In the Liberals, in coalition with the Country Party, were first elected to national government. Sir Robert Menzies went on to lead Australia and the Liberal Party for 17 years, before he retired from politics in In , the Abbott Coalition Government took office.
Governed in coalition - - - - present. Governed in own right - - Governed in coalition - - - Governed in coalition - - - present. Governed in coalition - - Governed as Liberal National Party - Governed as Liberal Country League - - Governed as Liberal Party - - - present.
Some of the more notable were the replacement of open voting by secret ballot, the confinement of elections to a single day, the creation of the Supreme Court of Canada, and the establishment of Hansard, the public record of the House of Commons Debates. Despite these reforms, the Liberal Party under Mackenzie was unable to achieve a solid popular base of support in any province except Ontario, and in , the government was badly defeated in the general election.
The Conservatives won seats, the Liberals Edward Blake In , Edward Blake, a great parliamentarian but a man whose leadership was not extremely successful, succeeded Alexander Mackenzie as leader of the Liberal Party. On the retirement of Blake, the Liberal members of Parliament elected Wilfrid Laurier national leader of the Liberals.
The choice of Laurier to succeed Blake was a clear demonstration that the Liberal Party accepted the equal partnership of the English and French in Canada. From the time of his election as leader, Laurier began to preach the ideal of national unity. Until his death in , Laurier spent a total of almost 45 years in the House of Commons, 15 of them as Prime Minister of Canada. We gravitate incessantly towards an ideal that we never reach.
No sooner have we reached the point we are aiming at, that we discover new horizons whose existence we never even suspected.
We dash towards them, and those new horizons, explored in their turn; we discover others to which we are carried away, on and on, further always. Thus will it be as long as man is what he is; as long as a soul immortal sits in a mortal body; his desires will always spread wider than his means, his actions will never reach the level of his conceptions. Some 2, delegates from across Canada met in Ottawa. This was the first time that Liberals from all parts of the country joined together in working out policy.
Evidence of the new Canadian national consciousness permeated the Convention and delegates returned home to build up a truly national political party pledged to reconcile provincial autonomy and national unity, to uphold civil and religious freedom, and to build a self-governing Canadian nation in which all the elements would be harmonized without losing their own distinctive character.
The old French-English bitterness flared up again. The rapid expansion of Western agriculture, based largely on wheat, stimulated and largely created a national economy in Canada for the first time. The development of the West created an expanding market for Eastern industry.
The growth of modern industry in turn brought new difficulties of industrial relations and social welfare. In , the Liberal government established a Department of Labour to handle problems created by the growth of large-scale urban industry. Defeat by Robert Borden The first period of Liberal reform continued until After the general election in , the Liberal Party once again found itself in Opposition; Conservatives and 86 Liberals were elected.
Beginning with the Boer War in , the two groups took opposite sides on the issue; and when the strain of World War I made itself felt, they divided in the bitter quarrel over conscription. By , the conscription question had become a crisis. Borden was convinced that conscription was necessary but did not believe a one-party government could apply it successfully.
He invited Laurier to join in a coalition to impose conscription and when Laurier refused, he entered into negotiations with the leading English-speaking Liberals. One after another, they left Laurier and either joined the Union government or gave it their support.
Not a single French-Canadian from the province of Quebec had been elected to support the Union government and Laurier had only a handful of followers from outside Quebec.
Sixty-two of the 82 Liberal members were from Quebec and, of the rest; almost half were elected in constituencies with a substantial French-speaking population. The Convention again adopted resolutions formulating a progressive new program for Canada designed to strengthen a country weakened by the prewar depression and shattered by the impact of war with its resulting inflation and economic dislocation. The cooperation of the French-speaking Liberals at the Convention, and the choice of an English-speaking leader demonstrated that the French-speaking Liberals were resolved to restore the Liberal Party on the basis of racial harmony and national unity.
In , the Liberals with Mackenzie King as their leader were returned to power but the face of the House of Commons was radically altered. The Liberals with seats were one seat short of a majority, and over half of its members were from Quebec — all 65 seats in that province had returned Liberals.
But on the issue of tariff reduction, he did not act quickly enough. As a result, in the general election, the Liberals and Progressives split the vote in the West and the Conservatives gained. The Conservatives won seats, the Liberals and the Progressives Byng asked Conservative leader Arthur Meighen to form the government, but he was unable to gain support in the House.
Another election was held in September In the interval, an agreement was reached between many Liberal and Progressive candidates in Manitoba and Ontario whereby Liberal-Progressive candidates who pledged to support the Liberal government were nominated jointly.
