By JOHN WEIR

| EIGHTEEN years have slipped by since I first revelled in the col-
| lection of early British workers’ poems, songs, novels and essays
(An Anthology of Chartist Literature), inspiring still after more
than a century and a half has passed, part of our great interna-
tional tradition. Leafing through it again I have culled some pieces
that speak of the solidarity of labor with movements for freedom
at that time.

In a poem titled To the Poets of America, printed in The North-
| m Star on March 9, 1844, in a passionate appeal for action on
behalf of freedom for the black slaves in the U.S., the anonymous

Poet (W.B.) tells the American poets:

Bards of Freedom’s boasted land!
Brothers! — foremost of the free!

Ye, who with impassioned hand
Sweep the cords of Liberty!—

Ye, to whom the boon is given

To win the ear and melt the heart! —
Awake! and, waking earth and heaven,
Perform the minstrel’s noblest part.

Why stand ye mute? when on the ear

A thunder-peal from sea to sea —

A peal earth’s darkest haunts shall hear —
Proclaims — The slave now be free.

Long has he drain’d the bitter cup!

Long born the scourge, and dragged the chain,
But now the strength of Europe’s up —

A strength that ne’er shall sleep again!”

And in four lines the workers’ poet sums up the purpose of art
: hd literature, the duty of the creative writer:

The minstrel cannot, must not sing,
Where fettered slaves in bondage pine!
Man has no voice, the muse no wing
Save in the light of Freedom’s shrine!

Th the April 25, 1846 issue of the same paper we find a poem Ire-
| “0d in Chains by Allen Davenport, which rings a contemporary bell.
Hi tWas sung to the tune of The Mareillaise:

Rise, Britons, rise! with indignation —
“Hark! hark!! I hear the clanking chains,
That bind a brave and generous nation,
Where martial law and terror reign;
Her gallant sons demand assistance,
Can British hearts refuse the call?

\ Behold them struggling for existence,
Shall Ireland, or her tyrants fall?

See! see! the fiends of war

Have seized on Liberty;

Then rise, and as one man declare,
That Ireland shall be free!

Arise; and with a voice of thunder,
Proclaim amidst the clashing storm,
That you to burst her chains asunder
Will meet the foes in every form.

What though the cannon point before ye,
-And dungeons gape on every hand;
Unite! and put down Whig and Tory,
’Tis time the people should command.

Dishonor’d be the grave

Of him who quits the field:

i But crowns of glory to the brave,
| Who nobly scorns to yield.

‘Tn 1839 three leaders of the Chartists—Frost, Williams and Jones
were sentenced to death. The journal John Bull printed a defiant
| Popular song of the time by an unknown author, which began:

Hurrah for the masses,

The lawyers are asses,

Their gammon and spinach is stale!
; The law is illegal,
The Commons are regal,
And the Judges are going to jail.
Hurrah for the masses!
The lawyers are asses,
The Judges are going to jail.

| Yes, the British labor movement was born in militant struggle and
S reared on proletarian solidarity and support of the national libe-
tion struggles throughout the world.

Who has carefully gathered up and presented to the English-
aking public the treasures of that legacy? An Anthology of Chart-
Literature was prepared by Soviet writers with the assistance of
tish author Jack Lindsay and was published in English by the
€ign Languages Literature Publishers in Moscow.

BOOK REVIEW

Leisure fare from USSR

Comes the week-end after your
hectic electioneering, you'll en-
joy a few hours relaxing with
fiction, books to evoke sympa-
thy, delight, and sharpen your
class-consciousness.

How about these paperbacks
from the Soviet Union?

A VILLAGE DETECTIVE by
Vil Lipatov; eight stories or
novelettes all about Uncle Anis-
kin and the people of his Siberi-
an village. Lipatov himself as a
boy was the object of the eccen-
tric detective’s wise correction.
‘From meandering pace to sheer
suspense, from child-like sim-
plicitiy to wit of a sage, or pierc-
ing the duplicities of human
hearts, the contradictions in this
beloved Village Detective and
his villagers reach under your
skin, made you guffaw with
hilarity. In all of Lipatov’s yarns
you sense the crisp Siberian
rawness of life, like our own
Canadian frontier days, the dif-
ference being in the solid
strength of honest socialist cha-
racter underlying the profes-
sional “Sherlock Holmes” and
his countrymen.

THE DAWN OF COLCHIS by
Konstantin
truly great author has created
this novel of his homeland in its
birth-pangs: Georgia in the
heady years when the rich and
the selfish still clutched for what
they’d held before the Revolu-
tion. New young hands of un-
read farmers searched out un-
charted ways, fought in despera-

Lordkipanidze. A

tion, learned a new awareness of
human frailties and of heroism.
Set in the exotic land of legends,
where Jason of antiquity sought
Medea’s Golden Fleece, this
story of our generation’s pre-
cursors comes alive in the tell-
ing of a master, Lordkipanidze.
Sights of delicate beauty, events
of dread and horror, matter-of-
fact conversations among neigh-
bors, all levels of story develop-
ment, in plot and vivid charac-
terization, excel in a book you
will always remember: The
Dawn of Colchis.

WHITE GRASS by Vladimir
So!oukhin, is a collection of six-
teen short stories, as he calls
them, “a handful of pebbles.’
Pebbles that you can search out
and admire while leisurely walk-
ing a shore, feel for their smooth
or bumpy surface, look under
the gray for the soft shades of
pink and green, taste with your
tongue for their briney or .gran-
ite associations. Soloukhin re-
veals his heart, and through it
the hearts of a child, of a teen-
ager in first love, of a workman
who starts out for personal gain
but thrives on the companion-
ship of work solidarity against
nature’s odds, and of a grieving
old woman thrashing through
her agony to.her own sense of
solace on the loss of her son.
Soloukhin’s experience of. social-
ist life is barely hinted at, yet
revealed subtly in his splendid
artistry in depicting human emo-
tions.

