Parliament's sorry record

"Q HE second session of the 21st parliament
- of Canada (sometimes called an “emer-
gency” session) has already established an
unprecedented record for speed—but in the
- wrong direction. :
First on the agenda was the strike of
125,000 Canadian railroad workers for the
40-hour week and a 10-cent an hour wage
increase. Parliament disposed of that “ob-
stacle” to national “security” in record time

with a four-cent temporary wage boost and a -

new statute,-calculated to bring labor to heel
with a “compulsory arbitration” dog-collar.
With the railway strike successfully broken
and labor faced with an undemocratic arbit-
rary decree, parliament passed on to the

next order of business—‘defense.”
Finance Minister Douglas Abbott,
speaking for the government. wants an-
other $442,000,000 for “defense,” in addition
‘to the $425,000,000 appropriation of the pre-
ceeding session. This makes a total of
$867,000,000 for the 1950-51 “defense” bud-

get. re se
Taxes! Oh yes, taxes, “I anticipate that
I shall have some tax proposals to make”
says cagey Douglas Abbott as he lowers the

upon social security spending, and with ©

Defense Minister Brooke Claxton, chants the
slogan the late unlamented Hermann Goer-
ing offered to the German -people, “Guns
Setuee Butter.” Since the end of the Second
World War, Canadians have already poured
_ approximately $1,500,000,000 down this “de-
_fense” sink hole, with little or nothing to
show for it except-the huge profits shown
on the balance sheets of the merchants of
death, and a trigger-itchy top brass. clamor-
ing for war now!

No money for low-cost housing, for de-
cent old age pensions, for .social security or
all those other things so piously promised
when victory over Hitler hung in the bal-
ance at Stalingrad. But for atomic war on
the Soviet Union, via all the Koreas in the
making by the atomaniacs of Wall Street
(External Affairs Minister Lester B. Pear-
son promised “new Koreas”) falsely labelled
“defense’—hbillions of dollars.

Fearful that the “emergency” session of
parliament might not complete a truly sorry
record, the Vancouver Sun of. September 5
editorially posed the question: “What About
Th Communists?” and complains peevishly
that parliament hasn’t also lowered the boom
on“... Communist activity where it is judg-
ed prejudicial to the nation’s welfare.” \

In the opinion of the Sun it is “equiva-

_ lent to the Criminal Code offense of obstruct-

ing a peace officer in the execution of his
duty” for any Communist to hold opinions
different from President Truman, Dean Ache-
son, Lester B. Pearson or Douglas Abbott.
Moreover, unless “. cock-sureness about
Red successes elsewhere is curbed .. . this
abuse of freedom in a democracy leads to the
forfeiture of that freedom,” say the “free-

dom-loving” Sun!

Evidently the Sun feels that if parlia-
ment could add the banning of the LPP to

its smashing of the railway strike, to its

anti-labor compulsory arbitration decree and
its doubled war budget (labelled “defense’),
the legislative box score would complete a
warmonger’s most desired gamble with
the lives and happiness of the Canadian
people. ace

~ 2,000 new readers by October 31.

{_*OME September 15. this paper will
“begin an intensive drive for 2,000
mew readers. The times call for three
times that number, but we aim at what
we can do, rather than at what we would
like to do.

We need a minimum of 2,000 new
_ readers to help us to counteract the ly-
_ ing cold-war propaganda which the com-

mercial press dishes up as “news” and the

editorial “opinions” with which it seeks _

to confuse and befuddle the people.
We need thousands of new readers
from the factories, mines and workshops,
at the. “point of production{’? where the
class struggle (far from being a “thing

of the past” as stated recently by pro- |

| vincial Labor Minister John Cates) in-
_ cubates new ideas and new hopes hourly,
and to which the PT gives direct ex-

pression.

In the fighting ranks of labor, harass-
_ ed with the pliant stooges of big business _
who conduct their splitting and raiding

drive to boost circulation.

brought closer.

tactics, their sell-outs of labor’s interests
and their parrot-like warmongering be-
hind the mask of anti-Communism, papers
like the Pacific Tribune serve the dual
purpose as an educator and organizer for
greater rank-and-file labor unity. ‘That is —
why the bosses and their stooges in
labor’s ranks periodically vent their spleen
atthe PL:

We are confident that all our tire-
less press builders and supporters wha
have done a big job in the past for the
PT will again be in the forefront in this
They too
know from experience that only by get-
ting the PT into the hands of new thous-.
ands of readers among the basic sections
of the working class. can the battle for
peace, security, and progress against fasc-
ist-inspired war policies at home and
abroad, be won, and the goal of socialism

Build the paper that fights your
battles. 2,000 new readers by October 31!

+ Printed by

s We See lt

HE trains are running again, the 124,000 railway workers are

back at work. A new law, the “Maintenance of Railway Opera-
tions Act” is on the statute books, and Prime Minister St. Laurent
has publicly expressed “the utmost confidence” in CNR boss Donald
Gordon.

