James Simpson (politician)

James "Jimmy" Simpson (1873-1938) was a Canadian trade unionist, printer, journalist and left wing politician in Toronto, Ontario. He was a long time member of Toronto's city council and served as Mayor of Toronto in 1935, the first member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation to serve in that capacity.

In 1892, Simpson was one of 27 members of the Typographical Union on strike against the "Toronto News". The strikers, including Simpson, founded the "Evening Star" on November 3, 1892 as a strike paper. [Michael Horton, "Out of the darkness The Evening Star is born --- A group of jilted printers had enough and created 'a paper for the people'", Toronto Star, November 1, 2002] For ten years, Simpson served as the "Star"'s City Hall reporter.Jimmy Simpson 1873-1938: Our shocking socialist mayor, November 1, 1992]

Simpson went on to become a labour leader and was the vice-president of the Toronto and District Trades and Labour Council at the turn of the century and served three terms as vice-president of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada between 1904 and 1936. As a labour politician, he was elected a Toronto school board trustee (1905-10) and was elected to Toronto's Board of Control in 1914 and against from 1930 to 1934. [Rupert J. Taylor, "Labour history: The struggle for workers' rights", Canada & the World Backgrounder, December 1, 1997] . He was one of the co-leaders of the Ontario Labour Party (Ontario section of the Canadian Labour Party) in the 1920s and a Labour candidate for the Canadian House of Commons on several occasions that decade but was unable to win election to Parliament. Simpson played a leading role in opposing Communists in the Labour Party. After the Communists convinced the party to withdraw its nomination of Simpson as its candidate for Toronto city council's Board of Control in 1927, Simpson and his supporters quit the party leading to its collapse. They then formed the Toronto Labour Party which explicitly excluded Communists from membership.

In the 1930s he became a leading member of the Ontario CCF. In 1934 he was ran as a CCF candidate for the Toronto Board of Control and was elected which set the stage for him to run for Mayor of Toronto in 1935. The only one of the city's newspapers to support him was the "Toronto Daily Star". The other papers and both the Conservative and Liberal parties supported Simpson's opponent, Alderman Harry Hunt and accused the CCF of being anti-British and under Communist influence. Percy Parker, a leading Liberal, declared on the radio that "the bells of Moscow will ring when Simpson is elected mayor."

Simpson's personal popularity and the organization put together by the CCF and the trade union movement was enough to elect him making Toronto the largest city in North America to have elected a socialist mayor. As mayor, Simpson supported the campaign to boycott the 1936 Summer Olympics being held in Nazi Germany that summer. [Bruce Kidd, "Early Boycotts", Globe and Mail, August 18, 1980.]

Despite being left-wing, Simpson was also intensely anti-Catholic which cost him the support of the "Toronto Star" when he ran for re-election as mayor in 1936 contributing to his defeat.

Simpson was killed in 1938 when his car crashed into a streetcar.

In 1900, Simpson and eight others founded the Ruskin Literary and Debating Society and served as its first president. Today, it is Canada's oldest debating society. [Zena Cherry, Globe and Mail, February 16, 1980]

References

External links

* [http://www.empireclubfoundation.com/details.asp?SpeechID=826&FT=yes Address by Mayor Simpson to the Empire Club of Canada, January 10, 1935]