Uitte Loa eR |

‘March for peace on May Day

HIS May Day, 1951 will see labor’s vanguard battalions
the world over, marching: for, peace; marching with
growing determination that the hands of the war instigators
must and will be shackled, that never again will they be
allowed to loose devastating war upon the peoples of the
world. ; :

It is a long march, a long review, since the first May
Day of 1886 when American labor raised the banner of the’
8-hour day as a tribute to its first Haymarket martyrs.
During those 65 years, on each May Day labor has taken
stock of its struggles, its victories and its defeats — and
strengthened itself ideologically and organically for the
greater struggles ahead. \

The imperialist war incendiaries and their social demo-
cratic lackies seek to distort and misrepresent the origin
and purpose of May Day. By foul red-baiting and specious
promises of a “free way of life” they seek to mislead labor
and the people, to take them disorganized and divided into
the camp of reaction and war to serve as cannon fodder
for waging imperialist war upon the socialist sector of
the world, and upon the colonial peoples struggling for
democratic independence and socialism.

In every: country, May Day is hailed as a day of inter-
national people’s solidarity and_unity. Invisible hands atross
+ seas and continents are joined in eommon cause for democ-
racy, peace and socialism. In Canada, May Day of 1951
has a special significance because our country, a great
potential bastion for peace and goodwill, has been trans-
formed by the St. Laurent government into a backyard
war base for Yankee imperialism, into a war satellite of
Wall Street atomaniacs. *Every Canadian worker, farnter,
small business man, already feels the evil blight of this
Yankee-inspired, war insanity in a hundred different ways.
* May Day, 1951 must signalize a great and sweeping
upsurge of the Canadian people, demonstrated in parades
and meetings, of a new united resolve to preserve peace
and isolate the warmongers. March with labor on this
May Day along the broad highway towards peace. « Join
the mighty throng of progressive humanity in the struggle
to end war and hunger and: poverty.

: _ Peace will triumph over war! Fight for peace, as for
~ite?}

— ‘The meanest thief’
OCIETY is quick to pin the label of “the meanest thief”
on anyone who steals penmies from a blind man’s cup
or robs a child’s penny bank,

Last weekend the Johnson-Anscomb Coalition qualified
for this dubious distinction, even among governments out-
Sapa only for, callous policies: toward the working peo-
ple.

The announcement that old age pensioners were to be
deprived of their pension cheques on entering: hospital, to
cover the cost of hospitalization, evoked a new wave of
public indignation against administration of the ,B.C. Hos-
pital Insurance scheme. The-.gratituous insult accompanying
this order, that old age pensioners would be permitted to
retain $5 a nronth out of their pension cheques for “pin”
meney added fuel to public indignation.

Aside from being a flagrant breach of faith on the

‘insurance premiums of old age pensioners (mainly because
their pension, as it now stands, is totally inadequate to
provide the simple necessities of life for our senior citizens),
_ the BCHIS “order” authorizing such appropriation was
verude, idotic, and highly ‘illegal. It did however, better
_ than any other single action ef the Coalition, demonstrate
the cynical attitude of that unholy partisan alliance against
the interests of the people, young or old.
-- Even the Vancouver News-Herald was spurned to com-
ment editorially that: “It,would be hard to beat this as
-an idotic and cruel, as well as faith-breaking order”. It
_-eould have added, “especially when a quarter of ‘a million
people under the leadership of organized labor
pressed their. disapproval in petition against BCHIS. incom-
, petence and maladministration. demanding the Coalition
‘either withdraw its hospital insurance tax gouge,
Sign!”

tered BCHIS is becoming more and more a struggle to

backs of the B.C. people like an alp.

N

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*

part of BCHIS in its initial agreement to pay the hospital

ex- |

or re-
Obviously the fight for a just and efficiently adminis-

get rid of this Coalition political incubus which sits on the —

NAH UR TA UU A

As We See It

by TOM McEWEN

NOH AA AHURA

*

a

“

“NON’T go to work tonight Tom, I think our

baby will come before moming.”’ I didn’t
go to work arid our baby did come. Brigat and
early she came on a beautiful June morning just
as the sun was breaking over the rim of the Kil-
donan plains. A bonnie raven-haired lass she was,
this wee bundle of humanity destined, in_ the
course of her short stay with us, to blossom into
one of the noblest and best beloved of Canada’s
pioneer Communist women.

In the simple custom of Scottish working class
folk, we named her Isobel after her mother, a

spinning lass from
the Gourdon tex-

. tile mills, and af-
ter her grandmo-
ther, whose peo-
ple for. genera-
tions had follow-
ed the sea for a
livelihood, receiv-
ing little indeed
for their hazard-
ous labors, and

often giving very

much.
When Isobel
began to creep

around and dis-
cover the wonders
of her little world,
lowing her cheeks
out in a “‘tuch-
tuch” mimicry of
a train, this first
endearing word became her name, “Touche.” And
so Touche it was until the May morning in 1950,
when, her tasks ended and the bnght pattern of
her life completed, she left us. .

George Dimitrov, one of the world’s daunt-
less Communist leaders and first premier of a
free Bulgaria, listed four main qualities that go
into the making of a good Communist: loyalty,
devotion, and conviction for a cause, plus earnest,
study and practice of the science of Marxism-
Leninism as the guarantee of its triumph. Added
to this must be a deep humanity that feels, and
seeks to share, the burdens and worries of others,
to share all one has with the victims!/of adversity.

