Mike Tytherleigh, a regular columnist in The Province, is worried (see his comments of June I, page A2) about a “COPE majority in the next election’’. I hope his fears are well founded. His solutions — that the NPA and TEAM need “paid professional organizers”’ and more funds doesn’t worry me, as long-as COPE gets the votes. But he did make some Harry Rankin other remarks that require an answer. For one thing, he makes the: rather silly statement that COPE is “‘the only political par- ty in civic politics’’. First of all COPE is not a political party but a reform: group in civic politics. It is no more a political party than the NPA or TEAM. All three groups have members of political parties within their ranks. Of course we have dif- ferent objectives and aims. The NPA and TEAM represent developers and other big business interests, while COPE represents the needs of the or- business. voters with his -equally silly statement that ‘‘a COPE ma- jority in the next election will see a civic administration that has no time for the free enterprise system’’. That’s the old NPA red herring. COPE is not com- mitted to the abolition of the free enterprise system nor could it abolish it at city hall even if it were. What COPE wants to do is take city council out of the hands of the developers and big business interests where it’s been for the past 45 years’ (since the NPA ‘was. formed) and put it back into the hands of the peo- ple. Wherever and whenever it is in the public interest, controls Politics at city hall _ less, free enterprise in the true dinary citizen and small -Tytherleigh tries to frighten . who want to use city hall to fill their own pockets. As for the small businessman, the only free enterpriser left in our society because big business is highly monopolized today, he’ll get a better break from a COPE council. We’ll have more, not sensé of the term. And COPE will introduce a new system of priorities. Affordable apart- will be placed on the depreda- tions of developers and others ments for example will take precedence over trade and con- vention centres. Tytherleigh also urges the ‘*business community to pay the shot”’ if it wants friends at city hall” with the inference that this would be something new. Is he sO naive as to believe that the developers and other big ‘business interests have not been funding the NPA and TEAM all along? What about those donations to the NPA from the CPR that were revealed some time ago? Who is he trying to kid? Business interests have had more than friends at city hall; they’ve had willing servants. Finally, he says, ‘‘the concept ~ of_keeping .politics out-of -city hall must be changed now that politics are in.’’ Politics has always been “‘in’’ at city hall ever since 1886 when the city was formed. The NPA, for ex- ample, isamotley assortment of. bone-headed Social Crediters and Conservatives. TEAM is dominated by Liberals posing as reformers. Their politics has been that of the corporate in- terests they represent. What~ Tytherleigh and his friends don’t like is the fact that with COPE the ordinary citizen, the working middle class and the middle classes, will also have a voice. BRITISH COLUMBIA. SMOKING SPEAKERS AT ALBERNI HOUSING MEETING . Behn, Dave Fairey, Ald. George McKnight. Housing crunch about to hit Alberni, but city can block it - ALBERNI — Labor economist Dave Fairey warned June 5 that the speculation and market manipula- tion which have sent land and house prices soaring in most major B.C. centres is about to hit Alberni, but unlike most other places, Port Alberni municipal council can act to curb inflation in the housing market if it chooses, _ ABurnaby civic activist who has, focused attention on the injustices of property taxation in B.C. with challenges last year and this year against the property tax assessments of oil refineries on Burrard Inlet in Burnaby, Fairey was invited to Alberni to discuss land prices, taxes, rents and mor- tgages by three Alberni aldermen, George McKnight, Walter Behn and Paul Reitsma. With Fairey. to address tenant issues was Greater Vancouver Renters Association president Tom Lalonde. Fairey told the 80 Alberni residents who turned out to the public meeting about his tax challenge against the oil refineries and drew the obvious analogy to the situation in Port Alberni where the huge MacMillan Bloedel com- plex dominates the skyline and the tax rolls. In spite of the dominance of the MacBlo mills, homeowners still pay unjust property taxes, he charged. Residential property amounts to 38.5 percent of the total assessed value, with. industry’s share only slightly larger at 42.8 percent. A glaring inequity is the exclusion by provincial law of machinery values from the tax roll for municipal -purposes. Machinery is only taxed for school purposes. In Alberni, total machinery values of $79.7 million almost equal the total assessed values for all land and buildings of $87.5 million. Citing Alberni alderman George McKnight’s past appeal against MacBlo assessments and his own fight with the oil companies in Bur- naby, Fairey said that unjust pro- perty taxes can be fought. The housing crisis has yet to hit Port Alberni with the full force it - has in the Lower Mainland, which has seen three bedroom bungalows in Surrey and Langley increase in price by 69 percent and 73 percent in the past eight month period. . However theinflationary spiral has begun to hit Nanaimo where prices have soared between 40. percent and 55 percent in the last year. Reports that a consortium of doctors and professionals have recently purchased as many as 200 houses in Alberni and still have a standing offer to buy every house. selling for under $55,000 is a sure sign that the speculators are mov- ing into Alberni and that prices will jump soon, he said. However the scenario which has been precedented in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley need not happen in Alberni, said Fairey, because the municipality of Port Alberni owns: 320 acres of vacant land within city limits and the pro- vince owns another 210 acres, ex- cluding’ parks. There is enough . .