He helped draft the Winnipeg Declaration, which moderated the CCF's economic policies to include acceptance of capitalism, albeit subject to stringent government regulation.

As the United Steelworkers of America (USW)'s legal counsel in Canada, he helped them take over the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (Mine-Mill).

[6] Moishe and David were influenced by the Bund's political pragmatism, embodied in its maxim that "It is better to go along with the masses in a not totally correct direction than to separate oneself from them and remain a purist.

[22] It published many of his anti-communist views, though the December 1930 issue included an article he wrote expressing his approval of the Russian Revolution and calling for a greater understanding of the Soviet Union;[22] throughout his career, he would attack communism, but would always have sympathy for the 1917 revolutionaries.

[27]When Lewis came to Oxford, the Labour Club was a tame organization adhering to Christian activism, or genteel socialist theories like those expressed by R.H. Tawney in his book The Acquisitive Society.

Lewis and future Ontario CCF leader Ted Jolliffe organized a noisy protest by planting Labour Club members in the dance hall where Joyce was speaking and having groups of two and three of them leave at a time, making much noise on the creaking wooden floors.

If he had stayed in England, he likely would have been a partner in a prominent London law firm associated with Stafford Cripps and become a cabinet minister the next time Labour formed a government.

In appearance, background, and intellectual outlook he is a grim antithesis to all the suave, slightly delicate young men who for generations have sat on the Union rostrum ..."[40] Sophie Carson had accompanied Lewis to Oxford, and they wed on August 15, 1935, shortly after their return.

The offending language included "No CCF government will rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation the full programme of socialized planning".

[50] Lewis did not share the desire of some members to keep the CCF "ideologically pure", and adhered to the Bundist belief that "it was better to go along with the masses in a not totally correct direction than to separate oneself from them and remain 'purist'.

When, in heaven's name are we going to learn that working-class politics and the struggle for power are not a Sunday-school class where the purity of godliness and the infallibility of the Bible must be held up without fear of consequences.

"[50] David Lewis was the party's "heavy", which did not help his popularity among CCF members, but after witnessing what he considered to be the European left's self-destruction in the 1930s, he was quick to end self-immolating tactics or policies.

[57] Despite his poor showing in his first election, the party asked Lewis to run in the 1943 by-election in the Montreal, Quebec, federal riding of Cartier, made vacant by the death of Peter Bercovitch.

[65] Lewis ran in Hamilton West instead of the CCF-friendly Winnipeg North riding that had elected CCF and Labour Party candidates since the 1920s and had a substantial Jewish population.

Historians and activists disagree on Lewis's reasons for doing so, but Caplan suggests that the shock of the Cartier election probably made him reluctant to fight another intense campaign against a Jewish Communist candidate.

This lack of unity between the two main Canadian umbrella labour organizations hurt the CCF, and was part of the Liberal–Communist alliance: TLC president Percey Berough was a Liberal, and vice-president Pat Sullivan was a Communist.

Carlin was loyal to his union, in whose service he had spent ten years, and to the men and woman who helped build it, regardless of their political affiliation; this made him unpopular with the CCF establishment in both Toronto and Ottawa.

[78] Lewis and Millard's crusade to limit communist influence received an unexpected boost from the Soviet Union, in Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 denunciation of Stalinism.

[82][83] After four years of comparatively limited involvement with CCF internal politics, Lewis became the party's national chairman, by winning the election to replace Percy Wright.

Even with the Declaration's modified tone, which removed state planning and nationalization of industry as central tenets of the party's platform, the CCF suffered a crippling defeat in the 1958 federal election, which became known as the "Diefenbaker sweep".

[96] Besides resistance from the Jewish community, in his role as party national vice-president David Lewis had to tackle the impending doctors' strike in Saskatchewan, the result of the CCF government's implementation of Medicare.

[Note 6] Lewis lost in Forest Hill, as his support among its Jewish community evaporated and returned to the Liberals, who were seen as best able to contain the Social Credit Party, which was perceived to be anti-Semitic.

With Diefenbaker in opposition (and unlikely to resurrect the coalition in Quebec that gave him his majority in 1958) and Social Credit a diminished force, Lewis returned to the House of Commons in the 1965 general election.

[103] The Act, enacted previously only for wartime purposes, imposed extreme limitations on civil liberties, and gave the police and military vastly expanded powers for arresting and detaining suspects, usually with little to no evidence required.

[103] Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield went so far as to say that, "Quite frankly, I've admired Tommy Douglas and David Lewis, and those fellows in the NDP for having the courage to vote against that, although they took a lot of abuse at the time....I don't brood about it.

[108] In February 1968, Stephen Lewis, as a supposed representative of the Ontario NDP legislative caucus, asked the 63-year-old Tommy Douglas to step down as leader so that a younger person could take over.

[113] A new generation of NDP activists known as The Waffle proposed many controversial resolutions, including nationalization of all natural resource industries and support for Quebec Sovereignty.

[113] Lewis, as the leading establishment figure, won the party's leadership on April 24 in a surprisingly close race that required four ballots before he could claim victory over the Waffle's James Laxer.

[119] This election campaign also employed the first dedicated plane for the NDP leader's tour, dubbed "Bum Air" by reporters, because it was a slow, twin-engine, turbo-prop driven Handley Page Dart Herald.

[125] He was appointed to the highest level of the Order of Canada in "recognition of the contributions he has made to Labour and social reform and the deep concern he has had over the years for his adopted country.