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Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
Telephones: Editorial, MA. 5857; Business, MA. 5288
Tom McEwen Editor
Ivan Birchard
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Farmer-labor unity can win

— Anscomb-Hart cabinet has announced the setting
up of a six-man commission ‘to inquire into school
taxation in the province’. The necessity for doing so did
not arise as an inspiration of good government. Quite the
contrary. Just as the mass pressure of organized labor
against Bill 39 has taught the CMA-dominated Coalition
that it cannot play fast and loose with the rights of labor,
so also has the mass pressure of British Columbia’s rural
population, and especially the farmers, compelled the Coali-
tion to recognize that it cannot diddle the people with ex-
orbitant school taxation.

In its interpretation of the Cameron Report applied to
school taxation, the Coalition sought to put the squeeze ~of
increased taxation upon rural areas without giving any-
thing in return. School taxes representing an increase of
anywhere from fifty to three hundred percent were ‘foisted
on the farmers.

Months ago the ‘school tax strike’ flared up in dozens
of B.C. communities. Protest resolutions, briefs, refusal to
‘pay taxes, demands for a special session of the legislature
to deal with the issue, poured in to Victoria from all cor-
ners of the province. Organizations such as the B.C. Fed-
eration of, Agriculture, the B.C. Beef Cattle Growers’ As-
sociation, rural taxpayers’ organizations and individuals,
all added their voice in condemnation of the Anscomb-Hart
school tax holdup.

The six-man commission has been detailed by the
cabinet to cover much the same ground already well-covered
in the Cameron Report. The commission is designed as a
face-saver’ for the Coalition. (Farmers and others, through
the medium of their respective organizations, have already
told the Anscomb-Hart government all they can tell this
commission. That they will give it another earful on an
iniquitous taxation policy there is little doubt.

But the larger question remains for both labor and
farmers—the question of clearing from office this liberal-
tory consortium, which, at the behest of big business ex-
periments with the rights of the people on a sort of ‘trial
and error’ basis. Bill 39 was a CMA-inspired conspiracy
against organized labor. Labor unity foiled its intent and .
left its promoters muttering on the need of ‘amendments’.

The ‘revised’ school tax policy—a distortion of the
Cameron recommendations—was a CMA-inspired conspir-
acy to place the full cost of improved education upon the
backs of the people, in this case mainly the farmers, while
giving them nothing in return. The unity of the rural popu-
lations, expressed in the ‘school tax strike’, clipped the
claws of its promoters, and forced a commission into being
to ‘inquire’ into what is already well known—that the school
tax policies of the Coalition government are undemocratic
and unjust to the nth degree. ©

The larger question—unity of farmers and labor in the
next election to remove this CMA-promoted Coalition evil
from B.C. . . . to put a people’s coalition into power cap-
able of legislating for the workers of factory and farm—
upon whom the welfare and progress of British Columbia
. That is the job that needs to be done now.

Prophet of gloom

CCORDING to Mr. Winston Churchill, “two disasters” have be-

fallen the British people. The first was the recent war, and
the British Labor government. The British sur-
mounted the first disaster, said Mr. Churchill. “The question which
how shall we free ourselves of the second?”
one reply. The British peo at whose
firmest quality of cooperation with the
European democracy, resisted invasion and con-
exertions, but as part of an anti-

war—against economic crisis—only
rejecting all proposals for hitching
as a satellite, or the proffered
reaction. The prophet of gloom will be confounded.

« + 7
‘Baron’ Cecil P. Hahn of Latvia, alleged corresponding secre-

tary for the Canadian Baltic Relief Committee, is resting up in
Vancouver following a strenuous three months’ lecture tour of

The ‘baron’ runs true to type. “Sixty thousand displaced Balts
in Europe want a new home. .*. preferably in Canada. We can’t
go home, We would be deported to the slave camps of the USSR,”
burps this Baltic ‘baron.’ Europe is going to the dogs with the
“fear of communist domination” says his excellency.

Then comes the real stuff of which Truman Doctrines are
made. “Many are choosing to stay in Europe only in order to be
on hand in case of a future opportunity to liberate their country.”
If the ‘baron’ is correctly quoted, that puts him in the same class
as the Gouzenko-Kravchenko fraternity.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1947

sand @ HERE is a tide in the

affairs of men, which,

taken at the flood, leads on
to fortune. Ommitted, all the
voyage of their lives is spent
in shallows and in miseries.”

Had Shakespeare lived today
one would have been justified in
thinking he had the Attlee-
Bevin government of Britain in
mind when writing these pro-
phetic words.

