Ti ia. Te he ND 1 MR y Siebate g

Labor Scene

Highlight of this week’s
session of the Vancouver and
District Labor Council (VLC)
centered on two letters received
by the VLC excutive on the
Czechslovak ‘‘invasion’” by
the Soviet Union and four other
Warsaw Treaty Socialist count-
ries.

The letters were from Donald
McDonald, secretary of the
Canadian Labor Congress and
Ray Haynes; secretary of the
B.C. Federation of Labor
respectively, ‘“‘deploring’’ the
invasion of Czech sovereignty,
and generally unloosing a blast
at the Soviet Union for its action.
The CLC letter offered
“encouragement and sympathy”

Report on
Vietnam

Mrs. Mickey Murray reports
on “Vietnam, Nation of Heroes”’
at a meeting on Sunday, Sept. 15,
2 p.m.,. at the Grandview
Community Centre, 3350
Victoria Drive, Vancouver,

Mrs. Murray was a delegate to
the Conference of Women held in
Paris, France, last April. This
conference was convened at the
request of the U.S. women’s
peace groups and the
Vietnamese Women’s Union of
both North and South Vietnam.
Mrs. Murray visited North
Vietnam for two weeks, and also
spent six days in Cambodia. She
will speak of the heroic
accomplishments of Vietnamese
women and children under the
most barbarous wartime
conditions ever known, as well
as of their sufferings and needs.

Mrs. Murray is national] vice-
‘president of the Congress of
Canadian Women and a long
time worker in the peace
movement. Over many years she
has been aetive in children’s
work.

Tea will be served, and
everyone is welcome. Auspices:
B.C. Women’s Committee for
World Friendship.

to the Czech people, and in
McDonald’s expressed view,
“democracy and communism
were totally incompatible.

Delegate J. Philips’ (CUPE)
speaking to the VLC executive
motion based on the twin letters
stated ‘‘it must be admitted that
the events in Czechoslovakia are
difficult to understand, and have
caused some concern among
democratic and socialist-minded
people in Canada.”’

“But
continued Phillips,
Soviet Union was also roundly
condemned by us and others
when it invaded Finland — but
History has vindicated that act.
Let us also remember that it was
the Soviet Union alone who stood
ready to defend Czechoslovakia,
but Britain and France refused
to join with the Soviets and we
had the Munich betrayal — and
World War II. And in that war
the Soviet Union suffered 20-
million dead, with horror and
ruin by the Hitlerites, such as no
other country ever experienced.

let us remember’’

“I believe that when all the
facts are known, including the
extent to which a rearmed West
Germany was involved in the
overall picture, the role of the
Soviet Union and its Socialist
allies will be easier understood
-in this country.”

Phillips also drew attention to
the fact that when the USS.
jaunched its ‘Bay of Pigs’
invasion of Cuba, ‘‘did the
officers of the CLC send letters
to all subordinate bodies calling
for protests? To my knowledge,
they did not. The U.S. has
occupied Guantanamo in Cuba
for nearly three-quarters of a
century — and still do, against
the wishes of the legal
government of that country. I
have yet to hear a clear-cut
‘demand from the labor
movement of Canada that the
Americans should get out of
Guantanamo.

W. Stewart (Marine Workers)
pointed out to the VLC delegates
“that we are Still too close to the
events for us to determine the
course of history; that the real
situation will be much clearer to

ANNOUNCING

FALL PT SUB DRIVE
SEPT. 15-NOV. 15

TARGET: 1500 SUBS

Watch next week
for full details.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 6, 1968—Page 8

“that the

. Republic.

us when all the anti-Soviet
hysteria of the monopoly-
dominated news media has
subsided, and the real facts
begin to emerge, as they are now
doing.

Stewart also recalled the
intervention of the Soviet by
many Western countries,
including Canada in the early
years of the Russian revolution
in futile attempts to destroy the
legitimate government of that
country and restore Czarism.

VLC Secretary Paddy Neale
Saw “no difference in what
happened in Czechoslovakia by
the Soviet ‘invasion’ that what is
happening in Vietnam by the
US 23

A delegate from the Plumbers
was of the opinion that ‘‘we
should worry more about the
boss in our own country,”’ adding
that the Czech situation has

simply provided “‘the right wing »

in the labor movement with
another chance to attack the
left.”’

At the end of the discussion
VLC delegates adopted its
executive recommendation to
deplore the invasion, urging an
early withdrawal of the invading
forces, and calling ‘‘for

complete withdrawal of all ;

uninvited foreign troops from
the soil of any sovereign nation.”’

Much to the disappointment of
the local news media, the VLC
delegate body in its discussion on
events in Czechoslovakia did not
indulge in anti-Soviet hysteria or
rancour.

