Forget uniting the Left

Buzz Hargrove wants to be the boss

Commentary from Larry Solway

  Here we go again. Buzz Hargrove has declared total war on the NDP. According to news reports out of Winnipeg during the week of March 5, Buzz Hargrove is denouncing the Manitoba and federal party because the province's NDP government won't take over a CAW-organized tractor plant in Fort Garry, Manitoba.
  Hargrove demanded Manitoba take control of the Buhler Versatile to prevent 250 jobs from heading to the United States, after the CAW rejected a company offer of binding arbitration to settle a four-month strike. (The company is playing its own brand of hardball, threatening to move across the border to North Dakota and take with it some owes the federal government $32 million in outstanding loans from the federal government.)
  After the government rejected his proposals outright, Hargrove declared the CAW's long-standing relationship with the New Democrats was over, both federally and provincially "It tells us that the NDP has deserted working people and therefore has lost our support," Hargrove told The Winnipeg Sun.
  Then last week used the platform in Kitchener a few days ago to hector us all about what he knows best: revival of The Left as only he can see it.
  Buzz said he wants Hampton and McDonough out. Buzz wants the party to return to its roots and stop the "fuzzy" centrism. Buzz wants. Buzz wants. Buzz wants. Sound familiar?
  It has to be clear to anyone except the most dedicated fan, that he wants the NDP remade in an image that he alone is able to see.
  Buzz believes that the relationship between organized labour and the party has come to an end.
  I suggest that once again Buzz wants one thing: to be the boss. He alone can save us from ourselves.
  He repeatedly has called for consensus and discussion. But he leaves no room for either.
  He calls for a return to our values but it was he who led "strategic voting" in the Ontario election. His unholy strategy was intended to elect a Blue Lite Liberal government. As it was all we got for his rhetoric was another Harris government and a decimated NDP caucus.
  If he truly wants to remake the relationship between organized labour and The Left, might it be unworthy of me to suggest he mend his own fences?
  Buzz insists he has the support of his rank-and-file. Maybe he does when it comes to negotiations, but even in this realm, there have been unseemly compromises (promoting Daimler Chrysler and ONEX spring to mind).
  Need I remind us that he has failed utterly to get his own members to the ballot box, except to vote Tory or Alliance? He may point with pride to the Federal NDP victory in Windsor, but he then must take the blame for all the Tories his members have sent to Queens Park, like the hard-right new Deputy Premier and the teacher-bashing Minister of Education. They are the proud bearers of power from the heart of his Durham region constituency, where Oshawa's GM workers live.
  Dare I remind Buzz that he torpedoed Bob Rae. Ostensibly this was because Rae abrogated the collective agreement with civil servants, but was it also because he dared to challenge the Big Three auto makers with his Carbon Tax that would have hit hard against gas guzzlers?
  And now this U-boat captain wants to sink Alexa and Howard because they could not prevail in an atmosphere of left-baiting tax cutting neo-conservatism and American-driven prosperity.
  The Left's time will come. But it will not come because the ego-driven Buzz says so. It will come with renewal and caring. It will come with consensus. It will come with discussion. And most sadly and cynically perhaps it will come when the promises of the Right turn to dust in a greed-driven recession.
  Hard times are a terrible price to pay for stupidity.

Larry Solway is a veteran writer and media worker who lives in Toronto.

What's your opinion? Is Buzz Hargrove telling it like it is? Do Canadians want a more left-wing political alternative? Do they need one? Is there a disconnect between union leaders and their members? Tell Straight Goods and see what others are saying in response to Larry's column.

Posted: March 19, 2001

[ Front Page ]