This alliance and the strength of Liberal organization in Saskatchewan resulted in the restoration of the Liberal Party to its position as a truly national party.
The Liberals won seats, the Conservatives 91, and Mackenzie King was able to govern with the support of the allied minor parties. The King Years The s were a period of growth and development in Canada. Together with his Quebec lieutenant Ernest Lapointe, Mackenzie King strove to add a new dimension to the achievements of Liberalism. Recognizing the political and social needs of the new urban industrial society that had developed rapidly in Canada under the impetus of World War I, he persuaded the Liberal Party to endorse a progressive policy of social reform.
After prolonged resistance, this concept was finally accepted as the constitutional basis of the new British Commonwealth of Nations at the Imperial Conference of Defeat by Bennett, then Victory After the boom years of and , the impact of the Great Depression in shook all of Canada and left the Liberal government uncertain as to how to survive the social and economic upheaval.
In the summer of , the Conservative Party under the leadership of R. Bennett defeated the Liberal government. The Conservatives elected members and the Liberals The Tories, however, were not capable of remedying the economic disturbance and were blamed by the people for failing to stop the disastrous decline in the standard of living and for the loss of confidence and hope which marked the years In the election of , Mackenzie King was returned to power with members.
After , Mackenzie King and his colleagues were faced with the threat of another world war and the possibility that Canadian unity might again be in jeopardy. Liberals were divided about the best means of avoiding the catastrophe of war, but were united in the desire to prevent it.
After the election of March , the Party organization was dismantled until the summer of , when victory in the war seemed assured. At this time, Mackenzie King concentrated activity on the preparation of a post-war program. To crystallize thinking and to formulate a far-reaching program, Mackenzie King called upon the National Liberal Federation to arrange a meeting of its advisory council in This meeting considered and debated policies for Canada that Liberals felt would have to be adopted if the country were to continue to grow and prosper after the war.
This was the program which, supported by the people of Canada, gave Mackenzie King his sixth victory at the polls in The electorate voted in Liberals and 67 Progressive Conservatives.
One more element essential to this Liberal victory in a society obsessed by memories of the Great Depression was a promise of full employment. This Mackenzie King was reluctant to give until he was assured that it was a politically and economically feasible objective in peacetime. He recognized that full employment necessitated the expansion of trade. Although a post-war slump had been widely anticipated, it did not materialize. It became evident that a shortage of manpower was more likely to develop than a surplus.
The St. Laurent Years In January of , Mackenzie King, in his 29th year as leader of the Liberal Party, announced his intention to retire from the Party leadership.
A call was issued for a National Convention to meet in Ottawa in August. Louis St. Laurent was chosen as his successor on the first ballot. Mackenzie King had left to St. Laurent the strongest Party organization ever known in Canada, which, despite the electoral losses of , was in perfect running order.
The Liberal government under St. Laurent was to accomplish much for Canada in the next nine years. One of the first achievements of the St. Laurent government was the completion of Confederation through the Union of Newfoundland with Canada in Among the changes were: old age pension legislation without a means test, old age assistance, allowances for the blind, extension of health grants, enactment of the Disabled Persons Act, and other measures.
In the field of international affairs, St. Laurent and Lester B. Pearson, his newly appointed Secretary of State for External Affairs, worked in close collaboration to secure national support for an active and constructive Canadian participation in world affairs. Laurent era was also one of the greatest periods of growth in population, in national wealth, and in personal incomes in Canadian history.
This tremendous economic development was facilitated by the encouragement of immigration to Canada of both labour and capital on a large scale.
National development, however, was by no means confined to material progress. One of the most imaginative initiatives of this government was the appointment of the Royal Commission on the Arts, Letters and Sciences under the chairmanship of Vincent Massey. In the Wilderness By , the Liberals had been in office for 22 years. This fact, combined with their haste and apparent misjudgment during the pipeline debate led the majority of Canadian voters to support other parties.
An election was called for June 10, Laurent announced his intention to resign from the leadership of the Liberal Party. Pearson was chosen as his successor. The policies of the Party were also carefully discussed and reaffirmed with a number of significant amendments. For the first time, an Atlantic trading community was adopted as a political objective of the Liberal Party.
A vast program of national scholarships, supplemented by national funds, to provide loans for deserving students also became an immediate objective. In addition, the Liberal program included establishment of a municipal loan fund and an Atlantic provinces capital assistance fund, with special aid to the Atlantic provinces for the completion of the Trans-Canada Highway and for trunk highway development.
