Seeennet

HE’ first session of the 21st parliament of
Canada opened Thursday of this week, too

late for this issue of the Pacific Tribune to
feature the legislative highlights contained in the
Speech from the Throne.

Prior to the federal elections of June 27,
the people of Canada had a veritable flood of
“promises” of what the St. Laurent government
was going to do if returned to power. The elec-
torate, literally stampeded by fear and uncertainty
into supporting the Liberals, gave that party and

government the largest majority given any govern-
ment since Confederation. Thus the 21st par-

liament opens in auspicious circumstances—the
people have the promises, and the government a
preponderant majority to make them good, with
a minimum of delay.

crisis that already falls on Canada like a funeral
pall, depriving new thousands of Canadians the
right of employment and stripping Canada bare of
markets . all the bitter fruit of Marshall-
planned control of our economic and political
affairs, the six poimts for parliamentary action
outlined by Tim Buck, national leader of the
Labor-Progressive ‘party, should be the essence ‘of
the Speech from the Throne at this time. If

these six points are included, so much the better.
If not, they must become a universal demand, as
a means of saving Canada from a repetition of
the Hungry Thirties and worse.

Tell parliament!

_ for wheat and fair, fixed prices for all their

pensions and family allowances.

To head off the deep-growing economic

® Jobs for all willing to work through the
federal government undertaking an adequate na-
tional housing program; long-delayed public
works such as hospitals, schools and sanatoria;
and development of trade, without discrimination,
with all countries. :

® Increase people’s purchasing power by rais-
ing wages; guaranteeing the farmers $2 a bushel

products; raising unemployment insurance benefits
50 percent, granting old-age pensions of $65
a month at 65 years; and by increasing veterans’

@ Enact a national health plan.

@® Tax ihe rich, relieve the poor by re-mposing
the Excess Profits Tax and abolishing the 8

percent sales tax.

@ Overcome the U.S.-dollar crisis by develop-
ing large-scale trade with Britain, the Common-
wealth, the Soviet Union, the New Democracies
and China, and by firmly maintaining the 100
percent parity of the Canadian dollar in relation
to the American dollar.

@ Turn to peace, away from war by breaking
loose from Wall Street’s atom-bomb war plans,
by honestly cooperating in the United Nations
to ban the atom bomb, to reduce armaments, to
develop economic and cultural cooperation among
the nations, to adhere to the United Nations
Charter. American troops and military installa-
tions should be removed from Canada.

Selling out

HEN it became obvious that the [WA con-
ciliation board “‘award’’ would meet with al-

most unanimous rejection by. the lumberworkers, even
including the possibility of strike action, things be-
gan to happen. While district president Stuart
Alsbury and his cohorts were putting on a noisy
show against the award, it is reliably reported that
{WA international president ‘“One-Cent’” Fadling
instructed the B.C. leadership to “quit horsing
around and get the agreement (as per the award)

settled.”
Whether ‘“One-Cent” Fadling so decreed ‘or

not is not of importance. The significant point 1s”

that in’ trade union procedure the Alsbury-Mitchell
IWA leadership have added ‘‘something new’’—
with a stale odor.

In the midst of preliminaries for a government-
supervised strike vote and general campaign for [WA
rank-and-file rejection of the “‘award,”’ the Alsbury-

{Mitchell leadership entered into “‘secret”’ negotia-

tions with the operators. Thus we saw a leader-
ship exhorting a plant in the afternoon to “reject”

the award, loudly disclaiming meantime, that any-

‘backdoor negotiations were afoot. And the same

Yeadership a few hours later exhorting the night shift

cof the same plant to accept the “new” agreement,
arrived at by a method of negotiation which could
not be other than secret!

This hole-and-corner brand of negotiation, as
one IWA member neatly put it, represents the

““Fadlingization of labor-management relations in the

B.C. lumber industry, paving the way for new
sellouts.”’

