eI LT Dit tite oS

ALBERTA ELECTIONS
Socred aligned
with big business

_ By KATE FOUNTAIN ;

—EDMONTON

IRE than 300,000 voters will go to the polls.

on August 17 to elect 57 members of the

Alberta legislature. By nomination day, August

7, it is anticipated that over 150 candidates will

be lined up te file their papers. The hats al-

ready in the ring bear every kind of band—Social

Credit, Liberals, Independent (Tories), LPP,
CCF, and one Independent Social Credit. _

Announcing the ‘election, Premier Manning
Promised electors a program “to ensure the con
tinuation of Alberta’s outstanding progress and
to enable our people to take full advantage of
the unusual opportunities which the next few
years will hold in store. It has become obvious,”
he said, “that until the people themselves again
Tenew their mandate . . . the constructive efforts
of the government . .. will be continuously dis-
torted and impeded by minority political factions
manoedvering for political advantage. .. .

This. is a defensive statement, which is any-

thing but a favorable position from which to

Start out to win an-election. The promise of
ecient opportunities” in the next few years will
arouse little optimism among workers and farm-
ers. Faced with rising costs of production on
the farm, rising prices of consumer goods, the
Steady increase in unemployment, they will re-
ceive Manning’s appeal to renew their mandate
in Social Credit very critically.

After 12 years of its administration the
People see much more clearly now just what
Social Credit represents. “° They see that de-
Spite some good reform measures in its early
heyday, Social Credit has gradually charted its

Course in the same direction as the “orthodox” -

and. “respectable” old line parties. With its
Courting of big business interests, Social Credit
has become less and less concerned with the
needs of the common people of Alberta, whose
demands for broader reform measures have been
ignored, ‘

The bonds of political matrimony between
the Social Credit government and free enterprise
ave been irrevocably sealed. Gifts have been
exchanged in the best of capitalist “good form.”

y denouncing the farmers’ non-delivery strike

two years ago the government took harsh action
that no farmer: is likely to forget on election
day. And at the last session of the legislature
tee enterprise received another handsome gift
in Bill, 91, a piece of anti-labor legislation de-
Signed only to hobble the workers and their trade
unions,

Workers to define ‘his stand towards this un-
€mocratic piece of legislation that was foisted
upon the people over province-wide opposition.

What is the remedy to stop the sell-out of
Alberta’s progressive heritage to big business?
‘There is only one. The people who want to see
this province ge ahead economically and socially,
for the benefit of alt, and not selfishly exploited

Y a minority group of profit seekers, must
unite their voices and speak with one voice on
election day.

Av great many of ‘these people are to be

found in ‘and around the Social Credit movement

itself. They must not be overlooked or mis-
judged because of the betrayals of their leaders.

hey ‘still want to go forward. A great ey
More are to be found in around the LPP and the
CCF, Hundreds of others will be voting for the
first time ; they, too. are looking for progressive

‘ leadership. All of these represent a vast major-

ity. The majority must be enabled. to win

_ through unity at the polls.
se PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 28, 1948—PAGE 9

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The fight against Bill 91 is now being —
Carried into the election campaign and every ©
' Prospective MLA is being challenged by the

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Price of | Marshall aid

. LONDON

TY percent of the workers at Gallaher Tobacco

Company in Belfast have been fired following Brit-

ain’s acceptance of U.S. trade agreements which pre-

vent British purchase of non-American tobacco. With

American tobacco one of the big export items under

the Marshall plan, workers fear further widespread
dismissals at Gallaher’s and elsewhere.

REAL ISSUES OBSCURED

W hat is Ottawa’s

policy on Berlin?

W 21 is the real story of Berlin which is
being concealed from the people of Can-

ada? What is Ottawa’s policy on Berlin?
‘The issue of Berlin cannot be divorced
from the general question of Germany. On June
24 the toreign ministers of the USSR, Albania,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary,

Poland and Romania adopted in Warsaw a dec-

laration which has been buried by the same daily

press that is headlining the notes sent to the

USSR by the U.S., Britain and France in a

way calculated to whip up another-war scare.
The Warsaw conference proposed:

: —Implementation of the measures ensuring the fin-

al demilitarization of Germany by agreement among
the Four Powegs. gu ;

—Control for a definite period by the Four Powers -

of Ruhr heavy industry with a view toa developing
the peace potential of the Ruhr and preventing re-
establishment of the war potential of Germany.
—Establishment by agreement among the govern-
ments of the USSR, U.S., France and Britain of a
provisional, democratic, peace-loving government for
the whole of Germany, composed of representatives
of the democratic parties of Germany, for the pur-
pose of creating a guarantee against the repetition
of German aggression.
—Conclusion of a peace treaty with Germany, in
accordance with Potsdam decisions, so that occupa-
ton troops of all the powers should be withdrawn
from Germany within one year after conclusion of
the peace treaty. :
'—Elaboration; of measures for fulfilment by Ger-
many of her reparations obligations towards the states
whick suffered from Nazi aggression.

