JN the British House of Com-
mons while the war was still
on, September 28, 1944, to be pre-

cise, Churchill, the orator of
“blood, sweat and tears” made a
speech in which he referred to
frees speech in the United States.
“Nowhere,” he
said, “is speech

. sedulously  cul-

knowing the standards by which
Churchill arrived at his conclu-
sions. He does not tell us what
these standards are, but since he
is the leading exponent of class-
divided society in that country,
we know that his standards are
determined by his class interests.

In the circumstances the “most
repulsive form” of free speech
will be the freedom to criticize
the class policies of Churchill and
the gang to which he belongs:
the freedom to denounce the im-

movement have picketed the
showing of The Iron Curtain or,
having made their protest, should
they have ignored the film and
advised others to do likewise?
If this question seems superfluous
to those who

;

The viewpoint

is succinctly expressed by Jack
Scott, the Vancouver Sun’s wide-
ly read columnist, who wrote’
last Saturday: “The picture itself
is hardly worth all the whoop-la
it has earned and, in fact, the
_ left-wingers have made a serious -
_ tactical error in giving it so much
publicity. For The Iron Curtain,
apart from any. other considera-
tions, just happens to be one of
the dullest movies you ever saw
in your life.”

Ivan Ackery, the manager of
the Orpheum Theater, sought tu
capitalize on the young people's
picket, by claiming that it was
attracting considerable attention
to the film. “Good for business,”
he is quoted as saying. “It’s won-
derful!” And this too, served to

_ bolster the argument that picket-
ing the film was a “tactical er-
ror.”

- It may be no more than an in-
cident in the labor movement's

‘HOULD. members of the labor

perialist exploitation that pro-
vides Churchill and those for
whom he fronts with their hay
and oats. (And what hay and
oats!)

People who belong in ancther
class have other ideas about
what is the “most repulsive form”
of free speech and whether it is
cultivated more sedulously in
Britain or the United States or
even in Canada.

A ruling the National Labor Re-
lations Board in God’s country,
made last week, places the dis-
cussion of this question on the
order of the day.

According to this new interpre-
tation of the “law”, any employer
bas the legal right to compel his
unionized employees, during the
time he is paying them wages, to
stop their work and gather in a
meeting, open-air or in a hall, and
listen to any agent, any anti-labor
demagogue, denounce their union
and they must not talk back.

If they have cultivated free
speech in its most repulsive form
any more sedulously in Chur-
chill’s Britain they must have

slid downhill a_ long way since
that famous day at Runnymede
which is their proudest boast.

fight for peace and democracy,
but it embodies an important
point of principle. Can you ex-
Pose a crime by ignoring it in the
hope that the consequent fewer
victims will render the crime un-
profitable and so prevent its repe-
tition? The only way to fight a:
crime, particularly when its vic-
tims may not recognize it as
such, is to bring it into the full
light of public scrutiny, to arouse
the community into an awareness
of what is taking place, even at
the risk of attracting more poten-
tial victims to the scene.

This is what the protest against
The Iron Curtain is doing. Movie-
goers might readily recognize it
as poor entertainment. Its sig-
nificance as a crime against the
peace is not so easily discerned.

The Iron Curtain was bound to
be poor entertainment. What else
could you make of the story of
Igor Gouzenko, the insignificant
eipher clerk who embezzled his
country’s trust to strut for a brief
while on the stage his country’s
enemies built for him, then to
hide his face for the rest. of his
life? The words of this faceless
creature can not be given credul-
ity by the many faces that spew
them forth. Hearst could not
raise them above the level of his
crude fiction and neither could
Hollywood. ¢

The films that were good en-
tertainment, the kind that people
remember because they portray-
ed something of their own strug-
gles and hopes, were created: by
men such as the film magnates
are now crucifying to make a
warmonger’s carnival. No doubt
there are still fine talents left in

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For this ruling of the National
Labor Relations Board there is
enly one synonym, It is the same
in effect as giving the bosses the
right to hog-tie their workers and
empty poison down their throats.

Nor can we in Canada pat our-
selves on the back and proclaim,
“It couldn't happen here.” For it
is only a few days ago that a
worker was arrested in the East
before anyone had a chance to
learn whether his contribution
was repulsive or not. He stood up
to address some striking workers;
he just got far enough to say,
“Fellow workers -’ when he
was pulled down by the cops.

The charge the police have laid
against him is that “what he was
about to say would cause a dis-
turbance of the peace.”

