eee

~— Ht __L IB ee

DEE a eee BE STL am aR

- CHARLES SIMS ACCLAIMS 'HE WROTE FOR US'

TOM McEWEN, editor of the
Pacific Tribune, has. written a
grand book on the life and times
of William Bennett, one of the
founders and builders of the
Communist movement in Canada.

lishing Company, Vancouver), is
a book that will be eagerly read
by old and young, alike It be-
longs on every patriotic Cana-
dian’s bookshelf.

To the men and women, con-
temporaries of beloved William
(OV Bill) Bennett, this book will
cause them to relive old memories
of the Canadian working class
struggles over the past forty
years and more. To the younger
_ folk this book will be a treasure-
_ trove, a rich picture of struggle

over the years, a soul-stirring
story of the life-work of a great
figure of Canada’s labor move-
ment. ;

Tom (McEwen’s book, in its
introduction and 20 chapters,
achieves the aim McEwen set
himself: “In these pages I have
attempted to make Ol’ Bill come
alive in the hearts of .unknown
readers, as he lives in the hearts
of those of us who were privi-
 leged to be his comrades.” Mc-
Ewen has succeeded in giving

wae a book that will prove to
be a powerful weapon in the
cause of socialism to which Wil-
liam Bennett devoted his entire
life. . :
eae
WILLIAM BENNETT was
born in Greenock, Scotland, on
May 8, 1881. He joined the Scot-
tish Labor party in September,
1897, as a lad of 16. Ol’ Bill came
to Canada in 1907, to Vancouver,
BL. For 42 years he made his
home there. There he worked
and fought and became one of
‘Canada’s.finest labor leaders. He
passed away in .Vancouver on
December 31, 1949, mourned by
countless thousands in Canada
in lands across the sea.
McEwen quotes Bennett: “A
study of the science of socialism
a life study, only fully learned
in the teeming struggle of daily
afte. — never learned by the pe-
dantic ‘socialist’ in his ivory
tower.’ :

‘Bennett as one of the founders
of the oe movement of

In chapter 7, the work of Bill —

He Wrote For Us (Tribune Pub-:

the Canadian working class and.

é

TOM McEWEN

He achieved the aim he set
himself.

Canada is described. In Decem-
ber, 1921, Ol’ Bill had been among
the first group of workers who
founded an organization in> B.C,
based upon the principles of com-
munism.

McEwen’s ‘book, in chapters 3

and 4, The (Heritage and To Live,

Unions Must Fight, gives a grip- |

ping descri tion of the harsh con-
‘ditions of € B.C. workers in
the early. years of this century,
of the famous Vancouver Island
coal miners’ strike battles. These
chapters show William Bennett
as an ardent, militant socialist,
who strove to combine the bitter
everyday struggles of the work-
ers against the inhuman oppres-
sion of the capitalist class with
the science of oscialism. .

As we avproach the 30th anni-
versary of the Communist move-
ment of Canada. He Wrote For
Us fittingly reminds its readers
of what Ol’ Bill wrote after at-
tending a convention of the
Labor-Progressive party in Van-
“couver in 1947:

“I sat in the city convention
of the Labor-Progressive party
in Vancouver last weekend. It
was so different from the first
gathering I attended when we

set up the Workers’ party in |

Vancouver that I think it is
something of a duty I owe to
the rab abes Lae here to register the

. ment

the it made upon me.

“The LPP of, today is the lineal

descendent of the Workers’ party
of a quarter of a century ago.
The name has changed—Work-
ers’ party, Communist party,
Labor-Progressive party — but
the principles, the objectives, the
character of the work and the
tasks are the same; the establish-
ment of socialism, not: the social-
ism that grew out of the fervid
imaginations of
dreamers, but that scientific so-
cialism which is the end prod-

uct of the process of social de- a

velopment, flirst understood:
through the genius of Marx and
Engels, whose 100th anniversary
we are celebrating this year, and

carried to a successful fruition ~

over one-sixth of ‘the world’s sur-
face by the guidancee of those
other men of genius, Lenin and
Stalin. ,

