Portal:University of Oxford/Selected biography/28

David Lewis (1909–1981) was a Russian-born Canadian labour lawyer and social democratic politician. He was national secretary of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1936 to 1950, and was one of the key architects of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961. He was the NDP's national leader from 1971 to 1975. Lewis's politics were heavily influenced by the Jewish Labour Bund, which contributed to his support of parliamentary democracy. He was an avowed anti-communist, and while a Rhodes Scholar at Lincoln College, Oxford, prevented communist domination of the university's Labour Club. He helped draft the Winnipeg Declaration, which modernized the CCF's economic policies to include an acceptance of capitalism, though under the eye of government regulators. He had a central role in uniting the labour movement with the creation of the Canadian Labour Congress in 1956. When his eldest son, Stephen Lewis, became the NDP's Province of Ontario leader, in 1970, they became one of the first father and son teams to simultaneously head Canadian political parties. In retirement, he was named to the Order of Canada for his political service. After a lengthy battle with cancer, he died in Ottawa in 1981. (more...)