Continued From page 2: Alsbury motivated y fear of labor unity root cause'of his rantings — “His name is Jack Phillips.” Four years ago the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada, un- der’ the leadership of president- emeritus Percy Bengough, acting under instructions of the USS. State Department, decided to “clean out” all Communists and progressive workers from’ Cana- dian unions, and to instruct the rank-and-file of these unions that they could elect only such union officers as were acceptable to. the AFL bureaucracy or else face expulsion. The Vancouver Civic Employees Union (Outside Workers) was one of the unions chosen to be “cleaned out.” TLC vice-presi- dent, Carl Berg of Edmonton was dispatched to Vancouver to do the job — either to wreck an old established union, or bring it into line with official cold war policy. “Socialist” Tom Alsbury was selected as Berg’s assistant. Berg “explained” to the local presS at the time that in his’ job of performing a surgical opera- tion upon a union, he was ‘“‘just like a doctor.” From then on he was “Doctor” Berg to the men chosen as his surgical victims. Following a long and bitter struggle to preserve their union and retain their democratic right to elect their own officers with- out outside interference, the civic workers — some 1,600 of them — defeated the Berg-Alsbury wreck- ers and kept their union intact. Defeated. by the workers, Berg and Alsbury set up 4 new local composed of-a splinter group of ane RECTOR CIGAR Only Union Made Cigar in Vancouver Hand Rolled Finest in Dutch & Havana Tobacco SOLD AT HOTELS or 214 Union St., Vancouver some 70 members drawn from Vancouver School Board and Airport workers. . It is from Local 407 with its' handful of members that Als- bury, a school principal and therefore ineligible to represent the teachers’ union, receives his “credentials” to sit as a delegate in the Vancouver Trades and Labor Council. i Since then, in annual wage negotiations, the civic outside workers have made substantial gains around a policy of unity with all civic employees, gains from which the Alsbury splin- ter group benefits, but to win- ning which it contributes little or nothing. Alsbury is satisfied to remain a hitch-hiker, concentrating his energies against his prime obses- sion Jack Phillips, secre- tary of the Vancouver Civic Em- ployees (Outside Workers). In his final article Alsbury portrays Phillips in the role of a*Communist Machiavelli, train- ed at the Moscow “Lenin Insti- |- tue in 1947.” True, Phillips has been abroad — as a soldier in the service of his country, serving in many countries of Western Europe dur- ing the Second World War. But he has still to make his first trip to the Soviet Union for Commun- ist “training” or anything else. And Alsbury accuses the Com- munists of “lying”! Upon numerous occasions Phil- lips, in the interests of his union, has appealed to any “better judg- ment” Alsbury might possess, but his appeals have fallen on deaf ears. On other occasions Phillips has suggested that Alsbury should “see a psychiatrist” when some of his ‘current statements or ac- tions revealed a. mental obsession rather, than differences on trade union policies. Alsbury’s replies have confirmed the soundness of Phillips’ advice! There are several important conclusions labor must draw from Alsbury’s Vancouver Sun articles — eonclusions which the articles are designed to confuse and ob- scure, & “SOONER OR LATER — Ii’S CAMBELL’S FOR CARS” “The Pick of the Market” SEE JOHN BESPALKO Campbell Motors Ltd. 1234 Kingsway Phone: EXpress 2474 Vancouver 10 SS SS SS Se =D fed (| =] J ps Hours: Daily , 9-5 339 W. PENDER ST. ad pea po TS he Also Lovely Linens, Large Assortment BEAUTIFUL PEKING ALL WOOL RUGS JUST ARRIVED FROM CHINA Assorted Colors, Patterns, and Sizes 2x3 to 9x12 * Hand- Embroidered Guaranteed Finest Quality &-Lowest Prices x East-West Export Import Co. Ltd. — Saturday, 9-12 ~ _ PHONE: MA 6615 First there is the great trade union merger in process; the bringing together of a million- strong Canadian Labor Congress through the uniting of the two big trade union centres, the Trades and Labor Congress and the Canadian Congress of Labor. There is need to bring into the CLC the Canadian and Catholic Confederation. of Labor, the many progressive independent unions — and above all, the need to organize tens of thous- ands of unorganized workers in- to a great democratic congress, having as its aim the winning of higher wages and living stand- ards, and the exercise of its poli- tical power commensurate with its economic strength and im- portance in the scheme of things. Rank-and-file unionists look upon the merger as the ex- pression of a new labor unity and a means of winning tre- mendous wage and working advances by 1957-58 when many union contracts expire—a unity: no. longer menaced by union raiding and internal strife. The trade union bureaucrats, high and low (and Alsbury is among the latter), are still play- ing the game of cold war politics under the guise of “fighting Communism.” They have another concept of merger — a great bureau- cratically controlled per capita paying machine, in which they will run the new CLC to their own liking, and in conformity with the wishes and desires of big business. : No better example of that aim need be sought than in Berg’s recent attempt to force a five- year wage contract on B.C. unions — a wage contract arriv- ed at and signed in the USS. without consultation with any union membership, specifying a wage cut of from eight to 87 cents an hour lower than the prevailing rate now being paid in B.C. on pipeline construction. Berg just couldn’t sell that shoddy package in B.C. any more than he could hand over the Civic Employees Union to Als- bury. The Vancouver Sun, in typical Alsburian style, featured Berg’s | failure to cut wages and hogtie workers with a. U.S.