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THE NATION

Breaking up the

Commonwealth —

By TIM BUCK

A Bout the only thing that the majority of
Canadians learned about the recent conrfer-

ence of British “Commonwealth” Prime Ministers .
was that they decided to drop the word “British”
from the title of their association. Acting Prime
Minister Louis St. Laurent explained that the

’
change has no significance. St-Laurent S. pre-
tence only emphasized its significance, One yer:
It was made to appear incidental but, in fact,
it revealed the deep stresses and strains she
are forcing changes in the state relationships Oo
those countries which, until so recently, were
simply parts of Britain’s empire. —

According to the information given to the
public, the ale issue before the Prime Ministers
assembled was whether or not India, Pakistan
and Eire could declare themselves sovereign re-
publics without getting out of the Common-
wealth. That was a pertinent question, of course,
but it was not the issue of the conference. It
merely reflected the fact that the contradictions
which compelled the calling of the conference
Were not solved. ;

India and Pakistan are no longer going to
permit their tariffs and other aspects of their
foreign trade policy to be decided by the British
government. Two other governments, Canada

and the United Kingdom) are rapidly discarding
traditional policies based upon the es
Wealth, replacing them by policies which stake
the economic and political futures of their coun-
tries upon U.S. war policy in Europe instead of
upon the Commonwealth:

, To avoid misunderstanding we must empha-
Size the following. The fact that. the govern-
Ments of Canada and the United Kingdom are
each abandoning their traditional Commonwealth
Policies to subordinate their countries to Ameri-
can imperialism does not mean that economic
Cooperation between Canada and the United

ingdom is being strengthened, on the SoH
the United Kingdom is being made a victim 2
U.S. finance-capitalist depredations and, like the

vultures they are, Canadian monopolists and:

their political henchmen are striving to make
Canadian imperialism a junior partner of Sus
Can imperialism in despoiling _the ona
British Empire. In such a situation it was ittle
Wonder that other members of the Common-
Wealth, Australia and New Zealand, were literally
‘demanding an answer ‘to the question : Where
do we’ go from here?” \
The conference was an attempt to find an
answer to that question. It was an attempt ie
find a means by which at least the form 0
Commonwealth unity could be’ maintained in spite
of the fact that its economic basis’ is pane
stroyed: As Teronto Saturday Night lugubriously

admitted—after referring to the discrimination

ue Las “ ”?
Practised against India and Pakistan by x MELE
ominions,: “Yet the rest of us are all hoping
that India and Pakistan will play an sete
Part in checking, partly on our behalf, the sprea
of Communism in the East. an
~The one question upon w
Prime ministers appeared to be unanimous tae
that of their plans for war. That 1s a tragic
‘fact—and a striking illustration of right wing
Social democratic service to ‘imperialist reaction.
~The three prime ministers heading Labor ey
ments and the prime ministers of India, Pa e .
and Ceylon are, all of them, prime ministers only

he assembled

. . re :
ecause in their respective countries the great

Masses of democratic people demand and fight

for the defeat of imperialism. Yet they could all_

be reported as being in complete agreement ese
a global war strategy based upon the war aim
of United States imperialism.

i rnment and
For the King-St. Laurent governmen

al

the un-Canadiar. finance-capitalist clique that it
serves, the outcome of the conference was emin-
ently satisfactory. They don’t want a too hurried
dissolution of the British Commonwealth. Main-
taining the Commonwealth is one way to help
prevent any of its member countries from be-
coming fully democratized. Furthermore, Can-
adians are not yet sold on the prospect of com-
plete dependence upon the United States and, in
the event that St. Laurent’s plans don’t work out,
markets in the’ presently Commonwealth coun-
tries may yet have to be gone after on the basis
of “Commonwealth relationships.”

In the meantime External Affairs Minister
Pearson announces that the King-St. Laurent

“government is ready to join the projected West-

ern Europe war alliance. He added that all pre-
liminary negotiations have been completed in
conversations which “started on July 6 at Wash-
ington.” te

The King-St. Laurent government want at
least the form of Commonwealth unity to be
maintained while they assist in scuttling the
Commonwealth: To the extent that such con-
flicting objectives are possible, simultaneously,
they were achieved. The conference of British
Commonwealth Prime Ministers was a part of
the process of the break-up of the Common-
wealth.

The Chief likes your story, Pegmire ++. was there

any truth, in. it?

