St & On the 40th, anniversary of the founding of the Communist press in Canada, Leslie Morris writes on: .. THOUGHTS ABOUT _By LESLIE MORRIS ® an old editor of The ; Worker, the Clarion and € Tribune this annivers- ary brings many thoughts Mind. ee the time The Worker € ‘se the press in March, » Up to néw, our move- ae bes published wise and cc. abor newspapers, not ae as good as they might he: €en, but always willing ‘canine often pungent and Rae, ae for the work- ihe co” always eager for ote they have made ae €s, but not the blun- i of fools and opportunists. ere the mistakes of eee of a zeal. which Sioa experience, but never Wittesness. They always New what they wanted. eat * * * van. orker in 1922, under Pee romantic pen name, ie Os”. Not long before had been working in perish mines and the cna of a small but bloody with r I had seen stayed ae as it always will. pesca proud, and a bit sur- oa ‘the editor in ee Oronto printed the mae the workers’ blood ca ae. I even tried my a a bit of drawing, but ee ned that down. I think “stag right. But later The . Worker published it. an act that I was the editor Y hay 5 do with on something to ‘ * aha printer's ink gets into the seat and the magic of ing nied word is as haunt- Steam as intangible as the € pr: ©comotive’s whistle on ee on a winter night. and ae to erase, rewrite, up ae again; to polish it in dec. (0 groan and finally ews Peration to write the then qretman’s "30": and Ss hear the leaden lines linotyp, Tattle down from the tor’ ~ to see the composi- lines ae fingers set the a, : the frames and then ut = the press grinding the :. Pages and to look for ane errors and the Whet} . aia to wonder Reality... facts square with OF bag. or the opinions good bit of, © Know that a tiny erg? influence on the work- Created vement has been Of the . this is the magic Sher journalist’s life. * * e * * q an ne aad worker-writers trained ee Our papers have Witty. Ow many painfully- Printeq qo letters they have nak Ow many eyes they have aa and hearts they One ated. “The spark will a Wrote Y become a flame” an on the masthead 1903 ittle illegal Iskra in Words Quoting Pushkin’s - Indeed it has. thousan Papers have struck Ne ig ds of sparks. The Tri- than Only 10 years younger Tavda, which is cele- its 50th birthday this : It is taking much lon- Tating Month | ger for Canadian workers to come to a socialist under- standing than it took.the Rus- sians. But essentially the job is the same, in Canada, Rus- sia, France, Britain, China, Cuba, the U.S.A. — to create a truly free press—free be- cause it is not commercial, not in the business of selling news as a publican does beer and a butcher sausages, but pouring out the truth, unbe- holden to any vested interest. “The truth shall make you free!” * * » What is the special quality of our press? Who has put it better than Lenin? It is our collective organizer and agi- tator. The big capitalist dailies also perform that function for their class; they organize movements, they agitate—but always for the power of the Almighty Dollar (and not always for the Canadian dol- lar at that), always against the historic truth. they have seen the move- ment as a whole, the socialist future. * * * They have told the people about the Soviet Union, her victories, difficulties and her aspirations—and have fought for Canadian-Soviet friend- ship and understanding. All this when the capitalist state and its labor-lieuten- ants have wallowed in anti- communism and lied about the first socialist state. I think of the hundred val- iant battles our papers have fought. In the 1920’s the veterans of the first world war had come home, restless and mili- tant. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was fresh in the memory — and the Citi- zens’ Committee of 1000, the RCMP attack on the workers near the city hall, the wound- ed and the dead. The Russian Revolution had swept over our working- people like a tidal wave. The OUR PRESS gave heart and encourage- ment and led the battle to organize the unemployed. It transformed the initial shock among the workers into con- scious, disciplined class action. “Work or Wages!” was the great slogan. ‘“Non-contribu- tory unemployment Insurt- ance!” * * * Farmer-labor unity: the gallant little-farm paper, The Furrow, in Saskatoon, and The Western Clarion later, fought starvation on the farm, to build the Farmers’ Unity League, as The Worker fought to build The Workers’ Unity League in the factories and mines. Malnutrition dug into the health of the people, over a million of them living on macaroni and beans. Work- tests were instituted by muni- cipal Scrooges. Thousands of boys and girls beat their way from east to west, from west to east, jailed and beaten by il i Tribune, national champion 0 against the monopolies. In British Colum- Our Tribune is an agitator for progress, for the new, against the decrepit and out- worn old‘. Agitator” has be- come a dirty word nowadays, but it has a very respectable origin. To stir up public opin- ion, to arouse public interest, to propose courses of public action to remedy abuses and to change social and economic systems when they become a blockage to human progress, this is the part of the agitator. Cromwell’s men in the New Model Army,. the Army of the Commonwealth, were called Agitators. A fine word. The enemy of slothfulness and social decay. * * * Take The Worker, The Cla- rion and The Canadian Tri- bune out of the labor history of the past 40 years and what have you? The corrupt daily press. The anaemic and in- effective CCF papers. The