Communists on prairies
fight to save farmers

countries is proving to be the
more stable market. Its expan-
nion requires the development of
two-way trade. In addition, there

A special meeting of the Sas-
katchewan Committee of ‘the
Communist Party was held in
Regina last week to discuss an
emergency farm program to cope
with the present agricultural
crisis.

Fred Schofield, Saskatchewan
provincial leader of the Party,
announced to the press that the
committees of the three prairie
-provinces will coordinate their
activities to campaign for the
emergency program and are call-
ing for a mass delegation from
the West to Ottawa. The import-
ant thing is to change the Tru-
deau policy, aimed at wiping out
half of the remaining farmers
and ruining rural based busi-
nesses, and offer a constructive
policy which would return pros-
perity to the agricultural sector.

The Communist Party is con-
vinced that the agricultural sur-
pluses can be sold. To do so the
Federal government must break
policies laid down over 20 years

ago, when the Liberal Party .

based its policies on the proposi-
tion that there would be a world
war, and simultaneously develop-
ed new economic policies which
subordinated the Canadian eco!
nomy to that of the United
States. The current market crisis
is a direct outcome of that
policy.

The trade established in more
recent times with the socialist

Theatre Review

are real - possibilities. for the
opening of new markets in Latin
America, Asia, and Africa.

There must be government
over-all planning, linking the di-
versification of Canadian agricul-
ture with the opening of new
markets. This is the only way to
avoid disastrous dislocation of
the market through indiscrimin-
ate diversifications. Such plan-
ning must aim to replace the pre-
sent policy of exporting guns
with a policy of exporting food.

By cutting the war budget in
half and using this money to give
credit to new markets we could
dispose of an extra 400,000,000
bushels of wheat at $2.00 per
bushel and leave $100,000,000 to
export dairy and poultry pro-

ducts to the protein hungry peo-.

ple of the world.

Until the government institu-
tes such plans to break the bot-
tlenecks on trade the Communist
Party is calling for a moratorium
on all farm debt, for special fin-
ancial assistance to rural muni-

‘cipalities, and for measures to

put cash into the hands of the
farmers.

The call of the Communist
Party is: TAKE YOUR CASE TO
OTTAWA. DON’T BE FORCED
OFF—FIGHT!

.

Viewing 1930's from 1970

Some forty years ago Ben
Hecht and. Charles MacArthur
wrote a Broadway hit, The
Front Page, which was soon
turned into a very successful
film. At the O’Keefe Centre
Torontonians are now enjoying a
brief revival of the play.

Well, things have changed
since Depression days. Today’s
newspaperman is more likely to
be a university graduate than
was his hard-boiled, souped-up
grandfather of the Thirties. To-
day’s politician owes more to his
public relations pro than to the
crude cunning his grandpa em-
ployed. And the modern police
force is a much more sophisti-
cated apparatus than’ the goon-
squads who terrorized the hun-
gry rebels of yesterday.

Yet, in 1970, reading about the
Senate’s hearings on the mass
media, we have reason to be
troubled. by the growing mono-
polies in press, radio and TV
which - doctor the information
media and brainwash the popula-
tion. In 1970 we should worry
more about the smoothie metro-
politan alderman than we did
about his more obvious yahoo of
an ancestor. And in 1970 we
have little evidence to suggest
that our law-enforcers have been
converted to humanity.

The Front Page story is about
a Chicago anarchist about to be
hanged for killing a cop. The
condemned man escapes, there
is a manhunt and he is eventual-
ly recaptured. In the course of
the excitement we are given very
unflattering views of three
American establishments, as
groups and as individuals—the
press, the politicians and the po-
lice. The mayor rants about the
“red menace” (his slogan: Re-
form the Reds with a Rope!) The
sheriff orders his men to shoot to

kill the fugitive (even though
there has been a reprieve.) The
reporters and the editor are_in-
terested only in headlines, by-
lines and circulation (there is not
a decent human being in the lot.)

The only person who shows
any human warmth and who by
contrast is a paragon of virtue,
turns out to be the whore. The
others are scoundrels, swine or
saps.

Soon, as you watch this play,
you must become aware that the
Chicago of 1928 lives again —
blown up a thousandfold in the
Chicago of the scandalous 1968
Democratic Convention and re-
peated in that farce of a trial-in
Judge Julius Hoffman’s court
today. :

The Front Page is not a ma
terpiece. It doesn’t have to be.
But it gets under your skin. It
is a healthy irritant. It unfrocks
the hypocrites and exposes their
foulness,

True,

acting, direction and

writing in the U.S. theatre have -

changed a great deal in forty
years. The director, Harold J.
Kennedy, has chosen caricature
or, more accurately, a “camp”
style, a broad cartoon treatment.
Characterization is accordingly
rather broad. Nevertheless the
play (with its high-decibel
laughs, high-voltage melodrama
and now-routine shock-words)
holds your interest and its peo-
ple register most of the time.
(The authors must derive some
posthumous delight in seeing so
many crummy types lampooned
once more.)

Principal cast members are
Ray Milland, DeVeren Bookwal-
ter, Colin Hamilton, Olive Deer-
ing, Peter Adams, Joseph Elic,
Brooks Morton, Leon Benedict
and Elizabeth Kerr.

—Martin Stone.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 13, 1970—Page 10

Questions for study

Canadian TV and U.S.A.

