Exits and Entrances: A Journey Through Many Landscapes by Dave Jaffe: Chapter Seven - Second Part

   Chapter Seven - Part Two.


        Once I had joined COPE I realized its internal set-up. COPE brought together communists and left-leaning social democrats. The communists like Bruce Yorke, Fred Wilson and communist sympathizers like Harry Rankin ran COPE because they had founded COPE back in the late 1960's. But social democrats like Libby Davies, Bruce Eriksen, Jean Swanson and the health economist Dave Schreck gave COPE a wider appeal. Unfortunately neither Jean and Dave ever got elected to city council though both of them ran for council quite a few times.
     I was now launched on a 14 year involvement in the political world. While belonging to COPE, I also volunteered for the New Democratic Party. This double role caused me some tensions.
     "We can't get close to COPE," Gerry Scott, one of the N.D.P.'s chief organizers told me in 1980. "They've got communists in there. We've got to keep them at arm's length." I stayed active in COPE and in the N.D.P. too. When people asked me what the N.D.P. was like I usually replied, "It's an organization like any other. There's a top, a middle and a bottom.I'm at the bottom."
      At the top stood the provincial secretary and the party leader. During most of the 1970"s and into the 1980's, Dave Barrett, the charismatic former social worker from east end Vancouver led the party. A great organizer Yvonne Cocke, was the provincial secretary for some time.
     In the middle of the party you found the elected Members of the Legislative Assembly and the federal Members of Parliament or M.P.'s. Near the top of the party also were trade union leaders like the head of the B.C. Federation of Labour, the heads of provincial public sector unions and the then-head of the International Woodworkers of America. Then at the bottom sit the rank-and-file N.D.P. members like myself along with the 40,000 other members of the provincial party.  I was just one of tens of thousands of anonymous members who basically showed up to canvass, and lick and stuff envelopes. Nothing I or other canvassers did, really affected election results. I used to tell people, "My dad was a salesman for a cable company. I'm a salesman for social democracy."
    I divided the prominent N.D.P. members into two groups:Those I knew and those I didn't. I never knew Dave Barrett, the hard driving M.L.A. from New Westminster Dennis Cocke, or Bob Williams the tough intellectual from Vancouver-East . Barrett led the N.D.P. to victory in 1972 and  served as premier from 1972 to 1975. The New Westminster -based Cocke  was B.C."s Minister of Health under Barrett and did a very fine job. His wife Yvonne was for a time the provincial secretary, as stated before. Then there was Bob Williams. These four people basically set the directions for the N.D.P. in the 1970's and early 1980's.