| rlple SE ri Witenes

Lif FUN IE =

swat fflacensnean (=>) naseses 06H tvvssaltsrssees rarssncaneeniss ‘ bs

Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street
By The TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY
Telephones: Editorial, MA. 5857; Business, MA. 5288
Tom McEwen Editor
Ivan Birchard Manager
Subscription Rates: 1 Year, $2.50;..6 Months, $1.35.
Printed by Union Printers at 650 Howe Street, Vancouver, B.C.
Authorized as second-class mail by the post-office department, Ottawa

Coalition betrays promise

N May 15 the Coalition government’s Bill 39 was pro-

claimed, and never,within the memory of trade union-
ists has labor in this province been coerced by such vicious
anti-labor provisions.

In the last election the Coalition published a manifesto
promising progressive legislation which would lead the way
for the country. Instead, the Anscomb-Hart Coalition .has
enacted the most backward labor law in the Dominion.

Bill 39 can never be acceptable to labor in its present
form. Not a single voice has been raised in the labor move-
ment to defend it and not one local has had a kind word
for it. It has been condemned by unions of all affiliations.
Even the daily press has been forced to express editorial
recognition of this general opposition.

Proclamation of the new act should be the signal to labor
and all forward-looking citizens to join ranks now in com-
bating the Coalition’s betrayal. The challenge to the trade
union movement is clear: United labor action—or else.

- /

Farmers on tax strike

ROM Vancouver Island and the Interior comes word

that farmers in many districts are holding meetings to
protest exorbitant education taxes. They are proposing a
school tax strike until their demands are met.

One of these demands is that the provincial govern-
ment shoulder the greater of the burden of school costs
out of consolidated revenue—now at an all-time high.

The protest points to a situation which, to a greater or
lesser extent, prevails throughout the province. The failure
of governments to relieve lower income groups of discrim-'
inatory taxation is resulting in a tax strike movement.

To most citizens this appears to be the only way to
get redress from a government whose main concern is the
interests of the big monopolies,

The people of Vancouver Island have started something

that will have the support of the whole province. Through

public action they are showing the way to protest an un-

just provincial taxation system which permits powerful

logging corporations on Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railroad

_ lands to go tax free while the people are squeezed to provide
tax revenue.

The people cannot be silent

T is time that Canadians paused -to consider the fact

that during the past three months not a single official
word has been said on Canada’s foreign policy in the House
of Commons. The government has not introduced nor has
the CCF forced a discussion on Canada’s responsibilities to
the United Nations.

This at a time when millions of the world’s people see
in the Truman ‘Doctrine a bare-faced rejection of the prin-
ciples on which UN is founded.

What is the explanation for this silence? Is it that
Canada has no foreign policy or is it that Canada is playing
a role that will not bear investigation? »

Outside the House government spokesmen are more
vocal and their words have sinister implications, Prime
Minister King attacks Henry Wallace’s mission in Europe.
General McNaughton expresses support of American atom
bomb policy. These developments, seen against the back-
ground of the ‘spy scare’ and the Canadian-U.S. Arctic
pact, add up to only one conclusion—support of Truman’s
anti-United Nations policies, complete subservience to the -
ruthless aims of American imperialism. This is the position
which evasion in the House of Commons is intended to
obscure, These are the anti-Canadian aims which are being
pursued behind a wall of official silence.

_ The forces for peace and for progress in our country
were never so powerful as they are now. What is needed
is that they should be united into the powerful instrument
capable of cutting Canada loose from American imperialism
and making Canada one of the foremost nations of the
world in the fight for peace, The present emergency » re-,
quires that the CCF should step out of its role as apologist
for Bevin. It requires that the labor movement should play
a bolder, more aggressive role at the head of all peace-
loving people in the fight for an independent Canadian
policy.

FRIDAY, MAY 16, 1947

AO cee CTA

As we see it

EECA By Tom Mc Ewen

N the course of a tour

through the interior of
British Columbia and across
the country we have been
conducting a sort of a one-
man poll of public opinion

On such issues as prices, wages,”

anti-labor legislation, and Can-
adian-Soviet relations. The re-
sults show that in spite of the
high-pressure campaign of big
business through its press and
radio control, the people are
maintaining a fairly even keel
in their opinions on current af-
fairs.

