IN MY role as fearless prognosticator, in the wake of Lib-
eral Sheila Copps’ leftneck attack — if there are rednecks,
surely there are leftnecks, no? — on the Reform party, I
deciared in another forum last week that the three main
federai parties were quietly colluding to do a number on
the Reformers and their leader, Preston Manning.

Scarcely had the electoral bytes
and bits lined themselves up on
my computer — the current
equivalent of ‘‘scarcely had the
ink dried’’ -- when there came to
my gnarled old hand a copy of the
book Preston Manning and the
Reform Party, by Saskatchewan
journalist Murray Dobbin.

And there can be no doubt:
Dobbin’s innuendo-filled tome is
the semi-authorized version of the
New Democrats’ contribution to
carving up Manning and his party,
whose growing strength and war
chest pose a real threat to the po-
litical Big Three in a lot of their
shakey constituencies.

Dobbins’ role as the NDP cat's
paw, particularly of its venerable
Saskatchewan cat, coutdn’t be
plainer.

His publisher, James Lorimer
and Co., says in a press release
that he did graduate studies in
prairie populism, specifically on
the emergence of the CCF, the
NDP'’s predecessor.

He taught native studies and
previously wrote a book on two
Saskatchewan Metis leaders of the
1930s, chough where he taught
and the identity of the two Metis
are undisclosed. Well-known New

Our
standards
are
sterling

Trevor
Lautens

GARDEN OF BIASES

Democrat John Warnock is at the
end of his list of acknowl-
edgements.

Most revealing, he thanks ‘‘the
Deugias-Coldwell Foundation for
their timely and generous con-
tribution of a grant to help
research this book."”

The two gents enshrined by the
foundaticn are of course former
NDP leaders Tommy Douglas and

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Crafted with great care,
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Great moments
come out of the blue.

BIRKS &

M.J. Coldwell.

Only the very young and the
very uninformed wouldn't
recognize all this, so at least the
publisher doesn’t hide it.

The book would be worth
reading if only for its insight into
the acute discomfort Manning is
causing the NDP, as well as, by
extension, the other mainstream
parties.

And there’s more to come, by
the way: West Vancouver Reform
party spokesman Gordon Shaw
tells me that Alberta columnist
Don Braid is wriiing a book on
the Reformers for Key Porter
Books, which, like Lorimer, is
sure to see the world and Cana-
dian politics with all the self-
interested centralism of a Toron-
to-based publisher.

We are all, in this fortunate
land, entitled io our biases — or,
as all but the more candid among
us (see title of this column) prefer
to call them, beliefs.

So Dobbins is contributing to
the national debate by displaying
his.

it's amusing, though, to sce
what he avoids. Thus in his final
chapter, summing up Manning
and the Reform party, he is utter-
ly silent about one of the party’s
best-known goals: the triple-E
(elected, equal, effective) Senate.

It’s obvious why. The self-styled
prairie populists of the NDP can’t
openly admit they're opposed to
the triple-E, which is popular on
their western turf, and then again
they can’t openly admit they sup-

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port it, which would upset the
central Canada industrial-belt
wing of the party and make it
very awkward to expand their tiny
but cherished toehold in Quebec.

The Reformers didn’t invent
triple-E, but they’ve snatched it
and run with it and therefore they
out-populist the populists (NDP
variety).

The whole flavor of the book is
that of a would-be dignified
documentary that yearns to dig up
the dirt, but to its intense frustra-
tion can’t find it.

Innuendo and weak shot thus
co-exist uneasily side by side.

Inneundo: In 1967-68, Manning
went to work under contract with
TRW Systems, a high-tech com-
pany with defence contracts, in
California.

Weak shots: Everything from
the implication that he meekly
followed in the footsteps of his
father, former Alberta premier
and senator Ernest C. Manning,
to the opening sentence under the
sub-title Assessing Preston Mann-
ing, which reads limply: ‘*Preston
Manning is something of a
malcontent.’ Hey. Fiery stuff.

Vm especially tickled by the
took’s closing paragraph, a classic
revelation of the schizophrenic
conflict in the NDP — Mike Har-
court embraces it perfectly in Brit-
ish Columbia — between revolu-
tion and respectability, between
the only slightly diluted Marxism
of the Regina Manifesto and the
three-piece-suit gentrification of a
party entrenched in the Commons

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SClvrion tielinde ss
Stetlinan
\fr, Fancy
phd vile if a)
“Bagatelle +

Adrien ys seatthint

and in the new status quo.

After warming to the finale
with the observation, as any Tory
could put it, the ‘‘democracies
progress by muddling through.
Dobbins rumbles on:

**Peonle rightly sense that what
they have built is being destroyed.
But ‘leaders’ arriving out of
nowhere, claiming to be ‘dif
ferent,’ with master plas for our
future, should not be embraced as
saviors.

‘They should be seen for what
they are: a warning sign that
something is very, very wrong and
that we must mz:ke an exceptional
effort to gct it right again. That
exceptional effort means exercis-
ing tolerance. thoughtfulness, and
sound judgment.

‘*,.. That means, minimally,
examining the political parties as
carefully and dispassionately as
possible ... and supporting the one
which most clearly and honestly
speaks to our values.’’

Roll of drums. Clash of cym-
bals. Curtain.

Look, I’m neither as contemp-
tuous of the NDP nor as friendly
to the Reformers as the foregoing
might suggest. But I know great
entertainment when I see it.

And I'm not sure what’s more
entertaining: Dobbins’ sub-Chur-
chillian prose, or the thought of
the ghosts of Douglas and Col-
dwell cringing with embarrassment
at their party's long, long road
from socialism to stuffiness.

-t
a