4 &
HE declaration was in reply to the communique
7 of a secret conference of the three powers

‘in London on June7 when Britain, France and

the U.S. arbitrarily changed the frontiers of
Germany in violation of the Potsdam agree-
ment and set up a Western German state.

At the London® conference a number of
steps were taken which have the aim of isolating
Eastern from Western Germany economically
and politically. Yet the Potsdam agreement
says specifically that no decisions shall be taken
respecting the future of Germany without the
joint participation of Four Powers, U.S., USSR,
France and Britain. wie

- This action by the Western powers virtually
liquidated quadripartite control of Germany.
And inevitably, Berlin, which lies in the Soviet
zone but is itself divided into four zones ad-
ministered by the Four Powers, has become the
focal point of the differences created by vio-
lation of the Potsdam agreement.

The Western powers, whom Canada fully

supports, are bent upon maintaining their hold

in Berlin, not in order to assist the unity of the
Germany state on a democratic foundation, but
as a means of furthering their policy of making
western Germany a base of future war operations
against eastern Europe.

| To this end they insist upon retaining in
Berlin all the rights they have repudiated else-
where, a stand the USSR and the eastern Euro-
pean democracies counter with their demand
for settlement of the whole German problem ‘of
which Berlin is the expression.’

against the profiteers to the public.

LABOR FOCUS

The conventions
and falling wages

By BRUCE MICKLEBURGH

ABOR will be meeting in convention this fall

to chart its course against a background of
steadity falling real wages. The Trades and
Labor Congress meets in Victoria October 11.
The Canadian Congress of Labor meets the same
day in Toronto. The IWA International Board
has chosen the same day for an international
convention tn Portland. Preceeding all these
will be the B.C, Federation of Labor convention
September 4 in Vancouver.

Even the government has to admit that real
wages are taking a beating. The Dominion Bu-
reau of Statistics says the weekly wage in nine
leading industries averaged $39.69 as of May 1,
1948. That’s an increase of 10.4 percent over
last year’s figure of $35.95. It looks good tiil
you realize the profiteers have more than eaten
up the gain. ;

. During the same period, from May 1, 1947 to
May 1, 1948. the cost of living index hopped
from i33.1 to 153.3, an increase of 15.2 percent.
Balance wages against prices and you get a
five percent drop in real wages. Labor’s figures
show an even greater drop. .

This points up the need for labor to secure
heavy wage gains to hang on to what’s left of
living standards, let alone raise them. And this
in turn throws into sharp relief the urgency
of action on the part of hundreds of thousands
of organized workers, to overcome the fatal in-
fluence of the right wing trade union bureau-
cracy, whose methods of obstruction are legion.

This year sees an absence of coordination on
the wage front with key unions voluntarily or
by force of circumstance working out separate
settlements. There is no major drive to organ-
ize the hundreds of thousands of unorganized.
There is urgent need for labor to carry its case

I : Defensive
tactics are being advocated by the right wing
at a time when conditions were never better for
a strong labor offensive. The bureaucrats try
to hide their responsibility by red-baiting but
the fact is that it’s internal weaknesses that are
holding back labor.

Every worker on the job has an unanswer-
able argument for those who are trying to juotify
evasion of the wage fight—his pay cheque buys
less from week to week. This is the test of
labor statesmanship. And it’s from down be-
low, where the facts of life are very real, that
the movement has to come to rouse Canada’s
million-strong unions.. :

Labor’s counter-offensive has to come from
the job to the local and from the local to the
conventions. Only the strongest membership
action can rescue labor from the passive rotting
and inner sabotage that characterizes some un.
ions, and defend the militant unions that are
holding the front line. Such membership action
will have to include action against the right-
wing leaders.

There are signs of such action. The bi
steel plants are dissatisfied with Millard’s 11-
cent settlement and with red-baiting in the _
union. Workers in the GM Oshawa plant are —
moving to head off advocates of the phony escal-
ator, settlement. In Vancouver’s building trades
there is mountiyg dissatisfaction with those
plumping for an escalator clause that would
actually allow the boss to cut wages under cer-
tain conditions,

The right-wing International President Jas.
E. Fadling of the IWA is under fire ‘from at
least three directions. The B.C. District Coun-
cil of the IWA has “responded to demands from |
the camps and mills and has demanded Fad-—
ling’s resignation to his face. The same day the
district council in Washington’s “northern em-
pire” laid down the same demand before his
lieutenants. Simultaneously elections being held
in southern Oregon’s District Six are register-
ing a repudiation of the Trotskyite former Inter-
national Secretary E. Benedict who went in
there to do a job for Fadling.

These — i i

are signs that will help union mem-
bers to realize the possibilities for strengthen-
ing their position at the coming labor conventions.

But that voice can be heard, ttarting now,
in a flood of resolutions from down below, where
the shrinking pay cheque isn’t to be brushed aside.
There’s no union that can’t start on this job now.