EDITORIAL

This paper has always advocated and supported
all movements and actions for peace and welcomes
the second Canada-wide convention of the Cana-
dian Peace Alliance which met in Winnipeg last
weekend.

The founding convention in Toronto last year
reflected the need for the gathering together of
Canada’s many and diverse peace organizations in
order to strengthen and expand this vital work.
With CPA’s formation the more than four decades
of dedicated and persistent peace activity in this
country was joined in a unity that brought the peace
struggle to a new stage.

The past 12 months show just how correct that
step was and what an immense job lies ahead.

This CPA convention meets at a crucial stage.
Reykjavik has helped make clear where the obsta-
cles to arms control and disarmament lie. It helped
strip away the rhetoric about who is to blame for the
arms race and the war danger that represents.

Reykjavik showed just who wants detente, dis-
armament and an end to the insane arms race. And
it showed who doesn’t.

Nobody missed the point, not even former Rea-
, gan backers (and even present Reagan backers) that
' the U.S. president gave up.a sweeping arms control

agreement in order to keep his Star Wars program.

Reagan’s West European allies found out with-
out a doubt that Star Wars isn’t an arms control
bargaining chip, as Washington had claimed.
Rather it is a wild and destabilizing gamble by
which U.S. military planners hope to achieve mil-
itary superiority over the USSR.

' his country would not trade away its nuclear arsenal
on earth just to be threatened with nuclear death
from space.

That’s why Gorbachev asked the president why

| That’s why Soviet leader Gorbachev. told Reagan's

The lesson of Reykjavik: —
Star Wars or arms control

an SDI “space shield” was needed if nuclear missiles
are abolished.

That’s why Reagan refuses to join the USSR ina
moratorium on nuclear weapons tests — his _all-
out arms program needs testing.

That’s why the U.S. ‘Air Force blasts ahead (with

direct Canadian complicity) on its air launched *

cruise missile program, its Trident submarine pro-
gram, its B-1 bomber conversion, its chemical wea-
pons program.

That’s why Reagan warns he will break the
SALT II treaty this winter and the Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) treaty as soon as it hinders SDI
space research.

And that’s why talk about “equal responsibility”
for today’s dangerous arms race is not only untrue,
but helps weaken the struggle for arms control and
disarmament.

Faced as it is with overwhelming evidence that
the USSR wants genuine, far-reaching agreements,
Washington’s job of selling the Soviets as war-
mongers has become more complex. In that sense,
Reykjavik was an unmitigated disaster for Reagan’s
public relations hacks.

So today, any backing away from the main
point — that Star Wars prevented arms control at
Reykjavik and prevents it today — will objectively
help the Pentagon’s smoke and mirrors game.

Peace supporters should drive this point home to
our government: arms control is possible. It’s pos-
sible today, tomorrow or next week. Ottawa should
stop making excuses for Reagan. It should urge
Washington to give up its Star Wars obsessions and
talk arms control and disarmament. It should urge
Reagan.to stop nuclear testingec., uncles ce.

And to show that it is serious, our government
should break the cruise testing agreement we
shamefully signed and begin to embark on a path
toward an independent foreign policy.

Business & Circulation Manager — MIKE PRONIUK

FIRIBUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON

Graphics — ANGELA KENYON

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 125.
- Phone (604) 251-1186 _

Subscription Rate: Canada — $16 one year; $10 six months. “3
. Foreign — $25 one year;

Second class mail registration number 1560

3 Se road to peace is certainly not paved
and straight. Consider the tribulations
the New Westminster Peace Council has
experienced in its attempts to get the Royal

People and Issues =

a

opment to be welcomed by the workin

But now what do we do with all these
books? A couple of weeks ago, we did n°

City’s council to make a nuclear-weapons
free zone declaration.

Although more than 40 municipalities
in British Columbia, and more than 100
nationwide, have adopted the declaration
through referendum or, increasingly, a
vote in council, efforts by the peace coun-
cil to have the city declared so have been
sidetracked — but only temporarily.

Some aldermen and the mayor took a
curious stance when the issue came up at
the urging of the peace council on Oct. 20.
But strongly supporting the move to
declare New Westminster nuclear-weapons
free were aldermen Wes Jensen, Betty
Toporowski and Ray Mercer.

