BRITISH COLUMBIA

The hoisting of
a wicker basket
trailing streamers
bearing political
Statements to an
Uupper-storey win- ©
dow of the Van-
Couver’s Carnegie
community centre
May 18 was accom-
panied by cheers
from some 100
people who marked
a key victory scored
by unemployed
Workers on that
Spot 50 years ago.

The demonstra-
tors, many bearing
Placards demand-
ing jobs for Cana-
da’s unemployed,
cheered as the bas-
ket was raised to
mark a similar activity on behalf of the
occupation of the centre, then a museum,
by members of the Relief Camp Workers
Union on that day in 1935.

The group then filed inside for speeches
and entertainment as part of a symbolic
re-enactment of the occupation that
wrung from then mayor Gerry McGeer
two days relief.

.The demand of the relief camp
workers — ‘“‘work and wages” — is the
same one being voiced today, said Robert
“Doc” Savage, one of those who took part
in the 1935 occupation.

COLIN
GABELMANN

Carnegie meet echoes
demand of ’35 jobless

The symbolic occupation is one of sev-
eral events organized by the On-to-Ottawa
Trek committee commemorating the trek
and other events that rocked Canada in
1935 as thousands left Bennett’s 20-cents-
per-day work camps to take their demand
for work and wages to Ottawa.

The conditions that forced the men into
relief camps and compelled them to organ-
ize to demand relief are being repeated
today, said Savage, citing the food bank
lineups.

“So I say to you, fellow workers, organ-
ize now, not in your hundreds but in your
thousands,” he urged.

Cheers also went to B.C. Communist
Party leader Maurice Rush, who said that
“the conditions that people face today area
sad commentary on the capitalist system.”

Targetting the provincial Socred and
federal Conservative governments, Rush
said the closure of hospitals this summer
while costly megaprojects are created and
millions are being given in tax breaks to
big corporations shows the govérnments
“chose the interests of the coupon-clippers
ahead of the people of B.C.”

In contrast, the Communist Party offers
a program including raising welfare rates
to the recognized poverty line, government-
sponsored public housing construction at
union wages and vast reforestation mea-
sures to put British Columbians back to
work, he said.

Rush said that the Solidarity Coalition
and Operation Solidarity “showed the
way a high level of unity amiong people
can achieve victory for these policies.”

Provincial Communist Party leader Maurice Rush offers party's solution to
B.C. jobless plight at Carnegie occupation memorial.

B.C. NDP labor critic Colin Gabel-
mann said his party estimates that B.C.’s
actual unemployment rate is between 28
and 31 per cent, “based on those who
would actually like to work.”

Gabelmann noted the $3 billion spent
on the northeast coal deal amounts to $1
million spent per job, since the project is
estimated to produce only 2,300 full-time
permanent jobs.

He also hit the $500,000 Coquihalla
Highway project, calling it “morally
wrong that we put our priorities on these
kind of endeavors.

“Tf we planned our economy properly
we wouldn’t have enough people to fill all
the jobs,” he stated.

Rally organizer Terry Hanley, noting

she had worked for wages only four
months in the last two years, cited several

‘need — we need work and wages and we

victories achieved by labor and the unem-
ployed in the early 1900s.

In 1908 thousands of workers walked
off the job during tough economic times to
win the eight-hour work day, she said,
noting that “‘we’re only going to get (work
and wages) by banding together and
organizing.”

As for the 1935 trekkers, “they brought
down the federal government (which was
voted out of office following the police
attack on the trekkers in Regina) — what
more power can you ask for?”

The problem, said Hanley, is that the
history of the trek and other unemployed
struggles has been downplayed and is lar-
gely unknown today. But those victories
provide lessons, she said.

“We will not be swayed from what we

need them now,” she declared.

Consultation before policy in NDP meet

_ There’ll be no large-scale nationaliza-
tions under an NDP provincial government
led by Bob Skelly.

Although a previous resolution calling
for the nationalization of at least one major
forestry giant is on the policy books, there
are no plans for such action, the leader of
B.C.’s New Democrats said in a brief press
conference with reporters following his
speech at the close of the provincial NDP
Convention last weekend.

The convention, which drew some 600
delegates to the War Memorial Gym at the
University of B.C. May 17-19, will probably
80 down as the quietest — “boring” was a
Popular consensus — B.C. provincial con-
vention in recent record.

The party may be heading to the
polls — both September and early spring
are under speculation — before the mem-
bers meet in. convention again. Yet it wasn’t
until Skelly spoke that the convention
Teflected the election that is widely expected
to be held before the opening of Expo 86
next spring.

