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