Review

Ideas always ‘harmful’

3 Sat weekend of January 19-

20-21 in the city of Toronto,
the 17th National Convention of
the Communist Party of Canada
will be in session. This historic
convention will also mark the
40th anniversary of the founding
of a Marxist-Leninist party in
Canada; a party dedicated to
peace, social progress, and a

- Socialist Canada.

In greeting this vanguard
party of the Canadian working
people in convention, a few ob-
servations are timely.

Twice in its 40 years the Com-
munist Party has been “out-
lawed” by Tory and _ Liberal
henchmen of big business, and
twice it has emerged from its
imposed “underground” status
with renewed strength, vigor, and
numbers; proof of the strength
and ability of the Canadian
people to accept new ideas of
social change, and to defend their
right and the right of others,
to accept or reject new ideas,
against all reactionary and dic-
tatorial suppression, whatever the
source.

On the eve of this convention,
January 11 to be exact, the Van-
couver Province once again edi-
torially calls for the banning of
the Communist Party and the
prohibiting of its 17th national
convention, topping this off with
one of its own inspired “letters
to the editor” urging Mr. Dief-
enbaker to “take the lead”, a la
the U.S. “Subversive Activities
Control Act”, and apply the gag
to Communist ideas and organiza-
tion in Canada.

“No doubt,” wheezes the Old
Lady of Cambie Street, “this is
an embarassing question for a
government dedicated to freedom
of movement and expression”, but
dear, dear, look at “the harm it
can do, and the harm it desires

A prominent New Zealand
hewspaper supports the idea of
moving the United Nations head-
quarters from New York to Ber-
lin. It gives two valid arguments
for such a move; it would ensure
the “free city” status of Berlin.
It would also enable the Polish
Proposai for a nuclear-free zone
in Europe.

Pacific Tribune

Editor — TOM McEWEN
Associate Editor—MAURICE RUSH
Business Mgr.—OXANA BIGELOW

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k

to do us” if some Tory Don
Quixote doesn’t step in and do
something?

Failing that of course, the
Province undoubtedly hopes that
its call for action against the
Communist Party convention
will, at the very least, serve as
an inspiration to ignorance vio-
lence and hooliganism against the
party, thereby providing the Old
Lady with another opportunity to
display -her highty questionable
“virtues” in-what she calls “free-
dom of movement and expres-
sion.”

As ever and always, what the
Communists will and do discuss
in convention and congress, are
the most publicized resolutions of
all political parties, bar none. This
is so because they reflect, as in
a mirror, the hopes and aspira-
tions of the common people of
factory, office and farm.

Peace, disarmament, neutrality,
an end to NATO war pacts, the
nation’s resources developed and
spent for the people — instead of
the monopoly profiteers. The
independence of our land, free
from the economic, political and
military domination of U.S. im-
perialism and its Canadian mon-
Opoly partners.

If such policies “do harm” to
the Old Lady of Cambie Street
and her ilk, then indeed can the
Canada of working, peace-loving
people say: All success to the 17th
National Convention of the Com-.
munist Party of Canada. Let’s
have more such “harm.”

EDITORIAL PAGE x

ILED in its first attempt to

F

Cuban revolution in blood, U.S.
imperialism plots another armed
invasion. This time however, the
invasion is to be supported by

- “economic strangulation.”

In a “private” newsletter U.S.
Business outlines the Pentagon’s
“Operation Strangulation”; get
all nations on this hemisphere to
cut off all trade with Cuba, and
all so-called “free” nations to
prohibit their shipping from
carrying cargoes to Cuba.

During 1961 Cuba’s purchases
from Canada was $36 million, just
double that of pre-Castro days,
mostly all in Canada’s favor. A
good many B.C. pulp workers
managed to retain their jobs on
the strength of MacMillan ana
Blodel pulp sales to Cuba, which
topped $1 million last year.

Now, with “Operation Strangu-
lation” on the ways and U.S. big
business greasing the skids for
launching, Washington will be

applying the pressures to its Can-:

adian and Latin American “yes-
men” to close the trade door on
Cuba.

This will likely reach a “high
priority” stage at the scheduled
Organization of American States
(OAS) meeting in Punta del Este,
Uruguay on January 22, where
U.S. imperialism will turn on the
heat for open intervention and
economic embargo against the Re-
public of Cuba.

