Ph Pe EE a eT oe ee tie

. KING STALLS

- doms.

Would mean in Canada. , é
LaCroix Bill was heard in the Committee, al-.

Popular pressure

civil rights need

By FRANK WILLIAMS
—OTTAWA
« fee King government has never needed
lessons in how to stall for time. One of
the latest examples is, the way in which the
campaign .for a Bill of Rights has been bypassed
by parliament Two sessions have now gone
by since the prime minister first set up a Joint
Committee of the House of Commons. and of the
Senate on Human Rights and Fundamental Free-
For two sessions this committee has met
and talked.

The Committee was set up in the first place
to ward off the criticism that developed because

of the way the government disregarded civil

tights in its handling of the espionage cases

and in its treatment of the Japanese-Canadians. ©

The prime minister set up a committee with a
double function, to discuss the question of
Canada subscribing to an international Bill of
Rights to be drawn up by the UN, and to dis-
cuss how to protect civil rights in Canada.

The Committee began to meet a year ago
and promptly got lost in vague generalities. It
didn’t want to hear witnesses until it decided
what it wanted to do. This year it has been
Sitting again. It got to the point where it was
willing to receive briefs on the state of civil
rights in Canada from such organizations as
applied for permission to file. briefs.

Again the Committee refused to hear out-
Side witnesses. And again exactly nothing was

achieved. The briefs submitted by half a dozen

groups, including the Civil Rights. Union of

- Toronto, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Committee .

for a Bill of Rights were read before the Com-

mittee but have not been printed in the minutes.

The government saw nothing incongruous —
‘(n naming the notorious Wilfred LaCroix, author

of the LaCroix Bill to abolish political freedom,
to be a. member of the Committee. Another

member was Social Crediter Hansoll, defender

and friends of anti-Semites.

CCF ‘members on the Committee failed to
make an impressive showing. The discussion of
the draft international Bill of Rights afforded a
good chance to show- what such a Bill of Rights
No protest against the

though Hansell wanted, to know if a Bill of
Rights would mean that it was impossible to
outlaw the lLabor-Progressive Party. _ The
Whole question of political freedom, which is in
issue both in Canada and in the U.S., was ignored
by the Committee. ar

The witnesses heard were officials of the
departments, of justice and external affairs. — All
Were stand-patters who could see nothing wrong
With things as they are. Varcoe, deputy minister
of Nustice, in other words the man actually re-

; ‘sbonsible for a large number of the violations
Of civil rights,
that to Sous a Bill of Rights in Canada would

evolved the fantastic argument

Mean taking certain powers away from the
Soveriiment and that would mean that these
Powers would revert to the government | of
Britain. So Canada would be less “independent’
than she now is.

. No one punctured this absurd statement
which js solemnly recorded as. the last word in
Constitutional wisdom. ; >

The conclusion is plain, that the government
will do nothing to safeguard the rights of Can-

Aadians until it is forced to do so by a nation-

Wide demand for a Bill of Rights. —

~ Manitoba CCF

o

who recognize that fact

—Coldwell’s stand scored

N a press statement commenting on reports of M. J.
Coldwell’s address to the Gyro International in
Ottawa on July 7, Tim Buck, LPP national leader, sees
an indication “that the CCF national leader has now
joined the open agents of monopoly-capitalism in public
advocacy of policies amed at’ war aganst the USSR.

_ “Coldwell is quoted as calling for the elimination
of Stalin and the other governmental leaders of the
Soviet people,” Buck points out. “He is quoted as
declaring: ‘It may be ten to fifteen years before the
climax is reached. But it must be understood no nation
and no force can oppose successfully our way of life.’

“Coldwell informed the Gyro International that ‘The
rigid line of Moscow must somehow or other be broken
down.’ He did not suggest that the aggressive war
provocation of the United States imperialists should be
opposed. He wants Stalin eliminated so that, among
other things, advocates of capitalism (he termed them
‘men of our world’) will be able to ‘enter freely into
Russia.’ He did not protest against the manner in
which Canadians, including: members of the CCF, are
being turned back by U.S. immigration officers if they
are suspected of being supporters of progressive policies |
in Canadian politics. He did not criticize the King
government for its refusal to permit Harry Pollitt to
visit Canada from Britain, or for its deportation of the
vice-president of an international union back to the
United States. :

“In Canada, the fight to maintain world peace and

make it enduring is a fight to expose and politically

defeat the agents of imperialistic finance-capital who
are striving recklessly to stir up prejudice and war
hysteria. Members and electoral supporters of the CCF
deplore their leader’s
attempt to line up the CCF in the camp of the organ-
izers of a new imperialist war.”

ERP CONDEMNED

hits Marshall plan

(NHARGING that the Marshall Plan was
- “framed to provide capitalists with markets
rather than to help the people of Europe, and is
designed to support reactionary governments
against. development of socialism by supplying
those governments with arms to be used against
the people,” delegates to’ the recent Manitoba
CCF convention went on record as, opposed to
ERP.

