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Make peace earth in 1971!

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UUM UIT TIMI PEL LL 2

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Polish events bring
re-study of policy

WARSAW — Edward Gierek,
secretary of the Central Com-
mittee of the PUWP stated in a
radio and TV broadcast on Dec.
20:

Fellow countrymen! Today
the Central Committee of the
Polish United Workers Party
entrusted the duty of secretary
to me. I speak to you in the
name of the Party.

During the past week events
have taken place which have
profoundly shaken the whole
community and confronted the
motherland with grave peril.

The coastal cities — Gdansk,
Gdynia, Szczecin, Elblag — be-
came the arena of workers’
action,” disorders, and_ street

conflicts. People have died. We ’

all feel this tragedy keenly. -

The questions beg for an
answer: How could things come
to such a misfortune? How did
such sharp social conflicts dev-
elop? And swell to such propor-
tions? Are there such matters—

after all, these are our own’

domestic, inner problems —
which we could not solve in
another way?

It is our duty, that of the

leadership of the Party and the

government, to give the party
and the people a full answer to
those questions, This will be a
difficult and self-critical answer,
but it will be clear and truth-

’ ful. After all, at the base of the

present situation in our coun-
try there are causes which arise
from actual difficulties. We ex-
pect those difficulties to be
understood by the working
class, by the whole community;
but there also are such causes
which arose out of ill-consider-
ed concepts in economic policy.
We will eradicate those.

The iron rule of our economic
policy, and our policy in gen-
eral, must always’ be to take
reality into account, to main-
tain broad consultations with
the working class and_intelli-
gentsia, and to respect the fun-
damentals of collectivity and
democracy ‘in the life of the
Party and in the actions of the
guiding powers.

The recent events have re-
minded us in a painful way of
the fundamental truths that the
party must always keep close
ties with the working class and
all the people, that it has no
right to lose touch with the
people of labor.

Our people, who have under-

gone so many tragic exper-
iences, our working class and
its party, which have lifted the
country from the deepest
abyss, must find in themselves
sufficient strength, reasoning
and responsibility to put an end
to the disturbances and to solve
calmly and in accordance with
the interests of the country, the
swollen. problems that confront
us.
It was precisely of these mat-
ters, which are of extraordinary
importance to the working
people and the Polish state, and
with a feeling of the greatest
responsibility for them, that we
spoke at today’s meeting of the
Central Committee and adopted
necessary decisions. It is of
them that I wish to inform you,
dear fellow countrymen. *

The recently taken decisions
in regard to price changes have
increased the «prices people
must pay for food products.

The Central Committee has
given the Political Bureau the
responsibility during the next
few days to review the possibil-
ity of improving the material
conditions of the lowest income
families and those with many
children, which as a result of
the recently enacted price
changes have been hardest hit
in their budgets.

_We must allot the funds nec-

‘essary for that purpose.

There are also many other
matters. which are of concern
to working people and will de-
mand a solution. Among them
are the situation of working
women, housing problems, and
questions of the youth. I want
to assure you that all of them
will be studied with the closest
attention by the leadership of
the Party and government, and

@ Continued on pg. 10

Labor must take the lead

in putting a halt to war

Appeal to the conscience of the world

: Seah

Bring back smiles to children of Vietnam

The following Appeal has been issued on behalf of the World
Peace Council by its Secretary General, Mr. Romesh Chandra:

Mankind is outraged... a new crime has been committed.
Bombs have rained again on the people of the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam. The U.S. government has once more
brazenly broken its solemn pledges. It has escalated its war
to new heights. It has violated again the sovereignty of the
Vietnamese people. It shamelessly defies world opinion.

President Nixon’s hypocritical statements about his desire
to end the war stand fully and completely exposed. His October
7 “peace proposals” can be seen now in their real and true
meaning.

The World Peace Council appeals to the conscience of the
peoples of the world. The peace forces have the power to meet
and end the new danger to peace. zat

Let us act as never before in solidarity with the heroic Viet-
namese people. The bombings must be stopped immediately.
The hand of the aggressors must be stayed. ;

Nobody must be silent. Everybody must act. The U.S. troops
must go home. They must leave South Vietnam—all of them,
rapidly and without conditions. The Vietnam people have the
right to settle their own destiny themselves. Humanity can and
must assure them that right. :

Responsibility rests on Nixon

MOSCOW — Re-affirming full support to the Vietnamese
demands for the full and unconditional withdrawal of U.S.
troops and respect for the people’s right to settle their own
domestic affairs, the Soviet Government warned that: it “will
draw appropriate conclusions from the new provocations and
threats to expand aggression against the fraternal socialist
state — the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It should be clear
that a continuation of provocations against the DRV, attempts
to carry out new military threats against the peoples of Indo-
china will lead to an even greater complication of the situation
in Southeast Asia and the Far East.