Officials of the American
Servicemen’s Union (ASU) here
scored as an ‘‘act of savage
murder’ the killing of one GI
and the wounding of 58 others by
military policemen during the
quelling of ‘an outburst at
Longbinh, the U.S. Army’s
largest stockade in Vietnam.

Military police, according to
army spokesmen, used tear gas

William Kashtan, National
Leader of the Communist Party
of Canada who returned early in
August from a visit to a number
of East European capitals, will

arrive in Vancouver this
| weekend.
Included in his one-day

itinerary will be an address to an
“invitation” meeting on ‘‘What’s
Behind the Czechoslovakian
Crisis?”. The meeting will be
held in the AUUC Hall at 8 p.m.
Sunday September 8th.

Decisions

Cont. from Pg. 1

they are carrying out with these
aims in view. ‘

It was stated by the
Czechoslovak side that all the
work of party and state bodies
through all media would be
directed at ensuring effective
measures serving the socialist
power, the guiding role of the
working class and the
communist party, the interests
of developing and strengthening
friendly ‘relations with the

peoples of the Soviet Union and -

the entire socialist solidarity.

The troops of the allied
countries, that entered
temporarily the territory of
Czechoslovakia, will not
interfere in the internal affairs
of the Czechoslovak Socialist
Agreement was
reached on the terms of the
withdrawal of these troops from
its territory as the situation in
Czechoslovakia normalizes.

The Czechoslovak side
informed the Soviet side that the
supreme commander in chief of
the Czechoslovak Armed Forces
had given the latter appropriate
Orders with the aim of
preventing incidents and
conflicts of violating the peace
and public order. He had also
instructed the military
command of the Czechoslovak
Socialist Republic to be in
contact with the command of the
allied troops. In connection with
the discussion in the United

Nations Security Council of the
so-called question on the
situation in Czechoslovakia, the
representatives of the
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
stated that the Czechoslovak side
had not requested the submission
of this question for consideration
by the Security Council and

demanded its removal from the
agenda.

The leaders of the CPSU and

the leaders of the Communist.

Party of Czechoslovakia
confirmed their determination to

unswervingly promote in the

international arena a policy
meeting the interests of
strengthening the solidarity of
the socialist community,
upholding the cause of peace and
international security.

As before, the Soviet Union
and Czechoslovakia will
administer a resolute rebuff to
militaristic, revanchist and neo-
nazi forces that want to revise
the results of the second world
war, to encroach on the
inviolability of the existing
borders in Europe. They
confirmed again the
determination to fulfill
unswervingly all commitments
undertaken by them under
multilateral and bilateral
agreements concluded between
socialist community, to raise the
effectivity of the defensive
Warsaw Treaty Organization.

The talks passed in an
atmosphere of frankness,
comradeship and. friendship.

| Hit murder of GI
Withdraw all foreign troops---’ by MP’s in

Vietnam

and other ‘‘normal’’ riot
suppression procedures: against :
the imprisoned GIs.

“We support the struggles of
these enlisted men at Longbinh
just as we support the black GIs
jailed at Fort Hood and the GIs
ai Danang,” declared Andy
Stapp, chairman of the ASU.

‘‘We demand that the
Pentagon release the names, and
numbers of the men and specify
which individual was killed.

He said there is a connection
between the uprisings in
Longbinh and Fort Hood.

"The GIs have béen a sleeping
giant, Stapp said, but ‘“‘now they _
are beginning to wake up and~
fight their oppressors in the
officer caste.”’

Describing aspects of this
oppression, Bill Smith, a Viet —
veteran and an organizer for:
ASU, said:

“At the Longbinh stockade the
prisoners are under orders to
take service cap off and slap it
against their leg as a sign of
submission when they Pass an ~
officer,

“‘Now the men have obviously
decided to put an end to that kind
of humiliation and other
medieval practices. They are
justified.”’

Dissolve
NATO-
Warsaw

Pacts

On the occasion of the
intervention in Czechoslovakia, a
member of the Warsaw Pact, bys
five other members of the
Warsaw Pact, namely Poland,
the German Democratic
Republic, the USSR, Hungary
and Bulgaria, the National
Executive of the Canadian Peace
Congress re-affirms its support
of the fundamental principles of
world peace, namely non-
intervention in the internal
affairs of any nation, respect for
territorial integrity and the right
of every country to political,

social and economic independ- —
ence. :

Current events make it clear
that these principles cannot
become a reality as long as two
power blocs, Nato and the
Warsaw Pact, confront each
other in Europe. The dissolution
of both these blocs and their
replacement by a European
Security Pact is the only
guarantee of peace and of the
independence of all European
Nations big or small. .

The Canadian Peace Congress ©
urges all people to recognize that
the basic principles of peace will
not and cannot be made effective
in a world which does not accept
the principles of peaceful co-
existence and non-interference
in the internal affairs of other
nations. (National Executive of
the Canadian Peace Congress. )