pel

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McEwen

HTT INT

Review

EDITORIAL PAGE

TOM McEWEN, Editor — HAL GRIFFIN, Associate Editor — RITA WHYTE, Business Manager.

Comment

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THE provincial budget present-
ed this. week by the Social

Credit government will go down

tn history as a ‘‘trick budget’? —

a budget which gives a little. and
es a lot.

The highly unpopular sales tax

"Was originally introduced by the

now defunct Tory-Liberal Coali-
tion to finance hospital insurance
for the people of this province.
Now it is hoisted from three to
‘five percent and Premier W. A.

. Bennett offers the same excuse

as his Coalition predecessors.
To take the sting out of this

Rew raid upon the incomes and |

living standards of the low im
come groups, BCHIS premiums
are to be abolished, and certain
unstated “‘refunds’’ made to
BCHIS ‘beneficiaries.’ While
the government’s future plans for
BCHIS are all quite vague, the
abolition of BCHIS premiums is
calculated to soften up the peo-
ple’s wrath against the new five
Percent sales tax gouge. An aver:
age B.C. family will now “‘save

its annual $39 on BCHIS prem:
lums—and pay twice that amount

'HtHUWtICU Iii Tt in:natttantittxnstitttitttitttttttttittiinkttttitttintsttttinnn nanan UPA
Canadian citizens; if we could forget the.

Tom

A YANKEE outfit which calls itself the
_ ~ Sons of the American Revolution has

_ awarded Senator Joe McCarthy a “good
We take it that the

citizen” medal.
SORs are the male version of the
aughters of the American Revolution,
th highly allergic to anything remote-

Y resembling the revolutionary. Despite.

€lr misleading titles, these outfits come

Well within the current radio commen-

tator’s standardized cautioning that “any
Tesemblance to actual persons living or
dead, is purely coincidental.” *
There is nothing the SORs dislike
Quite so much as the word “revolution,”
either in form or content, which possibly
explains how they came to hang a’ “good
_ Citizen” medal upon a. fascist fanatic
ike Joe McCarthy, oe
This award wasn’t quite unanimous,

OWever, a fact which indicates that the —

revolutionary flame of Jefferson, Lin-

Coln, Tom Paine and other great Ameri-—

Can rebels hasn’t been completely ex-
tinguished by these SORs, DARs and

eir “good citizen” smear brigades. _

The Philadelphia SORs’ out-going presi-
dent branded the award to McCarthy as
a “desecration .. . highly ironic'that any
5ody should present an award to a man

SO associated with distortion as Senator

¢Carthy, SPR aee

Proudly displaying his SOR medal on

4 stage setting depicting George Wash-
ington and the Spirit of ’76, McCarthy
Teplied with his well-known battle howl
ue A Red.” Now we can look forward
th the Sons of the American Revolution
«®Mselyes being investigated for other
; ine Versives” who object to medals for

Just recently the U.S. Information Ser-

- satellite of the United States . .

Bennett's trick budget

or more through the increased

. sales. tax levy.

For thousands of wage earners
this five percent tax becomes a
direct wage cut, clipping five to
eight cents off every purchasing
dollar. Moreover, its adverse ef-
fect upon business operation and

growing unemployment will not

be offset by Premier Bennett's
roseatte hopes for future B.C.

‘‘prosperity.”’

A tremendous protest must.

answer this iniquitous sales tax
hoist. This onesided form of
provincial financing which places

the main burden upon the wage

earners and people with low in
comes must be abolished. The
burden must be put where it
rightfully belongs, on the backs
of those who reap the real profits
from our resources—the monopol-
ists, trusts and war cartels.

Old age pensioners and social
welfare dependents are to receive

a $5 ‘‘bonus,” just half of what

our senior citizens’ organizations
asked for, and less than’a quarter

_of what is needed to live in mod-

erate comfort.

vice, under McCarthy pressures, banned
the writings of Thomas Jefferson from
overseas libraries. A literary chap nam-
ed Sheldon Foner who had compiled a
number of Jefferson’s works had stood
on his constitutional rights when quizzed
by the McCarthy witch-hunters on his
religious and political beliefs. The end
result was a McCarthy smear job on
Foner—and the thought-control axe for
readers of Thomas Jefferson.

Happily however, some of these over-
seas U.S. librarians have decided . for
themselves and their readers that what

Jefferson has to say is much more im- |
portant than who compiled his writings,

and certainly very much more important
than the ranting and raving of McCarthy.
Consequently they kept their Jeffersonian
literature in circulation despite the Mc-
Carthy ban. The example has a moral
lesson for the would-be book-burners of
Victoria, British Columbia.

