Arthur Puttee

Arthur W. Puttee (August 25 1868 - October 21 1957) was the first Labour MP in the Canadian House of Commons.

Puttee was a printer by training; born in England he immigrated to North America in 1888 and settled in Winnipeg in 1891 and helped found the local trade union council, the Winnipeg Labour Party and a left wing newspaper, The Voice, with himself as publisher and editor from 1899 until 1918.

When Winnipeg's Liberal MP, R. W. Jamieson, died in February 1899, Puttee put out the call for the nomination of a Labour candidate to contest the vacant seat in the by-election which was finally held on January 25 1900. The trade union council agreed and with resources promised from local unions, nominated Puttee as its candidate against the Liberal candidate, E. D. Martin. However, the Liberal Party was divided with Martin having been nominated by a minority rebelling against the Manitoba Liberal Party's leader, Clifford Sifton and the Siftonites unofficially supporting Puttee.

Puttee ran on a platform calling for public ownership of "all natural monopolies" and other reformist measures. The basic issue of the campaign was whether labour had a right to have its own representatives in parliament.

In a narrow two way contest, Puttee prevailed by a margin of eight votes. Puttee ran for re-election later that year in the 1900 Canadian election and won again by a margin of 1,200 votes against Martin due to unofficial Liberal support (Martin ran as an Independent).

Puttee remained in Parliament until the 1904 Canadian election when he was defeated. There were several causes for this setback.

As an MP, Puttee came into contact with British Labour MPs such as Keir Hardie and Ramsay Macdonald and promoted the British Labour Party as a model to emulate. In doing so he repudiated Marxists within the WLP alienating more radical and revolutionary socialists. The Winnipeg Labour Party suffered a severe split with socialists and many trade unionists leaving in 1902 to join the Canadian Socialist League and ulitmately formed the Socialist Party of Manitoba which had a much more radical program than Puttee's broad based WLP.

A second reason for Puttee's defeat was the loss of Liberal support as the Liberals reunited under the control of the Siftonites and ran their own candidate, D.W. Bole, for the 1904 Canadian election as did the Conservatives.

The Liberals made strenous efforts to appeal to the working class through the dispensation of patronage among leading trade unionists as well as by attacking the trade union council as being radical and unintersted in ordinairy workers. Puttee was painted as a dangerous "revolutionist" backed by "assassins".

Out of office, Puttee returned to his newspaper and continued to agitate for independent working class politics. He became chairman of a new party, the Independent Labour Party based on the British model. Ultimately, Puttee's conservatism sidelined him as the labour movement came under the influence of socialist ideas. He opposed labour militancy and the Industrial Workers of the World in particular and, by the time of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 had ceased to be a signficant leader in Winnipeg.