Advocate of Compassion: Stanley Knowles in the Political Process

W.H. Heick is a professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University.

G.G. Harrop, Baptist minister and professor, member of the CCF/NDP and an admiring acquaintance of Stanley Knowles, has written a sound study: Stanley Knowles in the Canadian political process. Sources have been, in the main, the public record, added to which were the Knowles Papers in the Public Archives of Canada and a narrow range of interviews.

Harrop places Knowles in the context of the developing Canadian political process and the evolution of the socialist movement. A member of Parliament has three areas of service: constituents, Parliament itself, and national issues. Harrop concludes Knowles covered all three bases more than adequately in over forty years in the Commons.

“This liberal and conservative politician is essentially a democratic socialist” (p. 129). Knowles has built his political philosophy on the social gospel’s plank of a belief in the essential goodness of human nature. Therefore, it behooves people to work for the twin goals of social justice and peace. Knowles’s interest in the functioning of Parliament arises from an appreciation of that institution as the tool whereby Canadians can advance toward higher levels of social justice and a more complete peace.

In the area of social justice, Harrop shows Knowles’s major concerns in his being a “one man pension lobby” (p.40) and his interest in the establishment of health insurance. Social justice extends to civil liberties and his interest in a fair treatment of the Japanese Canadians in World War II, in conscription in that war, and later in the use of the War Measures Act to deal with the FLQ crisis. In the area of peace, Harrop relates Knowles’s shift from pacifism to responsible collective security through the world parliament, the United Nations. Knowles’s concern over the well-being of Parliament shows in his major involvement in the pipe line debate and in his criticism of salary increases for Commons members.

The democratic process is the instrument through which social justice and peace can be worked for. Thus, not only is Parliament a vital cog but so also is the political party. Knowles has played a highly significant role in the evolution of the CCF and the NDP.

Harrop has written what he himself recognizes as a preliminary study. It stands well as such. General readers and high school level students will appreciate his work. The academic historian will still want a fuller analysis.