Your car insures| — their profits §= By N. E. STORY IH post war period bas seen a splurge of profiteering on the © part of big business in Canada. In no field does this apply with greater force than in the highly cartelized field of casualty insurance. j Casualty insurance is a general term which includes fire, auto, burglary and other forms of property insurance. This article will deal only with automobile insurance in British Columbia. - First, let us look at some highly instructive figures released by the Superintendent of Insurance, ENTIRE SALES OF AUTO | INSURANCE IN B.C. 7 ‘1949 Increase Percent of motor vehicles insured: Pleasure vehicles ..... 49% 90% 83.74% . ave cu vsmnsmsvu usta emrset LEHR Pit Vel is Sil ge 0) Gr Fanon wee yencies Re ‘ baad Se \ males) cet hte aes $5,322,000 $9,968,000 87 % Loss ratio (proportion of \2 sales paid in claim) ..- $3,265,000 $5,148,000 9.7 decrease ; : (61.35%) (61.65%) (proportion- i . ate to sales) 4 Net income (before ! ; , administration) ......- $2,057,000 $4,820,000 © 134.3% Thus the companies are in the enviable position of having x the highest income in history and the lowest loss ratio in years, while car owners are obliged to pay the highest rates in history. Profits (before administration) more than doubled in two years! The 83.7 percent increase of pleasure vehicles insured and the 115 percent of commercial vehicles is significant. The “Pink Slip’ amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act were intro- duced March 1, 1948, that is, in the middle of the period ex- amined, The statistics above substantiate characterization of this infamous legislation as a legal blackjack to boost insurance sales. Finally, it is noteworthy that virtually all pleasure cars in urban areas-are insured while only 58 percent of commercial vehicles (operated principally in urban areas) are insured. The figures show that 32 percent less of commercial vehicles are insured than of private cars. The large fleet owners (such as the BC Blectric) have contrived their own insurance coverage, admitting the obvious that, even with sizable fleet discounts, the product of their class brothers is uneconomical. The insurance moguis have planned cleverly, From the first post-war “readjustment” (after discontinuance of gas rationing) to a level above the pre-war period, the highest sales and rates in history have been maintained “by means of the “Pink Slip Law” and through annual increases in the mean rate (carefully concealed within a jungle of figures). They have been astute, indeed, that so far no’serious opposition has in the British African colonies, like those in the Gold Coast by elected representa- Kwame Nkrumah, leader of the successful describes the new “meodel’ constitution as because it leaves control powers in the hands under-secrtaries. f Africa’s peoples on } march ) es shone vevvavomsvnyc0ysenymvegyenrusievimsieyseccavimyse lane eweTun ESTO TATE Oy escmtr@trw Tu reR RNR TOT eciMHTOU BH EN eSHer aT BLE ° of appointed OT PPM TLS oe been raised in this province. ; ' The Rev. Father Saijah, of Sekondi, on the Gold Coast last resort, sre Rca ao _ When peces aionipnere charges are added to the cost of | es a fr as lid litt man and he didn’t like bein non-coopera ion S on e insurance —— license tees, gascline taxes, the parking ticket Is a quiet, nO e€, Sol ae ana h Bebe ch 2 principle of absolute non-violence. racket — the growing inaccessibility of car ownership to the in prison at all. For one , he 1s a parson 0 € urcnh average family is. painfully clear. There was widespread support for Positive Action in Accra, the capital, and other places on the Gold Coast. ‘aie A program covering the general factors, but the central demand of which is povermment ‘auto insurance. should be a plank in all progresive briefs and of England. For another serving his six-month inciting persons to take | daughter died after he began pire and raising half a million an illegal strike, and he have liked to see to it P that she had a decent Du the proper rites. But if the British & in this “models We colony thought it ¢ 1 little Father Saijah ‘thou- knows now how: Bb calculated. We shall be stronger when we come out.” Father Saijah and his fellow prisoners, Kwame Nkrumah, leader of the Convention People’s party, Anthony Woode, secretary and Pobee SBiney,: vice-president of the Gold Coast Trades Union Congress, are now out of jail. They were released this week fol- lowing the overwhelming victory won by the People’s Convention party in the first general election hela since the Gold Coast be- came a British crown colony in 1886. ‘ The British administration was forced to release its political prisoners. Its own _ repressive policies were decisively defeated despite the limitations on fran- chise and representation embod- ied in the new constitution. The People’s Convention party, which it had persecuted and conspired to defeat, was clearly the choice of the people. The victory of the Convention - People’s party will have” far- reaching effects throughout Afri- ca, where Britain’s imperialist — schemes for creating a new em- African troops are clashing with the aspirations of the African peoples, In the Union of South Africa particularly, it will streng- then the resistance to Premier Daniel Malan’s pro-fascist apar- theid (segregation) politics of white supremacy. e ; The Convention People’s party has been campaigning since last year for Dominion status, with the government