Maitland and the British Columbia Conservative Party : the struggle for political identity and survival
Date
1988
Authors
Terpenning, John Gordon
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Abstract
Royal Lethington Maitland was a brilliant lawyer and a lifelong member of the British Columbia Conservative party. He was prominent in the party from 1922 when he was elected president of the attorney general in the Coalition government. This study focuses on Maitland's political actions, motives and thoughts, principally during those years. However, to understand Maitland's actions and his role in the party it has been necessary to describe and explain the evolution of certain situations prior to 1922.
The analysis of Maitland's political career provides an understanding of his party's erratic performance during a generation that spanned the great prosperity of the 1920s, the economic, social and political chaos and challenges of the 1930s, and the trauma and sacrifices of a six-year war. But the party's problems were due to more than a volatile external environment. Plagued by weakly-supported leaders and strong factions, the party leadership was unable to take an unequivocal stand on virtually any issue. It was hampered by leaders that represented only urban interests and concerns. The party practised "issue" as compared to reform politics; that is, rather than pledging new policies, it responded to other parties' policies by simply condemning them, or promising it would do a better job of implementing those policies. And it failed to recognize a new constituency , namely, Liberals who would not follow Premier Pattullo as he moved his party to the Left.
The party was in fact committed to a struggle not just to maintain its identity, that is, its political uniqueness compared to the other parties, but simply to survive. It lost the 1924 election because of internal division, and after a brief spell of unity under Premier Simon Fraser Tolmie, disintegrated completely in 1932 and 1933. As a result the Conservative party was unrepresented in the Legislature from 1933 to 1937 for the only time since the formation of party government in 1903, and the CCF became the first Socialist official Opposition in the history of Canada.
The party appeared to be on the road back after the 1937 election. Led by a new leader, F. P. Patterson, it displaced the CCF as the official Opposition by a margin of one seat. But in the 1941 election the party, led by weakly-supported Maitland since 1938, came in third behind the second place CCF. And the first place Liberals finished in a minority position.
Maitland tried unsuccessfully for six weeks following the October election to promote a three-party Union government, which he preferred as the best way for his party to maintain its identity, but finally joined the Liberals in a Coalition government. The CCF refused to join because such a union would have caused it irreparable ideological and political harm. Faced with a party and caucus revolt if he opted to support a Liberal minority government, Maitland coalesced with the Liberals under John Hart in exchange for three Cabinet posts, Mines, Public Works and the attorney general portfolio for himself. Over the next four years Maitland persistently tried to build his party's image by attacking the CCF. Although initially unsuccessful , the strategy worked in t he 1945 election as the Conservatives captured seven former CCF seats and increased their strength , within Coalition, to 17 seats from 11 at dissolution.
During the 1946 Legislative Session, Maitland began laying the groundwork for some old-fashioned "fed bashing" in anticipation of the next provincial election. He had campaigned hard against the Pattullo government in the 1941 contest because of its refusal to cooperate with the federal government. To Maitland, such cooperation meant acquiescing with virtually every federal request for access to provincial tax sources. But by 1946 he had concluded that federal provincial co-operation meant only provincial cooperation, and that any provincial rights , once ceded to Ottawa, would never be restored, something Pattullo had maintained for years. Maitland, only days from death, but alert for ways to strengthen the party's image and perhaps forseeing an end to Coalition, had identified an issue that previous provincial governments had used with great political success.
Study sources include the personal papers of R. L. Maitland and his contemporaries, interviews and correspondence with individuals who were acquainted with Maitland, newspapers of the time, theses and dissertations, journals and monographs.