Topic
Forty years ago today he was elected BC's first NDP premier. Last year you voted him The People's Order of BC.
Dave Barrett: Wise-cracking warrior for social justice.
You nominated, you voted. Now it's time to give kudos to them all.
Given their records, clearly British Columbia is out of order.
Dave Barrett was a dangerous man.
It's not just the former Premier's critics who say that. One of his closest confidantes and cabinet ministers agrees, though for very different reasons. There's no doubt, however, that his impact is still felt 40 years later.
"He always had great ideas while he was shaving in the morning!" laughed Bob Williams, Barrett's Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources from 1972-1975. "We never knew what the idea would be when he came in.
"He was a very creative mind... He was the right guy in the right place at the right time. He captured the imagination of everybody."
On this day four decades ago, Aug. 30, 1972, -- when the New Democratic Party swept to power for the first time ever in B.C. and Barrett was thrown into the premier's seat -- the history-making leader was branded a socialist, radical, and even labeled "Allende of the North," a reference to Chile's elected populist leader (who, one year later, was killed in a U.S.-sponsored military coup).
Barrett's government would go on to pass a staggering 367 bills during its tenure -- creating everything from the Insurance Corporation of BC (ICBC) to the modern ambulance design now used across the continent (before, they used low Cadillacs and attendants were forced to crouch). From forcing politicians to reveal their donors, to the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) and the BC Human Rights Board, simply put, Barrett's caucus changed B.C.
When The Tyee last year invented The People's Order of B.C. and invited readers to make their nominations, Dave Barrett was a top vote getter. Perhaps that did not go unnoticed in high places. In May of this year Premier Christy Clark announced Barrett would be among those receiving the Order of B.C. honour.
On Barrett's lookout
Earlier this month Barrett's friends, colleagues and supporter celebrated his accomplishments near Cypress Provincial Park, a Barrett government creation. The man of honour himself couldn’t make it for health reasons, but surveying a cloud-blanketed Vancouver from the so-called "Barrett's View Lookout" on the road up to the park, Williams remembered the furor that erupted the day of their election. The media, he recalled, was incensed and alarmed by the NDP's victory.
"'This is a terrible thing!'" he remembered one radio show caller saying. "'The socialists are inside the gates now. Can't they do something about it? Can't they have a meeting at the Vancouver Club and annul the election?!'"
"That," Williams continued, "is the way it was.
"[Barrett] would usually answer any charge of being a wild-ass socialist with humour. That just dissipated the whole right wing's argument that he was dangerous -- 'How could anybody this much fun be dangerous?!' he'd ask."
Barrett, now 81, is best known by his caucus colleagues for his sense of humour, and the way he would laugh in the face of adversity and attacks from the business community. It was a trait many likened to the oratory gifts of Tommy Douglas, the former federal NDP leader and so-called father of medicare.
"When we were called the Allende of the North, he got into the Legislature and admitted it: 'I'm a red -- I wear red shorts,'" recalled Harold Steves, a 35-year Richmond City Council veteran who served as MLA in the Barrett NDP caucus from 1972-1975. "So we printed a button saying, 'I wear red shorts.'
"He treated these attacks with a good sense of humour. [Outgoing Premier] W.A.C. Bennett said, 'The socialist hordes are storming the gates and taking over Victoria!' So Dave said, 'Well, we're part of the socialist hordes.' He just brushed it all off with a good sense of humour... When you deal with issues like that, it doesn't put down your opponent -- it dulls the criticism. He effectively said, 'Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but you're being silly.'"
'The world was 40 years behind us'
While his jokes were notorious, Barrett's deeply serious side is less well-known. Steves remembers the Premier turning to him one day -- when they were discussing their plan to outlaw oil supertanker traffic and offshore oil drilling -- and making a remark he will never forget.
"He said to me, 'I'm afraid it may already be too late,'" Steves recounted, before pausing. "We were 40 years ahead of time, but I think history may tell us that, in fact, the rest of the world was 40 years behind us.
"Are we too late? If what we were trying to do at the time had gotten more support in Canada and the U.S., we might not be facing the catastrophe we're facing today. I think that was the message Dave had at the time, when he said we may be too late to stop, but we have to make an attempt to stop it from getting worse."
