The 1930s were a tumultuous time to be forming a socialist party. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), founded in 1932, was a latecomer among such parties. The turmoil of the Great Depression provided an opportunity to build a pan-Canadian party, but threats raised questions about the goals of the movement. Was socialism the only alternative to fascism? Or did fascism require a popular defence of liberal democracy? Meanwhile, other reform movements emerged as competitors and the CCF had to contend with the pre-existing and established Communist Party of Canada (CPC).

Historian James Naylor provides a fresh look at the early years of the CCF, the precursor to the New Democratic Party (NDP). Naylor insists that “there is much more to be learned about the formation of the left in the 1930s and 1940s, the ways in which it responded to the challenges of two decades of change, and how it understood society and its role within it” (12). In this detailed and extensively researched book, Naylor makes a number of important contributions that should influence how we understand the CCF.

The classic works on the CCF have focused on the formative role of its first leader, J.S. Woodsworth and the academics within the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR). Naylor encourages us to shift our focus to those he describes as “labour socialists.” According to Naylor, the labour socialist members of the Socialist Parties of British Columbia and Ontario, the Labour Conference of Ontario and the Independent Labour Party of Manitoba were the “core founders” of the CCF (66).

Many of these labour socialists had been active in the left organizations that existed before the First World War and had experienced the postwar labour unrest that saw its most famous explosion in the Winnipeg General Strike. Naylor thus emphasizes a degree of continuity between the older left from before the First World War and the newly formed CCF in the 1930s. In doing so, he breaks down the dichotomy between a supposedly doctrinaire and Marxist earlier left and a supposedly pragmatic and social democratic CCF.

Naylor demonstrates that the CCF was, at least initially, a “socialist” party; this was not postwar “social democracy” that sought to merely reform capitalism (72). Nor was the party reducible to the gradualism and technocratic planning of Fabian socialism. “Labour socialists…were revolutionaries, in the sense that they believed that capitalism had to be supplanted by a working class, socialist society” (10). The labour socialist organizations, especially the Socialist Parties of BC and Ontario, were shaped by Marxism.

Naylor underlines the oft-overlooked influence of the British Independent Labour Party (ILP). Again, the timing of the formation of the CCF is important. By 1931, the second British Labour Party government had collapsed, unable to address the Depression, and Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald had formed a coalition government with the Conservatives and Liberals. The Labour Party was not a shining example to emulate, especially for labour socialists. If anything, British Labour appeared as a negative example of reformism. Instead, many Canadian socialists looked to the ILP, an affiliate of the Labour party that was on a leftward trajectory and growing increasing critical of the party leadership. In July 1932, the ILP voted to disaffiliate. Naylor writes that “During the first half of the 1930, the British ILP would play an extraordinary role as a model for a surprising range of Canadian socialists” (37). As Naylor indicates, it's misleading to depict the CCF as founded upon the model of the British Labour Party.

The CCF was formed as a federation of existing groups. CCF clubs emerged to facilitate membership among individuals that were not members of affiliated labour parties or farmer groups. The clubs were viewed suspiciously by the labour socialists as an entry point for middle-class elements. A “class war” quickly emerged in the party that resulted in the exclusion or suppression of the radical, working-class currents. As early as the CCF's Regina convention in 1933, the labour socialists were being “marginalized” (105). This led to Woodsworth's purge of the Ontario Labour Conference in 1934 and another purge of the Ontario CCF in 1936.

The CCF had a complex relationship with the Communists in the 1930s and 1940s. On the one hand, they were rivals for working-class support. Yet, many labour socialists advocated working-class unity. The CPC was active in the labour movement, organizing the unemployed, fighting against state repression and organizing support for the Spanish Republic. Woodsworth and the CCF leadership opposed co-operation with the Communists. On the ground, CCFers often joined social struggles alongside or led by Communists. Naylor examines this in detail, but he places particular emphasis upon the impact of Communists’ turn to the “popular front” strategy in the mid-30s. As the Communists made the fight against fascism their priority, they “looked beyond the working class towards the broadest possible anti-fascist alliance” (202). The Communist embrace of cross-class alliances served to further undermine the vision of working-class socialism held by labour socialists.

Finally, Naylor demonstrates that Woodsworth's opposition to Canada's participation in the Second World War, usually described as pacifism, should be understood as rooted in the anti-imperialism of the labour socialist tradition. Rather than being a lonely pacifist voice, Woodsworth reflected the continuing strand of anti-imperialist sentiment within the CCF.

All of this makes a fundamentally important contribution that will become required reading for anyone that wants to understand the origins and trajectory of the CCF/NDP. The early CCF had a variety of political and organizational influences. The labour socialists were an important, formative strand within the CCF. The roots of the transformation of the socialist CCF into the social democratic CCF/NDP of the postwar years can be traced to developments in the 1930s and 1940s and the fate of labour socialism.