BOOKS

Canadian Seamen’s Union strike
woven into Lindsay's new novel

WITH HIS outstanding novel
Betrayed Spring, based on events
in Britain in the crisis year of
1947, Jack Lindsay established
himself as the only British novel-
ist to deal with the lives of work-
ing people in the postwar world.

His characters—dockers, stud-
ents, trade union officials, factory
workers—were real people strug-
gling with the real problems of
the industrial and political life of
that eventful year.

Now Lindsay has written an-
other novel along similar lines.
it is called Rising Tide (obtain-
able on order in Vancouver at
the People’s. Cooperative *Book-
store, 337 West Pender Street,
price $2.50).

Some of the characters from
Betrayed Spring appear again in
this new volume, and Lindsay ex-
plains in a foreword that it is the
second. volume in a series he is
planning under the general title
of The British Way.

Rising Tide tells the story of
the Canadian Seamen’s strike in
1948, and of the lockout of steve-
dores and dockers in London, to
which it led. Men of the London
docks refused to unload two Can-
adian ships which the striking
seamen had declared black, and
the Dock Labor Board refused to
employ the men on any other
ship until the two black ships
had been worked.

This dispute tied up, hundreds
of ships in the Port of London,

It was a fierce struggle, the
importance of which went far
beyond the immediate issues. The
dockers were not only upholding
trade union solidarity.

They were struggling against a
planned attempt by the employers
to destroy the whole’ bases of
the dockers ’security and reduce
them to an unorganized group of.
easual laborers.

The Labor government and the
right wing union leadership were
making a determined effort to
crush democratic rank and file or-
ganization among the dockers and
to assert the supremacy of the
bureaucratic machine.

The dockers did not gain all
they fought for, but they greatly
strengthened their own organiza-
tion and solidarity and set an im-
mensely valuable example to the
whole world of steadfast trade
union struggle.

ne * «x *

LINDSAY SEES this stirring
istory through the eyes of the
\dockers and their wives and girl
ifriends. Jeff and Phyl, a docker
and his young wife, set up home
jin an old hut on a piece of waste
‘land near the doeks—accommida-
‘tion is so short that they think
‘themselves very lucky to get as
smuch.

t They are an honest couple with
splenty of character but inexperi-
leneed, and as the dispute at the
‘docks develops the strain it puts
‘on the young couple finds out
‘their weaknesses. But it also
‘brings them the experience and
‘comradeship which enables them
to overcome their weaknesses.

‘ it is one of the great merits
‘ef Lindsay’s book that his char-

‘acters really grow and deepen

‘and change, as living people do,

jin the course of the events he

jdescribes.
~ Woven into the story are char-

‘acters whose attitudes and the

ichanges the dispute makes in

‘them, are typical of many. But
most of all the novel brings out

the tremendous communal spirit,

the sense of being one great fami-

.

ly, which binds the dockers to-
gether and makes them perhaps
the most solid, unsplittable group
in the whole British working
class today.

In this novel Lindsay has chos-
en a technique even closer to
the people and events he de-
scribes than that of Betrayed
Spring.

Real-life people like Ted Dick-
ens and Albert Timothy, rank-
and-file dockers’ leaders, not only
appear in the story but are ac-
tively involved in the personal
lives of the young couple around
whom the story is set.

The Canadian seamen, many of
them men who became well-
known personalities in dockland
at the time of the dispute, are
introduced in their own names.

The story of the Canadian Sea-
men’s strike, a world-wide affair,

is told through the laconic, vivid
telegrams the CSU leaders in
Montreal actually sent, and which
are now published for the first
time.

Two genuine poems written by
port workers are also included in
the story: Needless to say, the
events of the dispute itself are
treated with absolute fidelity.

The effect of this is that Lind-
say has produced a vivid account
of the dotk struggle that is not
jus? a piece of dramatic reportage
but a penetrating and warmly
human novel of enduring value,
in which occasional faults of writ-
ing matter no more than they do
in Dickens.

Jack Lindsay’s Rising Tide
surely marks the beginning of a
great advance in British progres-
sive writing—PATRICK GOLD-

ING.

NOVELS HEAD LIST OF PROGRESSIVE WORKS

Wide choice of books for Christmas gifts

DESPITE ALL the influences
which operate to prevent publica-
tion of. progressive boooks in the
United States particularly and in
Canada and Britain to a lesser
extent, there is still a wide choice
for people who want to give books
as Christmas gifts.

High on the list of fiction is a
new first novel by Arthur Kahn,
author of Betrayal and brother
of Albert Kahn, who wrote The
Great Conspiracy. In Brown-
stone ($2.25) Arthur Kahn has

written a powerful story of work- -

ing class life in New York. How
well he has succeeded in integrat-
ing the great issues of our times
with the lives of his characters
is a matter of opinion, but there
is no denying that he has faced
up to these issues honestly as
few American writers are pre-
pared to do today and by that
fact given his novel a strength
and conviction in the tradition
of Theodore Dreiser.

