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E=] THE WORKER

Official Organ -df_the Workers’ Party of Canada sot

TORONTO, TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1923.

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vou. 2, No 29.

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G REETINGS to all those who through the years have striven to create a mighty working class

newspaper — for»a real people’s paper which tells the truth.
Look at the mastheads — the titles — of t

he Canadian labor papers that have come and gone.

: ‘Gere they are, on this page, a living testament to the labors of the piomeers who for a generation

have financed, written, sold, sac-
. vificeed to build and maintain the

. fighting workers’ press. In a doz-
en languages of the people who

make up Canada; in half a dozen

provinces; among the French Can-

adians of Quebec and the English-

speaking Canadians; among far-

mers, miners, B.C.’ers; among
‘ youth and women, the labor press
has risen to challenge the voice
of the master-class—the big-time,
_ big-monied, small-souled and lying
newspapers of Mr. Moneybags.

And do not forget that in one.
Canadian province, Quebec, the-
_ tyrant Duplessis forbids the pub-

lication of Combat, the French
workers’ paper!

It is not easy for workers to set ;
up their own newspapers. It takes
money to print and to publish, and
workers get only enough money
‘to send them back to work again
for the boss. Whatever they
- serape together for their own

_ xfewspapers comes out of ‘the
meagre pay envelope. They have
to train worker-writers, to buck —
the conspiracy of silence of the
enemy, to fight for every subscrib-
er among workers who are doped
by the avalanche of misinforma-
tion and tawdry trash which fills
the big dailies.

Only when the workers own

the printing industry and the pulp
and paper millS, will they be able
to have free access to the means
of giving all people a socialist .
press. 4
To start a newspaper and fight
to keep it going is one of the
most important political battles
for socialism. Newspapers like
the Tribune are the heart and-
soul, the organizer and in pirer,
of the workers’ party, the/LPP’s
struggle against capitalism and
for socialism. They never can be
taken away. Thep can be out-
lawed, as the old Clarion was;
their readers and edtiors can be
persecuted, as has happened time
and again—but they keep on com-
ing out, police state or no police
state.
- Communist newspapers were
published right under the noses of
the Gestapo and Mussolini’s sec-
ret police in the severest condi-
tions of fascist terror. Not all the
dungeons and whips of the Tsar
could stop Lenin publishing the —
Iskra, and Stalin the Pravda. To-
day in Malaya, Greece, Spain,
wherever the fascists ride through ~
the night with gun and bomb, the
workers’ press lives.
Tt is the inextinguishable torch
of the laboring people, their con-
stant guide. It is one of the prin-
ciples of the communist party

that the workers’ press ties them
together in unbreakable unity.

e a)
The, great political newspapers

- of the!past are heritage of today’s

fighters for socialism. Jean Paul
Marat, the eloquent voice of the
Great French Revolution, was the
first mass political editor. His

paper, L’Ami du Peuple (Voice of.

the People) was the spokesman
of the propertyless masses’ who
overthrew the Bourbons and set
the torch to feudalism first in

France and then in most of Eur- .

ope. ; fon
On July 26, 1790, Marat wrote

‘an “Appeal to All Citizens,” warn-

ing them of the plots of the coun-
ter-revolutionaries and _ calling
theni to struggle.

“Your enemies need only to
triumph for a moment and blood
will How in torrents. They will
murder you without compassion,

they will rip open the bellies of

your wives, and in order to choke
within you the love of liberty,
their bloody hands will explore
the entrails of your children to,
find their hearts.” ; :

No wonder the counter-revolu-
tion murdered Marat. But only
after his newspaper had prepared
the way for the conquest of the

Listen to his —
-words (and think of the fascist-
‘ minded atomaniacs today!): ;

_ ers’ press of his native Georgia. —
William Lyon Mackenzie and
Louis Joseph Papineau, the great —
leaders of the Canadian democra-_

heights the Frenth people reached
in the Great Commune of 1793.

The people of the state of the
“pendarme of Hurope,” the Tsar-
ist autocracy, were led to their
first victories in 1917 by the news-
papers of the Bolshevik Party—
Iskra (The Spark) and Pravda
(Truth). . Today Pravda is the
strongest political newspaper in
the world, :

In Britain the Chartists of more
than a century ago, the forerun-
ners of the labor movement, pub-
lished the best labor political
papers in Britain up to the fine
Daily Worker of today.

‘Karl Marx was editdr of the
New Rhenish Gazette and brought
into court for his denunciation of
the jumker reactionaries.

Stalin’s earliest political activi-

ties,in the Caucasus at the turn

of this century were connected
with the publication @f the work-

4

tic revolution of 1837, were fight-

ers of the pen as well as musket.

)

These noble traditions belong to
the Communists of today. Only
that section of the labor press
which has the goal of socialism
forever before its eyes, is a free
press, because only socialists are
free men—free, from the mental

domination of the exploiters. On-.

ly socialist society, by abolishing

_ the exploitation of man by man, —

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 2,8 1950—PAGE 4

By LESLIE MORRIS

the very first thing that must be
done to have real democracy for |
the mases of the people, publishes
a really free mass press. Today
in one-third of the world the
people are delivered from the mil-
lionaire reactionary press and
have their own mighty news-
papers, sa

On this May Day, 1950, the Com-
.munists celebrate 30 years of ex-
istence of the scientific socialist
workers’ press in Canada, Thirty
years is a long time in the life of
a man ‘or woman, but only a
moment in history. But what a
moment! When the first papers
were published (The Communist,
‘The Workers’ Guard) in order to
bring enlightenment to the Can-
adian workers at the moment
_when the First World War and
_ the Russian Revolution, ‘had open-
ed up the world epoch of victori-;
ous socialism, the Canadian labor
movement was very immature in-

- deed. It is still a long way from

its full stature, but it has grown
immensely in that 30 years due
to the work and education car-
ried on by the Communists, and
expressed in large measure
through their press.
Nothing can take our press
away from us. Repression ean
drive labor off the radio, or make
it impossible to hold democratic —
public meetings, just like in Que
bec today under the Padlock Law.

But nothing can stop workers

writing and printing and distribut-
ie (Concluded on Page 5) |