S h 0 rt J a b GS sc

The balance sheet

T is customary, at the end of a year or the beginning

of a new year, to take stock of the important events
that have helped us to bear up under the whiplash of
fortune during the twelve months just gone.

The year 1947 opened with the CMA in the saddle
in the legislature at Victoria. They intended to force
their will upon the workers of B.C. in the guise of the
anti-labor legislation which has become notorious
throughout Canada as “Bill 39.”

We have to give them credit for making a good
try. But they calculated without the workers of B.C.
The way to defeat such legislation is to break every
provision of the law in the same way as Sam Gompers
used to advise the AFL that the only way to defeat in-
junctions is to break them.

And that is precisely what the workers of this
province proceeded to do. Against the provisions of this
alleged labor law, the IWA took a strike vote without
government supervision. The boss loggers, and their
henchmen on the air, roared themselves blue in the face
about this flouting of the law, but the solidity of that
vote was enough to convince them that resistance to
the men’s demands on their part would be a _ losing
game and the loggers and sawmillmen got a 15 cents
an hour increase across the board—without the help
of Bill 39.

When the government thought to use the penal
clauses of the bill against the Nanaimo laundry workers
and the steel workers, they were compelled to draw in
their horns; a one-dollar fine at Nanaimo and with-
drawal of the changes in the other case was a come-

down from the blood-and-thunder utterances about how
the law would have to be enforced.

All in all, the workers of B.C. made a laughing
stock of Bill 39. They did it by carrying on as if Bill 39
had never existed. They struck work as they always
had; they picketed as they always had where a strike
was in progress.

It would be impossible to write of what B.C. labor
did in the past year without taking some note of the
picket lines against 8-cent candy bars which started in
Ladysmith or Cowichan on Vancouver Island and swept
across Canada and the United States.

Death cargo halted

[OAR the end of the year another picket line
flashed on the world scene. A ship intending to
load munitions and planes for the murder of innocent
Chinese people by Chiang Kai-shek’s reactionary gov-
ernment was picketed by Vancouver workers in one of
the most successful picket lines ever established in B.C.
This picket line not only prevented the war material
being shipped to China, but it exposed some of the
leaders of Canadian labor in their true colors. That
picket line scored a glorious victory. An alibi was found
for the Chinese custom of “saving face” in the explan-
ation that the ship’s charter had run out. But it was
the picket line that stopped her in spite of ill-friends of
the Chinese people.

If some people, too, who boast -about what friends
they are to the workingclass, had got out and done
a little more for Effie Jones, mayor of East Vancouver.
she would now be locking horns with the Public Utili-

UN

ties Commission over the matter of the 10-cent street
car fare, about which Mayor Charles Jones passed his
“sacred word of honor,’ not our word of honor, but his.

At the beginning of the year Vancouver made a
most egregious blunder in the choice of a mayor, Gerry
McGeer, who did nothing for the wages he drew except
disorganize the police force. This disorganization has
been so successful that among Mulligan’s policemen,
one was arrested for beating up an innocent civilian
on the street and got six months in jail. The police are
so alert that two kids who broke out of Okalla prison,
came into Vancouver and stole a car out of the police
garage on Cordova, to be picked up later in Dalles,
Oregon. On another occasion the hurry-up wagon was
left on Cordova while the operator went inside to do
some business; when he came out it was gone and was
found later that night in another part of town. The
latest exploit, however, of Mulligan’s cops is the most
serious for one of them has been convicted of theft
in the east end of the city. This is all that Gerry Me-
Geer did for the city. Charles Jones will not do much
more. This year we’ve got to make Effie Jones mayor
of all Vancouver.

5

Truman makes it clear
that profits is aim

By GEORGE LOHR :

SAN FRANCISCO — Press agencies reported recently
that only 24 representatives were present in the House and
12 senators “wandered about the chamber’ while President
Truman’s Marshall Plan message was being read to these

two bodies.

I guess the rest of them just
couldn’t bring themselves to lis-
ten to the reading of this pon-
derous and repetitious document.

Furthermore, it also shed very
little light on just what these
European nations will receive
under the proposed $17 billion
program.

But for all that, the message
was nevertheless an important
foreign policy declaration. It went
much further in tipping*the hand
of the big business crowd than
did Secretary of State George
Marshall’s speech at Harvard last
June which initiated the Marshall
Plan discussions.

At that time Marshall said
that U.S. aid is not aimed against
any doctrine or country but
against hunger and starvation.

President Truman has made it
clear that the program has the
objective of saving the “civiliza-
tion in which the American way
of life is rooted’—namely the
free enterprise system with its
exploitation of the poor and profits
for the rich. :

Truman’s message. also
abounded with red-baiting attacks
and phrases about the alleged
threat of communism to free in-
stitutions.

Despite claims that

previous

the Marshall Plan was a pure and

S

\

Greetings...

to all
MEMBERS

from the

MARITIME CLUB LPP

FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 1948

simple aid progrm, the message
admitted that it was “much more
than a commercial operation.”

“Tt represents a major. seg-
ment of our foreign policy” and
“day in and day out its opera-
tions will affect and be affected

by foreign policy judgments,”
Truman said.
“This program,” the message

continued, “will affect our rela-
tionship with them (the partic-
ipating nations) in matters far
beyond the outline of the _ pro-
gram itself.”

This is a confirmation of the
evaluation of the Marshall Plan
which progressives have been
making right along.

It can mean nothing but the
use of dollars as a political club
to force the people of Europe
into a pattern of life designed
for them by those who will stop
at nothing to perpetuate the profit
system.

- One of the key objective in
this general scheme is the main-
tenance of a free enterprise
Western Germany.