On February 1, , with the new leader barely in position, Parliament was dissolved and the country was faced with a general election. The Liberals suffered one of the greatest defeats in their history — they won 49 seats, from only four of the provinces. The Conservatives won seats, the largest majority in Canadian history. Pearson immediately committed himself to the dual task of providing an effective Opposition and to the rebuilding of the Liberal Party throughout Canada.
Under his leadership, the Liberals achieved three broad objectives. They established a new direction for the Liberal Party. And they provided responsible opposition in Parliament proposing constructive alternate courses of action. The first of these objectives was most dramatically realized at the Kingston Liberal Conference of , where a new forward-looking and challenging Liberal program, including vastly expanded welfare services, was worked out.
Academics, politicians and leaders from all fields of Canadian life participated in the formulation of Liberal policy. In the campaign, Pearson emphasized unemployment, mismanagement in Ottawa and loss of international prestige, but more than any other single issue, the question of nuclear weapons became very important. The roots of the issue went back to when NATO decided to stockpile American nuclear weapons for the use of its forces including Canadian troops in Europe.
In , the Diefenbaker government decided to abandon the projected construction of the Avro Arrow aircraft and to replace it with the Bomarc B missile which was to be equipped with a nuclear warhead.
A crisis of indecision arose when the time came to furnish the warheads without which the Bomarc was nothing but an expensive blank cartridge. Badly split over the nuclear armament question, the Conservatives emerged from the election with their power considerably reduced; dropping from seats to seats. The Liberal Opposition, winning 99 seats, doubled their strength. Only the imbalance in rural representation allowed John Diefenbaker to carry on his government in a minority position for a few more months.
In , Lester B. Pearson realized on taking office that the survival of Confederation depended to a great extent on his success in reconciling the desires of the French and English Canadian communities. In order to counter growing dissension and to strengthen national unity, the Liberal government formulated the policy of co operative federalism. This has been defined as cooperation between Ottawa and the provinces at three levels: pre-consultation in the formulation of federal policies, collaboration in the drafting of these policies, and coordination in their implementation.
Co operative federalism harmonized federal and provincial initiatives, particularly in the area of social welfare legislation and shared-cost programs. He was convinced of the need for a distinctive flag to assert Canadian identity. The long, difficult struggle over the flag issue immobilized Parliament for almost six months in However, on February 15, , the red maple leaf on its red and white banner became the official flag of Canada.
The Search for a Majority In September , after two and a half years of minority government, Prime Minister Pearson dissolved Parliament and sought a majority mandate. The Conservatives claimed that the election was unnecessary, and the Canadian people, faced with the third election in four years, agreed. Although the Liberals were victorious in the November 8 election, and increased their standing from to seats, they were again denied a majority.
The Tories won 97 seats, an increase of two seats over the previous election. Disappointed but undeterred, the Pearson government rededicated itself to the tasks of unity and progress; and the Party renewed its efforts to fashion a program and a philosophy that would merit the confidence of Canadians in all parts of the country. It was in this spirit that the Party held its national policy conference in October This was the first occasion a national party had held such a policy conference while in office.
It established a complete legislative program endorsing principles as broad as accountability and universal accessibility to education. Although the Pearson government was accused of inaction or of maintaining the status quo rather than moving forward, it implemented an impressive list of reforms. Other significant legislative measures provided the reorganization and unification of the Armed Forces, new manpower placement and retraining programs, and greatly increased financial aid to the provinces.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau, then Minister of Justice, introduced a Bill of Rights, to be entrenched in the British North America Act which, if accepted, would have precedence over statutes of the federal government and of the provincial legislatures.
The Bill of Rights was of particular importance in that it would guarantee the protection of the language rights of French-speaking Canadians throughout Canada. Menzies succeeded, largely because his purpose was commonly sought and approved. The Liberals left Albury in December with a provisional federal executive, a draft constitution, a vague set of principles, and boundless vitality.
Within nine months they managed to launch six state divisions, approve and implement a federal constitution, hold a federal council meeting and elect a federal executive, form branches and enrol some 94 members of whom probably a majority outside of South Australia had no previous party membership , establish and finance a federal secretariat and, in August , formally launch the Liberal Party of Australia.
An obvious reason for its early success—and a factor in determining its character—was that the new party quickly attracted droves of postwar idealists determined to make their country a better place.
Returned servicemen, with a sense of public duty, provided the recruits and the energy. By contrast, Missen likened the formation of the Kew Branch of the Liberal Party to a Billy Graham revival meeting as men and women came forward to proclaim their new faith. What they all wanted, was a new party, untainted by the past, a view which angered older UAP types who objected to being treated as cast-offs when they came forward to join. Two of the new Liberals shared a surname.