MOLDAVIAN AUTUMN by
Ion Drutse. No man produced
prose yet created poetry in it
like Ion Drutse. Don’t expect to
find socialist | consciousness
though, for his literary gems
sing of a people beloved to him
for their national idiosyncrasies,
their religious superstitutions,
and for the beauties of nature.
Stories you want to read over
again, savoring their sweetness,
yet which leave’a mysterious
sadness of something missing.
You want to ask him what.

ASTRIDE A DOLPHIN (Giant
of the Satire Column). The au-
thor’s name I’ve forgotten as I

’ threw the book out, and have

no intention of looking for any
more of his writing. It wouldn’t
be worth a mention except that
the Tribune advertised it a while
back. It, reads like one of those
Hollywood pot-boilers churned
out after the industry’s bought
off an unknown writer with a
good theme. It’s a medical plot
with bureaucratic jealousies
downing righteous research, until
our egotistical “‘Hero” bares all.
A cardboard journalist and an
Americanized interpretation of a
modern girl are engaged in
mock battle-romance. This story
is crammed with male chauvin-
ism, and rings as false as a sub-
way token in a pin-ball machine.
Why they ever bothered to
translate it into English I'll
never know; but someone in Hol-
lywood will make a mint out of
it yet! H.W.

Biased US. text ousted

VICTORIA — A _ textbook,
slanted to create anti-Soviet
bias amongst Canadian sixth-
graders is to be withdrawn from
use in British Columbia schools,
following complaints, Eileen
Dailly, B.C. minister of educa-
tion has announced.

The book’s closing pages des-
cribe the Soviet Union as pro-
longing the Vietnam war, en-
couraging Arab nations to at-
tack Israel, and generally en-
gaged in fomenting unrest
throughout the world.

John Meredith, superinten-
dent of instruction services, said
it appears a textbook selection
committee chose a British edi-
tion called Let’s Visit USSR dur-
ing a review of available re-
source books about a year ago.
Meredith said the British ver-
sion didn’t contain the contro-
versial closing material.

Somehow, he said, the agent
for the Canadian publisher,
Longmans, supplied an Ameri-
can edition with its highly sub-
jective conclusion.

Urge freeing politicals

In a letter to the Communist
Party of Canada, four Commun-
ist parties of the Middle East
have described the political
situation in Jordan and appealed
for support in their struggle for
democratic rights, indeed for
life itself. The letter reads:

“For the past two years, espe-
cially since September 1970, the
situation in Jordan has been
deteriorating. The reactionary
forces do their utmost to use all
oppressive and terrorist meth-
ods, restricting democratic free-
doms. They do not refrain from
suppression and bloodshed. .

“Thousands of detainees and
prisoners, civilians and service-
men, patriots and progressives
are held in Amman and Zarga
prisons and in Al-Jafr, notorious
desert prison. :

“Furthermore, they suffer all
kinds of repression and depriva-
tion; some of them (have been)
tortured to death.

“The release of these detain-
‘ees and prisoners, Palestinians,
Jordanians, civilians and service-
men, is a pressing matter poli-
tically and in terms of humane

treatment. To this end we appeal
to you, our brothers and dear
comrades, to help us in a world-
wide campaign, demanding the
Jordanian authorities declare an
famnesty and release all these
prisoners and detainees held for
national and political reasons.
We know that your multi-form
solidarity with us will have a
great effect in achieving this
burning demand.

“We.have confidence that you
will respond to our appeal.”

The letter is signed by the
Communist Parties of Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

In ‘response, the Communist
Party of Canada stated in a let-
ter to the prime minister of
Jordan:

“We have examined the infor-
mation we have received and
wish to inform you that our
Party fully endorses the Appeal
of the Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese
and Jordanian Communist Par-
ties and join with them in de-
manding an amnesty and the
release of all prisoners and de-
tainees being held in Jordanian
prisons for political and national
reasons.”

Meredith said the textbook
branch ordered the book and
received a letter from the agent
saying the correct title was the
inexact Let’s Visit Russia.

He said a copy was checked
after complaints and “we found
the last seven pages contained
‘material that was pretty ques-
tionable.”

A Longmans Canada Ltd.
spokesman said his firm had no
control over editorial content.
That is entirely the responsibil-
ity of the American publishers,
John Day Co., he said, but did
not say who authorized the
switch of editions, or why.

The Vancouver Province dis-
closed that the senior editor at
John Day pleaded ignorance,
having been appointed only two
months before. The book’s edi-
tor agreed the Americanized ver-
sion might be controversial in
Canada, but offered no excuse
for the offending passages.

Parents of children subjected
to this American propaganda,
whose indignation stopped its
use are evidently asking, along
with the editor of the Vancouver
Province, “why, in the midst of
a national clamor for more
Canadian content in everything
in this country, we still rely on
U.S. texts for school books.”

More drills for dentists

BRATISLAVA The very
latest dentistry instruments are
being made by the Chirana plant
in western Slovakia. Every year
new types of dental drills, most-
ly Czechoslovak patents, leave
the development department of
this factory. Most of its pro-
ducts, including other medical
instruments, are for export to
USSR, Greece, Chile, Iran, Cuba |
and Poland. a4 Me

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1972—PAGE 9