-Daily World

NEWS ITEM: The Canadian Troskyist paper recently carried a centre page
spread in which it outlined a program for the overthrow of the Czechoslovak
government. An accompanying article calls for the revolutionary overthrow
af the governments “not only in Czechoslovakia, but in the Soviet Union
itself.” The Trotskyist program outlines how to infiltrate unions and other mass
organizations and calls for the setting up of “small illegal groups on a strictly

conspiratorial basis.” t

Unity key to victory —
« in civic elections

By WILLIAM TURNER

With . Vancouver’s'’ civic
elections slated for December,
plans are already underway by
local reactionary groups to co-
ordinate their efforts in a con-
certed campaign to defeat Alder-
man Harry Rankin and the candi-
dates of the Committee of

, Progressive Electros (COPE).

It is not difficult to see why

reaction through its official

“mouthpiece the Non-Partisan
Association (NPA) is deter-
mined to pull out all the stops in
a desperate attempt to oust
Rankin in a move to bar the road
to progressive policies at City
Hall.

It is still smarting from the
beating it received by being
compelled to accede to the
demands. of tenants for a Rental

ao Freview Board, a victory that
~~“ powered the passage of the Land-

lords and Tenants Act (Bill 20)
by the Socred government.

In its haggling over the terms
of Block 42, the delaying tactics
to resolve Project 200, the
freeway and town-planning con-
troversy, the recent Vancouver
Yacht club beach steal, and on
many more vital issues, the NPA
has been the consistent cham-
pion of monopoly interests in
this city. Its leading spokesmen
on City Council, Aldermen
Adams and Broome, have
resorted on a number of
occasions to red-baiting attacks
on Harry Rankin in a vain

attempt to counter. the
progressive policies he _ has
advanced.

While these tactics of reaction
are nothing new and are always
intended to serve as a smoke-
Screen, when.a new element is
added aimed -at achieving the
same results, then it is indeed
cause for alarm. What is in the
making is a concerted effort by
the far right of civic politics
together with ultra-left groups to
unite their forces to bring about
the defeat of Rankin and the
program advanced by COPE.

Early in March members of
the NDP met unofficially to
discuss the question of entering
civic candidates under the

‘“panner of the NDP. The main
-) pressures being exerted upon the

’ mislead,

course comes from Trotskyist,
elements both within and outside
the ranks of the party. As part of
this disruptive move the
Trotskyists circulated a leaflet
at the March 12 meeting of
COPE, attacking and urging that
“those who have supported the
Committee of Progressive
Electors (COPE) in the past to
come all out for an NDP slate”
and that this is ‘‘the real alter-

native. to the. capitalist. .poli-, .

ticians in city hall.”’

The Maoists not to § dtitdone
have launched a vicious personal
attack upon Rankin. The Progres-

sive Workers Movement news-
letter states ‘‘we are especially
interested in the person of one
Harry Rankin, who adopts the
posture of a radical defender of
workers rights’. Ignoring
Rankin’s record as an Alderman
it charges this ‘‘is a pretty cheap
reputation,” ‘‘a combination of
windy rhetoric,’’ “championing
of causes of little value’. That
“on issues of some significance
Rankin was found running with
right - wing hounds and money
grubbing landlords’. The
article sums up this-diatribe in
asserting that “Rankin is a fake
radical’? who ‘‘folds when the
chips are down.”

This action is calculated to
confuse, and divide
progressive forces at a time
when the strongest and firmest
policies for unity are required to
re-elect Rankin and other
progressive candidates to city
council. Unity is the only
possible -way that entrenched
reaction in the form of the NPA
can be defeated. That is what
unity really means.

Efforts within the NDP to run
a party slate- or a group of
NDP’ers as independents would
only serve the purpose of
splitting the progressive vote, It
would be a setback to labor and
other progressive forces if
reaction is able to accomplish its
main aim — the defeat of Harry
Rankin. :

A rebuff to reaction was given
by the Vancouver Labor Council
when it endorsed Alderman
Harry Rankin and the program
of the Committee of Progres-
sive Electors in this year’s
election. =

NDP to take this anti-unity- This action also serves to

9G ONGT of RIA - JMUSaIRT DAD AG
~~ PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 10, 1970—Page 2 ©

NDP civic slate would

split progressive voters

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Although our municipal
elections are still eight months
away, the civic election pot is
already beginning to bubble and
boil.

For over 30 years the NPA has
ruled the roost. It has always
enjoyed almost a monopoly of
the vote in the predominantly
middle class areas west of
Cambie Street. But now its in
trouble.

It alienated many of these
voters when it tried to force
through the CPR’s Arbutus
Shopping Centre deal against the
strong opposition of local
residents. It alienated more of
these voters when it agreed to
allow ‘the Royal Vancouver
Yacht Club to build a_-private
parking lot on a public beach at.
Jericho, a decision it may yet
have to reverse.

TEAM hopes to cash in on this
middle class _ disillusionment
with the NPA. It has the backing
of powerful real estate promo-
tional interests and _ the
Vancouver Sun. Although
predominantly Liberal in make-
up, it has enticed some right
wing conservative minded NDP
into its ranks in an effort to!
attract the working class vote in
Vancouver’s East End.

COPE, the Committee of Pro-
gressive Electors, originated by
labor, is receiving increased
support from the Vancouver and
District.Labor Council and local
unions. But it is faced with a
split in the left and progressive
vote due to the efforts of a group
within the NDP who want the
NDP to run its own slate in civic
elections.

