PIONS REAL STORY NOT TOLD By TOM McEWEN | _ ond q The | AROLD PRITCHETT Grane Centennial of British Confeg eee into stor ration is ag profound ' bviouc cvent. It is already , , that the inted body in charge abor ane fprations, on which BEC have © people who built tion, 7h No genuine representa- this ae. €rase history from aa » and if they cannot si age that, to falsify it. ~ eae is under- " é .S. annexa- ie m their lackies in B.C. ada tried hard to annex make it a part of U.S. “century later a Stee shment is having Rss Selling out B.C. Titory and the jobs ing People piece ODolieg % United States Tt process " a fast buck. In by distor , ley falsify history 3 ted-ap 0. the oe Mable. 0 So red fe Peat acre. it With alleged ‘OUnd budgerwements’” and ete, p Setary affluence,” 00. While anywhere people 202000 of our ne ple are jobless, or i j,, tker naa the sophisticated Fp poly.g Understandable blish Ominated bourgeous Ments being what they are, IS nots : an . SO readily 0 tale able is a powerful Of Amerj n ‘ erica a Official] organ the er of January 1971, it €. Past-and : tig oa ae Future” — the stor: SOSs and oft. 4 Whe union 7A atocra or 2 8!28 Social ister Undert anyone for that Story. Tr : Story Gane to write the Ting; °n or a nation, the oa 1S to stick to M or peed Not permit ac Political Prejudices é detract from \ aS Matter how hese fact’ alleged e ora may be. ni ..- Page i l dition fo a this With ¢peoe Mark this SPaper © publication in iNBritse the History of 4d thay. Sh Columbia”? alm b : this edition, dt |. -asio, Our aS PE: = — ee ow “Workers International. it would have been a very com- mendable contribution to a centennial based on history. But since labor and history are both pretty well blacked out in centennial projections, the present IWA leadership at least has managed to expose its anti- Communism with considerable vehemence in its lengthy compendium of half-truths, plain falsehoods, and hoary anti- Communist slanders. TAFT-HARTLEY Spawned from the infamous Churchill, Fulton, Missouri, speech in 1946 which set the tone for a full scale launching of the anti-Soviet cold war in the U.S. and from which the U.S. took the world leadership of this Hitlerite ideology, the Taft- Hartley law received its origin and its Congressional approval. The aim and purpose of this law, explicit in its detail, was to castrate the American labor movement, begin a witch hunt directed by an entrenched labor bureaucracy, in its own ranks from top to bottom, expunge all Communist and non-Communist progressives from its ranks, and put its individual and collective approval to the Taft-Hartley law, viz: take an affadavit under Taft-Hartley provisions of its anti-Communist “‘purity’”’. This the U.S.-based Inter- national unions did, with a few notable exceptions. John L. Lewis; then president of the United Mine Workers (UMWA) and president Harry Bridges of the International Long- shoremen and Warehousemens union (ILWU) flatly refused to conform to Taft-Hartley, both as individuals and on behalf of their union membership. These two important unions, however, were the exception rather than the rule. In the main however, the top echelons of all AFL-CIO affiliates knuckled under to this massive anti-union cold+war brainwashing, AFL-CIO president George Meany and his top executive council members, acting out the role of a Goebbels, a role most of these Inter- national union presidents still carry out today in their support of U.S. aggression, murder and pillage against the people of Indochina, were in the lead of the knuckling-under. NOW AVAILABLE BRITISH | COLUMBIA: __ THE PEOPLE'S EARLY STORY By HAROLD GRIFFIN | Ran. BRITISH COLUMBIAN SHOULD | Rea stor BOOK Pacis CT, Shear’ Tibuing . Off iy, <¢ Or Co-operative Bookstore, 341 W. Pender. Y OF OUR CENTENNIAL. Paber: $1.95 Cloth: $6.00 Available at WHICH TELLS THE While the Taft-Hartley Act had no legal effect or status in Canada, its ideological aims, emphasized by successive U.S. Establishments and the U.S.- based International unions, spilled over into Canada, with the result that many Inter- national union leaders in Canada gave their ‘‘approval’”’ of Taft- Hartley provisions, as did our own Establishment, federal and provincial, regardless of party labels. The result was of course what these ‘“‘labor’’ coldwar-mongers desired; the expulsion of Com- munists, non-Communists and other progressives, individuals, and whole unions from the ‘‘House of Labor’’ on the flimsiest of pretexts, primarily that all alleged Communists were loyal to a foreign power rather than to Canada! Anti-Com- munist slanders, provocations, and fabricated suspicions, as to “‘loyalty’’, etc., set the tone for a Roman holiday of witch-hunting in all unions to a greater or lesser degree. In short, and because of this coldwar campaign in the wake of Taft-Hartley, organized labor did a better job of depleting, disrupting and destroying its own fighting elan than any boss or combination of bosses, with the full support of Canada’s political police could ever have done. The ideological poison of anti- Communism serves no one excent a reactionary Establish- ment and the powerful and exploiting monopolies whom such slavish Establishments serve. It is also designed as a weapon for war and aggression, and destructive of peace, as the history of recent times so glaringly confirms. WITCH-HUNT It is worthy. of note that. the anti-Communist origin in the . TWA, began with Abe Muir, who was Carpenter President Hutchinson’s right hand man, and later taken up by IWA president Fadling, International president Al Hartung, and other executive officers who fell over themselves in their hurry to sign the Taft-Hartley affidavit signifying their readiness to war on Communists at any and all opportunity. It may also be stated, historic- ally speaking, that the date of signing Taft-Hartley by Fadling, Hartung and Co., co-incides closely with the period of IWA decline, when its leadership both in Canada and the USA dropped from first to fourth place in B.C. union wage negotia- tions, i.e., in winning the wage and other demands of its rank and file membership. It is of course an ABC in trade union circles that no union can effectively fight the bosses and tear its own membership apart with red-baiting and expulsions at the same time. In such situations the boss invariably comes out the victor, because anti-Communis™m is a boss- inspired invention in the first place. 