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EDITORIAL PAGE. x

TOM McEWEN, Editor — HAL GRIFFIN, Associate Editor — RITA WHYTE, Business Manager.

Comment

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Tom
McEwen

“VES people from all over the world
come here daily,” the superinten-

dent told us; “in fact, you could say that.

One-quarter of all visitors to Highgate
Cemetery visit Marx’s grave.” :

I stood bareheaded beside the simple

grave of this man who had lived a life
of hardship and exile, and bequeathed
to his fellowmen a priceless science of
revolutionary advancement. Even’ as I
Stood there the realization came home
to me in full force that had it not, been
for Karl Marx, I and millions like me
Would have remained little more than
human beasts of burden. :
_ Now, over one-third of all humanity,
inspired. and guided by revolutionary
Marxism, are working out and directing
their own destiny, setting a world pat-
tern for freedom and enlightenment
prick will ultimately embrace all man-
ind.

Men and women of the British Labor
Party, trade unionists, Communists and
Social democrats, people of all races,
colors and creeds visit the grave of Karl
Marx. Reverently they stoop to touch
this little bit of English earth and the
deep crimson rose which same loving
hand has planted, and think of the multi-
Sided struggles before them with renew-
ed inspiration — the struggle to wrest
Canada from the talons of the Yankee
warmongers and win full independence
for the people of Canada; the struggle to
smash the “spy” war conspiracies of “Pig
Tron Bob” Menzies in Australia; the
struggle for independence and self-deter-
Mination for the peoples of Malaya,

Burma, Africa: the struggle of the all
Colonial peoples for freedom, with the
Victory of which full freedom of the peo-
bles in the capitalist sector of the world
is inseparably linked; the struggle for
Peace in a world tired of war.

Some loving hands had placed flowers
there a day or so before my visit. Others
come on all the tomorrows until the
“Brotherhood of Man and the Federation
Of the World” has been achieved. Some
Irsh worker had once planted a sprig of
shamrock there. Now it spreads and lifts
its verdant green in everlasting chal-
lenge.

it bes HY

Karl Marx sleeps in Highgate Ceme-
tery (founded in 1839) side by side with
many great men and women of English
arts and letters whose works have be-
come the cultural’ heritage of all pro:
Sressive humanity. :

Mary Ann Cross, better known as

“George Eliot,” author of some of Eng-
land’s finest literature, and her adopted
daughter, Elma Stuart, one of the first
Pioneers in the prevention and cure of
diseases, whose epitaph. speaks for all
-. . “Of those immortal dead who: live
again in minds made better by their
Presence.” 4 i

Henry Crabb Robinson (1867), “Friend
and associate of Goethe and Wordsworth,
Wieland and Coleridge, Flaxman and
Blake Clarkson and Charles Lamb . . . he
honored and loved the great and noble
in their thoughts . . . and his religion
corresponded to his life.” .

Michael Faraday and Herbert Spenc-
er, great thinkers, rebels of philosophers
Of their day. —°

At the entrance to Highgate Cemetery
is a huge red-granite mausoleum the
size of a two-car garage, the burial place
of one of Canada’s robber railroad

barons, “Strathcona and Mount Royal.” —

But few pause to look at this monument
to pelf and plunder as they wend their
Way among the silent graves, seeking out
those whose lives enriched all humanity;
Seeking out the hallowed grave of Karl

arx, immortal architect of a new world.

_ until a few years ago.

f
#

il

Ho” long is Premier Bennett
going to remain silent on the
B.C. Electric fare increase? In
face of the shocking revelations of
‘misconduct’ by the part of the

Public Utilities Commission, Ben-
‘nett’s statement last. week about .

appeal procedure cannot be ac
cepted as a serious statement.
The appellants know the appeal
procedure, and if they don’t, they
can get legal advice. But this ts
evading the real issue, namely,
does Premier Bennett endorse the
flagrantly biased actions of his
commissioners.

The commissioners’
and actions are such as to war:
rant an indictment. They have
falsified figures to produce an
argument for increased . fares.
They have “discovered new

conduct

‘evidence not submitted by B.C.

Electric at the public hearing, but
introduced by the commissioners
after the heaning in an attempt
to justify the increase in Vancou-
ver. Precisely because they knew
the facts would not sustain them,

qi: “f) 3

Put the rascals out!

they refused to give reasons for
their judgment until compelled
to by public anger. They claim
to have made a mistake of over
$750,000 due to “‘inadvertency.

- and stress of time.”

However, this claim is given
the lie by the fact that they cal-
culated the company’s so-called
increased wage costs by estimat-
ing the, total of wage settlements
during the period concerned,
when the actual total wages paid
by the company for the years
concerned were available, and
showed an insignificant increase.

