- Specified governmental

\y

F the people insist on increased
social and other services,
they'll have to pay for them, is a
rather hollow reply to municipal
taxpayers, already taxed to the
limit, and still lacking in a multi-
plicity of social services.

Mayor Alsbury of Vancouver,
like many other mayors, reeves
and municipal councillors through-
out the province, grappling with
the problem of rising schoo] and
other costs, periodically resort to
the above excuse. It’s much easier
that way, and takes senior goy-
ernments, provincial and federal,
“off the hook” in their dereliction

of municipal responsibilities. It

also serves to kill united and con-
certed mass action at municipal
level.

This methed of approach, aimed
at silencing the over-loaded tax-
payer’s demand for services in
return, provides an_ excellent
springboard for political chicanery
and opportunism to flourish.

For instance, Social Credit

grants to municipalities for badly

needed educational and other serv-
lees are conditioned, not upon the
old sales-tax distribution myth or
pecifi respon-
sibilities for stated municipal re-
quirements, but upon the readi-
ness (or otherwise) of the muni-
cipal electorate to vote Social
Credit.

Of course the Socreds are not
the exclusive custodians of this
brand of political squeeze. It is as
old and corrupt as capitalism it-
self, with every political party of
big business playing the same
game for partisan gain.

Soak the small owner taxpayer,
the basic strata of the municipal
population, to the limit, while at

the same time granting big mon-

opcly huge tax concessions, re-
bates, reductions and give-aways;
a typical axiom of all capitalist
parties, including Social Credit.
Hence it is adding insult to injury
to lecture the taxpaying “‘ittle

people” that if they want another

school for their children, they
must pay” with increased taxes.
This, while vast give-aways of

Pacific Tribune

Editor —. TOM McEWEN
Associate Edh:or — MAURICE RUSH
Business Mgr. — OXANA BIGELOW

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Account paid in full

the people’s resources are being
shamefully dealt out. to big mon-
oepoly private enterprise, with
huge tax concessions thrown in
to boot.

This, while the federal govern-
ment pours $114 billion of the tax-
payer’s money down the armament
drain annually, lacking even the
decency to blush for its criminal
waste.

The argument that, “the people
must pay for increased social
services,” is as phoney as its users
and those it shields. The people
have paid, and in full, and soaring
mill rates, taxes and living costs
show them still paying, while de-
prived of the essentials of modern
progress.

There’s a job to be done in every
municipality; to unitedly demand

that the taxpayers’ dollars be put”

fo constructive use; to demand
that senior governments live up to
their municipal responsibilities,
regardless of whether the muni-

cipal electorate votes Socred or
either of its liberal or tory
counterparts.

Demand that the arms sinkhole
be sealed off and the billions now
spent for war be used for peaceful
and progressive building. The
people have paid in full, now they
must unitedly demand delivery of .
the goods.

ITORIAL PAGE

Labor faces a test

EXT WEEK will be a momen-
tous one for Canadian labor.
Starting Monday, April 25, the
parliament of labor, the Canadian

Labor Congress, will meet in

Montreal.

Coming at a time when great
problems face the nation, Cana-
dian labor will have an oppor-
tunity to give a lead in solving the
big problems before Canada.

First and foremost is the vital
issue of our time — war or peace.
Meeting as it does only two weeks
before the Paris Summit confer-
ence, the Congress can render a
great service to this country by
speaking out for an independent
foreign policy based on neutrality,
for an end to U.S. subservience

_and for total disarmament. |
in the —

What could be more
interests of Canadian workers at
this time of mass unemployment
and rising taxes than that Canada

Pattern

“Man’s dearest possession is
life, and since it is given to him to
live but once, he must so live as to
feel no torturing regrets for years
without purpose; so live as not to
be seared with the shame of a

should cut arms spending, and
divert a large part of presently
wasted arms expenditure to build
homes, schools, hospitals and other
job-creating projects?

The CLC convention could also
do a-service to Canadian labor by
ending once and for all the long-
standing split in the labor move-
ment by opening the doors of the
CLC to all unions. This will require
an end to cold war attitudes which
now have no place in the trade
union movement. - :

It is to be hoped, too, that this
convention will see the need to
stand by the Winnipeg resolution —
for a labor-farmer political alter-
native open to all willing to join.
The course now proposed by top
CLC and CCF officials can only
create divisions and narrow labor's
role in politics.

Canadian labor faces a tesi next.
week. Will it measure up to that
test?

ter lite 3

cowardly and trivial past; so live,
that dying, he can say, all my life
and all my strength were given to
the finest cause in the world, the

liberation of mankind.”
—V. I. Lenin.

Tom
McEwen

WAY back in 1902, just 58-

years ago come May, in his
address to the tenth annual con-
vention of the Western Federation
of Miners in. Denver, Colorado,
WFM President Edward Boyce
said:

“T earnestly hope that the mem-
bers of the Western Federation of
Miners, and the members of all
other labor organizations, will, in
the immediate future, meet in con-
vention for the purpose of taking
political action, regardless of the
dominant political parties in either
gountry. (Canada or the U.S. Ed.)

“No member of organized labor
can be a true member ofa labor
organization, and a member of the
Republican, Democratic, Conserva-
tive or Liberal parties.

“The time has arrived when we

those political parties who have
legislated us into our present state
of industrial bondage. If we are to
continue to be wage. slaves- and

- workingclass

must sever: our affiliations. with -

political slaves, as we are today,
not capable of working for our
homes and families, and not cap-
able of fighting for those principles
that will insure peace and. happi-
ness to all who labor, whether in
the mines, on the farm, on the
ocean.or in science, then we. are

‘holding ‘out false hopes -to our as-

sociates- which are nothing short
of an illusion and a snare, and our
conventions and the maintenance
of this.organization are a waste of
time and: energy.”

/¥ifty-eight years have passed
since WFM President Boyce utter-
ed these prophetic and inspiring
words to his fellow miners; just |
about the time Kier Hardie’s
workingmen’s socialist political ac-
tion was beginning to be distilled
into something else — a poisonous
deadly brew called “social demo-
cracy,’ concocted to promote
disunity, division,
and the multiple “illusions” pin-
pointed by Boyce.

“Of course,” say the oracles,
“we have come a long way since
then, the world has changed, and
the Boyce idea is long outdated.”

We’ve had “change” alright;
two World Wars and a third in
the making. In the process we
have seen fright-wing . social-dem-
ocracy operating in the ranks of
organized labor as an agent of
capitalism; its recruiting sergeant

for war, its prime noise-maker
against the Socialist world (which
didn’t exist in Boyce’s day), its
blatant apologist and towel-boy
in periods of capitalist crisis, and
its ready defenders in the criminal
economic and political evils of
NATO-ized coldwar. Right-wing
social democracy — the Judas in
the House of Labor, ready and
willing at any time to sell out
Labor for much less than the pro-
verbial “thirty pieces of silver.”

Fifty-eight years later the job of
united labor-farmer political action
to cut loose from ‘“‘these political
parties who have legislated us into
our present state .. .” still con-
fronts_labor...

How does it go? By the Jodoins,
Knowles’, Strachans, Homes, etc.
—all the brood of right-wing
social democracy and bourgeois ‘
reformism conspiring to obstruct
an effective and united labor-farm-
er political action advance.

Whole trade unions, progressive’
groups, individuals, all excluded
on one coldwar pretext or other.
The “political action’ formula of
the CLC-CCF “new party” mid-
wives, contains a heavy dosage of
dirty politics—and little action,
thus making sure that those who
have “legislated us into our. present
state” will continue at the job.

' But it won’t be for long, re-
gardless.

April 22,

1960—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4