VANCOUVER After twenty years returns in COPE headquarters. This is my last week of commentary as an alderman. I began this column with my election to Vancouver city council in December of 1966 and have continued it for 20 years without a break. Twenty years as an alderman and 13 years as a community activist before then have demonstrated two simple yet pro- found truths to me. The'first is the abso- lute need for unity for all the reform forces at the municipal level. The second, and no less important, is the need for constant activity by the reform forces 12 months a year, around issues as they arise and based on a pro- gram clearly expressing the concerns of working people and small business who make up 90 per cent of the population. Since 1936 the parties of big business (Conservatives, Liberals and after 1952, Social Credit) have united in civic politics within the Non-Partisan Association. Their slogan was “keep politics out of city hall,” but what they really were after was to keep labor or reform politics out of city hall. They kept control of city hall until 1982. The Electors Action Movement, which was formed in 1968 as a breaka- way group from the NPA and which briefly controlled city council in the 1970s, quickly disintegrated and is now Har Rankin back with the NPA. The strength of the NPA has rested on this coalition of all right-wing, big business forces. The Committee of Progressive Elec- tors, which was established on the initia- tive of the Vancouver and District Labor Council in 1968, was the first concerted effort to unite all reform forces under one umbrella. In its first two years, this effort at unity met with limited success. The NDP also ran slates for civic office. The result was that those seeking reform at city hall were divided and for 12 years I was the only COPE candidate elected. In 1980 the situation changed. Again, on the initiative of the Vancouver and District Labor Council, a form of unity was achieved between COPE and an NDP group running as civic independ- ents. In 1982 and 1984 this unity resulted in a labor-backed majority at city hall and for a time also on the school board. Unity: of the reform forces is, of course, no absolute guarantee of victory. Sometimes the right-wing coalition, with its unlimited corporate funding and its monopoly of the media and its ability to mould public opinion, is able to defeat progressive reform forces. That hap- pened this year, not only in the Nov. 15 column ‘takes 30° TEN YEARS BACK ... Victorious Ald. Harry Rankin check le s 1976 election civic election, but also-in the Oct. 22 provincial election. But one thing is certain — electoral victory is not possible without a coalition of all the reform forces. I stress this point because already some people are being urged by the corporate controlled media and its columnists to break with COPE. They would like to see a return to the days when COPE and the NDP each ran slates because then the NPA could con- tinue to coast easily to victory. We’ve won many victories at city hall, even before we had a labor-backed majority. There was a time, not so long ago, when tenants were not allowed to vote on money bylaws, when city council refused to hear citizen delegations, when council meetings were held only in the afternoon at a time when citizen delega- tions couldn’t attend, when city health and building bylaws were simply disre- garded by slum landlords and greedy ~ contractors, when developers could get anything they wanted from NPA coun- cils. This was changed not only by the elec- tion of reform candidates to council but by the continuous pressure brought on council at every meeting by citizen dele- gations, and by the campaigns waged across the city by citizen groups. That was how, for example, the entrance to Stanley Park was saved from the devel- opers, and how the plan to criss-cross the whole city with ugly freeways was defeated. The lesson is that reforms are won not only in council but also by the activities by citizen groups outside of council in the form of meetings, delegations, demon- strations, petitions, and a dozen other methods of demonstrative public actions. COPE and other reform forces can make a comback, can win what they have lost. They can win majorities on city council, the school board and the parks board if they stay united and keep up the pressure by citizen activity the year round. The present NPA council won’t do anything for Vancouver or its people, anymore than will Mulroney or Vander Zalm. All of them will do it to us, not for us. The present NPA council has not a few members who have attitudes similar to the greedy Tory cabinet ministers who have been getting into trouble. There will be no lack of issues. A uni- ted and active reform movement will be an attractive alternative by the time of the next civic election. of Liberals and 2 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 3, 1986 COPE must forge left-centre unity By JIM QUAIL During the civic elections in Vancouver on Nov. 15 we in the Committee of Progres- sive Electors (COPE) and our allies suffered a serious electoral setback at the hands of the city’s right wing forces. We lost four crucial city council positions, eight of the nine seats on school board and our three parks board positions. But rather than des- pair, we should engage in an objective anal- ysis of the political outcome. That analysis shows that the support for civic reform forces remains firm, while the electoral successes of the pro-big business groupings is based on a shaky premise. For close to 20 years, there was a signifi- cant split among the right-wing forces in Vancouver civic poitics. One was The Elec- tors Action