‘THE projected time - table for
this session of the legislature

nas been knocked silly. Constituc
ency pressure against the sales
tax has been terrific and is still
inoreasing. Every type of organ-
ization is represented in the pro-

tests. The government had to
use its heaviest clubs to get the
bill caucused and it still can't
count on all Coalitionists to
vote for it.

Perhaps the most significant
government statement of the
week was scarcely mentioned in
the daily press. Premier “Boss”
Johnson stated: “No person ‘has
a greater desire than myself to
see proper health, pension and
hospital ‘insurance schemes, and
the sales tax will eventually pay
for them when they do come
into effect.”

This is the first official ac-
knowledgement that the provin-
cial sales tax will end up by
going far beyond the present
three percent toll—just as the
federal levy has ‘ climbed step
by step from two percent to
eight percent.

The housewives who came on
the labor lobby were sitting in
the gallery when Finance Minis-
ter Herbert Anscomb introduced
the sales tax bill. Anscomb
prides himself upon his ability
to draw up a budget, but the
budgetting problem he and his
fellow legislators at Ottawa are
giving housewives as a result is
wellnigh impossible. The min-
ister had the floor—but the la-
dies are likely to have the last
word when the ‘next election
comes around. And a lot of

Coalitionists are going to be in
the political dog-house.
e

FEAR of public reaction to its

policies is behind the gov-
ernment’s intensification of hys-
teria and in this atmosphere the
danger to fundamental civil and
trade union rights is growing.
Government members speak of
what they term “Commie”: plots
as the root of their difficulties
and are encouraging this police
state attitude in the civil ser-
vice. ;

This was the official attitude
in the buildings towards the la-
bor lobby which: came to the
capital last week to voice de-
mands that certainly have the
support of a majority of the
people in this province. The
government refused to méet the
lobbyists, but the effect of their
presence was seen in frayed
Coalition tempers and in the
sharpness of the debates that
made last week the hottest of
the session, with the CCF tack-
ling the government spoint by
point on its betrayals of the
people.

©
(THE CCF has been putting up
a great fight on the esti-
mates, contesting almost every
point. For example, on the At-
torney-General’s estimates, Her-
bert Gargrave, CCF whip, obser-

ved: “No wonder we have a
three percent sales tax when
there is excessive spending in
a purely administrative depart-
ment .. . showing an increase
from two to three and a half
million.”

By
BRUCE
MICKLEBURGH ©

“Shall we cut down on the
jails and police?” demanded
Wismer.

“J realize that as long as the
Coalition stays in we'll need
more jails and police,” was Gar-
grave’s rejoinder.

The CCF has made it pretty
clear the government is on a
wholesale spending spree at the
people’s expense, “Can't you
break that record?” Wismer ask-
ed at one point.

“We're out to break the sales
tax, but you steamroller every
vote through”, came Gargrave’s
reply. “$270,000 may not seem
much to you with your capital-
ist mind but 27 cents: is a lot
to me and the people who have
to pay this sales tax.’

o

"(THE CCF is thoroughly expos-

ing the government’s coal poli-
cies. Sam Guthrie (CCF, Cowi-
chan-Newcastle) demanded that
the Crown recover abandoned
Canadian Collieries mines on
Vancouver Island so that min-
ers’ cooperatives could work
their remaining huge deposits
without paying his royalties to
the company. He reminded the
House these mines had been
given to the Dunsmuir interests
for nothing in 1883.

“We've done nothing . . . this
is private property” © was
Mines Minister R. C. MacDon-
ald’s reply. His remarks were
supplemented by a spirited free

The week in the House

~ @alition coal policies make things hot for the government

enterprise speech from “Boss”

Johnson around the theme, “The
government does not propose to
go into the coal business ...
I’m in the coal business myself
and know what Im. talking
about”.

