‘4

uring the course of a num-
ber of recent TV broadcasts
on matters affecting organized
labor, it would appear that Mr.
Pat O'Neil, secretary of the B.C.
Federation of Labor, puts all his
emphasis upon “Communism”
rather than upon the most press-
ing need of the hour—trade union
unity.

Among many of the fop eche-
lons of right-wing social democ-
racy and trade union bureaucra-
cy, Mr. O’Neal is, of course, not
alone in th’s typical McCarthyite
art.

It does, however, fit badly in a
situation where the present need
of labor unity and co-ordination
is paramount. _At _the -moment
many B.C. unions large and small
are moving into, or are already
in negotiations for new wage
contracts. It is also known (to
Mr. O’Neil also) that the organ-
ized employers and their hench-
men are waging a concerted and
mounting ‘attack upon the wages
and standards of labor, using

*

Harms labor unity

EDITORIAL PAGE

every _legislative _and economic
trick to gain their ends, including
a growing army of dispossessed
jobless workers.

It is of course Mr. O’Neil’s un-
challenged right to disagree with
Communist ideals and aims. But
honest disagreement with Com-
munist ideology is vastly differ-
ent from cheap McCarthyite mis-
representation and slander, which
latter serves no one except the
bosses and their legislative watch
dogs.

When Mr. O’Neil and those
who think and act like him have
shot their repetitious anti-Com-
munist wad, the basic issues they
seek to obscure by doing so —
remain, and the burning need of
labor unity and action to win la-
bor’s just economic demands —
also remain.

If Mr. O’Neil can grasp this
fundamental truth before it is
too late, the thousands of. union
men and women who constitute
the B.C. Federation of Labor will
be the gainers. :

Make it short, boys

dressing a gathering of big
A business executives in the
posh Bayshore Inn last week,
UBC Professor H. C. Wilkinson
outstripped all the industrial
“time-study” and “efficiency
stop-watch” experts on the prob-
lems of production.

The prof’s discovery, following
long hours of burning the midnite
oil in diligent study, is that. “in-
dustry only gets two hours’ pro-
duction for eight hours’ pay.”

To be sure “management”

wastes a bit of time by poor or-
ganization and lack of know-how,
but the real waste is that “every
100 hours of labor paid for, 45
are spent in complete idleness.”

Now we know why poor devils
like H. R. MacMillan, Clarence

Wallace, Frank McMahon and
similar “needy” cases have to
struggle along on a paltry few
million a year. Just look how bet-
ter off they would be if that oth-
er 55-hours pay were honestly
worked for?

In the prof’s opinion this
chronic “idleness” is eaten up by
workers attending to “personal
requirements” or “just sitting
around.” The prof defines “per-
sonal requirements” as going to
the toilet and coffee breaks.

If “45-hours in every 100” does
seem a bit overdone, even allow-
ing for an industry-wide chronic

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:

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year. Australia, United States and
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Authorized as second class mail by
the Post Office Department, Ottawa,
and for payment of postage in cash.

constipation and a double the
present coffee break, remember
its a UBC _faculty -prof holding
the stop-watch on both opera- -
tions.. The “intelligenzia”?

During his discourse on “idle-
ness’ the prof told his audience
that “he hopes to continue his
studies in a survey of sawmills
and plywood mills in B.C.” Bet-
ter make it a “quick one” boys,
the prof will be “timing you.”

“HE warm greetings of inter-

' national workingclass. solid-
arity and fraternity which came
to the 17th national convention
of the Communist Party of Can-
ada from a score or more of
Communist and Workers’ parties
around the world, bear eloquent
evidence of a long-established
truth: that progressive ideas and
the common bonds of interna-
tional friendship cannot be sur-

. pressed at national boundaries by

reactionary governments.

_ It would be to Canada’s great
advantage were  Diefenbaker,
Green and company able to grasp
that fact, instead of continuing
to act in the capacity of a mangy:
“watchdog on a Pentagon leash,
barring entry into Canada of fra-
ternal delegates from other lands
as guests of the 17th convention
of the Communist Party.

The refusal of the Diefen-
baker government to give entry
visas to fraternal Communist
delegates from such Socialist
countries as the Soviet Union,
China, Hungry, Bulgaria, may
please the coldwar conspirators
of Washington immensely and’
further inflate the already over-

inflated and power-drunk Tory

ego which dominates in Ottawa.
But it does nothing to enhance
world respect for Canada’s boast-
ed “democracy,” or strengthen
international friendship.

