EDITORIAL PAGE

*

Comment

‘Close-Up’

A= TV fan laboring under the
illusion that U.S. McCarthy-
ism doesn’t exist in Canada must
have got a rude awakening by last
Sunday’s CBC-TV “Close-Up” pro-
gram.

The stale red-herring of “com-
munism” in the Mine-Mill union
served the CBC boys as a media for
demonsirating their several qual-
ifications for membership on any
Birchite “Un-American Activities”
inquisition, if as and when called
upon to serve.

It was no accident of course that
such a shameless anti-labor pro-
gram should be featured on the
eve of the Mine-Mill international
convention. Had CLC President
Jodoin or Steel’s Larry Sefton
planned the timing or the theme
ef this nation-wide anti-commun-
ist TV smear to facilitate their
cannibalistic raiding of Mine-Mill
membership in Sudbury and else-

garbage

where. (which perhaps they did?)
they couldn’t have turned in a fil-
thier job than did this CBC-TV
impudent inquisition.

Having set their stage on the
old theme “are you still beating
your wife” guilt complex, union
leaders are “accused” by inference,
invendo and the meanderings of
an obvious stool pigeon that they
are “guilty” of the Jodoin-Seften-
CBC allegations of “communism”?

In the early days of Mine-Mill
its leaders and members used to
be faced with monopoly gunmen,
thues, armed vigilantes and the
“judicial” frameup. Names like
Rio Bill Haywood, Joe Hill, Gin-
ger Goodwin are written deep in
its history.

Today Mine-Mill is faced with
the Communist “smear” by com-
bined gevernment agencies, CBC-
TY “culture”, labor fakers and
union raiders.

Editorial comment...

t is reported that the Diefen-
baker cabinet have decided to
set aside a room in the Parliament
buildings where perplexed MPs
can retire for an hour of “quiet
contemplation.”

While this will be a decided im-
provement over having to retire
to the men’s washroom to “com-
mune with the infinite,” it holds
certain political hazards for Can-
adians.

It may be recalled that when the
late Liberal chieftain Mackenzie
King was feeling the burdens of
government weighing heavily, he
used to spend numerous hours in
Seance consultation with the
spooks—ther bedevil Canada with
the end results of his “quiet con-
sultations.”

* * *

Among other things the score
board could probably be regarded
as a tribute to the infinite and
seemingly endless patience of the
Chinese people.

On March 21st the Chinese For-
eign Office issued its 193rd pro-
test against U.S. military air and
naval provocations and incursions:
upon the territorial sovreignity of
the Republic of China.

What if the situation were re-
versed? Then we’d hear Kennedy,
Dief, Green and company howéing
to high heaven about “aggression.”

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

Antk-rized as second class mail by
the Post Office Department, Ottawa,
ana for payment of pestage in cash-

But the Chinese, we don’t even
“recognize” them. All we recog-
nize is the boost to our trade pro-
fits by their wheat dollars.

* * *

We don’t know what sort of a
hassle the Burnaby Liberal As-
sociation was in when it turned
thumbs-dewn on ex-Liberal MP
Tom Goode as its candidate for
Burnaby-Richmond in the coming
federal elections.

But whatever it was it was all to
the good since Goode was never
rated as being any good for the
people of Burnaby-Richmond.

Dollar ‘Democracy’

he recent. elections in the Ar-
gentine should serve to drive
home a lesson to working people

everywhere; one that is all too.

readily forgotten or ignored.

In their fulminations against the
Soviet Union and other Socialist
countries, the bourgeoisie and their
right - wing social democratic
lackies never tire of bemoaning the
absence of “democratic elections”,
the “supremacy of the ballot box”’,
the right to “vote” for more than
“one party”, etc. and ete.

But when the vast majority of
the Argentine people, its labor
movement and its impoverished
peasantry, vote solid for the party
of its choice and as a result vote
Wall Street’s puppet Frondizi gov-
ernment out of office, that is a
“horse of a different color”. Then
its “to hell with democracy and the
ballot box” while the military and

?

reaction take over to keep the
“neoples’ choice” out of their el-

ected positions, and thereby “save”

Argentine for Wall Street.

Of course the post-election situ-
ation in Argentine today has many
parallels in Latin American coun-
tries. Whenever and whereever the
people of those countries elect a.
popular government,. not to the
liking of U.S. and/or British im-
perialism, “democracy”
nose-dive, its institutions and aims

swept out by a military junta or —

reactionary cabal, either or both in
the service of and financed by U.S.
imperialism.

In today’s Argentine as else-
where in the
phere, U.S. imperialism “saves”
democracy by destroying it; by
substitutine “dollar aid” to reac-

takes a

Southern Hemis- —

tion and labelling the end result |

“democracy”.