Free sae Week

[REE SPAIN WEEK will be celebrated in Canada,
the U.S. and other countries the week of December
1 to 8, it is announced by the Joint Anti-Fascist Refu-
gee Committee, New York, which has contacted forces
for peace in 33 different countries. An international
delegation will gather in Paris during that week to
petition the UN against any attempt to whitewash the
Franco > regime. : |

The campaign comes in the midst of an oper: drive
by big business in the U.S., Britain and Canada, to
have the Franco government represented at the United-
Nations: Public indignation at this proposal has been
widespread in all countries. In Canada, campaigns are
getting under way in local areas.. Pretest meetings
and petitions,are being planned and an effort will be
made to send a Canadian delegate to Paris.

The King-St. Laurent government’s attitude  to-
wards Franco Spain is regarded with anger and sus-
picion by all Canadians desiring peace. A typical re-
action to the prospect of allowing Franco, one of
Hitler’s first allies, to sit at sessions of the United
Wations, was the statement by Walter Dent and Alec
Forbes, president and vice-president of the Veterans
of the Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. :

“Mm memory of the 600 Canadian heroes whko lie
buried in Spain, men who gave their livés in the first.
attack of fascism against the world, and in the name
of our organization we protest this base attempt to make

“our country ‘a partner in the conspiracy to whitewash

Franco’s regime in Spain, a regime guilty of many
thousands of crimes against humanity,” the veterans
of the Spanish war declared.

LABOR FOCUS

W ar drive behind

attack on labor

By BRUCE MICKLEBURGH

OU have to look outside the unions to ex-

plain the ferocity of the attack on the
unions.

When you hear American bombers flying
north over Vapcouver every night, when fisher-
men tell you that sometimes twenty a day are
sighted over the Gulf—these are things that
are reiated to that attack.

When a young worker tells you, “My bro-
ther applied for a job in a plant down East and
they asked him if he’d been to the recruiting

- depot.”—that, too, is related.

These things are related to. the drive to
smash the woodworkers, the seamefi, the miners,
and every union. They are related because forti-
fications and munitions are paper and tinsel
without the militarization of the people.

In particular, the American puppets in our
government cannot unleash Canada on the path ~
of aggression without chaining to their war
machine our million-strong labor movement.

So that what is new and fraught with grave
danger about the current attack on labor is that
it is part and parcel of the drive to warand fas-
cism. Behind it stands the full weight 6f the em-
ployers, the employers’ governments ‘at Ottawa
and Victoria, and behind them again the full
weight of American imperialism.

Not even this combined offensive could break
labor from the outside. But the bosses have also
a fifth column of labor fakers drawn in the tirst
place from the right-wing social democrats en-
trenched in top CCF leadership (as distinct from
thousands of honest CCF trade unionists who
are fighting for their unions).

A typical local example of the link between
the drive to war and the attack on labor was
supplied last week by Tom Alsbury, a_right-
wing social democrat operating in Vancouver
Trades*and Labor Council, ’

On a CCL broadcast he claimed that. both

‘the French miners’ strike for existence ($70 a

month is what they’re asking) and the B- C.
woodworkers’ battle for a free Canadian union
are part of an international communist conspir-
acy. Miners facing Moroccan killers or wood-
workers fired for organizing are equally aware

. that such is the language of their class enemy.

To get a picture of the war crew in labor add
to these right social-democrats. a combingtion
of boss agents and stools, MRA elements, plus
those who seek to cloak union-busting with a
Catholic mantle, and Trotskyites such as the
Whalen gang whose profession is. treachery from
the left. "a

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce says it
will deal with such people—in the same breath
as it calls for the open shop and labor-manzge-
ment cooperation towards war. ;

The Fadling forces are the physical carriers
,of American Taft-Hartleyism into B-C. woods.
and mills, the same Taft-Hartleyism represent-
ed by the bullets prepared for Papagiros, sec-
retary of the Greek Federation of Labor, now
under death sentence.

When men are fired in Vancouver sawmills
for wearing WIUC buttons this is part of the -
militarization of Canadian workers. 2

This is the truth that the school of hard
knocks is driving home for many trade union-
ists. It is‘a truth that has to be grasped not in
a propaganda sense, but in a sense of seeing —
the forces involved and the character of the no
quarter fight that has to be waged to save the
freedom of: Canadian labo:. i ge

. Out of this it also follows that every tr de
union battle, whether it be the fight to enforce
or-win a contract, against discrimination ‘and
layoffs, for a free union, for collective bargain-
ing laws or for a foreign policy based on peace
and markets, is in itself a part of the fight for
peace.

And there can be no laws ever framed or
gang-tp of; phonies invented that can stop: work-
ers fighting for bread and butter and life itself.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER. 12, 1948 — PAGE 9