Canadian social credit movement

The Canadian social credit movement was a Canadian political movement originally based on the Social Credit theory of Major C. H. Douglas. Its supporters were colloquially known as Socreds. It reached its height of popularity in the 1930s, as a result of the Great Depression.

Federal Politics

When first formed in 1935, Social Credit took many voters from the Progressive Party of Canada and the United Farmers Movement. The party grew out of disaffection with the status quo due to the Great Depression that hit western Canada especially hard.

In 1935 Canadian election, its first, it won seventeen seats, all but two of them in Alberta with over 46% of that province's popular vote.

In 1939, Social Credit joined with former Conservative William Duncan Herridge and his supporters in New Democracy running in the 1940 election under that name but reverting to Social Credit for the 1945 election.

Never taking more than 31 seats, Social Credit was never seen a serious threat to form the government. The party had a major breakthrough in Quebec in the 1962 Canadian election returning 26 MPs from the province led by Réal Caouette while only electing four MPs from English Canada. This imbalance caused severe tensions in the Social Credit caucus and, on September 9, 1963 the party split into English Canadian wing and a separate Quebec party led by Caouette - the Ralliement des créditistes.

Of the 20 Social Credit MPs elected in Quebec in 1963, 13 joined Caouette's Ralliement, five of the remaining seven ran in the next election as independents while two joined the Progressive Conservatives.

The English Canadian party, concentrated in Alberta and British Columbia, elected only four seats in 1963 and five in 1965. In 1967, three of its MPs defected. Party leader Robert Thompson and a second Socred MP defected to the Progressive Conservatives while a third MP, Bud Olson, joined the Liberals. In the 1968 Canadian election Social Credit lost its last two seats in English Canada leaving the Quebec Creditistes as the sole representatives of the movement in parliament. In 1971 the Railliement and the English Canadian Social Credit reunited into a single national party with Caouette as leader but the party continued its decline. In the 1972 election, the Social Credit caucus was reduced to 15 seats - all in Quebec - and won only 7.6% of the polular vote. In 1974, only 11 Socreds were returned to Parliament, one short of the 12 needed for official party status.

The decline of the party accelerated after Caouette's death in 1976 with Social Credit electing only six MPs in the 1979 Canadian election under new leader Fabien Roy. However, Joe Clark's Progressive Conservatives were in a minority government situation and the Socreds had just enough seats to give the Tories a majority in the House had the two parties formed a coalition government or otherwise agreed to work together.

Clark's government refused to grant the small Social Credit caucus the official party status it wanted let alone form a coalition or even cooperate with the party in any way. This attitude contributed to the government's fall in December 1979 when the Social Credit caucus abstained in a vote on a Motion of No Confidence.

The resulting February 18, 1980 federal election not only defeated the Clark government but wiped out Social Credit, leaving it without any MPs in Parliament for the first time in almost 50 years.

Fabien Roy sought to return to the House of Commons in a by-election held in Frontenac, Quebec riding on March 24 (which was the result the death of the original Social Credit candidate), but lost to the Liberal candidate. Roy resigned as leader on November 1, 1980.

The party never elected another MP and fell into obscurity.

After Fabien Roy's resignation, the party chose Martin Hattersley in 1981 as interim leader over Alberta evangelist Ken Sweigard. Hattersley was an Edmonton lawyer and former British army officer. Hattersley resigned in 1983 when the party would not drop from its membership three outspoken Albertans accused of anti-Semitism.

In 1983, the party chose a new leader by conference call, selecting Sweigard over Elmer Knutson, the founder of West-Fed, a western Canada separatist movement. Knutson subsequently formed the Confederation of Regions Party. John C. Turmel was disqualified from the race because his membership in the party had been suspended.

Quebec Social Credit supporters were mostly social conservatives and Quebec nationalists, while Western Canadian supporters were mostly socially conservative populists.

After the collapse of the party most of its supporters went on to support Brian Mulroney in his 'great coalition' of western populists, Quebec nationalists, and Ontario fiscal conservatives. Other supporters of Social Credit went on to support the New Democratic Party.

Mulroney's coalition fell apart in the 1993 election. Westerners went on to form the Reform Party of Canada, and the Canadian Alliance while nationalists in Quebec supported the Bloc Quebecois.

In 1990 the remnant of the federal Social Credit party was taken over by evangelist Ken Campbell who rechristened it the Christian Freedom Social Credit Party and then the Christian Freedom Party but it failed to nominate at least fifty candidates for the 1993 Canadian election and was dissolved by Elections Canada on September 27, 1993 with its candidates reclassified as Independents. After the party's dissolution many of its remaining members drifted into the Christian Heritage Party.