Tom Uphill charged that there
was $10,000,000 worth of water
in. Canadian Collieries ~ stock,
and Harold Winch blasted the
whole Island coal setup ,as one
of the biggest steals in history.
To this MacDonald replied that
the Dunsmuir deal was “by con-
tract between an individual and
the government what's
wrong with that?. . . Dunsmuir

Z

Z

helped the development of this
. he had the initi-

~
Ns

as

province ..
ative”.

Tom Uphill drew a vivid pic-
ture of a different kind of initi-
ative—the initiative of the min-
“who earn their $11 work-
ing in hundreds in a dangerous
hole where there are no flush

toilets. Nobody can say their
wages are too high unless they’re
prepared to go down and dig.”

ers

Harold Winch charged the
Premier with preparing another
huge coal steal in the Peace
River when the PGE was com-
pleted. -

Prairie storm brewing

By B. R. SWANKEY

SUPPORT for a non-delivery

grain strike this summer is grow-
ing throughout the west. It is cen-
tered around the demand for an
initial price of $2 per bushel for
wheat. Farmers are also demand-
ing that they get the world ex-
port price for all wheat, that pay-
ments on participation certifi-
cates be yearly and that all grains
be marketed by a national grain
board.

Is the demand for a $2 initial
price justified and reasonable?
Well the fact is that farmers
need $2 a bushel if they are to
meet, the rapidly rising cost of
production and still make a liv-
ing. Money isn't worth what it
used to be. It’s what the dollar
can buy that counts. Secondly
‘there is over $230,000,000 in the
Wheat Board Treasury
that belongs to the farmers. This

Clement Attlee--a little man

A profile by
BETTY WALLACE

< 3 importance of the Rt.

Hon. Clement Richard Attlee,
prime minister of Britain, is
that he typifies all that is good
and all that is bad in the
Labor Party. He is indeed the
product of his time and en-
vironment. ’

The 65 years of Attlee’s life-
time have covered the phenom-’
enal rise of Britain to world
power and its subsequent de-
cline to satellite status to the
United States. These 65 years
have also been a_ period of
great hope and disappointment
for the labor movement.

This period saw the found-
ation of the Fabian Society in
1884 (which developed and
spread social-democratic philos-
ophy throughout Britain) and
militant trade union and elec-
toral struggles, which led to
the return of the first Labor
government with effective power
under the leadership of Clement
Attlee himself. _ ‘

The high hopes of two years
ago have vanished, and British
socialism led by Attlee now is
engaged in betraying the in-
terests of the British working
class at the behest of Britain
and -American capital.

e

\LEMENT Attlee was born in

London on January 38, 1883.
The son of a London solicitor,
he had the traditional English

upper-class education. He left
the famous public school, Hail-
eybury, to ‘go to Oxford. Later
he became a barrister.

Like many young men of his
generation, he was disturbed by
the disparities of wealth and
poverty which he could not fail

to notice everywhere in Britain. |

Brought up in a_ conservative
atmosphere of a typical Victor-
ian family of the professional
classes, he broke away to join
the Fabian Society: when he
was 25 years old.

- Attlee thas had little to do
with the industrial or trade
union side of the labor move-
ment, His earliest experiences
came through his association
with the social reform move-
ments led by rich philanthro-

pists. Attlee abandoned the
legal profesison to become
secretary of a social work

settlement East

End.

He held minor offices in the
two minority Labor
ments of 1924 and 1929, having
been elected a member of par-
liament for Limehouse in 1922.
His _ parliamentary career co-
incides with the change in the
character of the Parliamentary
Labor Party. Previously Labor
MPs had come almost exclus-
ively from the working class.
Today the working class rep-
resentatives are in a definite
minority. - ;

in , London’s

*

AT his best
"““mediocrity, and it is there-

govern-

Attlee is a

fore difficult to describe Attlee,
the man. His most enthusiastic
supporters have found it neces-
sary to explain that his weak-
nesses and negative qualities
are those that serve him best
as leader of the Labor Party.

