British Columbia

Ssocreds are divided,
but victory uncertain

as NDP moves right

Continued from page 1
Vander Zalm has alienated a large section
of Socred voters. But, more significantly,
the survey gave the government a negative
rating on five of six issues.

The most significant negatives were edu-
cation at 61 per cent; social services, 62 per
cent; health care, 63 per cent; and the envir-
onment, 69 per cent.

Given the margin of the NDP win in the
Cariboo (Zirnhelt 56 per cent; Wark, SC, 37
per cent) it is difficult to conceive of a
Socred recovery in that riding were an elec-
tion to be held in the reasonable future.
Cariboo continued a pattern relatively con-
sistent over the previous byelections, with
about a one third shift in the popular vote
from the Socreds to the NDP. The shift is
cutting class lines. That was demonstrated
vividly in the Point Grey byelection which
in a historic first saw all of Vancouver’s
upper middle class Kerrisdale vote solidly
for the NDP’s Tom Perry.

Those schisms in the upper class are a
revealing window into Social Credit’s
divided house. The Socreds are divided
within the party and within business.

Within the party, four MLAs have left
the caucus, and all primary candidates that
opposed Vander Zalm in the Socred leader-
ship contest have either left cabinet or are
positioned as an alternative leader.

In the business establishment, from the
beginning, Vander Zalm was not the choice
for premier. It is well known now that
Howe Street supported Bud Smith. It is also
now documented that leading businessmen
on the Vancouver Stock Exchange have
continued to campaign against Vander
Zalm. Peter Brown of Canarim Invest-
ments, for example, last year paid $70,000
for an anti-Vander Zalm poll and had it
“leaked” to the Vancouver Sun on the eve
of the Socred convention.

Vancouver’s top venture capitalists have
strong ties to former premier Bill Bennett
and to Bud Smith, who was Bennett’s secre-
tary. Smith is also a business associate of
Murray Pezim, and a director of one of
Pezim’s companies. Vancouver MLAs
Grace McCarthy and Steven Rogers, as well
as Burnaby MLA Dave Mercier (one of the
four who left the caucus) are all closer to big
business, and are arrayed against Vander
Zalm.

Sections of big business want Vander
Zalm removed from the Socred leadership,
but they are not considering a break with
Social Credit at this time. Their political
view is summed up by the statement of the
four maverick Socred backbenchers: “We
encourage the concerned free enterprise
supporters to stay with Social Credit. The
party has room for all and your input is
valued. It is our objective to make the circle
wider, not narrower, to develop a complete
assessment and to rebuild support for Social
Credit.”

The diameter of the circle is the issue
dividing Social Credit.

There is no division within Social Credit
or on Howe Street over the main thrust of
Socred policy under Vander Zalm, which
has followed the neo-conservative agenda
set by Bill Bennett. Vander Zalm’s accomp-
lishments, for which he has enjoyed strong
business support, include Bill 19, privatiza-
tion, contracting out and restraint which
have now reduced the government payroll
by 41 per cent since 1983; and regressive
taxation and social service cuts which have
eliminated the provincial deficit and last
year produced a $700-million surplus. Not
least, Vander Zalm has championed free
trade and is playing a leading role in facili-

tating a continental energy policy.

The source of divisions within Social
Credit is Vander Zalm’s association with a
particular brand of extreme right-wing
Christian fundamentalism. Bible thumping
and rural populism has deep roots in the
Socreds, and Vander Zalm successfully
exploited that tradition in taking the leader-
ship over Smith and McCarthy. But it has
also led him and his closest associates to
take exaggerated positions on issues like
abortion and AIDS, which has divided the
right and brought discredit to the govern-
ment.

The controversy around the Socred con-

stitution, which since the 1930s has pro-
claimed the party to be based on “the
universally recognized principles of Chris-
tianity,” is another expression of the div-
isiveness that Vander Zalm and his wing of
the party have wrought. Had it not been for
the premier’s adventures with prayer rooms
at the legislature and AIDS videos, the mat-
ter of the constitution would likely not have
cropped up. But having invited the debate,
the answer from Vander Zalm’s Richmond
running mate MLA Nick Loenen to the
inevitable challenge against basing the party
on a single religious tradition was the thinly
veiled racism that “there is a greater degree
of openness in societies that have been
spawned by Christianity.”
_ This official attitude in a province which
is increasingly less “Christian,” and the least
of any Canadian province, narrows the cir-
cle and in the wisdom of Howe Street puts
their agenda at risk.

NDP leader Mike Harcourt dismissed critic’s ““empty rhetoric about socialism.”

called on all disbelievers to join him in a
meal of Howe Sound crab.

All this is music for the NDP, who are
enjoying the benefits of their position as the
only realistic alternative, and without much
scrutiny of their own policies or statements.

I believe that the NDP will produce a
comprehensive platform for the election,
and that regardless of the strengths and
weaknesses of that policy, there is clearly a
basis for the optimism at NDP provincial
headquarters.

