AO aaa — of

EDITORIAL

Peace real D-Day message

Every Canadian who comprehends the sacrifices
made, shares in the homage to the heroic, and in many
cases deeply motivated forces who stormed the Nor-
mandy beaches on June 6, 1944. That date sends both a
thrill and a pang through all who lived through that
period.

Canadians, taking a terrible brunt of fascist fire,
along with British and U.S. forces, opened World War
II’s second front according to orders from their high
command. They did it with full honors.

It is sad to say that the politicans who delayed that
assault thought to let the Soviet and Nazi German
forces destroy each other on the eastern front. That
intent is on record, but the scheme failed.

On the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1984, 40 years
later, leaders of the western countries of the wartime
alliance, and representatives of the Soviet Union,
Czechoslovakia and Poland, commemorated the val-
orous deeds of youngmen who fought fascism.

President Mitterand of France drew attention as well,
to the sacrifices and overwhelming victories of the

Soviet forces and people. The Soviet armies then fought
their way to the Nazi capital, Berlin, and conquered the
Reichstag, seat of Hitlerite infamy.

It was left to Reagan, on this solemn 40th anniver-

sary, to splutter out a warmongering diatribe, which |

amounted to spitting on the graves of the Canadian and
all other dead who fought in alliance with the indomita-
ble Soviet people.

That is the foul role of U.S. imperialism today — to
dishonor every decent act for peace, to scourge from the
brains of the young generation any knowledge of the
monumental contribution of the USSR to the wartime
alliance against the Hitlerite forces and, in league with
the same mutlinational corporations that served the

. Nazis, to proclaim that same Soviet Union and all

socialist countries to be the enemy. But the truth cannot
be hidden, even with Hollywood techniques.

That wartime alliance against fascism must become a
peacetime alliance — against similar stirrings of fas-
cism, against Reaganite plans for world domination
and against his final threat: nuclear holocaust.

Name own election issues

A summer federal election faces Canada according to
a number of political forecasters. The reasoning is that
since the polls are showing an increase in Liberal
strength, the new Liberal leader will call an election as
soon after the Liberal convention (June 14-17) as
possible.

It is not a question of how seriously the voters take
the ever-multiplying polls, but how seriously the Liber-
als take them. :

Workers, and all social groups hurt by the capitalist
system’s crisis, need to cut through the fog of election
hoopla and seriously decide their own key issues.

In the game of polls, the electorate is invited to play
only a watching role.

This guessing game of the media and big business
does not a jot to improve the lot of the host of Canadi-
ans suffering the injustices of cutbacks, layoffs, high
rents, high prices and the rest of the system’s “gifts”.

The polls game contributes nothing to the earnest
efforts of people across the country working for peace
and disarmament. In fact, in the middle of the pre-
election charade, Defence Minister Jean-Jacques Blais
boasts that in 1986 his department will spend $11.1
billion on the military, with increases every year after.

There is a clear and fundamental basis upon which
the working class and its allies can lay down what issues,
policies and candidates will get its broad support. In
fact, the whole specturm of forces which make up what
is a latent coalition — a progressive electoral coali-

tion — could, by coming together, elect men and
women to parliament who will address real needs. _
The real needs of vast numbers of the electorate are
the last thing on the minds of the corporations and their
string-operated politicians. If a plant isn’t profitable, lay
people off, close down, move out. If buildings are not
profitable, raise rents. If sales are not profitable, boost
prices. If education isn’t profitable in the long run to
those who run the system, restrict it, cut it back, make it
more costly, to serve the elite. If providing the health
needs of the population isn’t profitable, reduce the care,
make workers pay, unleash’ doctors’ extra billing on

_ family savings.

It may occur to those outside the corporate elite that
a social system ought to be working for people first —
not for profitability at any cost in human misery.

For that reason the Mulreagan Tories should be
prevented through all efforts from forming a govern-
ment. They have shown no useful policies, but have
exposed their sell-out intentions in league with the U.S.-
based multinationals.

Nor have Liberal leadership hopefuls like Turner,
and for that matter, Chretien, distanced themselves by
any great policy pronouncements from the neo-
conservatives.

The working class and its allies have a right and
responsibility to lay down their own priorities, and
found a coalition of forces to elect their own people to
parliament.

Want to have it good when times are bad? Be a trust company,
Take National Trust Co. Ltd., Toronto. In the six months endeq
April 30 while workers were scrounging to get by, NT had an
after-tax profit of $8,072,000. In the same six months a year earlier
it raked in $7,352,000.