(Lto R) Tom Lalonde, Ald. Paul Reitsma, Ald. Waltel_ land to accommodate almost the. _. entire need for new housing for 4 considerable period, providing the land is made available at affordable prices. In 1961, the average worker if Vancouver could buy the average house with monthly payments amounting to 29 percent of in) come, Today the average house has increased in price 400 percent and payments consume 83 percent of the average wage, excluding most working people from the market. In Alberni a worker at the mill earning the base rate will earm about $1725 per month. If the worker put down $18,750 on a $75,000 house, mortgage payments, today would be about $851 or 50 percent of monthly income. tradesman at the mill earns $2,237 $100,000 house, mortgage payment wouldstill amountto 5 | . percent of income. McKnight told the meeting thal it is possible to build affordable” housing if the city used its $700,000. development fund to build on its own land. Tenant spokesman Tom. Lalonde said that the housing crisis _ is squeezing low incometenants oul of their homes and they have no_ alternative but to organize and” fight back. He said he will be speaking to meetings in Courtenay; — Campbell River and Port Hardy to_ help -organize the tenants move- ment. E aving just read accounts of the participation by the Ku Klux Klan in the plot to overthrow the govern- ment of Dominica and, more recently, the Vancouver Sun account of the cross-burning in Stave Lake by rifle-toting KKK members, it was almost with disbelief that we read over the editorial comments in the May issue of The Democrat, the journal of the B.C. New Democratic Party: Thecomments, written presumably by Democrat editor Stephen Brewer, were in response to several letters from readers who had suggested that the Democrat’s defence of the Klan’s right to advocate racial hatred’ was wrong. In |. defending that position — and in upholding the right of any group to advocate anything, even violence — Brewer offered the following remarks: “*Yes, we would — in the name of democratic rights — permit people to advocate violence towards women and sexual abuse of children: “We would not, of course, claim that they had any right to carry out violence against women, or to sexually abuse children, any more than we champion the Klan’s “Tight” to carry through with its threats . “*The activities are proscribed by law, as they should be; . advocating them is not and —ina free society — can never be. ” We’re sure that many readers must have oe in- credulous — and perhaps even horrified — at the stark ex- pression of the Democrat’s freedom of speech argument; according to that argument the right of anyone to advocate racial hatred — or violence or sexual abuse of children — must be upheld for the sake of democracy. (es Ni dara pais sir niete sees ee Stee rR bee ar mea Tt People and Issues a a a ie a i rr ea tier acer te ae aces wera As for racism, the only response, argues The Democrat, - is an educational program which promotes tolerance and racial harmony. Ironically, it was in another NDP journal, the Saskatch- ewan-based Commonwealth, that we came across a rather different view of the response to the Klan. Writing in the July 16, 1980 issue — some time before the Klan assumed its current high profile — columnist Lloyd Robertson commented: ‘*As the late Saskatchewan Liberal premier Jimmy Gar- diner discovered, you can’t fight racists with just logic. Slogans and slurs can be invented faster that the research it takes to prove them false. And quiet logic is lost on amob that just wants to kick someone less powerful.’’ Robertson didn’t state just how the Klan could be fought, of course. But his comments demonstrate that education isn’t of much value when racists are allowed free rein — and anyone is allowed to advocate violence. More disturbing, however, is that The Democrat’s - views are presented as if none of the history of the past five . decades ever happened. ecause of that history, racism has been characterized for what it is — a crime against humanity. Contrary to Brewer’s arguments, racism does not require a violent act for a crime to be committed. It is itself a crime and those organizations which promote or incite racial hatred are guilty of a criminal act — at least that is how it is placed in at least three international conventions to which Canada is signatory. holocaust to ensure that the racism which had contributed to the deaths of six million Jews was not allowed to take its toll again. And one of the profound lessons that at least | some people have learned since then, is thata society which tolerates violence, whether racial violence or violence against women and children — a society which, in fact, even guarantees the right of anyone to advocate such violence — is a society which inevitably creates the condi- | tions for such violence to be carried out. hat is unfortunate about The Democrat’s preoccu- pation with the right to free speech of the Klan is that it comes at atime when pressure is mounting on the provin- cial government to take action against the Klan, — to allow charges, laid under the federal Criminal Code, to proceed, and to release the report on Klan activities prepared by lawyer John McAlpine. Several organizations— ; including union locals, the Coalition Against Racism and . the B.C. Committee Against Racism have demanded that the government move against the racists. To his credit, NDP MLA Emery Barnes has added his voice to the demand that attorney-general Allan Williams allow charges against the Klan to proceed. But in the cam- paign to move the provincial government, a supportive voice from the publishers of The Democrat would have Those conventions were drafted in the wake of the Nazi | considerable impact. — TRIBUNE— JUNE = _— aes ae