These actions all have their ba-
sis in laws made by parliament-
ary bodies—bodies composed of
representatives of the same class
Churchill stands for. Their ob-
jective is to destroy all working
class organizations that stand in
the way of increased profits and
continued privileges. The only
solution for the workers is to
turn them out and make new
laws—the sooner the better.

Hollywood. The Iron Curtain will
remind them that a prostitute
soon loses her beauty.

UYU
MMT

ATTA)

No, The Iron Curtain was not

intended to be good entertain-
ment. It was, as Time asserts,
“... anti-Communist propaganda
- +. the alarm and breast-beating
of the opposition are an under-
standable tribute to the enormous
and unique power of motion pic-
ture propaganda in general, and
of this film in particular.”

This is the frank admission
that. points the necessity of ex-
posing. such pictures as The Iron
Curtain by whatever means the
entire progressive movement can
devise. The important question is
that of bringing movie-goers an
understanding of what the bank-
ers and the industrialists who
contro] Hollywood are doing to
their favorite medium of enter-
tainment and, in the process, to
their thinking, —

The Iron Curtain is only the
first of a series of propaganda
pictures in the making—The Red
Menace (Republic), The Conspir-
ators and The
(MGM), Portrait of An American
Communist (Columbia), I was a
Communist (United Artists),. I
Married a Communist (Independ-
ent).

There will come a_ healthy
democratic revulsion against this
Prostitution of art and entertain-
ment, literature and science to
the destruction of liberty and the
fomenting of war. It wil] come as
the people struggle to realize
their own peaceful aspirations
and it will find expression in its
own propaganda, the propaganda
that produces art and docs not
destroy it precisely because it re-
flects and directs the people's as-
pirations,

But it will come the harder if
the poison of war propaganda is
first allowed to anaesthesize
people’s minds so that they con-
fuse itheir own asPirations with
the aspirations the warmongers
have for them.

By all means let us have more
protest. It can be an effective
weapon against the long silence of
fascism that is the alternative.

Red Danube —

Defend Nanaimo labor

ANAIMO, historic scene of labor’s struggles for eighty

years: lias again become a testing ground of labor’s
democratic rights:

Top-level figures of government and business stand be-
hind Mayor Muir's red-haiting campaign on the Island.

Muir's hand-picked rally called for a vast “anti-sub-
versive” organization. The type of mentality that stoops
to self-appainted vigilante action for special interests
associates itself with this kind of set-up. Hitler’s storm
troops were “anti-subversive.”

Nanaimo labor has properly branded the anti-red witch
-hunt—which is based on the current big lies about com-
munists—as aimed at dividing and breaking down free
trade unions.

The coal miner Vitkovitch accused Zorkin of being a
fascist and traitor to his country. Wismer has Vitkovich
arrested. But Wismer has lifted not a finger against the
daily flood of foul® big business slander against respected:
British Columbia labor leaders. He is himself a participant
in this orgy.

His own cabinet colleague, the Hon. R. C. MacDonald,
in a speech attaeking the CCF, Harvey Murphy and Harold
Pritchett, uttered the unprincipled lies that LPP leaders
“have sworn allegiance to Moscow” and “have been trained

to destroy by violence, by bomb, gun and: dynamite, the
institutions of this country and the people who oppose them.”

Nanaimo leaders, in the traditions of 1913 and 1947, has .
shown how to stand up to the red-baiters. Labor cannot
shrink from or skirt this fight. The fight against red-
baiting is a fight for the life and liberty of the labor move-
ment.

The working class of British Columbia stands in the
dock with Vitkovich.
Defend Nanaimo labor.

“You'll have to move, dear.

The flood waters are
still rising.”

Eéolang backward ~

(From the files of the People’s Advocate, May 27, 1988)

It is a week since the Relief Project Workers occupied the
Post office, art gallery and the Georgia Hotel. Although they
agreed to evacuate the hotel on- condition that they receive $500,
they are still “holding the fort” in the other buildings.

When a rumor spread that they were to be evicted, 150 women
formed a picket line at the buildings, a striking evidence that
the people of Vancouver want to See fair play.

These men are not outcasts. They are men without work.
They are men who are ready and willing to go any place where
there is work for them, but until a callous government, 2,500 miles _
away, provides this work, they are, in this struggle for recognition
of their situation, proving themselves to be of the highest type
of Canadian citizens by refusing to starve. j

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 28, 1948—PAGE 6