PUT Us ion Ot HE DEBACK TO \ cK TO “jote WORK —WORIC Bey Fifty years later, another Conservative government, given a sweeping ° mandate for its promise to provide jobs, is following the same economic policies, redesigned by the corporate sector to increase its profits, under the general heading of “Restraint.” The national disaster for working people of - Reaganomics in the U.S., Thatcherism in Britain, now threatens Canada. N*™ days after the Market Square events, the Saskatchewan government appointed the Regina Riot Inquiry Com- mission. Although its report, finally issued Apr. 23, 1935, exonerated the federal government and police, its 52 volumes of evidence provided a revealing picture of direct police interference in the political process and calculated efforts by the RCMP to provoke the clash that took place. In the end, the points raised in the Regina Daily Star July 16 by Eric Bee, secretary of the Citizens’ Defence committee, had not been challenged nor have they been 50 years later. @ “The police made a surprise attack on a peaceful meeting of citizens and strikers, without having first read the Riot Act or in any way giving orders for the meeting to disperse; e “After the meeting was broken up on Market Square, the strikers who were at the meeting (and this was only a small apart of the total number of strikers in Regina) suc- ceeded in forming up in columns of four and had started to march peacefully west on Eleventh Avenue towards their quarters at the Stadium when they were again sub- jected to another brutal attack by the Mounted Police who closed in on them from both directions on the avenue and they were forced to protect themselves by whatever means were readily at hand. e “On the afternoon of the evening on which the disturbances occurred, a delega- tion from the strikers had interviewed the provincial government and had agreed to being disbanded here under the supervision of the provincial government.” Premier Gardiner added one more ques- tion of his own: if the purpose, as stated by the police, had been to arrest the leaders, why were they not arrested while they were meeting with Gardiner earlier in the evening on July 1, or as they were moving freely around Regina? Thousands of people across Canada, Teviewing those points in 1935, drew the inescapable conclusion: on orders -from Ottawa, the RCMP and the Regina police launched an unprovoked attack on a peace- ful meeting. And the Bennett government, rather than negotiate the issue of work and wages, met the unemployed with police and bullets. The outrage over the Market Square attack was burned into the national con- sciousness and would remain in the months and years to come. n the federal elections of November, 1935, R.B. Bennett’s government went down to humiliating defeat — a defeat from which the Conservatives did not rec- over until election of John Diefenbaker in 1957. Commentators across the country put the focal point of that defeat at Regina on July 1, 1935. Seven months later, there were more echoes of the trek in two decisions of the newly-elected King Liberal government: the first, to strike Section 98 from the Criminal Code; the second, on July, 1936, to close the relief camps. , Operas ee insurance, although not achieved until 1940, nevertheless bears the imprint of the unemployed struggles of the ’30s, particularly the trek. The trek has all but been expunged from the record in textbook histories. But it remains, part of a living working class tradi- tion. And it has a sudden new vitality in the depression of the 1980s. “Neo-conservatism,” “supply-side eco* nomics” and “Reaganomics” were not in the popular vocabulary of the 1930s, but they would have served well to describe the policies followed by R.B. Bennett — a far distant relative of the latter day and like minded Social Credit Premier Bill Bennett — just as they describe the policies of the Mulroney government. If the unemployed are not now forced into relief camps, they are increasingly forced into food banks as the hard-fought rights of unemployment insurance are being stripped away by a government more con- cerned with profit recovery than establish- ing a program of work and wages. For trekker Bob Jackson, there is bitter irony 50 years after the trek, Faced with a bleak future in the depression years, his generation organized and fought for change, a struggle that laid the basis for many of the post-war social programs. Now history is repeating itself. His son, Larry, a skilled electrician, has been unem- ployed for most of the last two years as have hundreds of thousands of his generation across the country. And the unemployment insurance program, for which the relief camp workers lobbied and demonstrated, is being relentlessly undermined. For this new generation of jobless, the trek is more than a history. It is a lesson in organizing, in striving to unite people around a common program. It’s a lesson in winning the support of people who, for the moment, believe that private enterprise, displacing workers by thousands through its technological revolution, expanding its corporate empires, will lead the the way to recovery. Profits have recovered. Unem- ployment becomes worse. Terry Hanley, secretary of the On-to- Ottawa Trek committee, set up to com- memorate the anniversary, and_ herself unemployed, sums its up: “The sruggle in 1935 is hidden from us a great deal — but we need to know our own history. “In the relief camps, in 1934 and °35, they did what working people have always done: they got together and they organized to try and achieve something better. It’s the same today; we’re only going to get what we need by banding together and organizing. “That takes courage but that’s what they had to do in the ’30s and that is what we have to do today. “‘We can’t be swayed from what we need. We need work and wages and we need it now — just as they did in 1935.” the trekkers who were arrested. depression of the 80s. liberation movements. Ever since the Tribune was launched 50 years.ago as the B.C. Workers’ News, the fight for “‘work.and wages” has been our:beat. The first issue rolled off the press Jan..18, 1935. A week later it carried the report by a camp worker of the December, 1934 relief camp strike and the-plans to re-organize. Throughout April, May and June, the pages were filled with the struggle of the camp workers for relief, the trek and finally the police attack at Regina. For months afterwards, the B.C. Workers’ News was one of the only papers to report the campaign for the defence of We've been part of the campaigns for the unemployed in the years since — at the post office occupation in 1938, the fight for jobs during the Tory Diefenbaker years, the new campaigns for work and wages in the The Tribune is also mach more: news and commentary from the labor movement, from the peace movement, from the socialist countries and We're a strong voice in the labor, movement, reporting strike struggles, analyzing:trends and taking part in debate around Canadian autonomy, democratic unionism and independent labor political action. And we're -— Ea lam enclosing 1 yr. $1 The Tribune: born with the Trek read by thousands-of people across the province, trade unionists, peace activists.and others. Hf-you're fiot-a’ reader néw, why not take a subscription? Only $14 a year puts*the Tribune in your mailbox. Every week. Like the Trek, we're part of a militant tradition worth ‘passing on. _ IRIBUNE > Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C V5K 125. Phone 251-1186 be Name GB DE de RE RODEN Fe ee 0 Ae BON: ROME ¢ RRM RS Oe ee BORED RLS OBO ORT RRO So ed a 0 CECE Bae 9 0 o oReerm ele) Oe ere wee Eee. 6 ene 8 °F Postal: Code 4 2yrs. $250. 6mo s80_ Foreign 1 yr.'$20 0 | Bill me later(J Donation$...2..;. a READ THE PAPER THAT FIGHTS FOR LABOR 12 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, ON-TO-OTTAWA SUPPLEMENT