Two reports were received – one from Edmonton, an important city in the west, and one from Halifax, an important city in the Maritimes. The two reports concern the NDP, a party supported by the organised labour movement but in the service of the capitalist system, a consistently anti-working class party.
The New Democratic Party is the descendant of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), an agriculturally based anti-communist organisation founded in Regina in 1933-34 as an “alternative” to communism. The NDP is the labour based organisation, with a petty bourgeois and professional leadership, established and dedicated to the same cause as CCF.
Many workers with decades of militancy and experience in the organised labour movement have come to the conclusion thatthe NDP must be rejected as the political party of the working class and that the Marxist-Leninists must work hard to begin, develop and successfully conclude this process.
The two reports from Edmonton and Halifax reflect the beginning of this process. The report from Edmonton (see page 110) is an article written by two progressive workers who are members of the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway, Transport and General Workers, Local 99. The article is published in the newsletter of 99 under the title: What Was the Role of the NDP in Crushing the Railway Strike? The article concludes: “It is our view that the rail strike showed that one section of the workers were forced to fight against the entire capitalist class; and that to fight and win in the long run, the workers must also unite as an entire class to fight wage slavery and capitalist exploitation, it is the contention of the authors of this article that the only political Party which represents the genuine interests of the working class and is capable of uniting the entire class is the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist).” The article points out that the “history of the NDP is that of class collaboration and capitulation” and provides a detailed argument for the workers of Local 99 as to why they must withdraw support from the NDP and support CPC(M-L).
The second report, from Halifax (see page 114), is from two political activists who, together with others, were instrumental in taking the NDP-New Brunswick away from the NDP and handing it over to the Waffle. One of them wrote the “New Brunswick Waffle Manifesto”. The two political activitists write that they “are coming forward to unite with the Party on the basis of its Marxist-Leninist political line”.
From the two reports, it is quite obvious that the trend of unity amongst the Marxist-Leninists which developed throughout 1972 and 1973 is still a developing trend and that now this trend has further developed to take certain sections of the organised labour movement with it. Separated by several hundred miles, the progressive workers in Edmonton and political activists in Halifax come to the same conclusion: Build the Party and defeat the NDP! This development is an important feature of the rising revolutionary consciousness in the organised labour movement and that this feature is part and parcel of the growing trend of unity amongst the Marxist-Leninists themselves. We warmly hail this development. We are certain that the unity amongst the genuine Marxist-Leninists will continue to grow in 1974 and that the influence of CPC(M-L) will grow vigorously in the organised labour movement.
(This article first appeared in People’s Canada Daily News, Vol. 3, No. 353, January 24, 1974)