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Feminist politics: The Feminist Party of Canada
Women’sSrudres Inr. Prmed I” the USA.
Forum.
Vol.
FEMINIST
IO.
No.
6. pp.
613-621.
1987 C
POLITICS:
THE FEMINIST
1987
0277.5395/87 Pergamon
13.00+ .OO Journals Lrd
PARTY OF CANADA
DOR~HY ZABORSZKY Department of English, Laurentian University, Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, Ontario P3E 2C6, Canada
Synopsis-The Feminist Party of Canada was founded in 1979. This discussion is based on my own and others’ personal experiences as founding members. So far as it is possible to ascertain, this was the only organization of its kind thus far in Canada: an autonomous feminist political parry, founded and run by women, with the aim of introducing feminist politics into the public arena. It arose out of a shared perception that party politics and the three main political parties in Canada did not adequately reflect women’s concerns and that there was a need for such a party. Although the FPC is at present on hold, the time has come 10 assess this experience. It is, firstly, important to record this development, in order that it may not be lost from our collective memories. Secondly, it is useful to explore what can be learnt and what conclusions drawn from this event and the related issue of women and party politics.
My purpose in this paper is twofold: first, to record the facts connected with the formation of the Feminist Party of Canada in 1979, and second, to analyze the significance of this event and to evaluate its implications. The first aim is to a large extent linked to a feminist desire to record significant events in our collective history and at the same time to prevent its erasure. 1 will therefore provide a brief overview of the sequence of events, as well as attempting an analysis when appropriate. On February 11, 1979 a group of women met at Hart House, University of Toronto “for the purpose of founding a women’s political party.” (“The Beginnings of the Feminist Party of Canada.“) This aim was the result of a growing dissatisfaction with the lack of impact women had made in and out of formal structures, the scant attention paid by politicians to women’s concerns and the very small numbers of women in elected office. Furthermore, there was a shared perception that arose out of an analysis of the record of
This paper was first read at the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (C.R.I.A.W.) conference in Moncton, November, 1986. 1would like to thank Mary O’Brien, Frieda Forman, Patricia Hughes, and Margaret Kechnie for their help and advice.
the few women in office, namely, that, “most female politicians, regardless of background or party affiliation, reduced their connections with women’s organizations to a minimum, when they obtained office.” Therefore, the problem was and is that: “no matter how many women are elected, . . . they do not, on the whole, address themselves to those issues of concern to women, that have been continually neglected by everyone else.” (“The Beginnings of the Feminist Party of Canada.“) Although some of the Hart House group were resistant to the formation of an actual political party, there was a realization, at this point, that a feminist caucus-one of the possibilities discussed-would be ineffective. Consequently, the interim committee recognized the necessity of a women’s political party,’ because only “when the potential candidate has a context within the party and is shielded by the party structure, would she be able to maintain feminist beliefs while in office.” (“The Beginnings,” etc.) This recognition is based on the perception that the existing political parties did not adequately
‘It is worth noting that American feminists, largely inspired by Alice Paul, had in 1916 formed the National Woman’s Party, as part of the struggle for the vote. It lasted into the early 1970s. See Dale Spender (1982) and Doris Stevens (1920). 613
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DOR~HY
reflect the interests of women.’ It remained to be seen whether it was possible to draw together women from a large variety of backgrounds and political persuasions, and whether the common denominator of gender and a concern for improving the status of women would provide a workable unifying factor. Undoubtedly there was a very strong need for such action. “Not until women are thoroughly involved in the political system, not until fifty per cent of our federal, provincial, and municipal politicians are women, will women change the laws that keep them from the elusive equality they all seek.” The speaker is Laura Sabia, and the quote comes from a 1975 speech. (Sabia, 1978: 33). The basic points of this statement are as relevant to-day as they were eleven years ago. The question about the exact nature of women’s political involvement remains and the solutions suggested vary greatly. The founding of the Feminist Party may be seen as one such solution.’ Here it is appropriate to cite another view which is linked to Laura Sabia’s comment. Speaking about the 1979 federal election, M. Janine Brodie and Jill McCalla Vickers (1982: 46) concluded, “Most women candidates in 1979 had little chance of being elected, and the most visible and established elements of the women’s movement did not attempt to politicize and mobilize their sub-
Shortly after the first World War, there was some discussion among Canadian women concerning a Women’s Party. However, no actual party emerged. Nellie McClung, one of the leading suffragists, stated, “We could have very easily [organized a women’s party], and with some cause, but while we would have had a glorious time doing it, we would have merely succeeded in dividing the progressive force of the country.” (Quoted in Candace Savage, 1979: 145). The August, 1920 Editorial of Eve73~womanS World. “Need of a Woman’s National Platform”, ended as follows, “A woman’s national party will have to be, some dav. The times demand it.” The FPC founders used this editorial at the first publtc meeting in 1979 and they were also aw’are of the (American) National Woman’s Party. 3The three main federal political parties in Canada are the New Democratic Party (NDP). the Liberal Party, and the Progressive Conservative Party. The provincial parties roughly parallel this, with the addition of the Social Credit Party (primarily in British Columbia) and the Parti Quebecois (primarily in Quebec). The FPC activists w’ere drawn from all sectors except the right wing, though many members were NDP supporters or voters, and large numbers had no party affiliations.
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stantial membership to force the major political parties either to recruit women in winnable constituencies, or to make the status of women a central issue in the campaign. Thus, most Canadian women chose between the parties without reference to their status as women or a clear estimation of the partisan options available to them.” It is precisely because the women who were behind the founding of the Feminist Party perceived the situation rather as Brodie and Vickers did that they felt a need to start a specifically feminist party. Olive Banks wrote that, “The failure, for most of its history, to secure mass support for its policies has meant that the feminist movement has relied to a large extent on pressure group politics . . . feminism has always needed the support of a mass movement, and when there is general apathy about feminist goals the movement languishes” (Banks, 1981: 248). The question that arises from this not inaccurate analysis is why such pressure group politics is necessary for the most elementary ameliorative measures for women? (Not to mention more substantial ones.) It is difficult to escape the conclusion that all this immense expenditure of time and energy has been necessary because women have been stuck with a political structure which historically they did not create, to which they were unable to contribute for a long time, and which, consequently, did not reflect their needs and concerns. It is precisely an awareness of such realities which guided the women of Hart House in their initial discussions in 1979. The interim committee of the Feminist Party met every Sunday after February 11, as well as once a week as members of various subcommittees. Once a decision was made to work on a feminist political party, the women were faced with the “formidable task of turning vision into policy and policy into strategy.” (“The Beginnings,” etc.) The procedure for registering as a political party and the constitutions of established parties were studied. All this difficult and detailed work was followed by the first public meeting at the Ontario Institute for the Study of Education (OISE) in Toronto on Sunday, June 10, 1979. There were readings and music, an introduction by Margaret Evans, and speeches by Laura Sabia, Angela Miles, Mary O’-
The Feminist
Brien, and Maryan Kantaroff. Party memberships were sold before the meeting and the press was present to cover the event. Open discussion from the floor took place, and the participants sang women textile the workers’ organizing song, “Bread and Roses.” For anyone present, whatever their reservations may have been, it was a heady, exciting, moving occasion-as one of those, I can say that I was not only extremely moved, but also very conscious that I was participating in an historic and unique event. Certainly there were reservations. Laura Sabia wondered if we could avoid becoming divided, and if we could manage to obtain enough money to function properly. However, in my opinion, Mary O’Brien (1979) provided the most thoughtful and impressive speech, in which she said, among other statements, that, “Feminism is growing, not because it is a good theory, but because if we don’t do it we won’t be around. We aren’t going to build a new world on vision alone but we’re not going to build one without it” (Broadside, 1979). I think this was indeed an accurate view of the rationale behind the event. Certainly, it expressed the motives and aims of the founders far more accurately than the malestream press coverage, which was mostly trivial and irrelevant. It needs to be stressed that the aim was of course not to replace any then existing women’s groups, but, on the contrary, to continue participation in and cooperation with such groups. That is to say, there was already a various and broadly-based women’s movement, from which the Feminist Party emerged as a putative political party. The chief women’s groups in Canada in the late 1970s were: the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), a national umbrella/lobby group; Women for Political Action, aimed at changing women’s status from within each political party; various women’s volunteer and service groups; Women’s Studies departments/committees. The three main political parties (see p. 614, footnote 3) had women’s committees, but these had a subordinate structure within the parties. (The NDP women’s caucus, for example, was very critical of the formation of the Feminist Party.) These various groups were not explicitly political in a national, government-oriented sense: in other words, there
