Pafe Two

PECGPLE’S

ABYOCATE

November 12, 1937

The Peoples Advocate
Published Weekly by the
PROLETARIAN PUBLISHING ASSN.

fieem 10, 163 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B:C.

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

Windsor s Prestige

OST Canadians and Britishers have ynade

_allowances and are quite willing to re-
spond to the appeal made by the Duke of
Windsor recently that he be given fair play in
the present tangle of which he is the centre.
Willie Gallagher, British Communist M 2
echoed the sentiment of millions when he
designated the Duke as a private citizen who
had the rviehts and privileges of such,

Patience and loyalty, however, is being
stretched to the limit by news that Edward
gave the Nazi salute to Hitler, that he mixed
in friendly fashion amone those German eireles
which have earned the condemnation of liberal
thought throughout the world.

The now postponed tour of the USA by
the Duke was properly protested by the Amer-
Sean Federation of Labor on the grounds that
the infamous Charles Bedeaux was included in
the party. Millions of American and Cana-
dian industrial workers curse the name of
Bedeaux, a millionaire from royalties obtained
from the speed-ip system that bears his name.

Makine full allowances on the possibility
that the Duke is a catspaw used by Fascism to
further its purposes, he would be well advised
to heed democrats the world over and renounce
Fascist and labor-hatime advisors, thereby re-
gaining his past position of respect among real
fmends.

An Infamous Betrayal

#\WS that the British national government
contemplates a trade agreement between
Britain and Franeo-held Spain, and has ex-
changed commercial attaches adds another
chapter of infamy to the foreign policy of
Stitaim which, in recent months, has been a
sequence of shameful betrayals.

While diplomatic recognition 1s not i-
volved in this relationship, yet this overture
of friendliness to the Fascist butchers ot
Spain’s civilian population should convince all
of the real attitude of the reactionary national
government toward Fascism whether it be 1m
Spain, Germany or Italy.

This development, which is a continuation
of the policy followed by Britain since the
first days of the revolt of the Spanish generals
against the people, is a final attempt to erush
the democrati¢ government of Spain by making
if easier for Hitler and Mussolini to send arms
and thousands of troops to develop the war to
a point where intervention by France or
Britain can be looked upon as danger to world
peace, and is a frantic endeavor to prevent

France from opening her frontiers, a decision
that would quickly end the war in favor of the
loyalists.

But the British people have yet to be reek
oned with, and the storm of resentment which
arose oyer the HoareLayal proposal regarding
fhe rape of Ethiopia, which foreed Hoare to
resien, may well sweep aside the national gov-
ermment which is prepared to officially recog-
nize Franco and his allies.

The cynical old men who are manipulating
British power and influence in the interests ot
a handful of rich capitalists have overplayed
their hand, for the trade agreement with
Franeo can hardly be described as far- seeing
Imperial interests. Hitler and Maissolini are
not going out of Spain so easily and the friend-
ship of France cannot be held by such treach-
erous acts.

Leaying the fate of the national govern:
ment in the hands of an aroused British people,
we in Canada can determine the policy of the
Mackenzie King government on this issue. It
the present uninterrupted shipment of war
material to Portugal which finds its way into
Franco’s camp, if the great stream of serap
iron, lead and nickel continues to flow to Japan,
then there is every reason to fear the King
goyernment, covering itself behind Britain’s
treachery, will deal leeally with Franco. The
readiness of the Canadian government to fit
in with national government policies has been
demonstrated too often in the past.

Next month, all that is best in Canadian life
and traditions will be seen at the national con-
eress of the Canadian League for Peace and
Democracy. One of the most important items
on the agenda will be to voice public opinion on
the foreign policy of Canada. The hundreds
of delegates there will condemn this base action
of the national government and will convey this
in a clear manner to the King government.

It Is Happening Here

7HVILOSE who are apt to regard British tra-

ditions of freedom and democracy as some-
thing separate and apart, inviolate from the
destructive winds of tyranny and oppression ;
who cling’ to the phrase, ‘It can’t happen here,”
to cloak their fear and bewilderment, must
have had a rude shock this week when they read
that Premier Maurice Duplessis, the little Hit-
ler of Quebec, had applied his infamous pad-
lock law to La Clarte, progressive French-Ca-
nadian weekly published in Montreal.

