The Manitoba Labour Party (MLP) was a reformist, non-
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
labour party in
Manitoba, Canada. It was created in early May 1910 as a successor to the province's second
Independent Labour Party (1906–08). Former
Member of Parliament Arthur Puttee was a leading MLP organizer. The party fielded one candidate in the
1910 provincial election, and also ran candidates at the municipal level.
The party's founding convention declared that "the ultimate object of attainment shall be to preserve to the worker the full product of his toil". The ambiguity of this statement was criticized by the more radical
Socialist Party of Canada (SPC), which called for collective ownership in industry.
After the SPC nominated candidates for
Winnipeg North and
Winnipeg West Winnipeg West could refer to
* Winnipeg West (federal electoral district), coming into effect in April 2024
* Winnipeg West (provincial electoral district) (defunct)
{{Disambiguation ...
in the 1910 provincial election, the MLP sought to prevent confrontation and vote-splitting by fielding only one candidate of their own:
Fred Dixon in
Winnipeg Centre
Winnipeg Centre (french: Winnipeg-Centre) is a federal electoral district in Manitoba, Canada, that has been represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1917 to 1925 and since 1997.
History
This riding was originally created in 1914 fr ...
. Dixon was a moderate reformer, and campaigned in an unofficial alliance with the
Manitoba Liberal Party. He was bitterly opposed by the SPC, which belatedly nominated W.S. Cummings to run against him as a spoiler.
Dixon lost to the
Conservative Party incumbent,
Thomas Taylor Thomas Taylor may refer to:
Military
*Thomas H. Taylor (1825–1901), Confederate States Army colonel
*Thomas Happer Taylor (1934–2017), U.S. Army officer; military historian and author; triathlete
*Thomas Taylor (Medal of Honor) (born 1834), Am ...
, by seventy-three votes. Cummings's ninety-nine votes may have made the difference in the outcome. The SPC was widely blamed for Dixon's loss, and became marginalized in Winnipeg's labour community for the next eight years.
The Manitoba Labour Party dissolved after the 1910 election. In 1912, its leaders formed the
Manitoba Labour Representation Committee.
Election results
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! Election !! # of candidates nominated !! # of seats won !! # of total votes !! % of popular vote !! % in seats contested
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!
1910
Events
January
* January 13 – The first public radio broadcast takes place; live performances of the operas '' Cavalleria rusticana'' and ''Pagliacci'' are sent out over the airwaves, from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York C ...
, 1 , , 0 , , 1,939 , , , , 47.88
See also
*
List of Manitoba political parties
*
Winnipeg Labour Party
{{Unreferenced, date=October 2007
The Winnipeg Labour Party was a reformist organization in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, representing labour interests. Founded in 1896, it was based on an earlier Winnipeg organization known as the Independent L ...
*
Labour candidates and parties in Canada
There have been various groups in Canada that have nominated candidates under the label Labour Party or Independent Labour Party, or other variations from the 1870s until the 1960s. These were usually local or provincial groups using the Labour Pa ...
External links
Radical Politics in Winnipeg: 1899-1915 A. Ross McCormack
Some of the information in this article has been summarized from the article listed above, and from McCormack's ''Reformers, rebels, and revolutionaries : the Western Canadian radical movement, 1899-1919'' (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1977), pp. 90–91. Readers are encouraged to consult this work for more information.
All electoral information is taken from
Elections Manitoba.
Provincial political parties in Manitoba
Defunct political parties in Canada
Political parties established in 1910
1910 establishments in Manitoba
Political parties disestablished in 1910
1910 disestablishments in Canada