Another fine novel of working
class life is Gwyn Thomas’ A
Frost On My Frolic ($2.50). Set
as all his novels are, in his . be-
loved Wales, this is perhaps the
best of Thomas’ works in which

“he comes closest to our own

times, the period of the war, with
an occasional projection into the
post-war period. Thomas tells the
story of a group of young people
in their final grade at school (he
himself is a schoolteacher) and
their experiences as fire watchers
and volunteer land workers in a
small town just emerging from
years of depression. For another
writer it might be a _ slender
theme, but for Thomas, with his
ability to create character, his
descriptive power, his humor and
wit: as a satirist, it provides the
material for a vivid work.

Still another readable novel is
Betrayed Spring by Jack Lind-
say ($3.50) whose second work
in what is intended to be a series,
Rising Tide, has just been pub-
lished in Britain and will be avail-
able here in the New Year. Both
novels touch on the Canadian Sea-
men’s Union strike and should
therefore be of considerable in-
terest in this country.

Among the new volumes of
poetry by far the most outstand-
ing is All My Brothers by Joe
Wallace ($1).

Other novels include Crown
Jewel by Ralph de Boissiere
($2.50), woven around the theme
of labor struggle in Trinidad;

Italian Renaissance exhibit

Luigi’s “Salome” (above) is one of 140 paintings currently on
display in the exhibition of Italian Renaissance painting at Vancouvel
Art Gallery which ends this Sunday, December 13. x

readable volume by & British

WITH London’s pantomime

season in full swing, Unity

Theatre is presenting an old

favorite, Cinderella, with a

new twist.

Weaving political satire with
fable in the best tradition of
pantomime, Unity’s version
portrays Cinderella (“Cinders’’)
as the daughter of an impov-.
erished John Bull, who is dom-

Cinderella's ugly Yank sisters

Columbia pioneer who lives 1 a
isolated cabin in the Selkirks ani
writes with a naturalist’s U2
standing of the life he AON”
best. -

Grass Beyond the Mountalt
by Richmond P. Hobson, ae
($4.50), an account of latter :
pioneering in the Cariboo.

inated by his American wife.

The battle between Cinder-
ella and her ugly American
sisters becomes a riotous com:

mentary on “our way of life.” ine
The press turns Cinderella. Other non-fiction works ‘
into a “princess,” the FBI and clude: io uis
Scotland Yard hang around, oe ee che Tice of
and a twist in the ending drives |. the leader of the Hukbalaber
home the moral that people which is at once the stirrin$ tid
should not marry below them of the Philippines libersyr
into the ruling class. movement. 1.38)
The Rosenberg Letters Gtten

Water Tower by Andre Stil ($2),
editor of L’Humanite, a powerful
story of the French working peo-
ple; Burning Valley by Philip
Bronsky ($3), , set in the steel
towns of western Pennsylvania,
The Passion of Sacco and Van-
zetti, by Howard Fast ($3.25), per-
haps the best of Fast’s many
works.

Among a wide choice of novels
by Soviet authors are Spring
on the Oder by E. Kazakevich
($1), Kutnetsk Land by A. Volo-
shin ($1) and Harvest by Galina
Nikolayeva ($1.25). A good novel
of People’s Rumania is Mitrea

: “TURNING TO the non-fiction

¥ wih

Seasons Oreetinys
to all ovr customers

All books reviewed on this page —

may be obtained at

PEOPLE’S COOPERATIVE BOOKSTORE :
337 West Pender, Vancouver, B.C. MArine 5836

a collection of the letters
by Julius and Ethel Roseny©

1 Fought in Korea by J
Tunstall ($1.65), in which 2
bridge University student.
served with the British fore eek
lates his experiences 1? at
and draws the conclusio® yght

Cocor by M. Sadovenear ($1).
x * *

list, these are among the best of
the recent Canadian works:

The Heart of a Peacock by
Emily Carr ($3.50) and the less
readable Pause ($3) by the same

a5 he should never have
: : ; there

Strange Empire by Joseph oe: ; Mary
Kinsey Howard ($6), by far the Five Stars Over China eines
most accurate, the best docu. Austin Endicott ($2) re: of Cot
mented and sympathetically pres- Creative Age by the Deaantorm™
ented story of Louis Riel yet writ- terbury ($1.10), both We™7 aa.

ed accounts of the New 4
The Souls of Black Folk
XE. B. DuBois ($5.25).

ten.
River
Grant Madison ($2.50),

For My Sidewalk by
a most

Wie

If you have not received our Christmas catalogue,

please write for a copy.

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — DECEMBER 11, 1953 —