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An Ouiline Study © oe Issued by the e Story ° » American-Russian CANOL and the Institute ALASKA HIGHWAY _ $1.00 $3.50

iniversary

TEAWA, Ont.—Appreci- “the magnificent war

6th anniversary of the t of the message as_ re-

by the -External Affairs tment reads: — Sees : the 26th anniversary of the ing of the Red Army I de- on behalf of the govern- and people of Canada to

— CLEM WILLINGALE - first president of the Pacific

Clation, whose appointment as

d to you as commanderin- provincial organizer fot the Canada’s congratulations PCPPA has just been announc- xpression of appreciation of -

\agnificent wari effort of the pet : jl forces and people of the Union. : =

Victoria Meet To Hear Griffin

Hal Griffin, editor of The People, whose book, Our New Frontier—Alaska and the Canad- jan Northwest, was published in Wew York this weel, will speak at the K of P Hall, Victoria, this Sunday, February 27, on “Can- ada’s Future in the North.”

This week Griffin addressed the Social Problems Club at the Uni- versity of British Columbia and spoke at the Downtown Forum in YWancouver on the same topic.

glorious battle record a fficent series of achieve- along the vast battlefront en Geningrad and the — Sea. The Axis invaders been finally expelled from — thousands of square -miles > Russian homeland.

rman armies have been red and routed. The cour- skill and determination of ‘ed Army and of the whole people have helped -im-

> United Nations along the to ultimate and complete y.” E

UNIVERSAL NEWS STAND 138 EAST HASTINGS STREET

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and the War Now for SOc Soviet Planning - Our New and Labor in 2 Peace and War Frontier —65c ALASKA and the Both by CANADIAN MAURICE DOBB NORTHWEST. : |. The Soviet 2y

Union qoday HAROLD GRIFFIN

© FRENCH CANADA

A Siudy in Canadian Democracy by STANLEY RYERSON, $1.00

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‘Union

Expels Bruce

“The membership of the Amalgamated Building Wor- kers in Vancouver district have declared themselves unalterably opposed_to the formation of more trade union centers in Canada,” Said Lawrence Anderson, busi- ness agent, Shipwrights and Join- -ers, Local No. 2, in an interview with the People this week.

At specially summoned meet-

ings this month both the Blec-_

tricians and the Shipwrights and Jomers locals adopted a resolu- tion. ~ emphatically rejecting the decision of the recent conven- tion aimed: at Setting up another trade union center.” In addition, the reselution “endorsed stand taken by those delegates who supported the resolution for affiliation to the Canadian Con- gress of Labor at the Amalga- mated convention.”

“At the convention there were five resolutions for affiliation to one of the present trade union centres from locals embracing nine-tenths of the membership,” Anderson told The People. ‘The delegates at the convention who voted for a new trade / union center and against the motion for affiliation did so in defiance of the opinion of the membership. _“The general executive board expelled both Bert Smith and myself in order to defeat any broad discussion of the member- ship to reverse the decision to set up a new trade union center.

“The temper of the members against this: unwarrant- ed and arbitrary action was soon revealed when at a special sum- moned meeting the largest turn out of members ever held, both myself and Smith were returned to office while those responsible for. the disruptive activities, Malcolm Bruce, William Bray, C. Gibbard and J. Allan were ex- pelled. ;

“These — disruptive elements were expelled and the instruc- tions issued by Bruce and Bray. who were president and secre- tary, to the. management of the

shipyards. barring myself and Smith from the yards were countermanded by the newly

elected officers Edwin Baker and George Brown,’ he con- tinued.

Anderson recounted how

trouble had been brewing in the union for -quite awhile as the result of the attempt on the part of Bruce, Bray and others to suppress any democratic discus- sion of the union’s welfare or future as a part of the broad popular movement of the people for social security.

In the case of Malcolm Bruce the union meeting which expell-

. ed him and his associates, charg-

ed him with “adopting policies at direct variance with decisions of the membership and of act- ing without the authority of the local.’

“If the anti-unity elements are permitted to continue their ac- tivities the Amalgamated could soon become a center for com- pany and so called ‘independenvV unions and provide a base for every narrow dissident element who has a grudge against the labor movement,” Anderson said.

“The struggle of the Ship- wrights and Electricians Jloeals is basically a fight for trade union unity within the present established trade union centers with which the membership is fully in agreement,’ he con- cluded.

Labor Personalities—26

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overwhelming popular ~

” union .

