Review

‘Musts’ fo

RESSURES from various quar-
ters are mounting aimed at
having Canada renege on its wheat
sales to Peoples China. U.S. mono-
poly and government spokesmen
are becoming more vecal about
Canada “stabbing her . neighbor
(the U.S.) in the back”. Lester
Pearson and his Liberal cohorts,
cadging for votes, are also harping
on the theme. Sections of the mo-
nopoly press are loud in their
claims that all Canadian wheat is
being gobbled up by the Chinese
army, party and government of-
ficialdom, etc. while the “poor
Chinese people are left to starve”.
In Canada at least, it is the old
game of the “ins” and the “outs”
seizing onto anything that will
bring partisan grist (votes) to the
party mill. Dief wasn’t moved by
- any humanitarian motives by sell-
ing Canada’s wheat surplus to
Peoples China. The compelling
force was the need to hold Tory
support on the prairies. Farmers
were getting restive about wheat
surpluses and untapped markets.
Pearson would like to pry some of
these votes loose, hence his unison
with Yankee spokesmen and mo-
nopoly on the “moral” aspects of

x

r Canada

Canada trading with an alleged
“enemy”.

IMILARLY on the “to-be-or-not-
to-be” of nuclear weapons in
Canada. These old-line political
jumping-jacks have no scruples
about any issue where votes are
concerned. Dief cannot afford at
the moment to say, “yes, we'll have
nuclear weapons”. To do so, with
the present temper of the Cana-
dian people insistent on peace,
would be tantamount to political
suicide for the Tories. So Dief
counters with wordy  evasions,
while Pearson, together with his
Liberal cohorts, who sired U.S.
“integration” with its consequent
nuclear war alliances, gives out
with a lusty and well-feigned “no
nuclear arms” as a top vote getter.
Regardless of U.S. and other
pressures, Canada’s trade with
Peoples China and other sectors of
the socialist and emerging: anti-
colonial world, is a “must” for a
healthy Canadian economy.
Equally so, regardless of U.S.
demands or the slippery evasions
of Tory or Liberal vote cadgers,
no nuclear arms for Canada is a
“must” for Canadian survival. —

EDITORIAL PAGE «*.

A ‘broad field’?

NTERNATIONAL Woodworkers
of America (IWA) wage negoti-
ations are now in the hands of a
conciliation board. Compared with
current lumber operator profits

the IWA wage and “fringe” de-—

mands are extremely modest.

Last week MacMillan, Bloedel &
Powell River announced a net pro-
fit of $27,395,968 for 1961, a gain
of nearly $3-million over the previ-
ous year’s operation.

It would be hard to imagine the
representative of Forest Products
with such a profit balance sheet at
his elbow, arguing before any
board that the lumber operators
“cannot afford” a shorter work
week and a modest 25-cents an
hour increase, or trotting out the
old cliche about “pricing ourselves
out of the market’, etc. and etc.

But they’ll probably do just that
if the “Employers Proposals For
Revision...” of the current IWA
agreement means anything. De-
spite the MacMillan-Bloedel net
profits total, with corresponding
totals netted by other big lumber
operators, the bosses demand a
“20-per cent reduction” for fallers
and buckers, a hoist in board rates
to $3.75 a day, plus a whole series
of cuts in holiday, fringe and other

° . | | | benefit WNP Reet ene
Editorial comment . oo

OME twelve hundred prisoners
are now on trial in Cuba for
their participation in the U.S.-in-
-spired armed invasion of Cuba.
Their hands red with the blood of
the Cuban people, these mercen-
aries now plead for “mercy” from
their intended victims.

U.S. President Kennedy, with
unsurpassed gall and hypocrisy,
has “appealed” to the Cuban gov-
ernment for “leniency” to these
duped mercenaries, organized and
financed by the Pentagon for mili-
tary aggression upon Cuba.

And in Ottawa Kennedy’s “Man
Friday” John Diefenbaker adds his
two-bits worth. “We have been
particularly concerned with these
trials” orates Dief, “and are hope-
ful... that the proceedings are
conducted in accordance with nor-
mal principles of justice.”

Such Tory concern for “justice”
is truly touching, more so since it
was nowhere in sight when those
it pleads for were storming the
beaches of Cuba with one intent—
to kill, destroy, and rule.

Pacific Tribune

Editor — TOM McEWEN
Associate Editor—-MAURICE RUSH
Business Mgr.—OXANA BIGELOW

Published weekly at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.
Phone MUtual 5-5288

Subscription Rates:
One Year: 4.00 — Six Months: $2.25
- Canadian and Commonwealth coun-
tries (except Australia): $4.00 one
year. Australia. United States and
all other countries: $5.00 one year.

