Rogue Tory

by Denis Smith

  Edna and John were married in June 1929 from the home of her brother in Toronto. Her wedding dress was made by Lucien Lelong in New York City.

  Edna Mae Brower, of Saskatoon, in her late twenties.

  In the wartime election of 1940, Diefenbaker won Lake Centre for the Tories, one of only two victories in Saskatchewan.

  Now an MP, Diefenbaker was a sober and serious presence in this 1942 portrait.

  CHAPTER 5

  New Name, Old Party

  1945-1951

  IN DECEMBER 1942 THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY SHOOK ITSELF HALF-AWAKE BY choosing John Bracken as national leader. John Diefenbaker, despite his own double disappointment, was satisfied with the party’s apparent change of direction, but regarded Bracken with a respect that fell short of enthusiasm.1 On the single occasion when he invited the leader into his constituency in 1943, Bracken thoughtlessly touched an old nerve by telling the rural audience that farmers did not need lawyers to represent them in parliament.2

  Meanwhile, the balance of war was shifting gradually in favour of the Allies, the Canadian Army in Britain was not in combat, and voluntary recruitment was holding up. Mackenzie King, in his diary, allowed himself a bit of comfort about the war effort and the weakness of his domestic opponents. He was pleased that Diefenbaker, “the most bitter in his attacks” in the House, had not been chosen parliamentary leader, and he smugly reviewed the list of his fallen Conservative challengers. “There never was a more complete confounding of the politics of one’s enemies than is exhibited by this debacle of the old Tory party which has tried to cover up its disasters by giving itself a new name. In one round, while they have been talking of my not being a leader, I have succeeded, after defeating Bennett as the leader of the Conservative party, his successor Manion as the next leader, Manion’s successor Meighen as the next leader, and now witnessing the fourth leader … without a seat in the House.”3

  The party did not threaten King and his Liberals. J.M. Macdonnell insisted that the Tory “Old Guard” would have to be ousted from control by the creation of a new organization and fundraising group to assist the leader. Others, too, agreed that these changes were essential. In early 1943 Bracken named the vigorous young organizer Richard Bell - who had already assumed the role in practice - as national director; Gordon Graydon became president of a revived Dominion Progressive Conservative Association, replacing the elderly J.R. MacNicol; headquarters staff were hired; a monthly tabloid, Public Opinion, was planned to begin publication in August; and a network of supposedly non-partisan “Bracken clubs” was promoted across the country.4 But these acts of national organization remained hostage to the uncertainties of war, the tactics of the other parties, the whims of the powerful Ontario Conservative Party, and the political talents of the new leader. Within months the effort to reform the party and to place it solidly at the centre of the political spectrum had failed.

  Meanwhile, the Ontario Tories were on the rise under George Drew’s leadership. When the fading Ontario Liberal government went to the polls in August 1943, it collapsed before its two rivals. Drew’s highly organized Conservatives won thirty-eight seats, and the CCF was close behind with thirty-four. The Liberals ran third with fifteen seats. The victory gave an immediate boost to federal Conservative morale, but that was soon dispelled when it became clear to Bell that Drew’s organization was seeking to take control of the national party. An initial proposal to displace the national executive in favour of a Toronto committee chaired by the businessman Henry Borden was rejected by Bracken.5 But Bell was convinced that Drew and his corporate associates had longer-term mischief in mind. In a 1944 memorandum on party organization he wrote: “Some of the Drew people are in too much of a hurry to advance the cause of their own leader in federal affairs and have not hesitated to say so at the same time either directly or inferentially damning the present federal leadership. In the opinion of a considerable number of the federal members, the basic trouble is the desire of the Ontario Party to have control of the representation in the House of Commons from Ontario after the next election as a means of controlling a future convention of the Party and determining the future leadership of the party.”6

  The immediate concern of Conservative business leaders was to counter what they saw as the dangerous socialist threat now posed by the CCF. For them, that meant a frantic assertion of free enterprise propaganda and a renewed effort to commit the federal Conservative Party safely to a right-wing agenda.

  Mackenzie King and the Liberal Party were equally rattled by the socialist challenge. Their response was to move left with the tide of popular opinion, to reassert their claim to the broad middle ground tentatively sought by the Progressive Conservatives at Port Hope and Winnipeg. Cabinet and party, under King’s astute guidance, made their preparations during the fall of 1943 and announced their program in the speech from the throne that began the 1944 session of parliament in January.7

  That message established the foundations of national policy for the postwar period. The government committed itself to “a national minimum of social security and human welfare” that would include full employment, price stabilization, family allowances, health insurance, and contributory old age pensions. It promised to introduce the family allowance scheme during the 1944 session. For the prime minister, the postwar program would fulfil the vision laid out twenty-five years before in his book Industry and Humanity.8 Its more immediate sources were the Beveridge Report in the United Kingdom and the Marsh Report in Canada, which had given form to the widespread sentiment that the suffering of the 1930s must never be repeated. Diefenbaker called the program “the most tantalizing bill of fare ever offered to the Canadian people.”9

