THE PEOPLE

Published every Wednesday by The People Publishing Co., Room 104, Shelly Building,
119 West Pender Street, Vancouver, B-C. Telephone: MArine 6929.

EpiTor Hart GRirriv
IVUAINA GING EDITOR oo oecpere seen seneeesnneeen Ax PARKIN
Busryess MANAGER ....--<s..--.- MINERVA COOPER

Six Months—$1.00 One Year—$2.00
Printed at Broadway Printers Limited, 151 East 8th Ayenus, Vancouver, B.O.

The Quisling Plot

apes four plants of Boeing Aircraft are closed this week,

the machines are silent, the giant PBY planes in the Sea

Island plant no longer move down the assembly line. And the
reason? — nothing but a stupid federal government labor pol-
iey which refuses to recognize the just grievances of workers,
which dilly-dallies over making any definite answer to wires
and resolutions from employees requesting consideration of
proposals, and finally provokes disputes which should not have
existed in the first place.

_ There was no need of the lockout of the 8,000 aircraft work-
ers here. Had Labor Minister Humphrey Mitchell heeded the
aircraft union’s request for a commission to investigate the rest
period question, they would no thave been forced into the
action they finally had to adopt. Even then, there was no need
to shut down the plants. The workers’ determination to get
acknowledgment from Mitchell of their proposals should have
ben sufficient to bring prompt action.

Throughout the dispute the workers, represented by their
union, acted with full restraint, showed plainly that they de-
sired to maintain production in spite of all provocation. The
action to lock out the employees proves conclusively that full
responsibility must rest with the company and the govern-
ment, as the union charges.

What is needed now is an immediate protest by every sec-
tion of labor, by all organizations in the province, for reopening
of the plants. But more than that, the fact that the situation
at Boeings is being repeated in war industries throughout the

country proves again the need for real labor legislation and
policies that will allow Canada to get on with the war.

Such a federal labor policy demands: first, legislation to
curb the labor-hating actions of the great corporations and
force them to recognize the union rights of the employees; sec-
ond, setting up of arbitration machinery which will move
swiftly in all disputes, and not be an instrument of exaspera-
tion and delay; third, a federal law guaranteeing the right of
collective bargaining and outlawing company unions; fourth,
wage adjustments to met the real rise in the cost of living,
plus added curbs on profiteering; and fifth, genuine labor
partnership in the war effort.

Enactment of such legislation would remove the main cause
of all the disputes that are now plaguing Canada and interfer-
ing in our fight for victory over fascism.

Meantime, we hope, with the employees of Boeing Air-
erait, that the government will act swiftly in the present crisis
and offer a genuine solution to the dispute along the lines sug-
gested by the workers themselves.

A Government Responsibility

N breaking off relations with the Polish government the

Soviet Union has given us another example of how to fight
a real, anti-fascist people’s war. For a long time, reactionary
elements in the Polish government have conspired to advance
their imperialist aims at the expense of all the peoples of the
United Nations. Goebbels has taken advantage of this fact,
and the crime of the Polish government is that it accepts the
products of the Goebbels lie factory.

Moscow’s sharp, clear action in reply to the Polish gov-
ernment’s ridiculous statements teaches a lesson to all peoples
of the United Nations, and that lesson is: anti-fascist unity
is indivisible.

We cannot fight the Axis and play ball with it at the same
time. We cannot fight the Axis and curry favor with Franco.
We cannot fight the Axis and slander the Soviet Union at the
same time, as some CCF leaders are doing about the Alter-
Ehrlich executions,

This war must be fought with no holds barred, with no
punches pulled !

For that reason, Canadians will support the Soviet Union
in its fight against treachery. They will understand that such
sharp actions are necessary to maintain a clear policy in the
war against fascism, for they want to fight the war to the end
by preventing any sort of “understanding” with the ruthless
Nazi tyrants.

The Alter-Ehrlich Case

FPHE BC FEDERATIONIST has opened its columns to the
anti-Soviet and anti-unity discussion centering around the

criticism by certain

“Socialists” of the execution of two

Polish-Jewish spies, Henryk Ehrlich and Victor Alter, by the

Soviet government.

