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Friday, August 19, 1983
OCEESEDD 48

Vol. 46, No. 31

Newsstand
price

40c

50,000 iam Empire Stadium as mass
budget protests sweep the province |

i

Into and around the Empire Stadium they
Marched — clerical workers, firefighters,
Welfare recipients, social workers, and
White- and blue-collar trade unionists — a
Seemingly endless procession from almost all
facets of society, gathered together to tell
Premier Bill Bennett and the rest of the

Ocred government just what they could do
_ With the most hated legislation in Canadian
Post-war history.

Some 50,000 people jammed the stadium
On Vancouver’s Pacific National Exhibition
rounds Aug. 10 in the largest of three recent
demonstrations against the Socred budget,
M which an unprecedented unity among
British Columbians has been forged.

It proved a stunning rebuff to the Bennett -

80vernment and a fitting complement to the
two previous mass demonstrations in Van-
Couver and Victoria, as well as several others
t have taken place under the auspices of
Coalition groups that have sprung up around
€ province.
: Ose groups have turned out thousands
I local actions. In Kamloops, 4,000 rallied
during the afternoon of Aug. 9 against the
budget and legislation, followed by
2,000 in Nelson, 1,500 Kootenays residents
Cranbrook, 1,200 in Williams Lake, more
than 1,000 in Salmon Arm and hundreds in
Tallies in Fort St. John and Dawson Creek
Saturday.
On Wednesday, thousands were expected
Or rallies in Nanaimo and Bennett’s home
Niding in Kelowna, where a mass picket of
© Bennett hardware store was planned.
Further rallies are scheduled in Campbell
ver On Friday, (outside the Ministry of
Uuman Resources office) Fort Nelson on
turday and Courtenay on Aug. 31.
The rallies — held either through the
Unified labor organization Operation
Olidarity, or the broader anti-budget
8toups — have involved diverse groups who,
4 scant few weeks prior to the introduction
of the Socred bills, would never have con-

Sidered marching together in a common
cause

Many had never been in any action led by
the trade union movement before. But the
es are such that people can easily resolve
ler differences, said a speaker from the
Slant Stage at Empire Stadium Aug. 10.
ae Vickers, president of the National
been of the Mentally Retarded, con-
: ued: “We live in outrageous times, when
£0vernment elected on a platform of deceit
leo uStepresentation tables this kind of
, Slation.
In times like this, we make new friends
__ W€ join this coalition,” he said in a speech

COntin
. punctuated by cheers and ap-

: Thecheers also rang out for the rest of the
eel who addressed the second major
OF ey Operation Solidarity, the coalition
ed nea unions formed during a hastily call-
es of unionists a short few weeks
iG the Socreds made clear their intention
7 tee social services and abolish the

ts of labor, the handicapped, the
other Ployed, minorities, women and several
; a Social groups. ‘

WO weeks before the Aug. 10
on thestation, 20,000 people had gathered
on lawn of the provincial legislature to

Se their anger at the Socreds’ unman-
legislation. It followed by five days a

piturday rally in which the week-old Lower
the wand Budget Coalition drew 35,000 to

Parking lot of B.C. Place Stadium.
See NO GOV'T page 3

By FRED WILSON
B.C. is in a period of rapid social change.
A hundred thousand or more people have
taken part in mass demonstrations and a
new people’s movement involving hundreds
of grass roots community organizations and
labor has burst on to the province’s political
scene. It is worth pausing to reflect that the
event which provoked this dynamic process,
the Socred budget, took place just five weeks

ago. . . .
The significance of the historic Empire

Stadium rally was not only its size, but its

spirit. The 50,000 people that filled the

stadium didn’t wait for the speakers to hold »

their demonstration. Firefighters, bus
drivers, letter carriers, hospital workers,
civic workers, human rights activists, mar-
ched around the stadium for more than an
hour bringing the thousands in the stands to
their feet. The strength felt by those workers
and the exhilaration they left Empire
Stadium with is cause for more serious
thought by Bennett than just the number
at attended.
ia That spirit has extended far beyond Van-
couver and Victoria. Saturday, the com-
munity of Salmon Arm on Shuswap Lake
had the largest demonstration in the history
of that city. Some 1,000 people filled the

50,000 participants made history in Vancouver Aug. 10 in the largest of several

~ DAN KEETONG x

TRIBUNE PHOTOS

province-wide demonstrations against the Socred budget and legislation. Union con-
tingents such as the HEU group above paraded around the field during the Operation

Solidarity event.

Salmon Arm arena for an energetic rally,
held hands to sing We Shall Overcome, and
then marched through the downtown
streets. This town had in May defeated Bill
King and elected the violently anti-union
Cliff Michaels.

In Courtenay a solidarity coalition of 35
community and labor organizations has
transformed the community life of that city
virtually overnight. Shopkeepers are putting
‘“We Support Operation Solidarity”’ signs in
the windows and the public is being asked to
patronize those shops.

The speed with which the movement
against the budget has grown has presented
the Operation Solidarity leadership an over-
whelming challenge to consolidate the
diverse streams of protest and to maintain
themomentum. __

At this point it must be said that the
leadership provided by the B.C. Federation
of Labor and its Operation Solidarity part-
ners has been equal to the challenge. The em-

_phasis has been on building a large coalition

~ against the budget and putting people on the

streets in public protest to demonstrate the
size and breadth of the opposition.

Phase one of the fight-back will be essen-
tially completed over the next weeks as the
program of regional protests winds up and
the regional coalitions against the budget
take form. Phase two will present new tac-
tical problems of how to follow the first
round of mass demonstrations with
escalating mass pressure on the government.

There are three inter-related factors that
will determine the tactics that Operation
Solidarity and the solidarity coalitions will
be able to consider.

The first factor is the involvement of the
private sector unions in the fight-back. To
date there has been a mixed response from
industrial unions to the mass demonstra-
tions; the overwhelming majority of par-
ticipants have been from the public sector.
Some private sector union leaders just
haven’t grasped the new situation in B.C.

See CODE page 8