Exits and Entrance - A Journey Through many Landscapes by Dave Jaffe: Chapter Seven - Part Four

     Chapter Seven -  Part Four.
 

     Another interesting and committed member of the New Democratic Party was Margaret Mitchell who served as the New Democratic Member of Parliament  for Vancouver-East from 1979 to 1993. Mitchell grew up in central Canada and became a nurse and then a social worker.
    This short blonde woman joined the Canadian army and worked in South Korean hospitals during the Korean War. She later moved to Vancouver and was  one of the hardest workers I ever saw in the political world."Margaret makes sure that her constituents's problems get solved, " one of her assistants said.
     During her time in Parliament Mitchell was, I think, the first Member of Parliament to focus on and denounce wife battering. As she condemned this practice, Members of Parliament in other political parties tried to shout her down. Yet she persisted in her speech unfazed by the abusive words hurled at her. She was one gutty lady.
      These M.L.A.'s and M.P."s I have mentioned plus other New Democratic representatives , in government or in opposition, battled tough well-entrenched political machines like the Bennett father-and son Social Credit Party, the Trudeauite Liberals and the Mulroney Tories. They didn't win too many elections but they kept the progressive flame alive in British Columbia.
     From 1972 to 1976 I took part in over 20 elections. I licked stamps, stuffed envelopes, canvassed many voters and met many people. But I didn't fit  too comfortably into the world of party politics. I panicked at key moments, talked far too much and asked too many questions. Nor was I a team player the way I should have been.
     "Here comes Dave Jaffe," one friend of Dennis Cocke said when he saw me at the 1990 N.D.P. convention in downtown Vancouver. "He's going to talk my head off about politics and ask me some very searching questions." When I discovered the different factions in the N.D.P. I would go up to some people and ask them, "Do you belong to the (Bob) Wiiliams wing of the party, the (Dave) Barrett brigade or the (Dennis) Cocke machine?'
     These kind of ridiculous questions convinced many people I knew in the N.D.P. that I was a problem to stay away from. At last in 1996 I agreed with them and left the N.D.P. and COPE. At the same time I walked out of the anti-poverty movement where I also had caused problems. I had hung around movements for change too long and had become ineffective and a very small but disruptive force. Politics I realized was a very serious business and I was too undisciplined to fit in to the political machine.