People's Party Peace

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The People’s Party was a political party founded in 1971 and was an amalgam of various parties including the Peace and Freedom Party, Commongood People's Party, Country People's Caucus, Human Rights Party, Liberty Union, New American Party, New Party, and No Party.  The People’s Party held a national convention at the Gateway Hotel in downtown St. Louis in July, 1972, and the roughly 200 delegates nominated American pediatrician and author of parenting books, Dr. Benjamin Spock as their candidate for the 1972 Presidential election.  Spock chose Washington civil-rights lawyer and activist Julius Hobson as his running mate. 

The party’s platform called for bringing home all troops, not just those in Vietnam. It also proposed a 30-hour week for all workers, free mass transit and health care, minimum and maximum annual personal incomes, and laws forbidding police from carrying weapons. According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Spock stated “We are working for jobs, justice, peace and the liberation of all people, and I’m going to keep working for the People’s Party as long as I can find one or two other people to work with me.”

In the 1972 election Spock and his running mate received .01 percent of the votes.  In 1976, the party ran with Margaret Wright as their candidate and Spock as running mate, and lost with .06 percent of the votes.