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By LESLIE MORRIS

The draft of a program has been prepared by the National wounietes for the New
Party which was set up jointly by the Canadian Labor Congress and the CCF. A cover-
ing letter by Carl Hamilton, secretary of the committee, says: “In 1960: the conven-
tions of the CLC and CCF will make their final decisions on the establishment of the

New Party.” Interested people are asked to express their opinions on the documents,

which, says Secretary Hamilton, are not intended to be final.

- The new Party presumably
will come into being at a
founding convention which
will take place after the CLC
and CCF conventions in April
and August, and likely not be-
fore 1961.

_The Winnipeg Resolution

was based, in part at least, on|

the defeat suffered by the CCF
at the hands of the Conserva-
tive Party in the 1959 federal
elections.‘ In reaction to that
event, the idea of an all-inclu-
Sive party and common plat-
form was put forward. This
may have meant the CCF in
the minds of Stanley Knowles,
David Lewis and. other CCF
stalwarts, but it was not said
to be the CCF, and it is very.
much to be doubted if such a
flatfooted plan to invest the
new party with the CCF pro-
gram and trade union funds

would have been adopted at

‘the convention.

The draft program shows that
the architects of the New Party
are against a broad jparty.
They reject unity except on
CCF terms, which is not unity
at all, and, we prophesy, will
fail to atiract to the new pariy
many people who otherwise

could be won if they were not)

called upon in advance io swal:
low the “philosophy” of Messrs.
Lewis, Knowles and Company.
“Philosophy” is the word used
in Mr. Hamilton’s letter: ‘‘The
official statement of philosophy
and program will be made by
the founding convention of the
New Party and by no other
body.”

How can you get a unity of
philosophy? At the most you
can get unity on immediate
policies of action against Cana-
dian monopoly capital.

People who want progress’

and are prepared to work and

vote for a labor-farmer party’

and a platform of reforms may
have different philosophies. In
fact they do.

There are those who have

the Marxist outlook, the Com-'

munists; there are CCF’ers who
have a social reformist view-
point; there are many with a
liberal humanist
(liberal with a small ‘“1”);
there are trade unionists who.

think progress will be won)

only through the economic
struggle; there are farmers who
have the outlook of agrarian
democracy; there are .thous-

ands who stand for peace and’

clusive”

“philosophy |

disarmament and whose politi-
cal philosophy has yet to be
worked out in their own minds;
there are those .who would
support a new party which
stood firmly for Canadian in-
dependence and against domin-
ation by the USA. How many
shades and facets of politcal
thought there are among those
who are fed up with the Tories
and Liberals.

-Many thousands of voters
are ‘politically neutral’, so to
speak — people who do not
vote at all because they have
become disgusted with the
spectacle of the Liberals being
in and the Tories being out or
vice versa, while the basic
policies of Big Business remain
untouched.

The job is to unite all these

, varied elements into’one great

reform party, a labor-farmer

LESLIE MORRIS

party, on a federated basis, to
defeat the Liberals and Con-
servatives, win parliamentary
seats. and ultimately achieve
a democratic majority in par-
liament. :

This is not a pipe-dream. It
is. a practical task of welding
that democratic coalition of all
progressive forces in the coun-
try demanded by the present
political stalemate in Canada.

The draft program goes in
the opposite direction. The
New Party is not seen as an
all-inclusive, but as as “ex-
party, excluding not
only Communists but “left’’
socialists who may and likely
will at some point, organize
their own political party,
especially if the CCF goes out
of business at its August Con-
vention.

There are many CCF’ers

who were shocked when their
party's

1956 convention

in’

Winnipeg abandoned the Re-,

gina Manifesto on which the

CCF was founded in 1933, and

went away over to the right—
leaving behind the word
“socialism” and’ any ideas of
the socialization of the basic
means of production. Are these
people to be forced to give up
their political right to form an
independent socialist grouping
or party, while supporting a
labor-farmer party?

The net effect is to narrow
down the new party, to alien-
ate many who could otherwise
be brought in, and to strength-
en the suspicion among many
thousands of progressive
voters, or potentially progres-
sive voters who could be ral-
lied to an all-inclusive party,
that this is the CCF right-wing
leaders behind a transparent
mask.

