Mouseland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Story of Mouseland was a story told first by Clare Gillis, and later by Tommy Douglas, leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, later reformed as the New Democratic Party of Canada, a democratic socialist party. It was a political fable for the flaws in the way in which the Canadian population voted, which tended to be for parties that did not represent their interests.
The mice voted in Black cats, which represented the Progressive Conservative Party, and then they found out how hard life was. Then they voted in the white cats, which symbolized the Liberal Party. The story goes on, and a mouse gets an idea that mice should run their government, not the cats. This mouse was accused of being a Bolshevik, and imprisoned. However, the speech concludes by saying you can lock up a mouse or a person, but you can't lock up an idea.
The story is almost exactly repeated in Douglas Adams' novel So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, representing a similar situation in a human world ruled by lizards.
Brad Wall, Leader of the Saskatchewan Party, the opposition party in Saskatchewan recently parodied Mouseland, portraying the mice as incompetent and dishonest rulers, as an attack on the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party.
