Right ‘on target’

Ji Bvone making an honest appraisa! of what secretary-
treasurer Pat O’Neil of the B.C. Federation of Labor
had to say apropo of the Vancouver Community Chest
“Red Feather” drive, must marvel at the display of “indig-
nant” spleen put on by Vancouver’s two top monopoly
newspapers, the Sun and Province.

The current attack of these organs of Big Business
have a double --edged purpose; to distort and utilize Mr.
O’Neil’s remarks upon which to mount one of their period-
ic attacks upon labor in general; and secondly, to use it as
a smokescreen behind which the callous lack cf govern-
mental and big business responsibility for social welfare
can continue to be carefully hidden away.

The essence of Mr. O’Neil’s position as we see it, was
not an attack upon the Community Chest as such, but the
fact that in the changing setting cof a modern Canada,
social welfare in its entirety should be the prime responsi-
bility of government, rather than sluffed off as an object of
public “charitable” support.

Ne one can have anything but praise for the thous-
ands of “Red Feather” workers who do the leg-work from
door-to-door, “asking their fellow citizens to help the needy
and underprivileged,” as the Province puts it. And equal
praise for the householder whose modest contributions help
fill the Community Chest fund, and which must include
the substantial contributions which come annually from
the ranks of organized labor.

Nevertheless there are tens of thousands among all of
these contributors who think like Mr. O’Neil, — that the
public are being loaded with a “charitable” responsibility
which rightfully belongs to monopoly - sponsored govern-
ments. Doubtless it is Mr. O’Neil’s exposure of that dere-
liction of responsibility which has incurred the splenetic ire
of the monopoly press.

The B.C. Federation of Labor chief also struck a sensi-
tive nerve when he voiced some mild criticisms anent the
high salaries paid to some Chest drive leading personnel.

These features, however, were not the central theme
of Mr .O’Neill’s valid criticisms. The key issue was, is, and
remains that the full costs of social welfare is a govern-
ment responsibility; a responsibility it consistently shirks
by making “the needy and underprivileged” an object of
“charity” rather than otherwise.

Mr. O’Neill’s “timing” may have been bad, but his ob-
jective was right ‘“‘on target”’.

SOCIAL
SERVICES

Close the ‘MLE door’

dice a creeping horror the menace of a Nato multilater-
al nuclear force (MLF) is moving closer to a stark real-
ity. The West German revenge-seckers are jubilant. Chan-
cellor Erhard boasts that “progress” is being made, and if
other Nato powers don’t soon agree, Washington and Bonn
will reach ‘“agreement”’ themselves. J)

Speaking for the West German militarists, the general
staff remnants of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, whose fingers are
edging closer and closer to the H-bomb trigger through a
U.S.-dominated Nato, Erhard says “a good start has been
made... and the door will stay open for other European
countries to join.”

~

A “good start” by whom? And where does Canada
stand on this heinous plot to put nuclear bombs into the
hands of West German fascism?

Shall we mark “Remembrance Day” to Canada’s dead
in two world wars set ablaze by German imperialism, by
silently acquiescing with the Washington nuclear bomb
squad that their Hitlerite revanchists in Bonn should be
given this horror weapon to again threaten the peace of
the world? Because that is precisely what Chancellor Er-
hard’s boast of ‘‘progress” means.

The issue is clear — and vital; keep “the door” tightly
closed against the danger of West German fingers on the
H-bomb trigger via Washington’s “MLF brinkmanship.”’

Tom
McE WEN

he “movement” is now to all
intents and purposes, official-
ly “born”!

In the selection of aname there
seems to have been much argu-
ment “about it and about,” In the
east they call it the * Progressive
Independent Movement,” in the
west the “Labor Progressive
Movement,” and more recently
the “Progressive Workers Move-
ment,”

But as Shakespeare once ob-
served, “What’s in a name? A
rose by any other name would
smell*as sweet,” And contrary-
wise of course, as everyone
knows, the odor of an open septic
tank doesn’t smell any more
alluring by labelling its contents
Eau de Cologne.

Some days following its official
birth it took delivery of a modest-
sized offset press with which to
package its special brand of
“Marxism-Leninsim’. There
again some doubt about the

“name” of the consignee cropped
up. However, all was happily
adjusted, The “West Wind” and
prevailed over the “East Wind”
the “Labor Progressive Move-
ment” of 714 Georgia Street
signed on the dotted line,

Back at the June plenum of the
national committee of the Com-
munist Party, national C,P, lead-
er Leslie Morris said, inter alia;
“1 think as with all such phenom-
ena, it (the ‘movement’) will pick
up and utilize for its own purpose
not only the stated postion of the
letter of the Chinese Party to
the CPSU, but beyond that will
pick up and utilize for its own
purposes in the most unprin-
cipled, unscrupulous and faction-
al way all the shortcomings of
the movement (Communist), and
out of that distill perhaps the
most dangerous phenomenon ever
to have overtaken the cause of
Marxism in Canada,”

The truth of these prophetic
words is already much in evi-

dence, During the recent strike -

of the Teamsters Union at the
D, S, Scott Transport for union-
ization and collective bargaining,
a strike harassed with a flock of
court injunctions and heavy police
cordons, the“ Progressive Work-
ers Movement” (its latest name)
got out a leaflet for distribution
on the picket line, .