1948 SPLIT The IWA “‘historian’’ in the Lumber Worker claims the decline mentioned above only dates from the 1948 ““Communist- inspired revolution.” : The writer has been advised by IWA readers all over the province that this is not the only _ IWA ‘history’ distorts facts The Canadian government is reported to have protested to Washington against any further nuclear testing in the Aleutians. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission is preparing for new underground tests of weapons many times more powerful than the one megaton bomb 1,000,000 tons of TNT exploded at Amchitka on Oct. 2, 1969 which registered 6.5 on the Richter scale. Many groups in B.C. are busy organizing a campaign to protest the new tests. forward. Perhaps more, certainly not less, can be found where historical facts are twisted and distorted to suit the “historian”. The number is not so important-75 or 175. No doubt they will fit in well with the Socred centennial in which the prime objective is to obliterate historical fact from the record. But there is a repeated canard against the Communists in relation to events in the 1948 IWA split which stands out by itself, viz., the huge sums of IWA money and property which the Communists have alleged to have misappropiated. As we have previously said, this canard has been repeated, and though the facts have been made public more than once, it would appear to be the deliberate. policy of right-wing social democrats and their political ‘‘historians’’ holding important positions in the B.C. labor movement to repeat this canard, assuming that if the Big Lie is repreated often enough, it will eventually be accepted.as truth. In his book No Greater Power, commissioned by the B.C. Federation of Labor, ‘“‘historian’’ Paul Phillips repeated the identical canard. Although he was confronted with audited statements, and financial facts, he has not attempted either an apology or correction — evidently agreeing with Solomon Lovosky, general secretary of the now defunct Red International of Labor Unions, that ‘what is put down with a pen cannot be extracted . with a pick.” In such cases there is only hope, a remote one it is true — that such social democratic “‘historians’’ will henceforth be called upon by honest socialist- minded NDP members, and others, to “‘Salute the past and challenge the future’’ with historical facts in place of hysterical fiction. ¢ What should and could have been a centennial trade union publication designed to give a sense of strength and achieve- ment, of unity and determina- tion that the future will belong to the common people turns out to be another cold war blurb in which the poisonous ideology of anti-Communism is incubated, and the potential strength of an otherwise great union dissipated. Some-historians just won’t or can’t learn, and especially those who never got into a struggle or on a picket line— until the safety first whistle has blown the all- clear signal. Then they grab for the laurels of victory-primarily to slander those who did the fighting. x The IWA as one of B.C.’s most powerful and leading unions has a glorious history — one which has been totally ~ omitted in its centennial edition by its resident “historian’’. Stuart Keate, Vice-Pr Bruce Hutchison, Editorial Director C. esident and Publisher H. MacKay, Editorial Page Editor William T. Galt, Managing Editor ——_—_——— The continental approach e time _has_come for Ottawa “and Washington to form a continental ener: y policy. : i i is antic The first step is to banish the semanti bogeymen conjured up by the very word “continental” —. the idea that it means a sell-out of Canadian resources to the United States. : Nor should advocacy of a continental policy be taken to mean the release of resources in ‘ seeable requirements. What is needed is negotiated co-opera- j resource development to serve A eet ant both Canada and the best interests of the U.S. without sacrifice to the special interests of either. . The need is demonstrated by the con- troversy about Canadian nor quately preparec of warning al 1e and environmental contlicts. No matter what Canadian politicians I it, what they are really groping advocating an operand pipeline y Mackenzie Valley instead 0 down the } My ay eS {may ca for in itanker traffic development ot Sonn i tragedy is that. neither the eG aU. government was ade- i for it, despite plenty bout the inevitable economic future resource development, whether it oil, gas, coal, water or any other po- tential energy source and whether it be in Alaska, the Northwest Territories, or the Arctic. ‘he talks between Canadian ministers and U.S. oil company executives failed to advance this cause, but they ought to heighten awareness of the need. Tne ministers went into the talks with- : . out any clear consensus on Canadian excess of Canada’s own fore- jojicy “and they came out admitting they knew even less than they thought about the subject. Of course they shouldn't have expected too much sym- pathy from the people who devised and are already committed to the sea route. However, that route is not yet ap- proved by the U.S. government. It is to people in Washington that the Canadian ministers ought to be talking. The lesson ot the session with the oilmen jis that Ottawa must put on speed and get its facts sorted into some ine of ol- ticial policy. This is essential before Washington rules on the Alaska oil route and it snould serve as the basis for nego- tuating an over-all continental policy. The penalties of delay could be disas- trous economically, environmentally and politically not only through effects ‘y agreement_on of an Alaska route decision but in the » satisfactor aska ol could be te Nc movement of Alaska oil could tae Tora Tong-range approach — fo development ol resources lor a power- hungry tuture. “error” in the article; that there: March 26 confirms what the PT has been charging: that behind the "are no less than 75 others, and 5 misrepresentations of fact put ipressure for a Canadian pipeline route for U.S, oil is the plan'to impose a continental energy policy on Canadians. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, APRIL2, 1971--PAGE3 ||