 JIRIBUNE |

_ Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON

Business & Circulation Manager — PAT O’CONNOR ©

Graphics — ANGELA KENYON

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
f Vancouver, B.C. V5SK 1Z5
Phone (604) 251-1186

Subscription Rate: Canada — $14 one year; $8 six months
Foreign — $20 one year;

Second class mail registration number 1560

i
:
|
i

}

t is probably a measure of how con-
temptuous the corporate elite is of the
participants in the Solidarity movement
that two of the magazines catering to the

Fed convention from another vice-

People and issues | president, Don Garcia. It stands as 4

SR A ES RS I ER I TTR

comment not only on the Kelowna meet-
ing but on the continuing campaign

upper income set should try to turn last
fall’s unprecedented events first into farce
and then into melodrama.

First there was Equity magazine provid-
ing the farce with a cover story on Jack
Munro — written by Doug Collins —
showing the International Woodworkers
president posing in several hats, including
a World War I helmet (the cover photo)
and a battered top hat.

Then the June edition of Vancouver
Magazine provided the melodrama with a
story entitled “Weekend in Kelowna”, a
dramatized account by local writer Gary
Mason of the events leading to the
Kelowna accord which ended the public
sector strike last November. “‘With the
whole province about to go on strike,” the
story line goes, “Jack Munro and Bill
Bennett sat down and talked. This is what
they talked about.”

Once again, Jack Munro is the centre-
piece of the story since Mason’s account is
largely based on Munro’s version of the
facts as well as those of Premier Bennett’s
deputy and right hand man Norman Spec-
tor. Mason also quotes some of Munro’s
more familiar expletives as his reaction to
the version of events made public by B.C.
Federation of Labor president Art Kube
in a column by Province labor reporter
Rod Mickleburgh earlier this year.

“Weekend in Kelowna” certainly makes

interesting reading. But it is rapidly
becoming apparent that we may never
have a fully accurate version of what did
happen since everyone’s account varies.
This one, for example, denies any role in
the negotiations for Labor Relations
Board chairman Stephen Kelleher. But if
he had no part, why, when the dispute
arose over where the savings from the
teachers’ strike would go, did he publicly
declare that he was prepared to review his
notes on the negotiations with both Solid-
arity and government representatives?

What Mason’s story does reveal (apart
from the fact that Spector ate only two
doughnuts on the day of the Kelowna
meeting) is that there was apparently more
than just the confirmation of an earlier
agreed-upon accord reached in Bennett’s
living room. It also indicates that Munro,
particularly, was more concerned with
stopping the escalating job action than
with achieving Solidarity’s demands; and
that the IWA leader was determined not
to leave Kelowna without an agreement
even if it meant that Solidarity would have
to accept less than could have been
achieved given the strength of the
movement.

__ Inthe end, of course, it was the steering -
committee and not just Munro that

accepted the deal but Mason’s story does
suggest that there were divisions.

In the midst of the stories now coming
out about last fall’s upheaval we were
looking over our own notes on some of the
key events. And there are two statements
that stand out as a kind of commentary on
those events. Interestingly enough, the first
is from the founding of Operation Solidar-
ity and the second from the B.C. Federa-
tion of Labor convention which followed
the Kelowna accord.

The first was made by federation sixth
vice-president Bill Clark. He told the
founding meeting of Operation Solidarity
that the trade union movement, in launch-
ing its nine-point program, would have
“to face up to a general strike.

“T think there will be one and I think it
will come in October when 180,000
workers demand to keep the seniority pro-
tection they have in their collective agree-
ments,” he said. : :

- “But,” he added, “‘it must be disciplined
and organized — and if you can’t get the
government to back off, you have to be
prepared to bring it down.”

Clark got a big ovation for those pro-
phetic words. But as history was later to
show, the issues of government and a gen-
eral strike were the very issues which the
leadership — including Clark — were not
prepared to face.

The other statement came at the B.C.

against the government.
Declaring his own union’s support for

continuing action, he noted: “There may |
be some trepidation among some lead-
ers — but not among the rank and file.” —

Those are some of the lessons from last
fall’s events. But you can be damn certain
you won’t find them in the likes of Equity
magazine.

* * *

Wi been told before that we would —

have to wait for a promised book
review but the context in which that mes-

sage came last week from former Tribune —

editor Hal Griffin was a little alarming —
he told us while lying on a hospital bed in
the emergency room of Lion’s Gate
Hospital.

He was struck by a pickup truck while

he was walking across North Vancouver's ©

Lonsdale Street and thrown across the full
width of the street. A charge of impaired
driving has been laid against the driver of
the truck but in the meantime, Hal is con-
fined to a hospital bed with a fractured
pelvis and head injuries and is expected to
remain in hospital for the next two months.
Heis in Room 601 at Lion’s Gate Hospital
in North Vancouver.

We join with many others in wishing

him a speedy and full recovery.

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 13, 1984