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was no feminist, multi-issue group with an overtly feminist political aim. From the start, the educational aspect was held to be important, and plans were made for study groups, consciousness raising groups and issues discussion groups. Thus it was recognized that, although there were numerous already-committed women, there were also many who had to be convinced of the need for such a party. The problem -a serious one-- confronting the founders was how to convince women, many of whom had in the past supported the established political parties, to switch their allegiance to the FPC. And it is here that education was seen to be crucial. The task, as with any new organization, was to convince potential members of the validity and significance of the FPC’s aims: therefore to create a woman-centred party. The need for this was reinforced when we look at electoral patternsfor instance, the number of women seeking seats in the federal parliament rose from 4 in 1921 to 137 in 1974. But the number of women who won parliamentary seats in those 53 years rose only from one to nine. At this rate, women would need another 842 years to achieve equal representation at the federal level. Now, in 1986, the situation is slightly improved, but not to the extent of invalidating the basic premise. As Mary O’Brien has said, “Feminism is the political expression of the gestation of a politics of care and community which will replace the politics of conquest and chaos.” (O’Brien, 1979: 4.) It was very much this mode of thinking which informed and guided the members of the FPC and which they endeavoured to share with prospective members. But of course it can readily be seen that this is not the language of ordinary party manifestos, nor of the usual modus operandi of political parties. It can therefore be seen that what the FPC attempted was not only to offer new ideas, but of necessity, also a different mode of practising these ideas: the very uniqueness of the ideas mandated an innovative praxis. And because feminism also “rejects the symbolism of the patriarch, the prostration before power, the solutions of violence to private and public problems” (O’Brien, 1979: 5), it follows that the FPC did not have a hierarchical structure, let alone a “leader,” but rather, functioned on
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DORCITHYZABORSZKY
the basis of a loosely organized and voluntary committee system. This is an important point to which I will return later. The party continued with regular weekly committee meetings, all-day educational meetings (usually monthly) and the preparation of various policy statements. There were also smaller study groups and strategy meetings. Eventually, chapters were formed outside of Toronto, for example in Peterborough and Peel/Halton; there was great interest in the party from a variety of places and provinces across Canada. Next to Montreal, Toronto is the largest city in Canada, and it has had a tradition of sustaining various women’s groups. The multiplicity and variety of these provided a pool of people from which potential members could be drawn. A Newsletter was founded, whose first editor (until December, 1981) was Mary O’Brien. The Newsletter was sent to all members and was an invaluable way of keeping in touch; in addition, it also contained notices of various meetings organized by all types of women’s groups. As stated before, the FPC was not intended to replace other women’s groups, but to work together with them and the Newsletter underlined this. From time to time it also appeared in French, or at least half of it, thus highlighting a desire to be truly a national party. One of the issues of the Newsletter (Feminist Party of Canada (FPC) Newsletter, December, 1979) reprinted excerpts from the constitution of the Partis Feministes Unifies of France and Belgium (founded 1975) as a way of studying a party “under the rubric of feminism” which has “been constituted on the strength of a definitive written platform” (FPC Newsletter, December, 1979: 1). I should add that an office was rented, a postal box secured, stationary ordered etc., although of course finances were always something of a problem. By June 198 1 the party had 700 members, which certainly was a quite impressive number, albeit short of our best hopes. The membership of the FPC was mostly Anglo-Canadian and middle class, although there were women from other ethnic groups. There were some Francophone members and attempts were made to appeal to the Francophone sector. In general, there was considerable self-consciousness about the relative lack of variety in members’ backgrounds.
Certainly the so-called “two solitudes” (French-English), a notable feature of Canadian culture, affected in some measure the FPC as well. At this point, Native and Black women’s groups were not yet very strong. It was now, at a general meeting, that the decision was made to pursue the possibility of becoming an official political party in the Province of Ontario. This needed the collection of 10,000 signatures which simply endorsed the fact that the FPC had a right to exist. Here, it is worthwhile to cite from one of the editorials of the FPC Newsletter of June, 1981: “The notion of becoming an official party isn’t without its dangers, of course. There are no safe strategies for progressive political movements like ours. Some members feel that to be ‘official’ is in some sense to be co-opted by the patriarchal establishment. Others-and this includes me [Mary O’Brien] -feel that we are strong and confident enough to take what we need and keep our feminist integrity.” Here we have the classic problem of integrity versus co-optation; in the event, this was to be one of the factors which was to have a negative effect on the party’s future. It seems to me that it is impossible to be entirely “pure” in an impure and corrupt world, and while it is possible to preserve integrity, certain compromises are necessary if one wants to move from marginality and powerlessness to the centre of a political structure. A subsidiary problem which continued to exist within the FPC was the question of men as members and the related issue of whether men in fact could be feminists. From the beginning there had been a few male members in the party, but their numbers were never significant enough to create any serious structural problems. However, as it turned out, this was to become another divisive issue. Again, the experience here is a classic one-just as the question of co-optation is and is related to the ideas of separatist or integrationist feminism. I should add that for many of us at the time this was not a substantive problem. In early 1981 there was also the matter of the patriation of the constitution and the need for the Charter to reflect women’s interests. While several FPC members were active in the Ad Hoc constitutional committee, the constitutional issue was not developed politi-
The Feminist Party of Canada
tally by the FPC and the party as such was not invited to the original Ad Hoc deliberations. In the opinion of Mary O’Brien (with which I agree), the reason for this was the FPC’s “continued failure to get our party organized to make decisions rather than respond to events. Our membership continues to expand while our profile is not only low but close to disappearing altogether” (FPC Newsletter, April, 1981: 1). The point made here I think is that there is a difference between an actual political party-such as some members were striving to create-and a lobby group or caucus, such as, for instance, NAC. And what crystallized here was the divergence of opinion on precisely this issue, namely, political party versus lobby group. To this end, the May 17, 1981 general meeting tackled this issue and decided on pursuing the matter of becoming an official political party. As Mary O’Brien put it at the time, “It is very urgent that we face up to our feminist distaste for structure and leadership and ask how we can actually propose to do political things.” (FPC Newsletter, April 1, 198 1: 1.) What one had to realize - and some of us realized it only with hindsight-was that there was a need for a definite structure and even some leadership, that these were not dirty words, and that they were necessary in order to enable the party to act efficiently, indeed, to act at all. While there was an understandable reluctance to imitate patriarchal or hierarchical structures, there was nevertheless a need for some structure if the FPC was to function at all, and most especially if it was to become a political party. The last, so far as I know, Newsletter, now no longer edited by Mary O’Brien, posed several questions related to these problems. Among these were those pertaining to sexual orientation, class, separation versus integration and how these affect one’s feminism (FPC Newsletter, March, 1982). Having posed these questions, the writer of the editorial went on to say that “we cannot afford this division within the ranks when our common enemy, the patriarchal system, is so strong.” But then, very significantly, the editorial ends with the introduction of an oversized red herring, namely the question, “Now what does it mean for a man to claim to be a feminist?” (FPC Newsletter, March, 1982). While some of us were fondly imagining that
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we were working with and for a nascent political party which would at last make a serious feminist political impact on the existing structure, it turned out that others were not as urgently interested in such an endeavor. There was thus a divergence of opinion with regard to the future direction of the FPC: some members wished to pursue the overtly political direction which had in fact been implicit since the beginning, while others, an active and vocal minority, did not share this approach.” It is the latter group which in the end was more dominant, and this in effect meant the cessation of the FPC as it had been planned since the beginning. The outward sign of this was to be seen in the vanishing of the Newsletter, the last number of which was the March, 1982 issue referred to before. I might add, however, that many of us consider that the FPC is not really dead, but merely on hold. But the problem remains moot. If we look at history, malestream though much of the record may be, we find that most of the feminist political groups (to call them parties would perhaps be incorrect) which did make a political impact did have men as members. What is also noticeable is that in none of these groups - for example, Britain’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU)did men have any decisive influence in terms of policy decisions or membership on executive committees. In other words, they functioned in a generally supportive but ancillary manner. (Rather as women did in male parties, if at all.) What therefore is the answer to this crucial question? What needs to be emphasized is that, in my opinion, the issue of male members was not the cause of the FPC’s demise; rather, it became in a way the catalyst for bringing to the fore an assortment of differences. Essentially, the whole experience seems to have accentuated and sharpened the distinction between the separatist and the integrationist types of feminism, with, in this instance, the former predominating. In the case of the 41twas about this time that, prior to running candidates municipally, a pamphlet for the FPC was written by Patricia Hughes. Plans were just being made for municipal participation through public forums- though not candidates-and this in fact was an important project of the party.
