PEOPLE’S VOICE FOR PROGRESS

, No. 37

eS

5 Cents

VANCOUVER, B.C., SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1945

ick Brands

\liberate Lie

#n Buck, National Lead-
4 «the
}, nailed as a lie the false
# that $40,000 had been
into the Labor-Progres-

f-arty through the Soviet
Essy, as the LeBel Royal
ission dug into charges
Bhe Drew Government main-
E a secret political police
m were levelled by the CCF
ficial Leader E. B. Joliffe,
Miiately preceding the recent
io elections.

| report, which was alleged-
} pared by Captain Osborne-
hoer’s gestapo police force,
stated by Buck as ‘part of
i tical technique,” and he de-
2d that since the report was
in a branch and through
sls which obviously enjoy-
confidence of men high up
government of the prov-
f Ontario that the govern-
>of Ontario repudiate the re-
n the public interest.

. B. M. Freeman, a steno-
er for the “Special Branch’’
ae commission that she had
down a report in which the
tion was made in the early
of this year. It was further
ied in the hearings that Os-
-Dempster has mde re-
4 on officials serving with
saSmbassies of foreign gov-

( ants.

®: hearings further revealed
:Deputy Commissioner H. S.
ady of the Ontario Provin-
‘Police and Commissioner
Stringer had revealed most
te reports of the gestapo

Canadian Embassy of the
branded Osborne-Demp-
allegations as a deliberate
n an official statement, the
€ was declared “a false-
from beginning to end.’ ’
me Embassy is surprised to
i that such a deliberate lie
peen invented concerning it,”
statement continued. “The
Zion of the Soviet Embassy
t}is to convey mesages be-
1 the Soviet Government
(the Canadian Government,
! Embasy has no relations
esoever with any political
Hy in Canada. It cannot be
nasized too strongly that the
st is completely false.”

cow

|

Labor-Progressive }

URB THE MONOPOLIES

Unity And Struggle Will Compel
The Enactment Of Labor’s Program
---Says LPP National Statement

The Canadian labor movement, facing a reactionary drive intended to
place the whole burden of reconversion upon the working people in the shape
of mass layoffs, job speedup, wage cuts and. union-busting, was urged to
throw its united weight into the fight to win the peace and “’beat back the
monopolists” in a statement issued this week by the Labor-Progressive Party
which also included a proposed 11-point program of action designed to set

No longer slave laborers, these Russians smile happily
as they board a C-47 transport which will fly them home from
Germany. The man at the left spits on the German soil.

Evictees Emphasize
Action Needed Now

Elgin Ruddell, secretary of Vancouver’s Citizen’s Emer-
gency Housing Committee scored the three levels of govern-
ment for their adroit buckpassing in the housing question this
week, as a series of public meetings conducted by irate citi-
zens brought: Vancouver's housing muddle to a new climax.

Addressing a meeting of over
200 orderly citizens outside the
home of Pat Walsh, an evictee,
Elgin Ruddell -stated it must be
made clear to the governments
that “immediate action is needed
in the fa¢e of Vancouver’s hous-
ing crisis.”

Scoring contractors who. are
making a “killing” in swollen
property and house values, Rud-
dell said that there is the need
in Vancouver for 20,000 new low-
rental homes, and of these ‘there
is an immediate need for. 8,000.
He stressed the fact that a
housing scheme must meet the
needs of the low income groups,
and that any such program
would have to be publicly owned
and financed as the contractors
had already shown they are- in-
capabie- of meeting housing re-
quirements.

Vancouver’s penny-pinching
city council meanwhile, took a
firmer hold on the purse strings
of the city treasury, after start-
ling announcements of a new
housing schenie, fathered by Ald-
erman George Miller, and re-

mained silent on further discus-
sion or implementation of Mill-
er’s plan for the creation of a
servicemen’s housing community
south of Grandview Highway.

OTTAWA PLAN

‘In Ottawa, rumblings were
heard of a complete renovation
of present machinery to imple-
ment a nation-wide plan as
mayors of Canada’s house-hung-
ry cities closeted themselves with
federal administrators in an at-
tempt t> plet a workable plan for
the alleviation cf the present na-
tional housing crisis. Out of the
delib»rations of the mayors and
federal administrators, Recon-
struction Minister Howe emerged
as the man who probably will be
delegated with the responsibility
of producing order out of the
existing national chaos.

