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Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
Telephones: Editorial, MA. 5857; Business, MA. 5288
Tom McEwen
Stbscription Rates: 1 Year, $2.50; 6 Months, $1.35.

Printed by Union Printers at 650 Howe Street, Vancouver, B.C.
Authorized as second-class mail by the post-office department, Ottawa

The CCE and Bill 39. -

: ae labor in British Columbia is officially

on record calling for a special session of the Legisla-

ture to amend Bill 39. Regardless of affiliation the .

majority of trade unionists are now agreed that Bill 39 is
a legal obstruction to free collective bargaining and higher
wage standards, and in its present form a real threat te free
trade unionism. :

In labor’s growing demand that the Legislature be con-
vened to deal with Bill 39 NOW, the voice of ‘His Majesty’s
Loyal Opposition’, the CCF, is strangely silent. Two of the
ten CCF MLA’s, together with veteran MLA Tom Uphill of
Fernie, have endorsed labor’s demand for a special session,
but the balance of the ‘opposition’ MLA’s and CCF spokes-
men are conspicuously non-commital, <

Back in August when the cresendo of labor's opposition
to Bill 39 was growing and demands for a special session
were pouring into Victoria from factory, union hall, and
farm, the CCF also urged that “. . . the government should
call an emergency session of the House .. . for this purpose
_... and there should be no delay in this matter.” Since then,
however, CCF-leader Harold Winch and others of his col-
leagues have carefully skated around the issue in their public
pronouncements, and have referred to labor’s demand as

_ ‘stupid’, ‘futile’, ‘non-sensical’ and so forth, while at th.

_ same time propagating the leftist idea that labor has nothing
to gain from a ‘capitalist government’, and should therefore
concentrate its efforts towards electing a CCF government,
thereby assuring the enactment of a “real labor code”
modelled on the Saskatchewan pattern.

With thousands of workers on the picket lines, striving
to secure wage increases to meet skyrocketting prices, and
obstructed in their efforts by legal intimidation and perse-
cution under Bill 39, it is not enough to say, as a recent bul-
letin of the Vancouver Center CCF puts it, that, “You can
strike for higher wages, better working conditions, but the
only effective strike against this type of labor-shackling leg-
islation, is to see to it that the workers strike an X for the
CCF on election day.”

Skyrocketting prices leave labor no other choice than

to engage in concerted efforts NOW for higher purchasing,

_ power ... which Bill 39 is designed to obstruct and cripple.
A parliamentary opposition worthy of its salt should be in
pitching with labor, aligning itself with the demands of
Jabor, and demonstrating. by the quality of its leadership

_ today, that it is capable of giving progressive leadership
tomorrow. » ; ;

Organized labor in British Columbia demands a special
Session of the legislature NOW to repair the damage done
_ to its organization and well-being by Bill 39. Organized labor

expects from an avowed socialist Parliamentary Opposition

‘the fullest support in achieving its immediate objectives, as

_ well as its ultimate ones. What labor expects from a tory-

_ ridden reactionary coalition will depend largely upon the
degree of unity and determination in its ranks to have justice

_ done. Standing aloof from this struggle now and mouthing
utopian platitudes about ‘a real labor code’ when and if the
CCF comes to power, can only serve to give comfort to

_ the discredited Anscomb-Hart Coalition in its persecution
and denial of labor’s rights.

Labor knows what the CCF has said about Bill 39; it
_ now wants to know what Harold Winch and seven of the

CCF MLA’s are going to do about itr

__ The fact that the Coalition has so far been successful in
_Sidestepping labor’s demand for a special session to deal with
Bill 39, is in a great measure the responsibility of the CCF.

The Sus or free speech

RUSSIAN writer, Boris Gorbatov, writing in the Soviet Literary
A Gazette made some uncomplimentary remarks arent President
Truman, comparing his anti-communist warmongering policies

_ to those of the late Adolph Hitler. US Ambassador to Moscow
Walter Bedell Smith, protested the Gorbatov article, designating it
as “wantonly libelous”, and demanded the Soviet Government retract
the Gorbatov statements. Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov with
whom Smith lodged his protest promptly rejected it, pointing out
that the Ambassador’s protest was not only a “compietely perverted
picture of the Soviet press”, but that the act of protesting an article
ae Soviet writer to the Soviet Government was in itself “unaccept-

