Join and Build the New Party (1961)

Workers Vanguard, Mid-July 1961

Join and Build New Party Now!

Everyone should join the new party at once—all unionists whether they belong to a Canadian Labor Congress union or an independent union—all socialists no matter what their tendency—all opponents of the preparations for a nuclear war.

Do not forget but do not let any experiences that you may have had with any section of the cowardly and conniving trade union leadership stand in your way. Do not let any disillusionment with those who cut out the guts and finally sank the CCF stop you. Do not let any mistaken loyalties to any other working class political formation and their sectarian attitudes to the new party keep you out of its ranks.

Join now! Should attempts be made to keep you out, do not walk away in disgust. That is probably what they would like you to do. Fight to get in! It is your right and it is your responsibility.

The founding of the new labor party in Ottawa at the end or this month is the most important event in the history of the tumultuous struggle of the Canadian people for political and social justice.

We say this with full consciousness of the profound revolutionary character of this history, commencing with the strike of Quebec shipyard workers as early as 1741, and highlighted by the 1837 insurrections in Toronto and Montreal to win independence from the British crown and representative government; the struggle for the nine-hour day; the Winnipeg general strike; the rise of the CIO and the Windsor auto barricade of 1946.

With the development of the economy, in the process of these conflicts, the working class has grown in numbers and in strength. At the same time individuals and groups of individual participants, assimilating the broad lessons of these conflicts, and parallel ones in other sections of the world, have attempted to give them greater consciousness and direction and project the concept of an entirely new social order founded on public ownership of the means of production.

But no matter under what form these revolutionary socialists functioned, their primary purpose, what they have always looked upon as a necessary first is the launching of the whole working class, and getting it moving forward as a class, in the right direction. With the founding of the new party based on the trade unions, the primary organization of the working class, this aim is being realized. We have the organization of the industrial worker and working farmer into a political party of their own, independent of and challenging the political rule of the employers.

We cannot say at this time with what degree of political clarity this new labor party will be launched. It is probable that the efforts of the left wing at this time to win the party to a class struggle program and a socialist policy will be only moderately successful. But the main thing is that now, following this convention, the working people of this country will be moving forward as a class, with a political party of their own.

With that they will commence to learn how to combat the capitalist class and their political leadership, the Tories and Liberals. With that they will be able to test the contending viewpoints within the party—the inconsistencies and shortcoming of that and the insight and fullness of this viewpoint.

All workers, and we address ourselves particularly to class conscious workers, should get into the new party now. To fail to do so would be to leave the thousands of workers now going into it and the tens and hundreds of thousands tomorrow to the tender mercies of the reformists—would be to play the bosses’ game.

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