P. A. racic abvocate

PEOPLE’S VOICE FOR PROGRESS

Published every Saturday by The People Publishing Com-
Bany, Room 104, Shelly Building, 119 West Pender Street,
Vancouver, British Columbia and printed at East End
Printers, 2303 East Hastings Street, Vancouver, British
Columbia. Subscription Rates: One year $2; six months $1.

Editor Phone
C. A. SAUNDERS MA rine 5288

Win At Windsor

[ee emergency meeting by B.C. Labor in Vancouver this
week ‘supported the latest action’ of the Windsor Strike
Committee and decided to call special meetings of local

unions to obtain power for officers tq act in support of the

Ford strikes.

This action following -decisions by local unions and
the call from the Ford strike committee for sympathetic strikes
is a warning to Provincial authorities in Ontario and the Fed-
éral government that labor is prepared to go into action im-
mediately and will not tolerate strikebreakinge action or
‘bloodshed by police at Windsor.

The solidarity of the Ford strikers is a lesson in united
action to Canadian labor. The strike, now in its tenth week,
continues to stall on the key question of union security.

The strikers have stood solid against every form of provo-
cation offered by the Ford company. The shipping of police
to the scene of the strike in’ an endeavor to provoke blood-
shed raised an immediate storm of protest from organized
labor across Canada.

The sentiment of the workers is evident. They are pre-
pared to go all out to win this crucial fight.

Financial support has poured in, whilst sympathetic strike
action has already taken place. Every active unionist realizes
that the pattern for future labor relations may be set as a

_ result of the Windsor struggle. -

Under these circumstances it is not:a case of what has

been done but what more can we do.

The strike must be won and every worker must be pre-
pared to back the Windsor strikers to the hilt.

Action must be taken rapidly—the trade union move-
ment must be united and determined to win this fight.

Much has been done in B.C. But much remains to be
done. Response to financial appeals has been good, but this
elementary contribution cannot be regarded as adequate to
the occasion until every progressive and trade unionist in the
province is wearing a Ford Strike button as an earnest of
solidarity. This is no time for hesitancy or timidity. It is
the time for decisive action. Weakness at this time can be
fatal. Workers will not tolerate, and will repudiate those
who by wavering or vaccilation prejudice the cause of trade
unionism in Canada—for this is the stake. And only bold,
decisive action can win.

There must be no retreat at Windsor.

The Ford strikers must receive the whole-hearted sup-
port of all labor.

The fight to determine Canada’s future is tied up with
the Windsor battle. , ?

Everything for the Ford Strikers!

Win at Windsor!

Democracy

W 7 E have been hearing over the radio and reading in our
newspapers for months the stories of ‘totalitarian re-

gimes’—‘lack of democracy’ and so on, emanating from
‘authoritative sources’ in Europe. Everywhere that a progres-
sive government has taken power and proceeded to give
democracy to the people, supporters of the reactionary min-
ority have shouted these accusations. ~

The elections in France administered a sharp rebuff to
these prophets. ;

But, the elections in Yugo-Slavia brand the stories in-
delibly. Britain has carried on a fierce campaign against the
National Liberation Front—even to the extent of persuading
Dr. Subac, foreign minister in Tito’s cabinet to resign. Know-
ing the popularity of the Liberation forces and seeing in-
evitable defeat in the elections, Opposition forces, carried on
a campaign to boycott the elections.

Well, the people spoke, in the most democratic elections
ever held in the country. Ninety percent of the eligible voters
turned out to vote and they voted for Tito.

One party government—totalitarian. Where is the gov-
ernment in the so-called ‘true democracies’ with a ninety
percent mandadate?

PAGE 4 — PACIFIC ADVOCATE

This

Fee announcement by the conference of Muni-
cipalities, confirmed by Premier John Hart,
that public acquisition of the properties of the
B.C. Electric Railway is no longer contemplated
is a matter of serious concern to the people of
British Columbia. :

It represents the coalition’s final and complete
betrayal of the principle of public ownership of
British Columbia’s public utilities. As the Labor-
Progressive Party warned, tory-domination of
the coalition government has successfully and
cunningly sabotaged public acquisition of the
light and power system, at this most critical
hour. The powerful, electric monopoly couldn’t
wish for a more one-sided showdown.

For three years the issue has been bandied
around in a most desultory
fashion by Premier Wart
and the elected officials of
the Greater Vancouver and
Greater Victoria municipal
areas. The latter lost inter-
est in the campaign when
they discovered there were
to be no profits for muni-
cipal treasuries; that public
ownership meant service at
cost. The Provincial Gov-
ernment has evaded its re-
sponsibilities in a cloud of
indifference from the start.
Anyone familiar with what
has been accomplished in Ontario where a pub-
licly-owned Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Com-
mission which in addition to giving _cheaper
power to the people of Ontario, has managed in
the past five years to add $53,000,000 to its op-
ereling reserves, while increasing its fixed assets
by $36,000,000, cannot but be alarmed by this
capitulation to monopolies interests.