Ces : Bue
The Vancouver Sun of September 30 in an editorial entitled “Two

Sorts of Free Speech”, picks up the incident and uses it to cast
_ aspersions, first upon the Vancouver Branch of the Canadian-Soviet
Friendship Council, and secondly in a cheap sneer ai the Russian

| FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1947

HTH

A NEW concept of loy-
alty is being standard-
ized in America. The blue-
prints on what constitutes
loyalty are completed and pro-
duction (in the form of mass
witch-hunts) is well under way.
President Truman’s recent ‘dis-
loyalty order,’ affecting countless
thousands of civil servants, pro-
fessional people and other stratas
of the population, fits perfectly
into the pattern set by the House
un-American Activities Commit-
tee. In turn the pattern is woven
into the programs of the “Daugh-
ters of the American Revolu-

tion,’ the American Legion, the

National Manufacturers’ Associa-
tion, and scores of state and lo-
cal governmental bodies through-
out the country. What may be
overlooked in the development
ef this new concept of loyalty
is taken care of by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

- with J. Edgar Hoover keeping

the conveyor belt of this new in-
dustry well supplied with ‘disloy-
al’ material.

When Hitler set out in 1933 to
‘save the world from communism’
his first act was to destroy every
vestage of political freedom at
home. To establish a new form
of loyalty’ which held the Ger-
man Reich and race supreme.
Hirohito also evolved a new form
of loyalty which held that he,
God and the Japenese state were
perfect and complete. Anyone
having doubts on this point were
presumed to hold ‘dangerous
thoughts’ and promptly liquidat-
ed. The pattern of the new Am-
erican ‘loyalty’ industry, powered
by the anti-communist generators
of the Truman Doctrine, is there-
fore not without precedent and
can hardly lay claims to origin.
ality. :

In the September issue of Har-
per’s Magazine, Henry Steele
Commanger, professor of history
at Columbia University goes into
this new ‘made in the USA’ con-
cept of loyalty in an article’ en-
titled “Who is loyal to America?”

“What is the new loyalty,”
asks Commanger, and gives the
answer in one word—“conform-
ity.” “It is the uneritical and
unquestioning of America as it
is—the political institutions, the
social relationships, the economic
practices.” To critcize the repub-
lican or democratic partisans of
Wall Street; to question the pre-
datory nature of private enter-
prise; to inquire into or chal-
lenge the racist mentality of a
Bilbo, or the Negro lynchings

: ‘loyalty’

AAA ATW

As we see it

RR By Tom McEwen

of the Ku Klux Klan; to protest
the wage-labor exploitation of the
masses or the super profits of
the monopolists; to question the
editorial ravings in the Hearst-
McCormick-Luce press — all are
evidences of disloyalty in the new
blueprints. “America”
says Commanger, under the new
loyalty standards must be re-
garded as “finished, perfect and
complete.” e,
e
(ae to the status quo.
Blind unintelligent acceptance
of the ‘my country, right or
wrong’ ideal, in a new Deutch-
land Uber Alles setting. In the
new pattern of ‘loyalty’ the stu-
dent body of the Oregon State
College are lectured by Senator
Taft (prime mover in the Taft-
Hartley Bill) that ‘half the CIO
unions in the USA are commun-
ist-dominated.” Woe to the young
sss Amepican  stu-
dent who dares
to stand*up and
challenge this
falsehood of one
of the nation’s
‘loyalty’ pattern-
makers. If the
Rankin un-Am-
erican Activities
Committee does-
n’t-get him the
fe FBI will. Profes-
sor Commang-
Tom Ceo er’s outline of
the new ‘lopalty’ concept in Har-
per’s opens with a schoolmam in
Washington, D.C., who was tell-
ing her class about life in Rus-
sia, its school system, its health
program, the position of women
in industry, general social rela-
tionships, ete. Like every other
intelligent school teacher, this one
drew some comparisons between
her own country’s institutions and
the subject of her discussion.
Perhaps she didn’t know that
it is now a crime in the land of
Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt
to say anything about Russia un-
less it is bad. Her address to the
Ciass was read into the Congres-
sional Record, and the Rankin
witch-hunters with all their mot-
ley following were immediately on
the job demanding a “houseclean-
ing” and declaring that the whole
schoo] system was “shot. through
and through with communism.”
This despite the fact that, as Pro-
fessor Commanger says, her class
address “does not disclose a single
disparagement of anything Ameri-
can, unless it is a quasi-humorous
reference to the cost of having a
baby and of dental] treatment in
this country.” ‘

press.

Because Soviet officials refuse to be frightened by the atomic

rears of the US State Department, and does not hold itself responsible
for the expressed views of Soviet writers and journalists, the Sun’s
hybrid concept of a “free press” is outraged! :

In the columns of the Vancouver Sun, as in the Toronto Tele-

gram or the’ Hearst or McCormick press, one will find reams of anti-
Soviet: material, ranging all the way from syndicated forgeries to
cheap home-grown propaganda. And cartoons—depicting Soviet
jeaders in every pose, ranging from sheer idiocy to social crime.
Yet wehave still to hear of McKenzie King assuming “responsibility”
zor columns of the capitalist press, or St. Laurent~insisting that
“retractions” should be made to Joseph Stalin.

