CULTURE ———_——_ Mural part of city’s, province’s heritage Continued from page 1 his cartoonist’s job on the Vancouver Sun for labor activities. A lifetime member who holds the number-one card in the Vancouver News- paper Guild, Wilson was a Sun cartoonist, former Guild president of the former Guild Local 1, and a vice-president of the Vancouver Labor Council. “T found it pretty hard to get work after the Sun incident. The labor council and the Marine Workers wanted to help in some way, so I got the mural job,” Wilson explained. The Hungarian-born Petrov, who with his wife Sylvia and a crew of volunteers from the Marine Workers’ and Carpenters’ unions has almost completed the job of removing the drywall-backed mural from the Pender Auditorium, has a long history of restoring works, both large and more conventional in size, for institutions such as the National Museum in Ottawa, the Winnipeg Art Gallerty and the Manitoba government. He expresses an appreciation for the importance of the task. “We believe this is part of their heritage, their history,” said Petrov, stressing the delicate nature of the restoration work. Petrov will remove the old drywall from the back of the panels, reinforce the paper with canvas backing and remount the work on several sheets of interlocking spe- cialty plywood panels. He’ll also restore the original painting marred by the nail and other abrasions during almost 40 years of use of the auditorium. Much of the credit for the effort goes to Art restorers Ferdinand and Syivia Petrov (in white coats) display panel of labor a y B.C. industry. The mural is being removed from its 39-year home at the former hall of the Marine Workers and Boilermakers Union with the aid of the Centennial Commission and volunteer union labor, including that of (I to r) Del McNeil, Tony Gigliotti and Damir Hrgovic of the Marine Workers and Carpenter John Holowatiuk. Gary Oliver, manager of the Pacific Artists Studio co-operative which has occupied the hall for the last five years. The photographers, painters, fashion designers and other professionals and non-professionals using the studio needed the wall space, and that meant either paint- ing over the mural or saving it, said Oliver. “After learning of the reasons for this art, I felt it deserved to be preserved,” said Oliver, who subsequently set in motion the various efforts to restore the mural. He succeeded in getting the provincial archives to photograph the painting, but “they did nothing else.” Attempts to involve the Vancouver Art Gallery were also unsuccessful, he said. Eventually Oliver got in touch with Vancouver Ald. Bruce Yorke, a member of the Centennial Commission who, with fellow commission member Norman Young, arranged some $9,000 in start-up funds for the project. “I was just about ready for a nervous breakdown when it all came together,” said Oliver. The elements that “came togther” include the Centennial Commission, the rtist Fraser Wilson’s famous mural depicting 3g Maritime Labor Centre, the Marine Workers, the Vancouver and District Labor Council and others. Trade unions are helping by supplying volunteer labor for the project, but much more is needed, said Yorke. “We definitely need some additional funding. For its part, the Centennial Commission feels that it is fitting to pre- serve this part of the city’s heritage for our centennial year,” said Yorke. “Tt would be criminal to ignore the key role of organized labor in building this city and the province.” Alberta: the paths of money and govt ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECON- OMY OF ALBERTA. Edited by David Leadbeater. New Hogtown Press, Toronto. This informative collection of essays on the economy and history of Alberta is — refreshing and enlightening precisely because it uses the Marxist approach to history, and recognizes the integral connection between economics and politics and the interplay and struggle of economic classes. The authors discuss the role of big business (or “monopoly capital’) as “the dominant politico-economic power in Alberta’s dev- elopment,” the function of the state “as an instrument of business to maintain its dom- inant position and advance its particular interets,” the historical relationships of “Canadian and foreign (especially British and U.S.) capital to Alberta capital,” and the history of the working class “and its impact on relations between labor and capi- tal as well as other intermediate sections of the population.” David Leadbeater, in his excellent and comprehensive essay “Outline of Capitalist Development in Alberta”, traces the rela- tionship between economic developments and the election of the four governments Alberta has had: Liberals (1905-1921); Uni- ted Farmers of Alberta (1921-1935); Social Credit (1935-1971); Conservative (1971-). “Alberta has never had an era of compet- itive capitalism,” he points out, having been dominated since its inception by big monopoly corporations. He also emphas- izes the growth of native capital and its aspirations to make Alberta “a continental 10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 19, 1985 ‘gateway’ province to the north, making Alberta a transportation corridor and stag- ing area for northern development.” A.D. Fisher in his essay “Indian Land Policy and the Settler State in Colonial Western Canada” notes that occupation and settlement of Alberta “opened up Indian land to speculators and took from the Indians and Metis the right to hunt on their land and the independence this implied. It took away their means of pro- duction, the land, in return for promised treaty money and other annuities or land scrip.” The essay “The Labor Movement in Alberta: an Untold Story” pays tribute to the militant tradition of Alberta labor and especially its coal miners who elected a socialist coal miner to the legislature. “Communists,” says the author, “had been active in the industrial organizing drives that built the CIO, but after the war they were systematically driven out of the unions they helped to build.” He notes that the Alberta labor movement is more conserva- tive today than during past periods and is uncertain whether or not it will now take a more militant path. Recent events in Alberta have, I am sure, dispelled these doubts. “Business,” says Jim Anderson in his essay “The Municipal Government Reform Movement in Alberta,” “found it necessary to use the instrument of local government to ‘promote growth, to help establish economic dominance over the rural hinterland, to compete with rival urban centres, to control wages and working conditions, and to confer legitimacy on corporate objectives. A related and important factor in local government reforms was the desire by busi- ness to keep input costs down through municipal ownership of utilities such as gas, electricity and waterworks.” Ed Shaffer in the essay “The Political Economy of Oil in Alberta” emphasizes the dramatic changes that have taken place in the economy since the discovery of oil at Leduc in 1947, including the doubling of the population growth rate and the establish- ment of a satellite manufacturing industry dependent on oil. These combined, he says, to undermine the rural base of Social Credit and a “new urban based capitalist grouping emerged, centred around the Progressive Conservative Party elected to office in 1971, which was intent on building up a huge surplus from government royalties on oil to industrialize the province, while at the same time instituting drastic cuts in social pro- grams.” In the last essay in the book “The Politi- cal Economy of Province-building; Alber- ta’s Development Strategy,” Larry Pratt contends that Alberta’s business-state alliance supports a strong interventionist provincial government which will secure higher prices for oil and gas producers and use increased oil royalties to subsidize industrial diversification, increase control over the supply and pricing of natural resources, stand as a bulwark of provincial rights to block incursion by the federal government into Alberta’s economy, secure control over transportation routes and sys- - tems, and use the resources of the state to arrange joint ventures between multi- national corporations and Alberta-based business, thereby increasing local owner!-"— ship of the economy. He also contends that Premier Lougheed. initially favored economic diversification but has now abandoned the strategy. This book makes a valuable contribution” to an understanding of the economic forces that shaped Alberta’s economy and politics, of the role of the newly emerged native — capitalist class, and of the conflicts between — the three main groups of capital — multi- — national, central Canadian and_ native Albertan, all of whom have their snouts in the rich oil trough with each of them greed-*_— ily trying to extract the maximum for them- selves. ‘ What is not always clear, in my view, is the relative strength of the contending cap!- tal groups and the dominant role played by the multinationals in the provincial econ- omy and in the Alberta government. Nor 1s the decisive role that the working class can, will and must play in determining the pro- — vince’s future adequately emphasized. This book, with its wealth of thought provoking ideas, deserves to be carefully and critically studied and debated within the labor movement. I would recommend tt highly to all students of Canadian econom” ics and history. :