The King Can Do No Wrong: The Expulsion of the Douglasites, Intra-Party Conflict Resolution, and Dominant Party Ideological Moderation
Date
2022-04-18
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Abstract
In 1947-1948, Premier of Alberta, Ernest Manning, expelled the rabidly anti-Semitic sect of his caucus and Government known as the Douglasites. In this purge, Manning would end up expelling numerous members of his caucus, Party (the Alberta Social Credit League), and Government, paving the way for a drastic shift in espoused socio-political rhetoric and ideology from the Party away from the anti-Semitic. Although Social Credit’s anti-Semitic roots run deep, it is the case that Premier Manning was the primary catalysing actor that set the de-facto natural law of the Party from his ascension to the premiership. When Manning said that he “condemned, repudiated, and completely dissociated” himself from the group, whether his intentions were actually grounded in his moral framework – as is hinted towards by the author – or were instead a measure of his political acumen, may perhaps only have been known by the premier himself. But, what is strongly evidence is the fact that Manning played a primary role in this dramatic shift. Without Ernest Manning, this movement ideologically was not necessarily a given, and rather, what the historical record implies is that Manning in many ways served as the primary catalyst and driving factor in this shift. My thesis considers this course of events, their socio-political implications, and grounds itself theoretically in an application of Orbell and Fougere’s intra-party conflict resolution model for understanding the dominant party ideological moderation/decay.
Description
Supervised by Dr. Anthony Michael Sayers and Dr. David Stewart. Peer-reviewed and accepted by Dr. Sayers and a blind reviewer. Received honours designation.
Keywords
Alberta politics, Alberta history, Alberta political history, Social Credit, Intra-party, Intra-party conflict resolution, Ideological decay, Party moderation, Prairie politics, Prairie history, Ernest Manning, William Aberhart, Canadian anti-Semitism, Social Credit anti-Semitism, Alberta anti-Semitism
Citation
Tot, B. I. (2022). The King Can Do No Wrong: The Expulsion of the Douglasites, Intra-Party Conflict Resolution, and Dominant Party Ideological Moderation (Unpublished undergraduate thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB.