a

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fits today’s tragedy
» Africa.

End the Tory silence

NE of the many by-products

of Hitler’s “super-race”’ mania

was the cold-blooded murder of

six million Jews in the countries of
war-torn Europe.

For their own class interests
the spokesmen of western -im-
perialism of that day turned a
blind eye to this Nazi horror, with

disastrous results for all man-

kind.

In many respects the analogy
in South
The neo-nazi Verwoerd
government, in an effort to stem

the national aspirations of the
African people and to hold them
‘in bondage as a vast reservoir of

cheap labor, has imposed racial
segregation upon the Africans,
and enforces these hated laws
with daily mass murder and per-
secution of the Negro peoples, old
and young.

A “state of emergency” is de-
clared as a cloak for continued
police murder, arrest and whip-
ping of the African people. Lead-
ers of the S.A. Liberal Party, the
White Congress of Democrats, the
Transvaal Indian Congress, as
well as Negro leaders, are thrown

in prison and subjected to every

indignity. All who support the

‘African people in their just cause.

are persecuted. In the name of
“Jaw and order” genocide is
launched against the Negro peo-

-ple.

In the “civilized” West so-called.
“statesmen” put on a fine show

_ of “indignation” but nothing else.
The Diefenbakers in Ottawa, the

‘MacMillans in Britain and others
of their ilk “caution” against all.
effective protest. “It is an internal
affair of the S.A. government,”

‘they Say, so let’s do nothing that
- would “embarrass” the racist Ver-

woerd butchery. -

Prime Minister Verwoerd him-
self, like Hitler, promises even
greater massacres if the United
Nations or other “outside” forces
“interfere” in his racist persecu-
tion and murder.

Pacific Tribune

Editor — TOM McEWEN

_ Associate Editor — MAURICE RUSH

Business Manager — Oxana Bigelow
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Meantime new tyrannies are
being prepared. “Justice” Minister
Francois Erasmus is driving a bill
through the S.A. “parliament” to .
outlaw the African National Con-
gress and the Pan-African Con-.
gress. Erasmus argues that since
these two African organizations,’
“can not be described as definitely
Communistic, therefore he could
not evoke the government’s Sup-
pression of Communism Act
against them, hence the urgency.
of this bill.” _

What is urgently needed from
the outside world is a break in
this studied Tory silence, so that
the indignant voice of the Cana-

dian people and others can be
heard.

A voice promoting an effective
boycott of all S.A. products; a
voice demanding the severance of
all diplomatic relations with the
Verwoerd cabal misnamed a “gov-
ernment.” The ostracization of
S.A. “government” representatives
at the Commonwealth prime
ministers’ conference in London:
next month, regarding these peo-
ple as moral lepers until such time
as their racist crimes are halted.

The voice of Canadian labor
should ring out strong and clear
for an end to race segregation and
race murder in South Africa.

‘Two of

\* the current cycle of govern-
~ mental budgets harassed tax-
payers and municipal administra-
tions found nothing to ease their
tax load. In the Fleming “cold

porridge” budget of last week
anyone other than the big mon-
opolists, coupon clippers and fin-
ance sharks could look in vain for

anything to lighten the tax
burden.

True, in Fleming’s budget taxes
didn’t “go up”, but neither did
they come down, and all the mil-
lions of tax dollars which could be
used as federal aid for hard-
pressed municipal needs are ear-
marked as usual to go down the
cold-war armament. drain.

In our home province the
Socreds. also staged a Fleming
“flim-flam”. Bennett’s political
budgetary bribe of $50 “tax
rebate” to the homeowner left
municipal gevernments through-

_ out the province high and dry,

with little or nothing to meet
rising school, hospital and other
badly needed social service costs.

