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| An open letter

The following is an Open Letter from Pat O’Neal,secretary of the B.C.
Federation of Labor, to Sam Brown, an official of the Teamsters’ Union,
and is in reply to an article by Brown in the Vancouver Sun of Dec. 11.

O’Neal’s reply was published in the Jan. edition of The Labor States-
man and is re-published here in abbreviated form. While the PT does not
agree with all of the sentiments expressed by O’Neal, we do agree that con-
tinued debate on policy questions within the labor movement should find
the widest possible audience,in the search for working-class unity. It is in
this spirit that we reprint the excerpts below.

e
Dear Sam:

Your sermonizing on trade un-
ion morality earned considerable
derision among other Canadian
unionists who read your Dec, 11
article in The Vancouver Sun,

Even Teamsters chuckled
openly at the role of impeccable
union virtue,

It was unfortunate that you ig-
hored cogent facts of recent union
history, particularly those back
door efforts of the Teamsters
during the November “general
Strike” crisis, of which more
later, ea

* * OX

e . your holier-than-thou pon-
tificating has hurt all unions —
Most of all the thousands of
Teamsters who respect and with
whom we desire friendship and

- €O-operation,

It is to the credit of B.C.
unionists that they have retained
a sincere friendship with fellow-
workers on the trucks... |

Can you really feel that you’ve
gained anything by spurning this
friendship on the absurd grounds

. of offended virtue?

When the November crisis was
Settled one would have expected
all parties, particularly union-
ists, would quietly and efficiently
Set out to make the settlement
work,

_Acrimony was never less ap-
propriate, Yet you chose to mount
a stage with pronouncements
Which cannot fail to aggravate
already grievous labor problems,

* KK

Those unionists who attended
the pre-crisis conferences (you
did not) agree that to the many
questions raised there should be
factual replies,

But then instead of dealing
With the basic questions and an-
Swers you provided readers of
The Sun with an almost sublime
€xercise in sophistry, one more-
Over which has received ardent
€ndorsation of all anti-union em-
Ployers,

You know,’ of course, as did
other Teamster representatives,
that B.C, unions DID NOT plan

8 “general strike,”

This expression, with all the
fears it raises, was deliberately
Selected by employers and some
of the mass media to counter la-
bor’s protest,,

A “general strike” was never
contemplated, a fact as we shall
See was known to many of your
Own colleagues, What was
Planned was a mass protest: to
avoid any suggestion of “general
Strike” 9 rigid 48-hour time limit
Was imposed,

As you know, general strikes
are planned to be continued as

Enjoy Good, Home-Cooked
Meals at

Jennie’s Cafe
335 Main St.

© Modern equipment

© Dining room service

long as necessary to achieve cer-
tain goals, I might mention here
the general strike in aid of San
Francisco longshoremen, which,
incidentally, Teamster locals
supported in defiance of their
national leaders,

That was a bloody struggle
with police and soldiers battling
147,000 unionists determined to
convince the U.S. government to
end the evils of employer-con-
trolled waterfront hiring halls,

We of the B.C, Federation of
Labor took effective action to
forestall similar industrial war-
fare here,

Time was running out on Oil
Workers’ negotiations, Soon they
would declare petroleum pro-
ducts “hot.” :

In that event no orders or
threats would induce unions to
work with “hot” petroleum,

Results would have been dis-
astrous, The companies had
planned to use the inevitable
epidemic of “wild cat” stop-
pages to drag isolated locals
into the courts,

The union would have been
smashed.

The Federation had no alter-
native but to seize the initiative,
to move boldly to break the log-
jam in Oil negotiations,

The 48-hour protest was de-
cided on, But more important
NINE DAYS’ NOTICE was given,
If nothing else, this notice test-
ifies to the Federation’s urgent
desire to avoid industrial paral-
ysis,

By no stretch of reasonable —

imagination could this be termed
a call “to: the barricades” as
you suggested, Why you should
distort facts known to every

active unionist only you can an-

sSwer,

Many are wondering why there
“was no mention in your article of

the extensive and costly litigation
which B.C, unions have been

forced to undertake to secure,
employer observance of labor

laws,

-Many are asking why you failed
to mention that the most flagrant
violations of collective bargain-
ing requirements and the intent
of labor have been by manage-
ment,

Then there are your confident
answers to the automation-man-
power adjustment problems,
These are troubling experts
around the world and your own
Teamsters might find your con-
fidence helpful in devising auto-
mation clauses for your Own
members,

Our laws here require govern-
ment intervention in industrial
disputes, Automation demands
government action, The B,C.
Federation of Labor was deter-
mined that this action should be
taken, .. :

Fraternally,
E. P. O’Neal

ha at

EXPOSES VICIOUS LIES

Castro hits Trotskyism
as tool of imperialism

HAVANA — The Tricontinental
Conference of nations from Asia,
Africa and Latin America has
been a success, Fidel Castro told
a mass meeting here, It has,
he said, defied all predictions of
disunity and doom hoped for by the
imperialists,

For the first time, he declared,
the people’s movements of Latin
America have come together with
the similar movements of Africa
and Asia,

He paid tribute to the heroic
people of Vietnam, saying they
have taught the world the most
extraordinary lesson ofour time,
that imperialism can be defeated,
but the battle against the people
of Vietnam, Laos and the threats
against Cambodia, he added, show
the need for increasing help for
these people to the utmost,

Greeted by stormy applause
was Castro’s denunciation of the
Trotskyites as agents of im-
perialism,
ternational committed, he de-
clared, was a crime against the
revolutionary movement, in-
tending to isolate it from the
rest of the people by corrupting
it with stupidities,

He said his ire was aroused
by Trotskyite articles “accusing
Cuba of not giving Ernesto Gue-
vara a hearing and even making
the vicious insinuation that
Castro, his comrade in arms,
murdered him.”