‘An injury to one...’ |

he mass arrests in recent days

of some 70 Sons of Freedom
Doukhobors in the Kootenays bids
fair to become Canada’s greatest
“cause celebre” in the annals of
civil liberties.

The charge so far against the

arrested Doukhobors include “con-
spiracy to intimidate the Parlia-
ment and Legislature... between
1955 and 1962”, by their activities
in various B.C. centers during that
period. (At press time bail had not
yet been granted the Sons).
Already questions are being
asked; can justice emerge from an,

atmosphere of prejudice? Can 2

person so charged be tried for an

offense (now labelled “intimida-
tion”), for which he has already
served a penaliy? Can a govern-
ment (Parliament) be “intimid-—
ated” for nearly a decade without
having recourse to settling the
said cause of “intimidation”, or

does it merely solve the problem —

by tossing the alleged “intimida-
tors” in the hoosegow?

Ironic as it may seem, this. civil
liberties issue for a dissident mi-
nority may become a challenge t0
the liberties of all.

Tom
McEwen

O: newspapers have a value

reming us in today’s changing
world how little some things do
change. :

_ Couple of weeks ago Sam Eng-
lish of Michel dropped into the
‘PT office. Despite a prolonged and
grave illness Sam’s fighting spirit
remains undimmed. Never empty-

- handed, he brought us an old dog-
eared edition of The Daily Herald
of Nanaimo, dated February 6th,
1914, which boasted the ‘largest.
circulation of any Vancouver Is-
land paper.”

On its front page is a news item,
the court conviction of Sam’s coal
miner father, William English, for
his participation in the Nanaimo
miners strike of 1912. The Daily
Herald, an early pioneer of anti-
labor journalism in B.C., describes
the miners strike as the “Nanaimo
riot trials,’ and slanders the min-
ers union leaders of that day in
much the same terms as the ‘free
press” of our day describes any un-
ion leader worthy of his salt.

Top of the front page is a picture
of “General” Rosalie Jones,
(“Mother’”’ Jones-in the great Am-
erican labor movement of the
time), leading her heroic little

all their own. They serve to -

band of suffragette women from
New York to-Albany in bitter mid-
winter in the great world-wide
campaign to win “Votes for Wo-
men’’. Sort of reminded us that a
lot of things we take today for
granted cost the workers of an
earlier day a lot of hardship, suf-
fering and struggle to win. That’s
why we should never let any of la-
bor’s hard-won gains go easily.
Another front-page story has a
today’s aroma about it. Seems that
a group of our early ‘empire build-
ers” hdd “bought” the St. Peter’s
Indian Reserve lands in Manitoba,
(land estimated at $21%4-million) for
a lot of glass beads, cheap booze, a
spot of bribery and corruption here
and there among the chiefs to en-
tice them to surrender their lands.
When this scandal came before
a conference of some ‘eminent,
jurors”, among them the late and
unlamented Arthur Meighan, (then
a tory minister of justice), these
worthy jurists, pinch-hitting for the
land-grabbers, decided the ‘deal’
must stand; that “Parliament could
do nothing,” and that if the In-
dians wanted ther lands back they
could go to the courts? Reminds us
of a big cement company “deal”
which got all set to squat on Indian
lands and plunk a cement plang
down on the front door of an his-
toric Indian church 52-years later.
The Daily Herald “Indian Scan-
dal” story reminds us that. the
bourgeoisie of 1914 and 1962 have
one inherent trait in common; their
readiness to steal other people’s
property and describe the theft as

- Company unionism, the dream of

“free enterprise’.

The real DH piece-de-resistance
however is a full-length editorial,
scalped from the Financial News
of the day and captioned ‘‘The Les-
sons of the Nanaimo Coal Strike.”

What are these “lessons” which
must have been an all-night ordeal
for the editor to think up? That un-
ions are no good, (in this case the
United Mine Workers of America)
and the same goes for union lzad-
ers, (in this case UMWA Frank
Farrington). Rank and file workers
are “dupes” and the union leaders,
huge diamonds sparkling on their
fingers and tie-pins . . . are loaded
with affluence and oratory.” Re-
sult: “a ruined industry” and more jf
hardship for the union “dupes”.
But the Herald has a solution;
“why not return to the old system
of regular meetings of the men’s
committees with the operators?”

every exploiter, then and now.

This ancient editorial also car-
ries a warning to IWA leadership.
The editor sees the lumber indus-
try “‘loadeq with agitators and
small-fry communists’ and dole-
fully poses the question; ‘is the
lumber industry to suffer the same
fate as the Vancouver Island coal
industry?” Tch, tch.

“Unlike the “Minards Liniment”
advt. punch-line ending to most
columns in the Daily Herald its ~
splenetic anti-labor editorial does
not close with advice to readers
that ‘“Minards Liniment Cures
Distemper.” That is reserved for
another column,

—_—,

SON ee