Crisis of Clarity: The New Democratic Party and the Quest for the Holy Grail

George Brandak was Curator of Manuscripts and the University of British Columbia Library.

To Michael Bradley it is clear that in the federal election of 1988 the Canadian people will have to choose between a continuation of Brian Mulroney’s “successful surrender” of Canada and Canadian resources to the Americans, which will eventually mean the end of Canada, or electing the New Democratic Party. It is the only party in Canada, according to Bradley, not irrevocably committed to the defence of an obsolescent and contracting economy and society. The NDP could evolve into a true “people’s party” in the sense that it would reflect what the people really are, want, and need. To do this, the NDP must reject Marxist ideology (which is ill-suited for the North American environment), lay aside its fondness for Keynesian economics (for it does not work for a country with a branch plant economy), disaffiliate itself from the official recognition of the trade union movement, and return to some of the basic values of the original CCF platform, the human compassion of Tommy Douglas, and the good old days of power in Saskatchewan for all the people. Then, and only then, the Holy Grail is theirs for the taking.

This book is concerned with analyzing various events that lead to this possible scenario. Michael Bradley has written several books, including The Iceman Inheritance and The Mantouche Factor, and has been a President of the Toronto-area NDP Youth and the Dalhousie University NDP. Although his talents are being utilized as a speech writer for the Progressive Conservatives, according to the book jacket, his work is more suited to that of a screen writer for the Clint Eastwood film, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” The Good are Tommy Douglas, Jacques de Molay, and Jim Laxer; the Bad (or misguided) are David Lewis, Brian Mulroney, MacKenzie King, C.D. Howe, American corporate executives who are either lawyers or accountants, and North American trade unionists; and Ugly can describe the Marxist atmosphere that deceived David Lewis, the misapplication of Keynesian economics to Canadian soil, and the “new conservatism” that is deceiving Brian Mulroney and his trade union allies — a conservatism that is a desperate attempt to turn North America into a protected and isolated preserve for an obsolete industrial apparatus and the society it supports.

The book divides nicely into six chapters, beginning and ending with the elections of 1984 and 1988 and with other chapters on Brian Mulroney, Politics of Reincarnation; Tommy Douglas, Politics of Compassion; David Lewis, Politics of Consolidation; and Jim Laxer, Politics of Decline and Obsolescence. In discussing the personality and policies of Tommy Douglas, he uses only Doris Shackleton’s Tommy Douglas and for David Lewis he uses only Lewis’s autobiography, The Good Fight. The most common source was the mind and imagination of Michael Bradley.

On the whole, the book is much like a cookbook where the author has created a recipe that will cure the social and economic ills of Canada. As Bradley digresses, the connections he attempts to make between the Knights Templars and socio-biology and the points he wishes to prove will be difficult for some readers to comprehend. His picture of trade unions as merely protective associations bargaining collectively to get the best deal possible for their members and disregarding the rest of society may be correct for the United States and the area from which Bradley originated — I don’t know — but I don’t see that in British Columbia, where industrial unionism has looked at the whole rather than its parts in the past as well as the future and has become involved in major issues of our society, such as gigantic peace marches for nuclear disarmament. I don’t recognize his trade unions, so I disagree with his premise that a trade union base is not suitable for a democratic socialist party in Canada. And that is the strength of the book: many issues are raised and discussed. The book should generate a lively debate.