Intra-Party Democracy: A Case Study

Abstract

The principle of intra-party democracy underlying the so-called constitutional crisis within the Labour party in Great Britain—a struggle between the party conference and the parliamentary party over the creation of defence policy—has for some time been the subject of widespread discussion in academic journals and the “responsible press.” This paper examines the difficulties within the organization of the United Farmers of Ontario when intra-party democracy resulted in a clash between the parliamentary and mass sections of the party, and attempts to relate the implications of this study to the general question of the distribution of power in parties of extra-parliamentary origin.The domination of the Legislative Assembly from 1919 to 1923 by an alliance of the United Farmers of Ontario and the Independent Labor party provided Ontario with its unique experience of “third-party” government. The suddenness of the intervention of these parties into the traditional order of Ontario's Conservative-Liberal politics was matched only by their equally rapid exit after less than four years of power. Standing as it did at the forefront of a wave of protesting third parties in the following two decades, the event is of considerable significance both for its contribution to a general understanding of the problems of third parties and for the opportunity it affords as a case study of farmer-labour co-operation. Although intra-party democracy was important for both members of the union, this paper deals with its effects on only one of the parties—the United Farmers.