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FPC, the separatist approach resulted in the abandonment of the pursuit of a political presence, the inward-turning of the party’s direction and, therefore, in my opinion, the marginalization of what had been a potentially vibrant organization. The personal may well be the political, but here the political was abandoned in favour of the personal. And since marginalization is a crucial concern to feminism, it can be seen that this development did nothing to ameliorate the issue, but, on the contrary, merely aggravated it. Since this was the situation at that particular time (early 1982), many of us who favoured a more public political presence felt unable to continue to identify and work with the FPC, especially because this latest development ran counter to the original aims of the party. In her essay “Fighting the Good Fight: Separation or Integration?“, Patricia Hughes (1982) has ably analyzed this question. In it she remarks that “since a feminist society could not tolerate any form of oppression, it would be incompatible with feminist theory not to accept that all people are at least implicitly affected by that transformation. It is not realistic to believe that the world of women will be dramatically transformed without its having repercussions for men . . . while feminist practice does not require men, it must recognize their existence and determine their place in the theory and practice because they, too, will be part of feminist society” (Hughes, 1982: 286). Since men are also part of the human race, it is neither practical nor realistic to exclude them entirely from one’s calculations for the future, let alone the present. Therefore, also, “a political party dedicated to the objectives of a feminist pobe exclusionary: litical party, . . . cannot this is, as has been so marvellously expressed, the difference between ‘the politics of possibility and the politics of limitation.’ The reasons for not excluding men are pragmatic, theoretical and ethical.” (Hughes, 1982: 293-294.) What happened therefore in early 1982 is that the “politics of limitation,” to use the expression cited, became dominant in the debate within the FPC and this eventually led to what many of us hope is only its temporary demise. This development was especially puzzling in that, as I have earlier pointed out, the number of male members in
ZABORSZKY
the FPC was always minuscule and thus never presented a practical problem: one might say therefore that the events of early 1982 were the result of a purely theoretical but not a practical situation. Dale Spender (1982) in her insightful Women of Ideas has repeatedly stressed the importance of knowing our collective history, in order not only to avoid erasure but also to obviate the need to reinvent the feminist wheel about every fifty years or so. It is in this spirit that I wanted to record the existence of the Feminist Party, even if it is the very recent past. At the same time, 1 take seriously Spender’s injunction that we need to be able to learn from each other’s ideas and actions-this, in turn, is only possible if we are as fully informed about these as possible. Thus it is also crucial to try to work out what we can learn from our past, and specifically, then, from the relative failure of the Feminist Party. I have earlier pointed out that there was no leader in the FPC. Indeed, the very idea of leaders is one which runs counter to the collectivist, co-operative nature of feminist thinking. Therefore, as I’ve stated earlier, the party functioned with a loosely based committee structure, which was fairly efficient for a time. Much discussion was also spent on the issue of our name; while many of us realized that the name itself-containing as it did that that dangerous word, feminist might result in a certain amount of adverse publicity, we nonetheless believed that it was very important to call ourselves what we really believed we were. Here again we come up against the phenomenon of naming and the related issue of degrees of compromise. In effect, it was decided that on this issue we must not make any compromises. The FPC did not have a constitution, nor did it have an executive in a formal sense. With the easy benefit of hindsight, it is my opinion that this was a mistake. A formal structure in the form of a constitution with various articles, by-laws, etc., and an executive, would have been desirable for the smooth functioning of the party. In addition, it would have provided a more neutral mode of handling dissension and disagreement, and thus perhaps have avoided the more hurtful and subjective situations which became inevitable as a result of the lack of
The Feminist Party of Canada
structure. A structure, more or less formalized, also means that an organization will be less dependent on more or less powerful personalities to transact business, and the feminist goals of communal/co-operative endeavours can be better realized. The lesson to be learnt here, then, is the importance, from a pragmatic point of view, of some kind of structure so as to avoid futility and inefficiency. Again, it is useful here to search for possible historical precedents in order to determine what can be learnt from them. I would like to mention two events in the history of the British suffragist organization, WSPU. The first occurred in 1907, that is, very early in its existence. (The WSPU was formed in 1903.) Charlotte Despard, the Secretary of the WSPU, left it and formed the Women’s Freedom League; this happened because of differences in opinion over the handling of the WSPU constitution by Emmeline Pankhurst. In fact, the WSPU had a draft constitution, but the real decisions were made by the Emergency Committee, largely controlled by Mrs. Pankhurst and her supporters. What is striking is that subsequently both sides behaved with great generosity and by and large worked for the same ends. The second event occurred in 1912, when Mrs. Pankhurst severed her connections with Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, largely over disagreement with regard to militancy. (They joined the Women’s Freedom League.) Again, the behaviour of the Pethick-Lawrences was singularly generous and lacking in rancour. The lesson which can be drawn from these events seems to me to be the fact that in both cases the constitution, such as it was, of the particular organization had been more or less violated, thus precluding a more democratic and consensual solution to disputes. Indeed, Mrs. Pankhurst’s modus operandi was neither democratic nor consensual, even if immensely effective nonetheless. But the price of this style of operation was the loss of important and valuable individuals. So the importance of the mediating influence of a structure, a constitution, becomes greater, as does the need to respect and abide by it. Connected with the importance of some type of structure is the issue of goals. It is obvious that an organization, or party, needs
619
to have broad agreement on its goals from the outset. This means the formulation of policies and thus what might be called a party platform. Certainly this was not lacking in the Feminist Party, which from the beginning worked very hard to formulate aims, position papers and policies. This was crucial because members needed to have ready some acceptable response to prospective members, who naturally always asked what the FPC stood for and what its position was on a great number of issues. Hence the importance of the early press releases, which in effect were position papers (and on which I have been drawing extensively). And while these were being produced, the educational activity of the FPC, which I mentioned earlier, also continued, not only because of its inherent importance, but also for the practical reason that the members’ knowledge of feminism and current issues was varied and there was a need to make ourselves knowledgeable enough to cope with our work, with the media and the public. So the educational and policy-formulating activities happened simultaneously, thus resulting in a new type of endeavour. This meant that the emergence of the FPC as a political presence, and the grass-roots organizing which was also happening, coincided, therefore making for a complex and complicated experience. This in turn was rendered more difficult by the absence of a constitution. It was this absence, then, which hampered the FPC in dealing constructively with what Hughes has called “The Man Question.” I have said earlier that this was one of the most divisive (if not the most divisive) issues which surfaced finally in early 1982. Now, as Hughes and others have demonstrated, the requirements and conditions of a political party (even a putative political party) are quite different from those of other groups, be they consciousness-raising, lobby or whatever. It is of course because a political party aims at making an electoral impact that certain pragmatic realities cannot be ignored. “It makes sense when forming a political party to think of it as trying to appeal to as many people as possible within the confines of its ideological base. A party cannot expect support if it deliberately excludes half the electorate (that traditional parties have effectively done so is no reason to continue the
