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Slum landlords seek
revenge against DERA

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN
Cheap, tawdry, vindictive.
These are the only words that

adequately describe City Council’s
February 3 decision to refuse a
$22,000 grant. to the Downtown
Eastside Residents Association
(DERA) which would be used to
service the residents of the so-
called skid road area of the city
centered at Main and Hastings.

_- The motion favoring the grant
was defeated by. the right wing
TEAM-NPA coalition that has
formed in Council, comprising
mayor Art Phillips and Alderman
Jack Volrich, Fritz Bowers, Ed
Sweeney, Warnett Kennedy and
Hugh Bird.

DERA operates a daycare
centre, a local employment
assistance program and a car-
pentry shop for the rehabilitation
of patients.

But it wasn’t because of these
activities that the grant was denied
to DERA.

Under the leadership of its
capable and untiring president,
Bruce Erikson,
paigned vigorously and publicly to
clean up unsavory beer parlors in
this crime-ridden area of the city.
It demanded that the city enforce
its health and fire by-laws in the

DERA cam-

area and make the old hotels and
rooming houses there safe and fit
for human habitation.

This campaign earned DERA the
bitter hatred of the slum landlords
and certain wealthy property
owners whose greed for profit is
only matched by their unconcern
for the conditions they impose on
human beings.

In the course of its campaigns
and. battles DERA and Bruce
Eriksen found it necessary to prod
and to publicly criticize . City
Council for its failure and refusal
to enforce city by-laws in the area
and its reluctance to lay charges
against violators. This brought

’ DERA more than once into a head-

on clash with mayor Art Phillips
and aldermen like Jack Volrich.

Before DERA started its clean-
up campaign we had fires every
few months in the skid road
rooming houses. Each time people
were burned to death. And the beer
parlors were the centres of all
kinds of criminal activity.

The area is by no means cleaned
up yet. But at least things are a bit
better since DERA got on the job.

DERA’s request for a grant was
solidly supported by residents of
the area. In DERA they know they

See RANKIN, pg. 11

Labor can play unifying |
role in civic politics —

By JACK PHILLIPS

The New Democratic Party in
B.C. is divided over the issue of
what role the party should play in
the 1976 municipal election in
Vancouver. .

The polarisation of right-wing
political forces in B.C. generated
pressures which exposed the split.
For example, we find the following

in alead editorial in The Democrat

of January, 1976:

‘ce’, .. We can scarcely be
comforted by the fact that in the
seventeen months from the date of
the last federal election June 8,
1974 to December 11 provincial
elections, the New Democratic

‘ Party in British Columbia lost a

total of eleven members of
Parliament, nineteen MLAs and a
host of municipal and school board
incumbents — not to mention those
aspiring candidates whose iden-
tification with the NDP at this
period in time contributed largely
to their defeat at the polls.”

It was in this setting that word
went out from the legislative
caucus to place more emphasis on

winning positions for the NDP in’

the next round of municipal
elections in B.C.

The Vancouver situation at-
tracted most attention in the
media. When Syd Thompson
president of the Vancouver Labor
Council, called upon the NDP and

-the Committee of Progressive

Electors in Vancouver to devise a
working arrangement, he also
threatened that if they failed, the
Labor Council might withdraw
support from both groups.

An editorial in The Fishermen of
January 30, referred to his speech
in these terms:

“Surely one of the essential
requirements for unity is that the
NDP quit working both sides of the
street. When Thompson talks about
the necessity of ousting ‘that gang’
from the city hall, he ignores the
fact that it includes one alderman,
Mike Harcourt, who stood as an

NDP candidate in the last month’s .

provincial election and, until 1974,
another alderman, Setty Pen-
dakur, who likewise, ran for the
NDP provincially. :

“The ambivalent position of the
NDP in entering its own civic slate
through the Vancouver Area
Council of the NDP and resisting
all unity overtures of COPE, while

other candidate identified with the
NDP united with Liberals under
the TEAM banner to lend a false
face to civic government is hardly
calculated to unite the progressive
vote. In fact, it helps to ensure that
either through the faltering TEAM
or the resurgent NPA, big business
will continue to dominate Van-
couver’s city hall.”

The reference to ‘‘faltering
TEAM” in the Fisherman points to
another dimension of the split
within the NDP. The TEAM ad-
ministration at city hall has moved
sharply to the right and has been
weakened by internal dissension
and gains by the NPA in the 1974
election. These factors motivated
some of those _ previously
associated with TEAM to look
elsewhere for new alliances and a
new electoral organization.

Early in January a meeting took
place in the Vancouver hall of the
International Woodworkers of
America, called by Garth Brown, a
member of the Vancouver Burrard
executive and the provincial
executive of the NDP.

According to the February issue

Dora Bjarnason

Mrs. Dora Bjarnason passed

away on February 13, at the age of |

83, after a brief illness. Mrs.
Bjarnason was a long-time activist
in the progressive movement and a
member of the Broadway club of
the Communist Party.

Dora Bjarnason came to British
Columbia in 1933 from Saskat-
chewan, where her home had for
many years been well-known as a
gathering place for progressive-
minded people. In Vancouver, she
soon became known as an_in-
defatigable worker in the peace

movement and_ all — other
progressive causes.
Mrs. Bjarnason was

predeceased by her husband, Paul,
who was a well-known writer and
poet. Several of her children are
active in the left wing movement.

Dora will be sorely missed by her
many friends in the progressive
movement. The Tribune extends
its sympathy to her family and
friends. Next week Tribune
columnist Tom McEwen will pay a
special tribute to her in his column.

