2 rl 4 N PTE. -ing class!” Buck fells delegates; ‘Canada can tip scales for: peace’ Peace action must grow until war averted - LPP convention é The fourth national convention of the Labor-Progressive party. last week addressed an urgent call of good will to joi. hands in united action to maintain peace.” into war, the convention drew renewed confidence that pe tent to which such action will grow until world: war Action for peace world peace,’? came from was the ,keynote. By JOHN STEWART: the peace movement “to such heights that peace will triumph over .war.” And in answer to those who. behind a whipped-up war hysteria, sought to outlaw the LPP, Tim Buck told the convention, as he told the great peace rally in Massey Hall that: “The Labor-Progressive party is not going to be driven. underground.” The “pub- lic democratic struggle” against the monopolists and their plan o sell our country lock, stock and barrel to the United States is going to stop the present course of the St. laurent government and defeat the monopolists’ plan for war.” It was on the hasis of this confidence in the people’s action for peace that the LPP leader put before the convention a people’s program for peace which took its inspiration from the historic Nine-Point Program of the Sheffield- Warsaw Peace Congress, a program fashioned by delegates from 80 nations who represented half the world’s population. As Tim Buck, béloved national leader of the party, came forward. at the opening session, the more than 100 delegates rose to accord him a heart-warming ovation, this time not only in tribute to his leadership, but to add their cheers in‘honor o1 fis OUth birth- day anniversary. And as he began to speak, he saw before him men, women and youth from every part of Canada—from the steel town of Sydney, Nova Scotia; from the heart of French Canada; from the great industrial centers of Ontario and the farm country of the Prairies; from: logging and fishing camps of British Columbia. (“How- deeply is our party rooted in. the work- Tim Buck said later describing the convention to an audience of close to 3,000 people in Massey Hall.) conscious of the fact that he or she was part of a tremendous world march to peace and to so- cialism, from the moment convention They knew this from the greet- ings that began to arrive—greet- ings from brother Workers and Communist Parties throughout the world, headed by the great party of Lenin and Stalin, the Commun- ist Party of the Soviet Union. From China, from Britain, from the United States, from Italy, from the People’s Democracies, the messages came, each one a de- monstration of the international- ism of the working class, each expressing its faith that the Labor-Progressive party would not fail the people’in the struggle for .peace, and each paying a special tribute to its great leader: In his ‘keynote address, Tim Buck laid before the convention a program of action for peace—a program based upon the aware- ness that 1951 is the year of de- cision for Canada, the year of peace or .war; came after two months of dis- cussion by the entire party, a critical discussion that led to more than 100 proposals for changing and sharpening the LPP program of peace action. It was a critical hour in man’s march to freedom, Tim Buck said: “The people of Canada, indivi- dually as well as collectively, are _confronted by solemn and historic responsibilities in this ‘great crisis of humanity. We are confronted as a nation with a most solemn responsibility because, exactly con- trary to the false defeatist propa- ganada! that Canada is not strong enough to exert a direct influence upon world events, the actions of the ‘Canadian. government now may well be decisive in determin- ing the immediate course of action in the United Nations, and there- fore the question as to whether mankind is approaching world peace or world war.” He outlined the: ruthless drive of the United States to commit the UN to war against People’s ‘Caina,, which, he said, was the immediate and acute danger of a new world war. “Canada,” he emphasized,, “can be decisive in this situation be- a ‘program that. the mines of Alberta and the cause Canada’s attitude towards|} People’s China exerts a powerful| & | influence re : .| actions Every delegate there was made| i | the | was called to order.!} upan the attitude and of a large number of other governments. “A clear official Canadian de- cision to recognize People’s China, and in favor of seating her representatives in the Unit- ed Nations as called for in the UN Charter, with the settle- ment of any differences that - might persist by negotiations between equals, would quickly become the policy of the ma- jority. The advocates of arro- gant hostility. and systematic provocation, looking to war, as personitied by Yohn Foster Dutles and Warren Austin, would quickly become a minor- ity. “The St. Laurent government does not deny that it would have ‘recognized China months ago but for pressure from the U.S. State Department. “A chain of events can be start- ed which would avert a_ third world war if the St. Laurent gov- ernment is pressed now into car- rying out its own original inten- tion. The Labor-Progressive par- ty calls upon all democratic Can- adians to demand of the St. Laur- ent government and all members of parliament the .exercise of Can- ada’s sovereign right to Recognize People’s China Now!” 3 Can the policies of the St. Laur- ent government be changed? Yes. “There is still time to bring about changes which can be des cisive in averting a third world war. The profound desire of the great majority of Canada’s people that world war should be averted can and must be aroused and di- rected to influence the actions of the government and to make Can- ada a force on the side of peace.” LPP spoke out far and beyond the convention hall, addressing his words to every Canadian across the length and breadth of our great land: “The Labor-Progressive party calls upon all men and women of good will, urban and _ rural, French and English, Protestant and Catholic, to join hands in un- ited action to maintain peace. To- gether we must expose and com- bat the policies and activities that make for war. Together we must popularize Canadian policies which will help to buttress peace. To- gether we must arouse Canadian Then the national leader of the| ‘imperialist countries. TIM BUCK ‘Peace will triumph over war’ mass popular support for such policies in every part of the coun- crvso “There should be no condition to limit the breadth of such~ united action except one—that it be for peace. There is no limit upon the extent to which such united action will grow until world war is averted and peace is made secure. This fourth national convention dedicates all the energies of the Labor-Progressive party to the fulfillment of these