Political reversal in Alberta

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32701, 2 September 1971, Page 13

Political reversal in Alberta

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

EDMONTON, September 1.

Thirty-six years of Social Credit rule in the Canadian province of Alberta ended yesterday, when the Progressive Conservative Party won an upset election victory.

The P.C.P. leader, Mr Peter Lougheed, aged 43, went into seclusion today, and his office said that he was resting before taking over power. He is a Calgary lawyer, f The Premier, Mr Harry Strom, emerged from a Cabinet meeting saying that he

was prepared to transfer power as soon as possible, probably by the end of the week. Among Mr Lougheed’s first tasks will be the selection of a Cabinet and the handling of a dispute inherited from Social Credit, involving guards at provincial prisons. It was the first time since 1921 that one of the old-line parties, the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives had won power in Alberta. The United Farmers of Alberta displaced the Liberals in 1921, and Social Credit took over in 1935, under Mr William (“Bible Bill”) Aberhart, an evangelist-tumed-politician. He was succeeded by another preacher, Mr Ernest Manning,

• now a senator, in 1943. Mr Strom took over when Mr ' Manning retired from pro- ’ vincial politics in 1968. The New Democratic Party ; leader, Mr Grant Notley, has ■ become his party’s only representative in the House, which has 72 seats, not one of which was retained by the i fourth party, the Liberals.

The Conservative campaign was built almost entirely around the young, handsome image of Mr Lougheed, whose grandfather was the first Conservative Federal Cabinet Minister from Alberta. But even Mr Lougheed was surprised by ths. extent of his party’s triumph, in which eight of the 15 Social Credit Cabinet Ministers were defeated. He attributed it to “door-to-door and farmyard-to-fannyard campaigning.” Representation in the House will now be (1967 election figures in parenthesis): Progressive Conservative, 48 (6); Social. Credit, 26 (55); New Democratic Party, 1 (nil); Liberal, nil (3); Independent, nil (1).