SF Ee Le Me ae ae ee

ACSRBORIG to the St. Laurent
government, Bill 7 is nothing
more than the consolidation of
the Criminal Code, and we have
nothing to worry about. But a
careful study of Bill 7 brings out
the fact that the intention of the
government is to curtail free
speech and the right to strike and
picket. And it hopes to achieve
these objectives by “due process
of law.”

Those sections to which the
sharpest objections have been
taken were originally known as
the Garson Amendments. On May
$, 1951, the Montreal Gazette let
the cat out of the bag!

“The new legislation dealing
with sabotage and espionage
which the government will ask
parliament to pass is being in-
troduced here at the request of
the U.S. government. That is
something which Prime Minister
St. Laurent did not make clear
when he made his announce-
ment. During the negotiations
for the leased bases agreement,
the U.S. made it clear that Can-
adian security restrictions were
not considered adequate. Ac-
cordingly and at U.S. request, the
Dominion agreed to seek legisla-
tion which would provide better
protection for U.S. interests.”

The very wording of this re-
port proves that the obnoxious
sections of Bill 7 stem from Mc-
Carthyism. The proposed legis-
lation is referred to as “dealing
with sabotage and espionage.”
These are words they use in the
US. to frighten people, to. com-
pel political conformity, to smear
political opponents. Under the
guise of tightening up’ security
regulations in Canada, the auth-
ors of Bill 7 would gag the people
and shackle the trade unions. This
is the method of McCarthyism.
°

Canada needs a new Criminal
Code. Every good citizen is in
favor of adequate provisians for’
the safety and security of our
country, but such provisions must
be so framed as to guarantee the
basic freedoms of the individual
citizens. This is no time for hys-
teria. We must soberly estimate
the end results of what is new in
Bill 7 and govern. ourselves ac-
cordingly.

To begin with, we must recog-
nize the fact that the obnoxious
sections of Bill 7 were prompted
by a foreign government. This
government has been notorious

By BERT WHYTE

hoe Tolstoy, giant’ of world lit-
erature, once compared the
Doukhobors to Christ’s disciples,
and donated the proceeds from
his novel, Resurrection, to help
the persecuted Doukhobors in
Russia emigrate from their home-
land.

Tolstoy began writing Resur-
rection in 1889 and finished it.in
1899. In it he exposed the czarist
courts and the Russian Orthodox
Church, and preached moral self-
perfection as the sole means of
combatting evil.

No. literary critic considers
Resurrection one of Tolstoy’s
great novels. It certainly is not
in the same category as War and
Peace or Anna Karenina. But it

is worthwhile to remember that.

the publication of Resurrection
led to Tolstoy’s excommunication
from the church by the Holy
Synod in 1901,

Always a fighter for justice,.

Tolstoy on the one hand con-
demned resistance to evil, but on
the other found himself seized
with revolutionary fervor during
revolts against the czarist regime,
and impelled to support the re-
volutionary struggles for free-
dom.

At the time of the 1905 revolu-
tion in Russia he wrote in a let-
ter to a friend:
' “Things are developing with

amazing speed and justice. To be

DORR Gee Oe ee ee Oe ee I | US TOL A Ee it

What Bill 7
means to you

for the destruction of civil rights
at home. The Canadian people
must speak. up with one voice:
Keep McCarthyism out of Canada.

The most dangerous section in
Bill 7 is that dealing with treason,
Section 46.

For 600 years, in British and
Canadian law, treason has con-
sisted of only two offences, a per-
sonal attack-against a member of
the Royal Family and levying war
against Canada. For 600 years,
the only treasonable offence in
peace-time was an attack on a
member of the Royal Family.

The passage of Bill 7 in its pre-
sent form would remove, at one
sweep, the distinction between
what is treasonable in war-time
and what is treasonable in peace-
time.

Saturday Night, an influential
weekly in Toronto, was sharply
critical of this section: ‘““These
amendments were drafted very
hastily and upon the urgent in-
stigation of the United States,” it
declared.

Section 46(e) reads as follows:

“Without lawful authority,
communicates| or makes avail-
able to an agent of a state other’
than Canada, military or scien-
tific information or any sketch,
plan, model, article, note or
Gocument of a’military or sci-
entific character that he knows
or ought to know may be used
by that state for a purpose pre-
judicial to the safety or defense
of Canada.”

