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.

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Africa’s peoples
on } march )

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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 *