Their contribution to this stupidly vicious campaign takes
the form of an editorial “defense” of an article written by

David Lewis, CCF national sec-
retary —a wholly-uniformed and
slanderous article in which Lewis
defends Alter and Ehrlich mere-
ly because they were “Socialists,”
and accuses the Soviets of a
“political assassination.”

Had the editors of the Federa-
tionist taken the trouble to go
fully into all the facts, they could
not have justified their defense
of the CCF national secretary.
What are the facts in the case?

@

A’ the time of the occupation

of eastern Poland by the Red
Army in 1939, Alter and Ehrlich
entered the Soviet Union as ref-
ugees along with thousands of
other Poles escaping before the
Wazi armies. Subsequently, how-
ever, they were arrested by the
Soviet government and charged
with espionage. They were tried,
found guilty, and condemned to
death in August, 1941.

Specifically, Alter and Ehrlich
were accused of acting as espi-
onage agents in the employ of the
Polish government-in-exile. Even
though Alter and Ehrlich were
Jews and Social Democrats, they
supplied information of a vital
military nature to this reactfon-
ary government, which has since
exposed its true anti-Soviet bias
by forcing a break in relations
with the Soviet Union over in-
formation supplied them, of all
people, by the Nazis. More seri-
ous, the military information sup-
plied by Alter and Ehrlich to the
Polish government found its way
into the hands of the Nazi mili-
tary intelligence. Such informa-
tion was of inestimable value to
the German war machine.

Alter and Ehrlich were con-
fronted with these charges and
by due process of law found
guilty. Before they were execut-
ed, however, the Polish and So-
viet governments concluded a
friendship pact. To fulfil the pact
to the letter, and out of desire
to cement unity within the Unit-
ed Wations, the two Social Demo
crats were pardoned and re-
leased.

&

HEY remained in the USSR,

Moscow, though later they
went to Kuibyshev when Moscow
was threatened by the German
armies. They became the repre-
sentatives of Polish relief in the
USSR, distributing to Polish ref-
ugees funds collected in England
and United States. -

Alter and Ehrlich were arrest-
ed a second time in December,
1942, and accused of treason,
since by Soviet law both men had
become Soviet citizens. They had
been caught using their consid-
erable organization for Polish re-
lief to disseminate propaganda,
including pamphlets which the
Soviet government considered
harmful to the war effort. Some
of these pamphlets subsequently
found their way into the hands
of frontline Red Army soldiers,
urging them to halt resistance
against the Nazis, overthrow the
Stalin government, and seek a
separate peace between Hitler
Germany and the USSR.

Soviet authorities considered
this sufficient reason to order
their re-arrest. They were found
guilty by a Soviet court, con-
demned to death and executed.

It is worth noting that when
Alter and Ehrlich were arrested
for the second time, several of-
ficials of the Polish embassy in
Kuibyshev were charged with es-
pionage and ordered to leave the
country, The Polish embassy stat-
ed this fact to a newspaper cor-

respondent at the titme.

.)
CE SECRETARY LEWIS’
answer to these facts is to
point merely to Alter and Ehr-
lich’s “socialist’’ views as ade-
quate reason for their innocence.

But is that an answer? A group
of Jewish ‘Socialists’ united
under the banner of the Jewish
Labor Committee in New York,
were the first to initiate the cam-
paign of slander. Their leader, N-
Chanin, had this to say about our
Soviet ally:

“Even now the war will not be
won by Stalin or the Soviet re-
gime. The war against Hitler will
be won by America and England,
two free countries. The last shot
has not yet been fired. It will be
fired by a free America—and by
it the Stalin regime will also be
shot to pieces.”

How well these “Socialists,’’
political brothers of Alter and
Ehrlich, echo the ravings of
Goebbels!

@

HE Chanin group in New York

was not alone in this incred-
ibly vicious slander campaign.
Similar Jewish Labor Committees
in Toronto and Montreal, com-
prising a group of discredited
“Socialists” and Trotskyists, ar-
ranged for Alter-Ehrlich “memo-
rial’ meetings, and undoubtedly
were responsible for having that
astonishing anti-Soviet Alter-Ehr-
lich resolution put through this
week’s convention of the Ontario
CCF.

