RESUDSER JONSEE AUUCREORETSIORSECCRUTSSELENERSSEAEEUASSERRERETE IAT DO YOU THINK? UURRRDODSUDSUCURRSEREESUCESECET GE ECRERORENSCSCRSTOS) INC UANESDUODRLLEDUATLUTURORUCLECUSESRESELSSSUSVSCTRSTRAELOCESURAEESLISECLES ‘gram “ga short note in foman who has # airlines. some- yrning programs basewives, and is )b of presenting is of democracy ignified manner tng her listeners a’ of the Pacific . of course, to gi, whose morn- qi aute program eal Vancouver worth listening having enjoyed Hage career, is las successful in thine. absolute terms. “Women’s pro- Harently design- Miss Cowl’s ap- efreshing as a She talks about at things as reha- mrvice men and ssroblems of the favorite topic, fency. (There is fs a “juvenile de- Waaintains. When - mong it is the is “delinquent.” & radio listener, I #- to people like 2 the radio net- readers. subscribers. Every Voter A Subscriber With the defeat of German fascism an accomplished fact, and with the Nipponese home islands rapidly being reduced to what some waggish admiral termed “‘merely a menace to navigation,’ the thoughts of all and sundry are turning to the postwar. Each day cunningly contrived _advertisements are appearing in the daily press telling the curious public to be on the look-out for new cars, new radios, new furniture, new plastic products, new every- Public curiosity is being whipped up day after day. There is a note of expectancy each time you look into the paper, and we wonder what the dream house of the future will be like. Of course in the present housing muddle any old house will do, but you can’t help thinking in more There is one thing, and it’s no postwar dream, that we are wondering about. That is the objective of the boost- ing of the circulation of P.A. to at least 10,000 regular Right now, plastic dream houses to the con- trary, the most important thing in our minds is thé ac- complishment, of the present objective of ten thousand Considering the progressive vote in the last elections, the objective set is a modest one. Actually the ultimate objective will depend on the diligence of P.A. boosters, but the figure of ten thousand as a primary objective is well within the bounds of accomplishment. ' The campaign is already getting under way. Each day new subscriptions are trickling in, but the trickle must swell to a flow, the flow to.a flood, and the flood to a deluge ( you take it from there). € msors her. Let’s }rams like hers. 'ry fine purpose. they can hide their heads in the Housewife. sands of their own refusal to ae ae act, those of us who are part mes of the mad whirl are either being soaked to the gills for fusing situation jerry-built houses, or forced to Acity on the map 4 most backward =iation where it & planning to cor- us situation. Al- hoary headed, ; fathers seem to impression that live in hovels that -would make a prehistoric cave-dweller shud- der with revulsion. the thunders of coming catas- ‘trophe clash in the ears of our City Hall savants, the city COUNCIL'S “DREAM | - HOUSES! ————— SS SS —— 3 = = = = 2. = “Dream Houses” ACIFIC ADVOCATE In the midst of it all, though . fathers blithely ‘ignore the grave consequences that face an overcrowded city and spend an afternoon prattling about means to trap the felons who make off with chrysanthemums from Stanley Park. The feeling seems to be that mums must remain in the parks because if people have to sleep there they might as well sleep im beauty. But about housing? In the words of a cowboy quartette, “No, not a word,’ Messrs. Cor- nett (Smiling Jack), Buscombe (Porky Georgie), and ithe rest of the “do-nothings”. who have become fossilized while resting their hips in'the red-leather up- holstery of the Council Cham- ber, have developed a callous- ness to the trials and tribula- tions of the citizens that is only - equalled by the stupid superior- ity of Marie Antoinette who would substitute cake for the bread that workers could not buy. Some future historian, dig- ging through the archives of the City might uncover a state- ment that could be attributed to any one of the council drones, “They can’t find houses, let them find palaces.” I’m greatly afraid that any more twisting and turnings by the procrastinators at the City Hall are superfluous. won’t solve housing muddles, crying havoc on the stupidity of workers who brought them- selves to Vancouver won’t solve the housing erisis. Buscombe may plead, largely because of the astral number of empty rooms in his palatial residence, that a man’s home is his castle and surveys to make empty space available to the people that the City Council consid- ers the “untouchables” are un- feasible. But come hades or high water the people are go- ing to have homes. The council had better start figuring out means to build ’em. Five-in-two-rooms. Alibis - quan UREOURERDEASERRDESUAEATROSSEeSESteaeueresaasenene vusceauaecoae hort Jabs » o si SSUDDUSADDONGESORORUMECAUEEORSUSESERUCHARESODecREOLAGDUSODODDSOLERSACODSUEDUDCLIUREL ODED OSL UDG OROOSRDENEEIDESORS Liars Have Short Memories READERS of this column make sure that I do not run short of inspir- ation. They keep me supplied with newspaper clippings, articles and comments which provide the raw material for the finished: job as it appears here. Sometimes these come without comment; sometimes with an appeal to help them to answer anti-labor propaganda contained in the cuttings. I received one such item a few days ago from Kamloops. It was an article from a recent copy of the Railway Carmen’s Journal. It is written by Joe Corbett, general chairman of the.Joint Protective Board of the CNR. “Communism in Canada” is the title of the article and Corbett lies his way through a full page of close type—in the interest of “real Trade Union and Labor Party unity.” Taking his cue from Martin Dies and other red-baiters, Commun-. ists