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JOUNI, MCLOY

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United action needed
to win woodworkers’ demands

HE. B.C... District of the International Wood-

workers of America (FWA). conventton sei
June 15 as the deadline for decisive action in support
of its “No contract, no work” decision.

How seriously the present B.C. leaders of the
IWA regard this decision we do not know. We do
know however, that the majority of rank-and-file
IWA members, together with those lumberworkers
affiliated with the Woodworkers Industrial Union
(WIV), and those other thousands of unorganized
rkers at present in neither trade union organ-
- jzation, regard that ‘“No contract, no work” de-
cision as a very serious matter.

It is elementary in all struggles for improved
wages and’ working conditions that the greater the
unity and solidarity between workers, regardless of
affiliation, the better the chances are to win a wage
contract without the necessity of strike action. It
is also elementary that the more anenie ere to
preparatory strike organization and unity, tter
the ehuaices are for speedy victory, if and when strike
action becomes necessary to secure union demands.

It is reliably reported.by IWA men themselves
that their leaders are advising IWA local executives
to have nothing to do with any unity on the job, action
committee proposals coming from the WIU. And
this a bare five days before a vitally important dead-
line! : on
~ __Down in Washington where 8,000 TWA work-
ers have “hit the bricks” and are picketting all opera-
tions of the powerful Weyerhaeuser timber barons,
AFL workers have assessed themselves $10 per man
im some operations to help their IWA brothers win
the strike. We haven’t heard where the Washington
TWA leadership, as in' B.C., has instructed its strik-
ing locals to have nothing to do with this kind of

unity. On the contrary, we are sure it is welcomed
by 8,000 IWA strikers and their families, just as
much as it is feared by the timber barons and their
stooges.

On the B.C. scene three things stick out like a

sore thumb which TWA workers should immediately
bring to the attention of their District leadership: the
pitiful lack of strike preparations until now; official
IWA frowning upon all WIU proposals for unity
and job action in consolidation of the struggle to win
a decent wage and working contract for the lumber-
workers; total disregard and unconcern for thousands
of unorganized lumberworkers, who can be decisive
in this struggle, as witness the uncanny haste of the
Labor Relations Board to drive through its strike
vote on June 8 on all IWA and organized operations,
without prior consultation with the IWA District
leadership, and with its eye upon the possibilities of
rolling up a big “‘no strike’ vote among the unorgan-
ized lumberworkers.
_ On June 15 it is either a ‘‘No contract, no work”’
issue, based clearly upon the [WA demands for a
17-cent wage increase across the board, the 40-hour
week. and the closed shop—or a new pre-June 15
back-door deal to trade off the 40-hour week for a
few extra cents with which to plug the 1949 IWA
hole-in-the-doughnut contract.

The greater the united efforts of all lumber-
workers now, and especially between the TWA and
the WIU, the more sure the lumberworkers will be
of winning a substantial wage increase, preserving the
40-hour week, and winning greater union security,
organization and unity. The greater the united efforts
of all lumberworkers now, and especially between
the IWA and WIU membership on the job, the less
the chances of bartering away the hard-won right of
the 40-hour week. for a few paltry cents.

Tha (90 Bicuictad Compeign

HE Pacific Tribune is in receipt of an impor-

= tant statement from the provincial executive
of the Labor-Progressive, party, advising us that
during the months of June, July and August, the
party will undertake to raise a fighting fund of

$10,000. This amount will constitute the B.C.

provincial quota of a national party fund.
Materials for getting this financial campaign un-
der way have already gone out to all LPP clubs,
together with collection cards and attractive na-

tional party certificate books for stated amounts.

The steadily jncreasing demands upon the
LPP for a greater volume of printed matenals,
radio programs, and other media of publicity to
answer the lying propaganda and*slanders of the
camp of reaction and war, are all too obvious to
require elaboration. The fight for a mighty peace
movement to block the warmongers, in which the
LPP plays a modest role, calls for a greater vol-
ume of party agitation and propaganda than ever
before, entirely independent of Canadian Peace

_ Congress activities. ai Ses

Unlike the old-line parties of big business,
which now include the “cold war” top leaderships
of the Social Credit and CCF parties, the LPP
has no financial backers among the oil, brewery,
uranium or other magnates. The LPP depends
.atirely upon its membership and its ever-widening
circle of socialist-minded supporters, who realize
the worth and the need of a Marxist party to win
Canadians for peace, progress, and socialism.

The Pacific Tribune will carry a weekly
roundup on the progress of this national party fund
in B.C., in order to inform our readers on the
progress made. If the enemies of the working
people derive any satisfaction from our weekly
roundup, they are welcome to it. An additional
$10,000 worth of hard-hitting home truths from
the LPP on the day-to-day struggle is an objective
worth striving for. It brings the goal of peace and
socialism that much nearer. ;

For further imformation on this campaign, »
write the LPP Provincial Executive, Room 503,
Ford Building, Vancouver, B.C.

