- Title:
- The Commonwealth labour conferences, the British Labour Party model, and their influence on Canadian social democratic politics, 1920-1961.
- Creator:
- Barker, Ray Clinton
- Date Created:
- 1996
- Degree Awarded:
- Master of Arts
- Subjects:
- British Labour Party New Democratic Party socialism labour
- Geographical Focus:
- Canada Britain
- Supporting Materials:
- n/a
- Description:
- Using materials from the British Labour Party archives in Manchester, England, Canadian archives, memoirs, and secondary sources, this tudy of the Canadian democratic socialist and labour movement from the 1920s to the creation of the New Democratic Party in 1961 examines two structural maodels for the organization of that movement: the federative, decentralized structure of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and the centralized structure used to reorganize the British Labour Party in 1918, with its formal affiliation with and financial dependence on trade unions. The British Commonwealth Labour Conferences (1925-1957), which brought together the labour parties from throughout the Commonwealth and attempted to create a unified labour movement, held out the reorganized British Labour Party as a model of success. The conferences are presented as important events in the shaping of Commonwealth labour’s political culture. The conferences seldom produced tangible results, but for the Commonwealth labourites they produced a sense of intangible solidarity and common purpose. In Canada, this cutcome was filtered through a particuiar set of national imperatives with the result that Canada’s path deviated from its sister Commonwealth nations. The British, Australian, and New Zealand labour partics, all organized under the B.itish Labour Party model, became governing parties in their respective countries. The Canadian CCF, which never achieved a federal victory, finally adopted elements of the the British Labour Party model in its 1961 constitution, but adopted the model too late to be cffective
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- Barker, Ray Clinton. 1996. "The Commonwealth labour conferences, the British Labour Party model, and their influence on Canadian social democratic politics, 1920-1961.", Department of History, Carleton University
- Link to this page:
- https://cuhistory.github.io/grads/items/hist_216.html
Rights
- Rights:
- Copyright the author, all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.