Present day machinery for
gauging public opinion is part
and parcel of the same monop-
olistic press and radio combine
to ‘mould’ public opinion, so
what big business calls ‘public
opinion’ is its own opinion. All
other opinion is presented as
‘irresponsible’. For instance when
the Teen Towners of Kelowna
staged a parade supporting
nickel candy bars, the ‘public,’
according to the Kelowna Cour-
ier, was supposed to be indig-
nant at such irresponsible shen-
anigans on the part of the young
peopl. The robbery of the kids
by the chocolate monopolists was
nicely covered up in a paternal
homily on youthful pranks.

On the prices racket a Ver-
non mother of three children
said, “I think the women should
get together and do something,”
while a small grocery store mer-
chant added, fit looks to me
as if this ‘inflation is designed
to clean us all out.” Asked if he
thought it was high wages that
forced up prices, he cracked
back with, “On that theory re-
tailers would be expected to be
better off if they sell less, It
doesn’t make sense.”

A Cranbrook mother of five.

children, whose husband gets the
princely salary of $110 a month
as a government employee, said,
“tI am not only speaking for
myself but others like me who
find it awfully hard to make the
dollar stretch to buy the food

‘and clothing our children need.

We just cannot let it go on like
this much longer.” A mother
from Kimberley with a little son

inflation and _ repressive

and a Silicosis husband gets a
monthly pension of $67. “How
does any sane person or govern-
ment think we can manage on
that?” she asks.

A mine boss said the whole

trouble arises from labor want-
ing too much wages for too
little work. He
ididn’t elaborate

for
oney to buy
ack a larger
ortion of the
pro-
duction he de-
sired. A farm-
Ber returning to
Saskatchewan
from a winter
vacation in Vic-
toria said he
“didn’t know what things are
coming. to. When I was a young
man we usd to get two dollars
2 day and thought we were well
off. Now look at it. Why, in
Saskatchewan we have a social-
ist dictatorship just like thé
Russians, tch, tch.” :

A CPR conductor who never
missed a pay‘ day during the
hungry thirties thought that the
prices and wages issue was just
so much ‘red propaganda’, and
that everything could be set to
rights if the CIO were elimin-
ated. Upon further consideration,
he agreed to allow the CIO to
exist, but felt the government
should “do something about the
‘Pritchett-Murphy — axis’.” Obvi-

Tom McEwen

ously he had been ,reading a.
making

CMA-inspired editorial é
the rounds of Interior papers
which represent this ‘axis’ to

be the main danger to our “con-

tinued prosperity.”

A railroad section man said,
“Unless we are able to -build a
better labor unity to fight this
labor
legislation, we are in for a taste
of fascism in Canada. They gave
my union a 2%c wage increase
in 1946 and took it all back
from the children’s milk bottle.”
A preacher though that prices
were being “unduly increased”

and causing some hardships tu
the people, but felt that

“the

communists were at the bottom
of the trouble.” When we point-

“ed out that the communists held

no stocks or bonds in the big —
dairy concerns, the holy man
cast his eyes heavenwards and
murmured, “Well, well.”

A Fernie housewife thought
a buyers’ strike should concen-
trate first upon “vegetables or
anything perishable.” She ex-
pressed the fear that if people
refused to buy the millions of
pounds of butter now available
at the 10 cents a pound increase,
the packers could “put it back in
cold storage.” We assured her
that such a possibility - was
hardly likely since the impact
of a nation-wide buyers’ strike _
against price increases would ©
also have the political effect of
laying bare the manipulations
of the food speculators and their —
governments,

i”) :
1 *

URRENT opinion on Bill 39

and its crippling effect upon
collective bargaining and_ the
right to strike is pretty well

_ divided on class lines. Trade un-

ionists, regardless of affiliation,
are unanimous in their condem-
nation of Bill 39. The one ex-

ception, we found, is the com-
pany- promoted ‘Independent
Smelter Workers’ Union’ at

Trail, which, in the current is
sue of The Amalgamator is: all
in favor of government super-
vised strike votes, or of any-

thing else that will weaken and

destroy bona-fide trade unions.
The Amalgamator regards Bill
89 as ‘a recognition’ of its spe-
cial qualities by governments.
Perhaps it has something there!
The Amalgamator — editorials
on the ‘Pritchett-Murphy axis’
read as though they were writ~
ten (and probably were) by the
hired scribblers: of the Canadian —
Manuaftcurers . Association. In
fact it is just a shade more than
probable that The Amalgamator
figures in the expense sheets
of the CMA under the classifi-
cation of ‘personnel relations’.
One of the best antidotes for
the vicious poison now being
spread lies in widening the cit-
culation of the labor press.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 4

‘