——

By BILL CAMPBELL

At the present time in Canada
there is something of a battle
raging between the owners, and
would-be owners, of cablevision
companies and a part of the
Canadian establishment repre-
sented to a large extent by the
Canadian Radio and Television
Commission. The conflict is
centered around bringing in U.S.
channels via cable.

U.S..PENETRATION

The position is brought about,
technically, by the fact that re-
latively few people in Canada
can receive U.S. TV with home
antennas. On the other hand,
practically all homes can be serv-
ed with these U.S. stations if
the signals are carried further
into Canada via microwave and
then distributed by a direct
cable hook-up. to each viewer.

‘This typical cablevision set-up

constitutes a broadcasting sta-
tion and, like all others, is sub-
ject to licencing by the federal
authority, the C.R.T.C. referred
to above. It is the recent policy
of the C.R:T.C. to be very, strict
about Who gets licences, which
are renewed and, not least, the
Commission requires the fullest
information about the personal
and national makeup of the
cablevision companies wishing to
operate.

This is not an entirely “new
policy by any means, rather the
sharpening of a traditional one in
the face of a new threat brought
on by the advance of microwave
techniques developed since 1963.
The reasons behind this policy in
a moment, but first some reveal-
ing figures that give the present
penetration of cablevision into
the 5,532,000 households of Can-
ada.

Some Canadian programs are
on cable, but it is safe to say
that the great majority are of
U.S. networks’ origin. As of Sep-
tember, 1969, 17 percent of all
households in Canada had cable-
vision: of urban homes, one in
four. The annual rate of growth,
since September 1968, has been
a whopping 45 percent. To round
out the picture; by November,
1968, 55 percent of the total
Canadian population, in the bor-
der areas only, had a potential
multi-channel service of Cana-
dian and U:S. stations with re-
ception varying from good to
bad. Lastly, having in mind the
close relationship between adver-
tising arid the “message” content
of its non-commercial subject

carrier, it is significant that in

1968, 75 percent of all Canadian

national TV advertising time was

taken by U.S. companies. .

It is hard to escape the conclu-
sion from the above that the ac-
ceptance of the economic and
political control of Canada by

the U.S.A. must be fostered by

the spreading of American news

and views through our TV sets.”

And, of course, this means Ame-
rican monopoly ‘news and
views.”

A FIGHTBACK

Not only has the C.R.T.C. stif-
fened up the licencing proced-
ures but has laid down certain
minimum Canadian content re-
quirements for programs over
which it has control. Altogether,
unlike other fields of national en-
deavor, it looks as if Canada is
not prepared to act out, in the
TV field, the usual, official kow-
tow to the Yankee overlord. The
bald fact is that anything less
than this (surprising) toughness
would have spelt death to the
Canadian boadcasting industry
in very short order. Consequent-
ly, that section of Canadian big
business—the. chartered banks,
trust companies, life insurance
corporations, the newspaper
chains—which are Canadian con-
trolled reacted in the way they
did because they cannot afford to
lose a very powerful communica-

tion medium to their foreign

competitors. This group is able,
apparently, for the time being
anyway, to defend its position
through the agency of the fede-
ral government. (As a “little bit
of luck” for the group, the sub-
ject of the battle is not some
hole in the ground at the back-
of-beyond, but a clamorous, ver-
satile bag of tricks well suited to
clout the enemy where it hurts!)
THE BANDWAGON

There is a great deal of totally

inaccurate twaddle being bandied

‘give a damn about a distin

about today in various tocalit#!
right across the country by thos
who want to get on the cablev!
sion bandwagon, and who do!
Canadian culture, the quality °
the arts, or the truth. The m@
stick-in-trade arguments of th”
gang of brigands is:

1. “80 percent of Canadia®
have access to U.S. progra
now, so why victimize the 1
of us?”

2. “Cablevision gives you H
wonderful variety.” The first, a
the above figures from the
reau of Broadcast Measuremée
show, is just plain bunk. ~7!
second is a little more subtlé
but leaving aside the importé?)
question of quality, the fact"
that CBC and CTV are carryill
a great many U.S. netw?

‘shows now. The opening them!

incidently, of these gentlemen!
usually a rabid anti-CBC funé. ,

Then there is a kind of “left
political point of view whl)
says “a plague on both y?
houses.” That all the protag)
ists are died-in-the-wool capitél.
ists. However—and a mighty bl
one at that—doesn’t scient!
socialism, Marxism, urge us ®
ways to look deeper and furth#
than surface appearances? i
take into account the interplé)
of all class forces, and their sub
divisions, in any given situatio!
The question must never be
this or that attitude compatibl
with some abstract democracy "|
abstract ‘socialism. Rather,
work out, to select, from all t!
realities of the situation what #
titude and consequent actio?
can further the self-understat®
ing of working people as a el
and so.aid in the real fight f!
socialism. To see what benef?
can be grasped for these ends »)
involvement in the contradl
tions arising ‘between sectors ?
the owning class.

Not so long ago the workilh
people of Canada, and their ®
lies, both temporarily and othe
wise, missed out on making 3%
vances against the main enem)!
American imperialism — JO
Diefenbaker and the Bomatl
missiles, James Coyne and ov!
national finances, Walter Gord0!
and Canadian ownership.

Naturally, it is easy to gf
caught up in phoney nationalist!
positions. Or, rather, allow
genuine struggle for national if)
dependence to deteriorate int0
new national oppression. 14?
plight of Ireland, the danger
Quebec, must never be forgotte"
Of course. But, as the old sayif#)
has it, he who fears wol¥”)
shouldn’t get into the forest. |