LPP points the way HE national committee of the Labor-Progressive party has sounded a clear note of leadership for the whole labor and democratic movement. In his report to the leading party people drawn from all parts of Canada, Tim Buck drew the conclusion that the fight for peace is the over-riding task confronting the communists and all progressive people in the labor and farm movements. ‘ i The fight for peace is the fight for the independ- ence of Canada. To continue the present journey to- wards atomic war and even more abject "subservience to the U.S. military, would be to. plunge our country into catastrophe. The course of ‘this journey can be changed by mass popular action for peace and for Canada. These are the twin thoughts which stand out in Tim Buck’s report and in the conclusion of the LPP national committee. The danger of war has increased in the past year; but the organized strength of the peace camp throughout the world has also increased. The fighting peace policy advanced by the LPP is: —To organize the peace movement in every place of work and in every place of residence. —To put the full power of the party behind the successful conclusion, right away, of the Ban tha Bomb petition of the Canadian Peace Congress. _——To fight back and expose every warlike act or _ expression and to let slip no opportunity to tell Can- adians the truth about the sell-out of Canada to the U.S. trusts. This is the sort of policy of action’ which must sweep through the whole labor movement like a re- __ freshing wind, blowing away the poisonous weeds of __ confusion, defeatism and) division sown by the right wing CCF’ers who are the agents of the St. Laurent- _ Truman-Attlee policy within the working class. The forces of peace and democracy in the world are stronger than the forces which make for war. It is in North America, the home of the atomaniacs, where the responsibility for peace rests most heavily on the active workers in the labor and farm moye- ments. The crystal-clear leadership given to the workers of the world by the resolutions of the Communist In- formation Bureau assisied the LPP national com- mittee to reach its powerful conclusions. That is as it should be. The fight for peace, against the organ- izers of a new world war—which is the method of the fight for socialism—is a world fight, not limited to the people of any one country. At the same time the national committee pointed out that the fight for peace must begin where we live —in Canada. There can be no independence of Can- - ada, no national pride and patriotism of a truly pro- gressive character, without a policy of peace. Likewise, there can be no democracy worth its name without the fight for peace, for who can separate the fascist-like acts of Duplessis Quebec or the DP outrages in Timmins from the efforts of the war- mongers to defeat the workers at home as a prelude to World War III? There can be no fight for the economic needs of the people—jobs, relief, the 40-hour week, wage in- crases, guaranteed prices for the farmers—that will be really effective unless the fight against the Made- in-the-U.S. economic crisis is seen as part of the drive to war against the Soviet Union. \ These were the main conclusions of the important and epoch-marking meeting of the LPP national com- mittee. The maturity of the party was seen when Tim Buck’s 20th year of party leadership was greeted by the great audience at Massey Hall and by telegrams from the Communist parties all over the world—and chiefly the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. sue of National Affairs Monthly, will carry the main speeches and resolutions of this meeting of the van- guard party of the Canadian workers—the LPP. Every reader should study them carefully and make their contents known to all his fellow workers and friends. . : Debunking the H-bomb : A MOSCOW broadcast on the hydrogen bomb, & labelling it “the bogey of Wall Street” and ‘‘a mew smokescreen which will blind and stupify the average American”, should do much to counteract the screaming headlines in the capitalist press which have confused many Canadian people, including pro- From the time that the H-bomb was first hurled ento Page One by the nation’s editors, the Pacific _Tribune has warmed against acceptance of the war- mongers’ wild claim that the bomb “‘is a super-weapon capable of wiping out mankind.”” We pointed out that ~ ‘ ‘the unfounded assertion of Yankee imperialism laud- ang the H-bomb as “1000 times more powerful than the A-bomb’’ was merely an attempt to regain a posi- _ toa of “top dog’’ in the minds of the people, so that they. could win popular support for their false theory of an easy, push-button war and quick victory in the event of a conflict with the Soviet Union, ____Becanse the H-bomb is primarily a psychological _ weapon, any acceptance of its supposed ‘‘super pow- ers”, regardless of whether this acceptance is coupled with a demand for banning it or not, registers as a tase Roa sic alle there emotional reaction _ of horror at the idea of another terrible atomic weapon __ of destruction being created to overrule their rational words of Moscow’s radio commentator: “The Amer- ican atom bomb was once in great vogue. Now it is judgment on the question would do well to study the the new hydrogen bogey that is enjoying a honeymoon. It was needed by Wall Street for both domestic and foreign aims. But Wall Street was unable to alarm the people of the world with the atom bomb and it certainly will not succeed in doing so with its fairy tales about the hydrogen bomb.” This does not in any way minimize the horrors of a Third World War. All war is horrible; any war waged in this atomic age would be more terrible in its destruction and devastation than any previous con- flict. For this reason the fight for peace, which in- cludes the fight to ban the A-bomb and the H-bomb, is the life-or-death issue for all mankind. A concrete step in the direction of world peace _ was taken this week by the Canadian Peace Congress, which asked Prime Minister St. Laurent not to supply shipments of uranium to the United States until a. new clause is inserted in the U.S.