Rage Four

B.C. WoRKERS NEWS

Published Weekly by
THE PROLETARIAN PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
Room 10, 163 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C.
Telephone: Trinity 2019
@Qney Wear == $7.80 Shite Yee —— $1.00
Three Months —— -50 Single Copy ——
Make All Checks Payable to the B.C. WORKERS’ NEWS
Gend All Copy and Manuscript to the Chairman of the Edoitorial Board.
Send All Montes and Letters Pertaining to Advertising and Circulation to the
Business Manager.

Vancouver, B.C., Friday, March 12, 1937

Sit Down on the Hepburns

Ale strike wave which has been sweeping the United States
and bringing such gains to the organized and other workers
hhas spread to Canada, esusing alarm and an intensification of
class ferocity in the ranks of the rich employers and their goy-
ernment hirelings.

The exploiters of the workers have dug into their literary
garbage cans and hauled out the good old terms and phrases of
antilabor propaganda. The press is filled with denuneation of
“foreign agitators’ and such tripe. What is giving them goose-
flesh and causing them to reach for their weapons is the new
weapon introduced by the workers in their struggle for decent
wages, the right to organize and collective bargaining. This
weapon is the “sit-down” or “34in” strike, and it has proved to be
a mighty one.

Already capitalist law is being invoked. For workers to stay
at the place of worl: is “trespassing.” That is, while they are
making profit for the boss their presence at or in the place ot
work is lawful, but the moment they cease making prots for
him it becomes a crime.

The sit-down strike has brought the giant General Motors
Corporation to terms, secured improved wages for the men im its
employ. Steel, rubber, and other mass production corporations

aye granted imereases 1n wages and collective bargaining, not
because of change of heart, but because of the organizing activity
of the Committee for Industrial Oreanization and the sit-down
strike. :

Tn Ontario the workers in many localities have adopted the
sit-down strike with marked success. The employers, in their
endeavors to stop the use of this new and tremendously effective
weapon of the workers have resorted to a degree of lawlessness
and terror as even the notorious General Motors did not adopt.

In Sarnia, where the workers in a factory were conducting a
peaceful sit-down strike the company scoured the underworld,
recruiting gangsters, pimps and dope fiends, armed them with
death-dealing clubs and other weapons and set them upon the
strikers while the police looked on and shouted encouragement
to the thugs. And when the attack was over and scores of strikers
_eritically wounded, one striker suffering a broken spine, the police
acted—by arresting every <triker they could lay their hands on.

This flouting and violation of the laws of the land and of all
decency and humanity was endorsed by Premier Hepburn, who
says his government will not tolerate sit-down strikes and rants
against ‘professional agitators from the United States.”

The gauntlet thrown down by Hepburn will be taken up-
Tn fact the gauntlet has been thrown down by the workers, who
are determined to get enough out of the swollen and ever in-
creasing profit of Canada’s 50 financial and industrial buccaneers
to bring their wages up to a point to ensure an existence above
the borderline of hunger and priyation.

Hepburn’s windy threat will avail neither him nor his
masters nothing. The sit-down strike is here to stay, and under
the leadership of the GLO the workers in industry will effect
such powerful organization as will make the new form of strike
ever more effective.

a a)

Assist McDonald’s Family

EB campaign to raise funds to assist the wife and family of

the late Alderman TL. D. McDonald which has been initiated

by the Renfrew Improvement Association is one that should have
the support of all generous and fair-minded people.

The late alderman was 2 sympathetic man who was touched
deeply by the suffering of others. And he did not confine himself
to extending sympathy only; out of his slender resources he gave
generously to relieve the distress of those whose plight was brought
¢o his attention. It was on such a mission, while ill, that he sub-
jected himself to exposure which agerayated his illness and
caused his death. In his fight for the underprivileged poor he
gave scanty thought to the accumulation of worldly goods. <All
who admired the late alderman for his civic record and human
qualities should lend their full support to the campaign for funds
to make the road ahead a little smoother for his bereaved family.

a)

The London Elections

SMASHING blow to the reactionary anti-unity leadership
of the British Labor Party and a matter of encouragement
to the newly-established united front of the Communist Party,
Independent Labor Party and the Socialist League, was the
result of the recent London municipal elections in which the,
Labor Party not only retained office but made gains.

