Jump to content

User:Abebenjoe/Sandbox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< User:Abebenjoe
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Abebenjoe (talk | contribs) at 01:02, 22 March 2007 (→References and notes: fixed walter stewart books formatting). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
For other people named David Lewis, see David Lewis (disambiguation).
David Lewis
File:Davidlewis.jpg
David Lewis circa 1970
Leader of the New Democratic Party
In office
1971–1975
Preceded byTommy Douglas
Succeeded byEd Broadbent
ConstituencyCanada
Federal Member of Parliament
In office
1962–1963
Preceded byWilliam G. Beech, Progressive Conservative
Succeeded byMarvin Gelber, Liberal
ConstituencyYork South
Majority3,678 plurality
Federal Member of Parliament
In office
1965–1974
Preceded byMarvin Gelber, Liberal
Succeeded byUrsula Appolloni, Liberal
ConstituencyYork South
Personal details
BornJune 23 or October, 1909[1]
Svisloch, Russia
DiedMay 23, 1981
Ottawa, Ontario
Political partyCo-operative Commonwealth Federation
& New Democratic Party
Spouse(s)Sophie Lewis, nee Carson
ChildrenStephen Lewis, Michael Lewis, Janet Solberg, Nina Libeskind
Residence(s)Toronto/Ottawa, Ontario
OccupationLawyer
  1. ^ Smith,p.93


David Lewis (born Losz)[1] , CC, MA (June 23, or October 1909 -May 23, 1981)[2] [3] was a Russian-born Canadian labour lawyer and social democratic politician. He was national secretary of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation from 1936 to 1950, and, with Stanley Knowles, was one of the key architects of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961. He was the NDP's national leader from 1971 to 1975.

Early life in Russia

Birth

David Lewis, his family's original name was Losz, was born sometime after Svisloch, Russia's, first snowfall in October 1909 (officially, he was born on June 23, 1909 because that was the date he gave the immigration officer in Halifax, Nova Scotia, when he arrived in Canada.).[4] His parents were Moishe and Rose Losz. His father was a the leader of the Jewish Labour Bund in his hometown and worked in the Tanneries. [5]

The Bund and Jewish life in the Pale

To understand David Lewis's political activism requires an examination of his roots in the Shetal he lived in from 1909 until 1921. Svisloch was located in the Russian Empire's Pale of Settlement or Pale for short, near the Polish and Russian border in present-day Belarus.[6] The old market town was overwhelmingly Jewish, with 3500 of its 4500 residents being of that faith.[7] Unlike many of the the other Shetals in the Pale, it had an industrial economy based on the Tannery business.[8] This meant there were factory workers that could be mobilized into Labour organizations. Which is why the Jewish Labour Bund, or Bund for short, was so prevalent in the town in the early twentieth century. [9] Moishe Losz was Svisloch's Bund Chairman. [10] Lewis spent his formative years immersed in the Bund's culture and philosophy. The Bund was an outlawed socialist party that called for overthrowing the Tsar, equality for all, and national rights for the Jewish community. [11] The Bund's membership, although mostly Jewish, was actually secular humanist in practice. [12] The Bund was both a working political party and a Labour movement. [13] It was preoccupied in changing the system that was at the roots of low pay and dangerous, harsh working conditions.[14] At its beginning, the Bund realized that its project could only be successful if it were local in focus. A notion that is seen in one of its maxims, “a real revolutionary movement must have it roots...in its own environment.”[15] Another important maxim that would influence Moishe, David, and his son Stephen was: “It is better to go along with the masses in a not totally correct direction than to separate oneself from them and remain a purist.”[16] This philosophy of compromise, has been part of both the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and New Democratic Party's (NDP) practices, and came into play between their “ideological missionaries and the power pragmatists when internal debates raged about policy or action.[17] As Cameron Smith puts it in his book Unfinished Journey: The legacy of the Bund is their sense of social justice, the identification with workers, the focus on organization, the commitment to equality and democratic procedures, fierce anti-communism, secular humanism, multi-culturalism, the sense of international community, the anger with exploitation – in these things the genes of the Bund live on. [18]

