Formation of The CCF
When the Great Depression struck, Woodsworth and the ILP joined with various other labour and socialist groups in 1932 to found a new socialist party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), with Woodsworth as its first leader. Woodsworth said: "I am convinced that we may develop in Canada a distinctive type of Socialism. I refuse to follow slavishly the British model or the American model or the Russian model. We in Canada will solve our problems along our own lines."
In 1933, the CCF became the official opposition in British Columbia and, in 1934, the party achieved the same result in Saskatchewan. In the 1935 election, seven CCF Members of Parliament were elected to the House of Commons and the party captured 8.9 percent of the popular vote. The CCF, however, was never able to seriously challenge Canada's two party system. In particular, the enormous prestige of the long-time Liberal Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, prevented the CCF from displacing the Liberals as the main party of the left, as had happened in Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
In 1939, the majority of CCF members refused to support Woodsworth's opposition to Canada's entry into World War II. During the debate on the declaration of war, Mackenzie King said: "There are few men in this Parliament for whom I have greater respect than the leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. I admire him in my heart, because time and again he has had the courage to say what lays on his conscience, regardless of what the world might think of him. A man of that calibre is an ornament to any Parliament."
Nevertheless, Woodsworth was almost alone in his opposition to the war, and his days as a party leader were over. He was re-elected to the House in September 1940, but suffered a stroke in the fall and, over the next 18 months, his health deteriorated. He died in Vancouver, British Columbia in early 1942, and his ashes were scattered in the Strait of Georgia.
Woodsworth's daughter, Grace MacInnis, followed in his footsteps as a CCF politician.
Read more about this topic: J. S. Woodsworth
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