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‘Cm Pe 5

eid, DAILY WORLD

With loving care

400 AT BANQUET

COPE kicks off

election drive

About 400 persons attended

the lively Halloween banquet and

dance at Maglio’s last Friday night to hear Alderman Harry Rankin,
meet the COPE candidates, and kick off the civic election campaign.

Introduced by COPE official
Dave Werlin, Rankin told the
audience the old guard NPA
aldermen, headed by Tom
Campbell, will attempt to cover
up the real issues facing Van-
couver residents by substituting
a phony “law and- order”
campaign.

He said some of the issues are
the inequitites in tax assess-
ments, the lack of housing, the

“need of rapid transit as opposed

to freeways and bridges.

Shaugnessy voters, he said,
are class conscious. They get out
to vote in civic elections
because they have at stake not
only low tax assessment on
homes and business, but because
they know the NPA are their
friends and protectors.

Working class people have to
become class conscious too,
Rankin said. They have at stake
comparatively high taxes on
their homes, lack of decent
housing, high rents, and spiral-
ling costs of living.

We have clear evidence that by
turning out people in the area
from Main to Boundary to vote
we can have a change in civic
government, a progressive
council. Rankin said there is
little sense of workers struggling
for a 50 cent raise while allowing
reactionary governments at all
levels to take it away from us.
“They rob us blind,”’ he charged.

The War Measures Act
imposed by Trudeau, and the
gleeful support and use of it by
reactionary provincial and civic
authorities show that “in the
interests of democracy” they
will strangle democracy.

The labor alderman was
presented with a book in which
the hundreds of people present
inscribed their names. NDP
candidates were also introduced.

Folk singer Tom Hawken sang
several songs for the gathering.
COPE candidate Ron Gomez
was master of ceremonies.

COPE school board candidates
hit ‘thought control’ order

Branding Attorney General
Les Peterson’s order-in-council
calling for the. immediate dis-
missal of any public school
teacher or university professor
who either in spirit or action
appears to support the policy of
the FLQ, as thought-control,

intimidation and harrassment.

of one section of the population,
Margaret Chunn, Russell Peder-
son and Paul Mitchell, School
Board Candidates for the Com-
mittee of Progressive Electors
urged the B.C. government to
rescind this legislation immed
iately.

Pointing out that there are
sufficient safe-guards in the
Criminal Code and the Public
Schools Act to handle any
situation which the Provincial
Government apparently fears
could happen, the candidates
said, ‘‘Our heritage of inde-
pendent thinking and expression

of opinion ,hasybeen; tog dearly.
PACIFIC TRIBUNE2Z FRIDAY, ‘NOVEMBER
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bought to see it washed away in
an atmosphere of aroused
emotions, the witch hunt and
persecution of any group or
individual.”’

“If the Provincial Govern-
ment was as quick to respond to
some of the real problems of
education here, there would be
no overcrowding and lack of
proper school rooms and facili-
ties, and our children would not
be in danger of being short-
changed on their education,”
the candidates said.

“Teachers and the public will
note that the new order-in -
Council came out at the time the
teachers were preparing to take
a strike vote on the pension
issue. It would appear to us that
the order was directed as much
to circumvent action by the
teachers on the economic front,
as any concern about state-
ments about the FLQ,” the

nelease concluded.
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Public must guard against
new repressive legislation

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

What were the real reasons for
invoking the War Measures Act?
What are the results likely to be?

Before answering these
questions, let me say that
political terrors must be con-
demned in the strongest possible
terms. Terrorism has_ never
succeeded in bringing about
progressive political change.
Only the united and determined
will of the majority of the people
can do that.

Terrorism discredits and.

defeats the very causes it
espouses. What is more
important, it provides an excuse
for repressive action by those
who wish to destroy democratic
liberties and pin the label of
subversion on all protest and
reform movements.

Premier Bourassa’s claim that
the two FLQ kidnappings
constituted an ‘‘apprehended
insurrection” doesn’t stand up
under examination despite the
lurid follow-up stories. And the
fact that Premier Bourassa and
mayor Drapeau are part of a cor-
rupt and dictatorial power struc-
ture that has no parallel in any
other part of Canada makes their
claims doubly suspect.

A much more logical reason
for the use of the War Measures
Act being advanced by know-
ledgeable political observers is
that the authorities in Ottawa
and Quebec were becoming
increasingly apprehensive over
the rising wave of social discon-
tent and political protest that
challenged the political rule of
the Establishment.

Unwilling to take any remedial
measures, a solution was sought
in a show of force. The FLQ kid-
nappings provided the setting for
such action. Wholesale arrests
were made, all civil and consti-
tutional liberties suspended and
the label of FLQ terrorism was
pinned on political opponents of
Bourassa and Drapeau,
including the. Parti Quebecois
(which received 24 percent of the
popular vote in the last provin-
cial eleetion), the Political
Action Front (FRAP) which
sought civic reform in Montreal,
and the trade union movement.

Most Canadians are probably
unaware of how bad things are in

’ Quebec.

