THE NATION © ab cena enter et NRA ET Riel TOS a aa Ras oo PANE TE Bs otek LPP held own, but CCF vote cut 5,000 in Welland byelection ik is clear that all the frantic war propaganda, red- baiting and intimidation has failed to shake the will of the conscious element of the working people and farmers of Welland County in their desire for peace.” = This was the comment made by Mel D ig, Labor-Pro- gressive candidate in) Welland federal yelection, on results of the balloting on October 16, in which the LPP held its vote while the CCF vote was cut by more than 5,000. : : The seat, held for a decade by the late Hon. Humph- rey Mitchell, was retained for Liberals by Dr. W. H. McMillan, who polled 19,352 votes. Sam Hughes (PC) polleq 13,037 votes, Melvin Swart ((CCF), 5,985, and Mel Doig, 1683. : An LPP national executive statement said: The 1,683 votes received by Mel Doig, LPP candidate in the Wellington County by-election, in view of a 20 percent less overall vote, and in the light of the in- creased attacks upon) the party and leftwing movement, shows that the party ‘more than held its own. The LPP candidate alone offered a genuine alterna- ‘ive to the other three war parties. The LPP’s clear program of ‘People’s: Welfare, not Warfaré”; its radio broadcasts, advertisements and leaflets, distributed, in many of the plants and homes of the consituency, were on the whole well received. Many people understood that Mel Doig was the only peace candidate. They show- 2d strong interest, but long months of poisonous propa- ganda, accelerated by, the Korean war; confusion and intimidation,, held many back from’ voting LPP. The fact that the party more than maintained its percentage of the vote in such circumstances is important. _ It is deeply significant that all through the campaign, Physician, heal thyself “y AM NOT a hatchet man,” Mr. Berg said. “‘I came here as a physician to advise.”—Carl Berg, vice-president and general organizer of the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada, quoted in the Vancouver Sun, October 24, on his mission in Vancouver to oust officials of Civic Employees Union (Outside Workers), Local 28. neither Liberal, Tory nor COF candidate or their leaders dared to expose their real war program. The catastrophic loss in votes for the CCF (from 11,584 last year, to 5,958) reflects a deep-going crisis in CCF ranks—created by their shameful support of the government war pro- gram, The electors have lost confidence in the CCF. They recognize that its voice igs not that of labor and the people. They refuse to be impressed by the “price controls” smoke screen by which the CCF seeks to cover up its support of Yankee imperialism and the St. Laur- ent government war policy. Not only did far fewer workers vote CCF, but many disgusted by the union-raid- ing tactics of CCF right-wing leaders did not vote. The loss in CCF votes is a repudiation by the workers of the shameful charge by E. B. Jolliffe of “dirty” unions in referring to militant unions in the Peninsula. LPP COLUMN % AT any given moment there are two, oF six, or ump- 4 teen things that have “got to be done.” Your agenda—that of the club meeting or club executive, or Party committee, or of the ‘individual Party worker —loudly bears witness to the pressing multiplicity of ‘ needs and tasks. bi : This fact can bring a variety of results: soe One is a meeting that proceeds something like this: There are eleven points on the agenda. The order in which they appear is largely a matter of chance. The agenda is “organ- ized” only to the same extent as -a sack of potatoes. Any one point §@ is as important as any other, it doesn’t mattter which is finished first. While they. have slightly different shapes and sizes and one spud may take a bit longer to peel than another, it’s just a matter of time, and we'll) work our way through it. aah But will we? The rotation of the earth enters the picture at this point. There is day and night. [There is need to get some sleep. There is the point at which endurance of an unplanned, unorganized agewmda turns into ‘an exasperated demand that we come to a conclusion. Since people have to get up early to work, maybe what we need is a definite decision About time of adjournment? eae ee a a. Maybe. But more important by far is the need for — — leadership. _ WAN ae The same problem is posed in the case of the active individual Party worker, whether rank and file member of the club or Party leader or organizer. Your agenda includes a quantity of items. ‘This may lead to running hither and yon at great speed, in a lather of impatience ad frustration, at the mercy of unforseen phone calls and overlooked appoint- ments; or to total immobility, and paralysis of total indecision about where to begin or what to do next. ; Most. of us experience both, in some degree, a one time or another. : : i ; All of us have been at meetings where the peeling” approach prevailed. — : Don’t get me geek on amr Spuds do have to be peeled. : ; But our job also includes the planting ae 1 picking, the ploughing and the clearing abo ; harvesting and processing the crop, raising et ui ; ings on the land, defending all of it against pes' and plague of enemies, and in the near future, Taping, a new society + -- “spud va of leadership based on a political discussion of the Par'ty’s work. were written, not to substitute for your agenda, but By STANLEY RYERSON So the question, “What is to be done?” at any given moment isn’t so simple. We need to know where we're going—and not just “in general.” We have to have a political perspective, a clear sense of direction. And this thas to be: concrete, in terms of here and now and us. wae \ . This is given us by the line of the Party. : Our agenda needs to be planned, whether it’s the agenda for a day or a month or a meeting. And the soul of the plan, so to speak, must be the line of the Party. k We cant do everything at once. Collectively, as an organized movement, we can do several things’ at once. But the way they relate to each other, and reinforce each other, must as far as possible be con- sciously directed, and.at all times striven for as part of the fight for the line of the Party. Our week’s work needs to be thought out, in rough outline at Jeast, in the light of policy. What are the main things, and what is secondary? Likewise with the club meeting described above. What it lacked was a prior planning by the executive, Here priorities could have been decided on, a rough division of time allotted, and some of the eleven items taken off, to be handled outside of the actual meeting. “But this is elementary!” you may exclaim. “Why - does he bother us with