It was formed by 150 to 200 members[1] in the lead up to the NDP's 1979 federal convention to which it proposed a series of radical resolutions promoting greater public ownership of the economy and other socialist and left-wing measures.
[1] The only one of the caucus' resolutions to be approved by the 1979 convention, however, was one protesting the jail sentence handed to Jean-Claude Parrot, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers for leading a wildcat strike.
In the mid-1980s the Caucus was involved with the Campaign for an Activist Party which attempted unsuccessfully to elect a slate led by Judy Rebick to the executive of the Ontario NDP.
Simon Rosenblum, later a vice-president of the ONDP and chief of staff to provincial finance minister Floyd Laughren, was a leader of the caucus in the early 1980s[6] and authored a resolution that called on an NDP government to use "the central role of public ownership in the development of our primary resource industries".
[7] By the end of the 1980s the Left Caucus was led by members of the "Forward" Group such as Gord Doctorow,[8] Wayne Roberts, Harry Kopyto and George Ehring.