. According to the Sun’s code of journalistic ethics, which differs
in no way from that of the Hearst-McCormick standards, we here
must be “free” to libel, slander, distort, misrepresent or portray
Soviet life, policies and personages to our heart’s content, and expect
those we slander to approve of our superior “way of life’. We
reserve the right. to publish falsehoods about our neighbor and call
it “facts”. Should a Soviet writer or diplomat tell us the plain
unvarnished truth about our hypocritical idiosyncracies, we become
righteously indignant and get the State Department to intervene.

The Sun editorial gives the source of the controversy a sinister
touch as befits the propaganda scribblers of the new atomic age.
“Perhaps,” says the Sun, with a fine back-handed wallop at the
Canadian-Soviet Friendship Council, “Literary Gazette No. 39
which ‘sounds like an official information service .. . is not read in

Canada.” On its masthead the Soviet Literary Gazette (from which |

the Sun editorial pundits could learn a great deal about civilized
culture, art, and common every day veracity) carries its “Volume” |
number just as the Sun does. But it sounds much more intriguing
the way the Sun puts it. : ene
6 i
If ever slanderous journalism should become an indictable crime,
as Andrei Vishinsky recently suggested it should at the UN General

Assembly, the docket would be filled—not by Soviet writers, but by
the hired intellectual prostitutes of capitalist journalism.

,

Wee are those .who set the new
standards of/loyalty to which
the citizen must unreservedly con-
form. Professor Commanger lists
Some of the top notchers: “They
are the Rankins and Bilbos, of-
ficials of the DAR, the Legion
and the NAM, Hearsts and McCor-
macks.” And then he asks: “What
do men know of loyalty who make
a mockery of the Declaration of
Independence and the Bill of
Rights, whose energies are dedi-
cated to stirring up race and class
hatreds, who would straitjacket
the American spirit. , .?” Ofsuch
men Commanger remarks: “May
we not say of Rankin’s harangues
on loyalty “. . . is like the word
love in the mouth of a whore.”
The provisions of the Taft-
Hartley Bill seeks to impose this
bastardized concept of loyalty
upon labor. It goes far beyond
the narrow range of Communist
party membership or sympathies.
It strikes at the heart of those

concepts of freedom which is the

core of American freedom and
progress, Refusal to conform to
the new principles of ‘loyalty’
laid down by the Tafts already
brands “the CIO as half red.”
School teachers who tell their
classes the simple truths as they
know them of Russia, its achieve-
ments and its shortcomings, are
branded as ‘disloyal’ to American
ideals (?) Professional people
whether in the field of culture,
science or art, who do not con-
form to the new loyalty formula
are branded as ‘un-American.’ We
can expect to see Professor Com-
manger added to the list before
many moons. : ;

x)
Wet has all this got to do with.
Canada, you may ask, Think
kack. Remember the launching
of the ‘espionage’ cases—and Chur-
chill’s Fulton speech? How well
the ‘get-tough-atomic-diplomacy
pattern emerges, Millions to ‘com-
bat communism abroad; millions
to make use of hunger as a politi-
cal weapon, but nothing for those
who do not conform to the Ameri-
can ‘way of life’ laid down by Wall
Street. And at home the need to
restrict and limit effective labor
organization, to make it subordin-
ate its interests to the inerests of —
monopoly capital. °

To do all this under the Hitlerite
pretext of saving the nation or
the world from ‘communism,’ “Dis-
loyalty tests,” says Professor Com-
manger, “distract attention from —
activities that are really, disloyal,
and silence criticism inspired by
true loyalty.” For instance, on Bill
39, or skyrocketing prices, or the
lack of housing, or supplying Chi-
ang Kia-shek or the Dutch im-
perialist with the muntions of war,
what better comeback than the
noisy. yelp of ‘Russia’ and the
‘reds’!

Or again, when Harold Pritchett,
Ernie Dalskog, ‘Bert Melsness,
John McCuish and other members.
of the International Woodworkers
of America are denied entry to
the U.S. to attend the internation-
al convention of their union on the
grounds that they are members of
“an organization (the Labor-Pro-.
gressive Party) that circulates and
distributes written or printed mat-
ter advising, advocating and
teaching opposition to all organ-
ized government,” they and ° their
union are -the immediate victims
of the new ‘loyalty’ precepts of

the National Manufacturers Asso-

ciation. William Shearer, the Am- —
erican consul] in Vancouver, is not |

required to furnish proof of his

objections. They are implicit in

the new ‘loyalty’ ideology of the

Truman Reich. They say you eith-

er conform to our way of think-

ing — or you are a ‘Red’! For

Shearer and his paymasters there

are no “new truths to be discov-—
ered.” :

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 4