The Communist Party gave its support to the candidates
of the Labor Party, and despite the cringing of Morrison ef al.
who feared Communist support would lose more votes than it
svould gain, and disclaimed any connection with the CP, it is
now conceded that the reverse was the fact.

Proof of this is seen in the success of the Labor Party candi-
date Strauss, a staunch and open advocate of a united front with
the OP, who accepted Communist support gladly and inereased
his vote over the previous election to a greater degree than did
any other Labor Party candidate.

What proved true in France and Spain is proving true in
Great Britain, and by the same token will prove true in Canada

BG. WORKER S* News

March 12, 193%

Tn Memory of Jobn O7 Sullivan

HE revolutionary moyement, and the labor movement
: generally, sufiered a grievous Joss in the death in
Galeary a few days ago of John O’Sullivan, who all his
life had been in the front ranks of those struggling against
oppression and exploitation. ,

While yet a youth he emigrated to Ganada from Ire.
land, that land which has suffered and bled at the hands

- of British imperialism and the Irish Jandlords and eapi-
talists in leasue with it. In this country, to which he
had been lured by lying promises, as a coal miner in the
Drumbeller valley, in the Crows’ Nest Pass, and in other
eoalfields of Alberta and other provinces, he experienced
the effects of capitalist rule and robbery, of the exploita-
tion by the mining companies. the brutalities of their
strikebreaking provineial and Mounted Police, and the
vicious workings ot their class courts.

In the struggles of the workers tor living wages and
decent conditions he was always in the front line, un-
daunted, unswerying and unafraid: and for his loyal
service to lis class he endured several terms of im-
prisonment.

For many years he was a member of the Socialist

SHORT
JABS

oom
By
OL’ BILL
The The BC Collectric
re Sees is a public utility,
orporation- probably so-called

because it finds the publie useful,
certainly not because of its utility
to the public. Ask any of the yic-
tims who have to get home every
evening with the friendly help of
the strap during the ‘rush hours,”
a term introduced into the English
jansuage by the BC Collectric as am
alipi which enables that corporate
incubus to avoid its undertaking to
provide adequate service for the
Vancouver public.

The utilities committee of the

and humor.

he was a distineuished part

Being utterly bankrupt on argu
ments against the United Front and
faving to say something in view of
the mass demand for it within and
without their own part, CCF lead-
ers who are opposed to unity have
fallen back on the old Woodsworth
contention, exploded a hundred
times, that the CCF itself represents
the United Front; even more, they.
claim that it goes beyond a united
front, that is, is a people’s front.
This absurd claim was once more
put forward in an editorial which
appeared in the “Rederationist”’ of
March 4.

Basing itself on this false premise,
the editorial goes on to try to make
out a case against any agreement
or alliance with “outside groups,”
especially the Communist party.
“Unity of the working class is here,”
it proclaims, and cites the showing,
and a very good showing it was—
made by the CCF in the 1933 and
4935 elections as proof of the claim.
But the Social-Democratic lead-
ers of Germany made the same
claim when refusing the united
front with the result that their
party is out of existence today, and
the most brutal brand of fascism is
throttling the German people. And
the German S-D leaders had more
ground for the claim than have
the anti-unity leaders of the CGE;
for in Germany they had the gov-
ernment, whereas the CCF has but a
handful of representatives in the
federal and provinzial parliaments.
THE PEOPLE'S FRONT IS NOT
HERE. How can one speak of the
CCF being the People’s Front and
in the next breath—or line—speak
of “outside groups” in the labor
movement? But the answer given
is that the CCF is a POTENTIAL
people’s front—if only all other
labor parties will dissolve and come
into the CCF.

