The Dominion Labour Party (DLP) was a reformist labour party, formed in Canada in 1918. The party enjoyed its greatest success in the province of Manitoba.
In March 1918, Arthur Puttee and members of the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Congress (TLC) created the first branch of the Dominion Labour Party in Canada. The DLP was an ideological successor to various other reformist labour groups in Winnipeg, but was more explicitly socialist and actively cooperated with members of the Social Democratic Party of Canada. The Winnipeg local included such figures as Harry Veitch, Fred Tipping, and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) Fred Dixon. In the years after its formation, the DLP would set up other branches in cities throughout the Canadian prairies. It never had a strong central organization, and was more of a network than an organized movement.
The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 radicalized labour politics in Manitoba, and the DLP soon emerged as a much stronger force than the province's earlier labour parties had been. In the provincial election of 1920, the party formed an electoral alliance with the Socialist Party of Canada, the Social Democrats and a party representing returning ex-soldiers. Dixon easily topped the polled in Winnipeg, and eight other Labour MLAs were elected throughout the province (along with one Socialist and one Social Democrat).
Among the new Labour MLAs were William Ivens, then serving a prison sentence, and A.E. Smith, who later joined Communist Party of Canada. Strictly speaking, not all of these figures were elected as Dominion Labour Party candidates: Smith, though a member of the DLP, campaigned under the banner of the "Brandon Labour Party". The DLP, however, provided the basic framework around which the provincial campaign was based. Dixon was the unquestioned leader of the labour group in the legislature.
Late in 1920, the DLP split between followers of the American Federation of Labor and the One Big Union. When AFL supporters nominated an opponent of the General Strike as a DLP municipal candidate in Winnipeg, many others walked out and formed the rival Independent Labour Party. Dixon, who had previously been neutral, was the leader of the late 1920 walkout. Most other labour parliamentarians also left the DLP for the ILP, with Smith as the only prominent exception.
The ILP subsequently became the dominant labour party in Manitoba. The DLP aligned itself with the new Canadian Labour Party, and soon ceased to exist in the province as an independent organization.
There have been various groups in Canada that have nominated candidates under the label Labour Party or Independent Labour Party or other variations from the 1870s until the 1960s. These were usually local or provincial groups using the Labour Party or Independent Labour Party name, backed by local labour councils or individual trade unions. There was an attempt to create a national Canadian Labour Party in the late 1910s and in the 1920s, but these were only partly successful.
The first Socialist Party of Canada (SPC) existed from 1904 to 1925 led by E. T. Kingsley. It published the Western Clarion newspaper.
Before World War I, there were at least two organizations in Winnipeg calling themselves the Independent Labour Party. The first of these was set up by British trade unionists in 1895, and collapsed soon thereafter.
The Manitoba Labour Party (MLP) was a reformist, non-Marxist labour party in Manitoba, Canada. It was created in early May 1910 as a successor to the province's second Independent Labour Party (1906–08). Former Member of Parliament Arthur Puttee was a leading MLP organizer. The party fielded one candidate in the 1910 provincial election, and also ran candidates at the municipal level.
The Socialist Party of Manitoba (SPM) was a short-lived social democratic political party launched in 1902 in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The organisation advanced a moderate programme of social reform legislation. In 1904 the SPM became one of the constituent units founding the Socialist Party of Canada, an organisation which continued until 1925.
The Labour Representation Committee was a reformist labour organization in Manitoba, Canada, and was the ideological successor to groups such as the Winnipeg Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party and the Manitoba Labour Party. It was founded in late 1912, and was based on a British organization of the same name.
When the Social Democratic Party of Canada broke away from the Socialist Party of Canada in 1911, many Winnipeg SPC members joined the new organization. The new party's platform was written by three residents of the city, and it has been estimated that nearly 20% of the SDPC's total membership lived in Winnipeg during the early 1910s.
Frederick John "Fred" Dixon was a Manitoba politician, and was for several years the dominant figure in the province's mainstream labour and Henry George Single Tax Georgist movements. Also a proponent of proportional representation, he served as MLA in the Manitoba Legislaiture from 1914 to 1923.
The Independent Labour Party was the leading social-democratic party in the Canadian province of Manitoba prior to the emergence of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Several of its candidates were elected to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and it counted federal Members of Parliament J. S. Woodsworth and A. A. Heaps among its members.
John Queen was a labour activist and Manitoba politician. He was a Labour city councillor in Winnipeg from 1916 to 1921. He was leader of the Winnipeg General Strike and served a year in prison for his involvement. He was Winnipeg MLA from 1920 to 1941 and mayor 1935-1936 and 1937-1942. He was the parliamentary leader of Manitoba's Independent Labour Party, 1923-1935.
Seymour James Farmer was a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He served as Winnipeg MLA from 1922 to 1949. During this time he also served as mayor of Winnipeg 1923-1924 and later as city councillor in the late 1920s and in the 1930s. He was the leader of the Manitoba Co-operative Commonwealth Federation from 1935 to 1947. He served as a cabinet minister in Manitoba's World War I coalition government.
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (Manitoba) (CCF), known informally as the Manitoba CCF, was a provincial branch of the national Canadian party by the same name. The national CCF was the dominant social-democratic party in Canada from the 1930s to the early 1960s, when it merged with the labour movement to become the New Democratic Party. The Manitoba CCF, created in 1932, played the same role at the provincial level.
The Canadian Labour Party was an early, unsuccessful attempt at creating a national labour party in Canada. Although it ran candidates in the federal elections of 1917, 1921, 1925 and 1926, it never succeeded in its goal of providing a national forum for the Canadian labour movement. In most provinces, the CLP ceased to exist after 1928–1929.
Arthur W. Puttee was a British-Canadian printer and politician. Puttee was the first Labour Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of Canada, sitting as Winnipeg MP from 1900 to 1904.
William Ivens was a religious and political figure in Manitoba, Canada. He was a leading figure in the Winnipeg General Strike, and subsequently served as a Labour member of the Manitoba legislature from 1920 to 1936.
The 1922 Manitoba general election was held on July 18, 1922 to elect Members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Manitoba, Canada. The United Farmers of Manitoba won a narrow majority in the legislature.
Albert Edward Smith (1871–1947), known as A. E. Smith, was a Canadian religious leader and politician. A social gospeller, Smith was for many years a minister in the Canadian Methodist Church before starting his own "People's Church". He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1920 to 1922 as a Labour representative. In 1925, he became a member of the Communist Party of Canada.
George Armstrong was a politician and labour activist in Manitoba, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1920 to 1922, and is notable as the only member of the Socialist Party of Canada ever to serve in that institution.
The Socialist Party of British Columbia (SPBC), later the Socialist Party of Canada , was a provincial political party in British Columbia, Canada, from 1901 to 1905. In 1903, the SPBC won seats in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.
The Dominion Labor Party (Alberta) was a minor political party. It was founded on June 11, 1918 when Edmonton's Labour Representation League renamed itself the Alberta wing of the DLP. Its executive included Mr. Marshall, Mr. Mercer, Mr. Dan Knott, later mayor of the city, White, Findlay and Farmilo, and Elmer Roper, later mayor Edmonton.
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