Red Tory
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Red Tory is a term given to a political philosophy, tradition, and disposition in Canada. It has fundamentally, if not exclusively, been found in provincial and federal Conservative political parties. It is a definable historical legacy that marks differences in the creation, development, and evolution of the political cultures of Canada and the United States. Canadian conservatism and American conservatism - and the philosophical roots of the term "conservative" - are significantly different in each nation.
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[edit] Philosophy
Historically, Canadian conservatism has been related to the British Tory tradition, with a distinctive concern for the common good versus individual rights, as mediated through a traditional pre-industrial standard of morality, which have never been as evident in American conservatism. Today, however, Red Tories are often simply characterized as the left wing faction of the contemporary Conservative party, or a Conservative committed to the welfare state and/or liberal social policy. They are usually seen as centrist to centre-left within the Canadian political spectrum.
Red Toryism derives largely from a British Tory and imperialist tradition that maintained the unequal division of wealth and political privilege among social classes can be justified, if members of the privileged class contribute to the common good. Red Tories supported traditional institutions like religion and the monarchy, maintenance of the social order, and good government. Later, this would manifest itself as support for the welfare state. This belief in a common good, as expanded on in Colin Campbell and William Christian's Political Parties and Ideologies in Canada, is at the root of Red Toryism.
[edit] Origins
In distinction to the American experience where class divisions were seen as undemocratic (although still existing), Canadian Tories adopted a more patriarchal view of government. Monarchy, public order and good government - understood as dedication to the common good - preceded, moderated, and balanced an unequivocal belief in individual rights and liberty.
This type of Canadian conservatism is derived largely from the Tory tradition evoked by English conservative thinkers and statesmen such as Richard Hooker, the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, and Benjamin Disraeli, later the First Earl of Beaconsfield. The primary influences on Canadian Toryism in the Victorian age, were Disraeli's One Nation Conservatism, and the radical Toryism advocated by Lord Randolph Churchill. Inherent in these tory traditions was the ideal of noblesse oblige and a conservative communitarianism.
In late Victorian times, these were the pre-eminent strains of conservative thought in the British Empire, and were advanced by many in the Tory faction of Sir John A. Macdonald's conservative coalition in the Canadas. None of this lineage denies that Tory traditions of communitarianism and collectivism had existed in the British North American colonies since the Loyalist exodus from the American colonies between 1776 and 1796 however; and it is this aspect that is one of the primary points of difference between the respective conservative political cultures of Canada and the United States.
The explicit notion of a "Red" Toryism was developed by Gad Horowitz in the 1960s, who argued that there was a significant Tory ideology in Canada. This vision contrasted Canada with the United States, which was seen as lacking this collectivist tradition, as it was expunged from the American political culture after the American Revolution and the exodus of the United Empire Loyalists. Horowitz argued that Canada's stronger socialist movement grew from Toryism, and that this is an explanation of why socialism has never had much electoral success in the United States. This also meant that Canadian conceptions of liberty were more collective and communitarian, and could be seen as more directly derivative of the English tradition, than that of American practices and theories.
Horowitz identified George Grant and Eugene Forsey as exemplars of this strain of thought, which saw a central role for Christianity in public affairs and were profoundly critical of capitalism and the dominant business élites. Forsey became a Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) member, while Grant remained a Conservative - although he became disdainful of an overall shift in policy toward liberal economics and continentalism, something Forsey saw happening decades earlier. When the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker fell in 1963, largely due to the BOMARC controversy, Grant wrote Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, a book about the nature of traditional Canadian nationhood and independence that would become a lodestar of Red Toryism.
The adjective "red" refers to the left-leaning nature of Red Toryism, since socialist parties have traditionally used the colour red. In Canada, however, red is commonly associated with the centrist Liberal Party. Red Tories are commonly contrasted with Blue Tories, who believe in individualism and pure capitalism. The term reflects the broad ideological range traditionally found within conservatism in Canada.
[edit] Predominance
The Red Tories historically served as the most powerful faction within the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Many of the party's leaders have been labeled Red Tories, including Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Robert Borden, John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield, and Joe Clark. Many others have been influential as cabinet ministers and thinkers, such as E. Davie Fulton, Dalton Camp, and John Farthing.
The main bastions of Red Toryism were Ontario, the Maritime provinces, and urban Manitoba, areas where the Red Tories dominated provincial politics. The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party who have held power in that province for most of the time since Confederation, were often labelled as Red Tories, especially under the leadership of William Davis from 1971 to 1985. Under Davis, the Tories often ran to the left of the Ontario Liberal Party. Some political commentators have suggested that the new leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, John Tory, is in the mould of the Bill Davis Red Tory tradition.
Throughout the Atlantic provinces, traditional Red Tories are the dominant force in the provincial Progressive Conservative parties because of their support of the welfare state. This tends to explain why Canadian provinces are often ruled at the provincial level by a party that may be Conservative yet at the same time elect Liberal Members of Parliament to the Canadian House of Commons. In Western Canada, the Red Tory strain was significant only in Manitoba, and is particularly stronger in Winnipeg than in rural areas. The career of Duff Roblin, Premier of Manitoba from 1958 to 1967, is a prominent example. The Ministries of Premier Peter Lougheed in Alberta between 1971 and 1985 can be seen as somewhat of an anomaly - in a modern Alberta context - as his career has been viewed as another example of Red Toryism in practice.