Castro cited articles by Adolfo ;

Gilly in the Monthly Review of
N.Y., in Marcha, the Spanish
Trotskyite weekly, and in Nuovo
Mondo, the Italian Trotskyite
newspaper, as well as an article
by Felipe Alba Guante, the Mex-
ican Trotskyite, in El Universal,

Gilly, in his article Oct, 22
in Marcha had claimed that Che
Guevara had left Cuba because
of differences with Castro over
the Chinese question,

Castro, in his speech revealed
that Guevara had an understand-
ing with the Cuban revolutionists
from the very outset that “when
the struggle was completed in
Cuba, he would have other duties
to fulfill in another place, and we
always gave him our word that no
state interest, no national in-
terest, no circumstances would
lead us to ask him to remain in
our country or hinder him from
carrying out that wish, that de-
sire, and we fully and faithfully
kept that promise made to Com-
rade Guevara.”

Cuba’s enemies, Castro said,
have mounted a worldwide cam-
paign to discredit Cuba by using
Guevara’s departure as a pre-
text,

It was necessary for Che to
depart secretly, he noted, and
this gave the imperialists a

chance to use this circumstance. .
-Then Castro held up a news
clipping,

as one item among
many, and said:

“This item is a UPI cable dated
Dec, 6, 1965, which reads, ‘Ern-
esto Guevara was murdered by
Cuban prime minister Fidel
Castro following orders from the

USSR, declared Felipe Alba- —

Guante, leader of the Mexican

What the Fourth In- ~

Trotskyites, in a statement made
to El Universal,’

“He adds that Che Guevara
was’ liquidated because he in-
sisted on aligning Cuba with the
Chinese line, This set the tone
of a campaign which Trotskyite

‘elements began to launch every-

where simultaneously.”

FIDEL CASTRO

Castro considered Adolfo
Gilly’s accusation that Cuba did
not support the Dominican Re-
public to be particularly villain-
ous,

He pointed out that Gilly said
this at the very moment when the
U.S, authorities sought to justify
intervention by claiming that
Leftists and Communists heading
the Dominican revolution were
trained in Cuba,

Castro spoke of Gilly’s article
in the Monthly Review as “vil-,
lainous,”

“This person,” he said, “had
the vileness to accuse the Cuban
revolution of not having given
active aid to the revolution in
the Dominican Republic,” he said.

‘¢What does ‘active aid’ mean?
Did they expect that Cuba, whose
weapons and resources are well
known, could stop the landing of
U.S. troops in the Dominican
Republic?

“Cuba has weapons to defend -

itself and has these defense wea-
pons in an infinitely inferior
number with relation to the im-

perialists, and these gentlemen.
are so despicable, so shameless
that they blame Cuba for not
having prevented the landing, be-
cause what else does ‘active
support? mean?

“All that Cuba could do under
those circumstances, all that it
could have done and should have
done, it did.”

He added that asking Cuba to
prevent this landing ‘‘is like
asking Cambodia in Southeast
Asia to prevent bombings of North
Vietnam and to prevent the occu-
pation of South Vietnam by Yankee
imperialism,”

“Cuba,” he said, “does not
have millions of men under arms,
it is not a country having nuclear
weapons, because here our wea-

-pons are moral and the number of

millions is not infinite, the num-
ber of men is not infinite, but the
dignity and the decorum of this
people is infinite,”

Castro assailed the “infiltra-
tion’? of Trotskyites into the Guat-
emalan revolutionary movement,

One, he said, became the editor
of a newspaper which copied the
program of the Fourth Interna-
tional “from head to tail,”

“What the Fourth International
thus committed,” he thundered
from the rostrum to the dele-
gates from three continents, ‘*was
a true crime against the revo-
lutionary movement to isolate it
from the masses by corrupting
it with the stupidities, the dis-
honor and the repugnant and
nauseating thing that is Trot-
skyism today within the field of
politics,

“If Trotskyism, at a certain
stage, represented an erroneous
position but a position within the
field of political ideas, in later
years it became a vulgar instru-
ment of imperialism and reac-
tion,

“These gentlemen reason that,
for instance, with regard toSouth
Vietnam, where a vast revolu-
tionary front has united the im-
mense majority of the people and
has closely grouped different
sectors of the population around
the liberation movement in the
struggle against imperialism, to
Trotskyites this is absurd, itis |
counter revolutionary.”

Cuba, first socialist ‘country inthe western hemisphere, enjoys the support of
masses of people in South America. Seen above is a pro-Cuba, anti-U.S. demon-
stration in the streets of Santiago,.capital city of Chile. .

January 28, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 11