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BCElectric plans holdup

ESS than 24-hours after the BCElectric transit strike

was settled the commuting public of Vancouver, New
Westminster and Victoria were faced with the prospects
of a 33-percent hoist in fares. The CNPA-dominated City
Council of Vancouver—in which sits Alderman R. K. Gervin
and Jack Price (we underscore the ‘sits’), have obligingly
decided “not to oppose” the BCElectric demand when it goes
before the Public Untilities Commission for ratification.

The wage increase granted the Street Railwaymen
(minus the 40-hour week) will amount to approximately
one million dollars per annum. The five-point fare increase
demands of the BCElectric, which a lot of people have a
well-founded suspicion was okayed by the City Council even
before the strike ended, will net the company a cool three-
and-a-quarter million dollars annually. It is not difficult
to see who “won” the strike!

And that is not all. BCElectric’s effervescent president
Grauer declares “we have got to have this three-for-a-
quarter increase, although it is not the full amount we are
entitled to,” and emphasizes this superb piece of gall with
the threat of scrapping some of the BCElectric “development
program” implicit in his new 20-year franchise monopoly—
if the people do not ‘come across’ !

What to do?_ A big anti-franchise protest was lodged
by wide sections of the people through their various organ-
izations. The civic authorities in the three key cities
affected and the Public Utilities Commission turned a deaf
ear. They gave the BCElectric monopoly what it wanted.

A bigger protest movement must be generated against
this fare hoist steal. A protest movement which will cul-
minate in the sweeping out of the BCElectric’s stooges from
‘Civic office, and replacing them with people who will listen
to the people—and serve the people, by cracking down hard
upon the monopolistic buccaneers whose predatory greed

_ knows no limits. That is the only answer to the BCElectric’s
latest holdup.

Hunger rides again

66 A USTERITY” is upon us. It was officially launched

on Tuesday by Finance Minister Douglas Abbott in
Ottawa and Prime Minister King in London. It cancels out
all the glowing promises of a “prosperous” Canada, dis-

regards the widespread pleas of the people for the restora- ©

tion of price controls and food subsidies, clears the deck for
real big-time black market inflation, and sets the stage for
a return to the economy of hunger for the masses.

All the benefits such as they were which would have

accrued to the Canadian consumer under the Geneva tariff:

agreements and which were only announced Monday, were
wiped out Tuesday by governmental restrictions on imports
and the imposition of special excise taxes.

In a land rich in all resources and capable of producing
sufficient food, clothing and shelter for a population one
hundred times the present size, and the half of Europe
to boot, the Canadian people are called upon to adopt the
economy of “austerity”—which is the polite word for hunger!
We must “tighten our belts” and produce for export to
maintain our reserves of U.S. dollars, conscious at the
Same time that our actual and potential customers abroad
cannot buy all they need because they too are caught in
the vicious web of a Wall Street Midas.

Abbott’s “austerity”. program will indubitably assist the
rich to become richer, while speeding the poverty and hun-
ger of the poor. Those who buy Cadillac cars and diamond
tiaras will still manage it, since it is they who will operate
the rising black market which “austerity” stimulates. Those
who must perforce buy all the things that go into the
making of a workingman’s home are already being clipped
by inflationary prices. Abbott’s “austerity” will accentuate
the process, :

Canadians are promised in the new restrictions that
it will be a “short-term austerity,” to be followed by a
“long-term planned prosperity.” It is time for the people
to have done with promises. To build a prosperous Canada
the people would readily undergo a term of economic hard-
ship. To accept hunger as a means of amassing greater
wealth for a few vested interests . . . Canadians finished
with that in the Hungry Thirties.

The “austerity” program of King and Abbott should be
a signal for a national crusade against price increases—for
price controls and the restoration of subsidies on the people’s
food. For trade relations with Britain; the new democracies
of Europe and the Soviet Union—relations designed to by-
pass the Wall Street pawnbrokers,

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1947

tering of truths.