They explain that his very
modest, unassuming qualities
are those that enable him to
retain his leadership in a cab-
inet that holds such powerful
personalities as Ernest Bevin,
Sir Stafford Cripps, and Herbert
Morrison. '

‘He is a little man, in physical
stature as well as in moral and
intellectual caliber. The books
that he has written\ are second
rate, His political philosophies
are those of the nervous trades-
man who puts his faith in
charity and in God.

For Attlee believes in God
and at the moment has faith
in the charitable: intentions of
the American ruling class. To
be more accurate, he believes in
their charitable intentions  to-
ward governments that act on
the asumption that there is
nothing to choose between fas-
cism and communism.

Just ten years ago Clement
Attlee wrote a book called The
Labor Party in Perspective. He
still stands by the philosophies

that he expounded at that time.

He believes that in spité of the
existence of capitalism, Britain
is a country of personal and
political freedom, with a demo-
cratic constitution and “the
possibility of achieving socialist
ends by constitutional methods.”

He believes that the “first
place in‘“the influence that built
up the socialist movement must
be given to religion . .. In no
other country has Christianity
becOme converted to socialism
to such an extent as in Britain.”

He takes pride in his state-
ment that British socialists are
not “theorists or revolutionaries
who are absorbed in Utopian
dreams.” Attlee takes pride in
the day to day interest of the
Fabians in the drainage aspect
of municipal politics. Not for
him are visions of a society of
men free and equal with all
their mental and physical fac-
ulties developed in the service
of the people.

Attlee believes that commun-
‘ism and fascism are alike in
many ways and that Britain
must avoid both. He rejects the
class struggle as a “retrograde
step.” ‘

_ He. epitomizes the hatred of
theory which Lenin observed in
the British Left movement, the
fear of clashing with the ruling
class that characterizes the
Labor leadership, and the dull,
unimaginative and mediocre na-
ture of Britain’s leadership
today. ;

is enough to raise the initial price
for the 1947 crop to $2 a bushel
and still leave some over. Even
if the Wheat Board treasury did
not have sufficient money on
hand to pay the $2, the farmer
would still be justified in demand-
ing it. The farmer must be guar-
anteed a living and if necessary
should be subsidized by the feder-
al treasury.

The movement for strike action
will now gain further impetus as
a result of the 21 per cent increase
in freight rates. This increase,
which was granted.in the face of
the united opposition of all sec-
tions of the community in the
west, will boost the cost of every-
thing the farmer must buy—ma-
chinery, twine, groceries. Why, in
Alberta, lumber alone is going up —
$3 a thousand! And last year an
Alberta cattlemen’s association
estimated that a 30 per cent in-
crease in freight rates would re-
sult in a loss to the farmer of $5
for every head of stock sold.

What about the recent interna-
ional wheat agreement? This, a
product of the Marshall Plan,
compels farmers to accept low
prices and limits Canadian wheat
exports to 230 million bushels a
year. After years of subsidizing
Britain out of their own pockets,
farmers will now be forced to sub-
sidize American imperialism, sup-
ply it with cheap food which it
will use as. weapon to force its
reactionary policies upon the
hungry peoples of Western Eur-
ope.

Furthermore, the low export
quota will drive farmers out of
coarse grains. ee .

All these things combined are
bringing about an explosive situ-
ation on the prairies. And the gov-
ernment fears another farm
strike a great deal more than it
cares to admit. a

It is maneuvering in an ef: ort
to calm the growing resentme:
on the prairies. It is playing
round with the question of ¢
lishing a national grain
that would handle all grains. -
only a short time ago Agricultu-
ral Minister James Gardiner said

year the initial would be
raised to $1.75. ; : ee

If it can be done next year, why
can't it be done now? :

bie eta:

CONSTANTINE §

PACIFIC T

FINE: CUSTOM TAILORING

For Ladies and Gentlemen —

720 W. Hastings, UPSTAIRS
16, 1948—PAGE 9

‘PA. 3059 —