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practice); blatant sexism, even if by the subordinate group, does not lie well beside a platform against exclusion” (Hughes, 1982: 294). It can be seen, then, that an integrationist kind of feminism is a necessary condition for the functioning of a feminist political party. This need not, by any means, result in “selling out” or co-optation, so long as it is women who define the parameters, set the terms and devise the rules. The point is that women should be the subjects rather than the objects of political (and other) processes and as such acquire control over their activities. So long as such control is maintained, there need be no difficulties with “The Man Question.” The greatest problem for the FPC was, moreover, that of “selling” our visions for a just society to potential members. And here we had somehow to confront the problem of trying to fight against long-established political party allegiances. The task was to persuade women who had worked or voted for, say, the Conservatives to switch allegiances. Our educational sessions were particularly important here, but I think we never did quite find the magic formula (which may not exist anyway). Canada, unlike the U.S., seems not yet to have a women’s vote, although some awareness of its possible existence was shown in the 1984 federal elections. It is important to note that the initiative for the historic televised debate among the three male party leaders (and competitors for the prime ministership) on women’s issues in August, 1984 came from a feminist organization, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, and not from one of the established parties. Although in the 1984 elections more women MPs were elected (largely in Quebec, and probably simply as a result of an anti-Liberal Party backlash in that province), the number - twenty-fiveis still pathetic in relation to the percentage of women voters (fifty-two percent) in the electorate. It can be seen that the original forecast by the FPC about the number of years it would take to have an equal number of women in parliament is still largely valid. (Based on 1979 trends, it would take 842 years.) My opinion is that women voters still vote for reasons which have little if anything to do with their own interests as women. And while certainly some of the es-
ZABORSZKV
tablished parties have better platforms with regard to women’s issues than others, none give priority to them. The very fact that they are called “women’s issues” denotes a ghettoization of interest, as if, on the one hand, there were women’s issues, and on the other, there were human ones. And language referring to “women and other minorities” is still all too current. By contrast, “the political party is our [women’s] most public vehicle of our values and our vision; it seeks to advance our cause and our demands for justice throughout the entire society” (Hughes, 1982: 297). The founders of the FPC believed that our values and vision could not satisfactorily be advanced through the existing political parties, which is why they founded the party. It is a matter of judgement concerning the viability and possibility of reform from within existing structures versus the perception that efforts to do so are futile and useless. Traditionally, left-leaning parties, like Canada’s NDP, have been more receptive to women’s concerns; but even in these, women have had to fight every inch of the way and they did not set the terms of discourse but had to respond to existing ones. Speaking about the need to know our history and our past, Dale Spender has said that “to believe that we are on our own, that we have started a protest for which there is no precedent, is to be plagued by doubts, to be vulnerable, to be without models, experience, or guidance. In a society in which there is widespread acceptance that ‘normal’ means women in the kitchen and men in the corridors of power, we are likely to see our protest against these conditions as abnormal, as requiring explanation, demanding defence.” (Spender, 1984: 2.) As we discover from our history, women have always engaged in protest in one way or another; this knowledge reinforces our sense of justness and of the rightness of our activities. This is one of the main reasons why I have wanted to record, however inadequately, one episode from our collective past and to illustrate that it was a far from unusual or unique occurrence, although it was precedent-setting in this country. In conclusion, I would like to underline the need for learning from our past. In the case of the Feminist Party of Canada, this
621
The Feminist Party of Canada
means, I think, a recognition of the necessity for some form of structure to facilitate achieving clearly formulated aims. It also means a recognition that even though the FPC is at present on hold, the fundamental possibility of a feminist political party remains a realizable goal. If we take the longrange historical view, we have to recognize that feminism is relatively new. “Like all new political forms, it is in an early and unclear stage, just as Liberalism was in 1640, or democracy in 1790 or socialism in 1870” (O’Brien, 1979: 5). All such new political forms, then, go through a period of trial and error, which is why it is important to learn from them. For those of us involved with the FPC, our collective effort remains a noble and worthwhile experience, albeit at present one which seems an exciting experiment. This is especially so because, as Mary O’Brien (1979) has said, feminism “struggles for rational political expression of an ethical polity and a just economy. It has no illusions about its difficulties, no doubt about its coming triumphs and a firm confidence in its historical necessity.” (O’Brien, 1979: 5).
Brodie,
M. Janine and Vickers.
nadian
Women
in Politics:
Jill McCalla.
An
Overview.
1982. CuCRIAW,
Ottawa. Feminist Party of Canada. 1979-1982. Newsletters. Vol. 1, no.1 (July, 1979)-Vol. 3. no. 1 (March, 1982). Hughes, Patricia. 1982. Fighting thegood fight: Separation or Integration? In Miles, Angela and Finn, Geraldine, eds, Feminism in Canada: From Pressure lo Polirics (pp. 283-297). Black Rose Books. Montrial. Landsberg, Michele. 1986. Norway’s 40 percent law: Making equahty second nature. Globe and Mail 7(June): A2. The Need of a Woman’s National Platform. 1920.
Everywoman’s
World 13(2): 7.
O’Brien, Mary. 1979. Why Feminism? Why Women’? Why Now? Unpublished manuscript (5 pp.). O’Brien, Mary. 1981. The Polirics of Reproducrion. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Sabia, Laura. 1978. Women and politics. In Shteir. Ann B., ed, Women on Women (pp.29-42) Yorh University, Toronto. Savage, Candace. 1979. Our Nell, A Scrapbook Biography of Nellie L. McClung. Western Producer Prairie Books, Saskatoon. Spender, Dale. 1982. Women ofldeas. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Spender, Dale. 1984. Time and Tide Wail,for No Man. Pandora Press, London. Stevens, Doris. 1920 (reprinted 1976). Jailed for Freedom. Schocken Books, New Yorh.
FURTHER
READING
REFERENCES Banks, Olive. 1981. Faces of Feminrsm. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Broadside. 1979. Vol. 1, no. 1. Brodie, M. Janine. 1985. Women and Polirics in Canada. McGraw-Hill, Ryerson, Toronto.
Towards a Canadian Feminist Party. 1979. Arlanris .5(1): 142-145. Vickers, Jill McCalla and Brodie, hl. Janine. 1981, Canada. In Lovenduski, Joni and Hills, Jill, eds, The
Politics of rhe Second Elecrorare, Women and Public Purticiparion (pp. 52-82). Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Forum.
