yy N its balmiest days Vancouver’s celebrated fish dock never smel- led higher than the NPA admin- istration at City Hall. Small won- der that Mayor Tom Alsbury and his NPA pundits are so anxious to conduct more and more of the city’s business in “secret” behind closed doors. The Panruker case itself smells to high heaven. Here we had the ‘appointment’ of a common jail- bird as manager of the new’ Queen Elizabeth Theatre, plus the appar- ent absence of any efficient audit or checkup of his thieving opera- tions for nearly two years. Add to that the fact of eleven court remands, during which time the initial charges against Panruker were substantially ‘scaled down,’ with a final plea of “guilty” re- sulting. Taken together these facts add up to the obvious conclusion, that something is putrid in NPA ‘administration at City Hall, that something is being “covered-up.” To top that off we see the NPA council in “secret” session hastily ‘re-appointing’ the Queen Eliza- beth board personnel who were Panruker’s: managerial colleagues, —this even before his case was finally disposed of in- court with a four-year prison sentence. With the Walter Mulligan-Som- mers odor: still in their nostrils, taxpayers are inclined to ask with the Vancouver Sun, “How did he get away with it?”. There’s only one way. to find out; a wide-open investigation into NPA supervision of the Queen Elizabeth; to lay ail the facts, all the figures, and all the Panruker promoters or accom- plices on the table for all to See. The Panruker affair should serve to point up a growing crisis in Vancouver civic administration; the constant desire and aim of an NPA-dominated city council. and mayor to abrogate and narrow down democratic usages in civic government. To exclude public opinion and criticism by the “sec- ret” conduct of civie affairs; “in camera” as Mayor Alsbury so Pacific Tribune Editor — TOM McEWEN Associate Editor — MAURICE RUSH Business Mgr. — OXANA BIGELOW Published weekly at - Room 6 — 426 Main Street Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone MUtual -5-5288 Subscription Rates: - One Year: $4.00 Six Months: $2.25 Canadian and Commonwealth countries (except Australia): $4.00 one year. Australia, United States and all other countries: $5.00 one year. Authorized as second class mail, Post Office Dept., Ottawa. noisily and blandly puts it. As a result of this narrowing down process we see the. four- member ‘board of administration’ created to expedite civic adminis- tration “secretly” cut down to two. The indications are that it will soon be reduced to one, the equiv- alent of a “city manager” as de- signed by a Chicago firm of “ex- perts”, and eagerly sought by the NPA.’ Aside from the need of a full- dress investigation into the Pan- ruker appointment and~ supervi- Sion, it is time the voice of the ratepayers was heard in growing volume, demanding a drastic re- organization of civic government, whereby representation would be restored to the people through a Ward electoral system, and where the taxpayers would have access to a civic government, elected to conduct the city’s affairs out in the open for all to see. That way the city would cut NPA - Mulligan - Panruker risks (and costs) toa minimum. - . Re aw ee : EDI TORIAL PAGE : : oe Need NPA deodorant JFK—“quest for peace’ N January 20, 1961 the world breathed a little easier, the hopes of-millions rose perceptably, and the taut string of tension, often near the breaking point in past months, appreciably slack- ened. In his inaugural address to the American people and to the world, President John Fitzgerald Ken- nedy, assuming the presidency of the United States, the world’s. most powerful and most ruthless. im- perialist state, uttered words that the whole world has long yearned to hear. “: .. we offer not a pledge but a request; that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction un- leached by science engulf all hu- manity in planned or accidental destruction” .... ..