TOM McEWEN

As We See It

WE LIVE in an age of “flops.” Some future historian with a sense

of humor may re-name this cold-war period as the “flop era.”
The term “flop” as used here to describe this bourgeois shot-in-the-arm
morale builder, is something entirely apart (although not unrelated) to
the flop-houses, flop-joints, or other flopeteria of the Hungry Thirties
era,

All around us today everything that has to do with the hopes and
desires of the common people for those things that come under the
general heading of “life, liberty and the pursuits of happiness,” would
seem to be a “flop’”—if one looks at it through the
bleary lens of a so-called “free” press! :

A few illustrations will show what we mean.
All the news coverage a month or two ago on
China’s liberation of the island of Hainan was hail-
ed as a “flop.” Chiang was winning on all fronts.
The invasion of Hainan by Chinals liberation armies
was a “complete flop,” period. When the editorial
smoke of battle cleared away we saw that a flop
had indeed occured—but it was the editors who
re-chew the canned cud of the big time “news”
factories, and Chiang Kai-shek who had flopped!

For a couple of months the monopoly press
played up the German youth peace rally in Berlin
as “a Soviet-inspired putch,” and just fairly itched
to get some shooting started. Ameriean occupation forces and their
Marshallized mortgagee Bonn “government” massed a. great display
of armed force, ready at the drop of a bottle to defend their Coca-Cola’
“democracy” should the German youth march. On the day designated
the German youth did march—but the march was peaceful (even in,
the face of the most extreme provocations), therefore it was a “flop”!
Today “the editorial cud-chewers of the Western world are falling
over each other in their efforts to portray the German Youth march as
“a complete flop.” :

And only a few days ago in the land where General Hirohito Mac-
Arthur commands the sun to rise and set, the Communist march in
Tokyo to protest against fascist anti-labor edicts, and the vicious sen-
tences handed down by MacArthur’s courts against Japanese trade
union leaders, is described by the dollar-inspired cud-chewers as a
“flop.” “Only 100,000” or so Tokyo workers struck in protest against
the MacArthur edicts, and “only 5,000 persons or so attended a de-
sultory (7) mass meeting a few blocks from General MacArthur's
occupation headquarters.” All of which is intended to show, of course,
that any moral demonstration of Japanese workers against a made-
in-the-USA “Son of Heaven” is bound to end up in a “flop.”

And on the other side of the world in Merrie England, “about 9,000
persons attended a Communist-supported peace rally .. .” and heard
speeches by the “Red Dean” of Canterbury, Alexander Koreneichuk,
president of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, Liu Ning-I, vice-
president of the All-China Federation of Labor, and Paul Robeson,
noted Negro leader and artist. ‘Waving cut the audience in half, to
say nothing of the thousands unable to gain admission altogether, the
London peace rally, by the Hearstian yardstick, was a “flop.” We
can hear some of our Cockney friends saying, “Gor blimey, let’s ’ave
more of these ruddy flops.’

In our own backyard the “flops” came thick and fast in recent
days. The Vancouver News-Herald of June 5 scored a new high.
First, of course, there was the splendid Peace Arch Youth Rally last
Sunday of not less than 2,500 people. (We refrained from taking a
census of their ages). The News-Herald headlined its story: “Rally is
a Flop at Peace Arch,” “ Expected Horde of Youth Fails to Witness
Oratory.” oe

Prominently sandwiched into the News-Herald story, like a thick
slice of cold-war boloney, was the “news” that Nigel Morgan, LPP
provincial leader, and Homer Stevens, secretary of the United Fisher-
men and Allied Workers Union, were “not barred” by U.S. immigration
authorities from attending the rally. Ae ‘

The News-Herald of June 3—the day before the rally—carried a
typical stoolpigeon intimidatory article by Bruce Larsen entitled “Sun-
day’s Peace Arch Doings.” This article, in the best Gouzenko style
“put-the-finger” on .all prominent “Reds,” thus bolstering the cold-
war myth that all who strive for peace against the war-mongers are
engaging in “subversive” activities and will be held suspect!

‘Below the line the Trotskyite cold-war platoon of Yankee reaction
issued thousands of forged postcards to American and Canadian
citizens, advertising the Peace Arch Youth Rally as a gathering of ~
American and Canadian Communists, hoping thereby to provoke vio-
ion at Peekskill, N.J., and failing that at least to precipitate a

The blue-ribbon in News-Hierald “flops” is carried in last Monday’s
front page, touching upon the more delicate matter of royal carpets.
Under a New York dateline we are informed: “Chagrin is re
current in Great Britain over the apparent financial flop here of
Dowager Queen Mary’s carpet. Only a few bids have been made, none
satisfactory.

This royal carpet, as our readers will recall, was brought over to
this continent back in March to be sold for Yankee dollars. -It was
the Dowager Queen’s gift to help ease Sir Stafford Cripp’s dollar
shortage,

The British Daily Worker of March 29 pointed out that “Queen
Mary has shown Sir Stafford that he is barking up the wrong tree witlt.
all his exhortations to the workers to produce more goods for the dol-
lar market. Why go to all the sweat and trouble of making motor
cars and bicycles which Americans don’t want to buy when they are

falling over themselves to pay a million dollars for Queen Mary’.

_ carpet? Here’s the market we've got to exploit. Sir Stafford CripP®

and Mr, Harold Wilson had better
this morning and discuss the
the Royal Family.”

All of which shows that the Daily Worker like the Pacific Tribune
can err sometimes, and especially on Yankee markets for royal cal>
pets. The News-Herald says it is a “flop” so it must be a “flop.” We
live in an age of “flops.”

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Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
. Telephone MA. 5288 ;
Tom MO HIW EI Uo. a nies a ean ae Editor
6 Months, $1.35.

Street, Vancouver, B.C:'

Post Office Dept., Ottawa
PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 9, 1950 — PAGE 8 |