Barrett was ahead of the curve on any number of other issues. To name just three, his NDP ended spanking in B.C. schools, introduced Hansard records to Legislature, and created a guaranteed income plan for senior citizens.
'Acute sense of social justice'
As B.C.'s first (and only) Jewish premier -- one of the very few in Canadian history, in fact -- his awareness of oppression and discrimination was acute. He may have fought his opponents with a smile as he passed his expansive list of reforms still with us today, but in private he was an avid researcher on Nazism and Fascism.
"He had an acute sense of social justice," Williams said. "The fact that he was Jewish, I think, made him very sensitive to the nature of discrimination of all kinds.
"There was a very serious side of him that wanted to understand what mass man could do -- he was something of a scholar on the Nazis and their impact on the Jews, the gays and everyone else they destroyed. He had this really serious side to him, as well as his really open sense of humour."
Williams -- who attended Vancouver's Britannia High School two grades behind Barrett -- believes Barrett's education at Jesuit-run universities in Seattle and St. Louis also sharpened his political analysis and quest for social change.
"The day after the NDP's first-ever victory in the province, Barrett called Williams in typical spontaneous and jovial style.
"I got a call from Dave: 'Hey, Bob, we got it!'" Williams recalled, chuckling. "'We gotta get together. I think you and I are the transition committee!... I'll be at your house in half and hour.'"
And while so many of the Barrett-era reforms are taken for granted today -- basic stuff, like the right of citizens to sue the government for wrongs committed -- the NDP caucus' steep learning curve perhaps changed them as much as they changed the province.
"Those years when we were in government were really very exciting," Williams said. "But by the end of our administration, many of us came to the conclusion that our real job was to transfer power to the people."
As the NDP appears to inch closer to power in the province again -- polling at 49 per cent support in an Aug. 3 survey -- it's a lesson those who remember the Barrett years hope the party hopeful for premier keeps in mind.
"What the NDP government did in 1972 -- in that three-and-a-half years of electoral reform we brought to this province -- was we left a legacy of hope that's still with us," said Steves. "We want to pass that on to [NDP leader Adrian Dix] and the present caucus to bring in when they become the government next year: please build on that legacy of hope we started back in 1972."
With Dix's promises of "modest" reforms under a New Democrat Legislature, will the radical vision of the Barrett cabinet resonate following next year's election?
"The thing that I get from that, is that you have to get the fundamentals right," Dix told The Tyee. "You have to do that: you have to be prepared to dream big.
"And, at the same time, we have to be modest in terms of the range of things we can do. But the things you do, they need to be important things. The Barrett government did important things. We need to learn that, and we need to be a little bit bold."
Tomorrow we profile the second winner of The People's Order of B.C. voted by Tyee readers: Wild salmon defender Alexandra Morton. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Hakuin
37 weeks ago
Well Dave
I'm just happy you are going to live to see the utter extinguishment of the Socredlieberals once and for all.
Lawrence
37 weeks ago
Come on crispy
Call an election. Aren't all those rats running full tilt for the scuppers a bit embarrassing
Dan the socialist
37 weeks ago
Barrett was a great guy. he
Barrett was a great guy. he did a lot for BC. So did WAC before him. However the conservative Campbell has done his best to wreck those things they built for BC. Has any premier in BC had 'vision' since Barrett and WAC days?
Dan the socialist
37 weeks ago
The media, he recalled, was
The media, he recalled, was incensed and alarmed by the NDP's victory.
"'This is a terrible thing!'" he remembered one radio show caller saying. "'The socialists are inside the gates now. Can't they do something about it? Can't they have a meeting at the Vancouver Club and annul the election?!'"
=============
The media here is so pathetic with their right wing bias. It is a shame really.
Hakuin
37 weeks ago
Really Dan?
Whackky? All he ever did was lay the foundations for ruining the province by pumping out every scrap of natural resource at bargain basement price. We ought to dig up his corpse and put it on trial.
Fiat lux
37 weeks ago
Barrett has done a number of
Barrett has done a number of great things, but he was hampered by some of his colleagues in government having been utter dopes.
Also, that the NDP never had, and still doesn't have anybody who has the slightest idea about communications with the public, on what to say and how to say it?
Barrett was also in line to be reelected in 1983 (?, I hope I have the year right) when people already wanted to get ready of Bill Bennett.
