CANADA SHOULD FOLLOW BRITAIN son D.C IY, cane eng 702 AR EUS ‘appreciable extent, eesti Lita 2 Vol. 16 No, 22° > eee FRIDAY, MAY 31, 1957 VANCOUVER, B.C. Authorised as second class mail by the Post Office Department, Ottawa Lumber operators’ talk about slump doesn't stand up By BERT WHYTE ~ When IWA district secretary George Mitchell told Vancouver Labor Council recently that “St looks like We're going ta have a scrap this year, so we suggest You buckle on your armor and get ready to help us,’ he was talking the language that B.C. unionists under- “land and were waiting to ear, Oifce the proud leader in the battle for higher wages 4nd better working conditions in this province, International Oodworkers today Has slip- Ped to eleventh place among - ajor unions in wage scales. Only a fighting policy — and tike action if necessary — “an restore the IWA’s prestige \ the B.C. labor movement. Coast lumber operators plead that they cannot afford .a wage Nerease this year because of ‘the current slump in the lum- & industry. ormer attorney general Sordon: Wismer, chairman of the conciliation board which ‘hd Fo¥est Industrial Relations heard arguments of the IWA (representing the companies) talks of trying to reach a set- tlement through “separate and private” talks with both par- ties. Rumors that the com- panies hope to settle for a piddling few cents an hour are heard in every plant. Yet the operators’ cry of “slump”? — so assiduously tak- en up and spread by the daily newspapers — looks less than impressive when seriously ex- amined. - The operators’. claims were punctured this week by the Vancouver Sun, which in a special financial* supplement Continued on page 8 See LUMBER CHINA TRADE DAR CRACKED “Now that Britain has announced it will open trade with China, Canada must also break free from the United States and open up trade with People’s China,”’ declare LPP candidates Tom McEwen (Vancouver South) and*Maurice Rush (Van- couver Centre) in a joint statement issued this week. * “Trade with China would solve our lumber crisis in B.C. and give us a big lumber market for years to come.”’ The 15-nation talks on éas- ing the bans on. trade with China now. taking place in Paris are practically. dead- locked over the @.S. refusal to lift the embargoes to any and this week Britain announced a “so it alone” policy which France, Belgium and Japan are expected to follow. “China has to plan its trade far ahead to fit in with its Five-Year Plan, and Canada may miss the boat if we per- sist in blindly following the U.S. lead,’ says the statement of the LPP federal candidates. The ‘“Chincom” committee meeting in Paris consists of Japan and all NATO govern- ments except Iceland. It op- erates the present embargo on trade with China, imposed by the U.S: during the Korean war in 1951. Only U.S. pres- sure kept Britain in line in 1953 after the Korean Armis- tice had been signed. Now in the Paris meeting the _ US. tion. is continuing its obstruc- Its proposal is to shorten the China list a little — and to lengthen the Soviet one un- til the two are in line. Strong voices in the US. are being raised against this policy. “America can’t keep 400 million people behind an econ- omic curtain for ever, just be- _cause we don’t like the policies of their government,” Senator Magnuson (Democrat) said last _ week. He is cHairman of the Senate commerce committee, which will soon open an in- — vestigation into the U.S. em- bargo on trade with China. “Everybody is going there but us,” Magnuson added. “In March, 69 ‘ships docked at: Shanghai alone from every nation in the world except us. We are out of step with the Continued on back page See TRADE (Can the CCF and LPP cooperate? SEE PAGE 12 Vancouver citizens will have their only opportunity to hear Tim Buck, LPP national leader, during this federal election campaign when he speaks in the city June 6. Buck to speak at city rally June 6 Tim Buck, national leader of the Labor-Progressive party, will make a major policy speech when he speaks in Van- couver this coming Thursday, June 6, in the course of a na- tional election tour, it was an- nounced thig week. ey The LPP rally, the only one Buck will address in this prov- ince, will be held at Pender Auditorium, starting at 8 p.m. With Buck on the platform will be the Labor-Progressive party’s two federal candi- dates both contesting Vancou- ver seats, Tom McEwen (Van- couver South) and Maurice Rush (Vancouver Centre). Title of .Buck’s speech is “How the Liberal government has betrayed our interests.”