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The NDP was founded in 1932 as the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. The Ontario CCF saw itself as the successor to the 1919-1923 Farmer-Labour coalition that formed the government in Ontario under Ernest C. Drury. While United Farmer MPPs ended up joining the Ontario Liberal Party the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) as an organization participated in the formation of the Ontario CCF and was briefly affilated with the party before deciding to withdraw from active politics. Many active members of the UFO remained as indivdual members of the CCF and took prominent positions including Agnes MacPhail who served as president of the Ontario CCF in the 1930s and was elected to the Ontario legislature as a CCF MPP in 1943.
The CCF contested its first Ontario provincial election in 1934 in which it received 7% of the vote and elected its first member, Samuel Lawrence, in Hamilton East. The Ontario CCF failed to win any seats in 1937 but achieved a major breakthrough under its first leader, Ted Jolliffe, in the 1943 election forming the Official Opposition with 32% of the vote and 34 seats, just four seats short of George Drew's Progressive Conservatives who fromed a minority government.
The Tories remained in government for 42 years. The prosperity of the 1950s combined with the anti-Communist hysteria of the Cold War caused the CCF's fortunes to decline in the 1950s with the party losing its position as the Official Opposition in 1951 to the Liberals and the socialist CCF being reduced to two seats.
Donald MacDonald became leader in 1953 and spent the next fifteen years rebuilding the party which changed its named to the New Democratic Party in 1961 when it formed a formal alliance with the labour movement.
The Ontario NDP gradually picked up seats through the 1960s and achieved a breakthrough in 1967 with its popular vote rising from 15 to 26% and its presence in the legislature going from 8 to 20 seats.
Stephen Lewis took over the party's leadership in 1970 and the NDP's popularity continued to grow, In 1975 the Tories were reduced to a minority government for the first time in thirty years and the NDP became the Official Opposition with 38 seats and 29% of the vote as the result of a brilliant election campaign that forced the Tories to promise to implement the NDP's rent control policies. Hopes were high that the NDP was on the verge of taking power but in the 1977 election the Tories under Bill Davis again won a minority government with the NDP losing five seats and slipping into third place behind the Liberals.
The NDP declined futher in 1981 under Michael Cassidy but the party's fortunes turned around under the leadership of Bob Rae. The 1985 election resulted in a minority legislature with the Tories under Premier Frank Miller having 52 seats, the Liberals having 48 and the NDP 25. The New Democrats entered negotiations with both the Tories and the Liberals and ended up signing a two-year accord with the Liberals in which the Liberals would form government with the NDP's support in exchange for the implementation of a number of NDP policies. The Liberals and NDP voted together to defeat the minority Tory government in a Motion of No Confidence opening the way for Liberal leader David Peterson to form a government. This was not a coalition government as the NDP declined an offer to sit in Cabinet preferring to remain in opposition.
The accord expired in 1987, the Liberals called an election and were re-elected with a majority. The NDP returned as the second largest party with Bob Rae became Leader of the Opposition. In 1990 the party was elected to government for the first time by defeating the government of David Peterson and his Liberals.
Bob Rae became Premier of Ontario during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In government, the NDP disappointed supporters by abandoning much of its ambitious program, including the promise to institute a public auto insurance system. As the recession worsened the NDP implemented what it called the Social Contract, an austerity measure that reopened the collective barganing agreements of public sector unions and implemented a wage freeze as well as Rae Days which were a schedule of days in which the government shut down operations and sent government workers home without pay. The Social Contract resultd in a major breach in the NDP's alliance with the labour movement (a split which has yet to fully heal) as several unions turned against the party contributing to its defeat in 1995 at the hands of Mike Harris and the Progressive Conservatives. As a result of the election the NDP again returned to third party status.
Howard Hampton succeeded Rae in 1996 but the NDP has been unable to reverse its decline. In the 2003 election, despite an energetic campaign that saw an increase in its popular vote to 15%, the party was only seven seats in the Ontario legislature causing it to lose official party status.
See also:
Leaders of the Ontario CCF/NDP
++The Ontario CCF became the Ontario NDP in 1961External link