Vol.
FEMINIST
IO.
No.
6. pp.
613-621.
1987 C
POLITICS:
THE FEMINIST
1987
0277.5395/87 Pergamon
13.00+ .OO Journals Lrd
PARTY OF CANADA
DOR~HY ZABORSZKY Department of English, Laurentian University, Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, Ontario P3E 2C6, Canada
Synopsis-The Feminist Party of Canada was founded in 1979. This discussion is based on my own and others’ personal experiences as founding members. So far as it is possible to ascertain, this was the only organization of its kind thus far in Canada: an autonomous feminist political parry, founded and run by women, with the aim of introducing feminist politics into the public arena. It arose out of a shared perception that party politics and the three main political parties in Canada did not adequately reflect women’s concerns and that there was a need for such a party. Although the FPC is at present on hold, the time has come 10 assess this experience. It is, firstly, important to record this development, in order that it may not be lost from our collective memories. Secondly, it is useful to explore what can be learnt and what conclusions drawn from this event and the related issue of women and party politics.
My purpose in this paper is twofold: first, to record the facts connected with the formation of the Feminist Party of Canada in 1979, and second, to analyze the significance of this event and to evaluate its implications. The first aim is to a large extent linked to a feminist desire to record significant events in our collective history and at the same time to prevent its erasure. 1 will therefore provide a brief overview of the sequence of events, as well as attempting an analysis when appropriate. On February 11, 1979 a group of women met at Hart House, University of Toronto “for the purpose of founding a women’s political party.” (“The Beginnings of the Feminist Party of Canada.“) This aim was the result of a growing dissatisfaction with the lack of impact women had made in and out of formal structures, the scant attention paid by politicians to women’s concerns and the very small numbers of women in elected office. Furthermore, there was a shared perception that arose out of an analysis of the record of
This paper was first read at the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (C.R.I.A.W.) conference in Moncton, November, 1986. 1would like to thank Mary O’Brien, Frieda Forman, Patricia Hughes, and Margaret Kechnie for their help and advice.
the few women in office, namely, that, “most female politicians, regardless of background or party affiliation, reduced their connections with women’s organizations to a minimum, when they obtained office.” Therefore, the problem was and is that: “no matter how many women are elected, . . . they do not, on the whole, address themselves to those issues of concern to women, that have been continually neglected by everyone else.” (“The Beginnings of the Feminist Party of Canada.“) Although some of the Hart House group were resistant to the formation of an actual political party, there was a realization, at this point, that a feminist caucus-one of the possibilities discussed-would be ineffective. Consequently, the interim committee recognized the necessity of a women’s political party,’ because only “when the potential candidate has a context within the party and is shielded by the party structure, would she be able to maintain feminist beliefs while in office.” (“The Beginnings,” etc.) This recognition is based on the perception that the existing political parties did not adequately
‘It is worth noting that American feminists, largely inspired by Alice Paul, had in 1916 formed the National Woman’s Party, as part of the struggle for the vote. It lasted into the early 1970s. See Dale Spender (1982) and Doris Stevens (1920). 613
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DOR~HY
reflect the interests of women.’ It remained to be seen whether it was possible to draw together women from a large variety of backgrounds and political persuasions, and whether the common denominator of gender and a concern for improving the status of women would provide a workable unifying factor. Undoubtedly there was a very strong need for such action. “Not until women are thoroughly involved in the political system, not until fifty per cent of our federal, provincial, and municipal politicians are women, will women change the laws that keep them from the elusive equality they all seek.” The speaker is Laura Sabia, and the quote comes from a 1975 speech. (Sabia, 1978: 33). The basic points of this statement are as relevant to-day as they were eleven years ago. The question about the exact nature of women’s political involvement remains and the solutions suggested vary greatly. The founding of the Feminist Party may be seen as one such solution.’ Here it is appropriate to cite another view which is linked to Laura Sabia’s comment. Speaking about the 1979 federal election, M. Janine Brodie and Jill McCalla Vickers (1982: 46) concluded, “Most women candidates in 1979 had little chance of being elected, and the most visible and established elements of the women’s movement did not attempt to politicize and mobilize their sub-
Shortly after the first World War, there was some discussion among Canadian women concerning a Women’s Party. However, no actual party emerged. Nellie McClung, one of the leading suffragists, stated, “We could have very easily [organized a women’s party], and with some cause, but while we would have had a glorious time doing it, we would have merely succeeded in dividing the progressive force of the country.” (Quoted in Candace Savage, 1979: 145). The August, 1920 Editorial of Eve73~womanS World. “Need of a Woman’s National Platform”, ended as follows, “A woman’s national party will have to be, some dav. The times demand it.” The FPC founders used this editorial at the first publtc meeting in 1979 and they were also aw’are of the (American) National Woman’s Party. 3The three main federal political parties in Canada are the New Democratic Party (NDP). the Liberal Party, and the Progressive Conservative Party. The provincial parties roughly parallel this, with the addition of the Social Credit Party (primarily in British Columbia) and the Parti Quebecois (primarily in Quebec). The FPC activists w’ere drawn from all sectors except the right wing, though many members were NDP supporters or voters, and large numbers had no party affiliations.
ZABORSZKY
stantial membership to force the major political parties either to recruit women in winnable constituencies, or to make the status of women a central issue in the campaign. Thus, most Canadian women chose between the parties without reference to their status as women or a clear estimation of the partisan options available to them.” It is precisely because the women who were behind the founding of the Feminist Party perceived the situation rather as Brodie and Vickers did that they felt a need to start a specifically feminist party. Olive Banks wrote that, “The failure, for most of its history, to secure mass support for its policies has meant that the feminist movement has relied to a large extent on pressure group politics . . . feminism has always needed the support of a mass movement, and when there is general apathy about feminist goals the movement languishes” (Banks, 1981: 248). The question that arises from this not inaccurate analysis is why such pressure group politics is necessary for the most elementary ameliorative measures for women? (Not to mention more substantial ones.) It is difficult to escape the conclusion that all this immense expenditure of time and energy has been necessary because women have been stuck with a political structure which historically they did not create, to which they were unable to contribute for a long time, and which, consequently, did not reflect their needs and concerns. It is precisely an awareness of such realities which guided the women of Hart House in their initial discussions in 1979. The interim committee of the Feminist Party met every Sunday after February 11, as well as once a week as members of various subcommittees. Once a decision was made to work on a feminist political party, the women were faced with the “formidable task of turning vision into policy and policy into strategy.” (“The Beginnings,” etc.) The procedure for registering as a political party and the constitutions of established parties were studied. All this difficult and detailed work was followed by the first public meeting at the Ontario Institute for the Study of Education (OISE) in Toronto on Sunday, June 10, 1979. There were readings and music, an introduction by Margaret Evans, and speeches by Laura Sabia, Angela Miles, Mary O’-
The Feminist
Brien, and Maryan Kantaroff. Party memberships were sold before the meeting and the press was present to cover the event. Open discussion from the floor took place, and the participants sang women textile the workers’ organizing song, “Bread and Roses.” For anyone present, whatever their reservations may have been, it was a heady, exciting, moving occasion-as one of those, I can say that I was not only extremely moved, but also very conscious that I was participating in an historic and unique event. Certainly there were reservations. Laura Sabia wondered if we could avoid becoming divided, and if we could manage to obtain enough money to function properly. However, in my opinion, Mary O’Brien (1979) provided the most thoughtful and impressive speech, in which she said, among other statements, that, “Feminism is growing, not because it is a good theory, but because if we don’t do it we won’t be around. We aren’t going to build a new world on vision alone but we’re not going to build one without it” (Broadside, 1979). I think this was indeed an accurate view of the rationale behind the event. Certainly, it expressed the motives and aims of the founders far more accurately than the malestream press coverage, which was mostly trivial and irrelevant. It needs to be stressed that the aim was of course not to replace any then existing women’s groups, but, on the contrary, to continue participation in and cooperation with such groups. That is to say, there was already a various and broadly-based women’s movement, from which the Feminist Party emerged as a putative political party. The chief women’s groups in Canada in the late 1970s were: the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), a national umbrella/lobby group; Women for Political Action, aimed at changing women’s status from within each political party; various women’s volunteer and service groups; Women’s Studies departments/committees. The three main political parties (see p. 614, footnote 3) had women’s committees, but these had a subordinate structure within the parties. (The NDP women’s caucus, for example, was very critical of the formation of the Feminist Party.) These various groups were not explicitly political in a national, government-oriented sense: in other words, there
