The NDP 3 months after

Is the party over?

By: Gerald Caplan

March 1, 2001

  Can the NDP be saved as a relevant, vibrant force in Canadian life? Three months after another disastrous general election, the answer remains uncertain.
  The news is decidedly mixed. Last weekend, the party took the promising step of recognizing its plight and launched a renewal process designed to rectify it. Everything is on the table for debate, as it must be. Crucially, it's also intended to engage not only New Democrats but all Canadians "interested in building a fairer, more equitable and sustainable society". This describes perhaps several millions of Canadians. Yet the NDP received only one million votes last November. The challenge for the party is to get this natural constituency to take it seriously again. If it fails to do so, the NDP is doomed.
  The awkward relationship between the party and organized labour will also be under the microscope. Some unions are undertaking parallel appraisals, but the prior issue for labour surely must be the enormous gap between the espoused by union leaders and those of their rank-and-file. While many labour leaders are social democrats, their members overwhelmingly vote Liberal or Alliance. It's time the NDP-labour marriage was amicably ended and for labour leaders to figure out why they've been repudiated by their members.
  There's a second piece of promising news: the NDP's decision to join the battle to stop making the world the private preserve of transnational corporations. This is THE great democratic crusade of the next decade and it's exactly where the NDP belongs. Horrifying case studies of the misery and injustice caused by so-called both in Canada and around the globe are endless. The NDP must now use whatever forums it has to demonstrate this truth to Canadians.
  Then there's news that's simultaneously both good and bad. The NDP in parliament has been raising issues of major importance to all Canadians: the need for a system of proportional representation in elections; the banning of all corporate and union contributions to political parties (where's the Alliance when you finally need them?); the hysterical para-military preparations being made to beat back citizens demonstrating at the in Quebec City in April; calling on the government to oppose President Bush's national missile defence system; pointing out how Liberal changes to unemployment insurance penalize women most severely; and demanding that Canada take a leadership role in providing affordable medicines to poor countries to combat the AIDS pandemic.
  That's the good news - the party's doing the job it exists to do. The bad news is that these issues received minimal media coverage, and few Canadians, even social activists, are aware they've even been raised. This has been going on for years, and it's a major crisis that must be solved if the NDP is ever to have influence again in this country. It means that even when the party does its job effectively, hardly anyone knows. The consequences are inevitable. Since the media ignore it, the NDP is irrelevant. Since it's irrelevant, the media continue to ignore it. Thus marginalized, find the party to be irrelevant.
  Ways must be found to escape this fatal trap. First, like the social movements that use e-links to connect with tens of thousands of supporters, the NDP must find new methods of mass communication that don't depend on mainstream media. Second, the party must leap over the constricting walls of parliament to spread its message, as once did so memorably when she disrupted a staid meeting of bank shareholders and as the caucus intends to do by joining other citizens demonstrating in Quebec City next month.
  Hard as it is, New Democrats must recognize that they no longer hold the monopoly in the fight for social democracy. They must see themselves as the parliamentary wing of a movement that includes feminists, environmentalists, social justice and equity activists, third worlders, progressive nationalists, students, and all those peacefully opposed to unfettered capitalism. They need to associate themselves, both in Parliament and outside, with these groups and their causes. At the constituency level, largely moribund riding associations can find a new raison d'être by joining community and social justice activists in local projects. The intention is not to opportunistically recruit new party members. It's to build bridges and establish the party's bona fides. In turn, this will remind non-political activists how critical it is to have a voice in Parliament. If this process spreads, it will increase the NDP's credibility and, we must hope, make it interesting to the media once again.
  This is an enormously frustrating moment for democratic socialists. Listening to Tony Blair in Ottawa act as cheerleader for a system that leaves half of the world's people living on $2.00 a day was almost unbearable. Seeing my party ignored as it raises cutting-edge issues fills me with despair. Observing the scepticism of so many young activists towards party politics in general and the NDP in particular is painful. Clearly we need some kind of new instrument on the left, one that somehow combines the best elements of all of those angry at triumphalist capitalism. We need once again to be setting the agenda and influencing the debate. It won't be an easy or short process. The power of capital has never been more awesome. But the fight for a more just world has never been easy and is never over.

Gerald Caplan is a longtime NDP activist.

Posted: March 05, 2001

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