Home Social Landscape Featured Articles Community Political Organization in the Rimbey District, 1930-35

Community Political Organization in the Rimbey District, 1930-35

by Robin Hunter

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Twice The Rimbey Record publicly nibbled at the hook of credit reform. In one editorial it spoke hopefully about the "Collective Produce Clearing Association" plan, put forward by a Manitoba farm leader, which had quite clear similarities to the Douglas system. Before this, in July 1932, it analyzed several of the proposals being discussed for credit reform, but made no specific mention of the Douglas system. That the public mood, sharpened by the Depression, was open to exactly this approach, is indicated by the (unrelated) report that the Leduc Women's Institute, in an adjacent provincial constituency, had, as part of its educational program, "studied the Douglas social credit, or monetary reform system," as well as having studied technocracy and "the broad question of national currency."

Within the UFA there were at least two wings. These might be characterized as credit reformers and democratic socialists, both coexisting within the structure of the government party, though neither of them particularly saw eye to eye with the office-holding politicians. William Irvine, the local MP, clearly had a foot in both camps, but he had been influential in the founding of the CCF, Canada's democratic socialist party, and was beginning to have doubts about the efficacy of Social Credit. The principal stumbling block, as far as most UFA politicians were concerned, was the fact that there was virtually nothing the provincial government could do, since credit, banking and currency were all quite clearly matters under federal jurisdiction.

The Ponoka-Rimbey MLA was John E. Brownlee, a lawyer, who had been Alberta premier since 1925. Brownlee seems to have been on the conservative side of the UFA spectrum. Ever alert in warning the citizenry against the dangers of "Sovietism" and "extremism," Brownlee also took a dim view of Social Credit as a possible solution for the province's troubles. Although not opposed in principle to credit reform, Brownlee simply took the usual UFA position that money, credit, and other matters of that sort were federal, and beyond the scope of the Alberta government. As time went on, Brownlee used more invective in his broadsides against Social Credit. He argued at one point that the theory was "fanciful," in effect putting himself in the position of defending the status quo. In August 1933, Brownlee accepted a position on a federal royal commission, the Macmillan Commission, mandated to examine the Bank Act, and report on any need for revision. (This was the next decade's version of the commission which Irvine had persuaded to consult C. H. Douglas in 1923.) The appointment did little to lighten the premier's political problems, as he soon became enmeshed in a major scandal, which ultimately led to him resigning as premier, though not as MLA.

By 1934, many of the locals were turning in increasing numbers to advocacy of Social Credit, sometimes in seeming desperation, as the entire province, devastated by the Depression, seemed to jump on the closest available bandwagon. That bandwagon, probably because of the electrical talents of Aberhart, was the Social Credit movement. Internal pressure from the UFA locals persuaded the organization's leadership to concede space to Aberhart to make a presentation to the January 1935 convention. Extensive debate resulted in close defeat of a resolution endorsing Aberhart's version of Social Credit. It seems likely that this defeat reflects the closeness of the convention delegate stratum to the legislature leadership of the UFA government. This leadership no doubt felt it had to resist Aberhart's initiative, but the defeat of the resolution was not an easy one, as both William Irvine and Robert Gardiner, popular UFA MPs, generally identified with the socialist wing of the UFA, and the newly founded CCF party supported Aberhart from the floor of the convention. Irvine and Gardiner both saw Social Credit as an auxiliary tool for the kind of politics they wished to advance, though later, when Aberhart was in office, they had nothing more to do with Douglas economics.

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