For it is happening here! Under the guise
of combatting “communist influences” Que-
bee’s little tin demagogue is attempting to
crush all progressive opposition to his idea ot a
corporate state. And he is proceeding along
much the same lines as the Nazis in the “free”
city of Danzig, as Dictator Vargas in Brazil
who this week announced the dissolution of all
democratie government in the South American
state. :

The passing of the padlock Jaw was only
Duplessis’ first step im a planned campaign
in which he has the full backing of monopo-
listie interests. Free speech was denied the
delegation from the Spanish government last
year. Only a short while ago Alfred Costes,
French trade union leader and representative

of the Communist party of France at the
eighth national convention of the Communist
party of Canada, was, with Tim Buck, pre-
vented from addressing a public meeting in
Montreal.

There is doubt where Duplessis is headed.
La Clarte is banned while avowedly Fascist or-
gans are allowed to circulate freely. Alfred
Costes is not allowed to appear in public, but
Nazi agents may come and go as they please.

Our Canadian traditions, our British heri-
tage, are not inviolate. They are the traditions
of the people and as such will be preserved
only by the people. We cannot look upon Fas-
eism as something which has descended like
the darkness to dim the lights of Europe, as
something which, while it may oppress others,
ean never oppress Us.

Fascism, like a vampire drunk with the
blood of the people’s martyrs, is even now
raising its head here and it must be fought
now.

Duplessis’ veiled threat to the trade unions
that they must ‘‘clean out their organizations
of undermining communist influences which
would lead to ruin,” is a challenge to Cana-
dian labor as a whole. Infringement of the
democratic rights of only one progressive is
likewise a challenge to all liberals and pro-
eTesslves.

Alberta’s laws aimed at the monopolistic
financial interests have been disallowed by the
Kong government as unconstitutional. With-
out entering upon argument as to the consti-
tutionality of the Alberta Acts, how indubi-
tably unconstitutional is this padlock law ot
the Duplessis government which, carried to a
logical end, is aimed at the complete and abso-
lute destruction of the Constitution !

Those who value democratic freedom as a
hard-won right to be retained only by vigilant
strugele should lose no time in protesting this
latest assault upon that right to the King goy-
ernment. The Civil Liberties Union must have
every support in its campaign to challenge the
constitutionality of this law.

This is not a matter which concerns Quebec
only, but one on which.all Canadian progres-

ives must act to prevent the spread of reaction.

“Unwept, Unhonored and
Unsung’
AMSAY MacDONALD is dead. He died

» as he had lived since his youth, in luxury.
Capitalist politicians from Lloyd George to
Stanley Baldwin to MacKenzie King have
pronounced eulogies upon him, and the capl-
talist papers have given much space to his
eareer which they extol.

In his youth and middle age, MacDonald
was an idealistic, reformist socialist who ever
scorned the teachings of Marx, disdained all
theory, especially revolutionary theory, and
relied more on changing: the hearts of the capi-
talists than on the struggles of the workers to
achieve the socialism of his dreams.

When the world war broke out he at first
opposed it, but when the storm of opposition
to his pacifism broke and his membership in
the golf clubs of the snobocracy was cancelled,
he first advised the workers to let their con-

science be their guide, and later advised them
to enlist and become cannon-bodder for the
ruling rich.

For many years he was a leader of the
Labor Party, and in 1924, and again in 1929
when that party formed the government he
beeame Prime Minister.

As such he acted as any other imperialist
statesman. He carried on a ruthless policy ot
suppression in India and other colonies and
ground the faces of the poor of Britain, al-
though it ean be said ot his eredit that he
adopted a friendlier attitude to the Soyiet
Union than his previous governments.

His first government was brought down by
means of the ‘‘Zinoviey letter” forgery, a trap
into which MacDonald fell. On the publica-

tion of the forgery MacDonald contributed to

his own downfall by assuming it was a genuine
and denouncing and threatening the Commmnu-
nist International and the Soviet Union.