That those who put forward such
an argument are utterly confused
or are throwing dust into the eyes
of their members and the public is
apparent in the statement:

The CGF is out for unity of ac-
tion of all progressive, forward-

whenever CCF leaders quit trembling oyer an imaginary loss of |
middle class votes and boldly embrace the policy of the united J

front.
a aS)

Where the Money Goes
REMIER PATTULLO is back again from another one of

his innumerable junkets to Ottawa. And this time he brings
back the spondulicks, but not for the benefit of the province.
The $3,000,000 he borrowed and piled onto the provincial debt,
which is now approaching the ¢200 million mark, is to be used
to try to ensure the retum of the Pattullo crowd to the flesh pots
of Victoria by using it to start fake road work, with one dollar’s
worth of road to three dollars’ worth of votes.

Tn. an interview Pattullo endorses the using of $7,000,000
(taken by the federal government from the amount of assistance
hitherto given to the province for relief for the nnemployed) in
British Columbia for military purposes in preparation for an
imperialist war with mass slaughter and mutilation. He en-
dorses this monumental waste, and refuses to give a dime out
of the borrowed $3,000,000 to assist Waneouver to maintain its

looking people who have as their
constant objective ownership of
the means by which the necessi-
ties of life are produced.

But what about the many thou-
sands of progressive people who
have no such objective? There can
pe no people’s front without those
progressives—and one doesn’t have
to have as his objective the social
ownership of the means of wealth
production to be elassified as a
progressive. The Communist pro-
posals for unity include the em-
bracing of all those people in com-
mon struggle against reaction, 2
prerequisite to which is a united
front of such parties as the CCE
and the Communist Party, thence
to a united front of all labor or-
ganizations, and on to a broad
people’s front of all progressive
people.

Tt would be good if all progress-
ive people were in favor of the
social ownership of the. means of
wealth production, but the facts of
life are otherwise, and no amount
of wishful thinking or mere 4a5-

schools in decent condition.

sumption can alter that fact. Those

Party of Canada, and when the split in that organization
oceurred (on the issues of atiliation to the Third (Com-
munist) International) he left it and joined the Com-
munist Party, in which he rose to hieh official position.

Tt was a great honor to know him and to be his ecol-
league and associate, and a great privilege and joy to be
his friend and companion. When the skies were overcast
and the road ahead a rocky one, he neyer lost his superb
courage nor his unfailing cheerfulness and sparkling wit
Te was as warmbearted, as generous, as
izue and steadfast a soldier of the class war as is seldom
met with, and he died as he had lived—with his revo-
lutionary harness cn, his ft
eredit to the class from which he sprung and of which

The Communist Party, the trade unions, and all or-
ewanizations that are opposed to oppression and are fehting
for freedom are the poorer, as they are the sadder, for his
passing. But from the loins of the working-class, out of
the roar and the travail of the class strugele, other John
O’Sullivans are emerging who will carry on the great
struggle to which he dedicated his lite:

He did not live to see and enjoy the fruits-of final
working-class victory in Canada.
and enjoy the victory of socialism in the Soviet Union,
his fatherland in spirit if not by birth. And although
he did not live to see the victory in Canada, we feel sure
that in his last hours, in the silence of a receding slave
world, he heard the great revolutionary waves breaking
upon the capitalist shore, and felt already upon his prole-
tarian brow the breath of the revolutionary moming.

Can A People’s Front Be
Realized Within TheCCF?

ace toward the class foe, a

Some 25,000 people gathered at ine

City Council is going to press for @
probe of the service on the Oak
street, Dunbar and West Forty-first
avenue lines. If there is a probe,
everybody in the East and South
should be there to see that service
is provided to Hastings east, Grand-
view, Victoria and Joyce, as well as
Point Grey.

