“The CCF is not a ‘Class’ Party”: labour, politics, and their unification at the Lakehead, 1944-1963

Abstract

"The CCF is not a 'Class' Party”: Labour and Politics at the Lakehead, 1944-1963” is a study of the organized labour movement in the Lakehead from 1944 to 1963. This study analyzes the new sophistication of the organized labour movement and labour’s relationship to politics in a period of rapid change for the Lakehead. ““The CCF is not a Class Party”” argues that, between 1944 and 1963, the organized labour movement and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) at the Lakehead underwent parallel structural developments against the backdrop of conservative social forces in the postwar period that, by the end of the 1950s, necessitated a merger of the two formally distinct entities. The amalgamation of labour and politics, resulting in the formation of the New Democratic Party (NDP), is best examined through the political career of Douglas Fisher, who first represented the CCF and, later, the NDP in Port Arthur. The debate surrounding the ‘New Party’ idea in the late 1950s at the Lakehead is reflective of the uneasy relationship between labour and politics that had formed throughout the postwar period.