Ol’ Bi
ill

emphasizing in every line the need
for a great powerful Canadian
Marxist party to lessen defeat and
extend the victories of his class.
Class conscious to the last drop
of blood, his pen wrote in anger
against the monopolists, the CPR,
the “Gentlemen Adventurers of
England” (Hudson’s Bay Compa-
ny), the Consolidated Mining and
Smelting Company, those whom
the trained seals of the kept press
call “builders”, the organized kil-
lers of the Ginger Goodwins, Nick
Zanchuks, the coal miners of Es-
tevan — all the working class
heroes who have fallen before the
organized force and violence of
ruthless monopoly.

For Ol’ Bill there was only one
class of builders, the workers. The
others were the drones, the para-
sites, living and waxing fat and
rich on the sweat and toil of labor.
His Builders of British Columbia

Builder

nized that the time had come for
bold re-examination and change.

The ruling class of Canada, as
of other countries, was thrown
into a frenzy of fear by the Rus-
sian Revolution and the upsurge
of working class organization and
socialist agitation it produced in
this country. That fear was re-
flected in new repressive meas-
ures, particularly the vicious Sec-
tion 98 enected by the Meighen
government during the Winnipeg
General Strike of 1919. It was
reflected in screaming headlines
falsifying the news from Russia
and distorting it beyond all recog-
nition of the truth, just as today
sensational headlines and twisted
news reports present a false pic-
ture of what is happening in the
new democracies of Europe.

Bill Bennett and others set

- themselves the difficult task of

stands as a lasting tribute, not to
literary design but to the cause of
labor unity in the struggle for
peace, jobs and security as pre-
ludes to. socialism.

As far back as 1912, when the
Nanaimo and Wellington miners
were faced with the guns and ar-
tilery of the militia, called in to
back up the coal operators’ star-
vation non-union policies, Ol’ Bill
fought and worked for bigger
unions, bigger, better and more
militant unions; unions accepting
Marxist-Leninist scientfic leader-
ship in the struggle — not “dic-
tated by Moscow’,’ as the kept
press like to yelp, but from their
own staunch class hearts and

‘elass needs. Ol Bill saw trade
unions as a great vehicle of socia-
lism wresting new wage and
working conditions from their ex-

ploiters, raising the level of socia-..

list understanding and unity, nev-.
er merely as instruments for col-
lecting percapita and holding the
workers in leash.

OV Bill loved the Communist
party. To him it was meat and
drink of life, the.guarantee of the
Socialist Canada,-upon the thresh-
hold ,of which he bade us a quiet
goodbye forever. His proletarian
heart — which found joy in being
a Santa Claus to our children, |
and a pillar of rock in our daily
struggles is now still.

The party and the cause to which
he dedicated his whole life to the
last hour, shall build an enduring
monument to his memory — a
Socialist Canada abundant in the
human values he loved, freed from
all the sham and exploitation his

great working class heart hated
and scorned.

; the government

combatting the lies and interpret-
ing the news the daily newspapers
either distorted or suppressed en-
tirely. -

When the government banned
the Western Clarion in 1918 they
launched the Red Flag, and when
issued instruc-
tions to the post office to accept
the Red Flag but not to send it
out they changed the name to the
Indicator. Through their writ-
ings, through public meetings and
study groups they broke down
the barriers of distortion and pre-
judice, spreading through the
labor movement the profound sig-
nificance of the new workers’

state that had come into being to ©

influence their lives and open a
new era for their world.

Within the Socialist party itself
the ferment created by the war
and heightened by the Russian
Revolution continued in argument

' and dispute, with the advocates

of an opportunist course waging

a losing battle against the mili-
tancy of the rank-and-file, finally

‘to take refuge in the outright re-

fusal of the leadership to recog-
nize the demand ‘of the member-
ship for affiliation to the new
Communist International.

e
Bill Bennett was one of the 15
or 20 members of the Socialist

party, the OBU and the Workers’

Ex-Servicemen’s League, includ-
ing Jack Kavanagh and Jack
Clarke, who met in the Sullivan

of B.C.

Hall on Cordova street, Vancou-
ver, in December, 1921, as a com-
mittee to launch the new Workers’
party, which in 1924 became the
Communist party of Canada. The
achievements of the working peo-
ple of Russia had demonstrated
the need for a new type of party
to carry forward the struggle for
socialism. The Workers’ party
was the organization created by
Canadian workers to meet that
need,

Twenty-two years later, in the
Georgia Hotel, Vancouver, Bill
Bennett was again one of a gath-
ering, no longer numbered in tens
but in hundreds, from which the
new Labor-Progressive party was
launched in. the communist tra-
dition to which he devoted his life.

To tell the story of those inter-
vening years one would have to -
write a history of the old Com-
munist party, for in a sense the
story of the Communist party was

also Bill’s story. The one was a ©

bright facet of the whole.

His last years began to weigh
upon Bill, greying his hair and

seaming the face that was fami-

liar to thousands of workers, in
British Columbia and far beyond. .
But if age limited ‘his capacity for
work, it neither dimmed his youth-
ful outlook nor corroded his view
of Karl Marx’s theory as “only
the cornerstone of the science
which socialists must carry fur-
ther in all directions if they want
to keep pace with life.”

Until a few weeks ago, when
ill-health forced him to close his
typewriter for the last time, rea-
ders of the Pacific Tribune still
turned first to Ol Bill’s “Short
Jabs”. Indeed, it was as Ol’ Bill
that he was known to the remotest
corners of the province among
readers who had not missed his
hard-hitting weekly column since
its first appearance in the old B.C.
Workers’ News in 1935.

In the socialist Canada of the
future when the working people
honor their pioneers who, in the
words of Charles Mackay, “Aid
the dawning, tongue and pen,” Bill
Bennett’s name will be among
those immortalized in the. stone
and steel of new construction. But
no monument can tower as high
nor can endure as long as the
inspiring example of the lifetime
he devoted to the working people
and their struggle for socialism.

Adapted from an article “Bill
Bennett — Grand Old Man of
Canadian Labor’, published in
September, 1947, to mark Bill
Bennett’s 50 years in the labor
movement,’ '

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BUSINESS PERSONALS

DR. R. L. DOUGLAS HAS OPEN.-
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IN MEMORIAM

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Specializing in

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STAR LOAN CO. LTD.

Est. 1905
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IDEAL WESTERN KITCHEN CLOCE
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Lenin Memorial Meeting —
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* Sunday, January 15,

8 p.m. |

FORESTERS: HALL (SKINNER STREET)

NANAIMO, B.C.

A MASS PROTEST MEETING
AGAINST DP HOOLIGANISM
‘MONDAY, JANUARY 9, 1950, AT 8 PiMe y

SPEAKERS: S. ENDICOTT and J. DUBNO
Ukrainian Labor Temple, 805 E. Pender St.

TED HARRIS

Painters’ and Paperhangers’ Supplies

- 757 E. HASTINGS ST.

1949 STOCK CLEARANCE SALE
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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 6, 1950—PAGE: 1o