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

1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  Page 5

The UFA basic issues at the January convention seem to have remained the same until the provincial election in August 1935. A gradual accumulation of credible arguments and promising proposals built up on the Social Credit side of the account; much of it, as in Rimbey, within the UFA. Public opinion within the agricultural community steadily and inexorably swung to Social Credit, since it was a solution that seemed to have a chance of working. It is hardly surprising that people who were offered it, as well as a range of threadbare alternatives, plus a few dark horses new to the scene and unpromisingly promoted, chose Social Credit. The remarkable thing is the inability of the UFA to pose any alternative. The UFA went ahead and nominated candidates for the August election, although obviously morale and support were severely shaken, for only 45 of the 63 constituency associations fielded candidates. Social Credit ran a full slate, while the Liberals, who benightedly believed that they were going to benefit from the Brownlee scandal, ran 61.

The physically restricted world around the Rimbey UFA structure is a microcosm of what afflicted the organization province-wide. It was the governing party, but it had not the foggiest idea of how to deal with the number one social problem confronting everybody — the general collapse of the world's business system. Their principal opponents, moreover, were full of passionate intensity, convinced that they had the solution. They wanted to govern, and thought they knew exactly what they would do on the morning of day one. They did not, however, since as the UFA leadership had predicted, the bulk of the legislation related to their core program that they did pass, was disallowed or refused royal assent by the federal powers. The story of Social Credit's remarkable career has been told too many times to merit retelling here, but Rimbey's community political activity, even this mere skimming of the surface, gives an insight into one of the more bizarre electoral phenomena in Alberta's history.

[<<previous]

From: Aspenland 1998 — Local Knowledge and Sense of Place
Edited by: David J. Goa and David Ridley
Published by: The Central Alberta Regional Museums Network (CARMN) with the assistance of the Provincial Museum of Alberta and the Red Deer and District Museum.