Arthur Puttee

Arthur W. Puttee (August 25, 1868 – October 21, 1957) was a British-Canadian printer and politician. Puttee was the first Labour Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of Canada. Puttee was a printer by training. Born in England, he immigrated to North America in 1888. He settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1891. He helped found the local trade union council, the Winnipeg Labour Party (WLP) and a left-wing newspaper called The Voice, which he edited from 1899 until 1918. He was also a founding member of Winnipeg's first English-language Unitarian Church. When Winnipeg's Liberal MP, R. W. Jameson, died in February 1899, Puttee called for the nomination of a Labour candidate to contest the vacant seat in a by-election (which was finally held on January 25, 1900). The trade union council agreed, and with resources promised from local unions, nominated Puttee as its candidate against Liberal E. D. Martin. Puttee's chances for election benefitted from a serious division in the local Liberal ranks. Martin had been nominated by a minority faction in the party rebelling against Clifford Sifton, a powerful member of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier's Cabinet and the leading Liberal spokesman in the western provinces. Many Sifton loyalists unofficially supported Puttee against Martin. There was no Conservative candidate in the race; the Conservative organization in the city supported Martin. Puttee ran on a platform promoting public ownership of "all natural monopolies" and other reformist measures. The basic issue of the campaign was whether labour had a right to have its own representatives in parliament. In a narrow two-way contest, Puttee prevailed by a margin of eight votes (2431 to 2423). Puttee ran for re-election later that year in the 1900 election and won by a margin of 1,200 votes. Puttee again received unofficial Liberal support against Martin, who ran as an independent with Conservative support. Puttee remained in Parliament until the 1904 election, when he