Published Weekly at ROOM 104, SHELLY BUILDING 119 West Pender Street Vancouver, B.C. by the TRIBUNE PUBLISHING CO. MArine 5288 Minny Mnkewen 22 S508 Soe Ae Bos Editor Ivan Birchard ©... ..- SEO. ia Sane Manager Subscription Rates:°-1 Year, $2.00; 6 Months, $1.00 ‘printed By UNION PRINTERS, 2303 East Hastings Street — — — Vancouver, B.C Authorized as second-class mail by the post-office department, Ottawa Seeech from the Throne HE third session of Canada’s 20th Parliament opened January 30. The 2,000-word speech from the Throne read in the Senate chamber by Governor-General Viscount Alexander is chiefly notable for its negative generalities. Well garnished with high-sounding phrases about peace. and goodwill, but deplorably bankrupt of positive action on problems of domestic and foreign policy, the speech hits a new low in wordy mediocrity. The atom bomb—American imperialism in Canada’s northland—a stronger policy of de-nazification — interna- tional trade and relations with the USSR and the new de- mocracies of Europe, all these important issues which af- fect the lives and security and welfare of every Canadian are disposed of with a few wordy abstract generalities. There is nothing in the speech to indicate any departure from provocative anti-Soviet policies, which is the pivot upon whcih international friendship and peace, or hostilities revolve. On the domestic field the picture is little better. All semblance of price controls will go on March 31—unless a mighty peoples’ movement’ for increased wages and con- trolled prices develops to stay the hand of the price rac- keteers and their pliant parliamentarians. The miserable pittance of $25.00 at 70 years to our aged pensioners will ‘be considered,’ but nothing to indicate a substantial increase of the pittance or a reduction in the age limit. The possibility of a national labor code is fore- cast in the speech, with significant emphasis placed up labor to show more ‘responsibility’ towards its contractural agreements? Obviously labor, and not the profit-glutted monopolists are considered: by the government to be the ‘bad boys’. With such a preamble to proposed labor legis- lation, it behooves labor everywhere to keep a close watch upon what is written into any new legislation. A select committee of thee Commons ahd Senate will be set up to study and report on the question of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It is now 71 years since Confederation, and a Canadian Bill of Rights is long over- due. The shameful exhibition of the Tascherau-Kellock- RCMP star-chamber abrogation of the elementary rights of the citizen places greater need for such statutory safeguards to freedom. Taxation, specifically between the central government and the provinces, and in general, will occupy a good deal of the time of the session, as will the redistribution of parliamentary seats, which is not only a constitutional question, but one whcih will call forth much partisan maneuvering to seek added votes in the shuffle. 4 Early in the session, Prime Minister King declared the seat of Fred Rose, MP for Montreal-Cartier, vacant. Rose’s prepared statement to the Speaker of the House, whcih constitutionally—and in decency, should have been read to the House prior to accepting the motion declaring the seat vacant, was withheld. All in all, the speech from the Throne, in spite of its length and flowery verbiage, gives little encouragement to Canadians to feel that this session will deal constructively with many of the burning foreign and domestic issues to which their well-being depends. It leaves these issues to an indeterminate future, and marks a new low in medi- ocrity. It indicates that the government intends to tra- verse the path it has chosen—the path of. reaction, If ever there was a time when the people, through the medium of their organizations, should make their voices audible to pa elected representatives—that time is now. } } Canada, January 1947 ; oO JAN. 22, 1947, the price of Canadian copper rose five cents a pound, which means millions in gifts to Nor- anda mines. The same day, lead went up 50 percent, zinc over 300 percent, antimony t 100 percent- At once all these stocks soared on the exchange and speculators lined their pockets. : ON JAN. 23, 1947, at'6 a.m. in 30 below zero weather, Noranda, Quebec, copper miners were tear-gassed by Du- plessis’ police, One thousand miners and smeltermen have _ FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1947" Dove of ‘peace’ - - new style ss Rx ese ERB AO Sr As we see it LE ee aaa aN By Tom Mc Ewen VERY now and again some hired scribbler of the com- mercial press breaks into print with an editorial homily on that ersatz institution called ‘freedom of the press.’ While the ap- proach to this subject. ranges from tearful regret to well- feigneg indignation against those who dare question this ‘freedom,’ these modern sob-sisters and Don Quixotes have one thing in common—their defense of the ‘freedom of the press’ becomes an anti-Soviet,. anti-communist smear. : There was a time—a long time ago—when the fight for a free press was a genuine fight for truth and progress. That period can be said to have closed at the turn of the century. ‘Free- dom of the press’ today is best defined by a famous New York editor, John Swinton, who, when called upon. to reply to a toast at a banquet given in his honor by his fellow journalists, said: ‘, . . the business of the jour- nalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the seat of Mammon, ang to sell his race and his country for his daily bread, You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an ‘independent’ press, We are the tools and — vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are tne jumping jacks—they pull the strings and we dance, Our talents, our possi- bilities, and our lives are all the properties of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.’ Millions of reams of good fac- tual copy is pounded out an- nually by conscientious report- ers, but when it emerges from the editorial sanctum its con- tent has been robbed of all fact —if such is considereq to be inimical to the vested interests who dictate editorial policy. The reporter must learn to write what the paper wants rather than the truth behind the story - or his career as a reporter is short-lived. union security. a 16-cent hourly increase and N matters affecting labor, Strike struggles, statements of union leaders, or on the So- viet Union, the ‘freedom of the press’, surpasses itself in the qualitfes outlined by John Swin- ton. It may seem strange to. us here in Canada’ that the Soviet , : “press remains our movie fly. to three a, year ‘for a divorce; that John Doe las murdered iis mother-in- aw by slitting her throat from eno Tom McEwen ear to ear, or that the life and death of Al Capone, featured in our ‘free’ press as a high tribute to gangsterism. These events are not sensationalized in the Soviet press. If they are noted at all, it iss merely as ex- amples of social decadence, The foundation of the Soviet pres» is factual information on all issues, domestic and _ foreign, while ours in the capitalist countries follows the sensation- al portrayal, with all the quali- ties of perversion enumerated by Swinton. ‘ e © doesn’t recall the sensa- tional press coverage of the Russo-Finnish war of 1939-407 Representatives of all the big press syndicates were on the spot—in the Grand Hotel, Hel- sinki, Not one of them covered the front, since the but- cher Mannerheim could take no chances of the truth leaking out, even with the most trained and docile scribblers. Front ‘com- muniques’ were delivered at the hotel and from these the hacks wrote their dispatches. And what dispatches! Whole battalions of Russians ‘wiped out’ by a lone Finn before breakfast; a Rus- sian battalion in revolt against the ‘Stalin regime;’ Finnish AATCEUUTUETEOTOUULHA Keep this for reference. Paste it in your hat, hang it on the wall, take it to the union meeting, NEVER FORGET IT! friends. tell it to your THIS IS CANADA, 1947! bombardments which obliterat- €d Russian strongholds, but failed to shake the snow off the trees! Wanton Russian air bom- bardment of Helsinki which blot- ted out the city — strangely enough, with the exception of the Grand Hotel! Much of these fabrications of the ‘free’ press were later admitted by staff correspondents to be just that, but at the time they served the policies of reaction—which is the prime function of the vena] press today. «| In the more recent elabora- tions of the ‘freedom of the press’ boys, the Goebbels’ ‘iron curtain’ renders yeomen service on the anti-Soviet front. When they take a peek behind this imaginary ‘curtain’. they see ‘Russian troop movements;’ ‘areas denuded of all industrial equipment;’ ‘communist influ- ence;’ ‘Russian censorship’ and all the past slanders of yester- day resurrected and arrayed with all the vim and vigor of pre-war prevarication. The Rusians have no ‘free press,’ thus are badly inform- ed, we are told. So British and U.S. imperialism will beam pow- erful broadcast towards the USSR to let the Russian pecple know how our democratic heart bleeds for them in their com- munist-imposed ‘totalitarian’ iso- lation? The ‘men behind the scenes’ of whom Swinton spoke, are attempting to achieve what Hitler failed to do—break the Moral and political unity of the Soviet people and their confi- dence in their government and their Socialist way of life. Thé ‘attempt will fail miserably, but that will not stop its imperial- dst promoters with their ‘free dom of the press’ .clap-trap. iy Contrary to a local paper’s re- “cent editorial homily on ‘freedom of the press,’ the communists are — very much in favor of a free ‘press—freedom to blazon the truth, regardless of what nation, peoples, individuals, issues, or so- cial system are affected. That is Why we have a Pacific Tribune . why the progressive work- ers are straining every ounce of strength to have a Daily Tribune by May 1, 1947—in order to build a press in Canada cap- able of innoculating the people of our own country from what Swinton called ‘intellectual pros- titution.’ PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 4