Al ety) Ame ca” Te Fe Fee Pee Fe a ee LP Ie EN Bre me A | Fe em PON | Pe Ferry workers: eal TS EaNREE WALIA (r)\ WITH PICKETS . stances of racist comments. TRIBUNE PHOTO— SEAN GRIFFIN . citing repeated in- Yellow Cabs’. aie protested by drivers East Indian taxi drivers who struck Vancouver Yellow Cab Company last week to protest racist remarks by the company’s supervisor, have called on Van- couver city council ‘‘to cancel Yellow Cab’s license if they do not conform to the accepted standards of the community.” The drivers, members of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Lower Mainland East Indian Taxi Drivers and Owners Association, have also put the issue before the Human Rights Commission. The Commission was expected to review it sometime in mid-March. Vancouver city council also voted to defer action until the Human Rights Commission has considered the charges, sparked Status of Women cut by city The struggle for women’s equality was the main bout at a meeting of Vancouver city council Tuesday, and it forced mayor Jack Volrich to temporarily adjourn the meeting before one jabbering alderman got put down for the count. It was the women’s movement which received the main blow, however. Once the meeting got back together a split decision by council. denied the Vancouver Status of Women its annual grant to fund an advocacy program for women — and this, ironically, in the last city meeting before Interna- tional Women’s Day. when supervisor Peter Morris told East Indian drivers to ‘‘go back to India” and “‘this is not an Indian bazaar.” The comments were part of a long-standing practice of racism at Yellow Cab, Harjinder Walia, spokesman for the driver, told the Tribune Mon- day. “The company has often told us, ‘We can do without East In- dian drivers,’’ Walia said. The drivers have received donations from cabbies at other taxi companies and have been backed by several unions in- cluding the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Canadian Association of In- dustrial, Mechanical and Allied Workers and others. The fracas began when alder- man Bernice Gerard, a fundamen- talist minister active in the ‘‘pro- life’? movement, attacked the Status of Women for advocating the right of women to choose on abortion. ‘‘Public money should not be used to advocate abortion,” she declared, admitting her pro- testation was a grandstand for the pro-life movement. In a wild attempt to smear the women’s group, Gerard produced a resolution from a recent meeting of the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers’ Association, moved by their “‘status of women committee,’ calling for ‘‘sexual The resounding election victory in Zimbabwe of the Patriotic Front parties — in the face of a campaign of violence and flagrant bias against them by the British gov- ernor — this week gave this country the first majority government it has had in its history. And the jubilant reaction to the vote, announced Monday, was summed up in the words of the local chairwoman of Robert Mug- abe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) in High- fields, an African township near Salisbury: “‘There will be no more war,’ she told an observer team from Canada. ‘‘Peace will come to our country and we are all going to work together to rebuild it.”’ The long-awaited election re- sults, which demonstrated over- whelming mass support for the Patriotic Front throughout the country, was a repudiation of the decade-old propaganda campaign which had presented the PF as ‘‘Marxist terrorists’? and had sought to continue that campaign in the election as former Smith-ap- pointee Bishop Abel Muzorewa at- tacked the Front as ‘‘murderers.”’ ZANU (PF), headed by Mugabe won 57 of the 80 seats allocated to the black majority under the terms of the Lancaster House Agree- ments signed last year in London. Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe Afri- can People’s Union, which had campaigned under the unity name, the Patriotic Front, won 20 seats, leaving only three for the United African National Council led by discredited former prime minister Muzorewa. ZANU (PF), though joined with ZAPU in the Patriotic Front alli- ance, opted to run under its own name and added the Patriotic Front to it. Mugabe had earlier pledged to orientation’’ to be recognized as a human right. The Status of Women was, therefore, a “‘gay ac- tivist group,” she declared. It was later pointed out that the teachers” group had no connection with the Vancouver Status of Women. Alderman Warnett Kennedy was next up and, predictably, made matters worse with his comment that the Status of Women ‘‘should go back to knitting.” An infuriated Darlene Marzari attacked Gerard for ‘‘lies, decep- tion and hypocrisy.’’ The Status of Women advocated the right to choose, not abortion, she replied, justas the YWCA, a favorite group form a political alliance with ZAPU following the election and he reaffirmed that pledge Monday, stating that he would invite Nkomo into a coalition government. ZANU won 63 per cent of the 2,650,000 valid votes cast while the PF took 24 per cent and the UANC eight per cent. inside a divided union —page 12 Zimbabwe vote opens way to peace, unity Everywhere the results were met with mass celebrations. The Canadian Non-Govern- mental Organization observer team in Zimbabwe reported in a telex Tuesday the scene from High- fields: ‘‘The people were ecstatic, singing, dancing, marching in the See VOTE page 11 Herring strikers United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union president Jack Nichol told the Vancouver Labor Council Tuesday, ‘‘There are lots of herring fishermen who are prepared to lose the whole herring roe season,”’ rather than accept the massive price cuts which the ‘‘final offer’’ by the Fisheries Association represents. He added that there was every indication that the strike by the UFAWU and the Native Brotherhood ‘‘will go on for some days — if not for the whole season.’ That ae ty the fishermen, coupled with their solid 90 percent strike vote last week, echoed the reaction to the offer by the Association which never went above $624 a ton for gillnet-caught herring and $318 for seine-caught fish — down 50 percent from last year’s minimum prices and far below the actual prices paid to fishermen during the 1979 fishery when a flurry of buying by Japanese companies pushed prices up. Fishermen got an average $3,500 a ton for gillnet fish and $2,100 for See UNION page 3 council of Gerard’s, did. ‘‘Will you vote against the YWCA grant?”’ she demanded. Alderman Harry Rankin was in the course of defending the grant when the constant taunts of George Puil from across the chamber pushed matters over the brink. “You don’t have the guts’ to refuse grants, Puil jeered. ‘‘I have the guts to break your nose,” Rankin responded. After the adjournment, Gerard, Puil, Kennedy, Doug Little and mayor Volrich combined to deny the necessary two-thirds majority for a grant. The Status of Women is appealing. “won't take cut’ @ LEONARD PELTIER: The Native leader has been the victim of a U.S. gov't conspiracy, including at- tempts on his life, page 11. @ MUSIC: Surrey’s Bargain at Half the Price have re- turned from an interna- tional song festival in Berlin where they shared the stage with Mikis The- odorakis and others, page 10. @ URANIUM: The seven- year moratorium on ur- anium mining is a victory for public opinion, but opposition groups want an indefinite ban, until all questions about the in- dustry have been an- swered, page 3.