This, however, is mot what we
started out to deal with. A very
| Gommendable move has been starteé
by the City Council to reduce the
appalling death toll from traffic
accidents. Failure to obserye the
Signals at crossings has resulted in
many appearances in the police
court. In some cases the wrong
people have been soaked.- Several
BG WBlectrie motormen have beer
plastered with five dollar fines for
“crashing the red light.”

siatute of Alexander Sergeyevich
- Pushkin en Pushkin Square, Moscow, to celebrate the 100th anni-
versary of the death or Russia's most famous writer.

This is a miscarriage of justice-

OPEN
FORUM |

WE’RE TAKEN
TO TASK

Editor, B.C. Workers’ News.

Sir,—In reference to an article
appearing in your last issue, re al-
Jeged discrimination at Harrison
Mills, I wish to state definitely that
you have been misinformed. Realiz-
ing that such information 1S detri-
mental to organization I request
that a denial of same be printed in
your next issue.

All of us in camp out here know
the workers concerned and are
aware that they had been given
numerous chances while in camp.

In this camp there is a majority
of union membership and 4 func-
tioning grievance committee which
would soon have rectified any at-
tempt at discrimination.

Hoping you will rectify this mis-
take,

But he did live to see

Maztcorsa Bruce.

who belong to and support the CCE
and the Community party, both of
which have that as their objective,
are in a minority. Clearly then, the
conquest of power to realize that
objective is not an immediate ques-
tion. But there are burning prob-
Jems facing the people today—the
menace of fascist growth and ag-

gression, the threat to existing, if They’ re Full oft
limited and precarious, civil and =
democratic rights and privileges, Bright ideas
and the danger of imperialist war. Editor, BC Workers’ News:
Dear Comrade, — Havin= over-

heard Arthur Eyans speaking about
a new name for the BC Workers’
News at the New Age Bookshop and
reading about same in this week's
paper, I will sive my suseested title
and the reason for it.

Tell me, is there a better name
than “United People’s Press” or
“People’s Press’? I say no, because
“neople’ is the accepted address of
all classes of human beings. “Citi-
zen’? has a high-class odor to work-
ers and it is foreign to the farmer.
The same applies to “Worker” with
the city folk, and, of course, “Warm -
er?’ separates classes as well, since |
farmers do not always like being re-
ferred to by their livelihood and en-
joy dressing up and being part of
the people. ‘‘People” certainly strips
us all of our occupational clothes
and puts us in the nude camp of
unity. That is a “bare” fact, so if

Comradely yours,
J. McBiliott.
Camp 203, Harrison Mills, BC.

Are we to! wait until a majority
of the people desire social owner-
ship of the means by which the ne-
eessities of life are produced before
we unite with them on these vital
issues? To do so would objectively
assist reaction by keeping the forc-
es of progress divided while the
forces of reaction are bringing un-
der their banner of reaction all they
can use for their immediate pur-
pose.

Unity does not eall for, nor does
it need, the destruction of any pro-
gressive organization. Yet the anti-
unity leaders of the GCE propose
the liquidation of the Community
party and all other political parties
of labor, that they dissolve and lose
their identity in the CCF and there-
by bring about unity. If we are to
be realistic and practical we must
see that the forces of progress do

“not develop equally. And instead of
pemoaning this fact of hfe, we must
recognize it.

you are any judge of feathers accept
the suit that suits everybody.
Yours comradely,

; C.SIN.

Pp.S.—The same argument applies

in the political field. You want a

united people’s front on 2 Farmer-

Labor ticket. Why not United Peo-

ple’s party (UPF)-

Tf we wait until a majority of the
people desire and are willing to
struggle for- socialism before we
unite, the forces of fascism will be
upon us. Blum and other Socialist
party leaders of France were for a
long time opposed to the united
front with the Communist party,
using similar arguments as the CCF
advances. It was the growing pow-
er and boldness of fascism that
prought him to his senses.