He blew it big.
He got into a scrum with reporters when he was walking with his wife on a country road, somewhere in the Interior, during the election campaign.
He was asked what he thought of Bennett "restraint" ideas. Dave replied " The restraint is over!"
This was enough for the media to jump on him with claims that he and the NDP just want to "spend,spend, spend in good socialist fashion" and the NDP's numbers went down like a rock, overnight.
Now, as NDP members, our role is still nothing more than to vote for the Party and serve as addresses for begging letters.
The corporate mafia is now just waiting for the NDP to be elected next year, so they can have free hand to wreck the BC economy and blame the NDP for it. Yet, the Party doesn't seem to have the slightest idea of how to inform the public of the criminal CETA and TPP plans, and how to fight them.
All we can hear is the idiocy of "competitiveness". Exactly what the criminals want to hear so they can use it to rob us blind.
Ed Deak.
lynn
37 weeks ago
The Definition of a Great Man
Dave Barrett accomplished so many meaningful things because he was bold - a boldness that stemmed from the great courage that comes from great conviction. He had not only a great sense of humour (revealed so nicely in this article on The Tyee) but a great sense of warmth for the people that is truly, truly missed.
I agree with Ed that the NDP has yet to find a way to inform the public in an effective way about the big picture of what is happening to this province and to this country - the losses in rights and sovereignty through intentionally legislated grand theft. It is paramount that they work on this if they are to gain and keep the public support as no doubt the corporate mafia that Ed mentions will attempt to sabotage every move they make. Counteracting that kind of sabotage will take both boldness and imagination.
Lawrence
37 weeks ago
Ya know
I've been trying to get the NDP brass to suggest to the huge e mail list they have that they should read The Tyee, but I don't get anything positive back.
They don't want to look like they endorse The Tyee, and that's not what I'm asking them to do.
They could mention many sites where you can get balanced information on BC and the rest of Canada. so the NDP membership could become informed and battle the misinformation smearing and outright lies that will be assaulting us prior to the next election
pwlg
37 weeks ago
a memorable laugh indeed
I was living on the Central Coast at the time and remember several NDP cabinet ministers including Williams and Stupich visiting the area and meeting with residents and talking about what the government could do to assist the residents, not corporations, with their aspirations focusing on agriculture and resource development. The focus was on how both of these sectors could benefit the residents. This was highly unique and exciting.
I will be very proud to see Dave receive the Order of BC. He is definitely a front row recipient.
While they are at it, Harold Steves should receive the same honours. Having served as an Alderman and Councilor for the City of Richmond for 45 years and 3 years as an MLA still farms a portion of the family farm at the western end of Steveston Highway and has been a strong proponent and defender of the ALR since its inception.
Fiat lux
37 weeks ago
Lynn.....Any politician who
Lynn.....Any politician who yaks about "competitiveness" has absolutely no idea of what it really means, its purpose as an economic system, and even of what is going on in the world ?
I don't know what it will take to wake up the NDP brass, but unless they do wake upo one day, we're facing a serious problem.
I wrote to Mulcair, asking one simple question: Does the NDP have any plans to save lives, when the inevitable collapse of the present criminal economic system happens ?
No reply. Canada is in an ideal position to wake up the world, but I have to wonder if the NDP has any economists who know real economics from holes in the ground, and what kind of advice can the politicians expect from them ?
Waiting for a miracle......
Ed Deak.
wvdk
37 weeks ago
BC v WAC, Lake v Tarpit
W.A.C. certainly 'used up' some of BC's resources. The lake created by his namesake dam has a larger footprint on the Earth's surface than the OilSands of Fort MakeMoney. You can compare them from the right vantage point in Google Earth. Nonetheless if we were to put him on trial as Hakuin suggests I suspect he'd be acquitted because the proceeds of those public resources went mostly to the public.
wvdk
37 weeks ago
BC v WAC, Lake v Tarpit
W.A.C. certainly 'used up' some of BC's resources. The lake created by his namesake dam has a larger footprint on the Earth's surface than Fort MakeMoney's oily sandbox. You can compare them from the right vantage point in Google Earth. Nonetheless if we were to put him on trial as Hakuin suggests I suspect he'd be acquitted because the proceeds of those public resources went mostly to the public.
marlonbrando
37 weeks ago
Who's next?
