Based on extensive archival research and interviews with NDP politicians, senior economic policy advisors, and trade unionists, The Left in Power examines the response of the political Left in Ontario to the industrial crisis that gripped the old “industrialized world” at the end of the twentieth century. As social democratic parties around the world struggled to find a coherent response to the deindustrialization crisis, many pivoted towards progressive neoliberalism, Third Way social democracy, and an electoral dead end. Steven High puts Ontario’s experience into international perspective, showing how from 1990 to 1995 Bob Rae’s Ontario NDP government unfurled a rare opportunity to consider the Left’s economic thinking at a moment of global economic transformation.

Steven High is a professor of history at Concordia University in Montreal where he co-founded the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. He has authored a number of books and articles on structural and mass violence as well as deindustrialization as a political, socio-economic, and cultural process. He is currently the head of the transnational “Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time” (DEPOT) research project which brings together researchers, museum professionals, archivists, and trade unionists across Europe and North America.

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