Nevertheless public ownership of power is not
a dead issue simply because a group of provin-
cial and municipal politicians haggle themselves
to a stalemate. This is no reason to believe that
the principle with its tremendous possibilities
for practical application has been killed and we
must intensify rather than lessen the fight.

Ar ound Town by Cynthia Carter

THER are very few of us who would go out to

do our shopping dressed in a hoop skirt. And
few of our husbands ride a horse to work in the
shipyards. Such things, we know, would be ri-
diculously old fashioned.

Eut at the same time we send our kids to
school to be given an edu-
eation that in many respects
went out of date with gas
lamps and the little. red
school house.

About a year or so ago a
group of Vancouver high
school kids went to town on
the school board in an effort
to get revised school history
books .that would provide a
more correct interpretation
of events of the last hundred
years. They pointed out in-
stances in text books now in
use in which Britain was -
presented as the savior of India, a nice, kind
power that was good enough to take over the
country and run it for the ever-grateful Savages.
The Soviet Union, it seemed, was a sort of short-
lived experiment built on bombs and black
beards that would fold up any day now. And the
wars of intervention after the Russian revolution
were glossed over as acts of high chilvalry on, the
part of the aggressor nations.

The early missionaries to this continent and
the explorers who opened up Canada for strictly
business reasons are played up as heroes and al-
truistic individuals who did the Indians a good
turn by giving them equal doses of religion,
tuberculosis, and rotgut rum, and the wars be-
tween Indian tribes, such as the Hurons and the
Iroquois, proved that the Indians were blood
thirsty savages who weren’t fit to live. (One
wonders, reading these accounts of ferocious
Indian warfare, how there happened to be any
Indians unscalped when the British and French
arrived. Could it be, teacher, that the British
anc French used fomented Indian wars for their
own ends?)

But, of course, the “kids who protested these
inaccuracies got nowhere. Neither did the B.C.
Teacher’s Federation: in its recent courageous
fight for higher educational standards.

But with history moving at its present break-
neck speed, we can’t sit around and let education
stagnate. It’s time the mothers and fathers and
unionist and club workers got together and did
something constructive. Educational reform is
long, long overdue.

| eek by Nigel Morgan

One of the major wealknes.
to develop a progressive cog:
failure to develop a mass
popular demand that coulg
people’s program for ove.
through. There is no issue: -
tial “atomic energy” for ¢; ]
Tory coalition as does the
ownership of power. There jg 2
be more helpful in developin a
movement, that type of “yy
will lay the basis for Britig |
gress and move forward. : fi

y EE oEN. engineers with the s|
tion of W. C. Gilman ang |
tell us that self-liquidating ©
tricts can be established in ¢
Victoria areas on a non-pr
consider stopping short of ¢
Progressive Party cannot Tes
own their own utilities debt |
not to the big eastern Holt me
lic service. The struggle to
today in its beginning. T% be
means when Mayor Cornett sq |
mittee-room last week to anno |

The immediate proposition ¢-
cite to the municipal voters x |
plan to take over the B.C. §
temporarily stalled, and the Ge
be started anew. Those elected —
responsible for bringing the i
porary impasse must be mad
failure as best they ean. St 4
squirming already, as for e |
Valley reeves who have alreat
be “tragic” to drop the entin |
cause of disagreement over m4
of buck passing is going to sat}_
and householders of the lower} |
couver Island; nothing short <1
ownership with full developme ~
dro-electrie resources, 90 -percez
idle today, with cheaper poy:
secondary manufacturing indy —
vast program of rural electri {
labor, let’s unite AND GET ae

FIRST of all, what is education —

that education is, or shoule |
life. In pioneer days in Canac ||
sisted of very little of the thr *
practical hunting, tracking, ai
boys, and cooking, sewing and. !
the girls. This type of educatia ;
on in the home, was excellen |
the life the children of that da}
now, in our present day, edueai 4
thing apart from practical 1 |
schools, of course, do prepare be ?
job, and an academic educatio: |
cultural background of sorts. es
pert of the job education has t ?

We live in a world in whid 4
along with people, if we don’t © §
dropping atomic bombs in ous |
have to understand our neighb: ||
live next door to people of di
languages, economic systems. | |
taught how to do this in our se. i
ately not. ee

qd
4)

A recent educational survey
two years’ research, revealed
weaknesses in our educations
were:

1. School work had not heen ~
children or changing opportut
life.

2. School programs were desig
only a few children were able
and haven’t been changed to ser a:
all people. —

3. Good citizenship is not ont &

4. The educational system h
with scientific and social chang

5. Edueation has not been re ¥
new conditions of life.

6. Teachers and citizens do ne ;
agreed-upon goal. : :

Six faults such as these are &
And if education is not planned &
ren for the world they must live &
consider much of the childrens’ -
waste of valuable time. 23

But what to do- about it? Al
four dollar question! How abo —
subject up for.discussion in you —
political group? Then, when yi
whether or not action is neces!
delegations to the school board,
the provincial government? It’s
trying.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBEE