Rezoning to benefit CPR Cuts in social services Tories, business) tees please Tories, business) Cardero St. and Burrard St. in an = ye Continued trom paged create new jobs. “In fact, they will area owned outright by Marathon. ieee : However, an immediate public make matters worse,” he said. This area would also include office re ‘i outcry prompted the minister to “The times call for an expansion of buildings, restaurants and other ree deny any such suggestion and the economy, not policies which commercial developments. (peers deputy minister John Noble told will further undermine purchasing Although Marathon has not ee ‘ the Tribune Wednesday that the power. made any specific proposals for IEE increase would be passed on to. j the redevelopment of its land after Roth pensioners. , 1 OS ae. ipareay rezoning, in 1974 it proposed a 20- om: | Still to come in the federal °° aa ashes A s ie oa storey B.C. Telephone office Pun 4 government’s extensive cost- penditirss, the place 10 start 1s the, building, another 21-storey office Mh Al ts slashing program are the details of SEIS PECs Tart tower and a three-acre man-made island at the foot of Burrard Street. Present planning guidelines would most likely rule out multi-storey towers, but Marathon has un- doubtedly retained its plans for a comprehensive commercial development, and added to it plans for luxury residences. A further dispute the city will have with Marathon will centre on public access to the waterfront. The city previously had set a requirement that 40 percent of the new developments would be “‘open space.” But at the urging of Marathon and the NHB, city planners have revised their requirement of the developers to “strive for 40 percent open space. lf Marathon Realty gets its way in the redevelopment of Vancouver's waterfront, this section of land looking west from Bur- rard St. will be reserved for the rich in a comprehensive develop- ment of offices, stores and luxury apartments. —Fred Wilson photo reductions in unemployment in- surance program which are supposed to cut spending by $580 million in 1979-80 and more in the future. “For years, big business and the Conservative Party have been demanding cuts in social welfare payments, family allowances and unemployment insurance programs,’’ William Kashtan, Communist Party general secretary declared in a statement following the announcement. of Chretien’s proposals. “‘Now their wishes are being realized.”’ The Communist leader noted that none of the proposals, either those advanced earlier by Robert Andras or the latest plans would “Cut it by 50 percent and use the funds to create useful, creative jobs,”’ he said. That point was also emphasized by the Congress of Canadian Women which called on prime minister Trudeau to limit military spending in order to provide funds for increases in monthly family allowance payments. The B.C. chapter of the CCW also sent letters to Trudeau, Chretien and national revenue minister Monique Begin expressing concern about the family allowance cuts ‘which come, the organization noted, on.the eve of International Year of the Child, declared for 1979,-. Lazarus’ labor history ‘gutter journalism’ I recently read a small book called The Long Winding Road — Canadian Labor in Politics, - published in 1977 by the Boag Foundation in Vancouver. This book has two purposes. First to prove that the NDP has played a major role in building and giving constructive leadership to the trade union movement. Second, to discredit the role of the Communist Party in the labor movement. The author is Morden Lazarus, a leading figure in the NDP and a bitter anti-communist. I have rarely seen so much _ distortion in so few pages — se- venty-in all. (The remaining 22 pages are devoted to references and short biographies.) I found references to the Com- munist Party on 25 pages, and not one of them had a good word for the party. For example, on page 44, the author wrote this: ‘Current writers of labor history usually have a section with some headings: as ‘the struggle with the com- munists.’ And some of them, being young men, like people who have become active in the trade unions in the last ten or fifteen years, apparently look at the aging and ineffectual communist groups of today and wonder what the fuss was all about.” Such adjectives as aging and ineffectual are not in accordance with the facts. For example, in British Columbia alone there are many active trade unionists ranging in age from about 25 to 50 years who are well respected in their various fields of work and in the labor movement generally. But that’s is not the main argument I wish to present. To give an example of the anti- communist bias in the author’s presentation, he states on page 47 that ‘“‘after Hitler’s invasion of the USSR in 1941, they (the Canadian communists) became _ super- patriots, gave no-strike pledges ~ and urged an all-out production effort.”’ This suggests that in the opinion of the author, the Com- munists were wrong in placing the objective of winning the war against fascism as the primary objective of working people in Canada and other countries. However, in his one page of references he lists The Trade Union Movement of Canada, 1827- 1959, by Charles Lipton. On page 289 of Lipton’s book (Second Edition, 1968) we find the following in relation to the war in Korea: ‘In 1951 the Trades and Labor Congress, the Canadian Congress of Labor, the Catholic Confederation of Labor and the Railway Brotherhoods presented a joint brief to the federal govern- ment. It stated: ‘We are and have been for some time at war.’ -The free world was facing ‘the most ruthless aggressor in history.’ The LABOR COMMENT BY JACK PHILLIPS °. best that could be hoped for was ‘long years of heavy defence ex- penditures.’ Canada’s allies and ‘particularly our most powerful ally, the United States would not ‘tolerate a Canadian defence on a scale notably smaller than her own.’ The brief.referred to ‘single mindedness of purpose World War 2...” Then, the labor brief went on to say: ‘“‘Whether some form of wage control or stabilization will be necessary is a question for in- vestigation. The labor movement recognizes that wages could go up fast enough and far enough to break the price ceiling. . It believes that the proper way to deal with this question is a government-labor-management conference to work out ways of wage stabilization. If our government should introduce a general policy of wage and price controls, labor is ready to take part in a joint government-labor- management conference to con- sider wage stablization.”’ Onthe one hand, Lazaus sneers at the Communists who went all out to’win the war against fascist Germany and who believed that the very character of the war changed with the invasion of the USSR. On the other hand, he fails to inform his readers that the leadership of all the trade union centres in Canada offered all-out PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 1, 1978—Page 8 during — support to the Liberal government in relation to the U.S. imperialist war in Korea. Canadian Communists are also falsely labelled by Lazaus as having been ‘‘subservient’’ to the USSR because they recognized that defeat of the Soviet Union would have set back the cause of socialism for many generations and would have brought fascism to a large part of the world for a long time. But he conceals the fact that some right wing trade union leaders whom he proudly identifies as heroes in the campaign to drive the communists out of the labor movement, were prepared to have organized labor make any sacrifice in support of U.S. im- perialism during the Korean War. The joint brief noted above, was endorsed by the CCL which at that time was firmly tied to the CCF at the top level and in most provincial federations and labor councils. The key words in the brief were: ‘We are and have been for some time at war.” The free world was said to be facing “‘the most ruthless and powerful aggressor in history.” This was written when the dominant political leaders in the U.S. were hopeful that they would be able to use force to reverse the tide in those countries moving to socialism under the leadership of Communist Parties and their allies. The Canadian federal government and all parties in Parliament, including the CCF, openly supported that impossible goal. So did the right wing leaders of the trade union movement and Morden Lazaus. Z An honest analysis in depth of the Canadian trade union movement must inevitably conclude that right. wing social democracy has played a very divisive and reactionary role. In certain periods, such as the late forties and fifties, it openly sided with the global strategy of American imperialism and its junior partner in Canada. Someone who has the time to do a deeper study in respect to the philosophy, political orientation, motivation and personal op- portunism of right wing social -democracy in Canada could give these questions the full examination they deserve. I must RATA RRA confine myself to making the point that the Lazaus book is gutter journalism, designed to falisfy the history of the trade union movement and to improve the image of right wing social democracy by painting a distorted and spiteful picture of the Com- munist Party. According’ to lLazaus, the Communists were an alien element in the trade union movement which achieved nothing but “‘discord and division.” > One of the books listed in his references is Nationalism, Com- munism and Canadian Labor, - _ Now: edited by Irving Abella. Abella is no friend of the Com- munist Party but he felt it necessary to write the following in his book: “Though on the whole they have been badly maligned by historians and commentators on the period, there seems little doubt that the contribution of the Communists to building the CIO in Canada was: invaluable. They were activists in a period which cried for activity; they were energetic, zealous, and dedicated, in a period when organizing workers required these attributes. They helped build the CIO, and helped it grow until it was strong enough to do without them. They did work that no one else was willing or able to do. Although there are many nasty things one can say about the Communists, undeniably in building a viable industrial union movement in Canada, theirs is a contribution not easily measured.’”’ Abella gives credit to the Communists for their RiBUN leading role in establishing such key unions as Steel, Auto, Electric, Woodworkers, Mine-Mill and Textile. “In most instances,” Abella wrote, ‘‘the party people were good unionists, and the left-wing unions certainly provided the necessary services to their members. In fact, without the contributions and activities of these party people and their left-wing supporters, the task of organizing the CIO and the CCL in the late 1930s and early 1940s would have been immensely more difficult.” . But that is not the way Lazaus tells the story. According to the Long Winding Road, the greatest achievement of the right-wing leadership of the CCF and their key people in the labor movement was the expulsion of Communist-led unions from the old Canadian Congress of Labor, which Abella describes as an action that “was neither necessary nor wise.” > - It is my opinion that the Com- munist Party would make a ~— valuable contribution by publishing its own history of the trade union movement. As Abella informs us, historians and com- mentors have badly maligned the Communist Party. The Long Winding Road is not a history of Canadian labor in politics. It is a crude piece of propaganda in which the author juggles facts to serve a narrow, sectarian goal. As such, it will never be a best-seller in the labor movement and it will soon be forgotten. : “Back the paper that fights for labor SUBSCRIBE NOW Clip and mail to: 101 - 1416 COMMERCIAL DR., VANCOUVER, B.C. VSL 3X9 WIA CA RSS Se ere en $4.50 — 6 mos. .