Religious education

David Lewis was a secular Jew, just like his father Moishe. However, his maternal grandfather, Usher Lazarovitch, was religious and in the brief period between May and August 1921, gave Lewis his only real religious training.[19] Even though he was not yet thirteen, his grandfather taught him how to wear phylacteries. Lewis attended synagogue with him every day until he left for Canada. He really would not active participate at a Jewish religious function again until his granddaughter Ilna's bat-mitzvah in the 1970s.[20]

The Russian Civil War

When the Russian Civil War was at its fiercest, in the summer of 1920, Poland invaded, and the Red Russian Bolshevik army counter-attacked. The Bolshevik's were on Svisloch's border in July 1920. Moishe Losz openly opposed the Bolsheviks and would later be jailed by them for his opposition.[21] He barely escaped with his life. When the Polish army recaptured Svisloch on August 25, 1920, they executed five Jewish citizens as “spies.” [22] This was a false charge and was more of a tactic to keep the locals scared and not to participate in counter insurgency. Seeing that he wasn't safe under either regime, and the prospects for the future of his family, he left for Canada in May 1921, to work in his brother-in law's clothing factory in Montreal. By August, he saved up enough money to send for his family, including David, Charlie, and Doris.[23]

Religous education

David Lewis was secular Jew -- just like his father Maishe. However his maternal grandfather, Usher Lazarovitch, was religous and in the brief period between May and August before David emigrated, gave his grandson the only real religous training he would ever receive.[24]. Even though he wasn't yet thirteen, the age when Jewish boys have their Bar Mitzvah and complete their religious instruction, his grandfather proceeded to teach him how to wear the phylacteries. Besides attending morning services with his grandfather during this period, Lewis would not actively take part in a relgious service again until his granddaughter Elna's Bat Mitzvah in the late 1970s.[25] In practice the Lewis clan is aethist which includes David, his wife Sophie, and their children Janet, Stephen, and Michael.[26]

Rhodes Scholar

He won a Rhodes Scholarship and went on to study at the University of Oxford where he became president of the Oxford Union and the Labour Club. Along with fellow Canadian Rhodes Scholar, Ted Jolliffe, they fought the Communist Red October club and facists like Lord Haw-Haw–William Joyce.[27] Both he and Lewis planned a 'silent' protest at Joyce's February 1934 speech at Oxford. They carefully made sure that enough members from the Labour Club attended the meeting, and then in groups of two or three, strategically walked out of the speech, across the gymnasium's creaking wooden floors, effectively blotting out Joyce's speech.[28] The Blackshirts in the audience then caused riots in the street after the meeting and Jolliffe and Lewis were in the thick of it.[29] He was active in the Labour Party and was offered a safe Parliament seat in the British House of Commons, but declined and returned to Canada to practise law.

File:David Lewis.jpg
M.J. Coldwell and David Lewis looking over some papers together

CCF's Formative years

An active member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, Lewis became the party's national secretary in 1936 and was for many years the party's sole paid employee. He ran for the Canadian House of Commons in 1940, 1943, 1945 and 1949 but was defeated on each occasion. In the 1943 by-election in Cartier, Quebec, he lost to Fred Rose (politician) who became Canada's first and only Member of Parliament (MP) for the Communist Party of Canada).

Private Labour Law practice

Lewis resigned as national secretary in 1950 and moved to Toronto to practise law in partnership with Ted Jolliffe. He became the chief legal advisor to the United Steel Workers of America's Canadian division, and assisted them in their organising efforts and in their battles with the Communist-led Mine, Mill union.

1962: Finally elected to House of Commons

Lewis was elected as a Member of Parliament from 1962 to 1963 and 1965 to 1974. He established himself as one of the leading debaters in the House of Commons.

