The first Labour MP was Arthur Puttee who founded the Winnipeg Labour Party and was elected to the House of Commons from that city in 1900. Other MPs elected under the Labour or Independent Labour label include Angus MacInnis who was an Independent Labour Party MP from 1930 to 1935 and sat as a CCF MP from 1940; A. A. Heaps who was elected as a Labour MP for Winnipeg North in 1925, 1926 and 1930 and was re-elected as a CCFer in 1935; J. S. Woodsworth, who founded the Manitoba Independent Labour Party in 1921 and as sat as an Independent Labour Party MP from 1921 until he became the founding leader of the CCF in 1932.

The Federated Labour Party was created by the British Columbia Federation of Labour in 1920 absorbing the Social Democratic Party and part of the Socialist Party of Canada. In 1924, the Canadian Labour Party was formed by a coalition of the Federated Labour Party, Workers Party of Canada (the legal face of the Communist Party of Canada, and local labour councils.

From 1906-1909, There was also a Canadian Labour Party of B.C. that ran candidates in the early years of the twentieth century and was a split from and rival to a group calling itself the Independent Labour Party.

A later Independent Labour Party was organized in British Columbia in 1926 by the Federated Labour Party and Canadian Labour Party (B.C. section) branches. In 1928 it severed its CLP(BC) connections and in 1931 it reorganized and was renamed the Independent Labour Party (Socialist). The following year it became the Socialist Party of Canada.

Table of contents

1 Liberal Labour 2 Farmer-Labour 3 External Link

Liberal Labour

There have also been two Liberal-Labour MPs; Malcolm Lang, who was elected as a Labour MP in 1926 and re-elected as Liberal-Labour in 1930 and John Mercer Reid, a Liberal MP from Kenora-Rainy River who sat as a Liberal-Labour MP from 1968 to 1972 when he changed his desigation back to Liberal. In the 1943 Ontario provincial eleciton the Communist Party of Canada decided to run several candidates jointly with the Liberal Party of Canada in an attempt to marginalise the CCF. One of the Liberal-Labour MPPs elected was a member of the Communist Party - the others were Liberals who enjoyed Communist support. One Liberal riding association continued to nominate Liberal-Labour candidates into the 1970s.

Farmer-Labour

In Ontario, Labour and Independent Labour Party MPPs joined with members of the United Farmers of Ontario to form a Farmer-Labour coalition government from 1919 to 1923 with E. C. Drury as Premier. Across the country labour and the farmers movements, particularly the United Farmers formed alliances and often ran joint candidates. The Progressive Party of Canada was effectively a coalition of farmer and labour groups. In Alberta several Labour MLAs joined the initial United Farmers of Alberta government and in Saskatchewan the United Farmers and the Independent Labour Party merged to form the Farmer Labour Group in 1932 which, two years later, became the Saskatchewan section of the CCF.

Federally, Agnes Macphail who was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons as a Progressive was re-elected in 1935 as a UFO-Labour candidate before being defeated in 1940. She was, at the time, a member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation but ran as UFO-Labour for tactical reasons.

See also:

• United Farmers
• Progressive Party of Canada
• Cooperative Commonwealth Federation
• New Democratic Party of Canada

• List of political parties in Canada