[edit] Decline
The dominance of Red Toryism can be seen as a part of the international post-war consensus that saw the welfare state embraced by the major parties of most of the western world. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the Progressive Conservative Party suffered a string of electoral defeats under Red Tory leaders Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark. Pressure began to grow within the party for a new approach. Joe Clark's leadership was successfully challenged, and in the 1983 PC Leadership convention, members endorsed Brian Mulroney - who ran on a largely right-wing platform, but rejected free trade with the United States as proposed by another right-wing candidate, John Crosbie. Despite this early perception, the eagerness in which Mulroney's ministry embraced the Macdonald Commission's advocacy of bilateral free trade would come to indicate a sharp drift toward neo-liberal economic policies, comparable to such contemporaries as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. As result of this schism within the party, Red Toryism began to decline in relevance as a political force within the Conservative party, as it fell out-of-sync with a current political and economic orthodoxy that seemed to favour a more individualist orienation.
Red Toryism never held much sway in Western Canada where smaller-government and support for continentalist policies were greater. The growing population and power of Alberta and British Columbia has also played an important role in this transformation. Eventually the explicitly anti-Red Tory Reform Party developed in the west. At the provincial level, Albertan Red Tory supporters of Peter Lougheed and Don Getty were marginalized following Ralph Klein's assumption of power.
As right-wing support for the Federal Progressive Conservatives bled away to the Reform Party and then the Canadian Alliance, Red Tories increasingly gained control of the federal party. After the victory of the "Blue Tory" Peter MacKay at the 2003 PC Convention, and in violation of a contract signed with the Red Tory David Orchard, MacKay merged the Tories with Stephen Harper's Alliance.
[edit] Merger of federal parties
One of the most important issues facing the newly created Conservative Party is what Red Tories would do. The union has resulted in a number of Red Tories leaving the new party, either to retire or to defect to the Liberals. The latter group includes current and former Members of Parliament (MPs) André Bachand, John Herron, and Rick Borotsik. Joe Clark served the balance of his parliamentary term as a Progressive Conservative, outside of the new Conservative party caucus, before retiring from politics.
Additionally, three of the twenty-six Progressive Conservative Senators, Lowell Murray, Norman Atkins, and William Doody, decided to continue serving as Progressive Conservatives, rejecting membership in the new federal Conservative Party. Elaine McCoy and Nancy Ruth were later appointed to the Senate by Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, and chose to designate themselves as Progressive Conservatives. Doody has since passed away, and Ruth joined the Conservative Party caucus in 2006. Atkins is closely allied with the still very existent Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, and Murray, from Atlantic Canada, along with the Prime Minister who appointed him to the Senate, Joe Clark, opposed the merger of the federal PC party.
Other high-profile Red Tories such as Sinclair Stevens and Flora MacDonald applied to re-register the old Progressive Conservative Party name; however, this was refused by Elections Canada. On March 26, 2004, the Progressive Canadian Party was registered with Elections Canada. It aims to be perceived as a revival of the "PC Party", but has only achieved very minor results.
In the end, some Red Tories have decided to join the new Conservative Party. A group of them formed the Red Tory Council - a group constructed to give voice to the Red Tories, monitor the party and its positions, and to prevent too great a swing to the right. This group, however, was usurped in 2005 and replaced with a group called the Conservative Council, and it has been widely speculated by some Red Tories that such a move was undertaken to quell such dissent and inquiry in the new party's ranks. Many others have chosen to retain their principles, but refuse to align themselves formally with a political party, although the emergence of the Progressive Canadian Party, which claims to adhere to some central Red Tory values, is now perceived as an option.
[edit] Definition drift
With the conservative movement's drift to the economic and political right, the term Red Tory is often used today in the media not to refer to those in the traditional Red Tory tradition of George Grant, Dalton Camp or Robert Stanfield, but simply to moderates in the conservative movement, particularly those who reject or do not sufficiently embrace social conservatism, such as James Moore, Gerald Keddy, and Jim Prentice. Traditional Red Tories decry this misuse and the resulting decay of the term.
For example, in the 2004 Conservative Party leadership election, Tony Clement was sometimes referred to as a Red Tory even though he advocated privatization, tax cuts, curtailment of social and economic development spending and free trade with the United States. Traditional Red Tories would reject most of these stances.
Belinda Stronach, a member of the new party and relative newcomer to politics who placed second in the first Conservative leadership election, spoke up for government intervention to ensure growth in the economy, and generally stood against social conservatism, particularly in her personal support for same-sex marriage. Stronach's positions on these issues are ones that Red Tories support, and she was considered by many to be among the most prominent Red Tory members of the Conservative caucus in the 38th Parliament. However, she crossed the floor and joined the Liberals in the Canadian House of Commons on May 17, 2005.
The irony is that Red Tory now most often refers to a politics that embraces neo-liberalism but rejects a role for Christianity in public life, which in fact is the complete opposite of what traditional Red Tories believe. Some of this reflects a shift in Christianity away from social gospel postmillenialism to fundamentalist premillennialism (and therefore from social welfare and the common good to law and order and family values) but it also reflects confusion and amnesia about the historical meaning of conservatism in Canada.
[edit] References
- Christian, William Edward and C. Campbell , Political Parties and Ideologies in Canada (Note: several editions of this textbook have appeared since 1974, reflecting the changes in Canada's politics.
- Christian, William Edward and C. Campbell Parties, Leaders and Ideologies in Canada
- Farthing, J. Freedom Wears a Crown
- Grant, George Parkin. Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (1965)
- Horowitz, Gad. "Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation." Canadian Journal of Political Science (1966).
- Campbell, Colin [John]. CTtheory.net. Gad Horowitz Interviewed by Colin Campbell. [audio file], available online at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=397.
[edit] External links
- George Parkin Grant: Complex Canadian Critic of Technology and America
- Social Philosophies and Toryism in Canada
- The Red Tory's Creed (opinion)
- Anatomy of a Red Tory, a critical opinion by Andrew Coyne, May 15, 2000