“coalition.

of the Vancouver Democrat, th
meeting ‘‘included people on th
left who are interested i
municipal politics’. In opening the
meeting Brown advanced the
following alternatives: 1. D0)
nothing; 2. Join COPE; 3. Join they
Vancouver Area Council of NDPj
4. Join TEAM; or 5. Form a neW
group under another name. = |
Brown rejected the NDP Van
couver Area Council because 1
“has alienated most voters” ang
also rejected the idea of joining)
COPE. In so far as TEAM was |
concerned, Brown said he had lef}
that organization because it hag)
not performed well and seemed &
be falling apart. He advanced the
idea that the only viable alter
native was the creation of a neW)

_ Norm Levi felt that a coalition
could be built around three)
members of city council, Harcourt, W
Mazari and Rankin. Like Brown,| lit
he wanted Rankin
coalition, but not COPE. Harcourt

rarely get elected. q
The spokesmen for the NDF)
Vancouver Area Council. (whicll
has been under the sectarial —
leadership of Trotskyite elements
since its foundation in 1967), camé

out against unity of the =

democratic and reform forces.
the same issue of the Vancou'
Democrat, Jim Le Maistre of thé
VAC falsely refers to a ‘“‘sup
posedly progressive coalition like
COPE cuddling up to middle class.
liberals of the crumbling bourgeois
coalition of TEAM.”’

Like Trotskyites everywhere,
Maistre and his pals want to leap
over stages and make socialism
the issue in the next municipal
elections. As a smokescreen fo! i
their demagogy, the Trotskyites s
smear progressive organizations) a
like COPE. In this, they join the) i
right wing, whom they serve) ¢
despite their diversionary attack) ¢
on the right. They also join thé
right wing in their smear attacks) V
on the Communists. In fact, they) |
play a special role in so far as they) %
attack the Communists from

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positions which are alleged to b®&
more radical than those held by thé
Communists. ;

See CITY LABOR, pg. 12 : F

he Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC)
has fallen on evil days. Originally created by an in-
cumbent NDP government, it was intended to meet with
the demands of an overwhelming opinion which
demanded to be freed from the steady gouging of the
private monopoly insurance sharks.
Needless to say, the ICBC was made to play a big role in
the December provincial elections. Under the aegis of

Social Credit, a motley gang of dissident Liberals, Tories

and even a handful of NDP’ ers joined the Socreds to oust
the NDP. It was monopoly free enterprise at its best (or
worst) with no holds barred. This gangup of fast-buck

artists, with the press media and every other form of

misleading propaganda at its beck and call, won the day.
And since monopoly had poured literally millions of
dollars into the election campaign on behalf of its Socred
image, it was inevitable that they would demand payment
in kind when the votes were counted.

Thus even before this galaxy or ex-car salesmen and
other political nondescripts knew the way to the
washrooms in the Legislature, they were preparing to do a
job on ICBC — the first of their NDP targest.

Under the ministerial dictums of one ex-Liberal Pat
McGeer, the premiums of the ICBC were hoisted 300
percent — with cash on the barrelhead demanded. Mr.
McGeer had an easy solution, — “if you can’t afford such

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 20, 1976—Page 2

premiums, sell your car.’’ While some of those original
solutions have been slightly modified, they still emphasize
the mentality plus the anxiety to throw open the door for a
return to the private monopoly ripoff racketeers.

There is little doubt there were many weaknesses in the
ICBC just as there were in a lot of other legislation
enacted by the NDP. These weaknesses were painfully
obvious in its projected Mines Act, its educational
proposals, its tinkering in the fields of health, public
transit, welfare or coping with the larger problem of
unemployment. But nothing that a little time, a new look
or closer consultation with the people of B.C. would not
have remedied. :

Carried away however by the oratorial prowess and ego
of its leaders, the NDP called an election a good two years
ahead of time, primarily because of the threat of a right-
wing monopoly gangup, which ultimately engulfed it.
Hence the key issue in the election was the NDP itself
which neither its spokesmen nor its socialism was capable
of defending. Even at the eleventh hour had NDP leader
Barrett orated for the people instead of at them, the
outcome might have been slightly different.

Now the fast-buck servitors for monopoly in this Socred

corral are in full battle-cry against the NDP, seeking to ©

belittle, smear and distort every legislative move it made,
aided and abbetted by an equally corrupt monopoly
media, and making it’s first all-out move against ICBC.
To teach British Columbians not to dabble in public
ownership schemes, and least of all in a highly centralized
monopoly as the automobile business and the insurance
ripoffs that go with it.

Despite the huge rallies, protest Meetings and mass
petitioning calling upon the Socred government to exhibit
some common sense and reason in its ICBC mishandling,

by rolling back its premium charges to a modest 20 per
cent or less increase in place of its original insanities, the
answer is ‘“‘no, it cannot be changed now.” :
Here is where the question of unity comes in. The
rallies, meetings, petitions etc. show a big and wide unity |
in evidence — but not big or wide enough or determined ||
enough to convince a monopoly-dominated cabal thal
government is by and for the people, and not at whim of |
some monopoly-inspired jackrabbit. i
There are, of course, those labor leaders of the Ed
Lawson stripe who invariably preach “caution”, whos?
preachments are readily quoted in the media and TV, wh?
“don’t go all the way’’ with unity, when in fact they are |
already going in the opposite direction. a

OEP AE Pie Preah a calee FIE G ,

Whatever it takes, unity rather than capitulation is thé
answer. Unity is the only language. This government and
those it represents can ultimately understand. -

PACIFIC

RiBUN

Editor - MAURICE RUSH 4
Assistant Editor SEAN GRIFFIN ,
Business and Circulation Manager — MIKE GIDORA

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