No apology needed

AST weekend the Vancofver*Sun announced that Carl Berg,
““Hatchetman”’. for the Trades and Labor Congress. of Canada

was coming to Vancouver to “talk to civic workers.”’

Tt is not often the Sun manages to describe a spade as a spade,
but on this occasion it scored a perfect bulls-eye in the choice of de-
scriptive language. “Doctor” Berg (he dubbéd himself a “‘doctor”’
during his last union-busting visit). is a professional hatchetman, who
has won his way to the swivel-chairs of the trade union bureaucrasy,
not by building and consolidating unions, but by splitting and wrecking
unions built by the hard and consistent work of others.

It was to be expected that Messrs. Gervin and Showler of the
provincial executive of the TLC would demand an ‘“‘apology” from
the Sun for its apt selection of descriptive adjectives. This the Sun
tendered in a later issue, explaining that “‘no slur” was intended; just
a slip of the pen as it described “a figure of specch.”” All of which
shows that in these cold-war days it is hard to be an honest news-
paperman, even when he happens to stumble upon an_indubitably
correct “figure of speech.” :

Hatchetman Berg failed miserably in his last attempt to wreck
the organization of Vancouver’s civic employees on the phoney issue
of “‘communism.” He set up a splinter group and called it ‘‘Local
407.” “In contrast to the Vancouver Civic Employees’ Union, Out-
side Workers (formerly Local 28), whose members stood by their
union and its democratic principles, the Carlberger local remains a
splinter group.

Berg’s first ““big’” meeting on this visit, well advertized in: the
daily press, and at which he hoped to “‘talk to” hundreds of civic
workers, brought out a total of less than eighty. It turned out to be “‘a
moaning and groaning session,” devoted to a Bergerized harangue on
the “dangers” * of Communism—but nothing on the shrinking dollar
in the workers’ pay envelopes, or the soaring costs of living. Union-
busting hatchetmen do not concern themselves with such mundane
matters. Their vocation is:to rule or ruin every militant union coming
within their orbit.

Honest trade unionists require no ‘‘apology” from the daily press
‘on those rare occasions it inadvertently blurts out the truth, as the Sun
did on Hatchetman Carl Berg’s visit. But they do need an ever-
greater measure of trade union unity, solidarity and vigilance against
those TLC and CCL union wreckers and splitters, in order to preserve
their unions: and render the visits of the hatchetmen less numerous and
of much shorter duration.

Storm in a teacup

Ww don’t know Ralph Wolloschuk, either personally or by reputation,

but it would seem that a few hours in jail. has gotten Mr.
Wolloschuk a handsome volume of free advertising in the columns
of our “‘free’’ press.

It appears that Mr. Wolloschuk got a police ticket back in June
for using those dinky little auto-turning signals so popular on English
cars (which most users forget to turn off after they have made the
tum!). In the “interim’’ period, as the PUC would say, these signal
devices have become legal. Being a man of seeming principal, Mr.
Wooloschuk chose a brief stay in,durance vile, rather than pay a
$5.00 fine and $60,00 court costs.

__ Tt was then that Mr. Wolloschuk and -our “free” press really
joined issue in the production of “hot” news. The city jail is ‘ ‘dirty,””
the linen ditto, the “‘slops” served in lieu of food is terrible, and the
drunks sing all night. The press played it up fortissimo and Mr.
Wooloschuk became a “champion of the little people” overnight.
There is some discrepency in the columns of our versatile dailies on
how long Mr. Wolloschuk was “‘in.” ~The Sun gives him 24 hours
and 15 minutes, while the Province times the ordeal at 22 hours and
40 minutes.

Such a “to-do”! The event bids fair to rock the nation! It
has disturbed city council. That august. body of NPA politicians,
scenting votes in the controversy, is going to “‘probe”” the charge that
_“slops”” are fed to weekend guests in the Vancouver hoosegow. Their
“probe” will likely come up with the discovery that the said *slops”’
are simply camouflaged pate de foi gras which no Wolloschuks should
turn up their noses at. : :

Meantime Mr. Wolloschuk is getting a million-dollar advertising
build-up; our Non-Partisan solons an opportunity to air their respec-
tive views on hoosegow cuisine, linen and orchestration, while the sob
sisters of our “free” press get a subject on which they can really do
a bang-up job about nothing!

