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Call a special session now

NE WEEK before Labor Day, 1947, an American
O labor paper wrote: “Today marks the end of an era
for the American labor movement. The era of the
Wagner Act is over — the era of the Taft-Hartley Bill
begins.”

On this Labor Day the trade union movement of Brit-
ish Columbia is well into a new era of industrial relations—
the era of Bill 39. Trade union officials and members, com-
pelled to withhold their labor power to secure just wage
increases and improved working conditions, or even to fight
discrimination against union members, are met with legal
persecution and intimidation by the courts, armed with the
extra-legal provisions of Bill 39.

When this infamous Bill was being debated in the legi-
slature, members of the Hart-Anscomb Coalition govern-
ment ridiculed and pooh-poohed the fears of fines and civil
suits against the unions or union members expressed by
union leaders. In the Nanaimo laundry strike, and now in
the strike of Vanccuver steel workers, it has been made very
clear that the Coalition spoke tongue in cheek on this as
on all other ‘assurances’ connected with Bill 39.

Groggy with the defeat it sustained in the Nanaimo
Laundry strike, the Coalition is now spending the tax-
payers’ money flooding the province with a ‘Citizen’s Letter
on Bill 39’, an eight-page distortion of the purpose and con-
tent of Bill 39. In this manner it hopes to justify its prose-
cution and intimidation of the trade union movement of
British Columbia. While it fills the postal bags daily with
this contemptible apolgia for sound labor relations, it serves
court writs upon steel workers and their union, for whom
no other action was possible. . . with steel operators refus-
ing to bargain in good faith and stalling behind the designed
obstructionist technicalities of Bill 39.
ized labor in British Columbia, both AFL and

_CIO-CCL unions have demanded a special session of the
legislature to amend Bill 39. Opposition to its intolerable
provisions is daily in evidence. Unions assert their right
to conduct their own strike votes to back up their wage
demands. It is not a question of being or not being law-
abiding. It is just that Canadian labor will not submit to
anything that smacks of fascism—even in an incipient form.
Organized labor demands a special session of the legislature
to wipe the shame of Bill 39 off the statute books, to enact
a Labor Code which will give labor the recognition it has
won—and the responsibility it can honestly and democatic-
ally discharge. :

Added to labor’s voice for a special session of the legis-
lature, is the voice of rural B.C.—farmers, taxpayers’ organ-~
izations, and other groups, who have been and are being
fleeced by the government’s imposition of an unjust and
inequitable school tax. The Coalition’s taxation policies, as
with its Bill 39, are loaded in favor of big business, and
designed to place the burden of taxation and the mainten-
ance of monopoly profit levels upon the backs of the primary
prodicers and industrial workers.
in effect in many rural municipalities, and the demand of the

and rural residents has been clear-cut—a special
session of the House to remedy the school tax fiasco.

This Labor Day should mark a new determination for
iter unity between the AFL and CIO-CCL unions in

common cause to amend Bill 39. Together the unions
should seek a closer unity with the rural and farm popula-
tions, offering fraternal aid and assistance in securing re-
dress in school taxation. Premier Hart’s promises that
“some amendments to Bill 39 may be necessary” and “some
relief in taxation may be undertaken” will only be realized
when the labor and farmer movements of B.C., together
with other progressive-minded people, unite and intensify
_ their demands for an early session to correct the legislative
damage done to workers and farmers by powerful monopoly

©

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Tax strikes have been .

British

the ‘CCF News’ there is

an editorial entitled “The
Tragedy of Palestine.” It is
one of those editorials which
makes a socialist worker blush
with shame, regardless of CCF,
LPP or other affiliation. In a
restrained and generous tone
the Jewish Western Bulletin de-
scribed the editorial as “. not
sans taste, sans sense and sans
policy . . . not to be expected
from a ‘socialist’ paper.”

Commenting on the anti-Jew-
ish rioting in England recently,
the editorial referred to hits a
new low, which can only be
equalled by the poisonous racist
sewage of ‘Mein Kamf.’ We can
only presume that in its anxi-
ety to whitewash the action of
the British Labor government in
its handling of the Palestine
mandate, the ‘CCF News’ editor
resorted to the language of Goeb-*
bels and Streicher in his pres-
entation of a ‘solution’ of the
Jewish question.

“The blame for this (the anti-
Semetic rioting—Ed.) must rest
squarely on the shoulders of the
Jews themselves,” says the ‘CCF
News’ editorial. “. . . their very
claim to Palestine is shaky to
the point of being ridiculous
“. . . much of the trouble has
been the result of the British
Government’s failure to realize
that they are dealing with psy-
chopathic cases who are not
susceptible to reason and who

thrive on martyrdom.”

