Demonstrators protest CIP axing Human Resources Minister Grace McCarthy’s constituency office in Vancouver was hit by demonstrators Tuesday protesting the slated axing of the Community Involvement Program honorarium paid to welfare recipients who do community work. On Wednesday the Socreds backtracked and extended the program for six more months. The Solidarity Coalition backed by the B.C. Federation of Labor, and similar local coalitions in cities and industrial areas across the province, have brought together an un- precedented number of diverse citizen groups all united by one purpose — Premier Bennett’s anti-labor and anti-human rights legislation must go. We all know that many of the 26 bills in- Harry Poe aa hoe e Rankin | troduced by Bennett have absolutely nothing to do with restraint. They are simply out and out attacks on human rights and labor rights. Some people are saying: ‘Yes, we need some restraint, but not the kind that Bennett is introducing.”’ But do we really need restraint? Bishop Remi De Roo, the Catholic Bishop of Victoria, was right on when he said in Vic- toria the other day (in reply to an attack on him by Premier Bennett): ‘‘The heart of the issue is who is going to pay for the restraint program? The poor or the rich? The weak or the powerful? The problem lies not with spen- ding in itself, but what it is spent for, and who benefits from the spending.” Premier Bennett is putting all the restraints on working people — by layoffs, cuts in wages, cuts in social services and tax increases. People would support restraint on wealthy And to prevent people from fighting back he is putting restraints on human rights and trade union rights. The city council of Vancouver, thanks to the fact that it now has a labor-backed majori- ty (six out of 11) showed that the Bennett-type of restraint is not at all necessary. We were also under pressure from the NPA and TEAM aldermen to go along the Bennett road. We refused. : We laid no one off. _ We did not cut social services. We were able to do this not because Van- couver is so well off financially. We are in dif- ficult times too, just as is the province. But our policy was to put the needs of the people first. Bennett did not have to institute any policy of lay-offs, or cut social services, or introduce repressive legislation. There are plenty of places where the government can cut back without hurting people. It could end the huge subsidies to the big corporations involved in the northeast coal deal. It could make the pro- fessional sports promoters pay some of the cost of the new $200 million stadium at B.C. Place. It could save hundreds of millions of dollars by having a conventional light rapid transit system instead of an elevated LRT. It should not sell government-owned enterprises like Beautiful B.C. magazine which makes a profit of half a million dollars a year. The Solidarity Coalition, which represents the majority of the citizens of B.C., is deter- mined that Bennett’s legislation be withdrawn. ; Seven civic organizations in the Lower Mainland have banded together to be part of the Solidarity Coalition action against Socred budget, and to achieve unity in civic elections this fall. The civic coalition, formed Aug. 29, elected Coquitlam civic activist Eunice Parker as their representative on the Lower Mainland Solidarity Coalition steering committee. Vancouver alderman Bruce Yorke is the alternative representative. Included in the coalition are the Surrey Alternative Movement (SAM) and Citizens for a Better Surrey (CBS), the In- dependent New Democrats in Richmond and the Richmond Electors Action League (REAL), Citadel in Delta, the Burnaby Citizens Association, the Association of Coquitlam Electors (ACE) and the Com- mitte of Progressive Electors in Van- couver. Civic organizations unite for fall elections this a key issue in the upcoming civic el dent whose outspoken opposition to thé Socreds’ costly elevated light rapid trans! system cost-him his appointment as i man of the Greater Vancouver Region District’s transit committee, is also involv” ed in the coalition. : Several pieces of proposed legislatio® arising from the provincial budget provi ed the impetus for forming the coalitiom said Parker. These include Bill 3, whic! holds civic officials responsible for cuttiné of freezing the wages of its employees, Bil 7, which allows the provincial governmetl to limit municipal tax increases on give classes of property, and others which erod tenants’ rights, human rights and abo! the planning powers of regional districts. These moves undermine civ! autonomy, and the coalition partners work towards slates of candidates to maké Surrey alderman Bob Bose, an indepen- tions, she said. —— Ts had just returned from a visit south of the border and found the telegram waiting. It was already days old, but there was still time for Vancouver East residents John and Anna Starcevic to attend celebrations of the anti- facist struggle in his native Yugoslavia 40 years earlier. The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the July 4, 1943 breakthrough of the lines of the occupying fascist forces by the vastly outnumbered Partisans under the command of Marshall Umro ‘Tito. John was there to receive a medal for his contribution as one of several Cana- dian Communists who volunteered for a special assign- ment known as the British Mission. = Asamember of ateam of some 45 Yugoslav-Canadians trained by British Army officers Col. William Bailey and Capt. William Stuart in commando techniques, John’s task was to establish contact with Tito’s Partisans and recruit volunteers for the anti-fascist struggle. But by the time he and two teamates were parachuted behind enemy lines in May, 1943, contact between the British command in Cairo and the Partisans had been achieved. For the dur- ation of the war, and for a short time after, he was to serve primarily as an interpreter there, as well as in Palestine an Italy assisting in the training of Partisan fighters. Today little of the dedication and sacrifices of those volunteers is known to Canadians, although their story is documented briefly in a recent University of British Col- umbia Press publication, Canadians Behind Enemy Lines, written by Progressive Conservative MP Roy MacLaren. As with so much of the history of World War II that has yet to reach the Canadian public, the lack of recorded in- formation about their contribution has much to do with the nature of the people involved. The Canadian volunteers were all left-wing, many of them members of the Communist Party of Canada and many, as MacLaren notes, with police records for being “4abor agitators.’’ John himself was arrested and detained several times during the ten-year period between 1932 and 1942 for his organizing activities as a member of the Cana- dian Labor Defence League, and was on probation in Vancouver when he volunteered. Others had been in- carcerated in the concentration camps, set up mainly for prisoners of war, for their political activities. For these volunteers the past decade of imprisonment and dodging police ended with their involvement in the British Mission. Most were recruited with the aid of the Communist Party, and were chosen precisely because of their political sympathies with Tito’s Partisans, as well as for their ethnic background. The political irony is heightened by the fact that the British government would much rather have worked with the royalist forces led by General Draza Mihailovic. But these, it had become ap- “parent, were not only violently opposed to cooperation with the Par- tisans, ‘but were moving towards collaboration with the Axis powers occupying » the country. The heroic deeds of the - Canadian volunteers and the * Partisans take volumes to relate. John recalled the = ~ training near Oshawa, Ont., eo, _*_ the four-month crossing to JOHN SraAatevic ach. Cairo: (during which honored in Yugoslavia. Ne of the two ships carrying the volunteers: was torpedoed, despite the zig-zag course taken by the vessels) and the suffering of the Partisan troops. ss - Today a monument stands at the Sutjeska River where so many lost their lives breaking through Axis lines. And it was there that more than 200,000 Yugoslavians from each of the country’s six republics gathered to remember their dead and celebrate the anti-fascist victory in which people like John Starcevic played a significant part. * * * T his province has probably never occupied morethana . footnote in the British press over most of the last cen- tury but it was nevertheless not too surprising that the in- famy of the Socreds’ budget was so great as to make inter- ‘ national headlines. In fact, a recent issue of the Man- chester Guardian devoted an entire column to the draco- nian measures introduced by the Bennett government and even referred to the Socred regime as ‘“‘Thatcher West.’’ It may not be a phrase that most British Columbians have used — most people have their own, more colorful characterizations of the Bennett government — butit is an apt description considering the punitive social policies that have been pursued by Thatcher’s Tory government at the behest of her multinational corporate backers. And what is more revealing is to see the devastating social results of the “‘restraint”’ policy of the British government. Areader brought us a copy of the August 22 issue of the London Sunday Times with a recent report on poverty commissioned by Market and Opinion Research Interna- tional (MORI) for a television series called Breadline Bri- tain. And despite its origins as a survey carried out by 4 marketing agency, it gives a pretty good indication of the impoverishment of millions of Britons that is the direct result of economic depression and the slashing of social programs by the Thatcher Tories. The report is apparently the first detailed report of poverty conducted in more than ten years (certainly Tories were not about to illustrate the effects of the economl¢ crisis by conducting official government studies). Unlike traditional studies which have focussed on imcome levels to establish a poverty line, the MORI study is based on 4 survey of what the majority of Britons consider to be necessities. Those included a damp-free home, heated liv- ing areas, three meals a day for children, money for publi¢ transport and a private bathroom. By that standard, the Times report stated, more tha? 74 million people live in poverty since they cannot affor three or more of those items. Of those, some 10 per cent, OF 750,000, cannot afford the majority of the items on the necessity list. — Inevitably, the study found that those below the poverty line were concentrated among single parent families, Bt tain’s three million unemployed, the-elderly, the disabled and the low paid. There is also a bitter footnote to the Times report underscoring the ideological link that joins the Thatch Tories with the Bennett Socreds (and with the Mulroney Tories for that matter). The sameissue of the paper report's that the government is about to cut dole (unemployment) payments to all unemployed youth by more than 30 pe cent. The cut would save the government more than $300 million and the Treasury ministry is overjoyed because # would bring in more money than another reduction which was contemplated, slashing all unemployment paymen by five per cent. * * * er friends in the peace and progressive movements — those who had come to know her since she mov Vancouver in 1980 — were shocked and saddened by th | untimely death of Rose Nordstrom, who died during # |) coronary bypass operation Aug. 25. f Born in Rossburn, Man., in 1920, Rose lived most her life in Thunder Bay, Ont. Her second husband, Eins Nordstrom, was a well-known progressive and m Y folklorist in the northwestern Ontario city. Following the death of Einar in 1980, Rose came ! Vancouver to join her daughter, Susan Dahlin, an ecutive member of the Committee of Progressive Elector and vice-president of the B.C. chapter of the Congress ° Canadian Women. Rose was a member of the B.C. Pea” Council at the time of her death. en PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 2, 1983—Page 2 sz