  Family allowances were shrewdly designed as the government’s first venture into postwar welfare. They would mean monthly, direct payments to every child-rearing family in the country; they would catapult the Liberal Party to the left of the political spectrum and undercut the CCF; and they would divide the Tories. Without waiting for his MPs, Bracken pronounced the plan a “political bribe” to be opposed, and he probably had a majority with him when debate on the measure began in caucus. Diefenbaker recalled that “I was the only Member in our caucus, to begin with, not prepared to oppose it. It was demanded by some that I either oppose the measure or leave the Party … After long and stormy arguments over two or three days, all but one Conservative Member supported the bill.”10 In fact, Diefenbaker had a persistent ally in Howard Green throughout the discussion in caucus, while many others were open to persuasion because they recognized the measure’s popularity. Rodney Adamson noted the outcome on July 26, 1944: “Long caucus about family allowances. I take stand against them … Bracken is anti also but bows to Howard Green, Diefenbaker, the Western and Maritime Members. Perhaps this is good strategy. I say I will not vote for measure and will stay away.”11

  Diefenbaker and the progressive wing had won the preliminary battle, but the party nevertheless lost the war. When House debate opened on the bill, Diefenbaker led off for the Conservatives with a resounding statement of agreement in principle, aimed both at the public and at his own party.

  With the objective provided for in this bill there can be no disagreement; for if I understand it aright it means that … an endeavour will be made to achieve equal opportunity, particularly for those in the lower income brackets, and to give to many who to-day are denied freedom from fear and freedom from want the hope of something better in the future than this world and this country have seen before…

  Changes are taking place and tremendous changes are about to take place. We in the parliaments of the empire to-day must recognize that. The state must guarantee and underwrite equal access to security, to education, to nutrition and to health for all. That assurance is inexorable through the awakening of the spiritual being of man everywhere and the recognition of all men of their responsibilities for the welfare of all other men, not only within their own state but beyond its confines. Too often some of us are afraid to
approach new horizons because there has been no experience to guide us.12

  Diefenbaker found his inspiration in the “reforming zeal” of R.B. Bennett - whose New Deal legislation, he reminded the House, had been dispatched to the courts by his successor, Mackenzie King, and declared largely unconstitutional. So he took the caucus’s agreed line that King should now refer the family allowance bill to the Supreme Court for a constitutional opinion. Failing that, the Conservatives would support the measure. Adamson described Diefenbaker’s address as “his finest speech in the House … it is obvious that he has taken wind out of King’s election sail” by the promise of Conservative approval.13

  But Gordon Graydon and Herbert Bruce left a contrasting impression of covert opposition and grudging, tactical acceptance. Bruce made his leader’s claim more specific: the bill was “a bribe of the most brazen character, made chiefly to one province and paid for by the taxes of the rest”; and privately he pointed out that the beneficiaries would be French Canadian “families who have been unwilling to defend their country.” The premier of Ontario, George Drew, made that divisive charge public by challenging the right of Quebec “to dominate the destiny of a divided Canada.”14

  Mackenzie King was amused by these voices of a departed age and by the silence of most Conservative members; the most generous thing he could say about Diefenbaker’s legal doubts was that “the raising of a constitutional issue amounts simply to throwing up a sort of smoke-screen.”15 That was a fair reading of the Conservative position. The bill passed second reading by 139 to zero.

  Bracken’s failure to enter the House of Commons, or to inspire voters on his national travels, left the caucus more and more dissatisfied. While fundraising was markedly more successful after the Winnipeg convention, it remained the jealous preserve of a small group of Toronto and Montreal businessmen, “a few rich men,” in J.M. Macdonnell’s dismissive phrase.16 The Toronto contingent had given their initial confidence to Bracken, but they were all admirers and confidants of George Drew. Bracken’s selection, in their eyes, was a dubious experiment indulged in out of deference to Arthur Meighen. The whole progressive tilt of Port Hope and Winnipeg was also, for them, a matter of expediency. If Bracken could not quickly transmute it into votes, they were prepared to abandon him and reassert their rigidly free enterprise and Anglo-Canadian instincts. After Drew’s provincial victory he seemed to them, more obviously, the leader-in-waiting - a position confirmed by the overwhelming election of the CCF to power in Saskatchewan in June 1944. In Bracken’s - and Diefenbaker’s - own territory, the Progressive Conservatives lost all their deposits. The electorate was undoubtedly moving left, but it seemed unimpressed by a Conservative Party uncertain or opportunist about its principles.

  The opposition was shackled in its wartime role, since that called for constant affirmation of its loyalty to the cause. Diefenbaker told parliament that the House could not fulfil its duties if it acted as “a cockpit of contending factions, each desirous of preparing for the hustings.” Instead, he saw parliament’s primary wartime function as propagandist: “to strengthen the resolution of the people to carry on to the end; to energize our people against the apathy that too often follows military successes.” But he added another that was covertly partisan: “to assure our men and women of the forces that other men, with the necessary equipment, will be available as reinforcements and to see that our manpower is fully mobilized and put to the greatest possible use.”17

  On that issue of manpower and reinforcements the Tories appealed to their English-speaking constituency with the claim that they were more loyal, more patriotic, than the government. But it was a chancy thing. The language of conscription and “race” was dangerous - and Mackenzie King was a master of the patriotic game. What was more, the rural Conservative electorate was probably as sensitive about compulsory service as were French-speaking voters. The farms needed labour. As long as voluntary recruitment for overseas held up, the Conservative Party had to focus its criticisms on labour allocation and the call-up for home service: Why was it not fairly and evenly applied across the country? Why did so many conscripts evade service? Why was enforcement so lax?

