EDITORIAL PAGE

Export of logs is booming, firms are raking in profits.

Is Seaway outdated?

esd WEEK Queen Elizabeth and
President Eisenhower officially
epened the new St. Lawrence Sea-
way. In the opening speeches of
both notables, stress was laid upon
this great engineering achievement,
and upon the democratic amity and
friendship between Canada and the
U.S. which made such an achieve-
ment possible. In fact Ike went one
better by declaring the project to be
without “a parallel i in the world.”

A “look see” further afield at
some of the outstanding achieve-
ments along similar lines *in the
Socialist sector of the world, and
particularly in the USSR and Peo-
le’s China; achievements which
dwarf the St. Lawrence Seaway in
time completed and scope, make
such boasts a bit farfetched.

What is disconcerting, however,
is the fact that the capitalist “plan-
ners” of the Seaway have proven
themselves a bit shortsighted. Al-
ready voices are on the air, on TV
and other media of public informa-
tion, confirming some disturbing
factors, chief among which is the
fact that the St. Lawrence Seaway,
in terms of world trends in shipping,
is already obsolete; that for
freighters- above a certain tonnage,
this seaway to. the “heart of the
continent” is useless.

As an Ottawa commentator terse-
ly stated last week on a TV pro-
gram, just one day prior to the
Royal-presidential official opening,
the St. Lawrence Seaway has one
major defect: “It isn’t wide enough

Pacific Tribune

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Editor — TOM McEWEN
Managing Editor — BERT WHYTE
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and it isn’t deep enough.”

We can find similar short-sighted
parallels on numerous B.C. bridges
and highways — a three-lane pro-
vision for a six-lane need. With
motorist patience however, plus the
aid of a good traffic policeman,
congestion can be eased, whereas
the skipper of a ten-thousand ton
freighter drawing 25-feet in salt
water, scrapes bottom when he gets
into the fresh-water lower buoy-
ancy of our newly opened seaway,
and at the same time scrapes off
the sheen of our “achievement,”
thus proving it obsolete for the
purpose designed.

?

Injunctions

le HAS long been loudly con-
tended by those interests who
stand in need of such arguments
that Communists, Socialists and
others of radical opinion “have no
respect for the law.”

Without going into an analysis of
the nature and purpose of the
“state” or the validity or other-
wise of such arguments, a brief
look at what is becoming an almost
daily occurance in our “free-way-
of-life” puts this question of “res-
pect” in proper focus.

A union (any union) goes on
strike for wage increases or other
justifiable cause. The bosses or com-
pany concerned immediately rush
off to court to secure an injunction,

*a legal instrument “restraining” the

said. union from exercising its in-
alienable right to strike and picket.
In 99 percent of the cases in which
such application is made, the court
readily obliges.

Any detailed survey on the
granting of injunctions against un-
jons, and the number is legion,
would show among other things
that little or no inquiry is made as
to the “other side” of the dispute;
that a minimum of argument is re-
quired for the bosses to secure such
a “legal” instrument, and that in

and: str

numerous instances the injunet
‘is already prepared befor
with the judge obligingly break!
his nightly slumbers to affix
okay to this restraining instrume

Try as they may, working
and women, whether radical of
radical, find it difficult, to m|
any degree of- ‘ ‘respect” for
laws, knowing as they do from
experience that these restraints §
directed against them, and in f@
of their exploiter.

Many years ago when the i injus
tion gimmick was being
tensively against the then you
virile AFL, that body had a 5
formula to meet the problem;
fight injunctions, ignore them!”

True, AFL leaders from
Gompers down didn’t always ss
by their formula, but their ‘
pect” for such restraints stem
from fear of court reprisals,
than the “majestic equality ol
law” with which the bosses’ ¢
clothe themselves when 4
hobbles to labor.

Fifty years later with injun n
against unions as thick as
cops on a parking meter beat
still don’t know of a better forn
short of Socialism with its peo?
courts, than the Gompers one:

Tom
McEwen)

W PUTNIKS and Luniks and

Ss. . The New Party.” That
is the imposing title of a four-
page pamphlet just issued by the
Political Action and Educational
Department of the Ontario Feder-
ation of Labor. Its author is
Morden Lazarus, educational dir-
ector of the OFL, executive mem-
ber of the provincial (Ontario)
CCF, and co-editor of the CCF
paper Comment,

This particular pamphlet is pre-
sumably intended (by the author
at least) to present argumentation
in favor of a new political labor-
farmer-people’s party, as set forth
by the Canadian Labor Congress
at its 1958 Winnipeg convention.

In actuality it is a gross politi-
cal distortion of the CLC resolu-
tion, since CCF pundit Lazarus
places the “new party” if, as and
when it is ever born, on a exclu-

sive diet formula of anti-commu-
nism.

Like a good right-wing social
democrat, Lazarus berates the
snobbery, the extravagance, the
stupidity, the humbug and all the
other inherent characteristics of
capitalism, not because it has
made a botch of things in general,
but because it hasn’t fought
communism to the satisfaction of
CCF’er Lazarus and his right-
wing social democratic colleagues
in the OFL and out of it.

“We have to make up our minds
now,” says Lazarus, “about what
is important and essential and
effective in our battle for leader-
ship against the Communists. We
have to give these things top
priorities and make the snobbery
of excessive luxury and the lux-
ury of excessive snobbery take a
back seat to these priorities.”

It would seem that modern
capitalism is not moving decisive-
ly or firmly enough against ‘“‘com-
munism” to suit this CCF “edu-
cationalist,” so let’s get going with
the CLC’s “new party” to do the
job right!

That such disruptive and di-
visive tripe should be written by
an individual who boasts of being

a “socialist” is bad enough. That |
it should be published by a great
body of working men and women —
like the Ontario Federation of
Labor, and especially at’ a time
when government-employer at |)
tacks against labor’s Cn
rights on a nation-wide scale 3
increasing with mounting” in-

tensity, is almost tmbelievable
But there it is.

Any new party or mover
which sets as its prime aim and
target a fight against communism,
is doomed to ignominous failure
and defeat. Any “new party” or
movement coming into being on
that premise is even strangled be-
fore birth;; an act which Lazarus,
in the name of the Ontario Fed-
eration of Labor, seems hell-bent
on accomplishing. nari

Trade unionists everywhefe,
which includes many sincere CCF
men and women who are €o
vinced on the need of an‘all-in- ©
clusive united labor-farmer-peo- —
ple’s party to replace the To
Liberal and Socred henchmen of
big business, will reject CCF
“educationalist” Morden Lazarus’
conception of a “new party” a
concept that could well have been
written by the U.S, state depart-
ment.

'

July 3, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAI