ft _ ite 3 Profits before scenic beauty e of the oft-repeated promises in the Coalition pre-election ballynoo 0" was the insistence that, given “sound business government’”’ (which meant a return of the Tory-Liberal shotgun alliance), big capital would be encouraged to invest in B.C. This in turn was to provide boundless “‘prosperity and jobs’. ‘‘Alcan or poverty’ was how our versatile attorney general put it. Big capital has flocked to B.C., but the order of its coming “is as yet not too well known by the common people of B.C. As an - “encouragement” to invest in B.C. the Coalition has handed over millions of acres of rich timber, mineral and water resources of this province to powerful Yankee and home-grown monopoly concerns. But that is not all: Great scenic park areas whicn have been dedicated to the people of this province in perpetuity, have been handed over to these monopoly ghouls to exploit and destroy at will. Tweeds- muir Park, the Ootsa Lake area; now Strathacona Park on Van- couver Island, with its famed beauty spot of Buttle Lake. The interests of all the people in fish and timber conservation, the interests of pioneer settlers in many of these areas—all are tossed into the discard to make way for the new profit-bloated “investors”. an Like the notorious Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which stars in the role of the Coalition’s Charlie McCarthy for the BCElec- tric, the B.C. Power Commission (BCPC) does a like job for the Yankee monopolies taking over B.C. The hearings which opened last week in Courtenay on the damning( and destruction) of the Buttle Lake area, provided an example of how the BCPC delivers the goods (in this case the heritage of the people) to big capital. _. For the BCPC it’s an open-and-shut case. In essence tha BCPC says: “We want the timber and power interests to .invest in B.C., and if we have to give them B.C. as an incentive, we're prepared to do just that. Compensation for destroyed fisheries or evicted settlers? Bah! You ‘must be a Red.’ This is Coalition. _ government 1951 style. Nothing and no one must be: permitted to stand in the way of capital “‘investment’’. Scenic beauty? What is scenic beauty compared to the beauty of monopoly profits! Mr. Bumble was right! ~ gaa of the law is no excuse” has long been a handy ‘A legal fly swatter to flatten out many an innocent offender who __hadn’t the faintest notion of what or which law had been broken, and who, in the language of the superb Mr. Bumble, might draw the obvious conclusion that “‘the law is a ass.”” ; __. Overly anxious to protect our “moral” standards, even at the risk of taxing our sanity, our present-day lawmakers take an on-again- off-again-Finnegan dim view on gambling. Service club bingo con- tests are frowned upon as instruments of the devil, and pontifically _ squelched by the forces of “lor ’n order.” Raffles for a sleek new car (some raffles this is) receive the same curt dismissal into the realm of “immoral’’ practices. .. Our stock exchanges, the biggest gambling racket of all, that rob the widow and orphan, that gamble in the nation’s food and life, governing ‘‘our-way-of-life.’ ; pe The Rotary Barrel contest—guessing how long the barrel will take to get from one point to another down the Fraser River—is ruled _ out by Vancouver’s Police Chief Walter Mulligan as being “‘llegal.”’ ___ Purchasing a numbered strip of tickets for the Pacific National Exhibition, with the chance of winning a car for the “lucky’’ number, in the versatile minds of our lawmakers, is quite “moral’’ and legal. Several thousand B.C. citizens attend the races daily and bet a few dollars on their favorite horse to get to the finish line first, an en- joyable pastime which puts scads of profits into the pockets of top | racing promoters, and a goodly tax rakeoff into government coffers. . The widespread desire to introduce sweepstakes. as a means of financing hospital needs in B.C. as in-Britain is condemned by the Holy Willies of our time as develish and immoral. Y'et the B.C. _ citizen who must pay a $42 per annum entry ticket for a hospital bed if needed, faces a much greater gamble in getting there than is in- volved in the sweepstake idea. ___ The recent police “crackdown” on the racing bookies; the periodic raids upon Chinatown’s Fan Tan games; the green light to one gamble and the red light to another (although both are similar in every respect) leaves Mr. Bumble’s considered opinion still ace high—‘‘The law is a sie - To look for a solution to this problem one must look, not at the “Tittle” man who bets a dollar on the nose, on a car, or the speed of _ a barrel on a river, but at the big politicos behind the scenes; at those who interpret our archiac gambling laws to protect the profits of those _ gambling interests behind the scenes, who provide the political slush- funds and who vote the right party ticket! Such a closeup study might tend to lessen the hit-and-miss duties