Editorial

The war against war

By definition, peace is not compatible with military alliances.

Military blocs thrive on tension and fear of war. And those who grow
wealthy from the billions spent on weapons have a vested interest in the
retention of weapons’ spending, military alliances and a climate of fear and
mistrust which spawned them in the first place.

It follows, then, than an outbreak of peace will be viewed with abject
horror in some circles. It will be attacked as everything from unrealistic to
unpatriotic. Entire theories will be developed to prove that peace just won’t
work.

This is exactly what is happening these days in the 40-year-old military
alliance to which Canada belongs. Peace has attacked NATO, and NATO
doesn’t like it.

The worst fears of its military planners, their political hacks and the cartels
who sell the weapons is coming true: NATO’s enemy is disappearing. The
peace attack has sown panic because it strikes at the very foundations, the
raison d’etre of NATO.

Some time ago, A Soviet spokesperson hinted this was coming. He
warned the West, and we should have listened. Speaking in Washington to
the media, Georgi Arbatov told Americans that the Soviets were going to do
the most terrible thing to the weapons-makers, the generals and the fear
peddlers. ““We’re going to deprive you of any enemy,” he said.

Then the peace offensive really began in earnest. Unilateral, bilateral and
multilateral initiatives were fired from the socialist community upon the heads
of NATO in rapid succession. The barrage was merciless — and effective.

And it continues — even intensifies. Columns of Soviet tanks are filmed
rolling east! Western observers watch warheads being destroyed, chemical
warfare factories being converted and divisions of Warsaw Pact troops being
demobilized. No let-up. No mercy.

The Americans, along with the ever-vigilant Margaret Thatcher issue dire
warnings that the offensive is a sham. But still it rolls on. The INF treaty is
signed, nuclear missiles are removed from the GDR, and Czechoslovakia.
There’s subversive talk of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Mediterranean,
in Scandinavia, in the Arctic and even a non-military corridor through
Europe.

NATO brass are outraged, but the public is impressed, even friendly
toward the thaw. Millions of people want more disarmament, more nuclear
weapons-free zones — until the entire globe is one big weapons’ free zone.

No more chemical, biological, nuclear, or conventional weapons of mass
destruction. No new nuclear subs for Canada’s navy. No more Warsaw Pact.
No more NATO.

The peace attack has become an all-out war on war.

TIG
in C

ANT is a

Cea, —,

TRIBUNE

EDITOR

Sean Griffin

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Dan Keeton
BUSINESS & CIRCULATION MANAGER
Mike Proniuk
GRAPHICS

Angela Kenyon

Published weekly at

2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C., V5K 1Z5
Phone: (604) 251-1186
Fax: (604) 251-4232

Subscription rate:
Canada: @ $20 one year @ $35
two years @ Foreign $32 one year

Second class mail
registration number 1560

t was only a month ago that we reported

that Walter Gawrycki was in hospital
struggling to recuperate after undergoing
heart bypass surgery following a heart
attack days earlier. But that struggle,
sadly, was his last, and on April 24,
Walter’s long and generous life came to an

end. : resource industries that saw him become

More than 400 people packed the Rus-
sian People’s Home April 28 in Walter’s
honour, as several speakers, representing a
number of organizations of which Walter
had been a part, paid tribute to his life:
Osmo Lahti, Finnish Organization of
Canada; Orest Moysiuk, Federation of
Russian Canadians; Harry Rankin, Com-
mittee of Progressive Electors; Rosaleen
Ross, B.C. Peace Council; Lionel Edwards,
Veterans of the Mackenzie-Papineau Bat-
talion; Sean Griffin, editor of the Pacific
Tribune; and Communist Party leader
Maurice Rush.

Born the son of a liveryman in Shere-
shova, Byelorussia in 1907, Walter was
already working as a woodcutter by the
age of 12. Nine years later, as his native
Byelorussian language and culture came
increasingly under Polish subjugation, he
immigrated to Canada.

Like many of his generation, he began
life in this country as a farm labourer,
working briefly in Leader, Saskatchewan
before moving to British Columbia. In
Vancouver, he signed on as a rigger with
the Vancouver Bay Logging Company,
beginning an attachment to the province’s

variously a fisherman, shipyard worker
and finally a longshoreman.

The depression forced him out of a job
but it also began what was to be a lifelong
commitment to the working class and
progressive movements. An activist among
the relief camp workers, he later joined the
Communist Party, maintaining his mem-
bership throughout his life.

In 1937, he volunteered for Spain,
becoming one of the 1,200 Canadians in
the International Brigades who fought to
defend the newly-elected Spanish Repub-
lic from Franco’s fascist attack. Wounded
during the retreats in 1938, he was “sitting
up in a hospital bed playing a mandolin
that he managed to find somewhere, when
I first met him,” Rosaleen Ross recalled.
Herself a volunteer from Britain, Ross was
to work with him many years later follow-
ing the founding of the B.C. Peace Coun-
cil.

Returning to Vancouver, Walter main-

tained his links with his Byelorussian cul- -

ture, first as a member of the Maxim
Gorky Club and later as a member of the
Federation of Russian Canadians. He was
still one of the organization’s leading

People and Issues

members at the time of his death.

After retirement from longshoring, he
continued his activity with several organi-
zations, working on the election cam-
paigns for the Committee of Progressive
Electors, participating in petitioning and
other work with the peace council and
setting the pace for the Tribune’s annual
financial drive. He was one of the paper’s
foremost fund-raisers for many years, par-
ticularly before the paper’s contest was
banned by the attorney-general’s depart-
ment in 1987.

Tribune editor Sean Griffin noted that
those of Walter’s generation, those who
had founded the paper in 1935, were uni-
que in their longstanding commitment to
the Tribune. “And among them, Walter
was himself special,”’ he said.

“In many ways, he was of the old
school — dedicated, disciplined and
unswerving in his philosophy,” Griffin
said. “But he was also someone who could
strike a rapport with someone half his age
... and inspired many of them by his own
example.”

That was borne out at the funeral where
friends and comrades from across three
generations and from a number of organi-

zations came to pay a final tribute to him.
He was later buried at Forest Lawn ceme-
tery in Burnaby where Osmo Lahti spoke
during a brief ceremony.

Walter is survived by his wife Mary as
well as nieces and nephews. The family
asked that any donations in his memory
be made to the peace movement or the
Tribune.

* *  *

Fo those who get the paper soon
enough to catch it, it will be something
of an historical event. On May 6, for the
first time, the Farabundo Marti Network is
set to take to the Canadian airwaves.

For two hours, 29 campus and com-
munity radio stations coast to coast are to
run features, news, analysis and interviews
from Radio Farabundo Marti, the broad-
cast arm of the Farabundo Marti National
Liberation Front (FMLN) of El Salvador.

Participating B.C. stations in the first
national radiothon are CITR 102 FM and
CFRO 102.7 FM (Co-op Radio) in Van-
couver, CJIV 94 FM in Burnaby, and
CFUV FM in Victoria. The broadcasts are
to run 3-5 p.m.

According to the El Salvador Informa-
tion Collective, the network consists of
several support teams, along with 14 sister
stations of Radio Farabundo Marti.

Also upcoming is Salvaide’s National
Walkathon for El Salvador, set for May 27
on the Stanley Park seawall in Vancouver.
Phone 254-4468 for more information.

4 « Pacific Tribune, May 8, 1989