British Columbia Social Credit Party

The British Columbia Social Credit Party (French Parti Crédit social de la Colombie Britannique - ), whose members are called Socreds, is a political party in the Canadian province of British Columbia. From 1952 to 1991 she dominated the provincial policy and introduced not only at the beginning of the 1970s the government.

Although it was founded to reform the capitalist economic system based on the theory of Social Credit (and thus was partly socialist ), moved the Social Credit Party within a few years to conservatism and gave the original ideology altogether. After a heavy electoral defeat in 1991, the party lost almost all of their electoral base and is now meaningless.

History

Before 1952, the Social Credit movement was split into British Columbia. The Social Credit League of British Columbia did not arise in the elections in 1937 for the first time candidates in 1941, however. 1945, various groups came together to form an alliance. 1949 occurred the Social Credit Party, the Social Credit League and the Union of Electors to separate.

The conservative-liberal coalition government led 1952 Instant Runoff Voting as a voting system, in the expectation that Conservative voters would give the Liberals as a second preference, and vice versa. So a victory of the Social Democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF ) should be prevented. From this electoral system, however, did not benefit the government parties, but the Social Credit Party, which was able to form a minority government. In the same year, Prime Minister WAC Bennett was elected as the new party chairman. In 1953 he won a snap election and won an absolute majority.

Although the party was originally created to implement the theories of Social Credit. But this was at the provincial level alone is not possible, why WAC Bennett gave the old ideology and a conservative party made ​​up the Socreds populist character. By repeated before the " red menace " and before " socialist hordes " warned succeeded his party, the CCF (later the British Columbia New Democratic Party ) away from the government for 20 years.

After the election defeat in 1972, Bennett joined the party chairmanship to his son, Bill Bennett. This turned away from populism and formed an uncertain alliance of supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada, rural social conservatives and urban economic circles. 1975 came the Socreds back to power and Bill Bennett became the new prime minister.

1986 resigned Bennett. He was succeeded by Bill Vander Zalm, who won the elections with a large majority. Under his leadership, the business community increasingly lost influence to the social conservatives, the new right-wing populist course drove moderate Socreds to the British Columbia Liberal Party. This process was eccentric and numerous scandals accelerated by Vander Zalms.

Vander Zalm in 1991 had to withdraw because of a conflict of interest and was replaced by Rita Johnston. In the elections of the same year, the share of the vote halved. 1994 left four of the six remaining members of parliament the party. The British Columbia Social Credit Party broke then together completely and did not even reach in the 1996 elections half a percent; the original electoral base had almost completely the Liberal Party faces.

The party still exists, but has no official chairman since 2000 more and has fallen into total insignificance. In the 2009 elections, she went to with no single candidate.

Election results

Results of the British Columbia Social Credit Party and its predecessors in the elections to the Legislative Assembly:

Party chairman

P = Prime Minister

  • Arthur H. Jukes (1937 - 1948)
  • Vacant (1949 - 1952)
  • Ernest George Hansell (1952 )
  • WAC Bennett (July 15, 1952 - November 24, 1973 ) P
  • Bill Bennett ( November 24, 1973 - July 30, 1986) P
  • Bill Vander Zalm (July 30, 1986 - April 1, 1991 ) P
  • Rita Johnston (April 2, 1991 - March 7, 1992 ) P
  • Jack Weisgerber ( March 7, 1992 - November 6, 1993 )
  • Grace McCarthy ( November 6, 1993 - MAY 1994)
  • Cliff Serwa (May 1994 - November 1994 )
  • Larry Gillanders ( November 1994 - May 1996)
  • Ken Endean (May 1996 - May 1997)
  • Mike Culos ( April 1997 - April 2000)
  • Eric Buckley ( April 2000 - October 2000)
  • Vacant (since October 2000)
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