While I applaud anyone (almost) who devotes themselves to public service, Dave Barrett was no friend of BC. One only has to look at his record from taking a surplus in BC and blowing it all on increasing the number of civil servants, to that icon of government waste, ICBC.
Who's next on the list of great NDP leaders? Glen Clark?
Perry
37 weeks ago
Order of BC is tainted
"What the NDP government did in 1972 -- in that three-and-a-half years of electoral reform we brought to this province -- was we left a legacy of hope that's still with us,"
And its been down hill ever since for the citizens of BC. What good is hope? Hope doesn't put food on the table for the thousands of children living in poverty. Hope does not provide a decent secure home for citizens forced to live and die on the street, while their politicians live in relative luxury.
The NDP has failed to bring power to the people so far, and I do not think things will change very much under their upcoming new government. There needs to be far more radical change than the NDP is currently offering.
And why on earth would anyone be honoured to receive that tainted Order of BC. The Order of BC lost its prestige when Gordon Campbell was awarded membership just months after leaving the office from which he waged war against the poorest most vulnerable citizens, while changing laws to enrich himself and his friends.
"The Order of British Columbia is Out of Order"
http://chainthedogma.blogspot.ca/2011/09/order-of-british-columbia-is-out-of.html
Fiat lux
37 weeks ago
No matter where and for whom
No matter where and for whom anybody works, the payment always, ultimately comes out of everybody`s pockets.
When Barrett was premier, corporate executives were taking home about 10 times the pay of their workers.
Now they are taking 400 times, while cutting wages and outsourcing to slave labour in China and child labour in India. Or the bank CEO who took home $45. million in a year, or the highest paid in Canada last year who took $55. million.
Are these criminal figures not stolen from the public? Where do they come from ? "Created" from the air ?
How about when corporations that have billions stacked away, are financing new rackets by borrowing making it tax deductible expenses, paid for by the public ?
How about a bit of logic instead of "conservative" propaganda?
Ed Deak.
Hakuin
37 weeks ago
?
"the proceeds of those public resources went mostly to the public."
If "public" means car dealers, bible thumpers and cronies perhaps. Even the Larry Lunch Buckets and their working (at half pay) wives who seemed to have jobs during the plunder were in the end sadly mislead as they discovered when their children had nothing to inherit.
The Socred era was a disgraceful blight and I sincerely hope the incoming government strips every filthy name they plastered on our streets and public works.
Jim Ryan
37 weeks ago
auto insurance
Hey Marlonbrando ... it's not that long ago that Alberta and the Maritimes were facing private auto insurance rate increases of up to 50% while the 4 provinces with the lowest rates all offered public insurance. I don't think the Fraser Institute were doing any insurance rate comparisons back then. It is unfortunate that our current provincial government have used our crown corporations as cash-cows but that has nothing to do with dave Barrett.
Hakuin
37 weeks ago
ICBC?
I remember pre - ICBC. Teenagers couldn't get insured, if you and the other party had the same insurer they selected one to royally screw based on what cost them less. When ICBC came it was a blessing, fairness, affordability and no corporate rape of the consumer. The the Socreds got back in and immediately tripled the rates.
If universal healthcare is doable, car insurance sure as hell is too. And in such a way that the average citizens doesn't have to pronounce "ICBC" with a gallon of spit.
alive
37 weeks ago
Voters: look in the mirror!
I must admit that I voted for Tom Berger as leader, but I soon learned that nobody could have done a better job than Dave did!
I voted for Dix at this leadership contest, let's hope my intuition was better this time around.
It is easy to blame the socred/libs, that people voted in, for screwing up a good thing --- but how about we blame the voters instead?
Fiat lux
37 weeks ago
When the Socreds got back in,
When the Socreds got back in, their one man disaster area by the name of Pat McGeer doubled the ICBC rates.
It caused a mini depression. There were cars abandoned all over Vancouver, with "Stick it in your ear McGeer" signs on them.
Hundreds of businesses went bellyup. It cost me $65,000 in losses. It was the first time Woodward's Stores lost money and went downhill after that.
A group of prominent businessmen wrote an open latter in the papers to Bennett, condemning that he pulled $400. million out of the economy in one shot at the end of February, when all insurances were due.
