EDITORIAL - Back the British miners There are moments in the world-wide working-class struggle for livelihood and dignity when some one sec- tor of workers holds centre stage. A{ those moments the whole of working humanity should congregate behind the frontline fighters and ensure their victory over the forces of backwardness and class hatred. That difficult place is held today by the British miners who, in Scotland and England, are sticking to their principles against one of the most reactionary, imperialist-minded regimes of our day which has raised police violence to the level of government policy. Solidarity with the striking miners in Britain itself was summed up by the 10-million-strong Trades Union Congress, which voted overwhelmingly to support the coal miners at its congress Sept. 3. Dockers have refused to unload non-union imported coal for use in steel mills, and power-plant workers among others are on record in solidarity with the miners. Numerous Canadian trade unions have made solid- arity contributions, and the Canadian Labor Congress \ donated $17,000. That is exemplary but there’s room ; for tremendous escalation of that help. A good question to ask is whether Canadian workers may not soon be facing increasing government oppres- sion along similar lines now that Reagan, the multi- nationals and the Canadian corporate elite have installed a federal government of their bidding. The support for the British miners is international. One source of aid is the fully-employed, fully- compensated miners of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic who collected some $77,000 for the British miners, now six months on strike. The issue is jobs and the Thatcher government’s determination to close down the mines that don’t produce high enough profit for its patrons of the ruling class. Other international solidarty has come in the form of about $4,000 from the Falkland Island/Malvinas con- struction workers. The New Zealand Trade Union Congress sent 800 lambs along with food parcels; and the recently-elected New Zealand Labor Party govern- ment unanimously voted its full support for the miners. A fund for the miners’ struggle has been set up in the Irish Republic with the Mayor of Dublin as sponsor, and holidays in the Six Counties have recently been organized for Ayrshire miners’ children by the Rath- coole Self-Help Group. Further decisive action is needed by Canadian labor, and Canadians as a whole to back the Britigh miners in their frontline struggle. : Hands off universality A poll carried out in May by Goldfarb Consultants of Toronto, found that 86 per cent of Canadians polled want government assistance to the rich cut off. It’s a perfectly natural response; except that the poll itself is laced with deadly poison. The Financial Post, representing the views of the corporate elite, came out with a similar attack on the universality of family allowances and old age security pension. Of course, everyone understands that the Financial Post is worried sick about the rights of the ordinary Canadian, and is not speaking on behalf of the privileged brokers, lawyers, doctors and corporate executives it represents. The Financial Post calls universality, that is the right to pension and family allowances for all, a “sacred cow” that should be put to death, or, “tackled” to use the Post’s mixed metaphor. The point is that the Post, which is ready to love Mulroney to the point of suffocation provided he per- forms properly for the moneyed few, wants universality destroyed. Is that because the paper, the mouthpiece of stock brokers and their clients is hurting inside because rich people get the family allowance and pension? Highly unlikely. What it wants is a means test to start cutting out families here, families there, to ensure a minimal living standard for working (and unemployed) Canadians. The Post quotes Mulroney, March 15, 1984, saying: “T have no hesitation in reviewing the concept of univer- sality...” but complains that he is not severe enough. The ruling class has everlastingly striven to impose a means test on the working class and the impoverished to wring out of them the last vestige of hope and dignity. It has repeatedly failed in that effort. And it will fail again if it is fought. This so-called ‘“‘sacred-cow” is a hard-won right of the people of Canada. If there is fear that too much taxpayer money is going to those who don’t need it, those with incomes in high brackets should be taxed accordingly. What is needed is to plug the loopholes, not to destroy universality. If it is sacred cows we are talking about we should demand a radical reform of the tax laws to channel the endless tax deferrals, loopholes and concessions of the corporations back to the public good. The hoax about wanting to end universality of social benefits to deny the rich is nothing but a dirty joke. The fight to retain universality needs powerful working- class resistance to this attack on living standards. VAS. 9. 