§ you paid me tonight.

Leslie Morris has pointed out

; other parties.
|ference is a difference that not
}everybody understands. In our
party we fight harder and more
consistently to eliminate dif-
i ferences concerning policies
Within the party than any other
political party does. It is be—
cause we fight so hard for unity
of purpose and policy that our
‘comradeship is of such a char-
acter that we can look around
this evening and see so many
pwho have cooperated together
in this movement for a quarter
fof a century oremore. This is

radeship.

| An old and tested friend of
mine, John Buckley, secretary
fof the Toronto and District
|frades and Labor Council, has
just reminded me that it was
25 years ago, almost to this
pvery day, that we sat together
jn a banauet organized by our
party. the Independent Labor
Party, 1 this city, to celebrate
the election of the Farmer-
Gabor government in Ontario.
He reminded me, also, that
while we were in Kingston he
and other progressives in the
Trades and Labor Council had
seen able to secure comrade
Alice Buck an opportunity to
» iddress the Council and ask for
support to the Canadian Labor
Defense League campaign for
~he repeal of Section 98 of the
‘riminal Code and our release
vom Kingston. As a result, the
Toronto District Labor Council
secame the’ main body of the
made union movement support-
mg the campaign which led to
the establishment of a Royal
Sommission and to the ultimate
*epeal of Section 98.

_ This unity, this wide-spread
inity of purpose and effort in
che struggle for labor’s inter-
2sts, is the yardstick of the real
tains of the labor movement.

S37 shall need all possible
_ unity, this year particularly.
We shall need it, because in
945 we shall begin to meet the
thallenge of peace. It is quite
tue that the war is not yet
over. The Nazi counter-offen-
ive on the western front
shows. that victory will be
yvrested from the Nazis in
Zurepe only by costly battles:
t wail demand the greatest de-
mee of national unity and

apable. But, there is no longer
iny room fer doubt as to the
United Nations continue the
mtcome. We may look forward
0 wvietory, provided that the
arugele and that unity is
paintained.

The challenge we shall
have to meet with the coming
-Gf victory will be the chal-
lenge of a new epoch. It will

be the challenge of new
problems and tasks, the
tasks involyed im world re-

construction.

| iC OMRADE MACLEOD,
my friends and comrades here in the hall.
-you all from the bottom of my heart for this tribute that

| that our party is different to ~
One of the dif--

the real meaning of our com-

very effort of which we are

Volume. 1, No 13, Januar 27, 1oas

_ Unity Is The Key

Speaking at a banquet honoring his 54th Gnniversary Tim Buck

analyzes the forces at work in Canada today
‘to avoid a postwar government of Tory reaction.

Comrade Morris, and all of
I thank

The Canada &chich will meet
this challenge will be entirely
different to the Canada which
entered the war in 1939. New
forces have come forward with
new aims and aspirations. They
are different, with higher aims
than those we were satisfied
with in 1939. The changes that
the war has brought in our
country and its economy have
compelled us all to revise our
proposals upon national policy.
The national policies we shall
have to fight for are deter-
mined by the fact that Canada
is destined to play a vital and
progressive role in the new
epoch the world will enter into
with the coming of the peace.

The challenge of peace is al-
ready finding response in Can-
ada’s political life. There is al-
ready developing a division
within the country on the ques-
tion of what should be our na-
tional policies to meet the tests
of the peace. Some believe that
their narrow selfish interests
will best be protected if Can-
ada is gotten back to the poli-
cies of the 1930’s. Mr. Arthur
Meighen, who perhaps typifies
Ganadian toryism more exactly
than any other individual, cas-
tigates those who argue that
social security can be estab-
Wished by governmental action.
Mi. Meighen declares, with all
the authority of a leader of the
Tory party, that that is not so.
His formula for CGanada when
the war is over was summed
up by himself in very brief
terms. He declared that the
working people of Canada need
to ‘relearn the lessons of hard
work, honesty and thrift.”

I am not going to spend time
analyzing how serious or other-
wise these “wise” words of
Mr. Meighen’s are and will not
waste time comparing the aver-
age working class family with
Mx. Meighen when it comes to
hard work, honesty and thrift.
It is important to note, how-
ever, that he is not alone in his
attitude to the working people.
We have recently experienced
a veritable spate of such opin-
jons ‘from industrialists and
presidents of banks. These are
characterized most clearly by
G. H. Garlisle, president of the
Dominion Bank of Canada. In
his annual report to the share-
holders a few weeks ago, Mr.
Garlisle declared that what
Ganada will need after the war
is “greater economy, greater
effort, lower costs of produc-
tion .. .” and, for the working
class, ‘a willingness to receive
a lesser wage...” Mr Carlisle
intimated that these things can
be acomplished if the scope of
collective bargaining can be re-
duced and he decried the idea of
united Labor Political Action.

T think that, in the in-
terests of Canada as a whole,
Mx. Meighen and Mr. Carlisle
must be proven to be wrong.
This is not only a question of
the needs and interests of work-
ing people and the trade union

<

TIM BUCK

movement. It involves the fun-
damental interests of all Gan-
ada: farmers, workers, pro-
fessional people, business, even

the interests of the financial
institutions for which men like
Mr. Meighen and Mz. Garlisle
speak. Canada cannot prosper
with policies, conditions and ob-
jJectives, which characterized
her in the 1930’s. Canada can
only prosper if we as a nation
face the realities of today. We
must use the tremendous pro-
ductive capacity, and the ex
perience, that the war has pro-
vided us with and meet the
needs of the postwar period
with policies that are made de-
liberately to connect these new
resources and capacities with
the tremendous needs of the
world and the Canadian _peo-
ple.