I was doing some work for Chunky Woodward at the time and as were having some tea in his den, I thanked him for the letter, as one of the signatories. He blew up and called Bennett and McGeer some fancy names.
I could never recover the losses and when we moved out of Vancouver and sold our brand new house, we got $65,000 for it to pay off the debt. "Stick it in your ear McGeer and Bennett"
Today the insurance for my farm truck is $700. with ICBC. Under private I would have to pay $7-8,000 at my age, without any tickets, or claims, according to friends in the States and other provinces.
I hate violence of any sort, but wouldn't hesitate to pick up a gun to save ICBC.
Now, how can we get back bank privatization under public control, so we wouldn't have to pay interests on the money we, the public, already own by law and was the purpose of the setting up of the Bank of Canada in the first place.
Paying interests for our own money has to be the biggest "conservative" racket and abysmal stupidity.
Ed Deak.
Don McBain
37 weeks ago
Well said Ed Deak
You of course are correct Ed in that the 1% has become so insanely rich from the work and spending of the 99% of the people in Canada... this has to stop!
Is that logic?
freewilly
37 weeks ago
those were the days
So another golden age, great opportunities, real change could be on our doorsteps. It just seems all too easy, key MLA's abandoning ship. Its as if they (Clarkes gov) have given up.
We dont have Dave Barett as a leader or visionary, not close. Does the NDP have any vision? or will it come from Left wing think tanks and an agenda dictated by powerful unions?
In our small rural village the left of center supporters are beating each other up. We are imploding, before the election has been called.
Fiat lux
37 weeks ago
Let's not get too complacent
Let's not get too complacent about key MLAs abandoning ship, as all this most likely is part of a long standing Harper plan to replace the BC Libs with the BC Cons.
These abandoners know this and, especially Falcon, who must be part of it, are counting on a royal welcome among the faithful.
What Harper and fellow "conservatives" with their also brainwashed, limited intelligence can not comprehend is that capitalism is on its last leg and will soon follow its idiot twin, communism, to the grave.
The big question now is, who will replace it, with what ideas and platform?
Still the "wealth creating", "growth" idiocies, or have some of our politician figured it out that any new system must be built on real democracy and physical realities, which means environmentalism ?
The reality is that you can't pee against the wind, no matter what the neoclassical theory and the stockmarkets say.
Ed Deak.
alive
37 weeks ago
Deserting rats
The ministers who are quitting now, will soon be on the board of several corporations!
That and a gold-plated pension is the reward for selling out the province and its citizens.
brg61
37 weeks ago
media
The media was alarmed by the NDP win in in 1972. NDP wins in 1991 and 1996 alarmed them even deeper.
The same dinosaurs lead BC's media today and will react predictably in 2013.
Carol Pickup
37 weeks ago
Dave Barrett
Dave Barrett was the best premier of B.C. His progressive government from 1972-1975 brought in more positive legislation than any government before it. One of the initiatives was the Resource Boards which integrated health, education and social services. The very first one was in James Bay, Victoria and it is still in operation today in spite of successive right wing governments moves to destroy it. I look forward to another NDP government come next May-more power to the people of B.C!!
Fiat lux
37 weeks ago
Barrett was still thinking
Barrett was still thinking and operating under the Keynesian theory, with fixed, strictly regulated money creation and the "free trade" rackets. Manufacturing was booming with new businesses, making all kinds of products, opening up all over, every day.
Since then the world has been forced under the criminal Chicago School, vonHayek/Friedman, neoclassical market economic theory, with deregulated money creation powers and the "free trade" fraud used to colonize and enslave the world, with Labour and Social Democratic parties also on the same bandwagon.
When Dix is talking about "competitiveness" and not a word by the NDP, either federally, or provincially, against the criminal CETA and TPP treaties designed for the destruction of any degree of democracy, we can not expect much from an NDP government.
Any beneficial plans, or actions, the NDP may have will be shot down by the WTO, WB, "free trade" and deregulated money creation, fraudulently called "investment".
The world is now under the worst crime wave in human history and we can't hear any politicians raising any alarms, warnings, or action plans against it.
Ed Deak.