The very looseness of this sec-
tion could make it possible for a
government to silence its political
opponents for ever. Section 46
(e) could easily become the means
of creating a Rosenberg case in
Canada.

e
Section 52 deals with certain
acts “prejudicial to the safety or

displeased with what is happen-
ing is like being displeased with
autumn and winter, forgetting
that in their wake comes the
spring.”
e :
Persecution of the Doukhobors
by the czarist government won
sympathy for the sect in many
countries of the world. Quakers in
England raised considerable

money to help the Doukhobors, zi

and this money was delivered to
them by an ex-captain of the

British Army, Arthur’ St. John. -

He was later arrested by the
ezar’s police and forced to leave
Russia, but while in Moscow he
met with Leo Tolstoy and brought
greetings from the titan of let-

_ ters to the illiterate and suffer-

ing Doukhobors. in the Caucasus.

In March, 1898, the Doukhobors
received permission to emigrate
at their own expense, and ar-
rangements were made to settle
in Cyprus, and later in Canada.

Three appeals for funds were is-

sued by Leo Tolstoy, the Society

of Friends, and V. Tchertkoff.
Tolstoy wrote_an Appeal to Rea-

son in which he pleaded the im-

portance of people everywhere

trying to understand the Doukho-
bors. He wrote, in part:

' “A “Roman Emperor enters
Rome in noisy, pompous triumph
—how important this seems; and
how significant it then seemed
that a Galilean was preaching a
new doctriine, and was executed

® TO. SPEAK FREELY
¢ TO STRIKE
¢ TO PICKET

7 e
IN. THE NEW BILL. (Mo. 7), REVISING ue r
CRIMINAL CODE, NOW BEFORE PARLIAMEN
nr

KEEP. CANADA FREE

se

By JACK PHILLIPS

PTE TE Ot Set Ur G0 Tt et Tee EEE Ue

interests of Canada” but does not
give a clear definition of what
this term means.

A group of longshoremen refus-
ing to load munitions for the
French forces in Indochina could
be sentenced to ten years in jail
for impeding the working of a
vessel.
after going through the regular
procedure laid down by. law, they
would be protected from the dan-
gers, of this section, but this pro-
tection would not apply to sea-
men honoring their picket line or
to members of their own union
employed elsewhere but particu-
larly in the strike as pickets.

The gas workers of Vancouver
and Victoria have announced that
they will go on strike on January
25. As far as the B.C. Electric,
the Labor Relations Board and
the courts are concerned, the In-

ternational Brotherhood of Elec-

How Tolstoy helped Doukhobors

therefore, just as hundreds of

others were executed for appar-

ently similar crimes.

“Pilate and Herod, -indeed,
might not understand the im-
portance of that for which the
Galilean, who had disturbed
their province, was brought be-
fore them for judgment. They
did not even think it worth while
learning what his teaching
meant, and even had they known
it, they might have been excus-

ed for thinking that it would dis- -

appear (as Gamaliel said): but
we — —we cannot but know the
teaching itself, as well as the
fact that it has not disappeared
in the course of eighteen hun-
dred years, and will not disap-
pear until it is realized.

“And if we know this, then,
notwithstanding the insignific-
ance, illiterateness, and obscur-
ity of the Doukhobors, we can-
not but see the vast importance
of that which is taking place
among them. — Christ’s disciples
were just such insignificant, un-
refined, unknown people, and
other than such the followers of

\ Christ cannot be.”

Among the Doukhobors, Tol-
stoy contended, “nothing new is
taking place, but merely the
germinating of that seed which
was sown by Christ eighteen hun-
dred years ago — the resurrec-
tion of Christ himself.”

It must be remembered that

If they were on strike.

‘SUH Gime POTTS TE TUTE EEE TE US Te TE Tp

trical Workers, Local 213, to
which they belong, has no right
to! represent them. Therefore,
they have been denied the right
to bargain under the provincial
ICA Act and a strike would be
illegal. This is a gross denial of
the workers’ right to belong to
the union of their choice.

If Section 365 of Bill 7 became

law and the gas workers were on

strike, they would be liable to five
years in jail. Clause (d) makes
it unlawful “to deprive the in-
habitants of a city or place, or
part thereof, wholly or to a great
extent, of their supply of light,
power, gas or water.”

The saving clauses provide that
this section will not apply where
all steps provided by law have
been taken through negotiation,
collective bargaining, conciliation
and arbitration.

The case of the gas workers
should, prove that if Bill 7 be-
comes law in its present form,
every militant union will be in
danger of being maneuvered into
a position where it has no bar-
gaining rights. Once in such a
position, the employers could lay
information against any striker
and press for drastic penalties.
@
Section 372, which carries pen-
alties up to and including life im-
prisonment, deals with the crime
of mischief.