ISOBEL EWEN ARYGROS

To assume responsibilities when it would be easier
to ignore them. es)

From her earliest days in the Young Com-
munist League, the Communist Party; and later

~ was richly endowed with these sterling charactenis-
tics. Many she had learned early in life, and
learned the hard way. These she enriched by

~ ature of men*and women who stand out in history
_ as the trail-blazers of human progress. Her little
library, one of my few cherished possessions, speaks
‘eloquently of the road sne traversed in good heart
and faith. | ee
@ Hl

The first great crisis in Touche’s life at the

mother. Too young to understand the myste:
of death, she knew only that her mother bad eae
and that the, responsibility of becoming “mother”
to a family of two brothers, a sister and a father
on - accepted ey by herself. Thus
she who was never to know the happiness of
motherhood, assumed the role of “mother” and.
‘became the human magnet that held a family unit
together in love, comradeship and understanding.
_ With Touche everything was related to the
great party of Marxism-Leninism.

sometimes bringing a frown, sometimes =
dation, depending upon the teacher, dhe-aiabe anik
the topic. Between her responsibilities as “‘mother,”

>

In memoriam

ment, its blood, bone and sinew. Touche
' To give a kind word, when it is hardest to do so. ©

the Labor-Progressive party, Isobel Ewen Arygros —

reading and studying the scientific and artistic liter-

age of seven years was the untimely death of her

early school days and later in Harbord cae
she often strayed far from the current text ‘books, ~

her studies in school, and the party she loved,
Touche crammed in a full day's work. “‘House-
work never finishes you know—you just stop,”
and, “‘Dad, I met some good people tonight when
I was ‘out with literature. And they're so poor
it’s a shame. © I'll just ‘have to do something.”

Even after she had left us there was one of
her countless boxes, packed with little things for
children she had gathered up, addressed to ‘her
cherished friends in Dawson City, far up in the
Yukon Territory.
©

In later years, grown to womanhood, Touche
marched the picket lines, distributed literature,
argued, as Nicolo Sacco said, “with intolerant
workers” and rang doorbells. In Touche’s phil-
osophy behitid every doorbell was a recruit for
the great army of human progress, and if she
found hostile. elements, which she sometimes did,
her great Communist heart catalogued them as
misguided friends rather than inveterate enemies
to the cause she espoused. Her sympathy, love
and understanding of humanity shed its warm
rays in her home and in her world.

“The party must think I’m a_stick-in-the-
mud, Dad. I never get ‘to go no place.’”’ It was
one of those numerous “goodbyes” in the lives of
a Communist family. Her two brothers were with
the Mac-Paps in Spain serving in the International
Brigade, stemming the first flood-tide of Hitler
fascism before it engulfed the world. Her only
sister was with the Canadian Medical Mission in
China serving with the late Dr. Norman Bethune
in the 8th and 4th Route Armies of the now vic-
torious People’s China. I was on my way to
Europe. Our “stick-in-the-mud” brushed the tears
from her eyes. » “I'll keep you all together from
here, just as I’ve always done.” For two weary
Mac-Paps fighting the treason of “non-interven-
tion” and the bullets of Franco; for a lonely
Canadian nurse out in the Yennan hills ministering
to wounded «Chinese soldiers with woefully in-
adequate supplies, and for a Communist_father,
honored to work for his party abroad, Touche
became Canada and “home” to us in a bigger way
than we had ever known. j 3

~ Upton Sinclair coined a name for then of this
calibre—the “‘Jimmy Higgins” of the labor pare
longed to that great battalion of brave Commut- —
ist women workers, worthy of no ‘less an honors,
those workeres who never “hit the headlines” but
are the real makers of history, fighting on after
every defeat, after every setback, after every heart- —
break, strong in their conviction of the cause they

serve, confident of its ultimate victory.

Touche left us just one year ago, in the early

hours of May 2. Her last day was spent wil?
her fellow workers of Toronto, celebrating with
the workers of the whole world the glorious

traditions and struggles of May Day. Her last”

conscious hours were spent in preparation 0 the
first great Canadian Peace Congress—to mobilize
Canada’s people, together with the peoples of
whole world, to stay the bloody hand of the war |
makers. As a master builder of the great. ane”

sacred edifice. of peace, Isobel Ewen Arygros
helped to build a granite foundation, which others
‘in her spirit will complete as a monument to human

~ dignity and happiness — against. which all

“storms of hate, intolerance, and war conspiracies |
will dash in vain. tg hat

As a fine and brave Communist woman, she
won ‘the love and respect of all who knew
She wore no Communist laurels that she
hadn’t eamed. We who knew Touche as “mothe! + |
sister and daughter, learned more than we. taught) |
received much more than we gave. Her inexhaust-_
able store of love and devotion to the cause of the
common, people, gave us a priceless gift.

9

The rose is faded, but its fragrance lives;
Its beauty, unmarred by the frosts of death,
Spurs us on to complete the purpose of its bloom:

La

a “PACIFIC TRIBUNE — APRIL 27, 1951 — Page ®