“Responsibility for such a turn of events will rest entirely with

the Government of the United States of America.”

Democratic unit y must

defeat repression tide

By JOHN WEIR

‘The invocation of the War
Measures Act — there are good
grounds to consider that action
unlawful because it was intro-
duced under the false pretense
of ‘apprehended insurrection”—
and the enactment of its twin,
the Public Order (Temporary
Measures) Act—which definite-
ly contravenes at least the Bill
of Rights and is morally repre-
hensible if not downrght uncon-
stitutional—are but the legal
cover under which the whole
repressive machinery of the
state is being set in motion.

While the hue and cry was
with: regard to FLQ terrorists,
the thousands of raids and
searches and hundreds of arrests
have been overwhelmingly di-
rected not against the FLQ or
terrorists at all, but against po-

litical opponents of tHe Estab-
lishment, against people who
held different ideas, whether pro-
ponents of sovereignty for Que-
bec (including separatists), ra-
dical labor leaders (including
anarcho-syndicalists like Char-
trand), or supporters of social
revolution.

In other words, the weight of
the repressive measures has fal-
len not on individuals who were
accused of an overt act: (or of
conspiring to commit or advo-
cating such an act), but on per-
sons who in one form or an-
other voiced disagreement with
the social and national struc-
ture in Canada and sought to
publicly discuss alternatives to
the existing system and to gov-
ernmental policies.

While the main target so far

@ Continued on pg. 10

DACIEFEIC TDOIRIIAIC

TUMDCNAYV NeEOCAADEeP 91 107

—AN. EDITORIAL—

Organized labor in Canada
has’ a_ special responsibility to
\make 1971. the year for peace
.in Vietnam — for new, united
efforts by trade unionists to
make their own the struggle of
the heroic people in Vietnam.

Nixon’s new threats to begin
again raining bombs on the De-
mocratic Republic of Vietnam
endanger not only the possibil-
ities for peace in blood-soaked
Indochina. His hopeless: aim of
a military victory there by ex-
panding , aggression involves
grave consequences for the
peace of the world.

The tirhe has come for Cana-
dian trade unionists to act for
peace on a new and greater

scale. ‘To .join with the peace.

forces of our country in the
mass world efforts in 1971 for
the withdrawal of U.S. and
satellite troops from Vietnam.

Last month’s Stockholm Con-
ference on Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia endorsed the initia-
tive of Scandinavian trade
unionists for convoking a world
conference of trade uniohs to
co-oordinate and, to strengthen
the support of the trade union
movement of the world for the
peoples of Indochina. _

The past. several years in
Canada have seen_ individual
trade union leaders and indivi-
dual locals speak out for peace
in Vietnam.

Now the call from. trade
unions and their locals. across
our country should be for the
Canadian Labor Congress itself.
to speak out unequivocally for
an end to the dirty U.S. war in
Indochina and to organize sup-
port for the projected world
peace conference of trade
unions.

The representatives. of ‘the
Indochinese peoples have set.
June 30, 1971 as the deadline
for the complete and uncondi-
‘tional withdrawal of: all U.S.
and satellite forces. Canadians,
and first of all Canadian trade
unionists have the responsibil-

ity — the internationalist soli-.

darity responsibility — of help-
ing to make sure that happens.

The struggle for peace must
now become the mightiest of all
struggles by organized workers.

For without peace, all other
struggles will fail.

In the U.S. today,' the voices
of American trade unionists are
heard louder and clearer than
ever, denouncing Nixon’s war
in Vietnam. British trade union-°
ists, French, Japanese and Ital-
ian trade unionists have under-
taken conferences and massive
demonstrations for peace in
Vietnam. Longshoremen in Aus-
tralia have refused to handle
American cargo bound for Viet-
nam.

The workers, all the peoples
of the socialist countries give
their full support to assure the
just victory of the peoples of
Vietnam, of Indochina.

In 1971, Canadian organized
labor can give vital leadership to
all the peace forces in our coun-
try, by uniting its own ranks,

first of all, for peace in Vietnam, —

for an end to U.S. aggression,
for safeguarding. the..peace of
the world. .

nacre