Who takes foreign orders O NE of British Columbia’s top anti-Soviet propa- gandists, Senator J. W. deB. Farris, has just returned from England. The legal job the Senator had on hand before the Privy Council, and his views on the political situation in that country have more than a passing interest for B.C. people. The first appeal before the Privy Council in-’ volved the right of the government of B.C. to tax lands along the Esquimalt and Nanaimo : Railway. The B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the right, the Supreme Court of Canada denied it. We don’t know what the Privy Council may say, but a lot of Canadians who still believe in Canada’s independ- ence ite Marshall plans and Atlantic pacts, might well ask again: “Why must the rights of Canadians, thwarted by rail monopolisis, be decided outside the borders of Canada? And although we don’t know where the Senator «stands on ‘such mat- ters, we do know that he is most Vociferous on “orders from Moscow”, “foreign interference” and other cold war epithets, directed against labor. Meantime, while the courts at home and abroad debate the right of a government to tax the rail monopolists, the B.C. people will cough up an esti- ae $18-20 million in sales tax in 1949-50 to fill The second case directly affects trade unionists. The B.C. Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada have both ruled that the B.C. Hours of Work Act applies to the CPR and its Empress Hotel (Victoria) employees. The CPR has ‘“‘de- cided” otherwise and so it takes the matter to the Privy Council for final decision. Again we don’t know what the Privy Council will say—but we have an instinctive notion of what a million or so Canadian trade unionists’ would say of a legal anachronism which still binds them to a status of colonial peonage, and stands as a perpetual threat to every progressive statute won after long years of struggle. These two cases point up the fact that Canada’s “independence” stil] depends upon the legal rulings of London, fortified by the dollar dictates of Wash- ‘ington, conditions which can scarcely be obscured by the Senator’s numerous “‘orders from Moscow” blasts. On the British political front the Senator dem- onstrates his able versatility. ‘What Britain needs,” avers the Senator, “‘is a good, live Liberal party.” But seeing that the Bntish Liberal party is as dead as a stale mackerel, the Senator will be content with “a Conservatice comeback”’. And that is precisely what the warmonger Chur- chill and his Tory-Liberal cohorts—with the full “backing of Wall Street—are working for. In this they are aided by the anti-labor, anti-Soviet policies of the Attlee-Bevin social democrats. Small wonder that Farris, who is himself a member of an ana- chronistic and unrepresentative institution, the Can- s/99 adian Senate, is ‘‘optimistic’’. The issue t Sead! October in Victoria, Percy Bengough, - 44 president of the Trades and Labor Congress ‘of Canada, said, apropos of. the Canadian Sea- men’s Union struggle: “*. . . the right to organize latives is the very foundation of free trade union- ism. This congress must never allow itself to be controlled by any particular group. This con- 8ress will strive for the cooperation of all but will strenuously resist dictatorship from any. The pol- icies of this congress must be determined at our ” conventions wy the properly elected delegates and not. through the medium of a St, James Street- _ controlled press."” : ‘ If the 1949 TLC convention stands by these excellent principles outlined by President Ben- gough in 1948, it will lift the unprincipled sus- pension imposed: upon the CSU, and aid that ‘splendid union to win its just rights. tee and bargain collectively through chosen represen- ~ If, however, the TLC convention, under pressure of foreign state departments, govern- ments, ship owners and trade union burocrats, should reject the cause of the CSU with a bar- rage of anti-Communist red-baiting, it will win the plaudits of “‘a St. James Street-controlled press’’—but lose its birthright as a free trade union organization. The choice is a momentous one for Canadian labor. Reduced to its simplest terms, it poses the ever-pressing question for all working men and women: “Which side are you on?” In 1948, President Bengough’s address to the TLC convention’ indicated that he knew. Events since then raise serious doubts. The Cal- gary convention has the historic task of giving a ecisive answer, designed to win full autonomy and greater solidarity for Canadian labor, in preparation for the great struggles that lie ahead - + + struggles in which Canadian seamen are al- . science of dialectical materialism to lay ‘but the “sole power’ ready bearing the brunt. Excessive zeal’ in Comox rN an editorial labelled “Excessive Zeal in Rev- - elstoke” the Comox Free Press worked itself | Wik biti: ob Wilenakat tee Oe like of four Courténay youths who had been fined $25 each in a Revelstoke court for “running out on a forest fire- 7 _with the B.C. Forest Service”. The boys were dis- te to fight a fire some 100 miles distant. The night out it rained and the only shelter our fire- ing heroes had was the “skimpy blanket fur- ished by the munificent Forest Service”. _ Deciding that the rain which soaked them must ’, the boys headed back to the ights of Revelstoke—and into the combined their “officious friend” and the law. That was just too much for the doughty Comox Free Press. Striking a ‘sturdy blow in defense of “< 1 f. il ” ° ; that “impartial” journal declared: ~ a