Review

EDITORIAL PAGE

“Bastian in the San Francisce Chronicle,

Block Bennett’s plans

PREMIER Bennett’s statement
last week in which he declared
himself and the Socred govern-
ment against any recognition of
ithe demands of the French-Cana-
dian people for equality should be
deplored by every democratic-
minded person in B.C.

The Premier announced that it
was his intention to go to the fed-
eral-provincial conference in Ot-
tawa opening November 25 to
oppose any changes in the terms
of Confederation to satisfy the
growing demand of the six million
French-Canadian people for a new
confederal pact establishing equal
rights for Canada’s two national

peoples.

Bennett even went so far as to

freer hand to sell out this province
.to the Yankee trusts.

Is Bennett hiding behind the
crisis of Confederation and talking
of “our British Commonwealth:
ties” to seek more freedom to open
B.C. to complete takeover by the
U.S. corporations?

The people of B.C., who are
democratically-minded, will reject
Bennett's insult to the people of
French-Canada. They will back
up the just demands now rising
ina mighty wave, to end the
century-long inequality of French
Canada, and for reconstitution of

Confederation to provide a volun-

tary union of Canada’s two nations
—French and English-speaking.

Comment

NDP’s road ahead

THE conventions last week of
the B.C. Federation of Labor and
New Democratic Party showed
clearly that there is an agonizing
reappraisal taking place in the
working class movement of this
province.

The excellent positions taken
on such questions as Canadian
autonomy, the need to develop
our own natural resources, trade
and normal relations with all coun-
tries indicate a growing awareness
of the bankruptcy of cold war,
right wing policies. —

It would be a mistake, how-
ever, not to realize that this grop-
ing for realistic alternative policies
Still is in its infancy

The NDP convention, for ex-
ample, failed to enunciate clearly

why the party’s performance in:

the last provincial election was so
far below what was expected of it.

This was mainly because the
party leadership refused to admit
the incorrectness of its “‘soft sell”’
approach. It tried instead to pin
the blame on lack of time, the low
ideological level of B.C.’s workers,
the voters list, etc.—in short, on
everybody and everything except
its own wrong policies.

' The emergence of a large left

‘wing centred around the “‘Social-

ist Caucus” shows that thereisa
powerful sentiment among the
rank and file of the NDP for more
militant, anti-monopoly policies
and for broader. labor - farmer
unity. This is indeed to be wel-
comed.

It is clear that the ‘ Secauni:
Caucus” includes in its ranks many

of the socialist-minded people who
were in the C.C.F. and militant
members of the trade unions. It’s
emergence emphasizes again the
need for the NDP to be based on
a federative principle to give ex-
pression to the wide range of labor,
socialist and communist opinion
in the Canadian labor movement.

However, it is also clear that
considerable confusion . exists
among some socialist-minded and
militant workers. Obviously, to
make acceptance of socialism a
prerequisite for all anti-monopoly
forces in B.C. would be to narrow
the NDP tremendously.

In any case many of the poli-
cies advanced by the left-wing,
such as nationalization of certain
industries and resources, étc., are
not “‘socialist”” demands. They are
anti-monopoly measures which
many non-socialists would sup-
port.

The interests of B.C.’s work-
ing people would best be served
by the NDP coming forward with
a strong anti-monopoly program
which will break the stranglehold
of Canadian and U.S. trusts, and
fight for policies to develop this
province in the interests of its
people.

Every socialist-minded worker
will advance the cause of the fut-
ure struggle for socialism by join-
ing now in the fight to make the
NDP such an instrument of politi-
cal action. That is the way forward
in B.C. to the NDP becoming a
genuine coalition of anti-monopoly
forces and an alternative to the
parties of big business.

hold out the perspective of the
break-up of Canada rather than
recognize equal rights for French-
.Canada when he said: “If the rest
of Canada breaks up B.C. will al-
‘ways.remain a part of the great
British Commonwealth.” And
then he added some ridiculous re-
marks that B.C. has its own flag, —
implying that somehow, rather
than recognize just demands by
French-Canada, he would see B.C.
pull out of Canada.

_. One wonders what deeper mo-
‘tives lie beneath Bennett’s talk of
a break-up of Confederation, es-
pecially when speeches by himself,
Attorney General Bonner and
other leading Socreds have repeat-
edly called for economic union
with the U.S.

