The war on liberties

‘RREST of peace petitioners on the streets
WMAof Vancouver is a flagrant violation of
civil liberties and a challenge to the right of
any individual to petition his fellow citizens
—a right that has been one of the corner-
stones of British justice since Magna Carta.

Even the Vancouver News-Herald, bitter

opponent of the peace movement, felt con-
strained to comment in an editorial Wednes-
day that “police proceedings against indivi-
' duals accused of offences arising out of the
circulation of the phony (sic) Stockholm
petition should be jealously watched by all
lovers of civil liberty.”

Having duly established its anti-com-
-munist bona-fides by impugning the purpose
of the peace petition and slandering those
circulating it as “enemies of their country”,
the News-Herald expressed concern over the
restriction of their right to circulate a
_ petition.

“Police allegedly acted on the complaint
of citizens” the editorial remarks. “Those
complaining should have been required to
prefer a charge and accept responsibility. It
is more than likely that the complainants
acted frivolously and. could not have suc-
cessfully maintained. their action in the
courts. r

“Tf civil liberty doesn’t extend to the right
to get signatures to a petition, it doesn’t

extend very far. Or if the right is enjoyed
by some and not by others, there is no .such
thing as equal justice in Canada. Or if there
is no respect of persons in the administra-
tion of law in Canada, the time has come
for lovers of civil liberty to bestir them-:
selves.”

The fight for the right to petition is an
issue of national importance. When a
Toronto peace petitioner was fined $25 for
“causing a disturbance” while petitioning,
the Canadian Peace Congress announced its
intention of “appealing this preposterous
verdict, if necessary, in every court in the
land.” The League for Democratic Rights
called the verdict “an infringement of civil
rights which must be challenged by citizens
all. over Canada.” =.

The case of the Vancouver petitioners; who

-appear for trial next Wednesday, will like-

wise arouse national repercussions, should
any ‘verdict be handed down which restricts
the right to petition.

One answer that peace workers can make
to this attempted gag on their sacred rights
is to take to the streets every Saturday in
larger and larger numbers with the Stock-
holm petition, and bring the key issue of
peace and civil liberties to the attention of
thousands of citizens in Vancouver during
the next few weeks.

-Coldwell’s betrayal

HESE stormy, crucial days test men
’ and parties. :
The recent CCF national convention:
brutally revealed that the CCF leadership
has failed to meet the test of the times. M.
J. Coldwell has led the CCF completely over
into the war camp of Anglo- American im-
_ perialism. « Bee ee
On Coldwell’s proposals the CCF conven-
tion demanded that Canadian troops be sent
to Korea and that the Regina Manifesto be
scrapped.
Coldwell and the rest of the CCF nation-
al leadership used this convention to make
the CCF completely acceptable to the worst.
enemies of the labor and farm movement.
The St. Laurent government said: no

~ Canadian infantry will be sent. at the present

to Korea. The CCF convention, to its shame, .
- demanded that parliament convene to send
Canadian boys to fight under General Mac-
-Arthur’s command in Korea. —

This base betrayal of the Canadian labor-
farmer struggle for peace, national indepen-
dence and the socialist commonwealth will
widen and deepen the acute crisis in the

we ae

y AST SUNDAY the Woodworkers’ Indus-
&& trial Union of Canada called for unification»
of British Columbia woodworkers inside the.
International Woodworkers of America. The
WIUC urged its members to return to, the
IWA in order to build a united organization
able to withstand the growing attacks from
reactionary employers. This decision ‘will be

when big business is trying to push the country
into another world -war, and in face of the
_ mounting offensive against labor’s rights and
- economic conditions can only react against the
- interests of the workers. =
The victory the woodworkers won on June
aptly demonstrated the power of unity. The
membership of the IWA and WIUC stood
shoulder to shoulder and compelled the bosses

The Labor-Progressive party, loyal to
the principles of the. working class move-
ment, holds high the bannér of peace, Cana-
dian independence and socialism. And it will
win in this struggle because there is no

power that, can convince the Canadian people’

that it is in their interests to sacrifice “their
lives, their sons and their country for the
glory and profit of Anglo-American imper-
ialist warmongers. The LPP stands firmly
on the side of truth and the working class
cause which is invincible.

Coldwell’s betrayal of peace and social-
ism must be answered by a heightened strug-
gle for unity and action of the labor-farmer
movement to defeat the Coldwell campaign
to send Canadian sons to die on Asian bat-
tlefields for Wall Street exploiters. It must
be answered by. gathering thousands more
names to the Stockholm Ban the Bomb De-
claration. Unity of the working class is the
way ahead to prevent Canada being fatally
involved in Yankee imperialism’s mad ag-
gression against peace and peoples of the
world, to guard Canada’s independence, and
to advance to the socialist commonwealth
— the shining goal of the labor movement.

for unity

to grant important concessions. How much
more could the workers have won had they
been united into one organization? The aim of
one union in the industry is now on the way

toward being realized thanks to the WIUC’s
recent decision.

_ However, there still appear to be road-
blocks in the way. Some leaders of the IWA
are trying to place restrictions against return-
ing WIUC members. This attempt to create
second-class members with limited rights
weakens the fighting capacity of the organiza-
tion and undermines inner trade union demo-
cracy. We are certain that the members of the
IWA want unity as soon as possible and want
to see their fellow workers in the WIUC re-
turned with full membership rights.