54. MC Trizec Corporation Ltd., P.F. Bronfman, chairman, had an after tax profit for the nine months ended July 31 of $35,927,000. That's up from $27,655,000 for the same nine months a year ago. Essen- tially a real estate holding and management company, Trizec operates across Canada and in the USA. : ~ IRiIBUNE Business & Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON Graphics — ANGELA KENYON Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C. V5K 125 Phone (604) 251-1186 $14 one year; $8 six months $20.0ne year; Subscription Rate: Canada Foreign Second class mail registration number 1560 t has been a case of now-you-see-it, now- you-don’t. But for the residents and government of the Sunshine-Coast regional district, it’s also been a case of the will of a People and Issues ee eee can Spain, and the time found Paddy Battalion. ee Upon returning to Canada, Paddy 3 people thwarted by an undemocratic pro- vincial government. We’re referring to the nuclear-free zone declaration from the Sunshine Coast regional board of directors more than one year ago, and subsequently enshrined in a sign produced by the Sunshine Coast Peace ~ Committée. Readers will recall from our previous coverage of the issue that permission to erect the sign adjacent to the Langdale ferry terminal near Gibsons was refused, ~ hag despite repeated entreaties from the j regional directors, by Highways Minister Alex Fraser. The Socred minister, who has no trouble allowing signs on provincial highways advertising everything from the local chamber of commerce to fruit stands, had claimed the nuclear-free decla- ration was “not applicable to the driving task.” While the regional board is constrained to follow the diktat of the minister, members of the peace committee have not been similarly bound. Thrée times now — the last being Labor Day weekend — the committee has erected its sign at Langdale. After each weekend the sign has always been removed by highway crews: We’ve been informed by regional direc- tor Brett ‘McGillivray, who with his wife Carol is a member of the peace committee, that while there’s nothing more the board can do other than to continue pressuring Fraser to change his decision, the commit- tee may well continue to erect the nuclear- free declaration on long weekends. And, he reports, there are other pres- sures mounting. B.C. Ombudsman Karl Friedman has also expressed an interest in the case, figuring, quite rightly, that Fras- er’s allowance of some signs “not applica- ble to the driving task” while banning -others amounts to nothing more than discrimination. And then there’s the question of other municipalities in B.C. — 22 of them, in fact — that have made the same declara- tion. McGillivray notes that at last week’s conference of the Union of B.C. Municipal- ities, several delegates complained of Vic- toria’s diktat, The issue really raises two questions, McGillivray points out. One is the government’s increasing centralization of decision-making. The other — and the one we think Victoria will have to bend on, eventually — is the Socreds’ insistence, despite Premier Bennett’s declared sup- port the peace movement, in standing in the way of the tide of peace sentiment - sweeping B.C. and the rest of the country. o say he led an active and colorful life would be almost an under-statement. In fact, it was such a varied life that details were long in forthcoming, and it is only now that we have enough information to _ pay tribute to long-time Communist and Tribune reader Paddy McElligot. Even now, much of the detail concern- ing Paddy — born John Patrick McElli- got in Ireland early in the century — are missing. He passed away, suffering from the effects of an operation for stomach cancer, on Aug. 23. According to his friend of the last sev- eral years, Courtenay school trustee Wayne Bradley, Paddy remained active in the Courtenay area, where he had resided for the last 10 years, in the local peace and Solidarity movements. He began that life of activity, at an early age, joining the Irish Republican Army at 16. Shortly after that he was to move to Britain, where he joined the Communist Party in 1925. - In 1929, on the eve of the Great Depres- sion, Paddy arrived in Canada. He was soon to become involved in the effort to organize the relief camp workers, and was a key figure in initiating the On-to-Ottawa Trek. In the closing years of that decade Franco’s fascist forces invaded Republi- became active once again, this time as an organizer and member of the Canadian Seaman’s Union. He was a member of the Courtenay club of the Communist Party at the time of his death. te a, isso e also have a sad note from Ernie Knott that a fellow member of the International Woodworkers, and a lifelong supporter of socialist ideas, Tod McLen- nan, had passed on. Ernie, speaking for the Victoria Labor Council in paying tribute to Tod at his funeral Sept. 8, cited the World War I veteran and woodworker for his efforts in organizing Operations at Comox Log and Railway Co., in Courtenay during the early 30s. ax In 1937, Tod became the first financial secretary of the IWA’s B.C. District, and in that capacity was involved in the fam- ous Blubber Bay strike on Texada Island. _ Later, Tod and Colin Cameron, MLA for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, faced physical attacks from + company goon squads while organizingat ~ the Elk River Timber Camp, No. 8. In his retirement years Tod actively | supported peace organizations and politi- cal parties dedicated to disarmament. 4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 26, 1984