With no aid from either Bennett
or Fleming (Tory brothers under,
the skin), the municipalities are
now. faced with the ‘“Hobson’s
Choice” of drastically upping the
mill rate and the taxes to meet
urgent municipal requirements.

a kind

In Vancouver alone it is estimated
that municipal taxes will take an

11-percent jump or ever — JUS 2
about double the amount ie ie
o thea

nett’s . political. “gift” (
homeowner — and a more hefty

hike to those not. eligible for the -

Bennett “gift” bribe.
Thus with: nary a cent for the

municipal taxpayer in the Fleming

budget and a Bennett give-one-
and-take-two-back Socred sleight-
of-hand bribe, the taxpayer at
municipal level is the victim pick-
ed to carry the load, while the

Socreds wave their “debt-free” —

banner.
In this political skulduggery

Bennett and Fleming have one- 2

thing very much in common. Both
are good at “give-aways” — but to
the wrong people. Both are good
at flim-flamming the people; Ben-
nett by making them think he 1s
“giving” them something for
nothing, the other by making

them think he isn’t “taking” any-

thing — at least not more than
the millions he annually pours
down the arms drain, in lieu of
schools, national health, economic
well-being, peace and jobs.

- Municipal taxes rise because

neither Bennett nor Fleming re¢-
ognize their
municipal needs.

Tom
McEwen

S a means of bringing Tory

promises and _ performances
into proper focus, a new “min-
istry” needs to be added to the
Dief cabinet ensemble. A “ministry
on unemployment.”

Such as “ministry” operating on
the customary Tory rule-of-thumb
principle, could add qa touch of
color to Labor Minister Mike
Starr’s endless and belabored “ex-
plaining” of rising jobless totals.

For instance let us say that at
the moment we have an estimated
army of 875,000 workers deprived
of the right of a job, although
the figure may be well above that.

Such a “ministry” skilled in the
art of Tory double-talk, could
show that of that number 650,000
“don’t want to work anyway,”
while another 200,000 or so are
“unfitted for manual work” in any
case. That: leaves us a _ bare
20,000 who “all have jobs but are
looking for better ones.’’ Add these
totals up with the Starr computing
machine and it leaves us a mere

handful of 5,000 or so “genuinely
seeking work’ because of “sea-
sonal’ dislocations.

This bouyant outlook of a new
Tory ‘ministry’ in place of Mike
Starr’s crude and colorless yarns
would restore confidence in that
old axiom, first expounded by a
French lady who, upon being told
the. workers of Paris “had no
bread’? came back with a good
Tory rejoiner — “let them eat
cake.”

Less than a block from the “PT”
office one can see daily, rain or
shine the western end of a line
which stretches across Canada; a
line of destitute jobless men, ‘“gen-
-uinely” seeking a bit of bread to
keep body and soul together and
dependent entirely upon a watery
“charity” soup, as thin as Dief’s
promises and Starr’s misleading
“optimism’ and its ‘‘seasonal’’ bal-
derdash.

While unemployment totals soar
our government and M.P.’s in
Ottawa toy with the idea of a
nominal salary hike to the miser-
able ten to twenty thousand mini-
mum they now receive annually
for evading vital issues of national
import, including the evil of un-
employment. (Even ‘the-world-
doesn’t-owe-us-a-living” Harold
Winch is reported to be feeling
the pinch.) Sounds almost poetic—
but not to the jobless worker being
disposed of his home and effects.

‘ticular need to do anything more

meet per capita requirements of

policy much easier than putting up
a decisive fight for their jobless
members,

soon, to the rising crisis of unem-
ployment facing Canadian workers.
These answers
once and for all that whoever may

How -does the Diefenbaker gov-
ernment manage to evade its re-
sponsibility to Canadian working
people who now see one out of
every eight being dispossed of the
right to earn a livelihood?

Probably the answer is to be
found in the top leadership of the
labor movement itself and its “do-
nothing” policies. Pious resolu-
tions in abundance, but a consist-
ent “hold-down-the-lid”’ on any-
thing resembling mass action
against unemployment. Nothing for
Dief and his Tory cohorts to fear
from that direction, hence no par- |

than a “‘fix-it-yourself” gesture on
chronic unemployment.

Worse, thousands of trade
unionists are dropped from union
membership because, in the ranks
of the jobless they are unable to.

union membership. The swivel-
chair per capita hunters find this

A lot of answers are needed, and

must determine

suffer from Tory bungling, trick-
ery and double-talk, it isn’t going
to be the working people. And
that means action instead of empty
words.

April 8, 1960—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4

responsibility to —