Toporowski told council that the decla-
ration would be council’s way of “making
a statement” for peace, while Jensen
reminded councillors of the joining of
hands by the staffs of the U.S. and USSR
pavilions at Expo last summer. Opposi-
tion of the predictable sort came from
council right-wingers Calvin Donnelly and
Malvern Hughes, with Hughes calling the
declaration “meaningless” and question-
ing the motives of the peace council.

But the more surprising opposition
came from Mayor Tom Baker, a council
member who regularly seeks the backing
of the New Westminster and District
Labor Council when election time rolls
around. Baker, a trade unionist, said he

“didn’t know how New Westminster citi-. ~

zens would feel” about the declaration and
that he wasn’t sure how to “implement”
the declaration.

In the end Baker was joined by Ald. Joe
Frances — another labor-backed politician
— and Hughes and Donnolly in tabling
the motion until Nov. 10.

Peace council chair Dian Dougan says
the group will be back before city council
on that date, and hopes to be joined by
others in the community seeking an end to
the arms race. She also urges supporters to
write council urging the nuclear weapons
free zone declaration be adopted.

2 * *

O ver the years at the Tribune, various
publishers, including a few like New
Star and Progress which are familiar to
Tribune readers, have submitted books
for review. Most of them find their way
into the review pages of the paper. There
are even a few cases where we’ve gone out
and bought a book because we’ve wanted
to do a review but the publisher didn’t
oblige us with a review.copy.

But something we’ve never said any-
thing about is the number of oddball or
frankly reactionary books that have come
cross our desk. And it seems lately that
we've got more than our share of them.

There have been several, for example,
from one particular publisher whose sta-
ble of authors includes former U.S. gener-
als, which have gone into the round file so
quickly that we’ve even forgotten the titles.
More recently, Cambridge Publishers in
Winnipeg sent us a copy of The Battle over
Bili ism: the Manitoba Language
Question 1983-85, Russell Doern’s acount

of his attack against. bilingualism in
Manitoba which whipped up rabid anti-

Francophone sentiment in the province. »

Russell Doern was the renegade NDP
MLA who broke with his own party cau-
cus and campaigned against the NDP
government’s proposal on the constitu-
tional issue of French-language rights.

Then from Stoddart Publishing came
Pacific Challenge: Canada’s future in the
New Asia by Vancouver’s resident political
dinosaur Eric Downton. Like most of
Downton’s writing in the Vancouver Sun,
the burden of his book is that Canada
should put new military armor into the
Pacific Ocean to meet the supposed threat
of Soviet incursions and should rise to
meet the new cheap-labor industrial chal-
lenge of the Asian countries by changing
our labor-management system and wel-
coming such initiatives as the Socreds’
special economic zones.

Then there was a curious title from
Vehicule Press in Montreal, Life of the
Party, by Gerard Fortin and Boyce
Richardson. That one was intriguing
because the front cover showed the draw-

ing of a man who had either adopted a-

strange speaking pose or was supposed to
be on the stage of Dance Party, circa 1940.

As it turned out, the book was Fortin’s
autobiography in which we were expected
to accept that his progress from a former
Canadian Seamen’s Union member and
Communist to real estate salesman and
Parti Quebecis stalwart is a natural devel-

in a Vancouver Sun story that a 10!
Province reviewer had come UP he
solution 30 years ago. In the 19505, 4S

- confessed, he would look over the ar

dust jacket, bang out a review — ane.
sell the book to the People’s Co-OP Beat
store. He hastened to add that he ¢ 4
approve of their politics “but they pa
best prices.” .- that
The problem here, of course, Bates,
Co-op Books wouldn’t want these the
even if we were sleazy enough to follow;
Province reviewer's example. 100s
have also changed, it seems. Down
book — which retails for y
comes with the words prom eh
stamped across the inside front
Review Copy — Not for Sale.

* * *

ress night and human frailty : s
what they are, typographical erro ode
get by us in many issues and last week S$”
tion was no exception. But one P tthe
error, which appears in the story 4 quel
Canadian Seamen’s Union bane
changed former CSU president ce”
Davis’ remarks about labor “mill gre’
labor “military”. As one reader wher at
it to our attention noted rather st ot he
changes the whole meaning ©
said.” We agree completely. ~¢ avis"
The sentence should have rea@ ag if
_.told the crowd that his ‘first less it
labor militance were achiev ne reli¢
Columbia at the Harrison MU™
camp’...”

+

4 PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 5, 1986