Autherized as second class mail by
the Post Office Department, Ottawa,
and for payment of pestage in cash-

as

Aside from being an unwar-
ranted interference in the internal
afairs of another state, we just
wonder what kind of “justice”
would have prevailed were the
situation reversed?

History is replete with the
answer to that one.

are not satisfied with a mere $28-
million net profit for 1961, but
want to assure that during 1962-63
it will be upped considerably by
substantial wage and other cuts
for the lumber and sawmill work-
ers whose labors created this vast
annual wealth. For the bosses the

road to still greater pra
geared to automation, speed’
rect wage cuts, slashed fring:
fits, plus a growing army
employed to be used as a I
lower the standards cf the
ployed. a
As the biggest single basi
in B.C. the IWA holds a ¢
sponsibility; to serve as
setter and example to other
in its promotion of unity an
gle to win its contract
mands. In this it has the
and support of every workin
and woman in B.C., eX
through their unions and 4
viduals.
It may also be expected
Canadian Labor Congress
tion opening in Vancow
April 9 will pledge its supP
greater unity and struggle
sure an IWA victory.
M & B chairman J.
says “lumber had a good !
showing definite impr?
over a broad field.”
That “field” must be €
to include the modest det
the IWA. With a $28-millio
boodle in the MacMillan
there is no valid reason
shouldn’t be.

——en

The day following the 4
ment of the British Roy
of Physicians linking
smoking with lung cancel,
shares on the London S!
change took a 25-million
drop. Reports show big
shareholders in near pat
stocks dropping daily.

Tom
McEwen

HEN the Aberhart Social Cre-
dit government first came to
power in sunny Alberta during the
Hungry Thirties, it did so by sheer
trickery; the promise of a $25
“social credit dividend” to every
man, woman and child in Alberta.
The skids had also been greased
well ahead of time to get rid of its
predecessor, headed by Premier
Brownlee. By one of the oldest
tricks known to man since the days
of Adam, a comely looking Eve
with an enticing apple had been.
sicked onto Brownlee. Result, a
“man of substance” hit the dust of
public opprobrium.

Safely installed in office and
wearing an enticing “holier-than-
thou” halo, Aberhart got busy on a
two-pronged program; inviting all
the sawdust-trail bible punchers
from the Rio Grande north to visit

-Alberta to help him spread Social
Credit “salvation”, and to issue his
“funny money” dividend.

The bible punchers came like a
swarm of locusts, headed by the al-
luring and voluptuous Aimee Sem-
ple McPherson. The “lone prairies”
buzzed with the swing of “revival”
and speculation on Abie’s “funny
money’.

“All you need is a fountain pen”
boomed Aberhart, and jobless
demonstrations used to head their
parades with a ten-foot one made
from a few lengths of stove pipe to
impress Abie’s on the urgency of
his promised “prosperity”. Esveci-
ally since the Aberhart “funny
money” dollar was barely negoti-
able at any store. However, it
wasn’t all a dead loss since the _
provincial treasury netted several
thousand dollars from the sale of
the Aberhart buck as a “souvenir”.

Then the King government and
the Bankers Association stepped in
and declared the Aberhart dollar
and the Socred legislation which
created it “ultra vires’ and that
was that.

Did that worry Aberhart? Not at
all. On the contrary it gave him
just what he needed, a new “‘come-
on” to dangle on the hustings. Here
he was, trying to give the people
$25 “for nothing”, and a Liberal
government in Otawa steps in and
says “nothing doing’. Result, a
greater majority than ever for
Aberhart—and a quiet burial for
his “$25 dividend’. Requisat im
pace.

“History repeats itself”, but not
always in the same setting does the
Social Credit actor “fret his hour
upon the stage’.

When the Bennett Socred gov-
ernment took over the BCElectric
the prime thought in the minds of .

bids fair to become another

most people who had been the
tims for decades of this powe? ©,
transit octopus was that Nn?
“public-owned”’ institution,
would be the first beneficia
substantial reductions in ©

and bus rates. :

The BCElectric shareh?
howled that the ‘take over” ©
pensation was too low. Big mi
poly, through all the media #
beck and call for howling, }°
“socialism” and invoked the a
the “courts” to upset the ©
over” meantime collecting 5©
million more dollars as a re
their howling.

Now with the BCElectri¢
over all tied up ir the courts
B.C. Power Corporation ‘Te
ships” legalistic red tape and
not, Premier Bennett’s oft ré
“promise”’of a cut in rates
announced at $1.00 on electri¢ |

hart carrot to dangle before
suffering electorate on the h

“You see how it is’ says wi
wearing his best Aberhart C?
glory smile, “they got me “ ‘
up just so I couldn’t cut YOU i
-BCElectric public-ownershiP |
perity. If you want that ©
know what to do?”.

It worked for Aberhart, put
is no reason why it should
mitted to work for Bennett,
if experience means anything