-designed wage contract in a headline which read: “Pipeline Threatened by Union Dispute,’ implying that the delay in natural gas pipeline construction would be due to. the workers’ demands for decent wages, rather than to Tory, Lib- eral and Socred giveaway poli- cies and monopoly-efforts to con- trol the people’s resources. Alsbury’s articles are an attack upon the trade union movement rather than upon “Communism,” which merely provides him with the pretext. They are intended to head off the desire for trade union unity, to keep the militants out of the new CLC, and to give a _ small trade union bureaucracy the power to wreck what they cannot rule. : Alsbury observed that he ex- pected to be attacked. He would! U.S have rendered organized labor a better service had he kept his disagreements with “commun- ism” (which is his democratic right) on a much higher plane of fact and reality. Since he preferred to do it at gutter level he has no grounds to complain if, in the backwash, labor splat- ters him in his own muck. Malayan pact signed Tunku Abdul Rahman, chief minister of Malaya (right) takes the pen from British Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox- Boyd to sign the agreement which will give Malaya nominal independence by August 1957. Real extent of Malaya’s in- dependence will be determined by what agreement the govern- ment reaches with the Communist Party in Malaya. By SAM RUSSELL : MOSCOW The Soviet Communist party i“ig not afraid to declare that there were mistakes in our foreign policy” in the past ‘““when we, too, were to blame for increasing ten- sion,’ Anastas Mikoyan told the party’s 20th congress here last week. “The Yugoslav question is a caSe in point,’ he added. “Since then steps have been taken to Bscties the ‘position, and such | steps could only have been taken by Leninists. | “The abolition of the military , base in Finland and the treaty | with Austria likewise show the | boldness of our policy and how ' it takes into account the realities of the situation.” , Mikoyan, a first deputy pre- | mier, said that there were also ‘shortcomings in the Soviet; Union’s foreign trade policy; which had to be eliminated. Certain aggressive circles, he said, had made a great deal of play with their talk about a so- called iron curtain erected by the Soviet Union which, they said, was a sign of weakness... “We have dispelled this myth,” he said, “and established strong .contacts with other countries.” | But, telling of difficulties in | exchanging visits with the U.S. ,—ineluding one of restaurant workers—he added: “Evidently the U.S.State Department fears even our cooks.” . He declared there was no “fatalistie necessity” for’ war, for there existed the strength of the working class against war, there was also the strength of public opinion, and there was the fact that the Soviet Union had the atom bomb and rockets that could go to any part of the world, ‘ Mikoyan went on to deal with the situation in agriculture in the Soviet Union and made a striking comparison between what is hap- pening in the USSR and in the He pointed out that in his presidential message to the U.S. Congress Eisenhower had spoken about & program for taking 25 million acres of cultivated land out of production. This, said Mikoyan, “is one of the expressions of the decay Mikoyan tells congress: ‘We too made errors in foreign policy’ of agriculture under capital- ism. Instead of ploughing up FE!) LR they were. — ‘ land they are turning cultivated - areas into virgin land again, while the USSR will be plough- ing up 75 million acres of virgin land this year.” “Though men do not have ‘enough to eat—59 percent of humanity—yet they cut the acre- age of crops,:and these are the people who claim world domin- ation.” : : Dealing with the overseas act- ivities of the United States, Mi- koyan pointed out that the U.S. takes $1,950 million in profits from oil out of the Middle-East countries every year. “This,” he said, “is so-called ‘world leadership’. If these oil profits went to the peoples of the Middle East, they could have developed their coun- | tries.” t Like two other speakers before him, Aristov and Suslov, both secretaries of the Communist | party’s central committee, Mikoy-~ an developed the remark made earlier by Khrushchev that “mak- — ing a particular leader a hero and miracle worker” minimised the collective leadership of the party. ; After a long break, said Mikoy- an, there was now collective leadership in the party and this was the main thing that charac- terised the Soviet Communist party today. ‘ “The principle of colleetive leadership,” he said, “is elemen- tary for a party of the Leninist — type. Yet for 20 years we did | not have collective leadership but the cult of the individual. This had a harmful effect.” ; At the morning session’ on Thursday last week, the 1,430 delegates attending the congress in the Great Hall of the Kremlin were givenra practical lesson in) | what is meant by abolition of the cult of the individual. SPE As each session opened, in the morning and again in the afternoon, they had risen to cheer the leading members of the party when they walked on to the plat- form. a On Thursday morning, Krush- chev went to the microphone and said that there was a request from members of the presidium that the congress should stop this. He appealed to the delegates to behave in a Communist way and as the masters of the congress