ES SS _ is

The creation of the British
Columbia Federation of Unem-
ployed under B.C. Federation of
Labor was a long over-due but
highly welcome decision.

To tackle chronic unemployment
and growing economic crisis, the
BCFE must be seen as an auxiliary
in the struggle for workingclass
interests, economic and political,
instead of a body subordinate to a
top-heavy trade union burocracy.

No ‘investigations’ are required
at- this date to establish the
‘causes’ of unemployment nor sta-
tistics to ‘prove’ its extent or
devastating consequences. Organ-
ized labor has filled government
archives with a wealth of material
on these matters, plus the disast-
erous results of government
neglect at all levels.

To measure up to its job the
BCFE must become a federation
of action; a body geared to the
central idea that its demand for
work and wages is paramount,
fighting for adequate compensa-
tion for enforced idleness mean-
time, and determined. that no
workingman or his family will be
deprived of their homes or effects
by seizures or foreclosures. To
fight for policies designed to pro-
Vide peacetime construction and an
end to reckless arms spending;
policies backed by mass action at
every level of government which
seeks to ignore or sidestep these
basic demands of working people.

Only last week several clergy-

men and other ‘mission’ leaders
‘deplored’ the lack of sufficient

beds and accomodation to shelter
jobless and destitute workers in
Vancouver. The coming winter will
see this picture steadily worsen-
ing.

What a lot of these people don’t
see, and what the BCFE cannot
afford not to see, is the need of
mass action to back up its de-
mands; that something more than
polite talk by ‘hat-in-hand’ delega-
tions is required to compel Ottawa
and Victoria to act, and produce
something more than patchwork

Pacific Tribune
Editor —- TOM McEWEN
Associate Edixor — MAURICE RUSH
Business Mgr. — OXANA BIGELOW
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Action to win jobs

panaceas to meet the destitution
of unemployment:

A government which pours close
to half the nation’s resources, to
the tune of 1'4-billion dollars down
the arms drain annually, and ex-
ports Canadian jobs along with
resources at the dictates of Wash-
ington, will not be moved by polite
exchanges to meet its responsibil-
ity to a growing army of jobless
workers.

The BCFE must have one prime
answer to this tory callousness
whenever and where ever it ap-
pears; mass action to back up its
demand for jobs, for economic
security, for an end to a suicidal
arms race, which has_ brought
nothing to working people except
unemployment, tension and ruin
in its wake.

Pursuing a militant policy
coupled with demonstrative action
for the right to work and social
security, the BCFE can become a
tremendous foree for labor and
general progress, fully worthy of
its great mission. Lulled into pas-
sivity by parliamentary blandish-
ments, (as has been the case in the
past) the BCFE can expire in
its infancy.

A million jobless should mean
‘take off the gloves.’

Mayor boosts unity’

Our versatile Mayor Tom Als-
bury, at home on most platforms
whether tory, liberal, socred ..or
CCF, was ‘pinch-hitter’ for Socred
Highways Minister Gaglardi at the
recent gathering of the B.C. Auto-
motive Transport Association.

Disturbed over the “recent
clashes” in the UN sessions, Mayor
Alsbury told his audience (almost
half American) that “Canada and
the U.S. must stand together more
than ever before.”

This “stand together” idea has
been a costly business for Canada,
beginning with the St. Laurent-
Pearson-CCF “integration” form-
ula, and ending up with U.S. dom-
ination of our industrial resources,
our military forces, our suicidal
arms spending, our so-called “de-
fence.” In fact the complete U.S.
domination of Canada’s economic
and political destinies; the dicta-
tion of.our very survival.

Just how much more we “must
stand together” only Alsbury and
those who think like him may
know, but we doubt it. But the fact
cannot be brushed aside that this

“Standing together” has cost uS
our independence and sovereignty,
our jobs and our national dignity |
as a free people. What little may
have been left us Diefenbaker
heaved into the U.S. pot in his UN
address, when he abandoned thé
neutralist nations’ struggle for
peace and acted out the degrading
role of stooge to a hardpressed U.S:
imperialism.

