predecessor successor office birth_date term_start article_title term_end name
fabien roy ken sweigard leader of the social credit party of canada november 10 , 1932 1981 martin hattersley
 1983 martin hattersley
martin hattersley

j. martin hattersley -lrb- born november 10 , 1932 -rrb- is an edmonton lawyer and a long-time activist in the canadian social credit movement .
born in swinton , near rotherham , yorkshire , england , hattersley earned degrees in economics and law from cambridge university before moving to alberta in 1956 where he worked as a lawyer .
his parents met at a social credit conference in britain .
from 1962 to 1964 , he was director of research of the social credit association of canada , and personal secretary and speechwriter to social credit party of canada leader robert n. thompson , mp .
hattersley served as national president of the party in the mid-1970s and ran for the party 's leadership following the death of réal caouette in 1976 , placing third .
he ran again in 1978 when he was defeated by lorne reznowski at the party 's national leadership convention by a margin of 356 votes to 115 .
hattersley had campaigned on a platform of broadening the party 's base and appealing to a wider spectrum of voters but was unable to overcome reznowski 's more doctrinaire approach advocating social credit monetary theory .
after the party 's remaining five members of parliament were defeated in the 1980 general election , he became leader of the party from 1981 to 1983 .
he resigned after the party voted to reinstatate jim keegstra and two others after hattersley suspended their memberships and tried to expel them because of their anti-semitic activism , saying `` i simply can not be leader of a party that has people accepted into its ranks that publicly express views of that sort . ''
hattersley later claimed that social credit 's association with `` that sort of approach ... prevents other people from taking it seriously . ''
he was also interim leader of the social credit party of alberta from 1985 to 1988 , in the wake of the party 's loss of its only remaining seats in the alberta legislature and has been president emeritus since then .
as leader he led an attempt to merge several alberta parties into the alberta political alliance , which proved to be a short-lived coalition of social credit , the western canada concept and the heritage party , in 1986 but neither the alliance nor social credit were prepared to run candidates in the 1986 alberta election .
in august 1988 , the body of hattersley 's 29-year-old daughter , cathy greeve , was found in the bathroom at an edmonton transit station .
she had been robbed and strangled to death .
ronald nienhuis , on day parole while serving time for armed robbery , was charged and convicted of the crime .
since his daughter 's murder , hattersley has been involved in an edmonton victim 's support group and has spoken in prisons on alternatives to violence .
he has spoken out in favour of prisoners ' right to vote , telling the `` edmonton journal '' that `` eing allowed to vote means you are being treated as a human being and a citizen and that 's good from a psychological point of view . ''
