by Denis Smith
The man who could not lead the Government into action to cure Canada’s economic difficulties is unfit to lead the Conservative Party into action in this election. For the sake of the party and the country, he should give up the leadership. In our view the country must always come first, but the welfare of the country is entwined with the welfare of the Conservative Party. In our system it is essential that we have two strong political parties. If Mr. Diefenbaker continues in the leadership he will do the party irreparable harm and perhaps destroy it as a national force.190
Bassett’s editorial in the Telegram on Wednesday morning, titled “Diefenbaker Era Closes,” could be read as though the palace revolt had already taken place. “At this moment both his party and the country see only the tragedy of this brilliant man with his myriad political talents, brought down by his inability to make and carry through hard decisions with purpose and determination … At sixty-seven, this man who flashed so brilliantly across Canada’s political firmament less than six years ago, cannot expect again to lead his country. Possibly he will not even lead again his party.” But Bassett sought to soothe his friend’s departure with praise. The party and the country owed him “a tremendous debt of gratitude” for his restoration of the two-party system, the dignity of parliament and of the citizen, and the destruction of “narrow prejudice … When the passions of the last few days subside, when the public comes to realize the battering he withstood, the cheap jokes, the organized riots of the last election campaign, the cruel rumours about his health, the fury of some of those who could not believe he had deprived them of office – then the public will re-appraise his worth and his contribution to the land.”191 The two Toronto editorials were written for a single reader: If the prime minister wouldn’t respond to the bad cop’s insults, perhaps he would accept the good cop’s blandishments.
When Diefenbaker walked into the caucus meeting in the Railway Committee Room at 9 am on February 6, he knew exactly what his opponents wanted. But he did not know what he wanted. Earlier, in his Commons office, he told Dalton Camp, Howard Green, and his secretary Marion Wagner: “That’s it. Get the Governor. I’m going to advise him to send for Donald Fleming and they can have it. I don’t want it, I’m finished, finished.” Green protested: “Ah, come on now, John. We’re not going to quit and you’re not going to quit.” Diefenbaker insisted: “No, I’m finished. Olive wants me to resign.” Green told him he was going to contest the election and “have a lot of fun.” Diefenbaker replied: “It may be a lot of fun for you, Howard, but it’s not going to be any fun for me.”192 Diefenbaker and Green departed for the caucus meeting in this state of uncertainty. The prime minister remained in turmoil, unable to come to a decision on his own as long as his counsellors gave him contradictory advice. He did not know whether he would still be in power that evening. If the day ended in resignation, he did not know whether that would come as his own decision, or be forced on him by his ministers. The Chief needed others to make up his mind for him.
Hees, the chairman of caucus, seated at the centre of the table with Diefenbaker on his right, began the meeting by reading a long, prepared statement blaming the government’s defeat on the prime minister and warning against an anti-American election campaign. After some time Diefenbaker interrupted: “What’s going on here? Who is the leader of this party?” This, he said, was a meeting to hear the views of MPs, not of the chairman. He challenged Hees with more questions about the minister’s recent actions. There was an eruption of shouting before Hees could continue. At some point (the accounts differ) Hees began to cry. When he ended, he announced his intention to resign. McCutcheon and Sévigny said they would join him. The shouting erupted again, as other ministers attempted unsuccessfully to make themselves heard. Diefenbaker rose again to speak, while his prairie claque cheered the room into silence. Perhaps half the cabinet had not joined the chorus. “If I’m not wanted I’ll go,” Diefenbaker yelled, and started towards the door. Some members cried “No! No!” while others rushed to surround him and prevent his departure. Diefenbaker dramatically retraced his steps and resumed his performance, talking of the big business plot against him as he stared down Senator McCutcheon. The Chief and his supporters were taking control of the meeting.
Alf Brooks, Grattan O’Leary, and Fisheries Minister Angus MacLean – sensing the palpable shift of mood in Diefenbaker’s favour – spoke with the eloquence of passion for party unity, for a united cabinet, and for loyalty to the prime minister in an election campaign. There were cries that the dissidents should change their minds and shake hands with Diefenbaker. One after another ministers rose and declared their loyalty, some of them in shame, and finally George Hees gave in to the overpowering sense of the occasion. As Wallace McCutcheon tried to leave, “he was forcibly brought back to the front by several members, said he would stay in the cabinet and shook hands with Diefenbaker.” Diefenbaker declared that he would stay if the caucus gave him unanimous approval, and asked all his supporters to stand. The room rose as a man. In this intimidating atmosphere, only Harkness and Sévigny dared to resist – and Harkness had to throw off Brooks and O’Leary as they tried to pull him to his feet. Diefenbaker, triumphant in what seemed to him unanimous endorsement and the conquest of his foes, announced that he would stay and lead the party. He leaned over to Hees, took his hand, and said, “George, we’ve got this election, and you and I are going to fight it together. I’ve got to have you beside me. I’ll change the defence policy better to suit you fellows’ views.” Hees recalled: “I was so excited I jumped up on my feet, and I was crying; there were tears in my eyes. I figured here we were at last, in with a defence policy that meant something.”