MacDonald’s open betrayal of labor began
with his renunciation of opposition to the
world war, was continued as Prime Minister
in his first government, reached a more intam-
ous point in his betrayal, along with Jimmzy
Thomas and other labor leader, of the great
general strike in May, 1926, and reached its
climax when, with Baldwin and other jmmperi-
alistie politicians he plotted the downfall of the
second Labor government to “save the Em-
pire,” and joined the Tories and renegade Lib-
erals in the formation of the reactionary Na-
tional government of which he was again
Prime Munister. zi

MacDonald was not a great man. His so-
called rise from poverty to a position which is
the highest gift in the power of the enemies
of labor was due to the trust the workers placed
in him and his readiness to betray it.

Tnordinately vain and susceptible to flattery,
servile at heart, having no faith in the working
class, he was as putty in the hands ot a class
long trained in all the arts of corruption of
weak leaders of labor.

His rank treachery of 1931 at last opened
the eyes of British labor to the canting im-
postor. He was regarded by the workers for
what he was, a Judas. And with all his smug
self-satisfaction he knew-he was so regarded.
Even his fellow traitor, Phillip Snowden, de
nounced him. He amassed wealth through mar-
riage and by bestowing a title on the notorious
eapitalist, Sir Alexander Grant (for which
he received a personal gift of a Daimler car
and fifty thousand pounds), and he moved in
the social circles of wealthy and titled para-
sites; nevertheless, even as Judas felt con-
seience-stricken, so these sweets turned to ashes
on his lips, and, hated and despised by the
elass he had betrayed, he was in his later years
a broken and dejected old man with a dim
realization that if he had not been a fool seek-
ing “the hollow praise of other fools,” his “sue
eess’ was his degradation.

His career should serve as yet another warn-
ing to the working class against other leaders
who show the characteristics he displayed, or
continue the policies of class collaboration
which brought him to his dishonorable end.

—M. B.

Communist Party Issues Vancouver Civic Election Program

(Below the Peoples Advo-

-erts an undue and sinister

are undernourished, without med-

city council on exorbitant fees Public

utility

corporations months prior to nomination day

cate presents the full text of
the Communist party's Van-
couver civic. elections. pro-
gram, as released this week for
publication.—Ld. )

Municipal government is of
great importance to al] wage
earners, low salaried people,
small business men, Civil
servants and all others of
the population who suffer
from the low standard of liv-
ing imposed upon them by
monopoly capital which ex-

influence and domination
over the administration of
municipal affairs.

The citizens of Vancouver have
suffered, and are suffering, from
such domination in an unusual
and increasing degree. The re-
sults are seen in the widespread
misery and oppression of the
great proportion of the popula-
tion.

Many of our peopie for whom
no work is provided, and many
employed workers because of the
low wages they receive, are con-
demned by circumstances to in-
adequate sustenance and com-
pelled to live in unsanitary, dis-
ease and crime-breeding slums.
Thousands of children of the poor

ical or dental care and compelled
to attend schools which are over-
crowded, poorly equipped and in
need of repair.

Gorporations are permitted to
keep the purchasing power of the

workers at a low level by oppos-.

ing legitimate trade union organ-
ization in which policy they have
had the support of the civic
authorities.

Relief allowances are far below
that which is necessary to main-
tain recipients in health and pro-
vide a modicum of comfort. Pub-
lic utility companies are per-
mitted, unhampered, to charge
all the “traffic will bear’ for the
inadequate services they render
to the public.

Waste and extravagance by the

=

PRESS He

“That must be Bop Bouchette.

Poor fellow, he g ot blown up by 2 bomb on a fishing trip.”

to private lawyers, unnecessary
entertainment, celebrations, and
useless junkets of members of the
city council are rampant, while
the barest needs of the suffering
people are not satisfied on the
plea that there is no money.

Realizing the crying need for
sweeping reform and clean gov-
ernment in the interests of the
great mass of the people of Van-
couver, the Communist party of
Canada (BC section) submits to
the electors a minimum civic pro-
gram to meet the immediate
needs of the people, a program
which is practicable and realiz-
able, and one upon which all
working class political parties,
trade unions and all other labor
and progressive bodies and indi-
viduals can unite.

Taxation. :
Reorganization of the system
of taxation and civic financing
with the aim of relieving the bur-
den on those least able to pay
and increasing taxation upon
wealth in order to provide the
necessary revenue for ordinary
expenditures and reforms.