PATTI viene ratnineg et yiinaitinaiey

MNT OTT A

As we see it

TWIN na a aU By Tom McEwen

ACLEAN’S Magazine,’

which among other
things might be termed the
literary boudoir of the ‘Finan-
cial Post,’ carries a masthead in-
troduction of charming naivette.
“Characters and names in fiction
stories appearing in Maclean’s
are imaginary, and have no refer-
ence to living persons.”

In recent issues Maclean's
Magazine seems to have got its
editorial metaphors a bit mixed.
A three-part serial in the October
and November issues entitled
“They Taught me Treason” by
one John Hladun is definitely
low-grade fiction, but the people
who are the target of this anti-
communist thriller are very-
much-alive Canadians.

From beginning to end the
story is a tissue of brazen false-
hoods, constructed upon a smat-
Its alleged
author John Hladun, a renegade
from the labor movement, didn’t
write the story. It was written
for him by one of Maclean’s top
Shadow-writers, one skilled in
the Drew Pearson art. of fabri-
cating a montrous cannard out
of a few meagre truths.

In the year 1931 John Hladun,
a member of the Alberta section
of the Communist Party attend-
ed a term of Marxist-Leninist
studies in the Lenin University in
Moscow. That much of the story
in Maclean’s is true. So also
is the fact that he was accom-
panied by other young Canadians
interested in a study of the prin-
ciples of scientific socialism. -

It is also true, as in the study
of all sciences, including socia}-
ism, that the student body, re-
gardless of its national compo-
sition or locale, often find them-
selves in sharp debate on the
apparent contradictions within a
given science. Even our own
UBC students encounter such
debates at times and it is good
that they do, because it is out
of apparent contradictions that
new ideas are born. We venture
to say the Lenin University
(when it existed) was no excep-
tion to this rule. But Hladun’s
shadow-writer found it possible
to blow these theoritical debates
into a sizeable slander against the
Soviet Union and the Canadian

communists. To discuss in Mos-

cow or here in Vancouver,

whether Canada is, or was, more

tightly tied to fhe tail of British

imperialism than to its American

counterpart is “treason”? On

that assumption all the other

‘events’ detailed by Hladun to

Maclean’s shadow-writer serve

to make up this literary dish

“They Taught me Treason.”
Hladun’s ‘stories’ of the GPU

(Soviet Security Police), of Rus-

Sian ‘slave camps,’ or Read Army

‘instructions’ on how to ‘shoot

capitalists,’ or of Canadian com-

munists ‘boring into the army’

are of the same cloth as the

Gouzenko - Sulli- Sy See

van texture —

shoddy and

threadbare of

the truth. But

as his old clothes

and sundry

other personnel

effects netted

him a good

price on _ the

black market,

at atime Tom McEwen

when the Russian people were

sacrificing much to assure vic-

tory for Socialism, so now his

falsehoods net him a good market

price per line of lies in Maclean’s

Magazine.

Yes, on his own say-so Hladun
admits playing the black market
and having sold all his posses-
sions at exhorbitant prices as
soon as he landed in Moscow.
That admission puts him—and
all his shadow-writer has to say
for him, in the category of a
person without honor, decency
or principle.

Against that background the
whole of the anti-Soviet cannard
entitled “They Taught.me Treas-
on” should be read. Yes, we
advise all communists and pro-
gressive workers to read this
latest Financial Post-sponsored
‘scoop’ because it teaches two
basic lessons we are apt to for-
get; the need of vigilance against
human rodents who sell them-
selves like a common prostitute
for a few miserable dollars, and
secondly, to view the depths to
which the bourgeoisie will dig
among the social garbage of our
day to unearth new callumnies
against the Soviet Union—ana@
the Canadian working class,

We live in stirring times, when

Schuschnigg - nazi criminal

ay Noe had an unwelcome guest this week, ‘Dr’ Kurt
von Schuschnigg, former Chancellor of Austria, the man who

turned his country and his
1938. He is the type of

to democratic institutions,
Kurt vor Schuschnigg was

on the side of Kaiser Wilhelm.

in world war II on the side of

people over to Hitler on February 12,
guest. that
without. He has nothing to" tell us
recorded in blood and suffering. His

can well manage
which history has not already
whole life epitomizes a hatred

custom, and human relations.
arrayed against Canada in 1914-18

He was arrayed against Canada
Hitler.

movement and organizations of ‘socialist’

ruthlessness equal to that of Hitler.

from the ranks of fascists who m

Even in prison under Hitler,
acter—a literary apologist for

We don’t need Kurt von Schu:
those sponsors who brought him

pillory of public condemnation.