Skelly, the MLA for the Alberni region
Where thousands of woodworkers have
been laid off, gave a speech that was notable
for what it didn’t contain, rather than what
Was said,

Noting that the reigning Social Credit
80vernment has “totally mismanaged and
bungled the economy of B.C.,” the NDP -
leader stated that “anger in this party has

en converted into a silent determination
to get rid of (the Socreds) once and for all.”

kelly praised other social democratic
governments — in Manitoba, and the
abor government of Australia — for
doing a “fine job of putting people and
Putting jobs first.” But in the generalized
tones of his speech there was no suggestion
of what Strategy New Democrats have in

-economic planning”

mind for putting B.C.’s 230,000 jobless back
on the payrolls.

Instead, Skelly emphasized what has
become a hallmark of his leadership for the
past year:-maintaining a policy of “co-
operation, not confrontation” while travel-
ling around the province meeting with
groups — “whoever will meet with me” —
of trade unionists, community workers and
businessmen.

Such would pre-
sumbably set the
stage for what Skelly
saw as an era of co-
operation between
business, labor and
a government which
he said would re-
store “stability and

to B.C.’s beleaguered io ;
economy.

The Alberni MLA BOB SKELLY
acknowledged the uphill road for the NDP
in an election in which there will be, thanks
to Socred gerrymandering, 11 new seats,
nine of these in Socred-held territory. And
he pointed to a $20-million advertising
budget the government is using to bolster its
image in the coming, possibly pre-election
months.

But, in Skelly’s estimation, the B.C. pub-
lic has been turned off by years of Socred
rule in which governing by cabinet order-in-
council, rather than by the legislature, has
become the norm. Voters see the firing of
school boards, the abolition of human
rights and tenants legislation and dozens of
other Socred actions as being unfair, and,
according to the NDP leader, “I think that
out of that sense of fairness people are going
to vote that government out of office.

“I’m relying on that sense of fairness and

outrage to get us elected,” Skelly told the
delegates.

As for an election strategy, that will be
drawn up by the provincial executive, Skelly
said.

As such, the B.C. NDP leadership’s
approach to the convention seemed an echo
of the years under former leader Dave Bar-
rett. Rather than using the event as a rally-
ing point for opposition to the Socreds —
which would involve striking strong policy
alternatives to the dozens of pieces of legis-
lation and orders-in-council that have
stripped British Columbians of trade union,
women’s, human and tenant rights — the

‘ object seemed to be to produce as quiet a

convention as possible.

Skelly’s remarks revealed the Barrett
influence, with the emphasis on an election
strategy based on letting the Socreds hang
by their own rope. That formula, unaccom-
panied by policies to strongly refute the
Socreds’ “restraint” program and the
monetarism behind it, helped spell defeat
for the NDP at the polls in 1983.

In the line of previous conventions, the
best resolutions reflected the struggle
against U.S. interventionism in Central
America and Canadians’ growing demand
for an end to the arms race.

The convention gave strong support to
motions calling on the federal govenrment
to establish an embassy in Managua, Nica-
ragua, protesting the U.S. government’s
ignoring of the International Court of Jus-
tice ruling against U.S. intervention in Nica-
ragua, and demanding the Mulroney
government cease aid to the El Salvador
government.

Delegates gave strong appluase to Rich-
mond Ald. Harold Steeves when he urged
support for the resolution committing an
NDP government to declaring B.C. a

nuclear-weapons free zone. The convention
handily passed that resolution, which also
included support for the New Zealand
government’s anti-nuclear weapons stand
and committed a B.C. NDP government to
work against further cruise missile testing in
Canada. The delegates also backed a
motion calling for non-renewal of the
Canada-US. Nanoose Bay nuclear weapons-
testing agreement.

B.C.’s New Democrats focused strongly
on education, condemning through an
emergency resolution the Social Credit
government’s firing of the Vancouver and
Cowichan school trustees. The conference
produced a lengthy statement of party prin-
ciples on education, and committed the
NDP’s education policy subcommittee to
produce a detailed policy paper for the par-
ty’s provincial council. Several other resolu-
tions also passed calling on a royal commis-
sion to examine B.C.’s education system,
and for academic autonomy for universities
and colleges, following a morning panel dis-
cussion on public education.

Whatever differences B.C.’s NDPers
have with each other, the convention mood,
if low key, was one of unity, with delegates
giving standing ovations to Skelly before
and after his speech. Discord surfaced only
on a few debates, notably when the party
reaffirmed its commitment to women’s
right to safe, medically supervised abor-
tions.

Delegates also approved resolutions on
Native rights, although one recognizing
Native claims to Meares Island was watered

down to opposition to logging of the island.

The convention elected as party president
B.C. Federation of Labor vice-president
Joy Langan, who ran unopposed to replace
retiring president Gerry Stoney.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 22, 1985 e 3

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