Template talk:Alberta NDP leaders

Canada: Alberta / Governments / Politics

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UFA?[edit]

Having the UFA in this template feels wrong to me - while UFA MPs participated in the founding of the CCF, the UFA as an organization did not, and at least two of the three UFA Premiers (i.e. the people listed on this template) were actively hostile to it (Greenfield was essentially withdrawn from politics by this point, and I haven't been able to find anything about his views on the subject, but given his general deference to Brownlee on this sort of thing I'd be surprised if he was much of a fan). I don't think it's fair to call the UFA an antecedent of the NDP, and it certainly isn't fair to suggest that Greenfield, Brownlee, or Reid were somehow forerunners of Roper, Notley, and Pannu. Steve Smith (talk) 21:14, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, I now see at United Farmers of Alberta that "of the nine UFA MPs elected in the 1930 federal election, eight joined the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation." However, it does state that "many members jump[ed] to the new Social Credit and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation movements", is there any way of knowing how many for each? I think when determining what party is an antecedent, for the purpose of these navboxes, we need to look at what happened to the party members when it was dissolved, not if the UFA leaders supported the CCF. 117Avenue (talk) 21:57, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well - and this may be a technicality, but I don't think so - the UFA didn't ever dissolve, nor was it folded into another organization. It persists to this day, and just stopped running candidates (of course, it doesn't exist as a political party today, but arguably it didn't back then, either). Provincially, a good majority of UFA supporters jumped to Social Credit, and I have the impression that the same is true of members, but I don't have any source for that.

I don't have any figures federally, either, but I note that in the 1930 federal election (before either Social Credit or the CCF ran candidates), the UFA won nine of sixteen Alberta seats, while in 1935 (after the UFA stopped running candidates), Social Credit won fifteen of seventeen (and the CCF won zero, and finished fourth in popular vote). This suggests that, at least the immediate term, the UFA was more a forerunner to Social Credit than to the CCF.

You can certainly trace back a progressive thread from the NDP that runs through the CCF and then splits into a bunch of sub-threads, one of which would run through the UFA (where it would be joined by others). But the link between the UFA and the CCF is probably weaker than, say, the one between the Wildrose and the P.C.s, and even if we wanted to say that the Klein P.C.s were an antecedent of the WRP, I don't think we'd put Klein and Danielle Smith in the same infobox (at least, not until later this weak when they'll likely be joined in {{ABPremiers}}). Steve Smith (talk) 23:17, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing this discussion out, Steve. And I do agree. The CCF/NDP is not a successor of UFA, regardless of the individual decisions of former MPs and MLAs after the co-op ended its political wing. It has not political successor. Reso lute 00:50, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I will partially recant. Looking at a book I have of UFA's history, it does seem that several members of UFA were also members of CCF and when it became evident that UFA was dying as a political brand, they tried pushing supporters towards CCF rather tha Social Credit. So I can see a case for noting UFA in the under link like Kevlar did, but I certainly do not support listing UFA's premiers on this template by name. That implies that UFA itself rolled into the CCF, which is inaccurate. Reso lute 01:12, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And I suppose it would be inappropriate to add the UFA to the Social Credit box since the Social Credit replaced the UFA government. Also, the Wildrose and PC are in the same box, at Template:Canadian Conservative Parties, but that's more of a position than timeline. 117Avenue (talk) 02:34, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]