The Citizens’ Emergency
Housing Committee declared, in
tthe face of the promotion of
housing schemes for servicemen

(Continued on. Page 8)
See HOUSING

the pace for the big struggle ahead.

Keynote of the LPP statement, addressed specifically to
the labor movemenz as the spearhead of progress in Canada,
is the need for the utmost unity among all sections of labor
“To defeat the growing attack of the monopolists and to de-
mand of the new Parliament the safeguarding of the economic
rights of the people and the protection of Canadian democ-
racy from the assaults of the reactionary trusts and monop-
olies and their chief political agents, the Tories.”

The program proposes for immediate action by labor

the following steps:

@ A determined fight by
labor for the building of 50,000
homes and a Dominion-Provin-
cial public werks_program to
employ at trade union rates
those workers rendered unem-
ployed through retooling and
recenversion.

@ A move by the trade un-
ions to prepare wage,demands
upon industry in order to in-
crease the purchasing power
of the people, and a struggle
to prevent reduction in take-
home pay when overtime and
hours are reduced because of
cutbacks in war orders.

@ Action to force the un-
freezing of sub - standard
wages by drastic amendments
to the Wage Control Order,
PC 9384, and the retention of
those provisions in the order
which prohibit wage cuts.

On the general legislative field,
the LPP program urges labor to
unite its ranks to achieve the
following:

@ Immediate enactment of a
national minimum wage of 50
cents an hour, with an eight-hour
day and five-day week.

@ Continued operation by the
government of all state-owned
war plants, and a policy in which
no industrial plant in the coun-
try must close. If this cannot be
done by private industry, the
government should intervene to
operate the plant.

@ Retention of the Excess
Profits Tax, increase in taxation
upon monopolies, and limiting
monopoly profits.

@ Recognition of union secur-
ity and collective bargaining in
law, extension of all social se-
curity measures, National Health
Insurance, and revision of the
Unemployment Insurance Act to
increase tthe benefits and reduce
the workers’ contribution under
the Act.

@ Full prosecution of the war
to defeat Japan, the complete
erushing of fascism and ratifica-
tion by Parliament of the San
Francisco charter.

@ Breaking off diplomatic re-
lations with Spain and Argen-
tine, the two remaining centers
of fascism in the western world.

“Labor must draw. the great
lesson of the election—unity of
labor and all progressive peo-

ple is the only weapon to de-
feat the Tory menace,” the
statement declares. “Unless
this is achieved, there is grave
danger that the monopolists
will succeed in foreing upon
the people the full burden of
reconversion.”’

Pointing out that the veterans
who won the war, and ‘the war
workers who produced the tools
of victory, are entitled to steady

jobs at good--wages, the LPP
statement asserts that in spite
of this layoffs are spreading
through industry.

“There is no doubt that the
trade unions—the main defense
organization of the workers—
are facing a fight for their
very existence. The. rapid
growth of trade unionism in

the course of the war was
grudgingly accepted—and then
only temporarily—by  large-
seale industry. The big mono-

polists now see a chance to
break the unions, to rewrite or
destroy agreements, to divide
war worker and veteran—all
for the purpose of lowering the
purchasing power of the work-
ers.

“This fall the Trades and La-
bor Congress and the Canadian
Congress of Labor will meet in
annual convention. These organ-
izations of labor have long since
adopted policies: that reflected
the interests of labor in war and.
in peace,” the statement con-
tinues.

“The time has now come to

put these policies into effect in
real earnest, and to submit
every union official to the test
of whether or not he is ready
to fight for the workers’ in-
terests. The political action
committees of the unions must
now become what they were in-
tended to be — non-partisan,
united committees to advance
labor’s legislative program.

“The trade unions, the CCF,
the LPP, along with all those who
oppose the designs of monopoly
to precipitate a new crisis, should
cooperate to the fullest extent
in giving leadership and fighting
policies to the working people,
the returning war veterans, and
to all who cherish the principles
of the Teheran Accord, the San
Francisco charter, and the win-
thetpeace aspirations of labor
and ‘the people.”