upport
df Labor
vought

| More Than Academic

Freedom Involved
| In Attack On Rights

Students at the University
; British Columbia, denounc-
= the recent suspension of the
enadian Student Assembly
» the UBC Student Council
a flagrant attack on their
hts, are conducting a vigor-
is fight against the council’s
tion.
A petition circulated among stu-
nts for calling of a zeneral meet-
g to discuss the arbitrary suspen-
yn of the GSA was signed by 250
tywo hours.
Following condemnatory state-
lents on the recent CSA confer-
‘jee made by Dean Krug of Mount
ison, NB, university, with an en-
Iment of 500, the UBC student
‘uncil suspended the CSA on
msy charges that its actions were
ibversive’ and brought ‘adverse
blicity for the university.’
Dean Krug held tnat the second
tional GSA conference, held at
Anne de Bellevue, Que. Dec.
-31, was anti-war and anti-British,
though he himself left the confer-
sce On Dec. 29.
The conference urged extension
education, preservation of civil
serties, application. of measures to
~eyent profiteering and complete
sposition to conscription, and an
idependent Ganadian foreign
olicy.
Students point out that the CSA
a widely representative student
ody which last year led the cam-
Bign for a national scholarship.
ecause this campaign met with
aecess 35 students are now ai-
inding university on grants
>talling $225,000 to be made over
period of three years.
The CSA here is appealing for
apport of all organizstions, but
articultarly the trade unions, on the
round that the issues involved
ive those facing the Canadian peo-
le as a whole.
“More than academic freedom is
t stake,” a student spokesman said
nis week. “Suspension of the CSA
a direct attack on our democratic
gehts.”

Open Probe
If Combine

KELOWNA, BC—appearing be-
ore Magistrate Findlay McWil-

BC Students Score CSA Suspension

FOR PEACE, PROGRESS AND DEMOCRACY

The ADVOCATE

VOL. 6, No. 3. Full No. 264.

VANCOUVER, B.C., FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1940

= © 5 Cents

Factor in

liam Lyon Mackenzie.

chaos of war.

The year 1935 saw Roosevelt's
New Deal molding the course of
American history. It could not but
have a strong influence upon Can-
adian affairs. Resurgent Cana-
dian democracy, as expressed in
election of the Liberals, but par-
ticularly in the large third-party
vote ,demanded that the needs of

ams in the adjourned Okanagan
ruit Combine hearing here this
eek. J. H. Reader, former treas-
eer in Lander Fruit Packing com-
any, asserted that he resigned
‘om the company in 1938 because
e thought “the growers were
etting too little from their fruit.”
Charged with being parties to the
suit combine are four men, R. P.
taples, Kelowna: A. GC. Lander,
celowna; W. P. Riley, Winnipeg,
nd Alexander McCallum, Winni-

ef, and eight companies with
vhich they are connected.
Decuments introduced at the

earing purported to show connec-
ions between Lander Fruit com-
any of Kelowna, Western Grocers,
itd., and Dominion Fruit Company
itd., both of Winnipeg, and the in-
erlocking share control of these
nd other companies.

Says Farmers In
Desperate Plight

Canada’s farmers “have their
acks to the wall” and are “mak-
ng a desperate fight’ to wrest a
iving from the land, C. A. Hayden,
ecretary of the BC Chamber of
.\ericulture, told the advertising
nd sales bureau of the Board of
‘rade this week.

Pointing out that returns to in-
ustry have increased five points,
rhile returns to agriculture have
ropped 42 points since 1926,
fayden declared that uniess meas-
res to improve the _ situation
mong Canadian farmers ‘were
ndertaken they would be “reduced
» the level of grubbing peasants.’

the people be the first considera-
tion. Instead, 1940 finds that de-
mand still unanswered.

The year 1940 finds the old polit-
ical alignments shattered by the
war, the new still in solution. The
most reactionary sections of Cana-
dian finance-capital which, in the
years 1930-35, pinned their hopes on
Bennett and thereafter found ex-
pression for their most brazen plots
against the Canadian people
through the now disrupted Hep-

To the people it has offered min-
or concessions without touching
the fundamental problems, for it
could not expect to be insensitive
to popular opinion and retain the
people’s confidence. At the same
time, unlike tne Roosevelt admin-
istration in the years 1937-38, it
failed to offer any direct challenge
to the entrenched interests.

During these years, differentia-
tion became more marked in the
two camps of progress and reac-
tion. In the summer of 1939 there
seemed fair promise that the Can-
adian people would be able to find
a truer expression of their needs
in the various democratic group-
ings then resolving into a move-
ment loosely linked by a common
program of social reform and
democratic progress.

