, as it was addressing the big issue facing the left in Canada.
It seems to me like at that conference, there was a lot of malaise and depression, especially on the part of the speakers who drifted back into the NDP. They are realizing that the NDP isn’t ever going to be what they want - any reform movement is crushed by the bureaucracy, and the party has moved so far to the right that people are longing for their old nemeses Schreyer and Blakeney.
We just came out of a leadership race in Manitoba, and the lengths that the brass went to prevent Steve Ashton, a candidate who although he is a progressive social democrat is not radical by any means, from winning the election tells us a lot of things. The NDP bureaucracy is almost completely opportunist, and is so afraid of any controversy that they will kill any vibrant left-wing movement in the party. The bureaucracy in the labour movement isn’t much better - the majority in this race sided with the right-wing candidate who promised not to implement anti-scab legislation and was the minister responsible for Manitoba Hydro, a utility that went on strike during the leadership race, over a guy who promised anti-scab legislation and walked the picket line with striking Hydro workers. The bureaucracy also has mechanisms with which to force people into line - the promise of future rewards for being a “team player”, and the extensive cult of personality and focus on party loyalty which obscures dissent and pushes members to going with the flow.
In short, the view in the Waffle Manifesto that “The New Democratic Party must be seen as the parliamentary wing of a movement dedicated to fundamental social change. It must be radicalized from within and it must be radicalized from without” is so untrue and absurd that it is pathetic. We need to be serious about what the NDP is: A party for middle class politicos, opportunist labour bureaucrats, and other left-liberal careerists.
So, I think for the left in Canada, instead of longing for a more radical NDP, we need to pick ourselves up, get together, and go it alone outside the NDP. There’s plenty of work to be done outside the NDP where we can seriously challenge the power structures in society, build up communities of struggle, and build a better world as opposed to doing free telemarketing for some orange-tied hack.
#2. Posted by Brian Latour in Winnipeg on October 29th 2009 at 9:06pm
What Judy says about the nature of Canada has a ring of truth, except for that brief moment of the Waffle’ existence. To have missed that moment was not to have glimpsed a different truth.
#3. Posted by mel watkins on November 6th 2009 at 4:35pm
There is a groundswell of passionate opposition to the slick corporate/elite propaganda machine of misinformation that presently casts a shadow over the North American continent. All is not lost. I was happy to see NDP National Leader Jack Layton decrying, on National Television, the spiteful treatment that whistleblowers are getting in Canadian Parliament over Canada’s complicity in the torture of prisoners in Afghganistan prisons. Right here in Nanaimo we have got the always justice-seeking NDP MLA Leonard Krog, and also Paul Manly, the filmaker who made the documentary You, Me, and the SPP, which is presently being screened in cities right across Canada. Another very bright light I see in the NDP party is the brilliant University Professor and writer Michael Byers. In the U.S. there is the strong new movement of Oath Takers, which consists largely of former American Soldiers and Police Officers, who are swearing an oath that they will not shoot at American civilians who refuse to hand in firearms, or refuse to be quarantined en masse for whatever reason, because that is against the American Consititution, and that is what they swear allegiance to, rather than any leader who tries to besmirch that. These fine men will not tolerate a repeat of what happened during Hurrican Katrina, when vulnerable citizens were pushed around, rather than aided by authorities. Bravo to these brave Americans, and God Bless you, our American friends.
#4. Posted by Madeline Bruce in Nanaimo, B. C. on November 22nd 2009 at 2:15pm
The Canadian Pension Plan is being mismanaged and the NDP know this & know what is wrong. The were part of the Financial Committee. The CPP fund has lost more money than what the Govt. admits to and the NDP knows this. Furthermore the fund managers are now in a conflict of interest. Those managing our CPP are now making commission because they are also buying and selling. Wrong.
Recently the CPP made a dreadful investments with Macquarie Group (Australia) Interestingly, CanWest had lots of shares of this losing stock which they needed to get rid of because of financial difficulties. Coincidentally they managed to sell their rotten stocks when our pension fund managers bought this Australian stock at more than what the stock was worth. Will the NDP (Jack Layton or Thomas Mulcair) speak out and tell Canadians what they know is going on ? No they wont. Why?
Below is what a knowledgeable friend had to say recently about the CPP”.
“Had a brief exchange with a Toronto news journalist about the latest CPP report. He had talked with the CEO and some others at Teachers. Their remarks suggest a degree of terror or anxiety about the values of their “private” investments. The trauma experienced at the Harvard Endowment Fund is probably the reason why. It also seems the CPP CEO is becoming defensive about the purchase premiums I have suggested are being paid.
In the case of the Macquarie Communications takeover, the practices and method used by the CPP IB/agents does not conform to either a “hostile” or “friendly” model. It does conform to a seller’s bank directed disposal model. In the absence of any retained earnings and no ability to raise fresh working capital from the public markets it would be an almost certainty the operator (Macquarie Communications) would have breached several loan covenants which in turn trigger change of control and initiative from the operator to the lenders. Lenders then try to find incentives/inducements that will attract a new owner/investor.
This is precisely the predicament I asked the Finance Ministers, from Mr. Martin on, to avoid. In the times we are in, de-leveraging is what almost every corporation is trying to do. In this example it is about shifting revenue uncertainty risk, with the full associated load of debt, onto an unwary investor. In other examples it is about “socializing” risk as was done for the Canadian Banks in 08.
This is form of “theft from the commons” that parliamentarians presumably would not wish to see happen. ”
#5. Posted by Vancouver Island reader in Nanaimo, B.C. on November 22nd 2009 at 8:59pm