parva ieee) SES ST a core averse ee CHEDDI JAGAN OUTLINES AIMS TORONTO — Cheddi Jagan, leader of the People’s Progressive y of Guyana, premier from 1961 to 1964, outlined his party’s Concern for, and clear-cut prop- Osals for, the independent de- Velopment of Guyana, when he dressed a crowd of some 900 here on March 5. . +he audience, many standing | IM the side aisles, included a large | oa of Guyanese now living in ada, Jagan’s address dealt with his j) Party’s contrasting ‘‘non- =| ©0Operation and civil resistance,”’ | NOw replaced by ‘‘critical sup- Port”’ in its relations with the €ople’s National Congress gov- €mment of Forbes Burnham. He Spoke too of Guyana’s relation- Ships in the Caribbean and the World; of his backing for the Stockholm Appeal signature Campaign for disarmament (he is a Member of the presidential com- “Mittee of the World Peace Coun- cil); and of the 25th Congress of © Communist Party of the Soviet Union, from which he had JUSt returned. Wave of Anger Explaining first, why and how the Ppp challenged the Burnham 80vernment, Jagan made these Points: e The 1973 election was ! ©N€ in 1968. The army inter- y Yened, seized thée~ballot boxes and, ‘‘in the process of doing so, } Shot our comrades, killing two of them,” e There was a wave of anger in j the Country; we should have won the election. © The PPP boycotted the parli- ment, having consulted with the ‘Wo other small opposition par- tes, and took the line of confron- tation, e At that time the government had a position which was pro- 'Mperialist in content, and anti- Working class. f €xt, the speaker gave reasons °r his party’s change of tactic: h e During the last year-and-a- walt the government began mak- ae Some moves forward in “omestic and foreign policy. © Some enterprises have been ationalized; the government has al ‘€n an active role in the non- lligned movement, it has recog- peed and developed relations With socialist countries; it has “ganization, SELA (Latin Merican Economic System). ti ® Guyana has broken off rela- “ns with Israel; and in the UN Ur. Jagan scores Sonien this book “The West on Trial”. fraudulent, as was the previous ° J©ined the new Latin American: ‘a political line of unity’ TRIBUNE PHOTO PPP leader Cheddi Jagan speaking in Toronto. voted against the U.S. package ‘deal’? for admitting Vietnam only if the puppet South Korea were admitted, and it voted for the resolution equating Zionism with racism. e After some vacillation, the Guyana Government took a good position on Angola. Eventually it allowed Cuban planes carrying aid to the legitimate Angolan Government, to use Guyanese airfields. Moving Against Imperialism ‘*Some people say: ‘How can you. support such a govern- ment?’’’ Jagan acknowledged. ‘“‘T ook where it came from. It came to, power with the help of the CIA.” True. ‘It is corrupt.’ True. ‘It carries out discrimination.’ True. ‘But,’’ he said, ‘“‘we have to see it in a wider context. He said that the government was moving against imperialism, and ‘‘we have to see imperialisin in this period removing governments, and setting up fascist rule ... “‘Some of our friends will talk about discrimination. Sure we have it in Guyana. They will talk about denial of rights. Sure we have it. But we can speak. We can perform. We can criticize. But in Brazil you can’t talk, you cannot organize, you cannot function. There is no freedom. “This is fascism. And this is what we must be concerned ab- out. Not that we love the PNC regime ..: ‘‘We want imperialism to get the message clearly,’ Jagan said, ‘‘that whatever our .differences are with the PNC, we are not go- ing to.do as they did in 1968 when » they joined with the CIA. We want to give a firm message to imperialism: Hands off! Do not intervene! ‘And if they intervene,” he said amid applause, ‘“‘we will fight like the Vietnamese people, and we will throw them out!” ‘‘Vietnamization’’ Danger The PPP leader accused im- perialism of very conveniently not settling the border dispute (when Guyana was a British col- - ony) in which Venezuela claims two-thirds of Guyana, and Surinam on the other side, loaded with U.S. money, has a claim on 5,000 square miles of Guyana’s territory. ‘On the south,” he said, ‘‘we have Brazil, the sub-imperialism of U.S. imperialism, the police- - man, the gendarme of U.S. im- perialism in Latin America and the Caribbean.”’ 5 On any pretext, he pointed out, the USA could activate one of th- ese neighbors in a ‘*Vietnamiza- tion’’ program of having the local populations kill each other, with the USA the beneficiary. This danger too was behind the PPP decision to change its politi- cal line and to stress the country’s unity. For this reason the PPP calls for a people’s militia instead of an army and a police force of the ruling party. It calls for an end to victimization of the PPP and its supporters in the interests of na- tional unity * Stockholm Appeal Speaking of the priority need for world peace, Jagan said that a new war would mean the destruc- tion of all the gains that the work- ing people have made. ‘**This is why I am interested in peace ...”’ In opting for peaceful co-existence, he said, ‘‘the main consideration is to. stop another war.’’ He referred to the Stoc- kholm Appeal, calling on all coun- tries to reach agreements on dis- armament. ‘‘I would recommend to you that we have everyone here sign it,’ Jagan said. “‘ ... have your friends sign it ...”’ He spoke of the ‘‘emphasis on peaceful co-existence and de- tente,’’ at the Soviet Communist Party congress which he had at- tended. Relating some of the ‘“*tremendous economic strides” of the Soviet Union, Jagan said, ‘we regard it as a shield for our own future, because with the - mighty Soviet Union and the mighty socialist community, we feel confident that we will be safeguarded when we move confidently forward against im- perialism and for socialism to bring a new order to mankind.”’ Before he spoke, Jagan was welcomed in speeches by the As- sociation of Concerned Guyanese, who organized the meeting, represented by the chairman, Peter Jailall and by Gail Teixeira. Other speakers were Jean Vautour, of the Canadian Peace Congress, and John Biz- zell, Metro Toronto chairman of the Communist Party of Canada. The meeting was followed by a ‘lively question period. Correction An incorrect figure in the Tribune article (Feb. 25), dealing with the United Nations Decade for Women, indicated that 32% of working women are members of trade unions. The sentence should have read: Only 22% of working women are organized in the trade union movement (in Canada). By NAN McDONALD JAMES TAYLOR, MINISTER OF COMMUNITY Social Services proposes specific changes to the General Welfare _ Assistance Act, when he says, “‘Mothers of young children will be forced into the job market,”’ as yet another exposure of the cold-blooded Tories in Queen’s Park as they turn their attention to the poor and underprivileged in their attempts to make those in receipt of social assistance bear a further share of the economic crisis that plagues this province. Not content with this callous, unwarranted statement, Mr. Taylor goes on to insult the thousands who are forced onto the ~ rolls of social assistance with such remarks as, ‘“‘we must get them out of their bathrobes’’. This proves without a doubt that Taylor and his kind are far removed from the crying needs of the mothers who are the sole support of their families, and are ‘struggling to provide the bare necessities that the meager pittance of social assistance allows. HE FURTHER MAKES THE INSIDIOUS STATEMENT that the proposed changes are ‘eliminating the area of dis- crimination in terms of sex’’. Pious statements such as this show the policy of the provincial government when it comes to equality of the population in this province. When members of parliament make such dangerous state- ments, one must conclude that the intention is to arouse and excite the misinformed and backward thinking elements in this province with the hope that it will create an angry backlash against the poor and unemployed, whose very existence is threatened and tormented by insensitive browbeaters, such as James Taylor. THE ONTARIO GOVERNMENT would have us believe that recipients of social assistance refused to accept reason- able employment, that the unemployed refuse to work. Delib- erate avoidance of work is not a major problem of the un- employed. A lack of jobs is the major problem. To give an example of a female presser in a cleaning estab- lishment in Hamilton: after 22 years of hard work in sweatshop conditions, and various attempts to organize a trade union, senior employees were Jaid off under the phony pretence that their productive capacity was below. the new. owner’s stan- dards, a female worker having exhausted her unemployment insurance benefits, and having no security of pension rights is now forced onto the rolls of social assistance. FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. According to studies completed by (bourgeois) sociologists, the work ethic of the poor is as good as, if not better than, average. Out of the millions living below the poverty level, 63% are not in receipt of social assistance while unemployment in Ontario has reached the appalling figure of 240,000, excluding mothers of young children. With the latest reports to the Ontario Economic Council pre- dicting that unemployment will rise even further this year, where are the jobs for the unemployed in this province? Tory government policy is to slash vital social services in health care and education and butcher daycare programs that all women are in desperate need of if they have small children. This, after 33 years of Tory rule, is their legacy to the people of Ontario while the multi-national corporations own and con- trol the economy of this rich province. . OUR YOUTH ARE FACED WITH afiuture that is uncertain; pensioners and those on fixed incomes are living in a desperate state of poverty. The government now openly attacks the poor and the unemployed. All this misery as they defend the so- called free enterprize system. There need not be any unemployment, poverty, or inflation. The crisis in Ontario is not the making of the people: it is the crisis of the system of state monopoly capitaliam and their spokesmen in Queen’s Park. The destructive course of the provincial government demands a fightback —a fightback that is developing day by day. The Soviet ideological jour- ‘nal, Kommunist, reported re- cently that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as of Jan. 1, 1975, had 15,300,000 members. The composition of the mem- bership, said the journal, was as follows: workers —41%, collec- tive farmers — 14.4%, em- _Ployees and others — 44.6%. More than two-thirds of Com- munist employees are engin- ' CPSU has 15,300,000 members eers, agronomists, teachers, doctors, workers in science, literature and art. Although the goals of the working class, and its world out- look have now become the goals and world outlook of the whole of the Soviet people, it is pointed out, the working class held, is holding and will continue to~ hold the leading position in soci- ety right up to the disappear- ance of class distinctions. = PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 26, 1976—Page 9