MAY DAY, 1975

“A major milestone in history’ |

By NIGEL MORGAN

On May First the working people
of all countries demonstrate their
international solidarity; renew the
sacred pledge to help each other in
the class struggle; confront the
war-makers, oppressors and ex-
ploiters with the mighty power of
world-wide unity of all who toil;
and proclaim their dedication to a
new world of peace, freedom and
social advance.

May Day was born on the North
American continent out of the
struggle of workers of the United
States and Canada for the eight-
hour work day. The ‘‘Federation of
Organized Trades and Labor
Unions of the United States and
Canada”’ (forerunner of the AFL-
CIO) set May 1, 1886 as the day for |
united effort to bring an end to’
excessive hours of toil.

Hundreds of thousands came out
_ on strike and gathered in meetings
and demonstrations in the main
industrial centres across the
continent to establish their right to
limit the hours of work to eight
hours per day.

The bosses. countered by
unleashing brutal police violence,
winding up with the exploitation of
a terrorist act, (widely believed to
have been a provocation of the
police themselves), to hang the
workers’ leadership in the Mc-
Cormack-Harvester strike
meeting in Chicago’s Haymarket
Square.

“There will come a time when
our silence will be more powerful
than the voices which you are
strangling today,”’ were the defiant
words the Haymarket martyrs —
Parsons, Fischer, Spies and Engel
— carried on their lips as they were
led to the gallows. From that day
in 1886 May Day was destined to -
become a symbol of struggle, of
hard-won victories, and of a world
to win. The founding congress of
the Second (Socialist and Labor)
International in 1889 set May Day
as a day for a_ world-wide

HAYMARKET MASSACRE! An artist's view of the attack by police ona peaceable labor
meeting held May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago. The meeting-was called to pro-
test police brutality and the murder of six locked-out workers at the McCormick Harvester
_ Works. The rally was attacked by 180 police. A bomb suddenly exploded. Police fired wild-
ly. Several civilians and police were killed and injured. Leaders of the eight-hour movement

demonstration with the workers of
North America.

* * *

May Day, 1975 will break on a
world that has undergone
tremendous changes, and in which
even bigger changes are on the
agenda around the globe. One-third
of the human race are already
living in countries where the rule of
capital has been replaced by the
power of the working class, and
where a new way of life is being
‘built. Working people of all nations
have good reason to be proud of the
tremendous achievements of the
new Socialist world system, led by
the Soviet Union — first and most
advanced ot the Socialist countries
— which on-May 9 will com-
memorate the 30th anniversary of
the heroic, unmatched contribution
its people made to victory over
fascism.

This year, May Day sees the
forces of national and social
liberation literally handcuffing the
warmakers; calling the im-
perialist enslavers and foreign
exploiters to account in country
after country. The past year has
seen the most signal advance in the
international situation since the
years immediately following the
victory over fascism. The difficult
years of cold war have given way
to a new era of detente. This has
been the most distinctive feature of
the recent period — a reflection of

the new balance of forces in the’

world today. The first and most.
decisive factor in this new balance
is the accelerating advance in the
relative strength and constructive
role of socialism in which the
Soviet Union is in the forefront of
the Socialist nations.

May Day, 1975 will record a year
of brilliant successes. With the help
of the socialist states, the newly-
liberated countries, and the
workers and progressive people of
the world, the heroic people of
Indochina’ have routed U.S.
aggression and their puppet Lon
Nol and Thieu regimes.

After centuries of enslavement
and degradation at the hands of

< a

B.C. Communist Party leader
Nigel Morgan points to the vast
changes which have taken place in
the world and the new challenges
facing B.C. labor this May Day.

successive imperialist plunderers
the people of Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia have driven the most
powerful of all imperialist powers,
the U.S.A., out of Southeast Asia
and have begun rebuilding their
war-torn country and a new life.

New victories for democracy and
national liberation have been won
in a wide series of countries from
Portugal and Greece _ to
Madagascar.

The victory of the Portuguese
people’s liberation struggle
against half a century of fascist
repression is bound up with a far
wider~ range of liberation
movements in the gigantic areas of
the Portuguese colonies in Africa.
The downfall of the Portuguese
colonial empire in Africa has
Sounded a warning note of the
bankruptcy and impending death
knell of the old racialist regimes
based on apartheid and _ special
privileged positions of colonialist
settlers, which have denied the
right of the overwhelming black
majority to vote in all national,
state or municipal elections and

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kept them in servitude. The con-
sequences of the vast change.in the
whole balance of Africa ara only
beginning.