This leaflet, topped off by a
gruesome cartoon depicting an
exceptionally ferocious looking
cop, with an injunction in one
hand and a club in the other,
getting all set tocommit mayhem
upon an innocent looking baby in
diapers, PAS

Venting its indignation upon
this form of “state brutality” the
leaflet tells us (in this case the
Teamsters Union), that*This and
other recent acts against workers
organizations, exposes the fal-
lacy of legal rights for workers
in a state controlled by the capi-
talist class,”

The “logic” is of course clear,
Away with any and all forms of
labor legislation, good, bador in-
different, Away with any and all
concepts of “peaceful co-exis-
tence,” Away with any and all
illusions that the workers can
win anything under capitalism,
The workingclass can “have no
rights, but those they TAKE”
(the “take” in caps). So, Avant,
fellow workers—and Teamsters
—to the barricades! :

While we have the greatest ad-
miration for the International
Teamsters Union and its fighting
president Jimmy Hoffa, we just
cannot see the Teamsters Union
locals wheeling it up to the bar-
ricades—just yet, But we can see
this great union, supported by,
and in return giving yeomen sup-
port to the growing solidarity and
unity of organized labor, holding,
winning and compelling a great
deal of beneficial legislative
“rights” and concessions from
the “capitalist class,”

But our “Progressive Workers

Movement,” which already a local.

humorist has dubbed the “ Peking

Pirates,” are not interested in -
labor’s hard-won rights, They

want “revolution” now and an end
to “capitalism” as a pre-condi-
tion for any kind of “rights,” So
they ‘say to organized labor in
Canada, away with “the fallacy of

‘for union recognition and C0} oft

Worth
Quoting

It can be done and it must be done
if the Indians of Canada are to sum
as a people... Indian reserve [an
must be preserved. They must
veloped. And if nnecessary exte!
Indian land ownership instead OF '
priving them of it by tricky land d
and heading them off into the
cities, there to die and be buried
the potter’s field. ae

—BIG WHITE OWL, in the B:
Native Voice, Sept. 199

*

It may not be generally know?
the profit-making section of the ec?
my is providing fewer full-time I?
today than it did 10 years ag
manufacturing,-for example, te
were 14 million production worke!
in 1953. Ten years later, 1% millid
less production workers were prod
ing 30 percent more goods.

In the steel industry, the situation
even more serious. Steel production
1953 totalled 111.6 million tom
the first six months of 1964 the
industry produced a record ann’
rate of 122% million tons. But!
significant thing is that this wa
complished with 144,000 fewer P
duction workers in 1953. é

—DAVID J. McDONALD, pres: united
Steel Workers of America.

*

How can Mr. R. N. Thomps?
leader of the Social Credit Party ®
plain that ‘‘Focus,”’ the Canae@ e
Social Crediter, official organ oft
Social Credit Association of Cana
in its January 1964 issue, carrie
full-page advertisement by the * Ce
adian Intelligence Service?” (The fe
Gostick-Pat Walsh “Christian At
Movement” sheet. Ed.)

How does Mr. Thompson expla
that Social Credit Party offices ha ;
been used as meeting places bY se
purveyors of hate, as exposed in OY
Toronto papers?

How does Mr. Thompson ony
his letter of approval on Houst
Commons stationery, of the «christia
Action Movement?”

al
These are questions that dem?
an answer.

—CANADIAN JEWISH OUTLO®
October, 1964 ‘

legal rights for workers.”

This ultra-“Leftist” brand °
Trotskyite provocation has
double-barrelled purpose; that?
a provocation against union me
engaged in a decisive struge
tive bargaining, and an impr
cannard against Communis”
that the latter have thrown 2°
the cause and revolution?
science of Marxism - Leninls fe
fo r what the leadership se
C.P, of China and its neo-P™
skyite groups of splittel
Canada and elsewhere call

visionism,”

So it’s up with the barrica4 a
“Get on the picket line,” and 5,
the idea “that workers nave
rights but those they TAKE *

Will someone please pass
aspirins, : :

Editor

Vancouver 4, B.C.

of postage in cash.

Associate Editor — MAURICE RUSH
Circulation Manager — JERRY SHACK
Published weekly at Room 6 — 426 Main Street

Subscription Rates:
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Phone MUtual 5-5288

lio):

ail
nt

Re

October 16, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PaS*