It does however, prove once
again, (if such proof is needed),
that the warm messages of these

Ideas need no visa

Communist greetings from_ many
lands, urging peace and peacef
coexistence between all natio

.an end to the threat and menacé

of thermonuclear war, and mut
ual friendship and respect be
tween all peoples and natior
regardless of differing soci
systems, are anathema to th
pretensions of “peace” an
“democracy” as preached b
Western imperialism. and its
Tory bellhops in Ottawa, wh
managed to bar. the. fratern
representatives of world- Com
munism, but couldn’t silence th
noble ideas they epitomize.

Obviously Dief’s boasted “dem
ocracy” (patented in Washing:
ton) regards peace and intern
tional friendship as “dangerous”,
hence the crude Tory attempts
to throttle it?

*% & ae
Diefenbaker’s “socialist Man_
Friday” nee Harold Winch, MP
(Vancouver-East) is back home
from his NATO junket. |
Adding to his “the-world-—
doesn’t-owe-us-a-living” laurels, ©
Harold sees NATO as a “purely ©
defensive” organization, dedicat= —
ed to the arts and sciences in all _
its preponderent “non-military”
aspects. Too bad says Harold,
“Canadians don’t know enough” —
about NATO’s “non-military” ac-
tivities? - §
Clearing the way for Dief,
“socialist” Winch thinks the —
RCAF in NATO should be equip- —
ped with nuclear weapons, our
other forces with “conventional.” _

re

Tom
McEwen

hen Louis P. MacNamee of

Kelvington, Saskatchewan
passed away on October: 6; 1961,
no one thought it worth while let-
ting this paper know. Then that
grand veteran Communist farmer
Walter Wiggins, co-worker of Lou-
is MacNamee in the stirring days
of the 20’s and 30’s among Sask-
atchewan’s fighting “dirt” farmers
decided that while it was late for
the customary obituary, L. J. Mac-
Namee’s life work was worthy of
a higher tribute than the mere
mention of his passing. In Walter
Wiggins’ opinion such mention in
the local and provincial papers
“fail to convey a proper estimation
of the stature of the man or the
part he played in shaping a bril-
liant page in Canadian farm _his-
tory.”

Born in Gananoque, Ontario
in 1874, MacNamee began work at
an early age as a railroad worker,
and often spoke of his railroad ex-
periences in the Mesaba Iron Range
of Minnesota where the U.S. Steel
corporations ground out millions
in profits from the blood and sweat
of the. Mesaba metal miners. In
one of the most militant and bitter

strikes in U.S. labor history, Mac-
Namee got his “baptism of fire”
and his knowledge of the worth
of organization and unity on the
Mesaba Range. |

In the year 1906 MacNamee mar-
ried a Dakota lass and the couple
moved up to the Kelvington (Sask.)
district, where they homesteaded
and purchased land. His experien-
ces as a railroad engineer on the
Mesaba moved him to study the
problem of organizing the farmers.
But in MacNamee’s broad vision of
those early days, Nothing less than
One national uniOn of all farmers
would suffice for the struggle as
he saw it. That idea is still valid
today. ; .

In the early 20’s, with the war-
time “prosperity” stripped from
the farmers and steadily worsen-
ing, MacNamee and a small group
of militant farmers began the job
of organization. Soon-a number of
groups came into, being, which la-
ter united and became the Farm-
ers Union of Canada, with L. J.
MacNamee its first President. _

In 1923 the first inter-provincial
conference of the FUC was conyven-
ed in Saskatoon. At that confer-
ence an historic decision was made;
for the farmers to organize a great

idea which grew into a mighiy —
force was the railroad-farmer, L.
J. MacNamee. From these efforts
of MacNamee and a handful of his
pioneering
Walter Wiggins), the marketing of
half or more of all the grain grown ;
in Canada, had their origin. E

and farm organization required
the work of many thousands of
farmers, the initial idea, the inspit-
ation, and the campaign driving
force came from the ‘‘man from
Kelvington,” L. J.

tive” leadership steered the pools
and farm organizations into “re- ~
spectable” circles, L. J. MacNamee
became an active worker in the
left-wing Farmers’ Unity League.
In 1931 he headed the first Can-
adian farm delegation to the Sov-
iet Union as guests of the Soviet
farmers, and widely toured the
prairie provinces on his return.

J. MacNamee was a big man phys-
ically, a man of big and strong
convictions, capable of strong pre-
sentation
when
page he wrote in Canadian farm
history, a history of struggle, or-

associates, (including

While the building of the ‘Pool’

MacNamee.
In later years when “tonserva-

Walter Wiggins concludes; Yala

convictions .
The

of those
occasion demanded.

“co-operative” system, owned and
controlled by farmers, for the mar-
keting of their own produce.

Thus was the Canadian Wheat-

Pool born and the initiator of this

ganization, and great achievement,
must not be forgotten. The farm-
ers of Canada in these times of
‘crisis and tension, could well do
with many of his sterling calibre —

today.”

January 26, 1962—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4—