It was in line with this that
the President’s message includ-
ed that area among the Marshall
Plan countries.

It spoke of the need of using
the industrial capacity of West-
ern Germany for the economic
recovery of Europe and men-
tioned especially the Ruhr.

There can be no objection to
such use for such-a purpose —
if that really were the purpose
of the Marshall Plan.

V. M. Molotov of the Soviet
Union proposed at the Big Four
Foreign Ministers council at Lon-
don that German production be
raised. He charged that the de-
velopment of industry in the
British-U.S. zone was being de-
liberately retarded.

The inclusion of Western Ger-
many in the Marshall Plan is not
for the purpose of developing
peaceful industries, owned by the
people, which could make tre-
mendous contributions to the
building of a prosperous Europe.

It has, instead, the objective
of preserving the free enterprise
nature of these Nazi monopolies.
They are to serve as arsenals in
the anti-Soviet war which the
architects of the Marshall Plan
have as their ultimate objective.

Chinese youth
cables ‘thanks’

Inspired by the solidarity
shown in the picketing of the
munitions’ ship SS Colima and
the growing resistance across
Canada against the shipment of
munitions to Chiang Kai-shek,
the Vancouver office of the
National Federation of Labor
Youth received the following
cable from China last week:

“The democratic youth of
China extends thanks and greet-
ings to the young workers and
students of Canada for their
heroic efforts in preventing
transportation of airplanes and
munitions to Chiang Kai-shek.”

The cable is signed by Chen
Chai Kang, for the Youth Asso-
ciation of liberated China.

Lawson gets CCL
position in city

Perey Lawson, secretary of the
Nanaimo local of the United Mine
Workers, has been appointed a
Canadian Congress of -Labor or-
ganizer in Vancouver, Dan Rad-
ford, CCL regional director, -an-
nounced this week. He was to be-
gin his new duties January 1.

In the UMWA local election held
to fill the vacancy created by
Lawson's appointment, George
Bryce, recording secretary, was
stepped up to secretary and A.
Aiken was elected recording se-
cretary.

Hearts bleed for
nazi criminals

Two Southern gentlemen, Reps.
Rankin and Cox, teamed up in
the House November 28, to make
a “pity the poor Nazis” speech
and wound up not only by com-
paring Nazi war leaders to Jef-
ferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and
other Confederate Civil War
leaders, but also by attacking U.
S. policy in Germany as a “satur-
nalia of persecution” and a “dis-
grace.”

Assailing the war crimes trial
of 22 Farben leaders and of Nazi
military officials who are charged
with atrocities and crimes against
humanity, Rankin declared they
were being persecuted by “a racial
minority” (guess who?).

American policy towards these
Germans and the denazification
program “might as well have been
dictated by Stalin himself,’ Cox
declared. Rankin said the time
had come “to stop these disgrace-
ful proceedings at Nuernberg.” —

Canadian economy
tied to Wall Street-UE

“Canada can expand its production and job opportunities
without being tied to the Marshall Plan,” is what the United
Electrical workers union says in effect in a letter forwarded
to Hon. C. D. Howe by the union president, C. S. Jackson,

The letter tells the minister
that future plans and the current
attempts to offset the difficulties
of the dollar crisis should be
discussed with the unions affected
before any finality is reached on
national policy.

Jackson _ stresses that the
new excise tax restricting pur-
chases of commodities manufac-
tured by members of his union
are excessive, and limit any im-
provement in the standard of liv-
ing of the Canadian people —
which is a stated policy of the
federal government.

Four points are listed as head-
ings of the questions on which
the union finds disagreement with
the government arising from its
present tax policy. These are: the
nature of the dollar crisis; bal-
ancing of Canadian and U.S. dol-
lars within the electrical industry;
the exceptionally small drain of
U.S. dollars (attributable to this
industry) in comparison to the

importance of the industry in

Canada; and the effects on the
nation’s economy of present limi-
tation of Canadian trade abroad
to the confines spelled out in the
Marshall Plan.

The union president charges
that the Marshall Plar is being
accepted by Canadian govern-
ment leaders as the basic policy
of government and followed ex-
plicitly on the insistence of cer-
tain U.S. interests.

Instead of developing an inde-
pendent Canadian policy, the
union charges that the govern-
ment has made a fundamental
error “in tieing our economy to
the dictates of American for-
eign policy.”

As an alternative to the limita-
tion of the Marshall Plan, the
UE-CIO appeals to the Minister
of -Reconstruction for a “wholly
Canadian plan of full aid to the
peoples of Europe and Asia based
upon Canadian credits and loans.”

Firing of film

‘anti-Semitic’

HOLLY WOOD —Ad¢drian

men
victory

Scott and Edward Dmytryk,

producer and director of the film Crossfire, have assailed their
dismissal by RKO-Radio Pictures as a triumph for anti-

Semitism.

The two were cited for con-
tempt of Congress for challeng-
ing the right of the House un-
American Committee to question
them on their political beliefs.

“We have received our dismissal
notices from RKO,” they said.
“We believe that the courts will
uphold our stand on principle,
which we now reaffirm.

“As a footnote to the perver-
sion of justice, history will record
the temporary triumph of John
Rankin of Mississippi, who in the
halls of Congress brought the
citation debates to an end with
a calculated anti-Semitic refer-
ence. History will further record
that a great many members of
Congress, to their everlasting
shame, laughed and applauded.

“We, the producer and director
of Crossfire, a picture which op-
poses the degrading practice of
anti-Semitism, feel that Crossfire

will stand as a testament of our

Americanism after
Thomas are dead.”

Rankin and

Happy
New Year

to

Everyone
*

W. HARMAN |
122 Hastings St..é,

4

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 5