. EDITORIAL
How to vote Monday

ith the probability of a few last minute after-thoughts,

Socred and Liberal election ‘‘promises” are now for
the most part all in the hopper. Compared with previous
election “promises” they all sound very good, and we put
special emphasis upon “sound”, since the bulk of election
‘bait?’ handed out by these political parties of Big Business
remain just that — as faras the common people are concerned.

For the electorate on Monday, and especially for organized
labor and working men and women generally, there are two
prime factors to keep in mind, both equally important in
the final election outcome; to “Get Out and Vote’’ and “How
to Vote”,

Premier Bennett’s “hurry-up” election was called with
the prime aim in mind of cutting down eligible voters toa
minimum, while the lavish menu of pre-election “promises”,
with the Liberals running a close second in the election
“bait-cutting” business, was and is aimed at a well-used
old-line party target — how best to confuse and hoodwink
the voter into voting against his (or her) own interests,

To change all this the solution is simple. In every B.C.
constituency where there is no Communist candidate, mark
the ballot for the candidate of the New Democratic Party
(NDP), In those six constituencies where there is a Com-
munist Party candidate — VOTE COMMUNIST.

By doing so the elector will be voting for a democratic
and progressive alternative to what this province has already
had far too much of, To vote otherwise is to perpetuate a
growing menace to the future of B.C.; a menace partially
hidden by extravagant “promises”.

VOTE COMMUNIST, VOTE NDP — and an end to Socred-
Liberal sellouts,

‘Back to the rails’

ith the plaudits of big business ringing sweet in his

ears for getting Canada “back on the rails’’ with his
Liberal-Socred strike-breaking bill, Pearson is now off to
London, there to wave his special “compromise” wand ina
last-ditch. effort to get a tottering British Commonwealth
“back on the rails”.

Unlike his scurvy treatment of the railway workers’ wage
demands, when Pearson and his Liberal and Tory colleagues
voted themselves an eight to ten thousand dollar annual
salary hike, there was no talk about “inflation’? and much
less about “the law”, That brand of cant is reserved “for
workers only”.

Had the railway workers and all other unions got together
— at the ballot box and on the picket line, such unity could
have written another kind of “law”, Now as it stands they’ll
still have to get together — to safeguard their unions from
Pearson’s strike-breaking “law”; to build labor unity from
coast to coast to eliminate Pearson’s “derail” obstruction,
wel! obscured by wordy cant and humbug, and put elementary

democracy “back on the rails”.

n the hit-and-miss zig-

zag path to human pro-
gress it is frequently noted that
“history repeatsitself, . .’’, both
in the area of great human trag-
edies, and not-so-great human
comedies.

This repitition of bygone hu-
man thought and action is not
always an exact replica of what
has gone before, but the com-
parisons often reveal a startling
similarity.

For instance, those who have
browsed through Plato’s “Re-
public” (374 BC) cannot but be im-
pressed by the revelation that
the great Greek philosopher, a
brilliant student of Socrates, pro-
pounded ideas of human thought
and action upon which an ideal
human society could be_ built.
Ideas, which a lot of today’s
political “philosophers” think
they themselves ‘‘discovered”,
Doubtless they are unaware that

Plato “jumped the gun’’ on them
by a mere 2,340-years. How we
do “progress”,

This was brought very vividly
to mind the other day after read-

ing the “success” story of a
humble barber in faraway Tsin-
an, China; how he had applied the
science of Marxist dialectics (as
per “Mao Tse-tung’s thought”)
to the production of a good hair-
cut and a Satisfied customer,

Perhaps a little “background”
in our own country will serve to
illustrate the point, keeping in
mind of course that People’s
China is a Socialist country while
we in Canada struggle to survive
in the “boom and bust’’ of capi-
talism,

Back in the mid-twenties and
early 30’s the proprietor of one
of the most popular barber shops
in Port Arthur, Ontario, and a
very good barber at that, was
also a leading figure in the local
Communist Party branch,

An untiring agitator and ex-
ponent of Marxism, when warmed
up on that gripping subject, he

“became oblivicus to all else,

ELECTION ROUNDUP:

~ Make education free at :
all levels, urges Rush

Outlining the party’s stand on
education, Maurice Rush, Com-
munist candidate for North Van-
Seymour said this week in a
letter to the B.C, Teacher’s Fed-
eration, that “the Communist
Party stands by the principle that
every child should have the right
to a free education,”

He said senior governments
should increase their contribu-
tions to education, and that Ot-
tawa should pay the full cost of
elementary education and B.C,
80 percent of the cost of second-
ary education,

Pointing out that over 40 per-
cent of all classes in B.C. have
35 pupils or more, compared with
only 21 percent for allofCanada,
Rush said this situation is intol-
erable and should be corrected,
As a first step he urged that
the ratio be reduced to a maxi-
mum 30 students and 25 inprim-
ary classes,

Rush urged the abolition of
university fees and granting of
travel bonus and living allow-
ances to make it possible for
students from poorer families
to have the same opportunity to
attend university.