_This proves the commission’s in-,

tent to present the company’s
case in the most plausible light—
in effect, falsification. |

Powerful interests stand be-
hind this commission. But it has
gone too far this time. A private
citizen would be prosecuted for
a much lessér offense. The public
is demanding that these commis
sioners be fired and the increases
rescinded. ‘Action is overdue,
Premier Bennett!

Outlaw racial discrimination

THE charge that the Jamaican wife
of a Canadian school teacher was
asked to leave exclusive Shawnigan
Lake Boys’ School on Vancouver
Island has evoked universal con-
demnation and had its repercussions
:n Ottawa and Kingston, where the
Jamaican legislature has called for
strong representations to the Cana-
dian government. ;
“Ie is to be hoped that this widely
publicized incident wifl serve to
direct an aroused public opinion to
the many unpublicized incidents that
occur daily throughout our province.,

There are those who too easily
salve their. consciences with the

thought that racial hatred no longer

finds the same blatant expressions
which disgraced our provincial scene
But it per-
sists in many ways — in discrimin-

ation against Negro citizens in hotels
and beer parlors, against Native In-
dians in restaurants, in restrictive
housing covenants against Jews and
Chinese, and particularly in discrim-
inatory employment practices against
Negroes and Native Indians, Jews,
Chinese and Japanese.

At the time of the Clemens case
in Vancouver, in which the Social
Credit government evaded the public
demand for a full inquiry, there was
a widespread sentiment for provincial
legislation to make racial discrimina-
tion the crime against society which,
in fact, it is.

The need for such legislation, and

the government’s responsibility for

introducing such a bill at the next
session of the legislature, is again in-
dicated by the Vancouver Island in-
cident,

Hal
Griffin

BETWEEN Lord Durham, “Radical .

Jack,” the Liberal English aristocrat,
and “Radical” Harold Winch, the CCF
MP, there is a century of time, but not
of thought.

In 1939, when he wrote his report on
the situation in the Canadas after the
Rebellion of 1837, Lord Durham admit-
ted the need. for responsible govern-
ment but he placed his recommenda-
tion within the concept of suppressing
French-Canadian rights. He viewed
French-Canadians as “a people with no
history and no literature,” and his pro-
posals envisaged the transformation of
Lower Canada (Quebec) from a French
to an English-speaking province.

Harold Winch, speaking out of his
own abysmal ignorance of French-Can-
adian history 115 years later, complains
of French-Canadian MPs in the House
of Commons: “It’s their God-given right
to use the French tongue, but why do
they insist on it when they know the
majority of members are English-speak-
ing and they»can speak English them-
selves?” :

A God-given right? Or a right won
by the French-Canadian people them-
selves in nearly two centuries of strug-
gle against those who sought to sup-
press it?

By the Act of-Union in 1841, which
abolished Lower Canada as a separate
province, the British imperial govern-
ment banned the use of the French lan-
guage in the assembly and government
of the unified province of Canada.

Louis Lafontaine, who had been jail-
ed as a Patriote in 1838, defied the ban
when the new legislature met in 1842,
speaking in French to denounce it.

Six years later, in 1848, coincident
with the winning of responsible govern-
ment for Canada, the clause denying of-
ficial use to the French language was
abrogated. And Clause 133 of the Brit-
ish North America Act guarantees the
agreement stated by Sir John A. Mac-
donald in 1865, “that the use of the
French language should form one of
the principles upon which the. Confed-
eration should be established. . . .”

it 503 no ety

Now comes “Radical” Harold- Winch
to sneer at French-Canadian MPs, as he
did before North Vancouver Junior
Chamber of Commerce on September 14,
and to argue that the work of the House
of Commons is being “stymied because
the French have a persecution complex
that is not right.”

Perhaps if Winch examined the arbi-
trary powers usurped by the cabinet,
the extent to which U.S. policy. dictates
the destiny of our country, he might
find the real reason the work of the
House is being stymied.

Perhaps if he understood Canada as a
state composed of two nations, French
and English-speaking, in which the
French-Canadian nation, having won its
basic cultural and political demands still
suffers inequalities, he would also un-
derstand why the passionate struggle of
the French-Canadian people to guard

. their language and their national rights

stands as an obstacle to the U.S. drive
to dominate Canada.

His prejudiced remarks serve only to
divide French and English-speaking
Canadians and to play into the hands of
Premier Maurice Duplessis who uses pro-
vincial autonomy as a cloak for perpetu-
ating the inequalities of French Canada.
We English-speaking Canadians cannot
hope to-reassert our own national inde-
pendence against U.S. domination with-
out guarding as our own the cherished
rights of French-Canadians.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 24, 1954 — PAGE 5