By HAL GRIFFIN hat Friday afternoon, in 1939 when I entered the dim lobby of the Flack Block at Hastings and Cambie, Armitage Moore and John Radford, the artist, were ar- guing furiously over the headline in the August 25 issue of the People’s Advocate, the last under that mast- head. ‘‘Chamberlain’s policies Spahd world to war’? it proclaim- Moore, a British imperialist of the old school, and Radford were among the tenants with whom the paper shared the old office block — the Communist Party, New Age Book Shop, and Francis Hann, whose insurance business was also a cover for his work as an intelli- gence agent, whether for Ottawa or Washington he was deliberately vague. A year earlier he had approach- ed me offering to exchange infor- mation on Japanese fascist activ- ities in the province — I was writing a series on Japanese acquisition of mining properties, the plans for which he obtained as part of his le- gitimate insurance business — and after my editorial board had ap- proved the proposal, we did ex- change information. Moore’s only concern that day was the paper’s headline. While Radford, who had socialist lean- ings, vainly tried to finish a sen- tence, Moore stormed at him. “This damn rag should be ban- ned,’’ I heard him shout as I went upstairs. And nine months later it was banned. But only after a stubborn struggle to keep the paper alive while the wave of hysteria, falsifi- cation and intimidation slowly rose to smother it. Forty years later, the crumbling web of official deceit and intrigue in high places has been blown away. Secret government papers of the day have been opened to public scrutiny. Politicians and military leaders have published their mem- oirs, baring the truth concealed by propaganda — the truth that the People’s Advocate, alone of all British Columbia papers, printed at the time. Twice a week, as editor, I gave a news commentary, Labor News Highlights, over radio station CKMO, a program sponsored by Dr. R. Llewellyn Douglas, a dentist- who derived his socialist sym- pathies from his early days as a rail- wayman. In my broadcast on August 22 I asserted that the Soviet-German non-aggression pact had con- founded the plans of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and French premier Edouard Daladier to betray Poland and embroil Nazi Germany in war with the USSR. ‘Nazi Germany has no desire to clash with the determined strength of the Soviet Union,” I stated. ‘Rather, Hitler’s policy is directed against the weaknesses of the democracies, which are enervated by the treachery of fifth columnists from within.”’ And I reiterated the point the pa- per had made time and again, that war could ‘‘only be averted by a peace front of the democratic countries with the Soviet Union.” The collanse of that hope was re- flected in the September 1 issue, the first shortening the paper’s nameto The Advocate, for William Lyon Mackenzie’s paper of the same name. That issue carried Soviet premier Vyacheslav Molotov’s statement to the effect that four-month long talks with a joint British-French military delegation to Moscow, which carried no mandate from its governments, had failed’ because the delegation had backed Poland in its refusal to allow Soviet forces to cross its frontier, the only effect- ive way in which the USSR could aid Britain and France against ag- gression. British-French proposals were “hedged around by many reserva- tions about indirect aggression so as to have formal and judicial pre- text to avoid rendering aid and leave the Soviet Union isolated in the event of aggression. . . ’’ Mol- otov declared. “We had to set ourselves the question of securing peace by other ways and obviating the menace of war between Germany and the Soviet Union. If the British and French governments did not wish to reckon on this, that is their right, but our task is to think of the inter- ests of the USSR, all the more since we are firmly convinced that the in- terests of the USSR coincide with the basic interests of the people of all other nations.” That same issue carried a late news flash that Hitler had an- nounced the annexation of Danzig, and before the paper was in the hands of its readers Nazi forces had stormed into Poland. In the early morning hours of September 3, Chamberlain in- formed the world, ‘‘Everything I had worked for, hoped for, believ- ed in, has crashed in ruins.” Indeed it had, but that did not mean he would be deflected from his policy of striving still to redirect the war against the USSR. As though directed from a single source, the anti-Soviet propaganda campaign sprang full blown from press and radio. The Vancouver Sun termed the Soviet-German pact the ‘most outstanding example of double- dealing and chicanery modern times have seen.”” The Federationist, official organ of the CCF, declared, ‘‘We would go further than that . . . and say it a In a 1942 photo, Hal Griffin addresses the audience ata b PRESS FREEDOM MUZZLED © is a betrayal of the working class of the world.”’ For a time the propaganda cam- paign had an effect. Suddenly, it seemed, people who had approved, openly and covertly, of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, the Japanese fascist leaders, were loudly de- nouncing Hitler — and just as ve- hemently denouncing the USSR and calling Communists ‘‘Com- munazis.”” Some of those who had sup- ported the Loyalist cause in Spain and picketed scrap iron shipments to fascist Japan were genuinely confused. I found that people I had known in the anti-fascist move- ment were crossing the street to avoid talking to me and one close friend, meeting me on Pender Street, bitterly informed me, “‘I guess I’m the only true socialist left in this city.”’ Those who had been following the course of events through The Advocate — and newsstand sales doubled in-the first few weeks of the war — were well informed, at least. As John Lee of Ruskin wrote in a letter published in the October issue: ‘¢. .when the Nazi army cross- ed the border, the news came through that the Poles were resist- ing. The Polish government fled and left the mass of the people de- feated, disorganized and in despair, their cities bombed, their ag in the Georgia Hotel Oct. 19 to welcome Communist leaders on their release from internment camp in Hull, Quebec where they had been PACIFIC TRIBUNE— MAY 2, 1980—Page 10 homes destroyed, their national life disrupted and ruined. . . “Then we heard that the Red Army had ‘invaded’ Poland and ‘stabbed Poland in the back’... but how different was this ‘inva- sion!’ We heard nothing of the bombing of cities, no burning of homes, no destruction of national life . . . the Red Army was wel- comed.”’ Asthe weeks of the ‘phoney war’ went by and even the Vancouver Province was constrained to com- ment that “‘It is as strangely a mys- tery and as vast a confusion as ever. . . We have a feeling that we do not: know what really is going on...,” it became apparent that the federal Liberal government of prime minister Mackenzie King knew exactly what it was doing in suppressing civil liberties and em- boldening big business in its anti- labor campaign. On November 3 I defined the is- sue in this signed editorial state- ment: “Out of the confusion surrounding this war and its purposes — a con- fusion, it must frankly be admitted, to which this paper added in its first statements and articles by enabling the conclusion to be drawn that this contained elements of a just, anti- fascist war — certain facts emerge clearly: <‘], — That under cover of the anquetheld held under the War Measures Act. At right is former Tribune editor ‘war emergency,’ reaction in the democratic countries is redoubling its drive against the liberties rights of the people. . . “2. — That the burden of the — war is being placed on the people. . .” pe The pages of The Advocate i these months bear out the accuracy of that statement. In October, 150 gold miners at Pioneer mine in Bridge River struck for a dollar a day wage i- crease, defying threats by the Lib- eral government of Premier T. D. Pattullo to prosecute them. company stripped all blankets from the bunkhouses and turned off heat and light in its efforts tO break picket lines. The strike con-" tinued for months and finally was broken by scabs. In November, S. G. Blaylock, striving to maintain Trail and Kim- berley as a company union strong- hold for Consolidated Mining and Smelting and thwart a Mine organizing drive, called for a curb on international unions because their organizers were ‘outside agi- tators’ and declared that ‘“‘there must be no wage increases’’ be- cause “maintenance of thenation’s ~ cash reserves is the most important economic duty facing Canada in wartime.”’ ve Publication in the November 10 — issue of Molotov’s report to the Su- : Soo Tom McEwen, one of those released, and his wife, Rose.