The Canadian social credit movement was largely an out-growth of the Alberta Social Credit Party, and the Social Credit Party of Canada was strongest in Alberta during this period. In 1932, Baptist evangelist William Aberhart used his radio program to preach the values of social credit throughout the province.[4] He added a heavy dose of fundamentalist Christianity to C. H. Douglas' monetary theories; as a result, the social credit movement in Canada has had a strong social conservative tint.
The party was formed in 1935 as the Western Social Credit League. It attracted voters from the Progressive Party of Canada and the United Farmers movement. The party grew out of disaffection with the status quo during the Great Depression, which hit the party's western Canadian birthplace especially hard. It can be credited both for the creation of this party and the rise of the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, forerunner of today's New Democratic Party.
In the party's first election in 1935, it only ran candidates in Western Canada. It won 17 seats, of which 15 were in Alberta and where it won over 46% of that province's popular vote.[4] John Horne Blackmore was chosen as the party's parliamentary leader.
In 1939, Social Credit merged with the New Democracy movement led by former Conservative William Duncan Herridge. However, Herridge failed to win a seat in the 1940 election, and Blackmore continued as parliamentary leader. At the party's first national convention in 1944, delegates decided to abandon the name New Democracy and founded the Social Credit Association of Canada as a national party. They chose Alberta Treasurer Solon Earl Low as the party's first national leader.
In its early years, the Socreds gained a reputation for anti-Semitism. It was said[who?] that Blackmore and Low "frequently gave public aid and comfort to anti-Semitism"[5] In 1945, Solon Low alleged there was a conspiracy of Jewish bankers behind the world's problems,[6] and in 1947, Norman Jaques, the Socred Member of Parliament for Wetaskiwin, read excerpts of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into the parliamentary Hansard.[7] Low repudiated anti-Semitism in 1957[8] following a trip to Israel after which he made speeches supporting the Jewish state.[5] After World War II made anti-Semitism less fashionable, the party began purging itself of anti-Semitic influences, leading Quebec social crediter Louis Even and his followers to leave the party in 1947.
In 1957, Low led the party to its best performance to date, with 19 seats. However, in 1958, the Socreds were swept out of the Commons altogether as part of that year's massive Progressive Conservative landslide. Although it was not apparent at the time, this began a long-term decline for the party. For most of its first quarter-century of existence, Social Credit had been either the first or second party in much of rural western Canada, particularly in its birthplace of rural Alberta. In 1957, for instance, it took 13 of Alberta's 17 seats. However, the 1958 defeat firmly established the Tories as the main right-wing party west of Ontario, and Social Credit would never seriously challenge the Tories there again.
did mai research XD