Leaders of the Social Credit Party of Canada

John Horne Blackmore (1935-1944)
Solon Earl Low (1944-1961)
Robert Thompson (1961-1967)
Alexander Bell Patterson (1967-1968) acting leader
Réal Caouette (1971-1976)
André-Gilles Fortin (1976-1977)
Gilles Caouette (1977-1978) acting leader
Charles-Arthur Gauthier (1978-1979) acting leader
Fabien Roy (1979-1980)
Martin Hattersley (1981-1983)
Ken Sweigard (1983-1990)
Ken Campbell (1990-1993)

Leader of Ralliement Créditiste (separate party 1963-1971)

Réal Caouette

Alberta

The ideology was embraced by the Reverend "Bible Bill" William Aberhart, who formed the Alberta Social Credit League based on Douglas' ideology and Christian social values. He was elected Premier of Alberta in the 1935 provincial election. His government was probably the only one in the world that adhered to the Social Credit ideology. In fact, he once tried to issue Albertans with "Prosperity Certificates", although this measure was disallowed by the Supreme Court of Canada. Aberhart died in office, and was replaced by Ernest Manning, who discarded the theory and attempted to purge the party of anti-Semites, but kept the Social Credit name.

Social Credit formed nine consecutive majority governments spanning 36 years, one of the longest spans of a single party in government in Canadian history.

See: Social Credit Party of Alberta

British Columbia

The Social Credit movement in British Columbia was largely fractious, and made up of various small groups, the largest of which being the Social Credit League. The British Columbian movement was largely at odds with the Albertan wing, and sought to distance itself from William Aberhart's religious preaching.

The effective death of the movement came when W. A. C. Bennett was elected leader of the League in 1951. Bennett joined in order to use the party as a political vehicle and was quick to dump the original ideology, and reorganize into the conservative populist British Columbia Social Credit Party.

Social Credit's first government in BC was a very small minority, but they were elected to a majority a year later. After the minority, and 20 years of majority government, the party was defeated by the NDP, which had one term in Government, and was followed by four more majorities for Social Credit, finally ending with the 1991 election. The party effectively ended in 1996 when they failed to win a single seat and received only 0.4% of votes cast. Many of the party's mainstream members moved on to the British Columbia Liberal Party which emerged in the early 1990s as the new free enterprise coalition opposing the NDP.

However, a small Social Credit Party remains. It ran only two candidates in the 2001 election.The strongest candidate of the two, Grant Mitton, a former radio talk show host who received 17% of the vote in his riding, has since left to form the British Columbia Party.

See: Social Credit Party of British Columbia

Quebec

The movement also caught on in Quebec in the 1960s, and although a Social Credit provincial government would never be elected due to the Union Nationale's near dominance on social conservative votes from the 1930s into the 1960s, the Social Credit party soon became a major contender in Quebec for seats to the federal parliament. Though B.C. and Alberta would elect a few MPs over the years, it would be Quebec that maintained the party's national presence after 1962, while the other two provinces held its base of provincial power.

In the 1962 election, Social Credit took 26 of 75 seats in Quebec, beating the Progressive Conservatives. They continued to finish in second place in terms of federal seats from Quebec until their last MPs fell with the minority government of Joe Clark in 1980. The most Social Credit ever captured in terms of the Quebec popular vote was 27.3% federally, and 11.2% provincially.

The Quebec wing of the movement broke from the rest of the party in 1963 to form its own Quebec-only federal Social Credit party, the Ralliement des créditistes. As a social conservative party, the party generally attracted voters who supported of the Union Nationale in provincial elections.

The party formed a provincial wing in 1970, the Ralliement créditiste du Québec, which benefited as the UN declined after the death of Premier Daniel Johnson in 1968.

The growth of Quebec separatism stymied the rise of the provincial Creditistes due to the Parti Quebecois' attraction to nationalist voters from the right and left despite the PQ's own social democratic leanings.

In the 1970 Quebec election, the Liberals took 72 seats, followed by the Union Nationale with 17, and Ralliement créditiste du Québec with 12. The party was riven by internal dissent for the remainder of its history, capturing two seats in the 1973 election, and only one in the 1976 election, the last time a creditiste was elected to the Quebec National Assembly.

See: Ralliement des créditistes and Ralliement créditiste du Québec

Other Provinces

While never electing any MLAs, Social Credit captured 3.1% of the vote in New Brunswick in 1948. In both Manitoba and Saskatchewan the party elected a few MLAs, and was the third party in each at various times. From 1936 to 1940, the Manitoba Social Credit party supported John Bracken's minority government and in 1940 it joined Bracken's coalition government.

In Saskatchewan, Social Credit elected MLAs in two elections - 1938 (2 MLAs) and 1956 (3 MLAs) - in which the party took third party status. Social Credit was never able to top 16% of the vote.

In Manitoba, Social Credit had a longer run. Of the ten elections from 1936-1973 seven yielded Social Credit MLAs. In 1936, Social Credit finished third, and in 1941, they tied for third. However, Social Credit never topped 14% here.