Joe Higgins speaks in Toronto 2011 - with Tommy Douglas' Mouseland! Leftist TBT

Four years ago today, the great Irish Socialist leader Joe Higgins traveled to Toronto to speak at the founding meeting of the Socialist Party of Ontario, an attempt to create a real left electoral alternative in the province.



Joe addressed those assembled to talk about the devastation in Europe and Ireland caused by austerity politics, the failure of the traditional social democratic and labour parties to oppose these politics and on the need for new left parties in Canada and beyond, as well as on the fundamental bankruptcy of the NDP.

We share this speech, which still remains powerfully true today, as well as, as a bonus, a video of Joe introducing the famous socialist parable, Mouseland, written by Tommy Douglas.




After the convention, Joe and a group of us also went to enjoy some of Toronto's best chicken wings at a working class bar in Etobicoke! You can read an account of this trip here: Going for Toronto's best chicken wings with Irish Socialist leader Joe Higgins