One of the main pressures for
such action comes from an ultra
left Trotskyite group called the
League for Socialist Action and
its members within and without
the NDP.

Pritchett better

The PT is happy to report that,
Harold Pritchett is improving
rapidly following an operation
last week at the Burnaby
General Hospital. He will be in
hospital for the next few days
and will then recuperate at
home.

We hope to see Harold back in
harness soon so that he can
continue to give his inspiring
leadership

throw back the snide attack
made upon Rankin by the
Trotskyists in their leaflet when
they state that the real issue in
civic politics is ‘not simply a
problem of replacing fat cats on
city hall with progressive
minded citizens’, with ‘friends
of labor’. The future of progres-
sive policies that will serve to
unite labor and _ progressive-
minded voters lies in the all-
important question of ensuring
the re-election of Alderman
Harry Rankin around a program
that will ensure an end to
reaction in this city and its
control of our city council.

The meeting called by the
NDP April 18-19, which will
consider whether to field a slate
of party candidates should give
serious consideration to the
over-riding question of unity in

_ their deliberations.

The effect of an NDP slate
would be to split the progressive
voters and the NDP itself and
make it easier for the NPA and
TEAM, which already have the
advantage of the support of the
privately owned daily press, TV
and radio stations, to continue in
office.

Putting an NDP slate into the
field would undoubtedly harm
the influence of the NDP,
particularly with the unions,
because both labor and the NDP
membership want to see the
NPA defeated and replaced not

by the Liberals but with progres- —
sives based on the kind of
program that COPE has.
Recognizing the harmful,
divisive effect of a split in the
ranks of labor, the Vancouver
and District Labor Council has
asked its affiliates and members
to oppose an NDP slate when the
matter is considered at a special
membership meeting of the
Vancouver NDP on April 18.
COPE supporters feel that
their prospects for gains this
year are very good, but much
depends on-keeping the labor-and
progressive vote united.

Woe B.C.’s_ perennial Socred “prime minister”
W.A.C. Bennett claims a direct hot-line plug-in with
the Diety, the entire fuse box of the founding Socred Prophetic
Bible Institute (PBI) in Calgary, Alberta, according to a
“Special to the Globe and Mail’, has finally blown the works.

Built by the very late William Aberhart, Anno Domino
1926, the PBI served as the incubator and birthplace of the
Social Credit movement in Canada; the axis on which the
Western Canada Bible Belt revolved. It also served as a
clearing house for Socred ideologies and “economics’’, first by
William Aberhart as the head of the first provincial Socred
government in Canada, and later by His chosen successor, €X-
premier Earnest Manning.

Both.in their turn and time held forth from the PBI
Tabernacle every Sunday in lengthy political - religious
harrangue, broadcast to the nation. And woe betide the critic
or cynic who challenged the Aberhart - Manning Bible ~ Belt
nostrums. Such a challenge was considered the equivilant of
questioning the word of Jehovah and his Socred Apostles. Sheer
blasphemy, what?

In its halycon years the Socred Prophetic Institute was
also the magnet which attracted numerous celebrities from the
U.S. Bible Belt; the voluptuous and curvacious Aimee Semple
McPhersons, the flocks of Elmer Gantrys, made famous by the
American author, the late Upton Sinclair. All found Sunny
Alberta a most rewarding ‘‘vineyard’’ to work— as the term 1S
used in its broadest sense.

When Aberhart first won election with his Social Credit
party in 1935, the PIB and its ‘prophetic’ bible thumpers
became the famed Tabernacle symbol that had led Socredia
into the ‘‘promised land”’!

What Aberhart was going to do by ‘‘the simple stroke of a
pen” far outstripped Boccasio’s ‘Tales of the Arabian
Nights’, but when the ‘‘Globe and Mail’’ reported the ‘‘more
than 1,200 depression victims who gathered at the PBI to
celebrate Aberhart policial victory’, it should’also have added
that when Abie tried to palm off hisscriptmoney in lieu of a few
legal tender dollars by way of welfare relief, the depression
victims flatly refused Socred script — for other than
souvineers, or low-grade toilet paper.

Now silent for fifteen years or more, the Aberhart
Prophetic Bible Institute is no longer silent or engaged 1n
political metaphysics. Its fuses are restored and it now
operates as one of the biggest and most colorful rock and roll
clubs in Western Canada. Now its ‘‘venerable”’ walls vibrate to
the psychedelic music and color of top rock bands and mini -
skirted go-go girls.

And better still, the PBI is playing to packed houses of -
young people almost continuously at $2 per, with rollicking
rock bands and dance girls ‘‘spotlighted’’ in the old Aberhart
organ loft, which serves as a stage.

‘“Fnough to make the old man turn over in his grave, 4
Socred sourly commented when shown this PIB “‘special to the

_ Globe and Mail.”

Many people have become, or are fast becoming fed up to
the gills with 35-years of Social Credit quasi religious - political
trickery in Alberta — plus 18 years of a similar brand 0
betrayal and sell-out in B.C. Without doubt such people will
welcome that change in the Prophetic Bible Institute ag
Calgary, from a “holier - than - thou’’ centre of occult politics
and medevial witchcraft, to a rock and roll centre of happy an
exuberant youth— who, with their rock music and dancing an
color, will help hasten the exit of Socred ‘‘gods”’ from the skies
— and their apostolic plagues from the seats of political power
on earth. Now the PBI is prophetic indeed— with the songs an
music of youth making it’s rafters ring. ~

CS aaaae