Unparty

The term "Unparty" can refer to either of two Canadian political parties, one active in the early 1980s, and the other currently active. The two are not related in any way.

At Present

Currently active political party in British Columbia, Unparty: The Consensus-Building Party usually refers to itself as simply Unparty. Its name was inspired by unconferences, and its goal is to promote bottom-up governance and consensus decision-making.

The 1980's

In 1980, some former members of the Ontario Libertarian Party (Lisa Butler, former OLP chair Mary Lou Gutscher, Bill McDonald and Paul Wakfer past-president of the Libertarian Party of Canada (LPC) who had spent many months of his time and considerable money to get the LPC registered by running 50 federal candidates, yet who was then summarily expelled from the LPC) all of whom left the current libertarian parties because of fundamental disagreements, founded the Unparty. A major reason for its founding was that all of the founders had become market anarchist by that time in their libertarian thinking, and decided that the only ethical political action was to seek to abolish the offices of the State. Therefore, the major thrust of the Unparty (and the reason for the name) was that any of its candidates that were elected would refuse to take their salary and would do nothing but vote against all legislation to expand or maintain the State.

The party was based in Toronto, and collected the required voter signatures to register the Unparty in Ontario and in Alberta, as well as qualify as a provincial party in New Brunswick. Successful public campaigns were run by Unparty members, attracting national news coverage. These included a protest against the census and a highly publicized defense of property rights with Unparty members attempting to prevent the government's forced demolition of a private home. (The official 'reason' for the government's actions was that the owner had not acquired a building permit for renovations made to his own property. According to the Unparty, this action, although apparently legal on the part of the government, was travesty of justice.)

Counter to most political parties, the Unparty was founded more like a partnership than a democracy, based on the premise that the members were customers who would continue their support so long as progress was being made, and that it was up to the leadership of the executive to provide that value, albeit with input from the members. This organizational structure, along with the official registration status of the Unparty in Ontario was what appealed to the leaders of the Unparty's London Constituency Associations, which had been, until that time, the most active and most visible of the Unparty groups outside of the head office itself.

Unparty folded in 1983.