The Socred government's eag-
‘erness to turn over the Columbia
and other resources to the U.S.
monopolies indicates that Bennett
would not be unhappy to have a

_ Pacific ic Tribune’

deci ort M McEWEN
r—MAURICE RUSH

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Tom
McEwen

This week’s guest columnist, pinch-
hitting jf for Tom McEwen who is recuperat
ing from an operation, is GEORGE HAR-
RIS, Sec.-Treas. of the United Electrical
Workers. This column, here slightly abridg:
ed, appeared in the Nov. 4 “UE News.”

N° men reach the stature of great-

ness in their work or profession.
Clarence S, Darrow was one who did,
and his life as a lawyer could truly
be called great.

‘Darrow lived in Chicago, but worked
in any corner of the United States
where injustice was found.

In his day he exploded many myths.
He wrote of one which still persists
and is widely used whenever there is.
a strike and strike-breakers. This is
the myth of the ‘‘right to work.’’

Clarence Darrow, friend of the op-
pressed, described the so-called right
to work as follows:

owe * *

“In spite of the fact that from the’
standpoint of the employer and the
market, labor is a commodity like
any other to be bought at the lowest
price and worked into the finished
product, still in a limited way society
and law have always recognized that
this commodity is not exactly the same
as wood and iron and must be gov-
erned by a somewhat different rule.
**Labor is really life. Itis the strength’
and en and time of human beings
given day by day to someone else, To

give it without any return is slavery;
to take it for an unjust or insignif-
icant return is only so much less,

**Trade unionism has grown so old
and strong, opposition is not now so
much directed against the union as
against everything it does. Most people
are now willing that workmen shall
be organized, provided they do nothing
but pass resolutions and pay dues,

**Just now the popular line of op-
position against unionism is made in
the violent demand for open shops.

**So long and vociferously have the
enemies of trade unions declared for
the open shop that no doubt many of
them really believe that they are fight-
ing for some principle of liberty and
justice and not to serve their selfish
ends.

‘Mainly their arguments consist in
various statements of the assumption
that every man has an inalienable right
to work when he pleases, for what
wages he pleases and for whom he
pleases, : e

*‘The word ‘inalienable’ sounds well,
for it is taken from the Declaration
of Independence, but it has no mean-
ing in this connection. An‘inalienable”’
right is one which cannot be taken
away, and it is obvious that under pres-
ent conditions no such right exists.

“The inalienable right to work is
a bit of birdlime, used to catch the
unthinking mass, and society, and all
industrial life must be made over or,
at least, radically changed before such
a right is anything except a far-off
dream,

‘‘The inalienable right to work means
simply the inalienable right of the em-

- ployer, without let or hindrance, to go

out in the open market and bid for labor
on the hardest terms, or, rather, to
so order that industrial world that all
men and women and children must bid
against each other for a right to toil.

**It is not so very long since a large
part of the coal of England was mined
by women, since they were even harn-
essed to coal cars down deep in the
earth, and on their hands and knees
drew the cars of coal from the dark-
ness up to a point where they were
relieved by mules.

**It is not long since little children
from eight years of age were placed
in these mines with their fathers and
mothers, and were penned in te
constant whir and din of the spinning
wheels of England for 10, 12 and even
14 hours a day, and it is due to the
trade unionists of England that these
inhuman conditions are gone forever.

*«But every step of advance was stub-
bornly fought by employers who violent-
ly contended that not only their fortune
but the safety and glory of the British
empire rested upon the unpaid labor
of these helpless slaves,

**And if trade unionism today should
flag or grow weary, should hesitate
or falter, should give up its demands
for the recognition of its union, its
collective bargains, and its closed
shop, if the field should be abandoned
to the employers, the great sea of weak
and helpless men and women and little
children would sweep away the indust-
rial conditions that organized labor has
won through its devotion and its strug-
gles, and America would live over the
dark industrial history that England
passed through,”’

Eee sp aee 3

So when we hear boss and politician

hold forth with assumed virtue on the

inalienable right to work, and the kept
press wax eloquent in vehement edit-
orials in response to workers’ picket-
line struggles, let us remember the
words of a great and brilliant man,
Clarence S. Darrow, who summed up
the ‘‘inalienable’’ right to work, as used
by the boss, in one word—Birdlime.

a a

..Nevembar 22, g269PACIIG TRIBUNE fogs 4

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