Once upon a time there was a giant who meant to rule the earth

with all its people. ...

| SIDELIGHTS

An election episode

Walter was a special kind of

guy. Not because he was a far-
mer, but because he was a
Communist who tried his best
to live his principles. He was
my friend, and died from can-
cer at 54 years of age.
_ He wasn’t well educated in
the formal sense, but he didn’t
miss much—and if you spent
as much time with him as I did,
you’d have discovered he was
a knowledgeable man, _ filled
with love for his country and
his fellow workers.

During one election — was it
provincial? or federal? no mat-
ter, he agreed to run for us. It
was during the early fifties
when anti-Communist feelings
were deliberately whipped up
to a high degree, and meetings
were sometimes broken up, oc-
casionally by misled students
and hooligans.

So there were difficulties
when you ran as a Communist,
particularly in a small town
like Wynyard, even though
Wynyard has some rich pro-
gressive traditions, and its main
street has seen demonstrations
against war.

One day, after his nomina-
tion, Walter and some friends
were coffeeing on the one and
only main street. A group at a
nearby table began to make
ugly and loud remarks. Walter’s
group decided to leave. Out on
the street, someone suggested
they go for a beer across the
street. No sooner said than
done..

In a few minutes that group

of obnoxious characters walked
in and deliberately took the
next table.

From then on things took an
ugly turn. One of the enemy
was -a fascist D.P. a loud-
mouth around the town, who
stirred up a lot of trouble for
progressives. The rest were
“lumpen” elements from the
district.

Walter told me that he had
made up his mind that, come
what may, he wouldn’t be driv-
en out. Besides, it. was impor-
tant to assert the right of Com-
munists to walk the streets like
anyone else. Finally, the D.P.
stood up, and violence seemed
imminent.

Suddenly there was a_ loud
crash. Across the room a giant
of a man stood up and shouted,
“Shut. up!” He strode over,
clumping in his engineer’s
boots, waving a glass of beer
dwarfed in his huge hand. He
pumped an index finger that
looked like a large piece. of
dowling into the chest of the
D.P., saying, “Now look here,
mate. You’re in Canada. We
don’t need you guys to look
after our Communists, we can
do that ourselves. Now you just
sit down if you know what’s
good for you, and shut up!”

What a silence fell over that
beer parlour.

Walter and the big stranger
raised their glasses and grinned
at each other across the room,
as the- D.P. and his friends
slunk out. W.B.

Editor—MAURICE RUSH
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For trade union rights

Trade unions in western Canada are
pressing campaigns against restrictive
labor laws.

These anti-labor laws are part of the
general attack on workers by the capi-
talists, around which a whole rationale
has been developed in the capitalist me-
dia, which question the use of the strike
weapon, attempt to picture labor and
bosses as having equal power, and de-
pene that labor takes no part in poli-

ics. .

The struggles of the wage earners
for the right to organize, to take effec-
tive action in their own interests, to
strike, and to be political, are centuries
old — and the rights were hard won by
the workers themselves.

Compulsory arbitration laws are de-
signed to control the use of the strike
weapon. They mean greater state inter-
ference in the internal affairs of unions
under the fiction that the state is “neu-
tral?

Collective bargaining and the right
to withdraw labor go together. Other-
wise collective bargaining becomes a
farce, taking place only on the bosses’
terms.

Defense of trade union rights is not
an abstract question. The right to freely
negotiate, to organize, and to strike or
threaten to strike, and to run their own
internal affairs, is the essence of trade
unions, as well as the essence of the
struggle of the workers against the
bosses.

Those rights have to be defended and
extended in order to advance living
standards, in order to support policies
leading to wider employment and to
overcome the negative social conse-
quences of growing taxation and rising
prices.

Laws cannot reconcile conflicts of in-
terest between the working class and
the capitalist class. Laws which protect
the interests of the capitalist minority
require the use of coercion and force
against the working class majority.
The trade union movement will find new
ways and new forms of struggle for
their rights.

The working class needs an up-to-
date trade union act which, above all
else, guarantees the workers the right
to gain more of the abundance they
create. :

The ranilts of war

Ultimately the war against Vietnam
will result in a 10 percent reduction in
the standard of living for the average
American, says Dr. Clayton of the Uni-
versity of Utah in an article summing
up the costs of the war to the United
States. It would be impossible to sum
up for bookkeeping purposes the loss of
life, the tears, the hopes destroyed, the
mass maiming and tortures inflicted on
the Vietnamese, and the consequent
shrinking of the human stature of those
who have actively supported that war.

Almost a million human beings con-
nected with the military have been kill-
ed there and, counting the wounded,
there are over two million military ca-
sualties, he states, and including civili-
ans the total is over three million.

“Since 1964, the consumer price index
has increased by 16 percent,” he re-
ports. If only half of that increase is

aitributable to the Vietnamese war —4
conservative estimate — then the It
flationary cost of the war in
terms has been $17,000 million in only
four years.

The war against Vietnam has had 4
similar effect in Canada. A large PI
portion of our imports come from We
U.S.A. at war inflated prices. Just how
much it has lowered the standard of
living here we do not know. But Tit
deau’s policies of continentalism, alone

ith Canadian complicity in the wa!
against Vietnam, have been responsible
for a considerable portion of the png
hikes in recent years. So much for al
the twaddle about wages causing infla
tion.
From even a purely selfish point of
view, it is in the interest of all Cané
dians to demand an end to U.S. i
perialism’s criminal war against Viet
nam.

Organize and fight

Prime Minister Trudeau says that hi
austerity program will continue, evel
though mass unemployment is a “veld
regrettable side effect.” %

It’s just “too bad” if your whole
world topples down around your 4
when you lose your job. Mr. Trudes!
doesn’t have to sit and look at his é |
and wonder how he'll manage to fe
clothe and educate them. It’s just “vel
regrettable” that a lot of young mé
and women, just graduating £rd!
school, or in between years at univel
sity, have no jobs for the summer. ie

ouis Rasminsky, governor of a
Bank of Canada, also says he wal,
the line held on wages. His wages al
$75,000 a year — he got an increase °
$25,000 a year last May.

Therein lies a basic problem of Cal
ada’s so-called democracy. These 4
the men holding office. They do not a
resent the working class. Instead, thé
decide to condemn the working ¢las® |
unemployment and poverty to proté
their own lush profits.

There is only one answer fo
workers — to organize and fight i
policies and programs in their ow? 4
terests.

It’s our cause too

The pot is beginning to boil in i
Caribbean. The State Department “ie
the CIA are busy, particularly 1?
so-called mini-invasion of Cuba. 4

Inspired by Cuba, where life is @
stantly improving, there is an upsute
of people’s struggles for a better D 1
This is the case in Trinidad where OF
adian big business has some heav¥
vestments. igi

The government of Eric willie
acted swiftly to put down the peo
movement in Trinidad. On the one neg
it announced that it would nations: af
the Bank of Montreal and the Balj,
London, and on the other jaile oft
leaders of the Black Power mové aC
and the heads of Trinidad’s ,
unions — particularly when it app’
ed there would be unity among
black and East Indian people. tet

Williams acted to protect the 17
ests of Canadian capital. The strlen
of the working people of Trinid@@ jy

justice and a better life should be he

13

ported by all Canadian working pee