Editor, BC Workers’ News:

Dear Editor— Seeing that the BC
Workers’ News is out for a new
name, and, to be sure, there will be
q lot of crazy proposals as well as
practical ones, I am sending im one
proposal which will most likely
tumble into the stove with the rest

Caballero, too, long held out
against the united front, but finally

| the “dilution” of

The fines are justified but they
should be levied against the com-—
pany. whose running schedules are
so arranged that it is impossible
to make the time if the traffic regu-
jJations are adhered to. In the down-
town areas the loading of two cars
simultaneously at the safety plat-

Book Review

REVOLT ON THE CLYDE—By
William Gallacher, MEP. $2.35.

Liova George, writing

memoirs, described William Gal |the second car to get through be-
lacher as ‘a Communist whose fore the light changes. :
manners were quite perfect and Wevertheless the motormen haye

whose tones were soft, but he left
no doubt to my mind that his was
the most sinister influence.” The
philistine, out of the depths of his
prejudice, is always surprised to’ dis-
cover that Communists have good
manners; and out of the same
prejudice he naturally finds their in-

to pay the fines themselves, the
company management declaring it-
self to be out in the clear. But the
men on the cars must make the
trip in the time allotted or chance
getting fired.

This is a job for the union. Action
BEG to protect the motormen from this
fluence sinister. intolerable situation can come only

Such superficial observations do | from the union. There is no nee@
not begin to touch the richness, to change the traffic regulation
variety or significance of a life like} Which is a good one; it is not neces-
Gallacher’s which is at once a pPro- Sary to deyise ways to enable the
found individual experience and motormen to beat it. The company
symptomatic of that great social must be made to alter its speed-up
transformation of which it is an in- time schedule.
tegral part. : Wight Poe See poet: eed 3

In this autobiography, the Com-| This is Se: per
munist member of Parliament sets 5 cent of the pec-
down with moving lucidity the story Worth Trying. ple of Vancou-
of a Glasgow working-class boy’s ver are not in such a hurry anyway
growth to mature revolutionary and the other 1% have to cool their
Statesmanship. It is a fascinating heels every time the BC Collectric
story as the record of a man, an scrap pile on Main street breaks
important story as the record of down. No matter what the come-
the most adyanced section of the pany time tables call for, no motor-
British labor movement. There are man should take, the responsibility
memorable pictures of working- of ‘crashing the red’ in the interest
Glass life in the slums and docks of of Sir Herbert Holt.
Glasgow and of Gallacher’s early Some years ago, in Glassow, the
experience in the trade union and | railroaders hauling freight and spot-
socialist movements. ing cars on the docks made some

The narrative iS specific, yet demands that the companies Te-
succeeds in conveying the univer- fused to grant. The men were all
sality of the sufferings and aspira- in the same union. They decided to
tions of that social class which is | *U” ‘according to the book.’ One
the motive power of the new social regulation stated that mo train was
order. Gallacher contributes to our to move at a speed in excess of
Imowledge of contemporary history two miles per hour in the dock
in a vivid analysis of the famous area; another that Shunters were
Clyde strike during the war against not to uncouple wagons till trains
Jabor, against had come to a stop- There were
industrial. conscription, high rents | 740% others listed in the rule book
and high living costs. Gallacher issued to them by the Clyde Trust.
himself was chairman of the com-
mittee which led the workers. It
was then that Lloyd George met
the eloquent and able young leader.
In his futile attempt to talk the
workers into submission, the Welsh

After a few hours ‘according to
the book,’ everything was in 2
snarl like the Gordian knot—and
the companies were brought to time,
If the BC Blectric motormen will
SuSSs heed the city traffic regulations, the
politician might well have con- | BC Gollectric speed-up schedules
sidered Gallacher ‘“‘sinister.’’ That | will have to be altered, or ditched.
was the viewpoint of Britain’s gov- * * * *

erning class.