great, demo- cratic and profoundly Canadian tasks.” Canada is not threatened from any quarter, nor is any Canadian interest, Tim Buck continued. “It is quite evident that Pr'me Minister St. Laurent’s announce- ment that the odds. against a general war are 50 to 1 represents the opinion of the leaders of the Facts are compelling them to admit, at least by implication, that there will be no world war unless the United ment encouraged in Canada the| democracy to action, ‘to mobilize; States starts one. idea the St. Laurent was coop-| | | { | | ' | | { Bi a { 2 | | | |; public meetings, that they “scenes” TORONTO “to all men and women Even as the Yankee war maniacs were ready tn plunge the world ace can be won as Tim Buck declared: ‘There is no limit upon the ex- is averted and peace made secure,’’ Conviction that such action could be decisive, that Canada could “tip the scales for every delegate, as did a new determination to go ‘into the highways and. byways of Canada’? and build “The important and, for Can- adians, too little recognized fact, is that the power-crazed met who head the United States would get little support even, in their own country for any pro- posal to launch a world war, if it were quite evident that coun- tries such as Canada and Britain were determined not to become involved. The fact is irrefut- able, however, and it imposes a solemn responsibility upon the Canadian people.” He went into detail to show how the St. Laurent government was loading the cast of its war pro- gram on the back of the working people. “The victims upon whom the burden of the cost of the enor- mous war expenditures and the bloated profits of -the war con- tractors are going to be placed are the masses of Canada’s people. “There were still, on January 4, no less than 248,000 workers unemployed in Canada, and those who are fortunate enough to be working, are paying in a dozen ways for St. Laurent’s war pro- gram. ‘They are paying through the rapid decline in the value of their dollars. They are’ paying through the wild upsurge of the prices of everything they buy, through the soulless profiteering of the monopolies. They are pay- ing through taxes, ,above all by the taxes visible and invisible, pay practically every they buy anything, taxes increase steadily the time which as @ price level goes up.” The purchasing power of wages 'in Canada today is actually lower, than it was in 1945, he said, while the productivity of ‘Canadian workers has increased by 26 per-, cent. ; i é The war drive in Canada was accompanied by a calculated un- — scrupulous assualt on civil liber- He cited the attacks on the hurling of bombs into halls and houses, the inalienable right to petition threat- ened, the terror-raids on people’s ties. |} homes in Quebec under Duplessis’ fascist padlock law, the barring of the Canadian Seamen’s Union on the Branch Lines by the fed- eral Labor Relations Oard de- spite the level vote of the workers involved—a decision of far-reach- ing consequences to the labor movement-—and the recent- ly stepped-up demand for the’ dut- lawing of the LPP. The .US. FBI was now directing part of the activity of the RCMP, he said. But this deliberate campaign of | intimidation and war-hysteria will fail, he declared. - “The Labor-Progressive party is not going to be driven under- ground. The public democratic struggle that was started orig- inally by the LPP against the monopolists and their plan to sell our country lock, stock and barrel to the United States, is winning ever-widening support; it is going to stop the present’ course of the St. Laurent gov- ernment and defeat the mono- polists’ plan for war.” ‘The pressure of public opinion is already forcing the St. Laurent government to retreat. True, this has been limited to “behind the action. in: “But the fact that the govern- entire’ 'erating with Nehru. without get- |ting the consent of the U.S. gov- ;ernment was by itself .a tremen- dous ¢ribute to the pressure of the rising opposition to the criminal drive to war. : “A little more pressure and the St. Laurent government will re- cognize People’s China. That would make Canada a vital force for world peace.” : The LPP leader spoke of the historic World Peace Congress in Warsaw and its Nine-Point Pro- gram for peace. He outlined 2 _people’s program for peace based ‘upon that program. He placed the greatest em- phasis on the need for militant trade unionists to join in the fight for peace. He said the “openly reactionary bureaucrats, assisted by the right-wing CCF leaders, are working systematic- ally now to transform the trade union movement into the labor front for imperialism in its drive for fascism and war.” He said that trade unions in which LPP members play an ac- tive role or in which they partici- pate in leadership, “should make .their central and main struggle always the struggle for unity of the entire trade union movement.” He warned that what is being done today in the trade union ‘movement is a scheme to emas- culate the unions. | “It is a scheme to transform the trade unions from organizations for the defense of the working class, to organs which serve the interests of imperialism.” ' He placed before trade unionists three main tasks—to get fully into the fight for peace, to lead the fight for higher wages now; and to organize the unorganized. ; An important part of the strug- gle for peace and Canadian inde- pendence was the development of the fight for Canadian autonomy of the trade unions, he said. “There is developing among the trade unionists of this ‘country an increasing realization. of the fact that Canada, as an _ imperialist state with its own separate laws and with an increasingly repres- sive system of government, cannot for long continue in a situation in which the trade union movement is merely an appendage of the movement in the United States. The fight to free Canada ‘from U.S. domination, to rid Canada of U.S occupation, to reassert Cana- - dian independence, is a fight to ‘make the trade union movement of this country free from US. domination also.” | .On the vital question of French Canada, the LPP leader said the party could be proud that it first put forward the demand that French-Canadians must have full right to determine for themselves whether or not they would go to war, “But,” he continued, “we must: emphasize that such a right can French Canada only as part of a struggle for the full right of national self-determination.” (This struggle can only be led by the working class, he said, and the LPP in Quebee must “fight for a realization of the ne- cessity of unity between~ progres- sive people in, French Canada and | progressive people in English Can- Continued on next page *See LPP PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 2nd, 1951 — Page 6 \ \ tes be gained by the people of —