THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

APRIL, 1971

A SALUTE TO

A GREAT CANADIAN —
AND HUMANITARIAN

With the federal New Dem-.
ocratic Party choosing a
new parliamentary leader,
Tommy Douglas steps out of
the spotlight into the realm of
legend.

No other politician in Canada
in Douglas’s 35 years of
political action has been so
right so many times. Though
66, he has the vigor of youth
and ideas to match.

He hardly fits the mold of
intrepid hero. Yet the Douglas
form, a pocket-sized 5-foot-6,
towers when he speaks out.
And he has made a career of
speaking out for any cause that
is just, though often not
popular. Y

Take any contentious issue of
the past 30 years and you'll find
Tommy Douglas’s words

outspoken. and later vin-
dicated.

Long before foreign
domination of the economy
was usurped as _ political
timber by those who had done
the selling out, he was spelling
out the issue and advocating
the answer.

“Decisions in Canadian
branch plants are made on the
basis of what is good for the
parent firm, not what is good
for Canada’s economy,” he
said in 1963 in a speech often
plagiarized. ‘‘Foreign  in-
vestment is not concentrated in
industries which create jobs
for Canadians, but in high-
capital, low-labor-content in-
dustries. This tends:to make us
hewers of wood and drawers of
water.”

_ GREAT CAMPAIGNER

As early as 1961 he was
campaigning for a department
of consumer affairs on the
federal level, long before it
became a reality. He bore the
insults of callous know-
nothings who berated him for

attacking the Vietnam war. -

And now they’re eating their
words and mouthing his.

He had the record to talk
from, too. Tommy and the Co-
operative © Commonwealth
Federation made the human
dimension their guidepost
during two decades of CCF
government in Saskatchewan.
. For 20 years he was the
province’s premier.

There were _ hospital-
insurance plans, farm-credit
aids, co-operative enterprises,
progressive labor laws,
government owned industries
and state-run auto insurance in
Saskatchewan long before such

To Weekend magazine he
said, ‘‘It is possible to control
the economy without owning
the industries.”

One can forget his remark-
able political achievements
while honoring Tommy’s
philosophy. But it would be
unfair.

He steadily built the federal

arty to a position of true
political clout before turning
over the leader’s job because
he just couldn’t face the
rigorous campaign of another
federal election. :

“Scrappy” waS a favorite
tag the press put on him. It fit.

steps were conceived any-
where else in the country.

Could Compromise

And though Tommy always
stuck to his word, the Scottish-
born former Baptist preacher
knew when he. could com-
promise and change. He had
said in 1948, while premier of
Saskatchewan, that govern-
ments should pursue five broad
fields of public ownership.

They were utilities, the
development and distribution
of natural gas, transportation
and communications like bus
lines and telephones, ‘‘some’’
natural resources and social
welfare, such as insurance.

In 1961 he told Maclean’s
magazine that where once he
would have added banks and
insurance. companies, he no
longer thought outright owner-
ship was necessary.

_ HARD WORKER _

Nothing came easily to Tommy
in life. He could empathize
with the vast numbers who
love him because he was one of
them. He was probably the
only premier with a union
card.
Linotype Operator

The son of an iron moulder,
Tommy was born Oct. 20, 1904,
in Falkirk, Scotland. The
Douglas family moved to
Winnipeg in 1910 but returned
to Scotland during the First
World War. His father had
enlisted, and Tommy
supported the family working
in a factory. The Douglases

returned to Winnipeg as the
war ended, and Tommy got a
job as a linotype operator with
the Winnipeg Free Press.

Early events can mark great
men, and Tommy was to learn
soon in life the facts of poverty.
A terrible bone marrow
disease struck him as a
youngster, and 12-year-old
Tommy could not walk to
school he was in such pain. The
best medical care was out of
the question for the poor, but a
doctor doing charity work took
in his case. As a grown man, he
recalled, it’s ‘the only reason I
can walk today.’”

Later he earned a bachelor
of arts degree at Brandon
(Man.) College and a master
of arts at McMaster University
in Hamilton, Ont. While
studying for a Ph.D. at the
University of Chicago, he faced
the choice of teaching there or
trying politics back home. That
one choice changed the face of
Canadian political events.

Won First Term

His first attempt at public
office, in the 1934 provincial
elections in Saskatchewan,
was unsuccesssful. But a year
later he won his first term in
the federal Parliament at 31
and was re-elected in 1940.

He resigned his federal seat
in 1944 to take over as leader of
the new Co-operative Com-
monwealth Federation in
Saskatchewan, and that same
year the farmer-labor
movement won power and 47 of
52 seats.

Always a friend of labor,
Tommy introduced bargaining
rights for civil servants and
legislated the 44-hour week, a
breakthrough for working men
and women at the time. Later
he vociferously defended the
right of federal employees to
bargain and strike.

“No government has the

, right,” he said in 1965, “to turn
| its employees into second-class

citizens . . . by denying them
the advantages enjoyed by
employees in industry.”

1948 Election

The CCF lost 14 seats in the

1948 provincial election, but it
held power and in subsequent
elections increased its
strength, winning in 1952 the
biggest popular vote in
Saskatchewan history.

To pay for the unprecedented
welfare programs he created
for his people, he increased
royalties from resource ex-
ploiters. “‘Social security costs
money,’’ said the CCF premier
in 1952. “‘But in our province

T. C. "TOMMY" DOUGLAS

those who are depleting and
exploiting the resources of the
province are the ones who pay
for it. They’re best able to
pay.”

While organized labor and
long-time CCF leaders were
forming the New Democratic
Party in 1961, the logical choice
for leader was either David
Lewis or Tommy. Mr. Lewis
himself stepped aside for the
prairie radical, though Tommy
eschewed a draft movement by
saying he served best ‘‘where I
am.’’ Still, the party prevailed.
The Saskatchewan CCF
released him, and he became
national NDP leader.
National Issues
_Immediately he began ar-
ticulating national issues and
was an early advocate of new
roles in confederation for
Quebec. Typically, he raised
the first warnings of the
gathering storm in French-
Canada. “We had better do
something about the fact
confederation is not working
equally well for all people in
ica ae Tommy in 1961.

n one election after anoth
he led the NDP to mere
shares of the popular vote.

He was leader when the:

national NDP won more than a

million votes in 1962 for the
first time, a figure of nation-
wide importance. He accused
the Pearson Government in
1967 of “timidity and am-
bivalence’”’ on Vietnam.

He called the Auto Pact a
$50-million-a-year ‘‘handout to
manufacturets.”’ (In 1970 it
was revealed that excise duties
of more than $60 million owed
by the big car makers had been
written off.)

Pearson Liberals

He relentlessly went after
the Pearson Liberals on
economic independence. “The ~
prime minister sings ‘O, ~
Canada We Stand on Guard for

Thee’ at the front door while >

out the back door he sells our ©
resources,” Tommy charged. “y
Those privileged to know the

- private man find him gentle 74
and warm, with a sensitive >
personality and bountiful sems€ 44

of humor. He makes a point
with a joke whenever he cam. ~
Our sexual mores, he omee —
said, ‘“‘are only slightly less |
hypocritical than the British ~
. in the Victorian Age.
Thomas Clement Dougia
suggested his own epitaph ®
re interview in 1961, and it W@
ypically humble, typiea¥z
Tommy. “He liked people: =