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was no feminist, multi-issue group with an overtly feminist political aim. From the start, the educational aspect was held to be important, and plans were made for study groups, consciousness raising groups and issues discussion groups. Thus it was recognized that, although there were numerous already-committed women, there were also many who had to be convinced of the need for such a party. The problem -a serious one-- confronting the founders was how to convince women, many of whom had in the past supported the established political parties, to switch their allegiance to the FPC. And it is here that education was seen to be crucial. The task, as with any new organization, was to convince potential members of the validity and significance of the FPC’s aims: therefore to create a woman-centred party. The need for this was reinforced when we look at electoral patternsfor instance, the number of women seeking seats in the federal parliament rose from 4 in 1921 to 137 in 1974. But the number of women who won parliamentary seats in those 53 years rose only from one to nine. At this rate, women would need another 842 years to achieve equal representation at the federal level. Now, in 1986, the situation is slightly improved, but not to the extent of invalidating the basic premise. As Mary O’Brien has said, “Feminism is the political expression of the gestation of a politics of care and community which will replace the politics of conquest and chaos.” (O’Brien, 1979: 4.) It was very much this mode of thinking which informed and guided the members of the FPC and which they endeavoured to share with prospective members. But of course it can readily be seen that this is not the language of ordinary party manifestos, nor of the usual modus operandi of political parties. It can therefore be seen that what the FPC attempted was not only to offer new ideas, but of necessity, also a different mode of practising these ideas: the very uniqueness of the ideas mandated an innovative praxis. And because feminism also “rejects the symbolism of the patriarch, the prostration before power, the solutions of violence to private and public problems” (O’Brien, 1979: 5), it follows that the FPC did not have a hierarchical structure, let alone a “leader,” but rather, functioned on
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DORCITHYZABORSZKY
the basis of a loosely organized and voluntary committee system. This is an important point to which I will return later. The party continued with regular weekly committee meetings, all-day educational meetings (usually monthly) and the preparation of various policy statements. There were also smaller study groups and strategy meetings. Eventually, chapters were formed outside of Toronto, for example in Peterborough and Peel/Halton; there was great interest in the party from a variety of places and provinces across Canada. Next to Montreal, Toronto is the largest city in Canada, and it has had a tradition of sustaining various women’s groups. The multiplicity and variety of these provided a pool of people from which potential members could be drawn. A Newsletter was founded, whose first editor (until December, 1981) was Mary O’Brien. The Newsletter was sent to all members and was an invaluable way of keeping in touch; in addition, it also contained notices of various meetings organized by all types of women’s groups. As stated before, the FPC was not intended to replace other women’s groups, but to work together with them and the Newsletter underlined this. From time to time it also appeared in French, or at least half of it, thus highlighting a desire to be truly a national party. One of the issues of the Newsletter (Feminist Party of Canada (FPC) Newsletter, December, 1979) reprinted excerpts from the constitution of the Partis Feministes Unifies of France and Belgium (founded 1975) as a way of studying a party “under the rubric of feminism” which has “been constituted on the strength of a definitive written platform” (FPC Newsletter, December, 1979: 1). I should add that an office was rented, a postal box secured, stationary ordered etc., although of course finances were always something of a problem. By June 198 1 the party had 700 members, which certainly was a quite impressive number, albeit short of our best hopes. The membership of the FPC was mostly Anglo-Canadian and middle class, although there were women from other ethnic groups. There were some Francophone members and attempts were made to appeal to the Francophone sector. In general, there was considerable self-consciousness about the relative lack of variety in members’ backgrounds.
Certainly the so-called “two solitudes” (French-English), a notable feature of Canadian culture, affected in some measure the FPC as well. At this point, Native and Black women’s groups were not yet very strong. It was now, at a general meeting, that the decision was made to pursue the possibility of becoming an official political party in the Province of Ontario. This needed the collection of 10,000 signatures which simply endorsed the fact that the FPC had a right to exist. Here, it is worthwhile to cite from one of the editorials of the FPC Newsletter of June, 1981: “The notion of becoming an official party isn’t without its dangers, of course. There are no safe strategies for progressive political movements like ours. Some members feel that to be ‘official’ is in some sense to be co-opted by the patriarchal establishment. Others-and this includes me [Mary O’Brien] -feel that we are strong and confident enough to take what we need and keep our feminist integrity.” Here we have the classic problem of integrity versus co-optation; in the event, this was to be one of the factors which was to have a negative effect on the party’s future. It seems to me that it is impossible to be entirely “pure” in an impure and corrupt world, and while it is possible to preserve integrity, certain compromises are necessary if one wants to move from marginality and powerlessness to the centre of a political structure. A subsidiary problem which continued to exist within the FPC was the question of men as members and the related issue of whether men in fact could be feminists. From the beginning there had been a few male members in the party, but their numbers were never significant enough to create any serious structural problems. However, as it turned out, this was to become another divisive issue. Again, the experience here is a classic one-just as the question of co-optation is and is related to the ideas of separatist or integrationist feminism. I should add that for many of us at the time this was not a substantive problem. In early 1981 there was also the matter of the patriation of the constitution and the need for the Charter to reflect women’s interests. While several FPC members were active in the Ad Hoc constitutional committee, the constitutional issue was not developed politi-
The Feminist Party of Canada
tally by the FPC and the party as such was not invited to the original Ad Hoc deliberations. In the opinion of Mary O’Brien (with which I agree), the reason for this was the FPC’s “continued failure to get our party organized to make decisions rather than respond to events. Our membership continues to expand while our profile is not only low but close to disappearing altogether” (FPC Newsletter, April, 1981: 1). The point made here I think is that there is a difference between an actual political party-such as some members were striving to create-and a lobby group or caucus, such as, for instance, NAC. And what crystallized here was the divergence of opinion on precisely this issue, namely, political party versus lobby group. To this end, the May 17, 1981 general meeting tackled this issue and decided on pursuing the matter of becoming an official political party. As Mary O’Brien put it at the time, “It is very urgent that we face up to our feminist distaste for structure and leadership and ask how we can actually propose to do political things.” (FPC Newsletter, April 1, 198 1: 1.) What one had to realize - and some of us realized it only with hindsight-was that there was a need for a definite structure and even some leadership, that these were not dirty words, and that they were necessary in order to enable the party to act efficiently, indeed, to act at all. While there was an understandable reluctance to imitate patriarchal or hierarchical structures, there was nevertheless a need for some structure if the FPC was to function at all, and most especially if it was to become a political party. The last, so far as I know, Newsletter, now no longer edited by Mary O’Brien, posed several questions related to these problems. Among these were those pertaining to sexual orientation, class, separation versus integration and how these affect one’s feminism (FPC Newsletter, March, 1982). Having posed these questions, the writer of the editorial went on to say that “we cannot afford this division within the ranks when our common enemy, the patriarchal system, is so strong.” But then, very significantly, the editorial ends with the introduction of an oversized red herring, namely the question, “Now what does it mean for a man to claim to be a feminist?” (FPC Newsletter, March, 1982). While some of us were fondly imagining that
617
we were working with and for a nascent political party which would at last make a serious feminist political impact on the existing structure, it turned out that others were not as urgently interested in such an endeavor. There was thus a divergence of opinion with regard to the future direction of the FPC: some members wished to pursue the overtly political direction which had in fact been implicit since the beginning, while others, an active and vocal minority, did not share this approach.” It is the latter group which in the end was more dominant, and this in effect meant the cessation of the FPC as it had been planned since the beginning. The outward sign of this was to be seen in the vanishing of the Newsletter, the last number of which was the March, 1982 issue referred to before. I might add, however, that many of us consider that the FPC is not really dead, but merely on hold. But the problem remains moot. If we look at history, malestream though much of the record may be, we find that most of the feminist political groups (to call them parties would perhaps be incorrect) which did make a political impact did have men as members. What is also noticeable is that in none of these groups - for example, Britain’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU)did men have any decisive influence in terms of policy decisions or membership on executive committees. In other words, they functioned in a generally supportive but ancillary manner. (Rather as women did in male parties, if at all.) What therefore is the answer to this crucial question? What needs to be emphasized is that, in my opinion, the issue of male members was not the cause of the FPC’s demise; rather, it became in a way the catalyst for bringing to the fore an assortment of differences. Essentially, the whole experience seems to have accentuated and sharpened the distinction between the separatist and the integrationist types of feminism, with, in this instance, the former predominating. In the case of the 41twas about this time that, prior to running candidates municipally, a pamphlet for the FPC was written by Patricia Hughes. Plans were just being made for municipal participation through public forums- though not candidates-and this in fact was an important project of the party.