HE lLabor-Progressive Party
has recently issued its Do-
minion election program. In
this election program we have
pointed out in the simplest pos-
sible terms what these possibi-
lities are and how they can be
achieved. I say that Mr. Car-
lisle and Mr. Meighen do not
speak-in the interests of Can-
ada. They speak only in the in-
terests of those who think it is
better to look backward than
forward, better to have strife
than to have cooperation and
enduring peace, better that
Canada shall go through ever-
recurring crises than that the
nation as a whole shall rise to
new levels of ‘prosperity and
cultural development. The ma-
jority of the people of Canada
must reject and defeat such
aims — they could lead only to
national disaster.

I am elad to say that it isn’t
only the spokesmen of the
working people who think as I
think in these matters. I ‘could
guote a number of statements
from industrialists and bank
presidents who agree quite
frankly that Canada will need
national policies that are dras-

tically different from those
which prevailed before the war.
There are deep differences

within the ranks of the capital-

“ple haye

ist class on these questions. In

my reply to the very beautiful ~

address by Comrade Morris I
aim to do no more than to in-
dicate these deep differences

and to ask you, my friends, and .

through you all the members of
our party throughout Canada,
to face up to the problem that
this brings forward to the
working people and accept the
responsibility for helping the
labor movement of Canada to
understand what an historic op-
portunity this brings forward
and what historic responsibili-
ties this confronts us with.
The true interests of Canada
do not depend upon the opinions
of any one particular group of
people. The true interests of
Ganada are to be found only in
these policies which will secure
the future; not only of the
workers, farmers, professional
and business people of HWneglish
Ganada, but of the farmers,
workers, professional and busi-
ness people of French Canada
also. Prench-Gahada  consti-
tutes the third of our popula-
tion with which we must march
forward in fraternal unity. The
true interests of Canada are to
be found only in the policies

-which will unite all workers of

English Canada and French
Canada—policies which repre-
sent the broad general interests
of the nation as a whole.

The true interests of our na-
tion in this situation lie in
those policies which represent
the common denominator that
can be agreed upon by all men
and women of good will who
want to make sure that the
sacrifices of our sons and
brothers in this war for world’s
freedom shall not have been in
vain.

Who want to make sure
that men like Wally Dent who
we are glad to see here this
evening, shall not haye
fought in vain. Phat men like
Hugh Anderson, Dick Steele,
Muni Erlick, Zane WNavyis,
Paul Stickman, Kenneth
Blois and thousands of other
Canadian boys who have laid
down their lives, shall not
have died only se that Can-
ada can revert to the policies
which helped to bring about
this war. We must unite Can-
ada against going back to
these conditions.

In facing up to the tasks of
securing correct postwar poli-
cies, we are strengthened by
the fact that a new force is
coming. forward in the political
life of our country. As a result
of the war and the tremendous
demands and sacrifices our peo-
been called upon to
make, our people have become
transformed. The needs of the
war plus science as represented
by radio, air travel, and so on.

have created a situation in
which, for the first time in
history, the great masses of
people are playing an active

part in the shaping of national
policies and of international
policies. They are stepping for-
ward on the stage of public af-
fairs and shaping the destinies
ef nations according to their
conscious desires. The contin-

and calls for unity

ent of Europe is being: remade
by the people in the spirit of
the promise embodied in the
Atlantic Charter and the pro-
gram of world progress enun-
Giated by Churchill, Rosevelt
and Stalin at Teheran.

The main spokesman and
the main organizational base
for this great new force in
the political life of Canada is
the labor movement. In the
unity of the labor movement
we find today. the backbone,
and the guarantee, of the
unity of our nation—because
the labor movement can only.
be united in defense of the
real] interests of our nation as

. a whole.
Se

FE shall in all probability

have a Dominion election in
Canada during this year.

If as a result of a pro-
longation of the war it should
be found necessary to post-
pone that election I for one
shali not complain if it is in
the imterests of yictory that
we do so.

But if a Dominion election
takes place, we as an important
section of the labor movement
shall try, frankly, to win the
labor movement to an under-
standing’ of the vital role that
it must play in transforming
our national policies and Gan-
ada’s conception of what the
role of government and the re-
sponsibilities of government
should be.

Can the labor movement do
that? Yes. it will be able to do
it because as we emerge from
the war to meet the challenge
of the peace, Canada is emers-
ing from the political past, and
the limits established by its
conditions and relationships,
towards a national future in
which the possibilities will be
wellsnigh immeasurable. In
the steadily clarifying pros-
peets of that future the main
lines of our destiny as a nation
are becoming clear: it will be
shaped by developments in
which Canada must play a vital
role.

Oux national destiny as an
important factor in the shaping
of the postwar era, is deter-
mined by the fact that Canada,
herself a product of the modern
era, is integrated, economically,
politically, culturally and geo-
graphically, with the nations
which will be decisive for the
future of the world.

Our own manifest nationai
interest, nay, our survival as
an independent nation, will
require that we become a
consistent, democratic foree
making for unity and inter-
national cooperation be-
tween the nations of the
British Commonwealth, the
United States, the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics and
other democratic countries.

Our nation was brought inte
being literally on the crest of
the industrial revolution. _Can-
ada was brought together as a
territorial unit as a result of
the conditions and possibilities
created by the industrial revo-

—Continued on Page 10