‘Cuba Si - ME

- destroy the Fidel Castro LOv-.
ernment and drown the victorious”

st ion

For Canadians the problem is”
simple; the insistence for con-_
tinued trade and friendship with
Cuba, and rejection of any and —
all U.S.-inspired military or econ-— a
omic adventures against the gov- _
ernment and people of Cuba. And —
just because of the readiness of
Tory and Liberal pundits in Can- _
ada to take their orders from the —
Pentagon, this insistence will 2
have to be strong, clear, and de- _
cisive,

EDITORIAL
COMMENT —

HE staid London Times has _

gone into an editorial sweat —
recently over the rising struggle —
between the mighty dollar and the
pound sterling, with its corres- _
ponding tussle between No. 10
Downing Street and ‘the Penta-_
gon, each trying to transfer the

crisis from one on to the other. A

This mouthpiece of the British —
ruling class expresses “deep con-_
cern on this continuing problem
of pound and dollar” and draws
the doleful conclusion that
“should either collapse, the West-
ern payments system would
quickly be in jeopardy.”

Britain’s hassle to get into
ECM and Kennedy’s latest for “a —
free world economic partnership”
are part of the dollar-pound bout, |
illustrating the “unity” of rival
imperialisms.

Tom
McEwen

T one of those frequent two-

hundred-dollar-a - plate — politi-

cal banquets down in the USA,

President Kennedy as guest speak-

er cheered his gastronomic guests

with the glad news that “the Com-

_ munist block has begun to crack”

and the ‘free world is gaining
strength.”

‘The burps of enthusiastic. ap-
proval were lound and. gastric,
with JFK cheered to the echo.

Qutside the banquet room some
five million “free” American job-
less, or roughl; 7 percent of the
U.S. labor force were less gleeful.
They at least would have been satis-

some assurance of a regular pay
envelope.

the country AFL-CIO President

expense sheet permits him to move
in these two-hundred-a-plate circles,
took a new Year’s peek into the
-.Pentagon’s crystall ball ‘and an-
- nounced he “‘sees new vitality per-
| vading the nation”: George was
- also hopeful that Congress “will en-
act a public works program ;

until unemployment falls.to a more

tolerable level.” Not until unem-

big British firms

fied with a two-doliar plate—and’

Meantime, in another part’ of

George Meany, whose salary and —

ployment is ended mind you, but
just down to a more ‘‘tolerable
level,”’ Z

So there we have it, Kennedy
seeing Communism “cracking up”
or “fragmentation” as he some-
times describes it, and Meany see-

ing “a new vitality”, “tolerable

levels” and the Communist ‘‘men-
ace”’ all rolled in one. Wonder what
they serve up as drinks at these
hundred - dollars - or - more-a-plate
banquets to acquire such “vision”?
* cd me

Feature writer Don Nicholson in
the December 1961 edition of the
Canadian Transport, organ of the
Canadian Brotherhood of Railway,
Transport and General Workers
Union, states that the European
Common Market (ECM) is being
created solely “to promote em-

ployment and. living .standards -in.

all countries concerned.” :
This laudable (if it were only
true?) objective is to be achieved
says Nicholson, “. . . by coopera-
tion between nations, rather than

competetion, and by working to .

eliminate tariff barriers.” _

’ wealth ‘fears at the probable re-

sults of Britain’s_entry .into ECM,

several million British. workers
through the media of their power-
ful. trade unions, not only oppose
ECM, but already can show by ris-
ing jobless indexes what it is al
ready doing to British industry.
-.. A) number. of long-established

Entirely’ aside from Common-.. :
put at its highest levels (speedup)),

‘Nicholson take another look.at his
ECM: ‘‘mitage.? .” Se ig

have already
“pulled stakes” and are moving
their plants to the continent, not
only to eliminate existing tariffs,
(as U.S. imperialism does in Can-
ada), but to take advantage of
lower continental wage and work-
ing standards. That kind of “co-
operation” will work splendidly
for big business, but its immediate
and long-range effects upon Brit-
ish workers will have disastrous
results,

Just to cite one example, on
January 11 a conference of 39 ex-
ecutive committees of engineering, .
unions in Britain, representing
some 3 million workers met in
York, England to discuss—what?
The flat rejection of the bosses’ to
consider any wage increase what-
soever. And their “reason”. for re-
jection—the ECM.

Clearly the “cooperation” and
“competition” envisaged by the
bosses and their 'Tory government
doesn’t square with the’ CBRT edi-
torial naivete. Whatever market
competetion monoply expects ‘to
eliminate by ECM is to be done by’
standardizing ECM production out: —

while reducing labor costs (basic-
ally wages) to the lowest possible
member-country norm. — 2

That’s how several million Brit-
ish trade unionists .see ECM. We

would strongly suggest Brother

tea:

January 19, 1962—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4

SET se