John Anderson, a young army officer, spent two years after the war recuperating from appalling injuries in Heidelberg Hospital. There he read everything he could about politics, including the works of Marx and Lenin which convinced him to join the new Liberal Party. Within five years, he headed the Victorian Division which he helped nurture back to good health in time to exploit the Labor split of — As state president, he told the Victorian Division in February that the Liberals were not a party of independents.
To that end, they must sink their personal and political differences. Inevitably, the party had attracted those with more than one purpose. A number saw a political career. He presented his credentials: he was very keen, he was the son of an old Ballarat merchant family, an Old Boy of Geelong College and a member of both the Royal Melbourne Golf Club and the Australian Club. Menzies, recognising talent and enthusiasm, promised to mention his name in Ballarat circles; in the young man just missed pre-selection.
He was certainly better qualified than the selected candidate for a New South Wales seat in , who was forced to withdraw after revelations that he was a convicted thief and had falsely claimed officer rank in the RAAF.
And he would have been less embarrassing than another New South Wales candidate in who turned up to meetings smelling strongly of whisky and shouting abuse, and whose arrears of house rent had to be met by the state division. The new men who were elected to the enlarged House of Representatives in included both the careerists and the idealists. More importantly, they exemplified many of the features of postwar liberalism.
Just four of the 38 had been born in the nineteenth century, all save three were Australian-born, their average age was 43 and 12 were under Twelve had university qualifications, and 29 were returned servicemen. In Magnus Cormack, who stood unsuccessfully in , emphasised another common characteristic:. Women also flocked to the new Party back in In return, women in Victoria were given equal representation on all committees and councils, with the result that some formidable figures—notably, May Couchman and Edith Haynes—exercised a considerable influence over the Victorian Division.
Nevertheless, when Eileen Furley was elected vice-president of the party in , through a process which would now be called Affirmative Action, she wondered why the party did not advertise that it was the one for women to support, and that no position in the party was beyond their reach.
What did the new party stand for, and how was it different? Rather than begrudge assistance to the needy, Liberals wanted to extend the safety net, while relying on economic development to create the right conditions for a long-lasting sense of security. The traditional elements were still present: the importance of the British connection, the centrality of the family and of the individual, the role of private enterprise as the principal source of wealth creation, the virtue of self-help and the justice of rewarding individual endeavour.
But the modern party had embraced Keynesianism, rejected laissez-faire , would not allow monopolies to do as they liked, and would guard Australia against the recurrence of a depression. A modified version of this Queensland proposal was adopted for the party platform in The FWC had identified public health, social services, the divorce laws and the political education and status of women as issues of special interest. Many of its recommendations presupposed substantially increased expenditure on welfare, including pensions, immunisation programmes and anti-TB campaigns, infant health and pre-school training, and primary, secondary and tertiary education.
In the process, the committee envisaged a greatly expanded role for the Commonwealth of Australia, which other Liberals found unacceptable. Clearly, to some extent, the FWC in the late s was ahead of the party. Yet the committee also embodied and reinforced a number of conservative values. It assumed that women had a primary responsibility as nurturers and moral guardians of the nation. There were the ritual denunciations of socialism, and the demands for a reduction in the size and influence of the Commonwealth Public Service, despite wanting to expand its functions.
The FWC wanted to maintain Australia as an English-speaking bastion of the Empire; hence in June it resolved that foreign-language newspapers be required to print complete English translations in adjacent columns, and in July urged the government to bring in British migrants. Above all, the FWC saw its role in terms of protecting the Christian family. In January it passed the following motion brought from New South Wales:. That the Liberal Party, when in power, shall review all existing legislation which places so-called de facto wives on the same basis as legal wives, as this recognition of illegal unions strikes at the whole foundation of our social structure.
One article of faith drew all the early Liberals together. They believed that their party was national and not sectional, inclusive and not exclusive. It was a party for all Australians, irrespective of class, region or religion. Class was the sensitive issue.
But the bluff engineer lacked a certain political finesse. Ritchie was equally frank, pointing out that he, not Menzies or the parliamentary party, was more in touch with public opinion. Besides, Ritchie and all the senior officials throughout Australia understood the importance of cutting the ties with the business committees which had pulled the strings of the UAP. Even if the federal and state Liberal organisations continued to rely upon the business houses for donations, at least they now collected the monies directly and controlled their disbursement.
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