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Vancouver, British Columbia, Friday, April 15, 1949

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Price Five Cents

Demand end fo terror

GOV'T IMPLICATED IN
SHOOTING OF SEAMEN |

A wave of anger swept through the Canadian labor
Movement this week as trigger-happy finks in Halifax
turned guns on striking CSU seamen from safe positions
aboard the ship they planned to.man as strikebreakers,
Wounding seven.

At Ottawa Trades Congress President Percy Ben-
Sough thundered against “this despicable act- of violence”
and demanded an open government investigation. (See
ack page.)

When Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent arrived in

ancouver Wednesday morning, CSU pickets met him

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Park board

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at the station, carrying placards demanding that the
federal government live up to its own labor laws and
halt strikebreaking activities.

Earlier, baton-swinging police held back CSU
pickets on Lapointe Pier while a scab crew boarded
the strike-bound SS Riverside and hacked through hawsers
with fire axes. A tug towed the vessel into midstream,
where it lies with damaged propeller. Officials of the
Boilermakers’ Union say their members will not touch it.
Neither will longshoremen go aboard the ship to line it
for a grain cargo.

HAULS

HUI

under fire

for bar against Goss

SEE BACK PAGE

On the Great Lakes, where seamen have been
battling shipowners since opening of the 1948 season, a
victory was won and a wedge driven into operators’
ranks when five companies capitulated and signed an
agreement with the Canadian Seamen’s Union. The
contract, best ever achieved by the CSU, includes a
48-hour week, time and a half for Sundays, $125
disaster pay, increased -subsistence, improved working
conditions and the checkoff. Other companies are ex-
pected to sign contracts in a few days. Canada Steam-
ship Lines is still trying to operate with strike-breaking
crews.

Now im its second week, the East Coast deepsea
strike -has spread across two oceans and touches four
continents. Ships are tied up in the United Kingdom,
France, Australia, British West Indies, United States
and Canada.

Cause. of the strike was a “‘back-door’’ agreement
signed by East Coast operators with the Seafarers’ Inter-
national Union while negotiations with the Canadian
Seamen’s Union were still in progress). The SIU had
no members on East Coast ships- but has been hiring
gun-toting thugs in Montreal and elsewhere and _trans-
porting them to Halifax and other ports.

Continued on back page —- See SEAMEN

Break this
-pattern
of fascism

This picture wasn’t taken
in Franco’s Spain, although
it might well have been, for
it has more in common with
fascism than democracy. It
was taken in Montreal when
police attacked a peace meet-
ing recently. It shows what
happens to civil liberties un-
der Duplessis’ Padlock Law
—and what will happen to
civil liberties ‘throughout the
country if the St. Laurent
government is permitted to
pass the new “Section 98”
it is reported to have under
study. It is part of a pat
tern with government-abetted
company violence against
striking Canadian seamen,
part of the pattern to silence
all opposition to war.

Is this your conception of
your country’s future? Of
course. not! But it can hap-
pen here unless you and your
friends and neighbors act to
stop it now! Send your pro-
test to St. Lauremt immdiate-
fy. ;