Martin Hattersley

Martin Hattersley
Leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada
In office 1981–1983
Preceded by	Fabien Roy
Succeeded by	Ken Sweigard
Personal details
Born	November 10, 1932

J. Martin Hattersley (born November 10, 1932) is an Edmonton lawyer and a long-time activist in the Canadian social credit movement. Born in Swinton, near Rotherham, Yorkshire, England, Hattersley earned degrees in economics and law from Cambridge University before moving to Alberta in 1956 where he worked as a lawyer. His parents met at a social credit conference in Britain.

From 1962 to 1964, he was director of research of the Social Credit Association of Canada, and personal secretary and speechwriter to Social Credit Party of Canada leader Robert N. Thompson, MP.

Hattersley served as national president of the party in the mid-1970s and ran for the party's leadership following the death of Réal Caouette in 1976, placing third. He ran again in 1978 when he was defeated by Lorne Reznowski at the party's national leadership convention by a margin of 356 votes to 115. Hattersley had campaigned on a platform of broadening the party's base and appealing to a wider spectrum of voters but was unable to overcome Reznowski's more doctrinaire approach advocating social credit monetary theory.

After the party's remaining five Members of Parliament were defeated in the 1980 general election, he became leader of the party from 1981 to 1983. He resigned after the party voted to reinstatate Jim Keegstra and two others after Hattersley suspended their memberships and tried to expel them because of their anti-Semitic activism, saying "I simply cannot be leader of a party that has people accepted into its ranks that publicly express views of that sort." Hattersley later claimed that Social Credit's association with "that sort of approach . . . prevents other people from taking it seriously."

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