Re

a

‘Have to stop Reaganism’

By JAMES LEECH i
TORONTO — Romesh Chandra, the

hear legendary international peace ac-

tivist, president of the World Peace
Council, greeted the vast growth and in-
fluence of peace forces everywhere,
when he spoke here during the Feb.
24-26 weekend. But he warned of the
tactics of the nuclear blackmailers who
threaten the people of the entire world.

The hard truths of the struggle for
peace and against nuclear catastrophe.
were brought home vividly to peace
workers from many parts of Canada, at a
series of events marking the 35th an-
Niversary of the Canadian Peace Con-
gress and its international counterpart,
the World Peace Council.

The Reverend John Hanly Morgan,

_ Peace Congress president, at a Friday

night public meeting, noted some of the
‘guideposts in the organization’s work.
Both the Canadian and world peace
bodies ‘‘began as responses to the Cold
War, which was announced by Winston

- Churchill at Fulton, Missouri in 1946 and

was formalized into the Truman Doc-
trine in 1947,’’ he recalled.

Millions were ‘“‘profoundly disturb-
ed,’ he said, at the new emphaisis on
arms, ‘‘the arrogant proclamation of a
new imperialism frankly labelled . . . ‘the
American century’.””

Morgan traced briefly the years of
“hard plugging’’ and said that today ‘the
main lie to be exposed is the myth that
there are two superpowers intent on mili-

“tarily dominating the world and are inan

intense arms race trying to outdo each
other.”” He siad that objective history
and UN debates and resolutions show
otherwise.
Reagan Obscurantists
He charged that Reagan and ‘‘a small

“women

Peace power never
So great — Chandra

army of right-wing reactionaries
representing the most militant and
obscurantist elements of American busi-
ness’’ are waging an imperial drive. This
included the brutal invasion of Grenada,
an island of only 110,000 people. Morgan
paid tribute to Trudeau for criticizing this
attack. The PM’s wider peace initiative
was acknowledged as well by Chandra
who had met in Ottawa with Trudeau’s
advisers. %
Karen Talbot, responsible for work
with the U.S. peace forces, on behalf of
World Peace Council headquarters in
Helsinki, noted the vast role of women in
world peace movements. ‘‘Leadership,
boldness and initiative are being taken by
women,”’ she said, citing Greenham
Common in England, Seneca Falls,
N.Y., and Pine Gap, Australia, where

women have consistently fought the nu- .

clear weapons menace — both its manu-
facture and deployment.

“In the USA,” she said, “‘the eco-
nomic impact of the military budget has

PHOTO — JERRY MORSE

-KAREN TALBOT

guilty,’ you are in a blind alley, she
suggested. ‘‘But if the American people
realize, that it is Reagan who has brought
us to the brink of nuclear war, who has

~ cut off negotiations, then they will direct

hit women particularly hard; people .

under the official poverty line are largely
... In manifestations of anti-
Reaganism women are deeply in-
volved.”’ ,

Concern and the Election

She said the demands being made by
the people of the USA for a nuclear
freeze, for preventing deployment of
U.S. missiles in Europe, are living up to
the precedent set at the time of the Viet-
nam war. But she asked: ‘‘Will the
people of the USA be able to turn this
tremendous concern into electing a Con-
gress and Senate that will turn around the
Reagan threat to the world?

‘‘If you support the idea that the Soviet
Union and the USA are equally guilty, or
even that the Soviet Union is only less

the struggles and demands in a direction
that will be most useful.”’

Romesh Chandra, who addressed a
public meeting, a banquet crowd and the
two-day biennial conference of the
Canadian Peace Congress, said that
people sometimes ask: ‘‘What have you
done in the 35 years of the peace move-
ment?” :

‘‘What was learned over those 35 -

years,”’ he said, ‘‘is the oneness of the
struggle.’’ He cited the peace forces’ part
in stopping the Korean and Vietnam
wars, blocking a nuclear outbreak in
Europe, and exposing ‘“‘first strike’’ and
‘‘limited’’ nuclear war ploys.

Struggles Linked

‘‘These 35 years have given people
new power to change this world,” he
said. But he warned that you ‘‘cannot
win in Europe while Africa starves’’;
(about 40,000 children die of starvation
every day) ‘‘and you cannot win in
Africa while Europe is threatened with
nuclear missiles. That is what made Mar-
tin Luther King such a threat to the
establishment — ‘‘he linked the struggle

Peace key issue in

: TORONTO — In his report setting out organizational guide-
lines for the period ahead, Gordon Flowers, executive director
of the Canadian Peace Congress, told that body’s biennial
conference, Feb. 25, that ‘‘the peace question will be the issue
in the coming federal election.”” He reported Congress partici-
pation in the Peace Petition Caravan Campaign, but said that
Canada’ Ss oldest and most continuous peace organization must
continue to build community groups.