It is with these people, the
same people by the way who
howled against the Soviets during
the Moscow trials of the Nazi
agents in 1936-37, that David
Lewis associates himself when he
joins in the “mourning” for the
two spies, Alter and Ehrlich.
More than that, he associates
himself with the reactionary
members of the Polish govern-
ment-in-exile, who were them-
selves involved in the Alter-Ehr-
lich affair. Truly, these “Social-
ists’ find themselves strange
bedfellows!

Nothing is said by Lewis and
his “Socialist” associates of the
two million Jews slaughtered by
the Nazis, of the millions of Rus-
sian, Polish, Gzech and French
people interned, tortured and
slaughtered by the Hitlerite
beasts. But they hypocritically
howl when two traitors, who hap-
pen to have been of Jewish origin,
are executed in the Soviet Union.

@

HE editors of the Hederation-

ist should have considered
these facts before rushing to the
defense of David Lewis and
thereby to the defense of Alter
and Bhriich. For it is little short
of criminal folly for Alter-Ehr-
lich’s defenders to rush headlong
into such a campaign in the mid-
dle of a terrible war against the
enemies of all Jews and Social-
ists. This folly is heightened by
the fact that it synchronizes with
the general intensification of
anti-Soviet propaganda on both
sides of the Atlantic, propaganda
that includes a volume of atrocity
stories about the treatment of Pol-
ish Jews in the USSR—designed
to persuade the unwary that Po-
land is a haven of rest for Jews
and that the Soviet Union is
anti-Semitic!

Certainly, it is a campaign that
will not be supported by the over-
whelming majority of the Feder-
ationist's readers or the CCF
rank and file members.

—AL PARKIN.

~ eel

‘SHORT
JAB}

by OF Bil

Squawk

HERE are two Morgz

logging game (at le
in B.C. One Morgan,
Morgan Ltd., is in the ;—
end, a logging operator *
solutely different from @
The other is Nigel Mor @
is connected with the 5
ducing end of the game
wise they are related
other just as much as €
related to Viscount R. B.

The “other” Morgan i
sociate of the organize |
Charlotte Island spruce
ors. Nigel is an associate
old Pritchett in the trul
sary work of organizing
gers, too many of whom
unorganized—and they a
a good job.

It is quite natural ther
of the QCI “operators,” -
plain English means boss
squawking about Pritchi
ing an organizing trip
territory. “Squawk” is
name to give to the s'|
in their name in the pre
days ago.

They don’t like Pritche
posed trip to the QGI
camps. (That should m
trip go over big: with the
The attitude of these “oj
is similar to that of a bi
a hold-up artist who | #
learned that a policeman
ing to look over their * §
INo more and no less.

Fooled?

6 Bee are people ¥
believe anything: not
they are mentally c¢
thick-skulled or belong
category of morons—but
they want to believe.

There is quite a smatt |
them in all of the capital
ocratic countries at this
writing. Among them ar
who are supposed to have’
for the inspired stories
Wazi propaganda machir
the alleged slaughter o:
ands of Polish officers
Soviets,

That nonsensical, lying ?
not fool anyone excep
who desire to be foole
welcomed by them wit
arms because they hate th
Union, the Communists, ?
mocracy and the workin:

The same is true also of |
ception of the other lyi:
about the high and nob
acter of the two social der
bundist agents of Hit
were summarily dealt wit!
Soviet gavernment for thi
eolumn activity in the
Union.

2
Guarding .

eo
Liberty!

HE lawyers are out a

save liberty. So we lea)
the remarks of one of the
J. H. Aikens, KC, in a re
a@ speech made to the Gi
Bar Association (the 1
trade union) here. !

After the last war, libel |
also guarded by the lawy
the old, some of them doc
men, who took part in tl
sailles Conference, the 1
were lawyers. Some of thu
practised law, some had
politicians, but all had tf
habit of thought.

Did they save liberty? N
made such a botch of iti
sensible people today ar
vinced that only the peopl
selves can save liberty—i
must be taken out of the
of the lawyers.