Several years later, Lenin had More Se oe ee
an opposite estimate of Gallacher; | Democracy. of Pascism Seas

he prized the temper of the young
Clyde revolutionary, though he
warmed him that temper was not
enough, that the proletariat needs
to develop its own Statesmen.
Today Gallacher is one of the out-
standing statesmen of the British
working class; hundreds of thou-
sands of workers in Scotland, Engs-
land, Wales and Ireland flock to his
meetings; even his class foes listen
to him with respect in Parliament.
The story he tells in Revolt on
thee Clyde thus becomes not only
a rich personal narrative but one

wear the mask of democracy. The
more that real democratic ideas
take hold of the peoples of the
world, the greater become the hypo
critical pretences of imperialist rule
in extending a share of government!
to subject and colonial races.

In India a few days ago, the firs
election took place under their ney
eonstitution. Heretofore, Indian gov
ermments have been ‘selected,’ Toy
they are elected. Qpen-handed Brit
jsh Imperialism has granted to tha
section” of the Indian people wh

accepted it or face the destruction

of his party together with all dem- of the crazy ones. What about the

“People’s Journal’?

oeratic liberty, at the hands of fas-
cist terror. That the hesitation and = ms
delay of Caballero and his Socialist ae) Oya ec =

BH. O, Haukedahl.

are supposed to be ‘fit’ for it, th

of the most important social docu- | ~~
right to vote.

ments of our times.
(Joseph Freeman in New Books). The population of India at th

last census (1981) was 350 millior

sary bloodshed in Spain 4s well rec-
ognized today by Caballero himself.
But it can and should be said for
him that his splendid work since
then has atonea greatly for his anti- i
unity mista%es in the past.

fellow leaders caused much unneces-
THAIS

Symbol of a tyrants

The situation in Canada and in
BC today demands that all organiz-
ations, whether or not they all want
socialism, should unite on the many
immediate issues upon which they
can find common ground. A united
front of the CCF and the Commu-
nist party would be a tremendous
step forward for the labor move-
ment and for the CCF itself —M.B.

The dreamer has left

The singer who sang

Its treachery 9n high

“The union is the American

way of doing things. The anti-
union, non-union way is the way
of tyranny by the boss, of un-
American despotism over the life
of the worker.’—Pres. Ray Ed-
mundson of United Mine Work-

ers of America, District 12.

Tear down the red and gold of Old Castille,

(Red for the blood of
Gold for the traitors who barter Spain).

For a trench on a mountain side;
Singing, for freedom has died.
Tear down the red and gold that flaunts not

The wind with memories of comrades slain
Defending liberty and Spain.

The peasant, the miner, the poet— :
Upelenched are their fists and high,

If in blood lies the road to freedom———-
For tomorrow they fight and die.

Tear down the shameful red and gold
Upheld by foreign arms. Unfold
The banners of a brighter day.

This way lies democracy. This way!

—MICHAEL O'MARA, ~

the number of voters in the rece
election was 33 million; less tha
one in a hundfed of the populatio
In the Soviet Union at the 1a
election, 92 million yoted out of
population of 170 million, over 90
of the adult population.

The majority of those who d
vote in India, find that their nu
bers are useless in face of the pow
vested in a small group of prince:
agents and hirelings of British DB
perialism. Amongst those who ¢
vote were the thousands
‘detenues’ in the concentrati
eamps of Chittagone and other pai
of Bengal. These camps in ‘den
eratic’ India are no different £r¢
those of Hitler in Nazi Germar
and the Indian liberals incarcerat
in them are not held because
any crime they haye committed, 1
because some official suspects tk
“might commit some politi
crime.” %

WAY

will
children slain;

his dreaming

of freedom—

and taunts

These are some of the differen
‘between democracy in class <
classless society.

in his |forms also makes it impossible for —

keane