The draft program itself ex-
presses the difficulty. With the

majority. of proposals — one

peace and the abandonment of
the nuclear weapons policy,
the recognition of China, con-

.|tinuing negotiations with the

USSR and China “to ease ten-
sions and to seek lasting
peace”; the peaceful use of
atomic energy and automation
certain utilities and such mat-
ters as housing, pensions, edu-
cation, which - protects the
workers’ interests; the public
ownership of the arts, farm
needs, civil liberties and so on,
we can unhesitatingly agree.
In fact the program contains
in the main a series of demands
which the Communists and
the trade unions and farm
groups have been advocating
for years. In some respects it
is a platform of the urgent de-
mands of the majority of
Canadians, put quite positively,
and illustrating a certain sen-
sitivity by the drafters of a
deep-lying desire among the
people for new national
policies.

~ But, the section titled: “Pub-
lic planning to ‘achieve econo-
mic democracy and to meet
Communist competition
abroad” is a reactionary sec-
tion which should not be al-
lowed to remain in a genuine
progressive platform. This is
the line of the big corporations,

‘| who are using the SUCCESS of

socialist construction as “argu-

ments” for lower. wages and

reduced working conditions in

Above is a new mail distributing machine ‘ibaa by
postal workers in Shanghai to speed up sorting. It is on
of many new machines and tools devised to mechanizeé

working processes.

Canada. It is Harold Winch’s
already discredited and much-
criticized line. There is no
threat to Canadian workers
and farmers in the successes of
the Soviet Union and People’s
China. Far from it. Every suc-
cess they achieve weakens the
monopoly capitalists, including
the Canadian. :

Peaceful competition’ be-
tween capitalism and socialism
will bring about conditions for
higher, not lower, living stan-
dards for the Canadian people,
if it includes, as it must. do,
the abandonment of the arms
race and a new pattern of
world production and trade.

The competition is with the
capitalist system, not with the
working class. For the draft
program to put forward the
monopoly-capitalist line is to
tie the New Party to the coat-
tails of Big Business.

The draft program should be
re-examined from top to bot-
tom. The mish-mash of admir-
able reforms and David Lewis
“socialism” should be rejected

in favor of a plain statement

.of the things the people want

now; there should be room in ~
the new party for the CCF and
the Communist Party, or for
@ny group of socialists wh?
might form a party to the left
of the CCF; there should be
no attempt fo unite around”
“philosophy,” but on the bread-
and-butter, peace, independ-
ence and cultural aspirations of
the Canadian people. The main
direction of the new pariy-
should be againsi the big mon-
opolies, for Canadian indepen-
dence, for nationalization. of —
the industries which control
the people’s food, fuel and

_tranportation.

It is not too late to influ-
ence the new parity in the di-
rection envisaged at the Win-.
nipeg Convention of the Cana-
dian Labor Congress. The Op-
poriunity to achieve a genuine,
democratic coalition of all pro-
gressives on a minimum com-
mon platform — with no anti-
communism in it, there is siill
time.

Farmers, labor have common

interest says broadcast

A monopoly  arrangément

‘between the packers, whole-

salers and chain stores set the
price for products at which
the farmer is compelled to
sell, and that the farmer re-
ceives very little compared
with what the consumer has
to pay.

This was the charge made
in a radio broadcast by Delta
organizer of the Communist
Party, Charles Stewart, Mon-
day, March 7 over radio ecg
tion -CKLG.

Pointing to the plight of the
small farmer, Stewart said,
“farmers are caught in a cost-
price squeeze. The price of

-goods he has to buy, such as

machinery, feed, fertilizers,
are controlled: by monopolies
and prices are set high while
he is forced to sell his products

to other monopolies ata low .
price.”’ =

He said the farmer is alsos
hit by large scale dumping of *
U.S. surplus farm products.
Hitting at the present system _
of deficiency payments, which .
he described as “inadequate ~
and a fraud,’ Stewart said
that “in any scheme of: defic-
iency payments the support’
price must be high enough |
and the quantity of products
large enough so that the small
farmer is able to cover the’
cost of production and ae
a reasonable profit.” a

Stewart called on the gov- .
ernment to go further in stop- .
ping U.S. dumping of surplus _
goods and urged closer co-op- ~

eration between farmers and

labor who ‘have a common )
enemy in the big monopolies. —

March 11, 1960—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 2 _