Had unity of the labor move-
ment been achieved earlier, had the
CCF leadership not obstructed and
rejected it, Canada’s history in

these years might have been dif-

Yes or No Position
on War Determining

Elections

By HAL GRIFFIN

Drawn by skilful pens over the years, the Canadian people
have been giver a picture of Prime Minister William Lyon Mac-
kenzie King. It is the picture of a quiet, idealistic man without
color, given to making long academic speeches distinguished only
by their indefiniteness, a man relying upon compromise to
achieve his ends. It is a picture carefully drawn against the
background of Laurier’s tradition and a picture, moreover, that
fully utilizes his lineal descent from Canada’s ‘Little Rebel,’ Wil-

This is the picture. But what is the reality sharply limned
against the turbulent stream of the past years?

In 1935 the Canadian people, awakened by six long years of
depression and misery from the illusions of a ‘golden era of
capitalism,’ gave the King government an overwhelming man-
date to proceed with a program of economic and social recon-
struction. “It’s King or Chaos,” cried the Liberals, and the peo-
ple, aroused by the ‘iron-heel’ policies of the reactionary Bennett
regime, chose King. Four years later King led them into the

burn-Duplessis axis, today are
strongly entrenched within: the
King government's camp. Where
elSe are vultures found but where
the feast is for the taking?

The Hing government today,
whatever it may have conceded
to popular pressure in the past,
is no less reactionary than its
predecessor, nor is there any
reason to assume that it will, in
future, be any less reactionary
than a ‘union’ government head-
ed by Manion.

Under pressure from the major-
ity of the people on one side and
from the entrenched big interests,
the King government in the past
has striven to pursue a middle
course which, in effect, favored

big business.

Basic Problems Unsolved

ferent. As it was the ‘democratic
front’ conception had only begun

to take shape and reality when the
war shattered it.

What is the new situation?

To the average Canadian the
record of the King government has
been characterized by indecision
and yvacillation, by seeming weak-
mess. Yet in the light of the past
four years’ illuminating events, it
must be asked how much of this
seeming weakness was calculated,
particularly in the sphere of inter-
national relations.

Did not the King government
Servilely follow the policies of the
Chamberlain government through-
out, advancing identical arguments
in their defense? Did it not concur
in Italy’s war of conquest against
Ethiopia, in Japan’s invasion of
China, in the Italo-German war of

(Continued on Page 2)

See KING

tupert Jobless Want Relief Cut Restored

Jity Relief Recipients Organizing

Unemployed married and single
en, demanding an upward revi-
Oa of relief scales pending their
Sorption into industry or work
rojects, this week at Gambie street
lief office launched their cam-
zien to secure signatures of relief
scipients 42S a preliminary move
) Jaunching of 2 broad, all-inclusive
pganization.

Shifts of volunteers from the Re-
ef Project Workers’ union, assisted
y¥ some Married men, solicited
lore than 2500 names of relief re-
pients endorsing 4 preliminary
rosram which includes extension
* the Municipal Improvements As-
stance Act in operation last

ugust for heads of families, work

projects for single men and in-
ereased old age pensions at lowered
age limits. :

The status of single women on
relief is made more numiliating
by veiled hints of relief officers
that there is no need for them to
be in need of relief when there
are so many single men in the
army, the organizing committee
charged.

PRINCE RUPERT, BG. — Im_
mediate steps to regain a 20 percent
reduction in married men’s relief
allowances were taken by the
Prince Rupert Unemployed Protec-
tive Association, recently organized
at a meeting in the Canadian Labor

Defense League hall here.

City Commissioner W. J. Alder,
who is resigning shortly, admitted
to a delegation that he was re-
sponsible for slashing married re-
cipients’ relief allowances, claim-
ing the cut in single men’s relief
wes ordered by Victoria. He re-
fused, however, to produce any
statements to prove it.

He also declared that the gov-
ernment was going to discontinue
all relief, since it could “not issue
relief and win the war simul-
taneously.”

A signature campaign is meeting
with ready response of the unem-
ployed and at a meeting held re
cently many unemployed joined the
EUR UREN

Cutting Of Communications
Reported Due To Revolt

LONDON, Eng.—Despite the severe censorship imposed on all reports
coming from Finland, not only in Helsinki but in all the capitals of the world,
news which leaked out this week indicates the growing mass support being
given directly and indirectly to the people’s government of Finland, headed

by Otto Kuusinen.

Food Cards For Britons

A LONDON housewife presents her coupon book
tioning of butter, bacon and sugar begins.

3

as Yra-

Labor Candidate Withdraws;
Communists To Nominate

CRANBROOK, BC.—In a letter to his campaign committee
here, Fergus McKean, provincial secretary of the Communist
party, this week announced his withdrawal from East Kootenay
federal constituency where he was nominated as a labor candi-

date last summer.