The initiative for unity taken by the
WIUC will open the way to establishing more
effective organization on the job to look after
the workers’ interests and will make possible

attainment of complete organization of the

woodworking industry, the advantage of which
every worker will appreciate.

TOM McEWEN

As We See lt

W* once had the thrill of meeting Uncle Tom, the heroic figure
in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s immortal Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It
was at a convention in New York City back in the Hungry Thirties.

He was an old man of sixty years or more, yet straight and
Square in his gauntness, and firm of step as he mounted the rostrum
to speak. His face was furrowed with suffering and privation, yet
intensely kind. His ebony skin was accentuated by a mop of silvery
white hair.

His words came in soft, hushed tones, reaching the farthest cor-
ners of the great assembly hall. Even the steady rumble of the traffic
outside was forgotten when Uncle Tom began to i
speak. His quiet-spoken words underlined the nar- :
row borderline between chatiel and wage slavery.

He told of the turpentine swamps of Florida,
of the “share-croppers”-of Georgia, Louisiana, Mis-
sissippi; of Negro peonage and slavery in the Deep
South, no less harsh because of an American con-
stitution and Bill of Rights. He told of backbreaking
toil from sun-up to sun-down; of poverty and
suffering so intense that his listeners could feel
the cut of the Legree lash on their own backs.

He spoke of “my people’—the Negro people—
and the Jim Crow lynch terror in whieh they lived
their daily lives, He spoke of the mad frenzy of
the big lumber and plantation operators at the coming of the union
and the Communist party to the South. To these slave owners who’
contrive to preserve slavery within the framework of a “democracy,”
“union” and “communism” are synonomous. : ;

Uncle Tom told us what it meant to distribute a leaflet—only pos-
sible after dark. Hunted with shotguns and bloodhounds, fleeing
for life, because a leaflet spoke of “union,” of “civil rights for all,”
of the Negro as a human being. “String these damn Reds up,” screamed
the Southern monopolists and their KKK mobs, while their “free
press” took up the chorus of “how the keep the Negroes in their place.”

It is nearly 20 years ago-esince we listened raptly to Uncle Tom —
from the Florida turpentine swamps and the “share-cropper” barbed-
wire compounds of the South, telling of the ruthless exploitation of
tens of thousands of Negro and “po’ white” workers, 3

During that length of time, and especially with Yankee imperial-
ism now posing as the world’s foremost exporter of “democracy,” one
would naturally expect the situation to have improved since Uncle
Tom’s day. But it isn’t so. If anything, it has become worse.

The June edition of Magazine Digest features an article, entitled
“America’s 75,000 Slaves,” citing the New York Times and New York
Star as the sources of its information. We’ rarely quote capitalist

journals for factual information, since the technique of the Big Lie
is becoming more and more the hallmark of yellow journalism.

_When, however, these journals do feel constrained to write on
some of the evils of the “way of life”-they are paid to espouse, it can
always be taken for granted that the disease is so well advanced it
can no longer be hidden.

The story the Magazine Digest garnered from its various press
“sources of information” is scarcely new. We heard it all from Uncle
Tom of the Florida turpentine swamps. We have heard it fromm
responsible sections of the Negro press and from their fighting, demo-
cratic organizations. We have heard it in the writing of great Ameri-
can Negro teachers, and in the songs of the world’s beloved Negro
artist, Paul Robeson—which is one of the reasons the U.S. state de-

partment cancelled his passport last week. To them, People’s songs
of revolt are “revolting.” ¢ nN

It is a story of ruthless exploitation, Jim Crow segregation, mob
violence and lynching, frameup, barbed-wire slave compounds, “white
supremacy’—a story of a total all-out negation of every concept and
tenet of democracy. And this in a country whose dollar-branded rul-
ing class has the brazen effrontery to “assume the responsibilities of
leadership for the democracies of the world.” A class that would like
to dictate (using the atom bomb as a threat) to the Russians, Poles,
Czechs, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Chinese, Koreans, how to run their
Own countries and affairs of government. : :

A class that denies, even in this year of 1950, and regardless of
its revolutionary Constitution and Bill of Rights, the most elementary.
essentials of democratic privileges or rights to its millions of Negro
Americans, . ‘

When one hears the billion dollar press of monopoly imperialism
Screaming about “12 million slave labor in Russian concentration
camps,” it is a safe bet that the howl goes up to detract attention
from its own slave compounds in the South, and its ruthless Jim
Crow exploitation of its Negro people, : :

Yes, Uncle Tom told it all to us that day 20 S ago in a New
York convention hall, just as Harriet Beeche. Beeatour kt fo us half
a century earlier in her immortal Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Slavery as an
institution was cancelled out by the blood of Americans in a civil
war, but in 1950 there are still tens of thousands of Negro slaves in
the South, toiling to amass fortunes for the enlightened “democrats,”

Dixiecrats,” plutocrats ...and plain rats, of Wall Street. =

When journals like the New York Times have to admit it, it
means that democracy, like so-called charity, “should begin at home.” |

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_ PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 11, 1950—PAGE 8

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