Predictions of NDP’s death unfounded

Letter to the Editor published in the Victoria Times Colonist, 29 January 2011

Surely Adrian Raeside has been following B.C. politics long enough to know that it is naive to depict the NDP as a “dying party” (cartoon, Jan. 21).

The New Democratic Party is no stranger to controversy or internal debate. It is composed of diverse individuals and groups, with wide-ranging views on how social change should be achieved, how resources and the environment should be managed and the role of markets and the state.

But to suggest that current debates over leadership foreshadow the NDP’s demise is not supported by evidence.

In 2001, when the Campbell Liberals reduced the governing NDP to two legislative seats, predictions of the NDP’s “death” were perhaps appropriate. But the party rebuilt and holds 34 seats. It holds power in Manitoba and Nova Scotia and, at one time or another, governed Ontario, Saskatchewan, BC and the Yukon.

After every election but one since 1932, the NDP or its predecessor, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, has formed the opposition or government in BC. Representatives of working people have held legislative seats as far back as 1900, when coal baron James Dunsmuir still dominated B.C. politics and economics.

Raeside’s cartoon reveals a predictable editorial line, attacking the NDP on whatever grounds while handling the Liberal party with kid gloves. As a historian of B.C.’s left, I predict it will take a lot more than a cartoon by Adrian Raeside for the New Democratic Party to die.