A steeply graduated property
and business tax be instituced
with exemption of the first thou-
sand dollars on the assessed value
of property, the method of grad-
uating the business tax to be on
the basis of turn-over or rental
value of premises, or both. No
exemption from taxation of large
corporations by means of fixed
assessment or other devices.

Public Works, Housing and
Slum Glearance

The inauguration of a $1,000,000
Home Building and Slum Clear-
ance project to be financed by 2
long term loan from the provin-
cial government at 2 low interest
rate. Im order not to impose an
additional burden upon the small
and middle taxpayer the govern-
ment to procure the mecessary
funds by taxation of profits of
foreign investors in BC mines, a
tax on logs exported from BC by
foreign concessionaires, and from
a portion of the revenue derived
from the gasoline and liquor
tases. 4

Monthly cash allowances to all
relief recipients for the purchase
of clothes, footwear and house-
hold utensils, equal to 25 per cent
of present relief allowance.

Police Administration.

The police commission to be
chosen by the electors and respon-
sible to the people, and an end
put to the use of city police in
breaking strikes, interfering with
picketing and spying on the labor
movement.

shall be brought under stricter
control and prevented from ex-
torting excessive profits from the
citizens and compelled to improve
their services.

Street car fares reduced to 5
cents for adults and 244 cents for
school children. Abolition of the
one-man car system as a menace
to life and limb and for a faster
and safer service.

Reduction of telephone rates to
individual subscribers.

Workers employed by public
utility companies’ and corpora-
tions operating under a city fran-
chise, and all trades directly or
indirectly regulated by the city
council, such as _ taxi-drivers,
cleaners and dyers, gasoline sta-
tion employees, etc., shall receive
the prevailing trade union rate
of wages and have the right to
organize into unions of their own
choosing without interference by
their employers.

The power possessed by the
city council by virtue of its power
to grant licenses shall be invoked
and other necessary measures
taken to prevent the arbitrary
rising of prices of the necessi-
ties of life, such as milk ,bread,
eoal, gasoline, etc, and when
necessary in order to prevent the
rising in the cost of living the
city shall engage in the sale and
distribution of such commodities.

Increased grants to and exten-
sion of the libraries system and
the provision of facilities for
night reading.

Municipal Democracy and
the Franchise.

Existing municipal democracy
to be maintained and extended
and the franchise extended:

(a) All persons, male or female,
of the full age of 21 years, being
a British subject, and resident of
the city of Vancouver at the time
of registration, or six months
prior to the date of election.

(b) Property qualifications to
be abolished and any person reg-

shall be eligible for nomination
for any civic office.

(c) That until such time as the
city charter is amended to con-
form with clause (a) that all per-
sons now eligible to vote shall be
qualified to stand for election to
any Civic office.

(d) Abolition of multiple voting;
one man, one vote.

All legal work to be done by the
legal department of the city
council and not by private law-
yers.

Freedom of speech, press and
assembly, and the right of legal
organizations to rent halls and
theatres without application to
police for permit.

Right of all civic employees to
organize into unions of their own
choosing-

School Board.

1. Extension and improvement
of the school system, providing
repairs to existing school build-
ings and the building of new ones
to eliminate over-crowding-

2 Free text books and other
necessary equipment in the class-
room to all pupils.

3. Equal opportunities for all
children and youth in schools and
university and the elimination of
fees in evening classes.

4. Restoration of salary reduc-
tions to all school teachers.

5. Wo encroachments on the
democratic rights of the school
board, which must continue to be
an elective body.

6. Free adequate medical, den-
tal and optical services for all
needy children when required.

Parks Board.

ji. Extension and improvement
of parks and playgrounds in sec-
tions of city where the poorer
classes reside.

5 Freedom of speech, assembly
and the holding of demonstrations
in all parks and grounds.

3. All employees of parks board
to receive prevailing trade union
rates of wages and have the right
to organize into unions of their
own choosing.

“Labor's Role in Civic Progress”

CJOR

istered on the voters’ list six
— ee
ge
F
+ COMMUNIST PARTY
... onthe Air..-
EVERY TUESDAY
CJOR 7:45 P.M.
P Nov. 16th...
F Fergus ea Speaks eee LADO:

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By
OL’ BILL

_ a
ra —
Slandering a eee See
Peaceful People Saran pore
circulated here about the Chinese
people who are defending their
country so valiantly by the tools
of Japanese Fascist imperialism,
will not make much impression on

the people of BC.

