Canadian Quits Party After 3 Ousted Anti-semites Reinstated

Martin Hattersley has resigned as leader of the Social Credit Party in Alberta, charging that the party was headed in the direction of Nazi Germany.

Hattersley, 49, quit in anger after a 33-31 vote by members to reinstate three party officials recently ousted for publicly making anti-Semitic statements. One of them, Jim Keegstra, Mayor of the village of Eckville, was restored to the office of first vice president from which he was removed after his dismissal from the local high school, Keegstra, a teacher for 14 years, had been preaching to his classes that Jews are the root of all evil in the world and that the Holocaust never occurred.

A Queens court upheld his dismissal which resulted from complaints by parents that their children were being indoctrinated with anti-Semitism. There are no Jews in Eckville. Tom Erhart, another Social Credit Party official, was reinstated as second vice president. He had been quoted widely as saying, “We’re tired of listening to this Holocaust. It is totally impossible for six million Jews to die in concentration camps.” The third official, cited for anti-Semitic statements was reinstated as a regional supervisor.

Hattersley, commenting on his party’s action, said “We cannot be successor party to the Nazi party of Germany and we are heading in that direction.” His position was strongly supported by Sen. Ernest Manning who was Premier of Alberta for 20 years when the Social Credit Party governed the province. He said he would have reacted the same way as Hattersley because “there is no room for anti-Semitism” in the party.