-Canadian contract, to read: “Canadian uranium shall not be used in produc- tion of atomic weapons, including the hydrogen bomb, and action must be pressed in the United - _ Nations for banning atomic weapons,” _ Support for this action by progressive organiza- tions from coast to coast, and securing of thousands of signatures on the Peace Congress Ban the Bomb petitions during the final week of the petition cam- paign, are practical methods by which Canadian citi- _zens and their organizations can help to halt the Yan- kee war “‘blitz’’ and maintain peace in the world. - makes these observations: Next week’s Pacific’ Tribune, and the March is-_ -but what he does to give substance to his words and by Printed by Union Printers Ltd., 650 HAL GRIFFIN As We See It READER in Victoria has written to this column protesting Tom A McEwen’s scathing comment on Jack Scott’s column in the Van- couver Sun recording the passing of “Ol’ Bill” Bennett—“Twenty : column inches of a cheap sneer at the party and the ideals which | Ol’ Bill’s whole life epitomized.” “Jack Scott’s column was very good, in my estimation,” writes the reader, “In fact, I tore it out and hung it on the wall along with his —_ column of January 5 (dealing with his letter from Steve Brodie) and — after reading your attack on the column I took it down and re-read | it, and I still figure it was a very good column. In fact, to my way of | thinking, it makes better reading than a great deal of the words print- ed in the Pacific Tribune dealing with Ol’ Bill’s funeral,” Then, in the course of his somewhat lengthy letter, the reader “Why does the staff of the Pacific Tribune spend so much time a deriding Jack Scott when there is so much other : materia] that needs printing deploring the system we are living under?”’ ; “I don’t know how far you or others would expect Jack Scott to go in his writings. It seems quite ap- parent to me that the only thing that keeps him on the payroll is his popularity, because he sure sticks his neck out further than any other columnist I have ever read in a capitalist paper .. . He has writ- ten several columns that would be a credit to. any writer for a labor paper.” : “What is to be gained attacking writers like : Scott and Elmore Philpott instead of concentrating on others who are ‘constantly supporting this phony system?” The letter is important precisely because it is in itself proof of the — need for taking sharp issue with Scott and others like him, for he is — by no means a unique product of the commercial press, wherever the corrosive acid of their real purpose spills across the fine words in 7 which they denounce prejudice and injustice, eS © 1 It is not correct,'of course, to state that Tom McEwen and other | staff writers are constantly deriding Jack Scott. But neither can the Pacific Tribune ignore a columnist who speaks to 150,000 people every day and influences their thinking. By what process does our Victoria reader separate Jack Scott from the commercial press for which he is a highly paid writer? You can no more separate Jack Scott from the intricate system of big business propaganda of which the daily press” is a part than you can separate M. J. Coldwell, the “socialist”, from the — capitalist system his party upholds in the name of ending that cap-_ italist system. Let our Victoria reader ask himself this question: Why. does the Vancouver Sun continue publishing Scott if it does not find it profit- able? The answer is that Scott, who frequently uses his talent to expose the injustices, the ills, the wrongs that thousands of people know in their own lives, retains these people as readers of his paper when otherwise the slanted news, the government-line editorials, the hyster- ical warmongering headlines might cause them to cancel their sub- scriptions in disgust. . °, The employment of “left” columnists, who are given an apparently free hand to write as they please, has always been a part of the Van- couver Sun’s policy—and it has paid off. Our Victoria reader may not remember Bob Bouchette who, before he swam out into Burrard Inlet one night never to return, enjoyed a popularity fully aS great as that of Scott, but in the thirties the Vancouver Sun used to advertise him as “The Workers’ Friend” and many a worker was fooled into believing that until some particularly vicious column destroyed the illusion, Scott, who belittled Ol Bill (“Few of OP Bill’s opponents knew he existed ...”) might reflect on the fleeting of fame, How many people remember Bob Bouchette, who spoke to hundreds of thousands but was not one-of them? But how many more will remember Ol!’ Bill a century from now precisely because he spoke for the future in our time and was in fact a leader among working people. That is the final test of a people’s writer, not only what he says is personal | experience and participation to test the validity of his conclusions. But Scott speaks as the observer, aloof from the struggle, recording but never sharing and never really knowing the things of which he writes That is why he can see poverty and corruption—but not the poverty n of the press for which he writes and to whose defense he occasionally springs with vituperation against the Pacific Tribune. 3 OV Bill understood these things well, As for instance when h commented on a reporter for the Yorkshire Post who was fired fo participating in a May Day demonstration: 4 \ own and take part in any real anti-capitalist activity, then his name will be mud.” te il} a I cy “a al Hi Ta 2 ray | uu mtn ] ] NU A 7 AN) EDD) Ry 2!) fl A t J ox Vi | By LW GON Ay ey tol cere, Neeedehs Nf Sete © Published Weekly at 650 Hi By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD. A : Telephone 5288 ae Tom McEwen ...4 . sy Sewer ce Pee he we ane Subscription Rates: 1 Year, $2.50; Howe second class mail, Post | I 1 \ wey