'To Waffle to the Left:' The Waffle, the New Democratic Party, and Canada's New Left during the Long Sixties

The Sixties were time of conflict and change in Canada and beyond. Radical social movements and countercultures challenged the conservatism of the preceding decade, rejected traditional forms of politics, and demanded an alternative based on the principles of social justice, individual freedom and an end to oppression on all fronts. Yet in Canada a unique political movement emerged which embraced these principles but proposed that New Left social movements – the student and anti-war movements, the women’s liberation movement and Canadian nationalists – could bring about radical political change not only through street protests and sit-ins, but also through participation in electoral politics. The Waffle movement, which formed around the “Manifesto for an Independent and Socialist Canada” and challenged the leadership of the New Democratic Party (NDP) from 1969 to 1973, represents a dynamic convergence of many of the social movements that comprised the New Left in Canada. The Waffle argued that the NDP should promote socialist measures to combat American economic domination and ensure Canadian independence while simultaneously engaging with extra-parliamentary struggles. NDP and trade-union leaders, reluctant to adopt such a radical approach, expelled the Waffle from the Ontario NDP in 1972. Despite its short life-span, the Waffle had a considerable influence on Canadian politics and the issues that it raised – Canadian economic dependency, Quebec’s right to self-determination, women’s equality, and the decline of the manufacturing sector, among others – continue to resonate to this day. Furthermore, the Waffle’s impact on Canadian nationalism and its legacy in the NDP, labour and women’s movements, radical left and academia remain contested. The Waffle’s successes and failures represent a potentially revealing perspective on Canadian politics and society during a period of rapid social change, the Sixties. While the existing historiography has sketched the outlines of the Waffle’s history, the focus overall has been limited to analyses of internal leadership disputes and the experience of the Ontario Waffle in particular. Abundant research materials now exist to support a wider and more intensive examination. Through an analysis of the Waffle, focusing on grassroots activists as well as the movement’s leadership, this dissertation demonstrates important connections between the Waffle and other New Left social movements. This interconnectivity is particularly significant, as it indicates that the Waffle occupied a unique place in the international New Left, specifically a convergence of social movements which sought to engage with electoral politics through an existing political party, the NDP. The dissertation also revises the movement/party dichotomy which has dominated much of the Waffle/NDP historiography. Finally, my study of the Waffle, a group active from 1969-75, indicates the flaws of applying a declension narrative to the Canadian Sixties, instead demonstrating the value of a “long Sixties” approach. As the clock ticked down on the 1960s, the Canadian New Left neither died nor retreated into cynicism nor lashed out in violence. Instead, its diverse elements, led by the Waffle, nurtured the wild dream of redirecting and leading to triumph an established political party.

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