Preston Manning and the Reform Party

Dobbin is a long-established journalist from the province of Saskatchewan. This books examines the political historical roots of the Western Canadian based Reform Party tracing it to the old Social Credit Party of Alberta. Social Credit was, of course, founded by evangelical Christians in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. It had populist roots but policies quite different from the socialistic ones of left populism founded by the CCF in neighbouring Saskatchewan (the forerunner to Canada's current social democratic party--the NDP). Preston Manning's father eventually became Premier of Alberta and Dobbin's book traces the former's personal development in that context.What Dobbin also identifies in detail is the funding of Reform by many business interests including some wealthy individuals who supported apartheid in South Africa. His presentation is well-documented but also written in a very popular style.