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DOROTHY
FPC, the separatist approach resulted in the abandonment of the pursuit of a political presence, the inward-turning of the party’s direction and, therefore, in my opinion, the marginalization of what had been a potentially vibrant organization. The personal may well be the political, but here the political was abandoned in favour of the personal. And since marginalization is a crucial concern to feminism, it can be seen that this development did nothing to ameliorate the issue, but, on the contrary, merely aggravated it. Since this was the situation at that particular time (early 1982), many of us who favoured a more public political presence felt unable to continue to identify and work with the FPC, especially because this latest development ran counter to the original aims of the party. In her essay “Fighting the Good Fight: Separation or Integration?“, Patricia Hughes (1982) has ably analyzed this question. In it she remarks that “since a feminist society could not tolerate any form of oppression, it would be incompatible with feminist theory not to accept that all people are at least implicitly affected by that transformation. It is not realistic to believe that the world of women will be dramatically transformed without its having repercussions for men . . . while feminist practice does not require men, it must recognize their existence and determine their place in the theory and practice because they, too, will be part of feminist society” (Hughes, 1982: 286). Since men are also part of the human race, it is neither practical nor realistic to exclude them entirely from one’s calculations for the future, let alone the present. Therefore, also, “a political party dedicated to the objectives of a feminist pobe exclusionary: litical party, . . . cannot this is, as has been so marvellously expressed, the difference between ‘the politics of possibility and the politics of limitation.’ The reasons for not excluding men are pragmatic, theoretical and ethical.” (Hughes, 1982: 293-294.) What happened therefore in early 1982 is that the “politics of limitation,” to use the expression cited, became dominant in the debate within the FPC and this eventually led to what many of us hope is only its temporary demise. This development was especially puzzling in that, as I have earlier pointed out, the number of male members in
ZABORSZKY
the FPC was always minuscule and thus never presented a practical problem: one might say therefore that the events of early 1982 were the result of a purely theoretical but not a practical situation. Dale Spender (1982) in her insightful Women of Ideas has repeatedly stressed the importance of knowing our collective history, in order not only to avoid erasure but also to obviate the need to reinvent the feminist wheel about every fifty years or so. It is in this spirit that I wanted to record the existence of the Feminist Party, even if it is the very recent past. At the same time, 1 take seriously Spender’s injunction that we need to be able to learn from each other’s ideas and actions-this, in turn, is only possible if we are as fully informed about these as possible. Thus it is also crucial to try to work out what we can learn from our past, and specifically, then, from the relative failure of the Feminist Party. I have earlier pointed out that there was no leader in the FPC. Indeed, the very idea of leaders is one which runs counter to the collectivist, co-operative nature of feminist thinking. Therefore, as I’ve stated earlier, the party functioned with a loosely based committee structure, which was fairly efficient for a time. Much discussion was also spent on the issue of our name; while many of us realized that the name itself-containing as it did that that dangerous word, feminist might result in a certain amount of adverse publicity, we nonetheless believed that it was very important to call ourselves what we really believed we were. Here again we come up against the phenomenon of naming and the related issue of degrees of compromise. In effect, it was decided that on this issue we must not make any compromises. The FPC did not have a constitution, nor did it have an executive in a formal sense. With the easy benefit of hindsight, it is my opinion that this was a mistake. A formal structure in the form of a constitution with various articles, by-laws, etc., and an executive, would have been desirable for the smooth functioning of the party. In addition, it would have provided a more neutral mode of handling dissension and disagreement, and thus perhaps have avoided the more hurtful and subjective situations which became inevitable as a result of the lack of
The Feminist Party of Canada
structure. A structure, more or less formalized, also means that an organization will be less dependent on more or less powerful personalities to transact business, and the feminist goals of communal/co-operative endeavours can be better realized. The lesson to be learnt here, then, is the importance, from a pragmatic point of view, of some kind of structure so as to avoid futility and inefficiency. Again, it is useful here to search for possible historical precedents in order to determine what can be learnt from them. I would like to mention two events in the history of the British suffragist organization, WSPU. The first occurred in 1907, that is, very early in its existence. (The WSPU was formed in 1903.) Charlotte Despard, the Secretary of the WSPU, left it and formed the Women’s Freedom League; this happened because of differences in opinion over the handling of the WSPU constitution by Emmeline Pankhurst. In fact, the WSPU had a draft constitution, but the real decisions were made by the Emergency Committee, largely controlled by Mrs. Pankhurst and her supporters. What is striking is that subsequently both sides behaved with great generosity and by and large worked for the same ends. The second event occurred in 1912, when Mrs. Pankhurst severed her connections with Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, largely over disagreement with regard to militancy. (They joined the Women’s Freedom League.) Again, the behaviour of the Pethick-Lawrences was singularly generous and lacking in rancour. The lesson which can be drawn from these events seems to me to be the fact that in both cases the constitution, such as it was, of the particular organization had been more or less violated, thus precluding a more democratic and consensual solution to disputes. Indeed, Mrs. Pankhurst’s modus operandi was neither democratic nor consensual, even if immensely effective nonetheless. But the price of this style of operation was the loss of important and valuable individuals. So the importance of the mediating influence of a structure, a constitution, becomes greater, as does the need to respect and abide by it. Connected with the importance of some type of structure is the issue of goals. It is obvious that an organization, or party, needs
619
to have broad agreement on its goals from the outset. This means the formulation of policies and thus what might be called a party platform. Certainly this was not lacking in the Feminist Party, which from the beginning worked very hard to formulate aims, position papers and policies. This was crucial because members needed to have ready some acceptable response to prospective members, who naturally always asked what the FPC stood for and what its position was on a great number of issues. Hence the importance of the early press releases, which in effect were position papers (and on which I have been drawing extensively). And while these were being produced, the educational activity of the FPC, which I mentioned earlier, also continued, not only because of its inherent importance, but also for the practical reason that the members’ knowledge of feminism and current issues was varied and there was a need to make ourselves knowledgeable enough to cope with our work, with the media and the public. So the educational and policy-formulating activities happened simultaneously, thus resulting in a new type of endeavour. This meant that the emergence of the FPC as a political presence, and the grass-roots organizing which was also happening, coincided, therefore making for a complex and complicated experience. This in turn was rendered more difficult by the absence of a constitution. It was this absence, then, which hampered the FPC in dealing constructively with what Hughes has called “The Man Question.” I have said earlier that this was one of the most divisive (if not the most divisive) issues which surfaced finally in early 1982. Now, as Hughes and others have demonstrated, the requirements and conditions of a political party (even a putative political party) are quite different from those of other groups, be they consciousness-raising, lobby or whatever. It is of course because a political party aims at making an electoral impact that certain pragmatic realities cannot be ignored. “It makes sense when forming a political party to think of it as trying to appeal to as many people as possible within the confines of its ideological base. A party cannot expect support if it deliberately excludes half the electorate (that traditional parties have effectively done so is no reason to continue the