The lying statements about the
bloodthirsty and brutal attacks
on peaceful innocent Japanese
military invaders, each of whom.
is a walking arsenal, by Chinese

monsters iS so much overdone
that it overreaches itself as
propaganda. *

If a man from the next street
came into your house, roped off a
part of it and claimed it for him-
self, murdered some of your chil-
dren, moved out the chesterfield,
the piano and all other movable
furniture, interferred with your
right to come and go, and you
never did anything to stop him;
but if, when he started to seize
the cookstove and the pots and
pans and wants to put his heel
on your neck, you decide to slap
him down and he fills the air
with screams of indignant protest
—this would be exactly the same
as the situation in China today.

The history and traditions of
China prove that the Chinese
people are the most peaceful of
all the great races that have
peopled this globe. When the
English monk, Roger Bacon, dis-
covered the explosive force of a
mixture of sulphur, saltpetre and
charcoal—gunpowder—all the in-
ventive genius of the white race
was turned towards devising
machinery—guns and cannon—in
which it could be used to slaught-
er each other. When the Chinese
discovered the properties of gun-
powder, 500 years before Roger
Bacon, they put it to a use that
would bring pleasure to every-
body. They made it into fire-
crackers.

This is sufficient answer of the
Chinese people to the propaganda
ef the land-grabbing Wascist,
military clique that now rules
Japan.

* * * *

Results. Wovember 11 is
not only Armis-
Rewards for tice Day, it is
also the anniversary of the judi-
cial murder of the Chicago Mar-
tyrs and this year is the fiftieth
anniversary of that ineradicable
blot on American “justice.”

These Ghicago workers, five of
whom went to their deaths and
three to years in jail till released
by Governor John P. Altgeld,
were not guilty of the crime
charged against them . This was
actually admitted in the decision
of the Supreme Court of Illinois
that heard their appeal, but revo-
lutionary workers had to he
taught a lesson.

The jury that found them guilty
received a reward of a hundred
thousand dollars, collected by the
Chicago gutter press, for their
verdict, a verdict that answered
the demands of the industrial
bosses against whom the workers
were lined up in the struggle for
the 8-hour day.

Gompare the reward of that
Chicago jury with that of the
English jury in the trial of Will-
jam Penn during the struggle of
the English people for the rights
of free speech “and assembly in
the seventeenth century.

The 12-man jury found him not
guilty and refused to be brow-
beaten by the illiterate and
scoundrelly judge, a dyed-in-the-
wool tool of the reactionary,
divine-right, ruling clique.

For this manly stand they were
fined forty marks, quite a sum of
money at that time, and com-
mitted to prison till it was paid.
As Hdna St. Vincent Millay told
her bourgeois friends, “In the
world in which you live Justice is
a woman of stone above a court
house door.”

= *= * *
The pin-headed men-
Who Is 5 tality of the bureau-
An Alien? crats of the white
ruling-class has nowhere been

better demonstrated than it was
recently in the State of New
York.

The most exhaustive research
has not yet enabled anthropolo-
gists to say definitely when the
Red men first appeared on this
continent, but even the most ig-
norant newspaperman will read-
ily admit that the Indians were
here before the white 200 per-
centers.

Intelligent people of Rochester,
WY, must have been moved to
tears, either of Jlaughter or SOrroW;
a few days ago, to learn that an
Indian, Frank Maracle, a great-
great-grandson of one of the most
famous Indians in American his-
tory, Joseph Brant, the Mohawk
chief of the revolutionary period,
had been dismissed from the
WPA because he is an alien.

But maybe “alien” is not so far
wrong at that. The Indian people
who once owned and lived sé
curely on this continent, have
been “alienated’’ from all the
rights they ever had in the land,
rivers, lakes and forests of Can=
ada and the United States, and
find themselves equal in status
with the white worker with only
one “right’—the right to line up
in the breadline or WPA project.

In capitalist society the true
“alien” is he who has been Sepa
arated from all forms of property-

es
as at