of Chief Mulligan’ and his =3, It would also add greatly to the sanity of B.C. 4 Eyl en i) Cn ig al) I iw) AA i Hl | } wn is UES UETIN EN | { ttAdatrvereat ilhis Metron Pinesesvsttt ft oecetbnecrey Published Weekly at Room 6 - 426 Main Street, Vancouver, B.C. By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD. Telephone MA. 5288 : Om “Mchvene. ccd een ceo oe Editor ; Subscription Rates: 1 Year, $2.50; 6 Months, $1.35. Printed by Union Printers Ltd., 650 Howe Street, Vancouver, B.C. _ Authorized as second class mail, Post Office Dept., Ottawa are highly legal and strictly moral, according to the ethical canons — 4 LAN RR As We See It | by TOM McEWEN Ac sé¥7ou will find herewith copies of the Board’s orders cancelling each of these certifications, and you will also find herewith a copy of the Board’s state- ment of reasons for its decisions”. The above legal billet doux was from the B.C. Labor Relations Board (LRB) to the Marine Work. ers’ and Boilermakers Industrial Union, Local No. _1, cancelling that union’s certification and collective agreements covering five Vancouver boatbuilding plants. Simple as that, in the modern parlance of gov- ernment as a union-busting agency. “Now there- fore” (the LRB omits the “be is resolved”) “the certification of the said Marine Workers. and Boiler- makers Industrial Union, as bargaining authority for the said employees is cancelled.” Stripped of all the legal jargon of “saids’ and “herewiths”, what is left is a crude piece of attempted union wrecking by an agency set up by the govern- ment and the bosses, with supporting legislation (the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act) to do just that, This action of the LRB is, of course, not without precedent. The decertification of the Canadian Sea- men’s Union, carried out by the National Labor ‘Relations Board and endorsed by the phoney-Ben- gough leadership of the Trades and Labor Congress was done to destroy a militant, progressive Cana- dian trade «union. The more recent action of the Ontario Labor Relations Board, backed by the courts, to deny certification to the majority mem- bership of the Newspaper Guild on the Toronto Globe and Mail established the precedent and set the pattern for the arrogant and undemocratic ac- tion of the LRB against the Marine Workers Union in B.C. i : This action constitutes a threat to all organized labor in this province. If a government board of political appointees can do it to one union—and get away with it, no union that operates on behalf of its membershin is safe from such attack at the hands of arbitrary, boss-controlled government!‘ No worker can afford to get sidetracked by smooth talk that such actions are directed only at “Reds” or other progressives whose ideas the powers- that-be don’: like? Hell! That's only the face- value pretext for modern union smashing. The real reason is that 'governments which have sold them- selves to the dollar-warmongers of Yankee imperial- ism cannot afford to have a powerful, militant, and above all a democratic trade union movement oper- ating in their sphere of political activities. There- fore, squelch the unions, but to avoid undue uproar, do it “democratically” by using legislation especially amended and designed to destroy the democratic content while’ preserving the form. : To the union-hating boss who used to insist that he would “never recognize” unions, but insisted on dealing with his employees as “individuals,” and on the basis of a well-organized blacklist, the evolu- tion of the ICA Act in B.C. has been a “blessing in _ be told that anything they may do henceforth under _ing hard-faced employers and corporations to reco8~ disguise.” With a Labor Relations Board,to im terpret the act to the liking of every labor-hating ‘ outfit, there is now nothing to worry about. If the — boss cannot diddle the workers out of contrac sy, rights, the LRB can deny workers the “legal” rights” : of contract! é ‘ A splendid arrangement—for the bosses. Which f brings us smack-bang back to where we started: the right to organize for the purpose of disposing : of our labor-power in the most advantageous many — ner possible, both as to wages and conditions work, with or without benefit of “legal” sanction. @ = Canadian trade unionists. welcomed labor legis: lation such ag_PC-1003 and subsequent provincia! labor legislation, where legislation aided in compe nize the workers’ elementary right to organ” unions of their own choice and bargain collective Ni But where such legislations is transformed into- its opposite—to be used as a vehicle for the trans; formation of the trade unions into a “Jabor-front ¥ appendage of capitalism to facilitate exploitation, — fascism and war, organized labor ener unalter-— ably opposed, despite the covert aid to Ss p j given by the trade union bufeaucrats, and thei® feeble squeaks when government-employer agencies rush the process too fast. The late and unlamented Humphrey (Bumbling? Mitchell “canonized” the current boss-governmen squeal, “It isn’t legal,” as a reply to every action taken by the trade unions to insist on fulfilment ° their rights. We can well imagine that in the weeks and months to come, as a result of the Labor Rela- tions Board’s arbitrary and undemocratic actiom there will be plenty of trade union actions eee will elicit the noisy chorus of boss and government agencies in the howl, “It isn’t legal.” From their concept of “legality” the howl may . be quite real. But it is also neither “legal,” decent, or democratic, to decertify established, recognizer unions, deprive their membership of the right 9 union choice of collective bargaining, to have unio2 contracts torn up like so much scraps paper, 2! to the identity of a given union is “illegal” and there — fore “null and void.” : The Labor Relations Board as a tool of the Coalition government has provoked an issue in its decertification of the Marine Woorkers Union—@” intended provocation, which will eventually boomet — ang on itself and-its boss-government sponsors. its action in trying to smash the Marine Workers Unio? will open the eyes of thousands of trade unionists to the greater need of labor unity to protect their unions from government-promoted wrecking crews: — It will also sharpen the awareness among trade unionists that the best legality for workers is that established by workingmen in a strong union, able to determine on the job or on the picket line, its ow affairs! # : ra Unity can wi pee officials Pat Conroy, Frank Hall and Percy Bengough are being forced to declare publicly that the workers must shave higher wages to meet the skyrocketting cost of living. This is because of the pressure from below. Workers in every in- dustry know the truth: speedup, more work for the same pay, profiteering prices, means bigger profits for the boss, a decline in the value of their pay envelope dollars. ; ; a All during the “cold war” since 1946 and the murderous Korea war of the past year these labor officials have, to isay, the least, been lukewarm to the workers’ battle for higher wages. For with M.: J. Coldwell of the OCF they have advocated class collaboration with St. Laurent and the trusts in’ the unholy, unpatriotic game of binding Canada to the Churchill-Truman war plans. Division, not unity; red-baiting, not solidarity; guns, not wages have been the priorities of Conroy, Hearst - pioneer William Randolph Hearst, top pioneer of gutter journalism, is dead. His billion-doNar chain of newspapers, magazines, and radio stations, ‘known as the “Hearst press” have stunk in the nostrils of all decent people for half a century or more. Hearst played upon the basest emotions. The perversion of sex, the distortion of truth, the pro- motion of political gangsterism, the draping of a gutter-press veneer upon every depravity; these were his tools and his technique. : An avowed fascist at heart, Hearst was the close confidante of Hitler, Goring, Mussolini, Himm- ler, and all similar sub-human scum who follow the pattern of the Nazi carrion. , 2 As a propagandist for the most reactionary circles of Yankee imperialism, Hearst had no peers. 4 a7a% i PACIFIC TRIBUNE — AUGUST 17, 1951 — PAGE 8 wage increases. Hall, Bengough and Coldwell since Churchill made his Fulton, Missouri speech. Was it not Frank Hall and Aaron Mosher who froze the wages of 150,000 railroad workers until 1952? j It is good that the union officials are now forced to speak in favor of higher wages now. But that is far from enough. What is needed? Action, soli- darity in every industry from railroads to the bush — to win higher wages now‘! The workers are d& manding this, and they ‘are right. Their demand for higher wages must set its. militant mark upon the coming conventions of the Trades and Labor Congress and the Canadian Con- gress of Labor, and in the Catholic Syndicate and the Rail Brotherhoods. For the fight to defend and advance the Canadian Congress of Labor, and in the interests against the war camp profiteers 18 right at the heart of Canada’s struggle for peace Success to the battles for higher wages now! of the Big Lie Compared with this modern multi-millionaire And@- a nias of sewer journalism, the late Herr Goebbels — was a third-rate piker. Hearst was not only 3 master at the art of distorting obvious truths, but invented lies which, when given the full scope 9° a@ powerful syndicated press, became “truth” t? millions of unsuspecting readers. ‘ ; The diligent historian who undertakes the rec~ reation of Hearst’s pioneering “successes” in Bi Taie technique, will require a sturdy constitution — and a goodly supply of disinfectants and deodor- ants. Hearst’s life was lived in the bottom sewer — of Yankee politics, where gangsterism, prostitution and the Big Lie germinate into national policy — the policy of fascism and war. ; con Those who weep over Hearst weep only for themselves dnd what Hearst symbolized in them. '