Mike Harcourt faced Bill Vander Zalm in
the 1984 Vancouver mayoralty election,
and the result was no contest. He undoubt-
edly believes that he can repeat that expe-
rience, and in fact the “election alert”
appeal from. Mike Harcourt which arrived
this week is full of rhetoric that sounds
awfully similar to his 1984 speeches about

(ESR eR PST EE, SO PEE TE EE ERT OTE TEE,
Throughout the left and in the environmental, labour and

social movements two questions swirl endlessly: will an
NDP government have any solutions to the fundamental
environmental, economic and social issues around which
thousands are mobilizing; can the Socreds be defeated
without those clear alternative policies?

Sunnie dee ia ec mmr me

But far-right Christian fundamentalism
is itself a byproduct of neo-conservative
wave through the last decade. It has
spawned direct advocates like the Christian
Heritage Party and parallel far-right
movements like the Reform Party. The
Reform Party now boasts 8,000 B.C.
members and a party official recently
remarked that almost all were provincial
Socreds.

How many of the delegates to the Social
Credit convention in October would asso-

ciate with the Christian ultra right isn’t

known, but the jeers for Michael Levy were
the loudest statement coming out of the
convention. The pro-Vander Zalm “stay
the course” strategy that dominated the
convention, for the present, has frozen the
political patterns in the province.

Vander Zalm has since named a new
cabinet which removes some loose tongued
ministers like Neil Vant and Dave Parker
from their high profile posts: But the first
statements uttered by the two new ministers
in two important ministries were a quick
indication that the new arrangements at the
cabinet table do little to alter the character,
or the style, of the government.

The new tourism minister, Cliff Michael,
argued that clear-cut forests are part of

what tourists come to view, and the new
environment minister, John Reynolds,

Vander Zalm saying “‘no” to everything
that is good. :

Harcourt has the leadership of the NDP
firmly in hand, and the electoral strategy of
avoiding controversy and everywhere ad-
vancing a moderate tone of appeasement
and consensus is not going to change. To
think that it might is not to know Mike
Harcourt.

Two events represent the Harcourt direc-
tion. First was the speech last year to the
Vancouver Board of Trade with MLA
Colin Gabelman in which he explicitly con-
demned the Barrett government for its poor
relationship with business and pledged that
an NDP government would be committed
to the “creation of wealth” — for example,
resource exploitation and the global market
place.

The second was his call for an “Envir-
onment and Jobs Accord.”’ Reminiscent of
Bob Skelly’s “Australian Accord” in the
run-up to the last election, Harcourt’s
accord would bring environmentalists,
loggers and the forest industry to a consen-
sus On a process to resolve land use disputes.

Both of these initiatives have occasioned
sharp polemics within the NDP, and the
party’s usually sleepy journal, The Demo-
crat, has come alive with the debate over the
past year.

But in spite of that debate, Mike Har-
court sent an unmistakable message to the

party’s left when he bridled at criticism of
his course in an article by Larry Kuehn in
New Directions magazine, which took issue
with the accord and suggested that the
NDP?’s environmental policy falls short by
failing to address corporate power. In a
CBC television interview, Harcourt stated
stridently that he has “no patience” for
“empty rhetoric about socialism.”

The response from the environmental left
in the NDP to Harcourt’s rejection of their
concerns is a conference for later November
called “the greening of the NDP.”

Outside of the NDP, the left is also aware
of the convergence of the primary environ-
mental, social and economic issues around
which thousands are mobilizing.

The growing. movement+t
lar control of the province’s resource and
forest base, based on aboriginal title, com-
munity control and sustainable develop-
ment policies which began at the Tin Wis
conference was propelled ahead at the
enormously successful State of the Islands
conference at. the end of October. A follow
up to Tin Wis is scheduled for Vancouver in
the spring of 1990.

From this movement, and the labour,
women’s and anti-poverty movements, a
program of demands emerge, but with the
clear appreciation that at this point there is
not a political voice to articulate that pro-
gram.

Given that need, together with the pros-
pects for political change, the Communist
Party’s provincial leadership in October
called for a “‘new political alliance” to influ-
ence the direction of change. The leadership
holds that there is a basis for such an
alliance, united by a left, environmental
program aimed at democratizing the econ-
omy and meeting social needs.

The party also agreed to delay making
decisions regarding the nomination of CP
candidates while it pursues this new
alliance.

Early discussions indicate that some New
Democrats appreciate the need for a strong,
extra parliamentary “green left” alliance
that would focus on the environmental and
anti-corporate issues, and be positive about
the need for an NDP government.

Others in the NDP and labour leadership
undoubtedly see that kind of development
as a threat, for its anti-corporate thrust goes
beyond NDP policy and challenges the
Harcourt direction to move the party to the
centre.

Therein are the tactics of left politics at
this point in B.C. But the strategic view
from the left is clear. We are after a new
government, and popular support for a
genuine anti-corporate, environmental and
social program that will move B.C. left.

This article is based on a political report to
the meeting of the B.C. provincial committee
of the Communist Party on Oct. 21. Fred
Wilson is the party’s provincial leader.

Pacific Tribune, November 13, 1989 « 5