“In the winter of twenty-five
years ago, in much the same kind
of weather, twenty-two workers
came together in a dingy hall in
Vancouver. We discussed the kind
of a party that had, five years
before, led the workers and
peasants of Russia to rid their
country of the capitalist incubus,
set up a government of their own.
and begin the work of building
socialism as it had been taught
by Marx and Engels. We decided
that that was the kind of a party
we neded, so we set about the

job of making it. That twenty-

two was our total membership
for all B.C. then. . ‘
“This convention of the! Van-
couver City LPP had’ six times
as. many delegates as we had
members, 137 representing 41
‘clubs.
jiasm, but not a very profound
understanding. That had to be
acquired from experience.”

This book is a powerful weap-
on on the 30th anniversary of
Canada’s Communist movement
to build up, under-the leadership

- of Tim Buck, the founder of our

party, the great political instru-
that. (William | ‘Bénnett
fought for on the party of the
working class and the nation that
will save Canada from war, that -
will achieve people’s democracy, ’
national independence and so-
cialism for Claanda.
~ S Foi : Fos ‘

THIS BOOK. is a_ powerful

weapon because it tells of the

well-meaning

We had lots of enthus-_

achievements of one of the pio-

ways understood the cardinal
importance of the workers’ press.
Tom McEwen has done a mas-
terful job
the texture of his book the pow-
erful writings of Ol’ Bill who
wrote for Canada’s labor press
consistently over the years. We
can all learn much from tha
writings of William Bennett. Hlis
Was a working-class style, hard-
hitting and clear, always elevat-

ing truth, the humanism, the sol- .

idarity and courage of the work-
ing class.

He Wrote For Us must be used
to teach all of our labor journal-
ists and correspondents how to
improve their writing, how to
make our labor press stronger
and better in the service of Can-
ada and socialism. For William
Bennett was the dean of Cana-
dian labor journalism. I would
especially urge and ask ‘every
young comrade to read and study
this book, and to follow the ex- °
amples of William Bennett and
Tom McEwen, to learn; from

them — and write for the labor
press, for their own Champion
and for the Canadian Tribune
and the Pacific Tribune, as well

neers of our movement who al-,

in” weaving through

Grand book on life, times of Bill Bennett

as for'c our many other fine labor-
farmer papers.

McEwen quotes Ol’ Bill on this:
“Our papers; like good books,
must have ag their aim the rais-
ing of a worker’s consciousness
and scientific understanding of
‘life around him, to know what
‘side of the tracks he lives on’,
and why; to teach him to fight
his class enemy collectively, and
to transform his thinking and re-
actions into a science — the sci-
-ence of revolutionary Marxism?
OY Bill, in his ilfetime, McEwen

correctly emphasizes, became a. * by
man known and loved by many
thousands of working folk,a man ~
hated and feared by the capital- '
ists and their right-wing social
_ democratic lieutenants in the la-
bor movement. This book of Tom
McEwen’s on the life and tirfles
of ‘OV Bill is a timely, living
monument to William Bennett, a
tribute that will inspire many,
many thousands of Canadians to
follow the road that Tim Buck
and Ol’ Bill’and the other foun- ~— >
ders of our Communist move- A
ment charted out 30 years ago
when they gathered in the city
of Toronto in February, 1922, to
organize the Workers’ Party of see
Canada.—_CHARLES SIMS.

a

Turkish poet in Moscow

After being imprisoned for years in a Turkish jail from which

world protest secured his release a few months ago, Nazim Hik-
met, the famcas Turkish poet, is seeing the peaceful accomplish-

-ments of the socialist world his- poems have acclaimed. Here, at

the USSR’s Third Conference for Peace in Moscow, he talks with
Konstantin Simonov (left), Soviet novelist, and llya aang ate
(centre), world famous Soviet writer. |

““TRESSELL OF MUGSBOROUGH’