Schuschnigg is a nazi; his hands
Austrian workers. The stains cannot
penitent grovelling. Those who willingly
rendering an ill service to Canadians

cum who are now
Canadians to ‘forgive and

schnigg here on any pretext and

here should be placed in the
are red with the blood of
be effaced by the sham of
provide him a hearing are
and insulting the memory

of those who sleep in foreign fields.

The Alma Mater Society of UBC isto be congratulated for
withdrawing their sponsorship when they became aware of what
an oderiferous ‘guest’ had been wished ‘onto them. In this way
they gave Canada wholesome leadership.

. sational

‘X’ as “pure lies.”

the best and the worst in human-
ity comes to the top. “Rough-
hewn” Canadians like Harvey
Murphy dont ‘shoot capitalists.’
He sits across the table with
these ‘captains of industry’ and
drives hard bargains for a little
more of the nation’s wealth—to
the wealth producers, the work-
ers,

The Hladuns also sit across
a table with the hired scribblers
of capitalism, and like their
patron saint Judas, sell their
falsehoods for thirty pieces of
silver—to slander, misrepresent
and confound the workers.

“They Taught me Treason” is
well calculated to deceive the
unsophisticated reader. It is
cleverly written, but with all
its cleverness it remains a crude
anti-Soviet forgery. It merits a
place with Igor Gouzenko’s ‘sen-
expose’ in the New
World magazine issue of May
1947, and which he was later
compelled to retract by the King
government. Not that the latter
loves the Soviet Union—but simp-
ly because Gouzenko’s ‘facts’ were
S80 obvious falsehoods that even
Ottawa had to utter an unwilling
protest.

Esselwein alias Leopold, Gouz-
enko, Sullivan, Hladun—they pass
in sorry review. Wonder who
comes next with his little tale
to smear the pages of history?

Hie you noticed the spate of
‘Mr. X’s’ who are coming to
the fore in the daily press with
‘inside’ dope on the USSR, Tito’s
Yugoslavia and other areas of
the new Europe that is arising?

A ‘Mr. X’ has just returned
from Yugoslavia with some hair-
raising tales anent the Tito re-
gime. Appears like the “iron-
hand-of-Russia,” “iron curtains”
and all that sort of thing has.
upset this ‘Mr. X’ badly. ‘Mr. X’
is, or was, a hotel operator in
Vancouver, but for “security” (7?)
reasons, doesn’t want his identity
known. Nevertheless, according
to the WNews-Herald story of
November 14, this ‘Mr. X’ and
Mrs. X are the guests of Mr.
and Mrs. Denny Kristionsen of
1220 Barclay Street. It is in-
teresting to note that Mr. Krist-
ionsen has aspired to civic office
as a CCF candidate in past years.
Now, with an ‘iron curtain’
around the house the running
may become a bit more difficult
for Mr. Kristionsen.

Homer Stevens ,chairman of
the Canadian youth delegation to
the World Youth Festival and
captain of the famous Canadian
‘Beaver Brigade” which did yeo-
man work on the Yugoslav youth
railway, branded the ‘iron cur-
tain’ delirium tremens of ‘Mr.
Stevens topped
that off by pointing out that
while the Canadians were work-
ing on the Yugoslav railway an
American magazine featured
them as being “trained to fight
in Greece.” Such is the veracity
of the kept press and its Mr.
X’es. ;

Nick Kopatic, another local
Canadian-Yugoslavy who is not
weighted down with an iron-
curtain complex described ‘Mr.
X' as “a dollar patriot—lacking
the honesty to be truthful to his
native land.”

The woods are literally full of
Mr. X’es these days. It is 2
sign of the times. We had scads
of them in the early days of the

Russian revolution. We'll have
more of them as_ capitalism
writhes in its dying agony. They
are the boys who supply the
‘news’ hawks. with what their —
patrons want to read.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 4