It was a mighty flood tide of
high resolve to achieve ‘socialism
in our time’ which swept British
labor
gave British toryism and _ its
arch-conspirator Churchill the
most crushing defeat in history.
Guided along lines of national-
izing (in the peoples’ interest)
coal, steel, transport and bank-
ing, and merging its rising tide-
waters for socialism with the
new democracies of Europe—and
the USSR, it would indeed have
lead “on to fortune.” Now the
British Labor government is
floundering in the “shallows and
miseries” of atomic-dollar dom-
ination with its inevitable ‘aus-
terity’ for the laboring people.

A sweeping mandate for social-
ism was bartered away for $3,-
750,000,000 loan with the imperial-
ist Shylocks of Wall Sreet stipu-
lating, with characteristic ‘Tru-
man doctrine’ insolence, just

_ how each dollar was to be spent.

The U.S. loan—to have tided
Britain’s reconstruction plans
over until 1950, is now exhausted,
and in-lieu of socialism the or-
dinary British plug like you and
I have been handed a statutory
package labelled ‘more austerity’
—the polite Oxford for more
starvation. Attlee’s ‘crisis bill’
promises the British people noth-
ing but the assurance that “all
the voyage of their lives” are
to be spent “in shallows and in
miseries.” ‘

e
ges very hard lessons are be-
ing learned in the present
British Labor government crisis
—at least by the British people.
The first is that socialism—the
social ownership of the means

into power in 1945—and ©

and machines of production and
distribution, can not be won with
the aid of Wall Street dollars.
On the contrary, the handing out
of Yankee dollars, far from aid-
ing ‘socialist’ programs, puts a
drastic limitation upon the nor-
mal functions of ‘free’ capitalist
‘enterprise’. The Wall Street
shylocks stipulate that the dol-
lars are to be spent in the in-
terests of the,
creditor and no
the debtor. Ca:
nada’ is alread
being hit by th
British ‘dollar f
crisis, as is!
Australia anal
other nations |
of the Com-¢
monwealth.
American im-
perialism is

achieving with
its dollars what Tom McEwen

Hitler hoped to achieve with his-

Whermacht — world domination,
and with similar arrogance and
brutality, as the ‘Truman Doc-
trine’ operations in Greece,
China, Palestine and elsewhere
clearly show. In this, Wall Street
has the full backing of British
tory reaction.

It is important to keep ir
mind while evaluating the
present serious crisis in Brit-
ian, that criticism of the Brit-
ish Labor government's pol-
icies must not be permitted to
open the door for a return to
power of the tory conspira-
tors and their Wall Street
backers. That would be catas-
trophic indeed. Criticism should
and must be directed towards
compelling the labor govern-
ment to keep faith with the
mandate it received from the
British people. That cannot
be done by kow-towing to Wall
Street.

A few days ago Marshal Tito
of Yugoslavia expressed himself
something like this. ‘All we ask
of the imperialists m the USA is
that they leave us alone. A loan,
in the form of credits to our

‘country, given in the spirit of

helpfulness, would aid our people

mR EO pc nc

2 Divide and rule CONC S Blog:

4
MPERIAL 4 -

&

a

tremendously. But if impossible
conditions are attached, we 4° »
not ask it and we don’t need it.
Just let us work out our owF
problems. In short, leave Ue ~
alone.’

The mighty USSR—faced from _
1917 onwards until 1939 (and
now again), with an economic
blockade engineered by Wall St»
built a great Socialist state upo?
its own resources. How great—
the world learned between 1941-
45—although a reactionary part
of it now chooses to forget.

E British people, sturdy 4°

the oak which symbolizes theif
growth, can also build Socialis
without American ear-markeé
dollars.
in fact it would be difficult, but
‘austerity’ for Socialism is #®
living ideal, whereas ‘austerity’
to serve the interests of im

perialist shylocks is a degradimg

form of endless exploitation a?!
slavery. Britain, allied with the
successors of Hitlerism in W
Street can never achieve social
ism.

Every such loan poured in 1
‘stabilize’ the crisis effects of it®
predecessor merely produces &
new crisis, and the plight of
British Labor government at the
moment is the best proof of
that irrefutable axiom of Mat™®
ism. ;

Yes, there is “a tide in the
affairs of men” which has bee?
missed in Britain, but the Ug@
will flow again. ‘Austerity’ 2° 4
means of realizing Socialism ,
a necessary sacrifice which be
common people understand ap
accept. ‘Austerity’ to meet Hi
demands of American jmperi a
ism—they also understand, a
from this understanding co™ =
class resentment—and class pe os
volt. The land which produ
a. Magna Charta, a Shakespear ;
the Chartist movement and ete
men of Tolpuddle, will yet Pry
duce the men who will le! dole
“on to fortune”, where the ©
lar will be but a token of a
change and a sturdy BM” oat
workman rated the nigh
asset of the nation.

It might be difficult-