Mr. Wolloschuk, as befits a citizen of mature years, should have
learned by this time; that although “‘strong walls do not a prison make,
nor iron bars a cage,” they make a very good imitation of something
not exactly patterned after the bridal suite of the Hotel Vancouver.

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By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
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Tom McEwen
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’

As We See It

by TOM McEWEN

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'WELVE years ago, on the evehing of November
10, my Wife and I left Moscow. We had lived in

the USSR close on two years, and as foreigners we
hadn’t been murdered in bed or otherwise ‘liquid-
ated” by the “dreaded” secret police, despite, all
propaganda. tales to the contrary. We had seen a
good deal of the late Doktor Goebbels’ badly rusted
‘Tron Curtain,” but in countries outside the Soviet
Union. As a final parting shot the authorities of
Pilsudski’s Poland warned the wife that if she per-
sisted in going to “that country,” dire consequences
would result!

So here we were. For three days, together with

_about three million other Moscovites, we had enjoy-

ed the celebrations marking the twenty-second an-
niversary of the great October revolution. Three
days of parades, banquets, balls and opera, express-
ing the unfeigned joy of a people who held their
destiny in their own hands, and who could already
look back upon 22 years of unparalleled achieve-
ment. :

On our way to the railway station our taxi had
to go through the Pushkin Square, an area in the
heart of Moscow covering about four large city
blocks.
by powerful searchlights, massed Red Army bands
played Johann Strauss’ Tales of the Vienna Woods.
It is only a rough guess, but probably one hundred
thousand couples or more danced in the square to
the lilting music. As our car nosed its way through
the dancing throng and on past the Pushkin monu-
ment at the end of the square, I looked up at the
carved face of Russia’s beloved poet. Somehow,

that night it seemed. the lines of suffering on his
strongly-etched face had softened into a smile of
fulfilled joy.

That is easily understandable. In every large
square in Moscow, and in every other city, town
and village in the broad Soviet Union, millions of
people danced and sang to the music of the great
masters, as a fitting climax to three days of merited
celebrations. Most unorthodox behaviour indeed
for a people alleged to be trapped behind: a Nazi-
invented “Iron Curtain’—now the sole and exclusive
property of Harry Truman and Winston Churchill,
salvaged from the Nazi rubble of the Third Reich!

All that was 12 years ago. The Soviet Union
was then 22 years “old.” This weekythe Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics will celebrate its 34th
anniversary. Thirty-four. years of Socialist achieve-
ment. Thirty-four years without grasping capital-
ists, landlords, profiteers, without millionaires or
poverty-stricken communities; without warmongers,
labor fakers or social democrats!

“It just cannot be,’ scream the pages of a venal
monopoly press, as they move hourly into action
with billions of lying words to help Harry and
Winnie drape their refurbished “iron curtain,” in
order to hide the basic truths of 34 years of heroic
sacrifice and magnificent achievement of the first
Socialist state. Especially would ‘they like to oblit-
erate the events of the past 12 years. Having created
a Nazi Frankenstein monster to plunder the Soviet
Union and return its people’s and, territory to the
rule of capitalists and landlords, the Trumans,
Churchills and their kind hate to be reminded that
they were compelled to rely upon the Soviet peoples
and their Red Army as the only power that could
destroy the “invincibility” of marauding fascist-
imnerialism.

Unfortunately for them, the voice of History is
much stronger than the voice of a new American-

At each end of this historic square, lit up.

ized Goebbels, and a thousand Stalingrads cannot
‘be obliterated by the provocative falsehoods of cold-
war propaganda, no matter how attractively it is
illustrated in the yellow pages of sewer journalism,
or in the double-talk oratory that flows in an end-
less stream from Washington, London and Ottawa.

After the victory in the peoples’ war against Hitler
fascism, the things that medn peace are themselves
outstanding socialist achievements in the Soviet
Union. The healing of war wounds, the reconstruc-
tion of peace-time economy, the rebuilding of devas-
tated industries, cities, towns, villages. Making
science still more the servant of the people, and
using atomic energy for the advancement and well-
being of the people, rather than for the destruction
of mankind.