  Beneath this litany of hints there was a hidden ethnic line. What John Diefenbaker called “the inequality of call-up and the inequality of service … ordained by this government” meant that the King government favoured French Canadians, and did so for political gain.18 This kind of complaint was relatively harmless to the government, yet it was meant to sustain an undercurrent of suspicion outside Quebec - for exploitation if and when battlefront losses began to mount.

  Until the Normandy invasion, few Conservatives chose openly to revive the call for overseas conscription. But in the summer of 1944, with casualties mounting in Italy and in France, the patriotic issue was not to be resisted. In mid-June the new national chairman of the party, C.P. McTague, called for the dispatch of home service conscripts as overseas reinforcements. The decision, he insisted, was a matter of national honour; the troops had never been needed for home defence but were needed overseas. Bracken endorsed the demand.19 This opening emboldened what Adamson called “the Globe group” (those Conservative MPs like Herbert Bruce and Earl Rowe who were close to the publisher of the Globe and Mail, George McCullagh, and to Drew) to press in caucus for a House motion in favour of overseas conscription. But the MPs baulked. “Caucus,” wrote Adamson, “is 100% against taking this suicidal step. Really a great show and a sock in the eye for the Toronto crowd.”20 Instead, the party produced a thoroughly confusing budget amendment that criticized the home defence army and called for its use on the farms, in industry, or overseas - or all three. Diefenbaker’s long and almost wholly irrelevant speech on the amendment prompted the impish Liberal backbencher Jean François Pouliot to respond: “The hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) appeared to be more illogical than ever. He said he supports the amendment; he spoke against it and apparently he will vote for it. I cannot understand him. If he made a speech of that kind in Saskatchewan, his own province, then I am not surprised that not only has his party been wiped out but all remembrance of it has been wiped out in the last election.”21 Given the variety of shadings on the amendment, Pouliot wondered whether Diefenbaker, or Green, or Rowe, or Bracken, or McTague spoke for the Conservative Party. “They meet each day in caucus,” he taunted, “Why do they not take advantage of it to tune their violins and come into the house with a united front? They go to the right; they go to the left; they look to the right and they jump to the left. That has been the Tory policy since the beginning of this session, in fact since the beginning of the war.”22

  The real conscription crisis erupted in October 1944, when the minister of national defence, Colonel J.L. Ralston, returned from Europe to insist, on military advice, that 15,000 home defence troops should be called overseas before the end of the year. King and a majority of his government disagreed, but the cabinet was harshly divided and near breakup. After two weeks of hesitation, King summarily fired Ralston and appointed General A.G.L. McNaughton as minister on a pledge that he would find the necessary reinforcements from the home army through voluntary transfers. But that desperate effort failed, and on November 23 the prime minister forestalled another cabinet collapse by reversing direction and committing 16,000 conscripts to overseas duty. By doing so he saved the unity of his cabinet (only C.G. Power resigned in protest) and his caucus.23

  Throughout November, as the recruiting and cabinet crises intensified, the Conservative Party and the English language press mounted a noisy and often vicious campaign for full overseas conscription. The demons of national hatred, so far contained, were loosed again. After November 23 there were anti-conscription riots in Quebec. Power lamented that “I envisaged the prospect of one-third of our population uncooperative, with a deep sense of injury, and the prey to the worst elements amongst them, and worst of all, hating all other Canadians.”24 In English-speaking Canada sentiment seemed to be overwhelmingly in support of conscr
iption, either partial or complete, and the Conservatives sought to ride the wave. The opposition amendment to the government’s motion of confidence asked that all NRMA conscripts (there were more than 100,000) should be “enrolled to serve in any theatre of war,” including the Pacific, where conscription had never featured in the government’s calculations. Without any explicit mention of the French-English divide, Diefenbaker played on the familiar theme that “partial conscription” meant unequal sacrifice that would “endanger the last vestige of unity in this country.” Although it was evident that the Liberal majority would sustain the government in its policy of desperate gradualism, Diefenbaker insisted that “there are hon. members all over the house who will say privately that they believe in everything in the amendment. There is no politics in it.”25

  There was politics in it. The Conservative Party had again abandoned Quebec to the Liberals by exploiting English-speaking Protestant prejudices. On the surface the debate was less damaging than in 1917, but that could be put down to the government’s caution (or cynical realism) more than to the opposition’s reaction. The Conservatives carried their condemnations into General McNaughton’s by-election campaign in the Ontario riding of Grey North, where a colourless candidate defeated the minister of defence in early February 1945.26 Bracken campaigned actively, and the victory briefly enhanced his reputation. But the issue was a fading one, as allied victories promised an early end to the war in Europe. That came on May 8.