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DORUTHY
practice); blatant sexism, even if by the subordinate group, does not lie well beside a platform against exclusion” (Hughes, 1982: 294). It can be seen, then, that an integrationist kind of feminism is a necessary condition for the functioning of a feminist political party. This need not, by any means, result in “selling out” or co-optation, so long as it is women who define the parameters, set the terms and devise the rules. The point is that women should be the subjects rather than the objects of political (and other) processes and as such acquire control over their activities. So long as such control is maintained, there need be no difficulties with “The Man Question.” The greatest problem for the FPC was, moreover, that of “selling” our visions for a just society to potential members. And here we had somehow to confront the problem of trying to fight against long-established political party allegiances. The task was to persuade women who had worked or voted for, say, the Conservatives to switch allegiances. Our educational sessions were particularly important here, but I think we never did quite find the magic formula (which may not exist anyway). Canada, unlike the U.S., seems not yet to have a women’s vote, although some awareness of its possible existence was shown in the 1984 federal elections. It is important to note that the initiative for the historic televised debate among the three male party leaders (and competitors for the prime ministership) on women’s issues in August, 1984 came from a feminist organization, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, and not from one of the established parties. Although in the 1984 elections more women MPs were elected (largely in Quebec, and probably simply as a result of an anti-Liberal Party backlash in that province), the number - twenty-fiveis still pathetic in relation to the percentage of women voters (fifty-two percent) in the electorate. It can be seen that the original forecast by the FPC about the number of years it would take to have an equal number of women in parliament is still largely valid. (Based on 1979 trends, it would take 842 years.) My opinion is that women voters still vote for reasons which have little if anything to do with their own interests as women. And while certainly some of the es-
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tablished parties have better platforms with regard to women’s issues than others, none give priority to them. The very fact that they are called “women’s issues” denotes a ghettoization of interest, as if, on the one hand, there were women’s issues, and on the other, there were human ones. And language referring to “women and other minorities” is still all too current. By contrast, “the political party is our [women’s] most public vehicle of our values and our vision; it seeks to advance our cause and our demands for justice throughout the entire society” (Hughes, 1982: 297). The founders of the FPC believed that our values and vision could not satisfactorily be advanced through the existing political parties, which is why they founded the party. It is a matter of judgement concerning the viability and possibility of reform from within existing structures versus the perception that efforts to do so are futile and useless. Traditionally, left-leaning parties, like Canada’s NDP, have been more receptive to women’s concerns; but even in these, women have had to fight every inch of the way and they did not set the terms of discourse but had to respond to existing ones. Speaking about the need to know our history and our past, Dale Spender has said that “to believe that we are on our own, that we have started a protest for which there is no precedent, is to be plagued by doubts, to be vulnerable, to be without models, experience, or guidance. In a society in which there is widespread acceptance that ‘normal’ means women in the kitchen and men in the corridors of power, we are likely to see our protest against these conditions as abnormal, as requiring explanation, demanding defence.” (Spender, 1984: 2.) As we discover from our history, women have always engaged in protest in one way or another; this knowledge reinforces our sense of justness and of the rightness of our activities. This is one of the main reasons why I have wanted to record, however inadequately, one episode from our collective past and to illustrate that it was a far from unusual or unique occurrence, although it was precedent-setting in this country. In conclusion, I would like to underline the need for learning from our past. In the case of the Feminist Party of Canada, this
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The Feminist Party of Canada
means, I think, a recognition of the necessity for some form of structure to facilitate achieving clearly formulated aims. It also means a recognition that even though the FPC is at present on hold, the fundamental possibility of a feminist political party remains a realizable goal. If we take the longrange historical view, we have to recognize that feminism is relatively new. “Like all new political forms, it is in an early and unclear stage, just as Liberalism was in 1640, or democracy in 1790 or socialism in 1870” (O’Brien, 1979: 5). All such new political forms, then, go through a period of trial and error, which is why it is important to learn from them. For those of us involved with the FPC, our collective effort remains a noble and worthwhile experience, albeit at present one which seems an exciting experiment. This is especially so because, as Mary O’Brien (1979) has said, feminism “struggles for rational political expression of an ethical polity and a just economy. It has no illusions about its difficulties, no doubt about its coming triumphs and a firm confidence in its historical necessity.” (O’Brien, 1979: 5).
Brodie,
M. Janine and Vickers.
nadian
Women
in Politics:
Jill McCalla.
An
Overview.
1982. CuCRIAW,
Ottawa. Feminist Party of Canada. 1979-1982. Newsletters. Vol. 1, no.1 (July, 1979)-Vol. 3. no. 1 (March, 1982). Hughes, Patricia. 1982. Fighting thegood fight: Separation or Integration? In Miles, Angela and Finn, Geraldine, eds, Feminism in Canada: From Pressure lo Polirics (pp. 283-297). Black Rose Books. Montrial. Landsberg, Michele. 1986. Norway’s 40 percent law: Making equahty second nature. Globe and Mail 7(June): A2. The Need of a Woman’s National Platform. 1920.
Everywoman’s
World 13(2): 7.
O’Brien, Mary. 1979. Why Feminism? Why Women’? Why Now? Unpublished manuscript (5 pp.). O’Brien, Mary. 1981. The Polirics of Reproducrion. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Sabia, Laura. 1978. Women and politics. In Shteir. Ann B., ed, Women on Women (pp.29-42) Yorh University, Toronto. Savage, Candace. 1979. Our Nell, A Scrapbook Biography of Nellie L. McClung. Western Producer Prairie Books, Saskatoon. Spender, Dale. 1982. Women ofldeas. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Spender, Dale. 1984. Time and Tide Wail,for No Man. Pandora Press, London. Stevens, Doris. 1920 (reprinted 1976). Jailed for Freedom. Schocken Books, New Yorh.
FURTHER
READING
REFERENCES Banks, Olive. 1981. Faces of Feminrsm. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Broadside. 1979. Vol. 1, no. 1. Brodie, M. Janine. 1985. Women and Polirics in Canada. McGraw-Hill, Ryerson, Toronto.
Towards a Canadian Feminist Party. 1979. Arlanris .5(1): 142-145. Vickers, Jill McCalla and Brodie, hl. Janine. 1981, Canada. In Lovenduski, Joni and Hills, Jill, eds, The
Politics of rhe Second Elecrorare, Women and Public Purticiparion (pp. 52-82). Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.