such trivial matters?” I make no apology. Of the last three club meetings I’ve attended, in three different centers, two ,suffered from just this’ ~ malady, of easy-going reliance on spontaneity: start the ball rolling and it’ll look after itself, so to speak. Certainly, you can’t (and mustn’t try to) have every- thing cut and dried, or a plan so rigid and “perfec- tionist” that there is no allowance for life and the new that thrusts upon us. We are political fighters, not fossils. But our political fighting.in many places falls short because it isn’t political enough. Check over your agenda or plan of work with these items in the October Nationa] Affairs Monthly: The Job This Month; Editorial; Month in Review. They to help give a political frame of reference for its preparation. : ‘ The first thing in the “anatomy. of leadership” is vision: seeing where one is going or needs to go, in . order to be able to fight to get there. — ° Other matters having to do with the make-up and substance of leadership (and this is the mission of all ‘Communists, without exception) I shall come back to in this column in the next few issues. r LABOR FOCUS By J. B. SALSBERG Attlee suggestive of Chamberlain WAS SHOCKED to read that the British government erefused visas to eight leading members of the pre- paratory commission for the Second World Peace Con- gress to be ‘held next month at Sheffield, England. I soon realized that my shock was due to the terrifying , Similiarity between the action of the Attlee “labor gov- ernment; at this crucial moment of world history and the action of the Tory government of the late Neville Chamberlain during a similar crisis in . world affairs. Could it be that this government of right-wing socialists is’ pursuing the same tragic policy which the arch- tory regime of Chamberlain followed? And if so, are we not exposed to the same horrifying consequences which followed Neville -Chamberlain’s aca tion? Let me tell you of the experience with the Chamberlain government to which I refer. . : ’ It was the summer of 1939—the ‘eve of the Second World War. A great crusade was on to achieve labor and people’s unity to save the peace of the world and to stop the fascist powers. Chamberlain had sold Czechoslovakia to Hitler. Cham- berlain had rejected the Soviet proposal for a security .pact—an eleventh-hour attempt on the part of the USSR to form a military alliance which Hitler would not dare challenge and thus save Europe and the world from war. Chamberlain then sent a third-rate diplomat without | authority to Moscow while personally engaged in man- euvers to have Hitler turn his military machine against . the Soviet Union. It was in those fateful months that a world organization, known as the League Against Racism and Fascism, called a conference in London for the middle of July, 1939. . ‘ Lest anyone think the body was “Communist-domin- ated” I haste to state that outstanding bourgeois per- sonalities were among the leaders of the conference. Lady Reading headed the British section and Baron Rothschild was one of the leaders of the French section. It was my good fortune to be selected by a fairly large group of organizations in Toronto to represent them at the London meeting. To my surpise, on arrival I was informed that the conference was postponed until September. The reason was that the world conference had to be moved from London to Paris and additional time was required to make the new arrangements in France. Why was it necessary to move the meeting? Because Prime minister Chamberlain called Lady Reading and asked her to cancel the anti-fascist meeting in London. The “holding of such a conference on British soil would embarass the British government since it would displease a friendly power . . .” he said. I need — hardly tell you that “the friendly power” which might have been offended was the Hitler government. Nor need I belabor the fact that the planned world meeting against fascism and racism never took place. Hitler Jaunched his war a few weeks before the new date fixed for Paris. © . When I read of Attlee’s refusal to grant visas to eight leaders of the present world peace movement, I was pain- fully reminded of the experience of 1939. Where the eight excluded, world-famous personalities, all Commun- ists? Of course they weren’t. Even if they were and their mission being one of peace, would a “Labor gov- ernment” be justified in barring them from London where they were to meet with some of the greatest figures of science, letters and labor in Britain to plan for the meeting to which represenatives from every part of the world were to come in order to advance the cause of peace? Of course not. ’ The facts are that among the eight refused visas by Attlee and Bevin were Pietro Nenni, leader of the Italian Socialist party, Professor Donini, Rev. J. Fletcher, Pro- fessor of Theology at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Deputy de la Vigerie, leader of the Christian-Progressive - party of France. Why then were these men barred from Britain? Was it because Attlee feared it might displease “9, friendly power’—the Truman government of the U.S., busily engaged in murderous aggression against Korea? I am very much afraid that the comparison between Attlee’s outrageous action at present and that of Cham- berlain is most apt. ‘ Today it is not an isolated USSR which actively fights © for peace. Today it is the USSR, plus the People’s De- mocracies, plus the great People’s Republic of China, plus the embattled freedom fighters in a whole number of colonial countries, plus the over 400 millions who signed the Stockholm peace petition. The world peace front is incomparably greater and stronger than it has ever been in the history of mankind. , : oS No, it need not happen again. And we must do every- thing in our power that it shall not happen again. There is so much that we can do. We can get tens of thousands ‘of additional signatures to the peace petition in Canada. We can win tens of thousands of trade unionists for per- sonal participation in the election of trade union delegates ’ to represent Canadian labor at the Second World Peace Congress. We can also do a great deal to make sure © that the Congress takes place in Britain as planned. Resolutions protesting Attlee’s ban on the eight world peace leaders can be adopted by local unions and for- warded to the British High Commissioner in Ottawa. Trade union leaders and trade union members can and should send such protests individually in their own name. _ All that will help to advance the world-wide battle for peace. PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 27, 1950 — PAGE 9