McCarthy’s recent bout with the top
brass of the U.S. army and Eisenhower’s
milk-and-water rebuke shows this U.S.-
pred fuehrer, if not a shining light as
a “good citizen,” at least nosing out Ike
as “first” citizen. This McCarthy con-
trives by howling “Red” at all who do

not accept his special brand of hysterics -

as gospel truth. 5
There is a lot being said by Canadians
in high and low places to the effect that

‘we don’t want any McCarthyism here.” —
Reading a recent copy of the Glasgow —

Forward, we see George Ferguson, editor
of the Montreal Daily Star quoted as say-

ing “Canada does not want to be relegat-

ed to the position of being a spineless
. Cana-
dian standards of taste are deeply of-
fended by the kind of performances . . .
run by people like Senators Jenner and
McCarthy . . . we are both democracies,
but we should never slide into the error
of thinking that we operate in the same
way just’ because we speak the same
language.”

That sounds fine, if we could forget

the recent world tour of U.S. salesman
Louis St. Laurent; if we could forget

‘Bill 7 and its U.S.-dictated curbs upon

the thoughts, words, actions and lives of

Authorized as second class mail, Post Office Department, Ottawa

Oh him? Some
American come
to convert us !

Wp '$

Hy)
i]

The sales tax exemptions on

children’s shoes and clothing and

the 24 percent reduction in the
Amusement Tax levy are what

might be termed ‘‘steps in the

right direction,’ but very short
steps when placed against the
five percent sales tax boost and
the BCHIS fiasco.

This 1954 provincial budget
makes one cardinal principle of

unconstitutional attacks of Maurice Du-
plessis upon Quebec labor—which be-

comes _a standing threat to Canadian ~
labor; if we could forget the banning of

the film Martin Luther in Quebec and
other historical documentaries closer to
home. Yes, and if we could forget the
nit-wit mentalities which. sparked the
Victoria book-burning incident, and their
twins who read progressive union men
and women out of their unions and out

of their jobs because they do not con-

form to official dictum—all drawing in-
spiration from McCarthyism and moti-
vated by the same fear, the same hate,
of anything progressive.

If we could just forget, then it wouldn’t
be hard to accept the infantile notion
that McCarthyism is non-existent in Can-
ada. When our daily papers pour out
their editorial wrath upon the lunacies
of McCarthy they are not disagreeing
with McCarthyism but only “deploring”
his technique. Their main boast of aping
McCarthy and yet remaining untainted
with McCarthyism, lies in our Canadian
ability (“finesse” they call it) to do the
same job with no fuss, no muss.
~ U.S. foreign and domestic policy (if
it may be dignified as such) to which
Canada has been committed, body and
soul, by the St. Laurent government, is

complementary to McCarthyism and vice
‘versa. Joe McCarthy is a direct product

of that policy. Together with Eisenhower,
Dulles and company, and their predeces-

~ sors of the Truman regime, he is its
evil genius, at the moment its Goebbels

—perhaps tomorrow its Hitler, with Eis-

- enhower playing the role of Hindenburg.

The main point for Canadians to grasp
is that they cannot have the “benevolent
partnership” Washington has bestowed
upon us through its Liberal agents and

salesmen in Ottawa without having Mc- -

Carthyism as part of the “bargain..” We
may deplore this “ideological” gift; we
may even hide our heads in the sand of
illusion and say “we don’t want Mc-
Carthyism here,” but that won’t stop it.
We can only get rid of McCarthyism when
we get rid of the breed’ whose evil

-schemes for survival make McCarthyism

a last-ditch necessity—for them. .

capitalist economy quite clear,
that in its search for revenue the ~
Social Credit government, like its
Liberal and Tory predecessors,

always claps the heaviest burden |
upon those least able to bear it.

HTH

Forty years ago

(From the files of the B.C. Federationist,
March 13, 1914)
Parker Williams, Social Democrati

MLA for Newcastle, introduced a bill

into the legislature to give domestic

workers the 9-hour day, 54-hour week,
and exclude board and lodging from
wages. The bill did not get beyond the
committee, stage before the legislature
was prorogued.
x x x
Under a Nanaimo dateline, the B.C.
Federationist published the names of all
those who had drawn strike relief from
the United Mine Workers in the Van-
couver Island coal strike “and then
deserted their fellow workers and return- ‘
ed to work while the miners are yet on

strike.” Opposite each name was the
amount of relief drawn. ~

f
Fifteen years ago
(From the files of the People’s Advocate,

March 10, 1939)

Establishment of a national youth ad-_
ministration would be given serious con-
sideration by the King government,
Labor Minister Norman Rogers inform-
ed a delegation from the national com-
mittee of the Canadian Youth Congress
which met with him in Ottawa. The
delegation pointed out that of three mil-
lion young Canadians, some 450,000 were
unemployed.

é

Ten years ago

(From the files of The People,

: March 11, 1944) "
Following several votes on affiliation ©
to the CIO taken over a six-month period,
Vancouver Waterfront Workers decided
to withdraw from the B.C. Council of
Longshoremen and apply for a charter
in the International Longshoremen’s and

Warehousemen’s Union (CIO). :

Ds PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH 12, 1954 — PAGE 5