Meeting under threat of further prosecutions, railway joint council chairman Roger Butler confers with other committee members at Monday’s meeting where rail workers voted to return to work. Story page 5. —Sean Griffin photo REFERENDUM OCT. 24 Vote for full ward system crucial to city’s growth By ALD. HARRY RANKIN October 24th will be a decisive day in Vancouver’s history. On that day voters will decide on whether we will have a ward system for the next civic election or whether we will continue on in the same old way and continue to elect each of our 10 aldermen by means of a city wide vote. The deadening effect of the 25 years of rule by the fossilized NPA prevented Vancouverfrom adopting a ward system like almost all other Canadian cities. The NPA kept on treating Vancouver like a 10 member constituency with the cer- tainty that this would guarantee its hegemony forever. Now with the NPA dinosaurs out of the way, we can go ahead and make some long overdue electoral reforms. Voters will have three questions on the ward system to answer in the October referendum. The first will be whether we Banquet marks YCL 50th birthday Liz Hill, the General Secretary of the Young Communist League, arrives in Vancouver this weekend to speak to the League’s 50th An- niversary Banquet, Saturday, Sept. 15 at the Fisherman’s Hall. The banquet will be the first appearance for the YCL leader on a cross country tour which will take her to Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, and Thunder Bay before returning to Toronto. Hill has just recently returned from the GDR and the 10th World Youth Festival to which she led a delegation of 80 young Canadians. Other speakers slated for the an- niversary celebrations are Maurice Rush, editor of the PT, and a past provincial secretary of the YCL from 1935 to 1939, and Glyn Thomas who was the provincial leader from 1947 to 1959. It was in 1947 that Thomas led the ‘Chocolate Bar Strike” against unjustified price increases’ in the cost of a chocolate bar. Thousands of youth throughout B.C. responded to the national cam- paign initiated by the National Federation of Labor Youth, as the YCL was called during those years. The boycott campaign and series of demonstrations reached such proportions that the major chocolate companies were forced to roll back the price of a chocolate bar from a dime to a nickel. The anniversary’ banquet is the major public event for the League in their 50th year since their foun- ding in 1923. In commemorating the founding of the YCL it is also the highlight of a current campaign to intensify activity and boost membership in preparation for the upcoming 16th national convention of the League. want to keep on with our present system or change over to a ward system. The second will be whether we . want a partial ward system (some elected at large and some: by wards), or a full ward system. The third question deals with the size of city council, whether it should stay at 10 as at present, be changed 12 to 15, 16 to 22, or 35 to 40. The main benefit of a ward system is that you will have an alderman you can always see about your problems, and whose job is to fight for the needs of your com- munity. In other words, he will (if he wants to stay in office), have to be responsive to the needs of the residents of his ward, and not just to the developers and big business. A partial ward system, which TEAM advocates, would not fill the need at all. It is designed to appear as a.reasonable com- promise, but its overall effect would be to pretty well keep things as they are. A full ward system is the only sensible solution. As to the number, the most practical proposal to come before Council so far is that of the Committee of Progressive Electors (COPE), which calls for 21 wards. That figure was arrived at, not by picking it out of the air, but by carefully examining the natural neighbourhoods we have in the ci- ty,. neighbourhoods that have grown up and have a distinct character of their own, with thriving community organizations in most cases. Their number comes to 21. Therefore the size of council should be increased accordingly. he opening lines of an old song is brought vividly to mind these days with the passing of an old generation of pioneer Communists; a song that began with the lines, ‘One by one we miss their faces, one by one they pass away.” Over the years we have tried hard, happily with some small measure of success, to bridge the generation gap; to ‘‘com- municate” with a younger generation whose ultimate destiny will be to shape a rapidly changing world in the mould of scientific Socialism. But this inevitable ‘‘end of a generation” of pioneer Communists is something else again. The gaps they leave in the ranks of a revolutionary party do not fill easily. One doesn’t have to be nostalgic of past ‘‘good old days’’ in which they were an integral part, or pessimistic of the struggles ahead, to say that they are sorely missed. Each in his or her own way patterned their days in the service of their fellowmen, without thought of reward of “honors,” their high ideals of and for Socialism withstanding all the contempt and contumely a decadent rotting capitalism could hurl at them. Like the French philosopher, Etienne Grellet (1773-1855) who said, “I shall pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.’’ They patterned their lives upon that code, to help their fellowmen take the next step forward — to enable all humanity to climb up out of the abyss of the social degradation of capitalism, to the high mountain peaks of a future Socialist grandeur. Their names are legion. Tim Buck, Pearl Wedro, John McCuish, John Hargreaves, Joe Kleindeinst, Mike and Elsie Eagle . . each a precious Memory, each an indestructible example: of devotion to a sacred cause — the cause of Socialism. In recent times the news media of Eastern Canada and here in our own B.C. have been featuring many lengthy and allegedly “learned” articles abqut socialism being ‘dead,’ .in the NDP. They are partially right, but only partially. ‘‘Dead”’ is a poor characteriza- tion of something that never ‘‘lived’ and a right-wing social- democracy in the NDP — and the CCF before it, has always seen to it that any and all “dangerous thoughts” of Socialism (and — or Socialists) be expelled from its ranks — the ‘‘Waffle’’ being the most recent sacrificial lamb to bourgeois “‘respectability.”’ But it is necessary regardless, that a decadent and reactionary bourgeoisie be fed those large doses of soothing syrup by the media on the ‘‘demise”’ of Socialism in the NDP, to be assured and re- assured, often and anon. Especially when its State apparatus feels it incumbent to transform Parliament into a strike-breaking institu- tion against railway workers and its courts to up their injunction output against labor. That of course is “normal procedure”’ by any and all decadent Administrations, Liberal, Tory, right-wing NDP, or a combination of all three. In this, as in other instances too numerous to list here, not the Justice of their cause, or wage levels, or increased inflation through greater extortion of excess profits via ‘technological advance” must concern the rail worker, but only to ‘‘obey the law”. . . a “law” hurriedly passed to preserve capitalism from its historical adversaries — the workingclass. “You break the strike,” wired Tory prime minister Arthur Meighan to his Minister of Labor, Gideon Robertson on the Win- nipeg General Strike of 1919, ‘“‘and we will enact the necessary laws.” History repeats itself. The Lewis “exhortation” to rail workers to forego their demonstrations before Parliament in protest of the unjust “law” designed to strangle their efforts, was highly reminiscent of an earlier ‘‘exhortation’’ by one Harold Winch to the Post Office sitdowners of the Hungry Thirties — to move out of the Vancouver Post Office “quietly” before the “law” throws you out violently; the “socialist Charley McCarthy’’ of police chief Foster, doing a job of ‘‘law’’ for a national Tory prime minister and a B.C. Liberal premier. Incidents which should mark the media’s touching obituaries of the “death” of Socialism in the NDP. But be of good cheer Messeurs of the kept press, our prognostications of “death” may leave the NDP (in your august opinion) as “‘just another party’’ but the Times and conditions and forces that make for Socialism are maturing rapidly. What is your Watergate, your insoluable ‘‘dollar’’ crisis, your corruption, your racist scheming and conniving in high places, if not harbingers of a new social order aborning?— the ideal to which a generation of veteran Communist men and women devoted their lives to achieve — and which a new generation are determined to win. _Can’t, you hear that whistle blowing? A full ward system has the sup- port not only of COPE but of the NDP, Vancouver Labor Council, many community groups and of TEAM. (Even if some of its aldermen refuse to abide by theif memberships decision). : The Establishment in our city 5 still strongly opposed to any kind of a ward system, even a_ partial system, and still cling to the neanderthal electoral ideas of the NPA. The reason of course, is that 7 they recognize that developers will have a hard time with a Council elected on a ward basis. We can expect that the Sun and Province will continue to cry ruil if voters opt for a ward system. The answer is that cities like Calgary, Winnipeg -and Toronto seem 10 have survived the ward system despite all the dire predictions ° our local daily editors. We can be certain that every & fort: will be made to turn out all the voters opposed to a ward system: Only if all its supporters turn oul, can the city make a change ° direction. That is the big job faciNe us from now to October 24th, ! convince all interested 1 progressive change to turn out of the 24th and vote for a full wal system of 21 members. GEORGE RYGA, whose ney The Ecstacy of Rita Joe," been widely performé ed North America, was honor last week when the play yi performed in Edinburg Scotland by a Kamloops oo 7 ee pany. It was named for one nine awards at this youe Edinburgh Festival. lives in the Okanagan V4, The play deals with the ty of Native Indians in thee 50th ANNIVERSARY BANQUET Sept. 15 Fishermen’s Hall 6:30 p.m. Tickets $4.00 Pens., High Sch. $3.00 at Co-Op Bookstore PT Office, from YCL'e* Hear Liz Hill cl General Secretary Y Dance to Vision uE YOUNG communist LEAST PACIFIC TRIBUNE FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 141979 2 PAGED