Cape Breton Labour Party
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Cape Breton Labour Party
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|---|---|
| Former provincial party | |
| Leader |
Paul MacEwan only leader |
| President | n/a |
| Founded | 1982 |
| Dissolved | 1984 |
| Headquarters | n/a |
| Ideology | social democracy |
| Seats in the House of Commons | n/a |
| Website | |
| n/a | |
The Cape Breton Labour Party was a social democratic provincial political party in Nova Scotia, Canada, which drew most of its support from Cape Breton, the northern part of the Province of Nova Scotia.
The party was founded by Paul MacEwan, who had been an NDP member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly for ten years, 1970 to 1980. MacEwan was kicked out of the NDP in 1980, after allegedly calling party executive Dennis Theman a Trotskyite. MacEwan ran as an independent, in the 1981 election and was re-elected by a strong margin. He took this as a mandate to set up a rival party.
The Cape Breton Labour Party was founded at a convention held in Glace Bay in the fall of 1982. MacEwan was elected its provincial leader. While at first the intent was to run candidates only on Cape Breton Island, the provisions of the Nova Scotia Elections Act forced the party to run candidates also in several mainland ridings to obtain recognition as a registered political party. The party's name was also changed to the Labour Party of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia at this time. In the end, a total of fourteen Labour candidates were run, eleven on Cape Breton and three on the mainland.
In the 1984 election, the 14 Labour candidates obtained a total of 8,322 votes. MacEwan was re-elected, with 3,832 votes. He thus became the first, and so far the only, candidate sponsored by a fourth political party to gain a seat in the Nova Scotia Legislature. Other Labour candidates were not elected, but managed to retain their deposits in the constituencies of Cape Breton East and Cape Breton Centre, while the NDP vote in those areas plunged to an all-time low in the same seats the party had held under Akerman.
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