Sharp debate on the resolution enlivened the
final session of the convention, with criticism

of the party’s: federal approval of ERP levelled |

earlier at the national council.

Berry Richerds, MLA for The Pas, described
ERP as being “first and foremost intended to
establish markets for U.S. products and prevent
development of European industry.” Richards

charged the national council of the CCF had .

gone too far in support of. ERP and had
nade no criticism of its weaknesses.

Both the convention committees on national
and international affairs insisted that charges
against the CCF national council were unfounded,
David Orlikow denying that the council had sup- .
ported ERP without reservation, and F. S$. Zap-
litny, MP for Dauphin, sought to reassure the
delegates that “in spite of its shortcomings the
Marshall Plan meant life or death to millions of

people in Europe.

Rees McCutcheon, well-known trade union
gigure in Winnipeg labor circles, described the
Marshall Plan as “the first instalment” of at-
tacks on non-capitalistic countries by the U.S.

“We've got two worlds today—one where there ©

is a form of common ownership, and the other
section, spearheaded by the U.S., supporting
private ownership.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 16, 1948—PAGE 9

Fadling’s line
hasn't paid off

By BRUCE MICKLEBURGH

VEN from the outside looking in, any trade

unionist would be justified in drawing some
pretty sweeping conclusions about IWA Inter-
national President Jas. E. Fadling’s blast on the
front page of the big business Vancouver Sun
announcing he was ordering an investigation of
the books of the B.C. district of the [WA.

-They’d be justified in concluding this is just
one more attempt in the many-sided campaign
to get rid of the militant leders, such as Ernie
Dalskog and Harold Pritchett, of a district which
has chalked up steady and impressive gains for
its membership and is recognized as setting the

"wage pace in B.C.

The Fadling clique won by a handful of
votes an international convention decision to
sign the Taft-Hartley non-Communist affidavits.
They tried to compel every officer (even in local
unions) to) sign,, illegally suspending the Can-
adian international trustee Jack Greenall and
others for refusing. Operators, of course, itm-
mediately demanded the new contract fulfil all
Taft-Hartley provisions.

The Northern Washington District would not
sign the non-Communist affidavits and ended the
International’s right to negotiate on its behalf.
Result? This district won 12} cents across the
board, plus adjustments up to 22 cents for cer-
tain classifications, plus maintenance of checkoff
and provision that checkoff cannot be revoked for
duration of contract.

_ On the other hand the right-wing Inter-
national leaders for months failed to t a
settlement for their districts. Operators Fraity
agreed to 124 cents, not across the board. Each
local union was left to settle with each employer
how much of the 12} cents would be applied to
each classification. On top of that, operators
insisted that seven or eight classifications were
excluded by the Taft-Hartley Act, and that office,
guard and professional workers must be separ-
ated’ from the rest of each local. They would
not even discuss hours, contract revision dates,
union security and wage-opening dates, and the
Fadling group feared to press for settlement be-_

cause operators threatened to refer the entire ©

matter to the Taft-Hartley labor board, where ©
thousands of other cases are already gathering

moths while workers. affected have no union _

protection. ype :
-Fadling can expect fireworks from his own
membership who are paying the price of com-
pliance with: the bosses’ Taft-Hartley Act,: the
bosses’ Marshall Plan, the bosses’ line of union
destruction by red-baiting, and. the bosses’ line
of backing the old-line parties. If. Fadling is
prepared to subject his own membership to this,
he'd have no qualms about endangering B.C.’s
crucial negotiations to. attack the B.C. leader-
ship which has fought -his policies all the -way.
And ‘it would make no difference to, Fadiing
that elected trustees in B.C. had just proved, on
the basis of an audit by chartered accountants,
that the $9,3772.882 shortage alleged by Fadling’s
supporters in the leadership in the leadership of
the New Westminster local. “existed only in the
imagination of those making the charges.” If
his main objective is to get rid of a leadership
that fights for the membership, then it’s consist- —
ent to keep throwing mud, whether red-baiting
or the equally time-worn method of financial
charges, in hope that some of it will stick no f
matter how untruthful and unprincipled.
~~ Locals 1-71, 1-85 and 1-217 have demanded |
his resignation. (Story on the job is that only
three Trotskyites, two of whom had been expelled é
from the CCF. could be eta - wt for Fadling _
i . big Vancouver sawmill local. ee
= Bhs was knocked down after the ‘First :
World War by a union-smashing offensive simi- _
lar to that unleashed today. Labor was sold to

the enemy by internal enemies under cover Ce oe eee

witch-hunt which led to the actual expulsion of -
communists as part of the process of tearing
the guts out of unionism.

Labor paid dearly for that in the 1920 s and =
1930's, but labor today can avoid a similar disas-

ter by learning the lessons and closing ranks

against pair eae 10

jsm ahead of trade unionism. aig 8 a
Labor united cannot. be destroyed—it s the tu

inside job that’s fatal. ‘ : pe

ureaucrats who place personal career- — &