> “graduated”

Al Parkin

By CYNTHIA CARTER

I I HAD a lot of money.” sighed Al Parkin one day just after The People had gone to press, “I'd buy the biggest news- paper in the country and turn it into a labor daily. And you know what Id do? Id go down to the press room and run my hand softly over all those nice new machines that don’t break ~ down an hour before deadline- I’d take all the thousands of cuts in the morgue and dump them into one big pile, and pick them up by the handful, and just let them run through my fingers... . .’ .

For quite a few years Al-has worked on labor papers, where bills must be paid from the hard-earned pennies of workers, where a one-column cut is a luxury, and a bank balance is some- thing you hope you'll have enough of to last to the end of the month, so there was good reason for his day-dreaming. At the

time, a good labor newspaperman, unlike the’ ordinary reporter who covers a beat and goes home when his shift is over, must be able not only to put the paper to bed, but to ad- dress a meeting, think out union tactics, and have a working Knowledge of everything from the theoretical back- : ground of the working class movement, to the intri- eate wordings and meanings of government legislation. Qn all these counts, Al Parkin qualifies.

He was born in Vancou- ver in 1911. His great-grand- parents, John and Mary Mal- pass, were among the first white settlers on the B.C. coast, coming to Nanaimo on the historic Princess Royal to open up the “Island coal mines. His grandmother, a remarkable woman, built; up a thriving business in WNa- Haimo after her miner hus- band was blinded on the job, later pioneered on a big farm in the Comox Valley, reared a family of 17, and lived to the fine age of 86. His father, Ed Parkin, log- : : ger and railroader, unionist and menrber of the Socialist Party of Canada was head camp delegate of the One Big Union for the Comox Logging Camps at Courtenay. and was blacklisted in 1920 when the OBU was smashed.

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AX started work in lumbering when he was 15. after a year in

high school, and when he was 19, with the depression already taking effect, he started riding freight. Down through Cali- fornia, back to Victoria, then a few months later on a boxcar tour of Canada, Al spent the early depression years storing up impressions of the country he lived in. He saw that his country. had a lot of possibilities that weren’t being utilized. He saw. why they weren’t, and how they could be; and -he saw that the Communists had the right idea on how to go about fixing things. In 1932 Al joined the Communist Party of Canada.

At once he was part of the unemployed struggle. In 1933 he became Vancouver Island organizer for the Young Com- munist League. The year before he had joined the Lumber Workers Industrial Union. At the beginning of 1934 he at tended a six-week labor school in Vancouver; and the day he the 1934 loggers’ strike, which was to establish unionism in the lumber industry, broke out. Immediately Parkin was sent to Campbell River as union secretary in the big picket camp. When the strike ended in May, he was recalled to Van- eouver for his first newspaper job—that of editing the mimeo- graphed B.C. Lumber Worker, jater described by Leslie Morris as the “best mimeo’d paper in Canada,” at a salary of six dol- lars a week.

“Union literature had to be practically smuggled into camps,” recalls Al- “We had to camouflage the paper to get it past company offices. sometimes mailing it in chocolate boxes tied with pink and blue ribbon. And the paper did a real job for the union, becoming a big factor in building the LWIU and laying the basis for.the present powerful International Woodworkers of America.” : Z

After two years on the Lumber Worker, Al went east to work on the Toronto Daily Clarion as a reporter and for a time city editor. When he returned to the coast in 1937 he worked for sev- eral months in the woods until the fishermen’s union hired him to put out the first issue of their new paper. The Fisherman. A few months later he became acting editor of The Advocate.

In July, 1939, he then went back to the TWA as a field or- ganizer, took several trips on the loggers’ navy, worked in the district office, was stationed as TWA organizer in the Courtenay area, and spoke for the union over lIecal radio stations. In June, 1940, Jong hours, low pay and hard work caught up with him. A victim of tuberculosis, he had to give up active partici- pation in the labor movement for a year and a half.

' Finally, in January, 1942, Parkin was able to take a job in Boeing Aircraft here. Before long, he was back in the. struggle. He joined Lodge 756. Aeronautical Mechanics. was made a shop steward, elected tc the Labor-Management Production Commit- tee. After working hours, he edited the union’s paper, the 756 Review. Last February, Parkin joined the staff of The Peo- ple, and has been associate editor until this weelk. :

Once again, iliness has removed Al Parkin temporarily from service in the labor movement. His many friends—loggers in Camps, the men in the fishing fleet, workers who remember his fight on behalf of the unemployed, readers of this paper who looked forward to his clear interpretation of trade union news and chuckled over Column One, and those who have worked with him on labor papers across Canada—are united in hoping that his recovery will be quick, so that once more he can take his place in the ranks of those who fight for democracy, against fascism, and toward the building of a better world.