narrow, constricted and too- often dull trade union papers. The expensive magazines for the elite and the mass maga- zines with acres of trivialities. * * * But go through the files of our Communist press and you have a handbook of history, a story of great causes, of triumphs and defeats — but always a record of struggle for the things which would help the working class. and their country. Our papers have always given the fresh, optimistic, liberating opinions of the Marxists and their Commun- ist Party — in every partial struggle as good Marxists, _ against old, decrepit socialist move- ment had been found want- ing. A great discussion raged through the labor movement. The Worker fought the good fight for a new labor policy, class collaboration, for a revolutionary workers’ party. * * *® The trade union movement had been weakened in the 1920’s. Leadership was found wanting to meet the new tasks of organizing the mass production . industries. The craft unions, “job trusts” the workers called them, were* not enough. The masses of the low-paid, unskilled work- ers were unorganized. “Organize the unorganiz- edl’”, said The Worker. “End the secession of the militant workers from the old unions and into new, ‘perfect’ sectar- ian unions, like the One Big Union! Back to the AF of L!” Our paper was the voice of the new union movement. It was the organizer of the mass production industries, the forerunner of the CIO. (Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Messrs. Millard, Cotterill, the Seftons and Jodoin!) When the terrible economic crisis smashed into the work- ers’ lives in October, 1929, The Worker was the voice of the helpless unemployed. In 1934 our paper went to twice- . weekly publication, and on May Day, 1936, to the Daily Clarion. Our circulation jumped ahead. On hundreds of street corners, in the slave camps and in the soup-lines and flophouses, our paper ‘Above is the masthead of the Canadian bia the Pacific Tribune has proudly carried f the people forward the tradition of the Communist Press in Canada. the railroad “bulls”, thrown into jungles. The Worker helped The Young Worker ta come out and built the Young Communist League. The Worker and the Daily Clarion, were the agitators, educators and organizers of Canada’s stricken working people. oo * * And the bitter strikes in the midst of all this — dis- proving the right-wing “theory” that workers could not win strikes when there is mass unemployment. The Stratford, Estevan and Oshawa strikers; at Bassell’s and the New Method Laundry in Toronto, and the Western Packing Co. in Winnipeg. On the pitched field of class struggle the workers fought back: for the right to organ- ize, to raise wages from a quarter to 30 cents an hour, for the right to picket and strike. The bosses sent tanks against them at Stratford. Everywhere the police devel- oped special squads of men to deal especially with strikers. The workers organized their own defense groups. They built their own “red cross” organization and their famous and great Canadian Labor De- fense League, forever assoc- iated with A. E. Smith. * * * In 1934 there were over 1,000 Communists and pro- gressives serving sentences or awaiting trial. The most fam- ous class war prisoners were Tim Buck and his comrades in Kingston Penitentiary. April 26, 1962—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9 The Worker and later the Daily Clarion, their great defenders. July 1, 1935 — Dominion Day and the murderous attack on the trekkers; The Worker was there —in Reg- ina, on that bloody day. The fight against fascism, for Spanish democracy, for peace; the struggle to stop the shipment of scrap iron to Japan; the warnings, week after week, day after day, that capitalist ‘‘non-interven- tion” would incite Hitler and Mussolini to war — as it did. The Leipzig trial and the hero, Dimitroff. The rape of Czechoslovakia at Munich in September, 1938, and the marching Nazi hordes. * * * were Canada at war, on Septem- ber 10, 1939. The Daily Clar- ion suppressed. The Canadian Tribune born — to skilfully tell the truth through the “phoney war’. The Commun- ist Party outlawed. Intern- ment camps held the bravest of the brave. * * * June 22, 1941, and the at- tack on the Soviet Union by the Hitler armies. At last the Great Anti-Fascist Coalition, the alliance against the Axis, for which our press had fought through the year. Coa- lition and alliance almost too late, in the teeth of Hitlerite victory. ak * * The Canadian Tribune was the champion of national un- ity to win the war; it called for all-out. production, for sacrifices to produce ships and guns and aircraft to smash the Hitlerite armies. _ It was the great spokesman of the Second Front — the landing in France to attack Hitler Germany from _ the West while the Soviet youth was pouring out its blood in the East. Many were the ene- mies of the Second Front. It was delayed for two long years. Churchill opposed it. The Canadian government dragged its feet. * * * June 6, 1944 — D-Day and the landing in France. July, 1945, V-Day, the victory. And at once the ‘cold war’ began — with the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima on August 10, “the equalizer” with the Soviet Union as U.S. Secretary of State Stimson called it — to blackmail the Soviet Union into surrender. Ee * Now our Canadian Tri- bune, 17 years later, is still fighting against the cold war, against -the thermonuclear war and for peace. They have been long, bitter, and for some discoura ging years. There are those who have See THOUGHTS. page ll