“Let both sides explore what problems unite us in- stead of belaboring the problems that divide us.” President Kennedy’s inaugural address is a far cry from the . ‘brinkmanship’ of nuclear destruc- tion and war’ provocations which characterized the Dulles - Eis@ hower regime. Unquestiona® they express the hopes and desi® of the common people of Ameri as they do of the peoples of whole world. . ‘New comes the acid test. T ‘other America’ to which Presid Kennedy is tied by powerful thom of monopoly finance capital; # armament monopolies who 1t@ vast profits from the preparati®! for nuclear annihilation and @ struction, who, up until now ha! constituted the real ‘governm@ manipulating its Eisenhower pl pets. Does it too seek that “que for peace” so finely stated i) President Kennedy? P| The answer to that lies not wi President Kennedy and his 8” ernment, but with the great AS erican people, united in purp? and determination with the peop! ‘of the entire world to win % most sacred goal. For the const! mation of this noble task, Presid” Kennedy’s inaugural address git’ added impetus and hope for W tory. i —_ Tom McEwen biped? are two methods of re- cording history. One is to ad- here strictly to fact. The other is to color-or embellish the “facts” to fit the conclusions desired. A recent CBC-TV recital of Van- couvers “Bloody Sunday” back in the jobless days of 1938, with seript-writer Doug Collins starring as “historian,’ follows the second method; ie., to fit “history” to the taste desired. One of the performers on this CBC version of “Bloody Sunday” was Harold Winch, CCF-MP for Vancouver East. It is no secret. that Mr. Winch loves’ to trace his early baptism into socialist struggle to a smart crack on the noggin by a police- man’s blackjack, suffered during the ‘“tin-canning” days of the Hungry Thirties. Over the years Mr. Winch and his admirers Have transformed this police routine practice of those early days into something of a national cause‘celebre. In her book The Compassionate Rebel author Dorothy Steeves gives further em- phasis. to this legend. - ce Now to get back to the CBC-TV rendition , of - “Bloody. Sunday.” Any TV_.audience not "conversant with the events preceeding or after that historic day of Liberal-Tory doublecross terror and police against jobless workers, ‘would in- dubitably get the notion that Har- old Winch, (with his tap-on-the- bean recorded) was the “hero” of the day. Also, those blankety-blank Com- munists, who are always presumed to-be stirring up and fomenting trouble, were nowhere in sight; too’ cowardly to be around when trouble really got started. Mr. Winch actually said so. There are still authentic photo- graphs of “Bloody Sunday’ which tell a different story, showing Com- munist leaders of the unemployed, beaten and bloody. It is also on the historical record that hundreds of the Post Office’: sit downers,” gassed, beaten, destitute and hun- gry, were taken, not to the CCF hall, but to the AUUC hall at 805. East Pender, where a “Mothers’ Committee,” led by Effie Jones, Annie Stewart and other outstanding Communist wo- men, together with the member- ship. of the AUUC, provided them with food, and dressed their sorely bruised bodies. “Those cowardly Communists’? A nice political theme for a CBC distortion of history, aimed at dis- crediting Communist leadership in . present-day jobless struggles, and utilizing a tap-on-the-bean “hero” to smear. history. - If we recall history correctly, it was Tim Buck and his communist colleagues, plus scores of hundreds of Communists throughout Canada which the Bennett “Iron Heel” government railroaded to prison, clubbed, attempted to murder, or murdered outright, under Section 98 of the Criminal Code, as the classical Tory “solution” for un- | employment, — : We don’t recall Mr. 7 f Re | f Harold © Winch, the “hero” of “Bloody Sun- | day” being in on any of these — events marking the history of the © Hungry Thirties. All we can re member, and even the CBC won't — let us forget it, is that romantic © tap - on --the - bean, which Sun columnist Jack Scott, quoted by Dorothy Steeves in The Compas: sionate Rebel, Churchillian “finest hour.” flair as It was. also from the ranks of | that | the Canadian Communists 1200 young men left Canada t0 fight and die for the preservation of Spanish democracy against Hit ler-Mussolini-Franco fascism. Si¥ hundred of these Mackenzie-Pap- describes with 2 | Harold’s © ineau fighters, many from the Re — lief Camp Workers Union, and | some direct from “Bloody Sunday”: © died in Spain — their face to the — enemy. We have no doubt there aré times in a class conscious worker’s life when a vicious crack on the © skull by a cop’s blackjack has aid- ed in the strengthening of his con- | victions. But it isn’t a decisive fac- tor to a full understanding of Marxian dialectics, or in winning the battle for socialism. To care less script writers with a yen for © romantics it may add a needed touch of “color,” but it has little ~ to do with accurately recording history on TV or other media. If it were otherwise we’d have — no hesitation in saying that at other such “tap” is long overdue — to the “world-does’nt-owe-us-a-liv~ ing” hero of the CBC’s ‘Bloody Sunday.” ae January 27, 1961—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Pa#!