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Struggles of past years

By MABEL RICHARDS

After one has spent an hour or
two with JuleS Stelp, 91 year old
self-named ‘‘professional rev-
olutionary”’, you go away mutter-

ing the old cliche (and meaning
it from the heart) — they just
don’t make them like that
anymore!

Jules Stelp is almost blind, has
what he says is a ‘‘bum”’ heart
and assorted other ailments but
one would not know it unless
Jules told him for he walks

Jules Stelp

Straight, tall, quickly, and
without assistance.

He has been a member of a
socialist party for 71 years which
surely must be some sort of
record. He is a founding member
of the Communist Party of B.C.
but he was a socialist long before
that in Latvia, the country of his
birth.

When that country was part of
old Czarist Russia, Stelp was a
student radical, although his
parents were of the petit
bourgeois rather than of the
working class. His remem-
brances of the revolutionary.
days of 1905 and later are

remarkably clear; indeed he
admits ruefully that he remem-
bers them more clearly than
happenings in later years.

To listen to him speak of the
activities and ventures of the
underground Socialists in those
days is to learn the true meaning
of operating ‘‘underground’’. It
has little relationship to the way
the term is tossed around today
in Vancouver. . .

Working at night with bundles
of literature strapped around his
body, crossing borders under the
eye of the Czarist gendarme,
making his escape to Finland,
then to Sweden with the police
hot on the trail of all
revolutionaries, Stelp’s adven-
tures in the early part of this
century were fraught with the
danger of exile and life imprison-
ment, or the firing squad.

_ When the 1905 uprisings were

crushed, Stelp says many people
said ‘“‘The revolution is dead!”
but Lenin said, ‘“‘The revolution
is not dead!’’ and the
revolutionaries carried on their
tasks, educating, organizing,
risking their freedom. It was not
until 1909 he and other young
Latvians left for America, for as
Stelp says, “‘We had wives and
families to support, and there
was no living for us in Latvia.”

Vancouver, 1911. With wry
humor Stelp recalls that being a
“professional revolutionary’”’
was not a profession that helped
one earn a living in those days.

“You could dig a ditch or go
logging.’ Logging it was.

He helped organize what
became in that decade the
biggest union in Canada, the
Lumber Workers’ Industrial
Union. It was the only Canadian
union affiliated to the Red
International of Labor Unions.

In 1925 he and hundreds of:

other loggers were blacklisted.
Bill Bennett, in his book Builders
of B.C. said of the period: . . .
“The smashing of such a union
(Lumber Workers) became the
first and immediate task of the
lumber barons — thousands of
European immigrants who had
no trade union tradition behind
them were imported; RCMP
stool-pigeons were placed in
every camp to spot the active
union men, and a blacklist, the
most efficient ever known in this
country, was devised.”’

Jules’ brother in Switzerland
during that period sent socialist
literature to the Canadian
Latvians and others from the
Baltic states and they were able
to keep in touch with what was
going on in the new Soviet Russia
following the revolution.

When the first branch of the
Communist Party. (known as the
Worker’s Party) was formed in
192., Jules Stelp was there.
Others he remembers from
those first days of the party were
J. Kavanagh, from the OBU; Bill
Fennett, from the Socialist
Party of Canada; James Clark,

from the Lumberworkers; A. S.-

Wells, from the Federated Labor
Party, and other comrades he
remembers as being named
Lewis, Smith and Hartley.

In 1924, at its third annual
convention, the Workers Party
changed its name to the
Communist Party, and within its
ranks Jules Stelp has been active
through the years. Today he
recalls those early struggles, not
with nostalgia and not with
“those were the days’’ regret,
but with humor and a
remarkable sense of the
continuity of the ups, downs, and
inevitable conclusion of the
struggle.

He views today’s youth with
understanding, but he is not
uncritical. :

There is anarchy amongst

Come Celebrate

CUBA’S NATIONAL HOLIDAY
GARDEN PARTY — JULY 25TH

3882 Yale St., North Burnaby
3 P.M. — ON

Cuban Food — Handicrafts
Adm. $1.75 each

Ausp: Canadian
Cuban Friendship C’ttee

Proceeds to Cuban Blind School

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JULY 23, 1971—PAGE 8

Labor Roundup

No tolls on Airport bridge

Whether it is the heat,
holidays, or just summer
lassitude, the labor scene is
exceptionally quiet right now if
the Vancouver Labor Council
meeting on Tuesday night is any
criterion. Business was
disposed of in less than an hour.

