EDITORIAL :
The Neros fiddle...

ome forty years ago the late William Z, (Bill) Foster,

leader of the Communist Party of the United States,
attended an American Federation of Labor convention, held
that year in the City of Toronto,

On behalf of his Party, his union, and his country, Bill
Foster had a difficult assignment at that particular AFL con-
vention; to present a resolution to its 99-percent all-white
delegate body demanding full equality and full civil rights for
all Negro Americans as provided for in the U.S, Constitution and
Bill of Rights.

History sadly reports that AFL president William Green and
the majority of the conven‘ion delegates, inthe main consisting
of high-salaried union roax men and union office swivel-chair
warmers, gave that resolution little consideration and less cour-
tesy as they roared their approval to ignore a

That was some 40-years ago, Since then the docket of racial
persecution, lynchings, bombing of Negro American churches
and homes, cold-blooded murder on the highways, continues
to grow like a gathering storm, with all-white juries and judges |
permitting the all-white killers to go scot free.

Last year the Watts race riots in San Francisco, sparked
by continued denials of the most elementary rights of Negro
American citizens, gave warning of a long hot summer in 1967,

“now finds its echo in the current tragic events in Newark, N.J.,

Driven to the point of desperation by continued discrimina-
tion in housing, job opportunities, education, segregation ad
infinitum, all their pleas for some elimination of these evils
fallen on deaf ears, Negro Americans are fighting a revolu-
tion of their own and, despite the great progress made by the
AFL-CIO since that far away convention of 40-years ago,
still fighting this vicious discrimination pretty much alone,

Thus in Newark as in Watts the all-white Neros fiddle
while the Rome they think is exclusively theirs by virtue of the
pigmentation of their skins, continues to burn — as they count
the dead from their violent “solutions”, This, while Negro
Americans are sentenced to, long years of imprisonment for
refusing to fight in Vietnam for the same so-called freedoms
denied them in their own country,

Yet we in Canada have no grounds to feel virtuous or smug
about the tragedy of race discrimination and persecution in the
U.S. Our own Native Indian people, shamefully robbed of their
lands and heritage, provides a shattering retort to our smug-
ness,

And down in Halifax, Nova Scotia we have our own Negro
Canadian ghettos, well hidden to be sure but equalling anything
in Watts, Newark or other notorious areas of U,S, racism,and
now beginning to erupt — an ugly fact which must serve as a
warning that racism and all its multiple evils must have no
place in Canada’s second century,

Tom
McEWEN

he lad who coined the cliche

“Great empires~ and little
minds go together” sure scoreda
bullseye in his brief description
of a capitalist statesman, Sucha
vast volume of historial confirm-
ation on that score is readily
available and being added to al-
most hourly, so it is scarcely
necessary to cite examples,

One has only to follow the
current sessions of the UN Se-
curity Council and the larger
General Assembly debates and
proposals for a solution to the
Arab-Israeli war crisis, There
it becomes so patently obvious
that many great and near-great
empires are indeed caricatured
by little minds. So littte indeed
that the destruction of human
life, be it Arab, Jew, Vietnamese
or other is insignificant to these
conforming little minds when
compared to the horrible thought
of the loss of Yankee dollars,
So they are content to remain
little minds — and thus a con-
stant threat to the very peace
they are alleged to safeguard,

Take a similar number of

o 4 ée8

of workingmen and women drawn
from every country under the
sun, of all races and creeds; men
and women with calloused hands
and toil-seared faces, possess-
ing little or no education, as the
term is understood in today’s
world, but fired with one deter-
mination — to stop the killing.
On the all-important question
of peace or war — dollars or
human life, their verdict would
be immediate and decisive —
peace and the dignity of human
life, and to hell with the dollars
and diabolical conspiracies of
little minds,

Or take another classical ex-
ample of the little minds at work
buggering up the peaceful destiny
and hope of mankind, When the
Peoples Republic of China ex-
ploded its first A-bomb, the
world’s peoples manifested the
mixed emotions of joy and sad-
ness, of frustration and fear and
hope. Then the little minds got
busy and dredged up their so-
called experts to elaborate, Even
Canadians were surprised at the
number of experts we ourselves
could mobilize to confuse the
issue,

BENNETT AND STRACHAN

ON QUEBEC | |

— STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

By NIGEL MORGAN

In the Vancouver Province of
July 13th Premier Bennett is
quoted as “having shown plea-
sure at the stand of B.C. Oppo-
sition Leader Strachan at the
recent NDP national convention”
on Quebec, “He almost used my
very words”, Bennett crowed.

Certainly this should give
Strachan food for thought, even
if he was unmoved by the stir-
ring appeal of his French Cana-
dian compatriots at the conven-
tion and the fact that his refer-
ence to “balkanization of the
country” was reportedly met with
a general silence broken by a
few subdued boos,

For while the NDP’s “special _
status” resolution fell short of
coming to grips with the need for
a new constitution, it showed
NDP members are giving serious
thought tothe problem, Strachan’s
position on the other hand ig-
nored completely the fact that
unsolved, the present crisis gets
in the way of every movement
for social advance and can only
finally end in breaking Canada in *
two,

The Communist Party believes
that the nub of the problem lies
in the fact that we in English-
speaking Canada have to face up
to the fact that French Canada is
a nation, Quebec was madeapart
of Canada by force of British
arms two centuries ago, yet
French continues to be the sole
language of a large proportion of,
the population today within a dis-
tinct territory,