This is the international situation

in which the advances toward .

detente (which it would be
dangerous, however, to take for
granted) is of paramount im-
portance. The world is changing;
and at jet speed!

* * *

The general crisis of im-
perialism is deepening and
becoming more chronic throughout
the capitalist world. In Canada we
have crisis upon crisis — an in-
flationary crisis; an energy crisis;
a monetary crisis; a markets
crisis; an unemployment crisis; a
farm crisis; an ecological crisis; a
moral crisis, etc. You name it.
We’ve got it. Even though the
techniques of exploitation have
been made more sophisticated,
unconscionable profiteering,
galloping inflation and mass
layoffs are driving home the fact
that the end results are the same —
legalized robbery and plunder of
the people.

In marked contrast to the
Socialist world system, where jobs
are still looking for people (instead
of people looking for jobs); where
there is no inflation; no energy
crisis; and no markets crisis. State
monopoly capitalism has
demonstrated its inability to
assure full employment, stable
prices, rising standards and equal
opportunities for all.

Inflation is making the rich
richer and the poor poorer. Our
living standards are being steadily
eroded, yet profits like prices are
at an all-time high. This is the way
in which wage cuts are being
imposed on the working people and
pensioners, while guaranteeing
profits for the
monopolies and big foreign multi-
national corporations. Never have
so many been rooked by so few!

Federal, _ provincial and
municipal budgets, which it is
claimed are aimed at lessening

inflation and preventing recession,

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were arrested and later executed. These events were closely connected with the founding of

May Ist as labor's international day.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 1975—Page 4

MENT FOR A SHORTER DAY.
3 se ireds of S es, in which Near-
ee se Two Millions of Workingmen ere
= the Participators.
‘ork pee,

_and pensioner standards; to get 4

are doing neither. Parliamenl
while calling on working people ‘
exercise ‘‘moderate restraint,
and now threatens an ‘incomes |
policy” to restrict wage increas®: |
is voting itself a 33 per cent hike. © |
fine example of “restraint,” a

What restraint do they expe
workers to exercise with infla |
tion continuing at 12 per cent aly |
predicted to going up at an evel |
higher rate this coming he
What restraint do they want old |
age pensioners and those depen® |
ent on welfare allowances to exel |
cise? Just what restraint c@l |
B.C.’s thousands of unemploy®
loggers, miners, millworket;_
plant, office and service person 4
exercise in places of work th@ |
have laid off, or shut down com \
pletely?

* * *

The attack on working people’ |
living standards, while profits miS° |
higher’ and higher, finds furthel |
reflection in monopoly-inspil@" |
attacks on the right to strike 7
through compulsory arbitratiol |
While the focal point of the atta a
today is the West Coas }
longshoremen, and provincially :
the public service sector, we wouX |
be naive to think they intend to stoP
there. Their real aim is to cripple |
the right to strike in industry, be it
public or private; undermine freé
collective bargaining, and maké
labor organization ineffective.

In this way trade unions can a
integrated into the mechanism an
state monopoly capitalism am
transformed into pliable pawns 0
class collaboration in conditions "|
sharpening competition in thé)
shrinking capitalist world market
The working class and their trade
unions need to go all out in unit
battle to defeat these reactionary
aims, aimed at shifting the ful
burden of the developing crisi& §
onto their shoulders. :

The challenge before B.C. labot
this May Day is to provide)
dynamic leadership, to curb)
monopoly power by economic an
united political action anchore?”
firmly to a class approach; to rais© |
the purchasing power of the people
through higher wages while cuttin8 .
the hours of work to provide en!
ployment for the jobless; to compe
a shift in the growing tax burden®
from people to the highly |
profitable industries, and to ¢% |
pand the public sector of the |
economy to provide a sound basis
for full employment and _risiné
standards of living by endiné
monopoly rip-offs.

; * * *

Big business in B.C. is engaged
in a powerful offensive to block an |
disrupt necessary democrati€
reforms and regain control of thé |
provincial government. We havé |
seen a well-orchestrate
progaganda barrage; phoney
strikes by the insurance companies
and landlords; and mining com
pany-inspired demonstrations
against the government. Bié
business is pressing hard to force
the government to abandon its
program of reforms. ‘They ar
uniting around a refurbished an
well-financed Socred Party: |
Widespread appeals for a wal |
chest for the Socreds are cil
culating in business circles.

It would be a serious mistake t
underestimate the extent of this
ultra-conservative, anti-labor,
anti-peoples gang-up. The
monopolists are infuriated becaus®
the NDP government has done |
much to improve welfare, health,

See MAY DAY, pg. 15