Under the old IWA leadership of Pritchett
and Dalskog the principle of having the workers in
every plant and logging operation discuss and vote

on the terms of a new contract was strictly adhered
fo.

Under the Alsbury-Mitchell leadership the hes,

ceptance” is confined to a select minority of IWA
membership, despite their claim to ‘‘represent 35,000
lumberworkers.”” A vote of some sort is essential to
give their backdoor negotiations a democratic halo,
but risks of rank-and-file rejection are studiously
avoided. That's what Fadling means by his “quit
horsing around’’ ukase.

When the lumberworkers scan the profits of
the boss loggers for 1948-49, even in the face of
Marshall-planned market paralysis, they will find
little in the ‘‘new’ agreement to get enthusiastic
about, and less when it gets down to operation
level. But it does serve as a warning signal that
the policy of the [WA leadership is no longer that
of winning higher wages and standards for the
workers, but rather to mould the union into an
instrument to safeguard profits.

United action on the job by the lumberworkers
can still halt the sellout, and translate the new
agreement in terms commensurate with the dignity and

worth of union men. United action can also win

“open covenants, openly arrived at’ despite the
secret deals of social democracy.

You and the Depression

A NEW pamphlet, You and the Depression, by

William Kashtan is designed to do a job, that
of breaking through the murk of “‘prosperity’’ propa-
ganda with which the agencies of big business seek
to cloak their exploitation and destruction of the
livelihood and security of the common people.

aking at a convention of Saskatchewan
farmers back in the 1924 post-war depression days
(we've had recurrent depressions “and a world war
since then), a veteran farm leader, the late A. E.

Partridge of Sointaluta, declared: “Folks, if the

people could only see this thing clearly for half an
hour, they would rise up as one man, and _ like
Christ, drive the money changers out.”

That was 25 years ago. Since those days
we've had a decade of unemployment, misery and

want, now popularly known as the Hungry Thirties,
topped off by a devastating world war—and are
again heading rapidly into what may well become

the most disastrous economic crisis of all time...

breeding ground for new wars.

You and the Depression tells in simple language
how this thing has come about, why it has come

about, and who is responsible. And not the least ©

important, what to do about it. ;

‘To help the people see this thing clearly .. .”
get a copy of You and the Depression and see that
your neighbor gets it too. It’s the best dime’s
worth you ever read, available from the People’s
Cooperative Bookstore, 337 West Pender, Van-
couver, B.C. It’s more than time to “throw the
money changers out.” Make You and the Depression
a mass weapon to do the job. Eee

;

TOM McEWEN

As We See lt

——

i ean ee! men are on trial in Foley Square courthouse, New York |
City. Twelve men—leaders of the Communist party of the United
States. This trial, already in its ninth month, is no ordinary trial.
On the contrary it is a very extraordinary trial, because in this Foley
Square courthouse the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the Ameri
can people have been suspended, ” ’

Twelve men are in the prisoner’s dock—but the working class
of the whole world is on trial here ...in the shadow of the Wall
Street counting houses, ;

No “overt” act is charged, or can be charged, in the indictment.
Ideas, philosophies, the revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism,
is being tried.

The oil monopoly’s ex-attorney-general Tom Clark, with the aid
of the FBI and its ragged platoon of trained stool pigeons “prepared”

the case against a socialist America, symbolized
in these twelve men. Should the case ever reach ~
the Supreme Court of the U.S., the verdict will
still be written by an oil-smeared Supreme Court
judge—ex-attorney-general Tom Clark.

Some day a Diego Rivera may do a classical —
masterpiece of this trial, depicting a standardized i
“made-in-the/USA” justice in oils. ‘

Human dignity, integrity, decency, honesty, all —
those qualities that raise men above fascist bat-
barism, count for very little in this caricature of
a law court. The stool pigeon is elevated to the

; a eminence of a judge—and the trial judge approves
this equality in partnership to assure the verdict. the government
wants.