Relief
Denied

Sentenced to the day they had
spent in jail by Magistrate Mc-
Kenzie Matheson, who found them
guilty on charges of vagrancy D in
Vancouver police court following
their arrest last Monday when
soliciting funds for Relief Project
Workers’ union, A. Church and W.
Goskey found they were barred
from assistance by relief authori-
ties.

The men were defended by At-
torney Mussalem, retained by the
Canadian Labor Defense League.

Applying in the regular way for
their relief, the men were told that
“orders have been issued to cut
you off relief.” Now they are with-
out any visible means of support
and may fall victims to the police
dragnet which over the weekend
rounded up 21 unemployed men
and sentenced them to an aggre-
gate of 858 days in jail.

This wholesale rounding up and
jailing of single men, many of

whom are said to have arrived here
to enlist in the army, is costing the
city $1 a day for their maintenance
and has led Mayor Telford to draft
a vigorous plea to the federal BOV-
ernment to make some provisions
for their maintenance out of prison.

“The decision to withdraw,’ Mc-
Kean wrote, “was arrived at after
careful consideration and discussion
with the leadership of the party of
which IT am a member. The reason
for adopting sucn a decision was
due primarily to the changed po-.
litical conditions and relationships
brought about by Canada’s partici-
pation in the war.

“My withdrawal is not due to any
attempt to refrain from placing
the Communist party’s political
program before the people, but as
already stated, is due basically to
the changes brought about by the
war,

“One of the factors which per-
mitted my acceptance of nomina_
tion in East Kootenay was the ef-
forts of our party to obtain coopera-
tion with the CCF party. Since
the outbreak of war, however, the
divergent position of the Com-
munist party and the CCH on the
war necessitates a change in re-
lationship between our party and
the CGF, so that the consideration
of obtaining cooperation in the fed-

eral election is no longer an im-
portant factor.”
In Vancouver this week an of

ficial of the Communist party stat-
ed that the party intended to an-
nounce its candidates “within the
next few days.’ Two constituencies,
one in Vancouver city, another on
Vancouver Island, were said to be

The current issue of The
Week, London newsletter
which for the past two years
has presented inside informa-
tion about European affairs
With amazing accuracy, writes
that the possibility of consider-
able internal trouble develop-
ing at Helsinki is the theme of
numerous reports seeping
across the border into Norway.
“There is reason to suppose,”
writes the “Weel,” “that the un-
explained breakdown of tele-
phone communications last week
Was not in fact the result of an
air raid, but of rebellious ele-
ments within the city. cara
“The latest orders issued from
Helsinki to the civilian population

| are understood to indicate the first

official admission of serious devel-
opments ‘behind-the-lines’.”

The Week’s contention is further
borne out by reports reaching here
from Stockholm telling of mass
shootings and arrests of workers
in White Finland.

MASS ARRESTS.

The Stockholm newspaper, Ny

Dag, writes that the workers of
Finland are hostile towards the
Mannerheim regime, and that the
Mannerheim regime is attemptins
te check the revolutionary senti-
ments of -the workers through
Mass slaughter reminiscent of the
White Terror of 1919-1920. A thous-
and workers have been arrested in
White Finland. 5
PROPAGANDA FATS.
; Aside from ‘rebellious elements’
inside Helsinki, there is another
imereasinely serious ‘embarrass-
ment’ worrying the Helsinii Sov-
ernment. Its propaganda cam-
paign against the Red army has
been so sharply overworked that
it is failing of its effect.

“Dutch sources,’ writes the
‘Week’, “assert that censorship has
been Imposed at Helsinki with
eae ae Purpose of preventing

ue fabricati Zi
See ee on of victory news,

(Continued on Page Two)
See HELSINEL

Housewives

Will Meet

NANAIMO, BGC —aA delegate con-
ference to discuss rising food costs
has been called by the Housewives’
League executive here. The con-
ae will be held Friday, Feb. 9
at p.m. in the Canadian Leci 1
et gion

Mrs. Mabel E. Norton, House_
wives’ League provincial organizer,
will sive a report on present food
prices, which, she told the Advocate
this week, have risen 17.8 percent
since outbreak of war.

Invitations have been issued by
the Nanaimo League to all house
wives and women’s groups in the
district so that a plan to combat

profiteering can be evelved at the
conference.

Ask Coneiliatien

PORT ALBERNI, BC—Applica-
tion to the previncial labor depart-
ment for a conciliation board was
made this week by officials of Local
85, International Woodworkers of
America, on behalf of employees
of Sproat Lake Sawmills’ logging
camp at Kileecoot, who are de-
manding a 50-cent daily wage in-

under consideration,

crease,

INTERNAL DIFFICULTIES |
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