The meeting broke up in cheers and applause, as Diefenbaker and Hees launched themselves arm in arm from the room into the mob of reporters and cameramen at the door. “I still carry on,” Diefenbaker exulted. “Tell them about it, George.” Hees spilled over: “Best caucus we ever had; the show is on the road. We are going to knock hell out of the Grits.”
His decision made, Diefenbaker walked back to his parliamentary office with Donald Fleming, who told him he would not contest the election. Diefenbaker said, “I’ve been thinking about the death of Chief Justice Kerwin and thought you would be a good person to be Chief Justice … Let’s see what others think about it.” But that, like so many other incautious or mischievous words of the prime minister, proved fantasy. An innocuous meeting of cabinet followed, and at one o’clock in the afternoon Diefenbaker visited Rideau Hall, emerging to announce that the House was dissolved and an election had been called for April 8.193
CHAPTER 13
A Leader at Bay
1963-1966
THE TELEGRAM was unrelenting. THE DAY AFTER DIEFENBAKER’S TRIUMPH in caucus, the lead editorial accused the prime minister of putting his own interest above that of the party: “John Diefenbaker yesterday decided that the sacrifice of his personal position as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, and Prime Minister until April 8, was too great a price to pay to save his party, and perhaps his Government.”
The political magic and force of personality that had once swayed thousands was strong enough to win support for his position from his party’s caucus and his cabinet colleagues. But the Conservative Party, including many of the members who yesterday pledged their support mingling cheers with tears, will pay dearly for this decision.
The party, as a political entity, is split as never before. The members will pay their account on election day as many of them undoubtedly must realize even now. The Prime Minister will lead his party into his fourth campaign, and has the satisfaction of knowing that no cabinet colleague was strong enough to unseat him, and only one had the courage to leave him.
It is impossible to say what price will be paid for this leadership and this satisfaction of Mr. Diefenbaker, but it will be huge in terms of political currency.1
The prime minister, said the Telegram, had no reasonable policies for electors to judge: “no b
udget … no Government defense policy … no long range economic plans; no tax reforms; no … trade policies since Britain’s failure to enter the Common Market … no comprehensive role for Canada in world affairs.” He had just two lines of attack: “First, United States interference in Canadian political matters and, secondly, that the opposition parties obstructed the business of Parliament. The Telegram believes that Canadians will not accept either premise as a sound basis for returning the Government to office.” The Chief’s resignation would have been far better, offered now, “still in office, and thereby giving his party a fighting chance under new leadership, than later, shattered at the polls and reviled by the unforgiving and the unremembering.”
Next day the Globe and Mail took different but equally deadly aim in its lead editorial, “A Matter of Morality.” Its targets were George Nowlan, George Hees, and Wallace McCutcheon, the ministers who had come out of caucus denying any revolt in cabinet against the prime minister’s leadership. They were lying.
It is a matter of fact that some Ministers of the Crown who on Wednesday declared their allegiance to the great leader had, only two days before, their resignations ready in their pockets. It was to be the Prime Minister’s resignation or theirs.
Today the Prime Minister is still in office and the rebels, having deserted their cause, are still in the Cabinet. They have purchased their jobs, for a few weeks, doubtless to “preserve” the party.
So now these men lead their tattered party into the election with lies on their lips and a dual standard of morality in their hearts. They have one set of morals for churchgoing and for the children’s hour, and another for the smoke-filled rooms.
Nor is this the full extent of their dishonor. They have abandoned the one among them who had the courage to resign, Defense Minister Douglas Harkness, and left at the caucus door all the support and admiration which they gave him in the hour of his decision. And they have attempted to place the blame for their own failings on others. They have said that all the reports of revolt in the Cabinet are mere press speculation, utter newspaper fiction.2
One day ministers spoke in confidence to the press; the next they accused it of falsehood in reporting their unattributed stories. “We want no more of these treacherous confidences,” the editorial thundered. Ministers should be frank in admitting that the cabinet had been “in a turmoil, in a paralysis of indecision, for months. One of the basic problems of Mr. Diefenbaker’s leadership has been his preoccupation with treason. He has been so busy seeking out conspiracies and suspecting everyone he has had little time for anything else.” That was the reason for the prime minister’s inability to govern, and for the Globes call for his resignation. Now that ministers had failed “to re-examine and re-assert their ideals,” they stood before the electorate in the wreckage of their government. “The caucus settled nothing. The Prime Minister does not trust his Ministers; they do not trust him. There can be nothing among them now but more turmoil, backbiting and suspicion. Such is the sort of leadership they are asking the public to endorse.” This was the bitter public testimony of former friends. The Globe was challenging the dissident ministers to come clean.