Leader of the NDP

In 1971, he ran to succeed retiring NDP leader Tommy Douglas, and won the leadership convention. He led the NDP through the 1972 federal election in which he uttered his best known quotation calling Canadian corporations "corporate welfare bums". That election campaign returned a minority government and elected the greatest number of NDP MPs until 1988, and left the NDP holding the balance of power until 1974. Lewis and the NDP propped up the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau in exchange for the implementation of NDP proposals such as the creation of Petro-Canada as a crown corporation.

In the 1974 election, however, Lewis lost his seat in Parliament, leading him to resign as party leader. It was revealed immediately after the election that he had been battling cancer. It is reported that Lewis had kept everyone, including his family, unaware of his condition.

Awards and death

In 1976, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

David Lewis completed his memoirs, The Good Fight: Political Memoirs 1909–1958 in 1981. He died shortly thereafter on May 23,1981. He is the father of Stephen Lewis, a former Ontario New Democratic Party leader who is now the United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, and Michael Lewis, former Ontario New Democratic Party Secretary, and a leading organizer in the NDP. He is also the father of Janet Solberg, former president of the Ontario New Democratic Party in the 1980s.

Those related to Lewis include:

References and notes

  1. ^ Smith 1989, p. 93
  2. ^ Smith 1989, p. 93
  3. ^ His actual date of birth is unknown. When he emigrated from Russia to Canada in 1921, he did not speak English, and according to David's daughter Janet Solberg, June 23 was the first date that popped into his head when the immigration officer asked him when he was born. (Smith,p.93,542) As Smith points out in his book, October is a best guess, since the only specifics given were that he was born "right after the first snows in 1909". (Smith,p.93,542)
  4. ^ Smith, p. 93
  5. ^ Smith, pp.17-19
  6. ^ Smith,pp.9-10
  7. ^ Smith, p.11
  8. ^ Smith, p.11
  9. ^ Smith, p. 17
  10. ^ Smith, p.11
  11. ^ Smith, p. 1
  12. ^ Smith, p. 133
  13. ^ Smith,p.127
  14. ^ Smith, p.127
  15. ^ Smith,p.63
  16. ^ Smith,p.63
  17. ^ Smith,p.63
  18. ^ Smith, pp.132-133
  19. ^ Lewis, Memoirs, p.12
  20. ^ Smith,p.152
  21. ^ Smith. pp.17-19
  22. ^ Smith, pp. 114-15
  23. ^ Smith, p. 115
  24. ^ Lewis, p.12
  25. ^ Smith, p.152
  26. ^ Smith, p.396
  27. ^ Smith, p. 195
  28. ^ Smith, p.195
  29. ^ Smith, p.195
  • Ascher, Abraham (1976). The Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution: Documents of Revolution. London: Thames and Hudson. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Caplan, Gerarld (1973). The Dilemma of Canadian Socialism: The CCF in Ontario. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Horowitz, Gad (1968). Canadian Labour in Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Smith, Cameron (1989). Unfinished Journey: The Lewis Family. Toronto: Summerhill Press. ISBN 0-929091-04-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Stewart, Walter (2003). Tommy: the life and politics of Tommy Douglas. Toronto: McArthur & Company. ISBN 1-55278-382-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Stewart, Walter (2000). M.J.: The Life and Times of M.J. Coldwell. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Limited. ISBN 0773732322. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

See also



Preceded by New Democratic Party of Canada leaders
1971-1975 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
William G. Beech, Prog. Cons.
 Member of Parliament for York South (first time)
1962-1963 		Succeeded by
Marvin Gelber, Liberal
Preceded by
Marvin Gelber, Liberal
 Member of Parliament for York South (second time)
1965-1974 		Succeeded by

Template:NDP Leaders

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Abebenjoe/Sandbox&oldid=116925583"