Everybody—that is, everybody with a dividend interest in rail-
roading—is happy. Jubilantly, the daily press tells us that the dollar
patrons of our posh railroad hotels are “eating again”, after their
sad experience of “roughing it’ for nine days.

What of the railroad workers, are they happy, too? Hardly. Four
cents a day compulsory arbitration dog-collars are not calculated to
bring forth whoops of delight. To put it plainly
Canadian railroaders received from a Liberal gov-
ernment, backed by Tories, CCF and Social Credit,
the prime sell-out in the annals of Canadian labor;

a sell-out made possible by the flabby acquiescence
and colloboration of the CCF-inspired Mosher and
Hall railway union “leadership.”

The nineday Canadian strike chalked up some
new records. ‘
1—Having maneuvered the country into a rail-

road “crisis’, by doing nothing to avoid it over
14 month of negotiations, the government, ably

* assisted by the railway union bureaucracy, created

a “national emergency” to serve as a pretext for

antistrike legislation, not only against the organized railway union,
but against all labor, amd especially those engaged in public utility
services. “With such a political backdrop, it was as easy as “rolling off”
the proverbial log for the government to secure parliamentary assent
to its strike-breaking “compulsory arbitration” restraints on labor.

2.—Speed, phenomenal! It has taken parliament 31 ‘years to “earn-
estly consider” the claims of life-time railroaders, gypped out of their
pensions by the CPR for participation in the 1919 Winnipeg general
strike and its hasn’t settled anything for the pensioners yet. (Perhaps it
is waitig until they are all dead, when the problem will be automatically
solved!) ‘

But parliament stampeded by the government’s propaganda of a
“national emergency”, mamaged to wheel through in little more than
20 hours, one of the most far-reaching pieces of strike-breaking legisla-
ion ever to be placed on the statute books. All its “sympathy” of
course, was for the railroaders (expressed in a four-cent wage bribe)’
but its actions clear the way for “negotiations” to be finalized on terms
agreeable to the coupon clippers.

Not one voice in parliament, Liberal, Tory, CCF or Social Credit,
seriously challenged the government’s strike-breaking bill, nor called
for a nation-wide protest from organized labor to help block this
infamous legislation which threatens the elementary rights of all
labor. It is true that CCF leader M. J. Coldwell made a frothy
“demand” for “resignation” of CNR rail boss Donald Gordon, but
carefully omitted any mention of the obvious fact that what. Gordon
was doing in “negotiations” was precisely what the goverment wanted

Whatever other opinions we may hold about Coldwell, we don’t
think he is that naive, because coupled with his bluster about
Gordon’s “resignation” was Mosher’s oft-repeated yelp, “We'll obey the
law” as a preface to all his “militant” orations on the strike, indicat-
ing that the thing uppermost in top CCF minds, was not how to win

the wage and hours demands of the 124,000 railroad workers, but how

to get them back to work under any conditions whatsoever. In this
Loe top-brass differed in no respect from Liberal, Tory or Social
or. ;

3.—Perhaps the most important “new record” chalked up by. the
railroad “settlement” is that- nothing has been settled. It is true
the railroads are back at work, but the bread and butter issue remains

_ —that, and a widespread resentment, the like of which has not been

known in labor raks for several decades,

The strike was a magnificant demonstration of labor unity. Given
militant aggressive leadership (with all laws still being obeyed), a
great victory could have been chalked up for the railroaders and for
Canadian labor as a whole. Mass rank-and-file’ pressure compelled
top leaders in the TLC and CCL to take time out from their “red-
baiting” sports to appeal to their rank and file to protest the govern-
ment’s strikebreaking legislation. A word from the railway union
heads and the whole labor movement would have swung into action
(as law-abiding citizens), to back the railway unions in their struggle,
and protect their own interests threatened by the combined at-
tack of the government and big business upon the railway workers.

One has only to look at the joint mass rally of unionists in Van-
couver last week under the combined auspices of the TL) and CCL to
appreciate the great potential of unity
and the united disgust with which labor views the government’s
strike-breaking legislation.

It was critical of railway union leadership for failing to provide
effective strike machinery and Strike pay; critical of the unseemly -
haste of parliament and the government in bringing down legislation
against the people, but slow, so very, very slow, on other matters affect-
ing ES eee wiley: ‘ “The more workers’ language we get in:

esolutions to those fat, complacent liars etter’
was how one CCL official phrased it. wid img ci ee

Two big jobs now face the railroaders and the whole labor move-
ment, For the railroaders, new negotiations and new negotiators to
win their original demands. For all labor, a nation-wide united 4

mand for the repeal of dog-collar Bil] No. 1.

d x by Hh Hinges seit ull
2 ESOT
ns LOLSSLE

Manas

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 8, 1950 — PAGE 8

behind the railway workers,