d
‘Pattycake, pattycake...
Editor, Pacific Tribune—

Sir: Lest there be some among
us who are puzzled over the fate
ef right wing social democrats
in countries where the workers
have taken power, let them con-
template the doings of our local
breed. The latest example .is
provided by Mel Kemmis, a
COCF’er and business agent of the
Bakers’ Union.

This alleged socialist joins his
mame with that of Birt Showler,
in the Vancouver Sun, in an ap.
peal of Vancouver to go easy on
the bread combine. The bakery
monopolies, it seems, have been
very good to their employees in
spite of the harshness of govern-
ment which have prevented them
from raising prices more than
three cents a loaf. Their mono-
polistic practices are evidently
intended purely for the benefit
of their employees. ;

Which goes to show that no
one can beat a social democrat
at distorted facts to support a
phony. position.

The top wage today for bakers,
one of industrys most skilled
trades, is $1.27 an hour—19 cents
more than the prevailing. wage
for unskilled labor. This year’s
Wage increase—when the cost of
living would have ,justified at
P least 20 percent—-was a measly
seven percent! This is the kind
of generosity Kemmis values so
highly that he thinks it justifies
monopolistic practices!

Lst year, when an _ aroused
union membership forced Kem-
mis to take a militant position,
the picture was quite different.

Tt is just over a year ago that
_ this same local, as part of its
campaign for higher wages, took
initiative in exposing the
bread monopoly, drawing atten-
tion to the simultaneous action
of all bakeries in raising prices
twice the amount of their in-
creased costs.

’ Classified

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ocepted Iater than Monday noon
of the week of publication.

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The music goes round again

Jo Stafford was first among California recording artists who
rushed to cut platters following lifting of the record ban by the

American Federation of Musicians (AFL).

The AFM recently

signed a 5 year contract with recording companies, setting up.
an employer-financed welfare fund.

According to the philosophy ex-
pressed in the Kemmiss-Showler
statement, this tactic should have
hindered the chances of a wage
Instead, they won 15
cents across the board, improved
shift differentials, vacations, etc.

increase.

Was the need for increased
wages any less urgent this year
with the cost of living at record
heights? Were the price fixing
policies of the Master Bakers’
Association any less odious this .
year with thousands of workers
and the

unemployed price of

- bread the difference between sub-

sistence and starvation? Or was
it just that the social democrats
are running true to form by pre-
tending that there is no class
struggle and refusing to fight.

There are ample precedents for
Kemmis’ action. At the milk
board hearings in 1947, Showler
made a pretty little speech ask-
ing the milk czar to raise the
price of milk. At the Public
Utilities hearing in August, 1947,

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Fred Alty, business agent of
the Gas Workers’ Union, spoke
out of a
17 percent inerease in the price
of gas.

shamelessly in favor

All of which raises the obvious
question: If Brother Kemmis
finds the Masters Bakers such

- generous and kind-hearted em-

ployers; if Showler is so sensitive
to the needs of the undernour-
and if
Grauer is so worthy in the eyes
of Brother Alty, how can these
brothers find it in them to sanc-
tion the expropriation of such
good-hearted monopolists when
the workers take over?

ished dairy combines;

So why should anyone be sur-
prised when the people’s govern-
ments of Eastern Europe tell us
that social democrats of the type
of. Mikolayezik and Nagy have
conspired with foreign imperial-
ists for
the monopolists?

TRADE UNIONIST

Vancouver, B.C.

the return to power of

GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Report on Israel

IZZY STONE is that rarity in the commercial press; a news-
paperman with axes to grind against the bigotry, oppression and be-

trayal that are capitalism’s biggest cash crops.

And he is the master

of the art of buttressing conviction with fact.

Out of deep éonviction, know.
ledge and love he has written
his swift-paced book on Israel,
This Is Israel (Progress, $3.00).
He was there when the Jewish
state was born and during several
weeks of the fighting. And he
had been there three times be-
fore, on one occasion as an illegal
immigrant. He writes as a
passionate partisan — the truth,
after all, takes sides — but he
doesn’t shout: the facts rivet to-
gether story and argument with
quiet power. This Is Israel is
designed as bird's-eye view of
Israel’s war of independence and
its political and social back-
ground. The latter covers not
only those recent international
events which formed the matrix
of this struggle, but the history
of Zionist experiment in Palestine
during the past seventy years.

The book is most successful in
dealing with the military side of
the war and with the part played
by the people of Israel themselves
in defeating enemies vastly sup-
erior in numbers and arms. Stone
gives us a vivid running narrative
that makes coherent for the lay-
man the military operations and
the strategy employed.

At the same time it reveals the -

human beings, soldiers and civil-
ians, whose extraordinary cour-
age, devotion and initiative made
it possible for so few to achieve
so much with so little.

First-_rate too is Stone’s in-
cisive account of the shameless
manoeuvering by the British and
American instigators and subsid-
izers of aggression in crass viola-
tion of international commit-
ments. However, the political
side of the picture is a bit out
of focus in two particulars: the
role of the Soviet Union and the
people’s democracies as support-
ers ,of Israel and defenders of
the United Nations partition de-
cision is too faintly delineated,
and Israel’s government leaders
are presented in lush colors that
give no hint of their serious
political shortcomings.

x * *

I BELIEVE TOO that Stone
errs in characterizing the Soviet
attitude toward the creation of a
Jewish state as an abandonment
by the USSR and the Marxist
movement of their traditionally
anti-Zionist position,

Zionism and the Jewish inde-
pendence struggle are no more
identical that are Gandhism and
the Indian independence struggle.
The Marxist movement remains
opposed to Zionism as to to all
forms of bourgeois nationalism.

339 W. PENDER

BRAMAN RAAAABAD

KNIGHTS OF HARMONY ORCHESTRA

211 SHELLY BLDG.

But it is and always has been
pro-Jewish people and pro-Arab
people. That’s why under today’s
circumstances it favors a demo.
cratic Jewish state and a demo-
cratic Arab state in Palestine,
and cooperates with all among
both peoples that work toward
these goals.

That part of the book which
gives a capsule history of the
Zionist experiment is written
from the heart. But it falls con-
siderably short of genuine history
and provides little beyond the
stereotyped idyll found in Zionist
literature. And the author shares
the Zionist blind-spot on the Arab
question.

When he describes the 310,000
Arabs whom the partition de-
cision placed in the Jewish state
as a “hostile minority” behind
whom stood another million in
the rest of Palestine, he is allow-
ing prejudice to subvert his cus-
tomary reportorial accuracy.

The fact is—and this was at
one time publicly asknowledged
by Israeli government leaders—
that with relatively few excep-
tions, the Palestine Arabs, de-
spite the reactionary propaganda
and intimidation to which they
were subjected, did not partici-
pate in the fighting against the
Jews.

Much more than a few brief
words deserve to be said about
Stone’s collaborators, the three
gifted photographers whose work
does so much to make. Israel live
in these pages. The best photos,
those that most sharply convey
the flavor of the war and the
people, are Capa’s. Cooke and
Gidal have good ones too, but
some are static and overslick.

—A. B. MAGIL

feees ort Aree tad
NOW HERE!

CANADA:
the Communist
Viewpoint
by
TIM BUCK

CLOTH, $3.50— PAPER, $1.00 ?

PEOPLE’S COOPERATIVE
BOOKSTORE

337 West Pender, Vancouver,

MA. 5836

TICKETS AT

0 EN |

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — DECEMBER 31, 1948 — PAGE 10

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