_ This tribunal “streamlines” Hitler’s “Reichstag Fire” \trial. That
conspiracy against the Communist party of Germany, the German
working class and the international Communist movement, pales be
fore this monstrous attempt to garotte justice and’ trample huma?)
right. % zr . : ;

Here the stool pigeon and the legal jackal, sustained by the court,
pursue their shameful vocation of character assassination, political
calumny, misrepresentation and falsehood, without restraint of any
rules or law of evidence. If the “accused” protest—which they have,
as-human dignity demands they must—even the limited freedom of
bail to enable defense is cancelled, and they are arbitrarily consigned
to a prison regime designed to break them mentally and physically.

Co

Three thousand miles away one can sense shadowy figures hover-
ing in that Foley Square courtroom, and in the prison cells with Gil
Green, Henry Winston and Gus Hall. Out of the past somewhere
comes a voice, pleading, but firm: “Four score amd seven years ago
our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived
in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal. We are gathered here today (in this courtroom and in this
prison cell) to determine whether that nation, so conctived and S80
dedicated, can long endure... .” i

In this courtroom the dead of revolutionary America are out-
raged ...and the living subjected to jibe and insult. To Judge
Medina the voices of Lincoln, Jefferson, Tom Paine, Fredrick Doug-
lass, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, count for nothing. To thesé voices
he is stone deaf. But to the voices of the modern Judas Iscariots,
the Gouzenkos, Budenzes, Kasenkinas, Chalmers, ad infinitum, he
turns an alert and sympathetic ear, like a hungry hound eagerly
sniffing a rotting carcase. , ;

To hell with the war against Hitlerism, your medals and cita-
tions for duty honorably fulfilled. This is THE war of all wars. The ~
ideal of socialist America challenges the yvested rule of predatory re
monopoly capitalism, Hence that ideal and its advocates must be
silenced, crushed. “History is the bunk,’ as Hank Ford once said,
so who are Abraham-Lincoln or Tom Paine compared with Louis
Budenz? P ite

Across the Hudson in Peekskill, N.J., top brass of the American —
Legion allied with the Klu Klux Klan, organize fascist hooliganism
against American citizens in an attempt to silence the powerful voice
of Paul Robeson, Judge Medina’s court “rulings” blend harmoniously

- throughout with the lynch-mob howls of the KKK.

History: indeed! ‘All history “is the bunk” to Judge Medina which
doesn’t serve his task of delivering the head of John the Baptist to
his Wall Street Herods. The Constitution? To hell with the Consti-

tution .. . if it permits the propagation of an ideal contrary to those
“ideals” designed and approved by the National Manufacturers As-
sociation, " *

The Bill of Rights? In this court, I, Judge Medina, am the sole
irfterpreter of the Bill of Rights. In this court, you, the accused ..-
loggers, miners; steelworkers, builders of skyscrapers and power —
dams... have only the right to interpret Marxism-Leninism the-
way I want it interpreted. In this court I shall only permit you the
right to become a Benedict Arnold or a Louis Budenz—but not a
Bill Foster, Gene Dennis, Henry Winston, Jack Stachel, John Gates,
Ben Davis, Gil Green, Bob Thompson, Irving Potash, Gus Hall or
John Williamson. These names are anathema to what I, Judge Me-
dina, represent. :

The “trial” of the 12 Commynist leaders in Woley Square court-
house before Judge Medina must serve to bring home to Canadian
workers, that -in the drive towards a new fascist world domination—
this time by an arrogant Yankee imperialism—IT IS LATER THAN ~
YOU THINK. We repeat, not the Communist party of the U:S., but
the working class of the whole world, the working class of Canada,
is on trial here.

Hence the people of Canada, those who do not cringe at the feet —
of the Marshall planners nor place the security of their future in
an Atlantic war pact, must rise to the defense of the 12 men who
stand guard for peace and democratic progress in Foley Square. Wwe,
together with the progressive people of America, must render the

final verdict.
iE

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Su rer Nitin

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 16, 1919 — PAGE 8