Movement (TEAM), incorpo- rating generally the Liberal Party and the big corporate developers. The other camp, the Civic Non-Partisan Association. (NPA), was oriented toward the Social Credit party and the city’s mer- chantry. The right-wing of the NDP aligned itself’ with TEAM until ousted ina power struggle in 1976, when Jack Volrich beat Michael Harcourt for the mayoral nomination. TEAM ’s alliance [ right-wing social democrats began to disintegrate. How- ever, some degree of division in the city’s businesscommunity | _ persisted, and_all- out unity of the right remained elu- sive. - This -began to QUAIL change sooner after the November, 1984 election, and was noticeable during the 1985 _ byelection for Bruce Yorke’s aldermanic seat. By then, a new group led by Brian Calder had taken control of the organiza- tion. They had driven out the most obstruc- tive elements of the “‘old NPA” and began re-formulating their political alignment. In a move that now looks rather ominous, they chose Bill Vander Zalm to head their 1984 slate. : a2 The new board of directors was domi- nated by realtors and land developers, many formerly of TEAM. By the spring of 1986, the TEAM/NPA rift had been effectively healed (Walter Hardwick quit as head of TEAM in pro- test.). Under pressure from a string of victo- ries by COPE and our allies, the right-wing closed ranks under the name of the NPA. While mayoral contender Gordon Camp- bell’s propaganda claiming that the NPA now encompassed every political stripe was grossly exaggerated, certainly the new NPA had achieved greater breadth and by elec- tion time incorporated many influential Liberals. The organization was poised to present itself as a “moderate,” centre- oriented group, and to disown its own record. The political transformation of the province by the Socreds under Vander Zalm, and the perceived success of Expo, set a climate of falsely-optimistic “boosterism” that facilitated this process quite decisively. Meanwhile, what was going on among the left? Here, the main factor was the departure of Harcourt. While throughout his mayoral career he never endorsed -COPE or COPE/Unity, pressure from the Vancouver and District Labor Council and from rank- and-file civic activists made an objective alliance of Harcourt’s Civic Independents and COPE possible. This was the essence of the “labor-unity” force, which built an alliance of the left with a substantial part of | the political centre. The NPA was largely isolated on the right. When Harcourt moved on, COPE’s main bridge to the centre was lost. Efforts were made to re-create that left-centre unity, by such moves as facilitating Ald. Bill Yee’s decision to run again, and joining forces to the extent possible with the remnants of the Civic Independents. Yee’s showing on Nov. 15 is indicative of our inability to recreate that bridge. His vote tumbled-by a catastrophic 13,000 — far more than any other incumbent. Without Harcourt, the Civic Independents were unable to summon either political credibil- ity or organizational muscle. - What COPE achieved in 1986 was left unity — the most powerful left unity ever. Our support from labor, from NDP members and constituencies, and from left- wing activists was much greater than in the past. We attracted 30 percent more election workers than in 1984. Despite the NPA’S: — plunder of the centre, and their. million dollar-plus campaign, and all of the red- baiting, and everything they could throw at us, COPE’s base slate vote actually rose by. some two thousand. However, at the present stage of the struggle; the:left and labor are-not strong enough to win by themselves. Civic politics is by nature coalition politics, and we must re-capture the support of a part of the cen= tre. To place things in perspective, while the NDP won more provincial votes in Van? couver than did the Socreds, they were oul” polled by the combined Socred-Li vote. Of course, there was a myriad of other factors. The provincial election disrupté our campaign, stalled our efforts to regain the ground that Campbell had bought by dint of months of media advertising, amt demoralized many among the left ane working class. For all of our phoning a? doorknocking and pleading on the 15th, thousands upon thousands of our identifie® supporters simply did not go to the polls. In many east-side polls, the turnout was we less than the number of identified COPE/ NDP supporters. It appears therefore that NDP voters switching support to the NP was a relatively much smaller factor. There were also organizational facto! We improved our organizational work WI" each campaign, and 1986 saw dramatl¢ progress in this regard. It should be noted that COPE remains powerful organization, and the only vo! of the people in Vancouver politics. V" alliances within labor and the left rem strong. Our base of electoral support is V° impressive. an The NPA, on the other hand, faces i problems in maintaining its position. Bi objective differences that caused the origi TEAM/NPA split have not gone away: i Even among its elected caucuses, c NPA has serious divisions. The elect members will have great difficulty maintall” ing their front of “moderation” and “pe tiveness” while paying off their mas* political debts. can Above all, they face a strong oppositi? force, that will re-double its base in the Ls roots of the community, and hammer he. relentlessly at every opportunity. 4 can Civic politics is highly fluid, ao east develop with breaktaking speed. If we leé es the proper lessons of Nov. 15, and obj@ tively assess our own situation and , f enemy’s, we face bright possibilities 1988. mit Jim Quail is the president of the Com: tee of Progressive Electors. -