These are strange words to
be used by a socialist (?). news-
paper to air its opinion on the
word’s most persecuted people.
+Embodied in a ‘letter to the
editor’ they would be bad enough,
but at least it could be put down
as the mental ravings of a Mos-
ley, an Arcand, a Bilboa or a
Norman Jacques. But they are
the words of a leading editorial,
reflecting official CCF attitude

I: the August 7 issue of

on the Jewish question—even ig-

noring the fact that they are
an insult to the many Jews
who lead and support the CCF

near: are a few points which
should be made clear t CCF
workers and others who do not
view anti-Semitic violence and
‘rioting’ through the eyes of a
Julius Streicher. First, that the
Palestine mandate, implicit in

®

mandate

UA

As we see it

TUTTE ET

the Balfour Declaration, was a
promise made by a responsible
British government, to aid in
the restoration of.a National
homeland for the Jews in Pales-
tine — a promise made to the
Jews. We are not here discuss-
ing the merits or otherwise of
that promise. The important
thing to keep in mind is thar

it was a promise—which succes--

sive British governments, tory,
‘tory-labor and labor, honored in
theory, but failed to carry out

in practice. Every single Labor
in

Party convention |
since the issu- «:
ance of the Bal
four Declara-
tion went o
record as sup-
porting that de
claration — and,
for Britain get-
ing out of Pal-

estine as an es-
sential prere-
quisite for the
‘amicable settle-

Britain

ment of Jewish- Tom McEwen
Arab differences in the Holy
Land.

Secondly, the ‘CCF News’ in

its anxiety to whitewash the
Attlee-Bevin ‘socialist’ regime,
fails to take into account what

the British labor movement and >

the trade unions have already
condemned—that the anti-Semitic
riots in England were instigated
by the Mosley fascist gangs—
“which have been allowed to re-
sume their fascist activities in
Britain without hindrance by
the Attlee-Bevin government —
fascist gangs who sought to ex-
ploit the regrettable occurrences
in the Holy Land for their own
sinister ends in Britain.

And most important of all,
that the British labor movement
and the Jewish and Arab labor
movements in Palestine have al-
ready branded the handful of
Jewish terrorists, such as those

who murdered the two British

soldiers, as agents of powerful —

British and American oil inter-
ests, whose claim upon the oil
and other resources of the Near
East can only be held in an at-
mosphere of bloodshed, terror,
and a divided population. All
this seems to have left the ‘CCF
News’ editor unimpressed in his
search of a ‘solution.’

‘and especially to those

‘

By Tom McEwen

i the annals of human Pro
gress it has been the unsought
martyrdom of the Jewish pee §
ple which has given mankind
some of its most cherished poo
sessions in the realm of —
literature, music and science.
But according to the ‘CCF News
the Jewish people are a nation.
of “psychopathic cases who ares
not susceptible to reason - - *'
The only criticism it offer®
Messrs. Attlee and Bevin
“failure to realize” this?

Even for a ‘solution’ to the
problem, the ‘CCF News’ 4dié®
in the putrid anti-Semitic mat —
ure heap of the late Herr Dok
tor Goebbels. Every evil, accord
ing to the late propaganda chief ©
of the ‘Herrenfolk’ stemmed
from ‘Jewish financiers.’ The
poison was subtly brewed to
leave the impression that
Jews—bar none, had tremendou®
economic power—for evil.

‘CCF News’ differs from Goeb
bels—not in thesis, but directio™ —
The Jews “. . . would be better
advised to use their considerable —
economic power to open ;
doors of America to their pet
fortunate co-religionists . -.° ~

To speak of “considerable eo
nomic power” in relation to pes
countless thousands of Jewis
men, women and children ~
without a country, without ® ~
roof, hungry, ill-clad and sick, —
shuttling backwards and ee
wards across Europe wi
all doors closed save
Cyprus. concentration camP,
an insult to the living who SUF
vived the’ Nazi death factorie®
of Hitler. The whole editori#?
cast a reflection upon the Bie
telligence of Canadian worker®
who 100k a
to the CCF for socialist leade™
ship. oe
To accuse the Jewish people
of “aiding and abetting > °
brained adventures in Pales@™
. . . because they are “psych
pathic cases who are not Ae
ceptible to reason . . -” 16 et
give moral justification t? fee
death camps of Oswiecim 9”
Buchenwald . and to
British concentration camps
Cyprus. It is time conkaS e
the CCF began making 8 CH
up on their editorial writers ™
dishonor the columns of @ |
cialist paper with the poison ©
‘Mein Kamtf.’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE

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