‘Looking up Howe Sound from Lions Gate bridge. |

EDITORIAL PAGE

Are the beaches clean?

et authorities have officially
declared Vancouver’s famed
beaches “open and clean” for
swimming. That is good news.
What isn’t so good is the complete
absence of scientific standards ap-
plied (if any) to determine the
safe” level of sewage pollution of
beach water. No such figures have
been forthcoming in the official
beach “opening” announcements.

Much work has been done clean-
ing up the beaches. Bulldozing deb-
ris, resanding, washing, etc., but the’
determitant of pollution of beach
waters—that is a different matter.

Last August Vancouver beaches
were closed to bathing; one day it
was a “warning” that pollution had
exceeded a “safe” level, the next
complete beach closure.

The question is what has been
done meantime to assure that a
similar closure for a similar reason
v.on’t happen this summer. True,
the beaches have been cleaned up
and district sewer officials have
spent some $25,000 chlorinating
sewage, but this sewage from a
half-a-million or so poulation, still
pours into the beachwaters of Van-
couver.

The rather flambuoyant annouce-
ment that the “beaches are clean...
we can now go swimming” has all
the earmarks of a Chamber-of-
Commerce tonrist booster attrac-
tion, rather than a_ conclusion
founded upon scientific standards.
To most people out to enjoy a
swim, minced chlorinated sewage

Pacific Tribune

Phone MUtual 5-5288
_ Editor — TOM McEWEN -
Managing Editor — BERT WHYTE

Published weekly at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.

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year.

is no more palatable than in its
raw state.

Meantime while Vancouver civic

authorities continue their “on-again-
.off-again”
beach closure policies, Lower Main-
land farmers and others are pur-
chasing fertilizer products from
U.S. metropolitan sewage disposal
plants—at a good profit to the
producers.

sewage pollution and

The question naturally arises;

why not get busy with such a sew-
age disposal plant of our own, as
the best and only way of ending
sewage pollution of beach waters,
and use the byproducts of such a
plant for our own farms and gard-
ens. rather than have to swim in it
—whether chlorinated or in its raw
state?

UMEROUS conferences between
Canadian Labor Congress and
CCF top brass point up one basic
law of working class political unity
and action; that the job of building
a united labor-farmer alterative to
the political henchmen of big busi-
ness cannot be done by pornos
finagling at the top.

Any CCF-CLC conference fhiehs
seeks to bypass rank-and-file senti-
ment and opinion on achieving uni-
ty, which sees the unions only as
voting and financing adjuncts of
the CCF, is doomed to failure in
all, except as an obstacle to the
unity it pretends to seek.

History provides lessons almost
daily on the futility of this narrow
approach to united labor political
action, but it seems CCF top brass,
like the Bourbons of old, “forget
nothing, and learn nothing.”

The recent elections in Manitoba
with a sweeping Tory victory, saw
the CCF lose ground because of
its anti-unity “go-it-alone” policies.
and because it had nothing better
to offer Manitobans than the in-
sistence that it could do a better

‘job of running capitalism than the

Tories.

In the Ontario elections on June
11 it will be much the same pic-
ture, and for precisely the same
reasons. The CCF top brass would
like Ontario trade unions to vote

CCF as “labor’s political a
supply the necessary electiot
but nothing more. CCF
Donald MacDonald, thro
inedium of the Toronto Dail;
has already assured the fi
of Bay Street that he can doa
better job of administering O
affairs than the Frost Tory e
rent.

Against the background of the
recent Rossland-Trail byelection exe
perience, the CCF in that area har
passed a very fine resolution Wh
cays in part: “Therefore, be it
solved, that in all future co

ences, both national. and provinei
all sections of the trade union
movement, without exception and
without prejudice, be drawn into
participation, in this way ach i
the maximum unity of the workit

class in the political arena. « - pe

The lesson is clear; not CCE.
CLC scheming at the top to secure
trade union votes and finances, but |
the broadest participation and unity
from below, which alone can 4
victory over the political paris
of reaction.

Top level CCF scheming not only
destroys their own existence as :
political party of the “left,” but 0
structs the progress of g
working class unity — the prin
essential to Socred- Toa
defeat.

Tom
McEwen

URING the recent LPP nation-

D al committee sessions in Tor-
onto, the party leader for Ontario
Bruce Magnusson, listed the “ed-
ucational” topics on CBC-TV pro-
grams over a given period of
time.
_ While my notes on this inter-
esting subject are not complete,
I recall that Magnusson’s list
showed such program topics as
gangsterism, murder, sex, cold
war dime thrillers, westerners,
and other such lofty subjects, a
predominant majority. Subjects
that would be of a moral, econo-
mic, social or cultura] benefit
were definitely in a minority
category on CBC programs.

So much for that, Any TV
viewer can make the same study
as Magnusson and come up with
pretty much the same omaha
balance sheet.

‘That’s not the worst of it. The
TV audience, as Mr. and Mrs.
Taxpayer, is called upon to sub-

sidize the sponsors of the bulk
of this “cultural” mess. :

Recently some MPs have asked
in the House of Commons that
the CBC give seme accounting of
the money it spends on spon-
sored TV shows, The CBC replies
that to do so would be “unethical”
which is the Tory way of saying
there are some things it is better
for the taxpayer hot to know,
since he would probably blow a
fuse or two were he to know that
he was not only getting 90 per-
cent or more under-par CBC-TV
programs, but having to subsi-
dize the “sponsor” to boot.

A Calgary MP wanted to know
how much the Canadian tax-
payer pays for the “General Mo-
tors Presents” program. We’d like
to know how much the CBC
spends keeping the farce called
“Fighting Words” and its “mod-
erator” Nathan Cohen on TV, a
program which rarely lives up
to its title, and which invariably
finds it “educational” theme in
the gutter of anti-Soviet cold
war innuendo and smear. :

Recently the Cohen “panel” had
a Yankee. gent: called Castle on
its rostrum, a U.S. millionaire
who runs some sort of magazine,
and: has ambitions to become a —
second McCarthy. :

The gist of Castle’s harangue
on this particular program was

‘of Soviet spies,”

to the effect that the Moscow
Bolshoi Ballet, now touring the~
U.S. and Canada Was a “nest
and should be
sent home forthwith. aes

Castle’s introduction of thi”
subject on “Fighting Words”
made one point clear to other
members of the pane], and to the
TV audience — that “moderator” u
Cohen and Castle (unknown to.
other panel members) had done >
some pre-rehearsing of this anti-
Soviet smear, so much so that |
one member of the panel walked
out in indignant protest. ~

‘Like every renegate from a
movement he once espoused,
Cohen’s anti-Soviet bias may
stem from the fact that he was_
once a member of the Commuist
party. During 1958 McLeans
Magazine had an article on ‘the.
subject, a sort of belated apologia,
the gist of which was that Mr.
Cohen was a very young man,
didn’t know any better, but is.
now fully recovered from ‘this.
youthful relapse.

In any case we see no valid
reason why the taxpayer should
be called to subsidize such “cu-
tural” garbage, whether it be
General Motors, Cohen, or the
soap operas of Suds Unlimited.

A few thousand letters of pro=
test might untie the knots ios 4
CBC’s “ethical” code. sig’? a

June 5, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PA