are referred to by Corbett as “Communist Agents” (in capital let- ters note), whose role is to destroy the trades union and labor movement in Canada, which contention is borne out by a farrago of nonsense, of lying and slander, in the true Angus MacInnis fashion. CCF leaders have stated that their organization maintains a policy of strict non-interference in the internal affairs of the unions, as a party. Their members in the unions are on their own. That may or may not be true. If these efforts at disruption are not organized, they cer- tainly seem so, to people who view them from outside of a CCF com- mittee room. But if it is true, as a party, their individual members in the unions make up for the temerity of the party in providing obstacles to working class unity in the trade union movement for the real work of the unions. Corbett’s tirade proves this. The first of Corbett’s lies I can refute from personal knowledge. He asserts that the Communists destroyed the Canadian Labor Party which was organized in 1921 by some of the leaders of the AFL, Jimmy Simpson, Jack Bruce and others, and that leaders of the Labor Pro- gressive Party today boast of their success in doing so. No leader of the Labor Progressive Party could boast, without lying that they destroyed the CLP for they did no such thing. 2 We had a branch of the Canadian Labor Party here in B.C. The Communist Party was affiliated with it. It was wrecked in 1926 or 1927 by the actions of the ILP (the Independent Labor Party) of which Alderman Angus MacInnis was the shining light, the leading member, and. which afterwards, became merged in the CCF. The CLP functioned well during its short existence. In one Do- minion election it ran candidates drawn fromthe trade unions, the ILP and the Communist Party, all of- them nominated by the CLP. The war chest was contributed to by all parties without exception. Its usefulness was brought to an end when the same elements who now run the CCF, MacInnis, Lefeaux, E. E. Winch and others, intro- duced a move to extend the vote to the Japanese; not to the Orientals, only to the Japanese. Every affiliated union immediately quit. With the basis gone, the people who had caused the disruption also dropped out. Having destroyed the CLP their work was done. The Communist Party tried to hold the organization together, to maintain it as a Canadian Labor Party but without success. The Com- munist Party, its branches throughout the province and a few Women’s Labor Leagues were all that was left of what might have been a service- able medium for working class political action in this province. I. took part in winding up the affairs of the B.C. Section after the wreckers had done their dirtiest best. Its demise in other parts of Canada was due to the same causes. It was the work of the same Social Democratic elements; unable to force their unworkable political proposals on the CLP, they destroyed it. Cérbett makes a song about the Communists setting up dual unions in* the Workers Unity League. But he does not mention that intolerant bigots like himself, drove the Communists out of the trade union move- ment, individuals, whole unions and in one case, a district organization, District 26 of the UMWA._ The reactionary John L. Lewis took away the autonomy of that district and it has never yet been regranted. But the Communists refused to be driven out of the labor movement, refused to be made non-unionists and organized the Workers’ Unity League. And to prove that they are not dual unionists, when the more sensible leaders in the AFL recognized that there was a place in the trade union movement for the Communists, they went back in with all the workers they had organized. But for this Corbett and other nincompoops like him, accuse the Communists of attempting to destroy the unions with which Corbett is connected, the same unions which expelled them merely for being Communists, the samie unions which drove them out because they were more concerned with strengthening the unions than with keeping them tractable and amenable to the desires of the bosses. CCF leaders when appealing to the unions to join the CCF in a body say that any trade unionist is free to hold any political conviction he desires. That sounds nice from a platform or on paper, but the facts of the last few years show that it is so much poppycop. Our experience compels us to refuse to believe it. To their way of thinking a trade unionist must not be a Communist and Communism is the most pro- nounced of all political convictions. If a trade unionist should happen to be a Communist—and there are plenty of them—he is penalized by expulsion from his union where CCFers like Corbett are in control. Where closed shop agreements are in force that is equivalent to being thrown out of a job, condemning his wife and children to hunger and went. Although red-baiters like Corbett would not admit it, there are men in the trade union movement who are not Communists but are willing to agree that the Communists are the best trade unionists. That, of course, would be too much to expect from the CCF as a party or from any of its red-baiting individual members who are on their own. Tom Alsbury was on his own when he got himself a part-time job in a sawmill after his day’s work as a school teacher was finished, so che could try wrecking the millworkers’ union, the IWA, by ousting the leadership who built the union and putting in their place a gang of CCF politicians. Corbett is on his own when he tries to sow dissention in the Rail- way Carmen’s Union with his lying tirade in their official journal. Every other CCF disrupter is on his own when he is doing his dirty work of union smashing but they are all CCFers doing the work of the CCF as a party. SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1945.