Speaking on a radio panel on
CJOR recently, Rush urged that
a crash program be launched at
once in Vancouver to provide
suitable accommodations to
solve the present housing short-
age for students,

He told the panel, which con=

sisted of three student leaders
and spokesmen for the Liberal,
NDP and Communist parties, that
at present $1.6 billion is being
wasted for military purposes.
“This money could be much better
spent expanding our education
program and meeting the needs
of the people,” he said,

End shameful status of B.C.’s

Native Indians, demands Beynon

“As a Native Indian, I have
‘during this campaign fought for
provincial action in education,
jobs, housing, and against the
discrimination that has forced
B.C. Indians into a status that is
a shame to Canada and Cana-
dians,” said 20-year-old Com-
munist candidate for Vancouver
Centre, James Beynon this week,
Beynon is a Native Indian,

He charged that the plight of
B.C.’s Indian people has been
virtually ignored by most candi-
dates in the present election,
“Yet it deserves serious consid-
eration because Natives of B.C.
have the poorest housing condi-
tions, the lowest levels of em-
ployment, and the smallest in-
comes of any group in the
province,”

Beynon said a recent survey
showed that the average life span
of Candian Indians in 1963 was
33.3 years for men and 34,7
for women, He compared this
with the national average of 61.5

Thus it frequently happened, with
a customer in the chair for a
hair cut or all soaped-up for a
shave, that the barber shop dis-
cussion would veer around to
some topic of labor political
interest, That was the unfailing
signal for barbering operations
to cease forthwith, and ‘‘dialec-
tics” to begin — and for the half-
trimmed or soaped-up customer
in the chair to be completely
forgotten,

That customers were lost be-
cause of this devotion to Marxist
dialectics there was little doubt;
not because the latter may have
been opposed to such ideas, or
knew anything about it. His main
gripe was to be held captive in
the tonsorial chair by half a
haircut, or all lathered up under
a hot towel--long grown cold and
clammy, until the wordy storm
of Marxist dialectics had sub-
sided,

But if our barber’s application
of Marxist dialectics lost cus-
tomers, it also gained converts,
thereby producing another “con-
tradiction” described in Marxist
dialectices as “the negation of
the negation”, “A little tonic on
the scalp this morning?”

When the first branch of the
Workers’ Party (now the Com-
munist Party) was formed in
Vancouver back in the stirring
days of ’21, the veteran Com-
munist journalist William «“O’l

years for men and 64,1 years for
women, :

‘‘Imagine this,” he said, “only
13 percent of Indian homes in
Canada three years ago had run-
ning water as against a national
average of 92 percent; and only
44 percent of Indian homes had
electricity when the Canadian
average was 99 percent.”

Beynon urged the following
steps to meet the plight of his
people:

“Employment and education are
the keys, Indian reserves should
not be hacked at by the B.C.
government but additional areas
should be granted to Indians to
include timber and farmland.
Industry should be established on
or near reserves to provide use-
ful livelihoods for the Indian
people, :

“In many cases, this can be
done through establishing co-
operatives — fishing, farming,

in his little shop on Main Street.

There too wasalively center of —

Marxist dialogue and debate,
Many of B,C,’s early Socialist
pioneers used to gather there and
together with O’1 Bill invariably
managed to touch off a warm de-

bate on Marxist dialectics, And ~

if the soaped-up customer in the
chair was disinterested or in
“a hurry”, well that was just too
bad, The dialectics of revolution-
ary thought took priority over
haircuts, and in O’1Bill’s opinion,
the best tonic for anything “under”
the scalp,

After a six-year study of Marx-
ist dialectics, as per ‘‘Mao Tse-
tung’s thought”, our Tsinan bar-
ber Li Teh-hsun has discovered
that a satisfied customer indi-
cates the best solution to all

Pacific

Editor — TOM McEWEN eh ay

lumber and even mining, as well
as traditional crafts.

“We need top qualified teachers
‘in isolated communities and
proper schooling facilities, not
situations where Indian education
is neglected because Victoria
won’t foot the bill,”

Beynon said that Indian affairs
are largely federal, but, he added
the province also has a direct
responsibility in guarding Indian
rights and advancing their inter-
ests, He said theSocred viewpoint
is best expressed by the fact
that the attorney general appealed
right to the Supreme Court of
Canada the decision that allowed
Vancouver Island Natives to hunt
deer out of season for their own
food needs,

“The B.C. government should
stand with the Indians instead of
against them in their fight for
compensation for lands arbitrari-
ly taken from them without
treaty.”

6Og

‘¢major contradictions”, If a cus-
tomer wants a haircut within a
stipulated 18-minutes, Li’s ap-
plied dialectics which combines
speed with quality (“good and
quick” the terms it) gets the job
done in 17- minutes flat,

Li outlines many “major con-
tradictions” in the tonsorial field;
meeting the demands of rush- .
hour customers, soothing the
fears of Junior’s first haircut,
combining ideology with tech-
nique, etc, On that last, Li scores
an important point, viz; ifa Com-
munist, any Communist, whether
in a capitalist or Socialist coun-
try, is a *‘good man” at his jobor
craft, his Marxist dialectics are
respected — even if not immedi-
ately accepted, But if otherwise
the “major contradictions’’ like
the high-cost-of-living, continue

to spiral, Even Plato foresaw that!

Tribune

Associate Editor — MAURICE RUSH

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