Under this section, it would be

a crime for the Building Trades ©

Council to post “information
pickets” in the neighborhood of
a construction job employing non-
union labor. The penalty could
be five years in jail.

The Canadian Congress of La-
bor has this to say on Section
372:

“Specifically, the Congress ob-

jects to Section 372 because it .

provides employers and hostile

Tolstoy wrote these words at a
time when his outlook was shaped
by the backward and contradict-
ory peasant psychology of the
period when capitalism was
maturing in Russia and when
working class ideology was not
yet the property of wide sections
of the people.

Tolstoy bitterly condemned the
capitalist way of life — but hoped
that a return to a form of patri-
archal peasantry could avoid con-
flict and bring happiness to man-
kind. His powerful mind, how-
ever, prevented him from entire-
ly accepting this philosophy, and
his artistic integrity made him
create characters in his novels
who reject non-violence and
spring into. rebellious action
against oppression. | ‘

Tolstoy felt an affinity with

the pacifist Doukhobors, and gave |

freely of his time and money and
talent to assist them in their de-
sire to escape ezarism and find a
new life in exile.

oe
What would Tolstoy write if he

were alive and in British Colum- ,
_ bia today, and saw the. brutal

methods used by our provincial
government in its attempts to
solve the “Doukhobor problem”
by force and violence, jailings,

‘separation of children from their
, parents?

I think that he would sit down
and write another Appeal to Rea-
son.

' PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 22, 1954 — PAGE 10

public authorities with a weapon
which could be used against
labor with utter injustice and ut-
ter ruthlessness. Most certainly
the section could be invoked to
break any strike. . .. This sec-
tion is thoroughly vicious and
should be dropped.”

The charge of sedition is one
that has been used on many oc-
casions to place the people’s lead-
ers behind bars. In most cases,
the victims have been opponents
of the{ government in power,
militant trade unionists, leaders
of the unemployed or advocates
of peace. .

J. S. Woodsworth, one of the
founders of the CCF, was charged
with the publication of two sedit-
ious libels in 1919.
~ One of them, a passage from
Tsaiah, reads as follows:

“And they shall build houses,
and inhabit them; and they shall
plant vineyards, and eat the
fruit of them. They shall not
build, and another inhabit; they
shall not plant and another eat;
for as the days of a tree are the
days of my people, and mine
elect shall long enjoy the work
of their hands.”

.Under the law of sedition, such
utterances tend to “excite ill-will
between different classes .. .”

Prior to 1951, the penalty for
sedition was two years. In June
1951, it was increased to seven
years. Under Bill 7,.it is propos-
ed to increase the penalty to four-
teen years.

Obviously, this section is de-
signed to throttle free speech
and to curb the progressive
spokesmen of the people. It is
equally obvious that the govern-
ment has more faith in repres-
sive legislation than it has in pro-
gressive policies that would con-
form to the requirements of the
people.

@

Basically,| two new concepts
have been introduced through
Bill 7.

The first concept would give
the government power to impose
the death sentence in peace-time
for offenses that hitherto have
been capital offenses only after
the proclamation of war.

The second concept would
place the trade unionist back
where: he was 150 years ago,
subject to criminal prosecution
for striking.

We have eleven labor codes in
Canada, ten provincial and one
federal. Each labor code gives
the appropriate body the right to
decertify unions and the right to
institute court ‘proceedings for
individual offenses by workmen.
These restrictions have weighed
very heavy on union members on
many occasions. We must not.

‘permit the federal government

to legislate additional, harsher
penalties.
Your member of parliament is

in Ottawa now. Don’t let it be a

case of “out of sight, out of
mind.” Bill 7 will be up for final
reading soon. Each and every
clause will be up for debate.

If you expect your MP to act,
then you must convince him that
the people back home are opppos-
ed to the undemocratic sections
of Bill 7. :

This means sending resolutions
from: organizations, letters from
individuals and groups of citizens,
post cards and telegrams.

Pin-point the following sections
and tell him you are opposed to
them: 46, 47, 52, 60-62, 64-69, 365
and 372.

A special committee will be set
up to study the sections dealing

. with lotteries, whippping and cap-

ital punishment, because these

matters are controversial. The

sections listed here are even more
controversial. Call upan your

MP to refer these sections to the

same committee. '

Action is the pass word. Act

now before it is too late. Let's

keep McCarthyism out of Can-
ada!

@ Jack Phillips, well known Van-
couver trade unionist, is secre-
tary of the Vancouver branch
of the League for Democratic
Rights.

'

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