Our two countries, quoth Mayoly
Alsbury, ‘must strengthen ties and
cement bonds’. In the forthcoming
municipal elections our NORAD:
harassed taxpayers. may hayé
something to say to Mayor Alsbutry)
on this U.S.-Canada “cement” busl
ness. :

Already taxed to the limit, Vat
couver’s municipal finances (with
hundreds of B.C. municipalities ™
a like dilemma) are unable to meet
the multiplicity of needed social
services because of this “standing
togetherness” advocated by Als
bury on behalf of Socred Gaglard!:

‘Standing together’ with the
American people in the cause 0
peace and friendship is one thing
What Alsbury’s “standing 10
gether” means is something el”
tirely different; a position which
an ever-growing number of Cal
adians are realizing is disasteroU®
for their peace, security and sul
vival.

—

HE U.S. presidential election
T campaign is spilling over into
Canada via the TV route. It can
hardly be said, however, that either
of the contending gladiators in the
presidential race provide any im-
provement to the low-grade quality
of TV programs, or to political en-
lightenment in this country.

In the so-called ‘‘policy debates”’
between candidates Nixon and
Kennedy, TV fans sometimes won-
der just. when either or both can-
didates will ‘break’ through their
frothy orations with a sales talk
(or a singing commercial) on the
high deodorant qualities of ele-
phant or jackass soap, or the great
‘new discovery’ of an unsurpassed
goldball shampoo. Certain it is that
such an innovation would in no
Way impair their performances to
date, as seen in Canada.

When a California friend wrote
us that placards in considerable
numbers are now being carried on
automobiles around San Francisco
bearing the slogan “Vote NO for
President,’”’ we were happy at least

to know that a great many Ameri-
cans shared our opinion that there
wasn’t much to choose from be-
tween Nixon and Kennedy.

Since “differences”? between tor-
ies and liberals, democrats or re-
publicans are of much less im-
portance to the common man than
their ‘unity of minds’, we see the
Nixon-Kennedy debaters doing a
lot of shadow-boxing on the ills
bedevilling the U.S. economy, but
both fully agreed on the need of
preserving and extending the ‘“‘big-
stick - position-of-strength-massive-
retaliation” of the Truman-Dulles-
Eisenhower era.

Both spend a good deal of their
time telling the U.S. (and the
world) how they are going to
“stand up” to Nikita Khruschchev;
how a ‘new’ virile ‘youthful’ Amer-
ica, under their magic touch, is
going to regain world leadership
and respect. And all because ‘if
elected’, each is going to endow
America with a greater “striking
power” against the menace of ‘in-
ternational communism’. We can
well, imagine millions of Ameri-
cans, already fed up to the gills
with this coldwar guff and its econ-
omic consequences, thinking in
terms of a “NO” protest vote rath-
er than a Kennedy or a Nixon for
president.

Little has been said in these pres-
idential ‘debates’ on how a growing
army of 5-million or more jobless
American workers is going to be

solved, and still less on the burn-
ing issue of civil rights; the right
of the American Negro people to
full equality in all things, and se-
curity against racist lynch mobs,
operating under state government

protection.
Of course both candidaes ere all
for “peace”, but... and the “buts”

are more numerous than the bris-
tles on an Oklahoma razorback
hog. In short, they are both for
‘peace’; a peace based upon bigger
and better H-bombs and ‘‘means
of delivery.” Both are for “peace-
ful coexistence,” providing either
in the capacity of president, dic-
tates the terms of “existence.” -

The choice of course is for the
American people and not us. Look-
ing at Ottawa and Victoria, we are
scarcely qualified to venture al
opinion on whether or not ‘Vote
‘No’ For President’ is the only
alternative. But it does express 4
protest against policies which lead
the American people, ourselves;
and the world, to the brink of
disaster.

Perhaps the Irish playwright
Brendan Behan, (now reported 01:
the “water wagon’) sums it uP
better: “If you have a Russian pas*
port, half the world wants to get
rid of you. And if you have a2
American passport, the other hal
hates you.”

So far the U.S. presidential “de
bate” would seem to be an e*
tention of that unhappy division?

—

f
October 21, 1960—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Pagé