Over the two-day meet, which also marked the Congress’
35th anniversary, the 55 delegates heard reports from five of its
provincial organizations, and from Eduard Sloan, president of
the Conseil Quebecois de la Paix, who led a three-person
delegation. Ten of the Congress’ councils were represented,
as were 10 affiliated organizations; observers included six

__, from the United Electrical workers.

Included in Flowers’ report was the information that there
are now 1,000 peace organizations in Canada; and that 54
Canadian communities have now declared themselves Nuc-
lear Weapons-Free Zones.

Among several resolutions dealt with were two dealing with
the Cruise tests in Canada and deployment of U.S. missiles in
western Europe. The first expressed the support of the Peace
Congress for its councils in Alberta and Saskatchewan in their
efforts to protest Cruise testing in the Cold Lake/Primrose
Lake area on the provincial borders. The second urged that

“Canadians be called upon to make every effort to bring about

the withdrawal of these weapons from Europe « . . consented
to by certain Europe governments against the will of the
majority of their people.”’ It charged that this ‘‘torpedoed the

Geneva negotiations and initiated an unprecedented escala-

”

tion of the arms race ...
~ Other resolutions condemned the U.S. threat to self-deter-
mination, security — and world peace; supported the UAW
position on peaceful production; and called for the withdrawal

Elected to lead Peace Congress: Michael Korol (left) vice-
president and Dr. John Morgan, president. Gordon Flowers is
executive director.

of the current U.S. ambassador for overstepping diplomatic

immunity in his public falsification of the balance of arms.
Besides greetings from affiliated organizations such as the

United Jewish People’s Order, Association of United Ukrai-

nian Canadians and the Finnish Organization of Canada, there —

came support and solidarity messages from peace organiza-
tions as far afield as Israel, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and
the USSR. Similar greetings came from peace organizations in
Guyana, Hungary, German Democratic Republic, Japan and
Romania.

election —

TRIBUNE PHOTOS —JAMES LEECH

ANDRA

ROMESH CH.

against the Vietnam war with jobs and
peace.”’ (Chandra, a native of India, also
heads the UN Committee on Apartheid
and Racism.)

He warned that “‘there is an aim today
to divide and misdirect the peace move-
ment.’’ But, answering the splitters’
argument, he stated: ‘“‘The reason we
oppose the deployment of the new U.S.
missiles in western Europe is not be-
cause it (Pershing II — editor) can reach
the Soviet Union in five minutes, but be-
cause if they are used, the world will be
destroyed. The question of deployment
of the missiles is a world-wide problem.

“We must stop deployment of nuclear

missiles,’’ Chandra said, and to do that
“‘we must stop Reaganism — from con-
trolling the world, from having arms
everywhere, from threatening
sovereignty everywhere.
“Tt is deceiving the world,”’ he said, ‘‘to
demand a freeze by the United States
and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union
accepted the freeze at the time of the UN
Special Session on Disarmament. It is
the USA that has refused the freeze!”’

1,800 U.S. Bases

While the speakers all exposed the
U.S. administration of Ronald Reagan as

‘the source of the nuclear war danger, it

was Morgan, a Canadian of U.S. origin,
who looked to the U.S. people for a deci-
sive part in ending that threat.

‘If you look at a map of the planet,”’
he said, ‘‘and put a mark for every spot
where we know some 1,800 U.S. bases
exist and add to that the floating bases of
surface and submarine craft, and then
draw a line from each base to Wash-
ington, D.C. you have before you a giant
deadly web embracing the world, each
filament of which can trigger a nuclear
holocaust, and at the centre of which is
the fat spider of military-industrial-
financial imperialism, feeding on its own
and the world’s people as on so many
insects.

“‘We the people have not come all this
way in history to be destroyed by the last
of the empires; the working people of the
United States itself, have not given
themselves in labor all these decades to
become the spider’s final meal!’ he
stated.

He expressed solidarity with the U.S.
peace movement — and “all the bet-
rayed, progressive and decent con-
servative men and women who are appal-
led at where their country has been taken
... who are determined to turn the 1984
presidential election into a victory for
peace, jobs, and social ethics instead of
Reaganite war, unemployment, racism,
and chauvinism.”’ :

In Toronto, Rogers Cable, Channel 10
will be showing the public meeting at
which Chandra, Talbot and Morgan
spoke, Tues., Mar. 20 (7:30 p.m.) and Fri.
Mar. 23 (2 p.m.). =

eS

J

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 14, 1984 e 7