Tomorrow night there will be a large rally against Canadian racism. Craig Mokhiber, Vijay Prashad, Carmen Rodriguez and many others will speak at “Internationalism Belongs in NDP Leadership Race”.
The online rally is a reaction to the three-person backroom NDP vetting committee possibly blocking a campaign and candidate that has aggressively challenged racist Canadian foreign policy. Too often the NDP has backed those policies.
As I explained in a widely distorted article, the NDP has recently endorsed the Core Group in which white foreign ambassadors dictate to Haitians. They’ve also supported the racist Five Eyes spy network and NDP MPs have employed the word “antisemitism” in discussing Palestine related matters more than the term “Jewish supremacy” during two years of genocide to advance Jewish supremacy.
The party has traditionally promoted Zionism, which most of the world labeled “a form of racism and racial discrimination” in a 1975 UN General Assembly resolution. Just after stepping down as NDP federal leader that year David Lewis was “speaker of the year” at a B’nai B’rith breakfast. According to the Canadian Jewish News, Lewis “attacked the UN for having admitted the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization]” and said “a Middle East peace would require ‘some recognition of the Palestinians in some way.’ He remarked that the creation of a Palestinian state might be necessary but refused to pinpoint its location. The Israelis must make that decision, he said, without interference from Diaspora Jewry.”
As I detail in Left, Right: Marching to the beat of imperial Canada, the CCF backed Canada’s role in the destruction of elected Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Before Ottawa decided to deploy troops, CCF MP Herbert Wilfred Herridge pressed for a deployment. While Herridge seems to have understood that Lumumba was popular, the CCF MP was extremely naïve about Canada’s actions. After Lumumba was captured by UN-US-Canada backed forces and beaten, Herridge told Parliament, “knowing of his concern with this problem … I wonder whether the [external] minister has any further information to report to the House.” But external minister Howard Green was antagonistic to the elected Congolese prime minister. In a private conversation with Green, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker called Lumumba a “major threat to Western interests”.
Canadian troops dominated intelligence-gathering positions within the UN mission and they worked to undermine Lumumba and Congolese independence. After the elected prime minister escaped house arrest and fled Leopoldville for his power base in the Eastern Orientale province, Canadian Colonel Jean Berthiaume assisted Lumumba’s political enemies by helping recapture him. Kept in place by Ottawa, the UN Chief of Staff tracked the deposed prime minister and Berthiaume informed the head of the military, Joseph Mobutu, of Lumumba’s whereabouts. Soon after, the elected prime minister was killed.
Ignorant or indifferent to Canada’s role in Lumumba’s assassination, Herridge asked the House of Commons, “has the government given consideration to what contribution we will make to meet the situation that will flow from this unfortunate incident?” I was unable find any CCF criticism of Canada’s role in Lumumba’s assassination or the UN mission.
In the early 1950s Iranians pushed to gain greater benefit from their huge oil reserves. But British Labour and Conservative governments had different plans. With Anglo-Iranian (BP’s predecessor) refusing to concede any of their immense profits, Iran moved to nationalize the country’s oil industry.
Despite calling for the nationalization of numerous sectors of the Canadian economy, the leader of the CCF criticized Iran’s move. In October 1951 M.J. Coldwell told the House of Commons: “What happened recently in Iran [the nationalization of oil] and is now taking place in Egypt [abrogation of a treaty that allowed British forces to occupy the Suez Canal region] is an attempt on the part of these reactionary interests to use the understandable desire of the great masses of the people for improvements in their condition as an excuse to obtain control of the resources of these countries and to continue to exploit the common people in these regions.” The CCF leader then called on the federal government to “give every possible aid to the United Kingdom in the present crisis.”
Mohammad Mossadegh’s move to nationalize Iran’s oil would lead the US and UK to orchestrate his overthrow in 1953. The CCF failed (or at least it’s not recorded in Hansard) to criticize Ottawa for backing the overthrow of Iran’s first popularly elected prime minister.
The CCF leadership immediately promoted Canadian participation in the US-led 1950-1953 Korean War in which eight Canadian warships and 27,000 Canadian troops participated. The war left as many as four million dead. Canadian troops denigrated the “yellow horde” of North Korean and Chinese “ch…” they fought.
From its roots the CCF demonstrated indifference to the racist colonial order. In an analysis of key early CCF manifestos (Calgary Program, League for Social Reconstruction, Regina Manifesto, etc.) Alan Whitehorn found the word “imperialism”/“imperialist” was only mentioned once while “capitalism” was used 18 times, “socialization” 21 times and “nation”/
“national” 25 times.
A radical document amid today’s pro-capitalist climate, the Regina Manifesto ignored important ongoing injustices. Written when Europeans ruled most of Africa, the Caribbean and Asia, the Regina Manifesto ignored Canadian complicity in European colonialism. For instance, it ignored the Canadians who governed African colonies or the universities recruiting students to join Britain’s colonial service what a top Colonial Office official described as “taking Canada into partnership in the white man’s burden.”
A comprehensive document like the Regina Manifesto, my leadership campaign’s platform seeks to correct some of its racist colonial views. Capitalism can’t be fixed – onwards to a socialist future challenges Canadian assistance to the lawless genocidal apartheid state and calls for Canada to withdraw from the racist Haiti Core Group and Five Eyes intelligence accord as well as. It notes:
“We stand in total opposition to colonialism. Western imperialist supremacy is based on the permanent de-development of the Global South. Consequently, western imperialist economies produce a labour aristocracy in the Global North which benefits materially and disproportionately from the super exploitation of workers in the Global South.
While the primary beneficiaries of imperial exploitation are corporate and financial elites, the structure of global inequality also grants uneven advantages to workers in imperial and settler-colonial states. These advantages—rooted in extraction, resource theft, and global wage hierarchies—are used by capital to divide working peoples and weaken international solidarity. Our task is to dismantle those structures and unite all exploited and dispossessed peoples in common struggle.”
In other words, justice for all must mean all.
Join “Internationalism Belongs in NDP Leadership Race,” an online rally to demand space for an anti-militarist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist candidate and campaign in the race and debates.
To assist, donate or learn more about my bid to lead the NDP check out yvesforndpleader.ca