That province has 41 percent
of all Canada’s unemployed.
Montreal slums are among the
worst in North America. The
average income in Quebec is
one third below that of Ontario.
Most industries in Quebec are
owned outside of the province.
French Canadians, with a 300
year history, have a strong sense
of national identity. They resent
being kept in a position of
inequality and they demand the
right to run their own lives.

Invoking the War Measures
Act and placing Quebec under
virtual military occupation may
temporarily inhibit political
protest, but not for long because
nothing is. being done about the
causes. Suppressing the
symptoms of a disease is no
cure. In fact, the actions .of
Bourassa and Drapeau have
brought a new unity among their
opponents. Today new powerful
political pressures are being
generated that may yet bring
about Bourassa’s eventual politi-
cal defeat.
oA, second reasonifor invoking

won

the War Measures Act may well
have been pressure from big
Canadian and U.S. corporations
to restrict civil liberties in all of
Canada. The trend had already
been established by the anti-
trade union legislation now a
marked feature in all provinces.
Applying the War Measures Act
to all of Canada creates a
climate for a shift to the right in

Canadian politics. This is
already being expressed in at
least three ways.

One is that it creates an atmos-
phere of fear, intimidation and
repression in which all forms of
protest — against unem-
ployment, the sell out of our
resources to foreign interests,
or Canadian complicity in U.S.

See RANKIN, pg. 3

@

J ust in case anyone gets the idea that violence origin-

ated with the Front de Liberation du Quebec
(FLQ) they should revamp that idea pronto, by taking a good
look at history. While the late Henry Ford of flivver fame
declared in a U.S. judicial hearing that “‘history is the bunk,” it
does contain many salient lessons for today’s social anarchy.
The history of the American labor movement is itself a
history of racketeering, gangsterism and cold-blooded murder
by the dupes of an Establishment that will go to any length
(and has) in order to preserve its ‘‘god-given’”’ right to exploit

and profit and prey upon the people. If murdér was required,

the bourgeoisie have never been squeamish on that account.

Jay Gould, big baron of the American rail systems in the
late 80’s of the last century, declared at a big rail conference of
his colleagues, that ‘‘if necessary, I can hire one half of the
American working class to kill the other. half.’ Today’s
Establishment are perhaps less frank, but no less savage in
their determination to ‘‘rub out’’ any who effectively chal-
lenge their class interests. So don’t let’s get overly maudlin
about violence, only learn who are its prime instigators.

When we have done so, we may rightly condemn the
terrorism and violence of the FLQ, remembering meantime
that it has had ample object lessons from a source that
virtuously decries violence, as-it uses it to the fullest extent in
the ‘‘solution”’ of its economic, political or other problems.

Thirty-eight years ago this week the government of Tory
Richard Bedford Bennett, ‘“‘Iron Heel’’ as he was better known
in the then army of jobless workers, attempted to shoot
Communist leader Tim Buck in a Kingston Penetentiary cell.
When this attempted murder was flashed across Canada,
Bennett himself flatly denied any such attempt on the life of
Tim Buck was made. Later, however, when further denials
became futile, Bennett admitted that ‘‘shots were fired at
Buck, but only to quieten him.” :

While the great prison was then under the martial law of
the Kingston garrison, it was an ignorant prison guard and not
a member of the military garrison which pulled the trigger and
sent eleven bullets into Buck’s cell, all within a circle of 11-
inches. Not bad shooting for a dull, cloudy day, a high
trajectory, and a stupid guard filled to the ears with
Establishment propaganda anent Communists, and hoping for
promotion for ‘‘getting’’ Tim Buck.

It was most embarrassing for an Establishment to admit
that it had stooped to attempted murder to gain its ‘‘ob-
jective’ and when Bennett himself visited the prison to ‘‘see
for himself,’’ the eight Communists incarcerated were taken
outside the prison walls as a ‘‘security’’ precaution, something
that was never done before or since in Canadian penal
administration. No doubt the ‘‘great man”’ believed in ghosts,
as his successor, the Liberal King was wont to consult the
spooks when vexing problems of state arose.

It was only after the latter had ‘‘passed on”’ that the
Canadian people learned that for nearly 20 years they had been
“‘governed’’ by spooks from another world (?) rather than by a
Tory or Liberal regime.

But it would seem that the spooks were also addicts of
violence, if one is to judge by the record of labor’s dead and
maimed on picket lines, in the bush, or wherever most
convenient for an Establishment’s ‘‘running dogs’’ to encircle
their quarry.

Ginger Goodwin, Jim Davis, and other well-known working
class leaders shot down in cold blood, not forgetting the three
Estevan coal miners. The pattern had never varied, only the
pretexts, the excuses, the alleged ‘‘justification’’ for such
murders, and/or the resort to murder and killing between man
and man over some trifling dispute or other. . . oe

Canadian cities, like Vancouver. nowadays, is rolling up a
staggering tally of murders and attempted murders, almost as
good as Chicago or New York. Police shoot indiscriminately.at

“suspects or alleged suspects, while Establishments, Tory or

Liberal, Democrat or Republican, fulminate against violence
— as they enact laws which promote violence. and as in
Vietnam. Cambodia and elsewhere, draw fat dividends for the

class they are elected to serve.

ihn amen

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