transferred to the African people. But Britain’s capitalists have other plans for Africa. Hard pressed by American com- petition, the liberation struggles of the Far East and the stirrings of the British working class at home, they are pinning their hopes of survival on a vast new African empire. In that ri¢h, comparatively un- developed continent, with its great mass of exploitable cheap labor, they dream of a new im- perialist adventure to solve the contradictions of their present situation. It is part of their grandiose plan that* Africa shall provide important war bases for the en- circlement of the Soviet Union and the New Democracies. But the plan is meeting one insuperable obstacle: the deter- mined opposition of the African people. ‘ After a campaign for a new constitution on the Gold Coast, Nkrumah declared “Positive Ac- tion” as a method of bringing pressure to bear on the colonial government. s The weapons of positive action were stated to be legitimate poli- tical agitation, newspapers and educational campaigns and, as a ) } : It so happened that the same weekend that Positive Action was declared the Gold Coast TUC called a general strike in support of one of its affiliated unions, the Meteorological Workers, some ‘of whose members had been dis- missed by the government after , a strike. The government seems to have regarded the coincidence of ac- tion on the part of the two bodies as a heaven-sent opportunity of smashing these two important section of the African progressive movement. : A state of emergency was de- clared and wholesale arrests took place, Two newspapers publish- ed by Nkrumah were suppressed. One of the passages objected to read: “We should remember that we have a sacred trust—to preserve this land which our fathers bought with their blood. Shall we yield our heritage so lightly to an in- truder and enemy?” After a struggle of some days, in which transport and trade were brought almost to a stand- still, the government's counter- offensive had its effect. Positive Action and the general strike were called off. ; The government immediately set out to teach the Africans a lesson, Numerous prosecutions were launched and the jails were filled. The Emergency Regulations gave the governor power to sup- press papers and ban processions or meetings and powers of arbit- rary arrest, search of premises and persons, detention or “re- moval.” But no amount of imprison- political platforms covering the provincial field. ment or police terror could suc- ceed in suppressing the people’s movement for liberation from colonial rule. The trade union leaders refused to appeal against the savage sentences passed on them. Biney, a tough engine-driver, and. the quieter, ‘more sensitive Woode, told the court they were proud of what they had done. , e@ Shortly after the arrest of its leading members in January, 1950, ‘the Convention People’s party swept the polls in the Accra Town Council election, capturing all seven elective seats for their own — members or candidates having their support. And everyone on the Gold Coast knew that if there had been similar elections in Sekondi, Ku- masi, and other towns in the col- ony, the results would have been similar. : The general election this week was based on the new constitu- tion, framed mainly on the lines of the recommendations of the All-African Coussey Committee, whose report was presented to the British Colonial Office in 1949. It is claimed for the constitu- tion that it represents perhaps the greatest experiment in con- stitutional reform in the British colonies. c But it is clear that the purpose behind the experiment was not to confer any real responsibility on the people of the Gola Coast. The very composition of the Cous- sey Committee, all African though it was, ensured that. ; No trade union representatives or anyone else who could be said to represent the interests of the working class were included. The PACIFIC TRIBUNE — interests of the farming commun- _ity, which forms by far the great- er part of the population, were thought to be adequately covered by the presence of a few wealthy chiefs carefully hand-picked. The committee recommended universal adult suffrage—but by indirect election. Only in the case of the four big municipalities of Accra, the cap- ital) Cape Coast, Sekondi-Takor- adi (chief port) and Kumasi, were the people to elect reprée- sentatives directly to the legisla- tive assembly, In all other areas, where the inhabitants form the vast major- ity of the Gold Coast people, the election was in two stages. The voters first elected delegates to an electoral college of the con stituency. Then these delegates elected one of their number +? represent the constituency in the central legislature. People living outside the four big towns were not allowed to exercise the same electoral rights as those who were residing i? — them. The Coussey Committee defend- ed this discrimination with the astounding statement that it would minimize “the dangers 3%” herent in the wide and ‘rapid e* tension of the franchise before the development of that full pol tical sense which is the true bal- Wark against the charlatan 8? the demagogue.” . Despite all this, the persecutio® and arrests, which forced Kwame Nkrumah to lesd his party from jail, the restrictions on the fran" chise, the Convention People party swept the polls. It is eo /, measure of the strength of the new people’s movement in Afric FEBRUARY 16,/1951 — PAGE *