French Canadians maintain
cultural traditions distinct from
other Canadians, Yet, from the
first days of British conquest,
the economy has been under con-

China “may” have touched off an
A-bomb, but if it did it was only
a teeny-weeny little one any-
way, very dirty of course, (only
the knowhow boys know how to
make clean bombs), and anyway
China had no means of delivery
for at least ten years, so we
could all sleep peacefully in bed
in a world stockpiled with
enough H-bombs to blow itto hell
and gone a dozen times over,

Nevertheless, we all sat back
and relaxed, while a prostitute
press gave these experts all
the column space they needed to
foist their little minds product
upon a highly gulliblized Homo
Sapiens,

But things don’t stand still,
Recently the Peoples Republic
of China exploded its first H-
bomb, high in the air, and with
enough megaton punch to oblit-
erate the whole of Vancouver
and a goodly part of British
Columbia in its expanded perif-
ery.

Again the experts came out of
their exclusive holes to soothe
away our fears and worries with
their special brand of soothing
syrup, This time however, they
were more restrained about
China’s ability or inability to
deliver or the speed at whichher
H-bombs might get rolling down
an assembly line, \

In this new trend at experting
the term “non-proliferation”
took on a new meaning and con-
tent, Even in Washington, U.S.A.
where “non-proliferation” meant

What’s got to be recognized H
that French Canadians, N° a
than the peoples of India, ‘
giers and Cuba, want to run thee
own affairs,

trol of British interests, Less
than 20% of Quebec industry is
controlled by French Canadians,
Less than 7% of the directors of
the largest Canadian corporations
are French Canadians, Quebec
wages also are 27% below those
of Ontario, .,

However, it is much more than
a question of language and eco-
nomics, The quicker we recog-
nize the rights of French Cana-
dians to run their own affairs,
including the right to separate
from us, the better it will be for
both French and English-speak-
ing Canada, It is one thing to
recognize the rights to separate,
and quite another to accept sep-
aration, For apart from ending
much that has been, and remains,
good inthe relations of French and
English-speaking Canadians,
separation today could only weak-
en both nations and open the door
to further penetration and dom-
ination of both by U.S, imperial-
ism,

By means of
tion based on equality am
racy, the road can be opel
co-operation of French am!
lish-speaking Canadians —
powerful lever for far-reac
social progress, To achieve
will require the working ou ‘a
new relationship — comple
new partnership; the sero
of the outdated BNA and ina
ing or a new constitution nM i
the principle of “majority cipl?
will be modified by the PEM,
of “national equality”
nation state.

d

This is the way 0 neh int

higher forms of co-operates i
will make it possible to we
to live and work together 0

mutual interests of poth.

Bennett betrays
anti-Canada stan¢

at
An arrogant Premier Bennett told a press conference

this week that it was good enough for B,C, to join with inten
at 7
of its ow qa

western provinces in a joint pavilion at Expo, but that B,C.
to spend a large amount of money for a pavilion
Expo 70 in Japan,

onthe
Speaking at a press converence at the Expo site in hy Bo

the Premier got irrated at questions from reporters on 0

did not have a pavilion of its own at Expo but was pla

the works for a pavilion at Osaka in 1970, an
Bennett’s only explanation was that B,C, has large tra

grading of Canada’s Expo and upgrading of Japan’s
the real thinking of the Socred government —
Japanese financial interests to the detriment of
interest, The performance of B,C, at Expo shows
of doubt that Canada does not come first in

the think?
Socreds at Victoria, ;

r exp?
among nations, Now on m

and their little minds P' on
are bearing dow?
non-proliferation pe
ing meantime what s¥ d
pretexts can be ¥ life
China our non-PF
‘product as we
And in the Penta€00 jg!
minds, now pecomint ost
aware that they 4% 7

everybody except “our valiant
NATO ally,” the West German
Bundeswehr, some reappraisals
began to hot up,

This, while millions.of ordin-
ary people suddenly and painfully
remembered that for the past 20-
years or more, the little minds,
including our own Ma-stinized
quota in Ottawa (Tory and Lib-

a new constit’
ddemoc

gene

pine

gir
or i
the 60
terests with Japan, What the Premier didn’t say was that rel :
to cater 10 veg |
canada’s Peal ]
peyond ee 1

u 3
sell 0 sit? Fe

eral), had resorted to every con-
temptible and cowardly trick in
the book (as per U,S, instruc-
tions) to deny the Peoples Re-
public her rightful and legal place
in the Councils of the United
Nations, The major contribution
of our own little minds was the
invention of new excuses for
barring a nation of 700-million
people from a world community,
dedicated to the cause of peace,

In other words our little minds
joined with their kindred mental
misfits from the so-called free
west empires, to make a great
nation an outcast and pariah

tainly “hoist on thel ig
calating) petard” in » 1008
toying with the insane collet
one way to affect ™ p He ;
tion in China is to 977% senlll | 18
H-bomb on it, TheKi@ iam
minds are all for it ted tf
firming the cliche 4 ;
start of this colum™

the
ucceed
Should they § sts

son-Martin apolo
minds will be ree”
function in that CaP?
we the people reliev ig

of living — because ite

a
or

itY

little minds to bam great :
nation — oe h

dian

Pacific Triple,

Editor—TOM McEWEN

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