Nanaimo lives up to

a proud tradition

By HAL GRIFFIN

—NANAIMO, B.C.
HAT is happening in this little Island city is not

merely the trial of a group of laundry workers
charged under the new Industrial Conciliation and
Arbitration Act with conducting an illegal strike. And,
much as some might like to confine it to. the weighted de-
liberations of the courts, it is more than a legal test of the
POwWers the government has arrogated to itself under the
Act. In a broad sense, it is the trial of the government
‘tself, of Premier John Hart and Herbert Anscomb, his
Minister of finance and partner in the Liberal-Conservative
alition, and of George Pearson, the ailing minister of
bor who sits for Nanaimo in the legislature but does not
Tepresent its people.

. On the day the court trial opened the government was
Siven an inkling of the forces it set in motion earlier this
year. It passed Bill 39 through the legislature, ignoring
labor’s representations for the insistent anti-labor demands

the lobbyists of the Canadian Manufacturers Association
and those others in industry for whom, the war was lost

the extent that it established the rights of the working
People. But the government should know now that it
fannot pass Bill 39 through the province.

A thousand people from the town and district marched
through the streets of Nanaimo on Wednesday: of last
week and for that day at least little else was talked about
®t done, ‘The mines were closed as the coal miners de-
Clared a ‘holiday’ to protest the government’s decision to

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proceed with the charges.
The camps in: the district were
idle because the loggers did not
report for work. Most of the

, ‘voluntary absentees’, as the Na-

naimo Free Press_ described
them, were in the parade that
marched to the court.

Between two and three hun-
dred of them managed to crowd
into the Eagles’ Hall where
Magistrate Lionel Beevor Potts,
ensconced in the high chief's
lodge chair, presided over the
preliminary hearing. The rest
packed the halls and the stair-
ways, passing snatches of the
proceedings to one another.

“Beevor Potts has just an-
nounced that he’s been served
with a writ prohibiting him
from going’ ahead with the
charge against the union,” the
word came down the stairs, and

later, with amused smiles, “They
have taken the names of five of
the girls off the list. They are
all juveniles. Their cases have
to go to the juvenile court.”

A tall miner at the foot of
the stairs twisted his face into
a wry grin. “Oh, so they're not
too old to work for lousy
wages, but they're too young to
go on strike, eh?”

Inside the courtroom, F. C.
Cunliffe, the prosecutor, and R.
J. McMaster, the defense coun-
sel, clashed right over the right

‘of the minister of labor and his

board to summons persons for
summary conviction and then
sit as a court to decide their
fate. McMaster opposed Cun-
liffe’s request for reference of
“certain questions” to the board
to determine future procedure.
He held that only a_ properly

—Photos by Pacific

@ Here is a small section
of the parade in which a
thousand Nanaimo citi-
zens marched to the
Eagles’ Hall on Wednes-
day last week to protest
the government’s action
in prosecuting striking
laundry workers. And
below, the strikers are
shown at the CPR wharf.

constituted court should have
the power to decide innocence
or guilt.

Magistrate Beevor Potts mov-
ed uneasily in his chair. “I can
only take the constituted law
as it reads,” he stated stiffly.
The hum of conversation rose
in the courtroom and receded
down the stairs as he conceded
that he had little more than the
authority to fix the penalties.

But the people of Nanaimo
are not relying on legal argu-
ments to establish for them the
rights of which they have been
deprived by Bill 39. They have
long and bitter memories of the
coal strike of 1912 when 164 of
the 256 strikers arrested went
to jail for defending their right
to organize. They remember, too,
that it was only the solidarity

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