George Hastings

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This article is about the businessman. For the English nobleman, see George Hastings, 4th Earl of Huntingdon.

George Victor Hastings (died July 27, 2002) was a political activist and businessman in Manitoba, Canada. He served as a navigator with the Royal Canadian Air Force between 1940 and 1947, and challenged Errick Willis for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba in 1950.

Between 1940 and 1950, the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives were part of a provincial coalition government led by the Liberal-Progressive Party. The alliance was opposed by some members of both parties, but attracted relatively little controversy before 1948, when Liberal-Progressive cabinet minister Douglas Campbell was chosen to replace Stuart Garson as coalition leader and premier. Some Progressive Conservatives had hoped for an improved standing with the transition, and regarded Campbell's victory as a confirmation of the status quo.

In 1949, Hastings and independent Progressive Conservative legislator John McDowell formed a pressure group called the Manitoba Democratic Movement (MDM). Not a political party as such, the MDM called for the Progressive Conservatives to quit the governing alliance and supplant the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation as the province's "government in waiting". Hastings and McDowell were both from the right-wing of the PC Party, and feared the CCF would be able to form government if it remained the primary opposition.

Under pressure from the MDM, as well as from George Drew and Dufferin Roblin, Willis resigned from the coalition ministry in mid-1950. The PCs formally left the coalition at their annual party convention in October, with only sixteen delegates voting to stay. Hastings stood against Willis for the party leadership, and lost by a margin of 188 votes to 45 (see Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba leadership conventions). The purpose of the MDM had already been accomplished, however, and most of its members accepted Willis's victory.

Hastings became an executive member of the federal Progressive Conservative association in Winnipeg South Centre after his leadership challenge.^[1] He never ran for public office at the provincial or federal level.