Consumers’ goods before guns, and cultural ad-
vancement in place of the-cash-and-carry gangster-
ism of dollar imperialism. On its 34th anniversary
the Soviet people are preparing to move forward
to Communism, the most historic and advanced step
in the annals of human history. Thus the socialism
that began as a great revolutionary experiment in
November of 1917, becomes a world inspiration in
1951. Like a mighty magnet it changes the thinking
of countless millions of exploited peoples beyond ©
the borders of the Soviet Union, bringing with it
the guarantee of peace, and the inspiration and hope

of all mankind in a higher destiny than the manure
pile of imperialist exploitation, hunger and war.

At considerable expense and effort to break
through the iron curtains draped around their own —
.countries to keep out the truth, workers’ delegations
from the so-called western world are visiting the
Soviet Union in ever-increasing numbers, to see and
learn for themselves, first hand, just what is going
on in the land of the Soviets.

Upon their return, even facing the necessity of
getting back through this malodorous curtain of
thought control, they are enthusiastic on what they
have seen or learned. The commercial press is
silent—or snidely tricky. How in hell can you get
Canadians to believe with Harry Truman that Russia
is all set to invade North America if Canadian,
British, French or other workers come back and
insist that these anti-Soviet propaganda yarns are
all poppycock? That the first and foremost aim of
the people of the Soviet Union, from its government
at all levels°down to the humblest Soviet citizen, is
for peace, that they are ‘building for peace!

It upsets the whole cold-war propaganda apple-
cart to have to admit that the thinking of the Soviet
people, their work, their achievements, their rebuilt
cities and industries, their use of science and their
love of culture, their mass graveyards and their
legions of Hitlerite-maimed and crippled heroes,
are dedicated to peace with all peoples and nations.

I don’t believe in miracles, but as I relive the
scene of 12 years ago, on this 34th anniversary of
the great Soviet Union I can see the poet Pushkin
step down from his marble pedestal in Pushkin
Square and kiss the tens of thousands who will be
dancing there with sheer joy at their full realization
‘of his dreams.

Thirty-four years of the ciaki cage accomplish-
ments of mankind, compressed into the most dram-
atic page in all history, before which the Philistines
of an outworn and decadent order threaten, how!
and cringe, in their mad attempts to turn back
the clock. N

Salute to the Soviet pioneers of a New World
as they march past their 34th milestone with PEACE
and COMMUNISM emblazoned upon their banners.

‘Thanks’ - but workers think differently 4

A REUTERS news dispatch informs us that the
British “Frades Union Congress (TUC) leaders
have “‘thanked’’ Clement Attlee and his late “‘so-
cialist” government for their achievements during
the past six years of its rule, “‘the like of which has
never been seen in parliamentary history.”” -

That effusion of “thanks” could be a gross
understatement, depending upon the point of view.
If carrying out Tory policies under a “‘socialist’”’
lable is to be considered an achievement, then British
social democracy is certainly deserving of thanks
from some quarters, but certainly not from the TUC.'

The big boys of Transport House, also presum-
ing to speak for eight million British workers, pledge
themselyes to ‘‘work amicably” with the new Church-
ill government! — !

This might prove a bit more difficult, despite the

fi

old-school-tie chivalry of TUC top brass. Getting

‘millions of British workers to repeatedly tighten their

belts and subsist on an austerity diet under the direc-
tion of a government bearing their own name, is one
thing. But getting workers to accept the same belt-
tightening processes in order to buy guns instead ©
butter, under the open direction of a Tory govern-
ment, is something else, even though ‘T'ransport
House pledges to “‘work amicably” on the matter!

Already the few post-election Churchillian

burps have made it clear to millions of British work-

ers, that it is they and not Altlee who lost the election,
and their “‘thanks’’ are being expressed in slightly
different tones to that of Transport House. ‘Their

“amiability”’ will be conditioned by three main issues

—lowering prices, fuller pay envelopes, and genuine
peace.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 9, 1951 — PAGE 8 _