In response to a letter from the
Sea Island and Community Rate-
payers Association council
delegates pledged to everything
possible to keep tolls off the new
airport bridge. Secretary-
treasurer Paddy Neale said
close to 12,000 workers will make
use of the bridge going from Van-
couver, and thousands of Rich
mond workers: come into Van-
couver to their jobs. He said the
idea of tolls and monthly passes
is obsolete and an unfair tax on
workers.

Opal Skillings of the Office and
Technical Employees union said
some 32 office workers who have
been respecting the Sheet metal
workers picket line at Neon
Signs have been unemployed
since May. She urged delegates
to assist in finding them jobs.
They are not eligible for
unemployment insurance.

Strikebreakers from Ontario
and the prairies have been
imported to work in Western
Gypsum’s plant, reported the
delegate from the Gypsum
workers union. Their strike
against the plant in now in its
fifth month, he said, with no
meaningful negotiations taking
place. Although the company
plant in Calgary is working at

. some youth today that will only
bring trouble, he predicts. He
remembers the anarchists
played a disruptive role on his
own youthful days, and he warns
it is a road to nowhere in Canada
just as it was in Europe.

But he is extremely optimistic.
In 10 years, he says, ‘“‘there will
be changes such as we do not
dream today.”’

Some 70-odd years ago the
young Jules Stelp fought for the
future in the land of his birth.

~ Today, at 91, he looks ahead to

the future of a socialist Canada,
the country of his adoption.

half-capacity, the Vancouver

. branch is shipping its products to

Alberta, but because of good
support from the building trades
unions, the company is being hit
fairly hard so far as sales are
concerned.

Labatt’s workers are on the
bricks and Molson brewery
workers are locked out, reported
the delegate from the Brewery
Workers union. Company and
union are not too far apart in
negotiations except for the
expiry date of the contract, the
delegate said. The union wants
the deadline for the contract
expiry to come up in May, ona
two year contract.

The B.C. Federation of
Labor’s annual convention will
be held in the Bayshore Inn
November 15-19. VLC president
Syd Thompson and secretary-
treasurer Paddy Neale along
with a third elected delegate will
represent the council. Frank
Kennedy, Longshoremen’s
union, was nominated, with
more nominations to be heard at
the next council meeting in
August.

* *

Grievous harm is being done to
the labor movement in the name
of Canadian unionism, stated
the B.C. Division of CUPE last
week.

While concurring in the legiti-
mate demands of trade unionists
in this country for Canadian
trade union autonomy, CUPE
secretary Gordon Adamson on
behalf of the union said ‘“‘we do
not consider it to be in the best
interests of Canadian workers
to split and divide the labor
movement as a shortcut to an
independent trade union move
ment.”

Adamson said splits, divisions
and disunity play into the hands
of the employers and present
roadblocks to further gains by
trade unionists in terms of
wages, benefits and working
conditions.

CUPE stated, ‘‘We believe
that Canadian workers should
step up the drive for autonomy
within their international unions
and that stronger demands

should be put on the Carat
Labor Congress to pressils id
national affiliates to gr”,
autonomy to their Ca™

members.”’
***

On August 19 the B.C: i
eration of Labor’s COM ii
for women’s rights W}
second meeting. a.

The committee was set Mi ?
the purpose of orga
women; to fight for ae
equality of opportunil!
employment, equal woe
to encourage a greater Te"
of women within the ae
seeking active leader”
positions, etc. ‘

: ite
The new womens ol
is headed by Lena Kress,
dent of Local 264, IBEW-

It is announced this werd
Robert Simpson, subsidi ob
Simpson-Sears, has bet ij
second largest shareh? ie
National Nursing Home - ai
operates Sandringham
Hospital in Victoria.

S;
pr

o
Employees there havé bee!

strike for 10 months fore qi
above the $1.50 an howl ig
company they are dealiné ih
made a profit of $605,371 milf
and now has raised ? nol
dollars to expand theif
in nursing homes.

: fost
This is the outfit that wate

to pay employees a livin’
* * *

oth
A few weeks ago the met Gi
ing on one of P.A. GaB. og
‘‘make-work’’ schemes wal
press Bowl staged a ee toil
out because there were ®
facilities at the job-site-

eee

This act of protest will oa
terest to employees } ase!
plants and mills along {0°
River which have 2€Y° oof
vided such elementaly
veniences for the workers:

{he

os on
It is a standing joke a hat?
employees in those plan’ ate?
“‘peeled’’ pole is the ¥

comfort. Shades of 1900!

¥

te

skies. Nixon’s “peace’’ outbursts don’t mean any cessation in U.S. massive bombing.

: +. ed ’ ; > we
PREPARING RICE FOR PLANTING, but keep the rifles handy just in case the U.S. bombers come : i