Wallace McCutcheon had privately established the conditions of his loyalty. After the caucus meeting, where he had opposed a campaign based on attacking the Americans, he wrote to Diefenbaker.
You heard what I said this morning.
I do not retract from that and I assumed when you shook my hand when I stood up at Caucus and announced that I was going to the country with you that you accepted my position.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, I think I should now say that any statements which I regard as anti-American I will disassociate myself with publicly.
I am prepared to defend your defence policy – with which you know I agree only as a matter of Cabinet solidarity.
However, if the Secretary of State for External Affairs does not proceed expeditiously with the negotiations that you announced were under way then I will have to review my position.3
Eddie Goodman, too, had settled his conscience. On February 5, before the Commons vote, he had written to Diefenbaker tendering his resignation from the Ontario organization committee of the party. The job had taken a “crippling amount” of his time. “To these personal reasons for my desire to retire,” he wrote, “there is now added the overriding and decisive consideration which is our strong disagreement on what is the proper defence policy for Canada. My views in this matter are clear to you as we have discussed them at length during the past few weeks.”4 He expected his friend George Hees to leave cabinet as he had boasted he would, and was astounded to hear radio reports of the caucus reconciliation. Goodman and Edward Dunlop (Hees’s brother-in-law) flew at once to Ottawa and confronted the minister, who explained that he had been “swept away by the pleadings” of caucus and by Diefenbaker’s fresh, though vague, commitments. “The truth of the matter,” Goodman recalled, “was he’s a warm emotional fellow, and with everybody, all his friends in the caucus and people whom he’d worked with for all these years, pleading with him not to destroy the party, he gave in, which is easily understandable.” Goodman told him he “was an ass,” and left Hees stewing.5
For two days, as he reflected on the challenges from Goodman, Dunlop, John Bassett, and the Telegram and Globe editorials, Hees attended cabinet meetings preparing for the election campaign. Pierre Sévigny, too, had agonized over the nuclear conflict and Diefenbaker’s faltering leadership, but apparently expected to be promoted from associate minister to minister of defence after Harkness’s resignation. Diefenbaker made no move during the week of crisis. On Friday evening, Sévigny and Hees decided to offer their belated resignations the next morning, and to persuade Léon Balcer to join them – still vainly hoping that a walkout would persuade Diefenbaker to retire. Balcer was summoned from Three Rivers for another late-night discussion at Hees’s apartment, but he refused to resign. Early on Saturday morning, while the latest round of rumours busied the telephone lines to Sussex Drive, Hees and Sévigny arrived at the door carrying their letters of resignation. Diefenbaker was still upstairs in his dressing gown, so Burt Richardson led them to the library and chatted while the prime minister dressed.6 Diefenbaker made his brief record of the interview a few days later.
On Saturday my wife informed me about 9.15 a.m. as I was up in my room, that Hees and Sevigny had arrived. I said as they had not phoned this was rather surprising.
I dressed and came down to the library and they were both standing and both smiling.
Hees said: “I am here to reason.”
I said: “I am not going to listen.”
He laid his resignation on the little table.
Sevigny said: “I too will have to resign,” and then produced his.
I said: “Won’t you wait?” and they said “No,” so I said: “That is the end,” and they left me.7
Richardson thought that “the prime minister was thunderstruck. He took the resignations but he was practically speechless about this because it was so much of a surprise.” The ministers still in Ottawa for the weekend were summoned to Sussex Drive for the latest emergency consultations. About a dozen turned up, and they in turn used the telephones to seek assurances of loyalty from those who were absent. By lunchtime it seemed clear there would be no more resignations, and Diefenbaker agreed that the vacant posts should be filled at once.8
“Olive has had a very hard and trying time,” Diefenbaker wrote to his brother on February 8, “but there has never been anything but words of encouragement uttered by her.”9 He did not repeat to Elmer his earlier claim that she had counselled his resignation. Friends whose loyalties were personal and disinterested quickly rallied round. Helen Brunt telephoned and wrote:
A phone call is so unsatisfactory. My purpose in calling as in this note is simply to say that I have the utmost faith in Our Prime Minister. I know he is doing what he believes best for Canada. And who are we to know better, who do not know anything of the m
atters at hand.
Oh Olive I know the heartache when they hurt your man. It will heal but the scar is always there. And you know who your real friends are after it’s over…
…I’m glad Bill isn’t here. It would break his heart but then he would have been happy if he could have helped – whatever John did Bill went along with. They battled but if the P.M. was adamant Bill accepted it and that was the end.
If I can be of any help any time, call me. I will do anything anytime.10