TRESSELL OF MUGSBOR-
OUGH ¥F. C. Ball (Lawrence
and tae London) is a book
about a book and its too-little-

short life in the bitter exploita-
tion, poverty and disease of Eng-
jand’s rural “tory belt”—and died
4 victim of TB at the age of 40

Four years after his death it
was discovered he had written a
book, consisting of 1,674 hand-
written sheets; a book destined to
become one of the great English
classics of working class strug-

The name of this author
Robert Noonan, but Tressell
was the pen name he left on his

erg 1 manuscript, The
: Trousered’ Pallant:

In his Tressell of Mugsborough
-F. C. Ball has done a masterful
job in restoring this Irish house _
painter and author of a great
‘working class historical novel to
his proper niche in literary his-
‘tery. ‘This book demonstrates

known author, who lived out his _

how much can be dond with so
little to do it with when a cap-
able craftsman is determined

that the ‘bourgeois curtain pf.

affected “respectability” shall not
be allowed to smother the flame
of genius. :

Tresgell’s book, The Rab pod
Trousered Philanthropists, is a
novel about workers. The work-
ers are in: the building trades,
where he himself eked out a pre-
carious existence; but what he
has to say is applicable to all
workers—to those like Tressell,
who dreamed and worked for so-
cialism and those legions of
others. who found social, ethical,
philosophical or religious excuses
and apologies for “their betters”
—the class whose exploitation op-
pressed them and ground them
into the social gutter.

These were the ragged-trous-
ered philanthropists whose readi-
ness to (imp when the boss
limped” has become a tradition in
some sections of British labor,
although the tradition is by no

cay = immortal working class

means confined to British work-
ers.

In Tressell of Mugsborough, F.
C. Ball has recorded the origin of
Tressell’s book and broken the
“loud silence” that has been de-—
liberately fostered in order to
keep this Irish house painter dis-
creetly obscured. Ball relates
how Tressell’s manuscript fared
in the hands of its first “dis-_
coverers”, how it was trimmed
and emasculated to soften the jar
of its biting realism upon middle-
class English “sensitiveness,” and
its dynamic impact upon the
thinking and socialist conscious- _
ness of millions of workers
throughout the English-speaking
world.

Ball Beingh his readers into in-
timate touch with all phases of
working elass life as seen and
experienced by Robert Tressell.

‘He has made Tressell live again —

together with other © working
class builders of his day and, like
a rxist artist, ae Tres-
sell’s hope that “. .. a golden light

novel

. . . will be diffused throughout °
all the happy world from the
rays of the risen sun of social-
ism,” with Sh legs a effect-
iveness.

_ Tressell of Mugsborough is a
worthy complement to The Rag-
ged Trousered Philanthropists.
Those “who read it will reach for.
or seek out again Tressell’s great
English classic. Ball’s book, like
Tressell’s own, has been written ,

‘for working men and women,
Ball describes _Tressell’s book as

“living propaganda for civiliza-—
tion’—the civilization of social-
ism. And this reviewer can com-

Mend Ball’s book as a brilliant

directive for the fuller use of
The Ragged Trousered Philan-
thropists in the fight for those
things Tresséll believed were the
right and heritage of his fellow-
men and his class.

Tressell of Mugsborough, priced
at $2.50, is available at the Peo-
ples’ Co-operative Bookstore, 337
West Pender St., Vancouver, -

| B.C.—TOM McEWEN,

DESIRE

Capsule
_Reviews

A PLACE IN THE SUN
Misses the social implications
of Dreiser’s great novel, An
American Tragedy, from which
it is taken, but still worth see-
ing for general excellence in
acting. me ere and direct-
ing. :

-SATURDAY’S HERO

_ Trials and tribulations of the

son of a Polish immigrant who
goes to college on a football
scholarship. Creditable job on
the big business aspects of the

college grid game. John Derek

and Donna Reed. nee

A STREETCAR NAMED, *
Elia Kaan’s strong direction
makes the film version of the
famous Broadway hit an ex-
citing, emotion-packed dbama.
Vivien ‘Leigh and Marion
Brando.

ws

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 11, 1952 — PAGE 10