page_title: Bankers' Toadies incident
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Bankers' Toadies incident / Background
caption_attribution_description: City of Edmonton mayor David Duggan
context_page_description: The Bankers' Toadies incident occurred in 1937 in Alberta, Canada when a pamphlet advocating the "extermination" of nine men identified as "Bankers' Toadies" was distributed to Alberta MLAs. The men were opponents of the Social Credit government of Premier William Aberhart, which had been elected on a promise of giving Albertans monthly dividends; Aberhart blamed the banking system for his failure to follow through on this pledge.
  After David Duggan, leader of the Conservative Party and one of the men named, raised his concern over the pamphlet in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, police raided the Social Credit League's Edmonton headquarters. Social Credit whip and MLA Joe Unwin and Social Credit Board advisor George Frederick Powell were arrested and charged with criminal libel and counselling to murder. Both were convicted of the libel charge, and Justice William Carlos Ives sentenced them to hard labour.
context_section_description: William Aberhart's Social Credit League won a substantial victory in the 1935 Alberta provincial election on the strength of its promise to implement social credit, an economic theory proposed by British engineer C. H. Douglas.  Social credit held that the poverty of the Great Depression was in part the fault of bankers, who kept the cost of credit, and by extension of production, high.  Aberhart's solution involved, among other things, monthly "credit dividends" to Albertans in the amount of C$25.
  By 1937, Aberhart's failure to implement these dividends or make other progress towards implementing social credit made many of his backbenchers suspect that he was either unwilling or unable to do so. This belief, combined with a suspicion that he did not properly understand Douglas's theories, led to the 1937 Social Credit backbenchers' revolt.  One outcome of the revolt was Aberhart's ceding a number of the government's powers to the Social Credit Board, made up of five Social Credit backbenchers.  Glenville MacLachlan, its chair, travelled to the United Kingdom, where he asked Douglas to come to Alberta and serve as its advisor. Douglas declined, but in his stead sent two of his lieutenants, L. D. Byrne and George Frederick Powell.  Part of the Board's mandate was to educate the public about social credit; to this end, Powell and Social Credit whip Joseph Unwin were assigned to write educational materials.
  In response to what they saw as the radically anti-business views of the Aberhart government and the Social Credit Board, Alberta's mainstream opposition parties—chiefly the Liberals and the Conservatives—began to cooperate under the auspices of the newly formed People's League.
caption: David Duggan raised the issue of the leaflet, in which he was named, in the legislature.
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