Okanagan Orchardist
37 weeks ago
According to marlonbrando....
one of the worst things the NDP did when they got in was to increase the number of civil servants... and of course the next government proceeded to reduce those numbers. When we had diligent civil servants in forestry, conservation, mining, etc. we were forced to obey the regulations. Just look at what the loss of those servants has caused in our Conservation system for example. Who needs a fishing and hunting license anymore? And in our forestry. Who counts all the logs that are going into the mills? We need some civil servants to watch over the likes of Rich Coleman who gave away half of Vancouver Island to developers. The big corporations are getting away with murder in the land development industry because our "civil servant" watchdogs (ALC) no longer have the man-power to control development.
Incidentally, I bought a small parcel of farm land close to town centre in 1972, just months after the ALR regulations came into effect. Thank goodness for them because this would now all be in houses.
exalbertan
37 weeks ago
the arrogance of a BC Liberal
I heard Dave Barrett's name mentioned on CBC radio just this morning.
In a response to a question about Christy Clark, Kevin Falcon avoided letting his true feelings show by suggesting that time allows a better perspective for all premiers once they step down.
He then invoked the names of WAC Bennett, Bill Bennett and Dave Barrett as controversial premiers who are remembered years later for their many policy achievements. Realizing that he had just complimented Barrett he quickly added after his name - "well a few anyway."
I hope more than a few people send him this article.
Sask Resident
37 weeks ago
Pay for transit pass?
I hope that Barrett would have paid for his bus ticket and not have tried to ride for free like the present NDP leader.
But how about a little honesty about Barrett. His world revolved around Vancouver and Victoria and his policies helped destroy lives for those in the hinterland, like central and northern BC. His ag reserve stopped communities from expanding but not Vancouver, and people had to drive further and further to medical facilities as doctors and nurses left. BC kept away oil tankers while Canada's east coast and the rest of NA's west coast have a steady stream of tankers along with jobs.
Hakuin
37 weeks ago
And oils spills
Lots and lots of oil spills
Jeffrey J.
37 weeks ago
God Bless Dave Barrett and the NDP
The impact of Dave Barrett and the NDP of 1973 is simply indescribable. The legacy of this progressive period is unsurpassed. Nothing like it has since occurred, particularly under the many right wing Socred/Liberal regimes since then, whether it be the administration of Bill Bennett (who ended up being outed in a shameful stock swindle), Bill Vanderzalm (forced to leave office under a huge cloud of suspician), Gordon Campbell (forced to quit his post under a storm of unpopularity) or Christy Clark (jury is still out).
BC citizens have benefited from the following programs from Dave Barrett:
1. ALR;
2. ICBC'
3. end of corporal punishment in BC schools,
4. introduction of Question Period in the legislature;
5. Creation of Hansard reporting;
6. restructuring of BC Hydro;
But our collective memory is steadily erased by the mainstream corporate media and the shallow policies of today's corporate ideology.
Long live Dave Barrett and the NDP.
Great coverage Tyee!
Frank
37 weeks ago
communication
Actually, I'd have to say the NDP have learned a great deal about communicating.
Dix knows everything he says and does will be treated by the media like quotes from Josef Stalin and acts accordingly.
A.Worker
37 weeks ago
My take on the reason for the
My take on the reason for the NDP failure to repeat its election success has to do with the untimely announcement of the election. The announcement came at the BC Fed convention at a time when the Fed was a force and was preparing to lay out some criticisms to Barrett and Co. The Fed and its members were the rank and file of the NDP, the trench workers. The election call took most if not all off guard and could and should have been handled differently as to the timing of the election call. Labour never did quite recover from that lack of consultation to go out and do the groundwork for the party with the same enthusiasm as the previous election. As far as communications go, the NDP did make a number a great changes like forming ICBC and the ALR. They put their heads down and went to work but failed to do what successive government have done and that is to actively promote and educate the public, the long and short term benefits of the programs they were introducing. It appeared as if they were letting the programs speak for themselves. Education, education, education. Little Wacky Bennett and the boys attacked ICBC by showing figures about the cost of the overall investment which included new buildings and infrastructure which the media pounced on. The failure of the government to adequately respond with the truth was a failing point. Hopefully the next government will get it right, but I fear they are already a bit slow to recognize some of the dangers we face with things like fracking and such. Vision and education are the keys to success.