Cancel forest licences, demands Rush

As corporate powerbrokers
from Canadian Pacific, MacMillan

Bloedel and Domtar huddled with -

premier Bill Bennett Thursday in
Victoria, the monopoly takeovers
' under discussion were blasted as a

*‘bloody disaster’” and ‘‘a grave,

threat to the interests of the people
“jit Caw

The strongest response came
from Communist Party leader
Maurice Rush who demanded
Wednesday that Bennett publicly
declare that the government will
cancel all tree farm licenses and

4

other timber harvesting licenses
held by MacMillan Bloedel if there
is any change in its corporate
structure.

Rush also demanded that the

government call a special session of '

the legislature to head off the
takeover of the giant forest
company by introducing legislation
to bring it under public ownership
and control.

The International Wood-
workers of America also called on
the government to block any
takeover of MacMillan Bloedel,

Ywenty years ago, on January 2, 1959, Fidel Castro (centre) and his Revolutionary Army entered the

predicting that if ownership passed
into the hands of Canadian Pacific,
capital would be diverted away
from the forest industry into real
estate and other industries that the
giant multinational has interests in.

IWA president Jack Munro
said Tuesday that a takeover of
MacMillan Bloedel ‘‘would be a
bloody disaster for B.C. The
premier should have flatly warned
that it just won’t happen.’’ Munro
also noted the power of the
government to withdraw timber
rights in the event that corporate

NU

e

Cuban capital of Havana to a tumultuous welcome, signalling the victory of the Cuban Revolution.
Celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary are being held all across Cuba — as well as around the world.

Threat of U.S. intervention looms in Iran

J led that Akan

ownership changes.

The battle for control over the
multinational companies flared into
the open last week with countering
offers by MacMillan and Domtar, a
Montreal based forest products
firm, to buy each other out.
MacMillan seemed to have the
upper hand and if successful would
have increased its assets to become
the fifth largest forest company in
North America.

Then Canadian Pacific entered
the picture with a bid to buy out 51
percent of MacMillan shares.

MacBlo takeover ‘a grave threat’

Canadian Pacific is already the
chief stockholder of MacMillan
with 13.4 percent of the shares, and
it also became known that
Canadian Pacific had been secretly
buying Domtar shares. Canadian
Pacific’s strategy was obviously
aimed at adding to its corporate.
empire a giant, cross-Canada forest
monopoly through a combined
MacMillan and Domtar.
Canadian Pacific’s move on
MacMillan prompted B.C. premier

See GOVT page 8

Trident marchers
convicted by U.S.

The pacifist Pacific Life
Community said this week that it
will continue its campaign of civil

disobedience against construction
of the LI.S.-Prident-muctear base in
Bangor, Washington despite the
U.S. court decision Tuesday which

oe ee tee

of illegally entering the submarine
base.

Fifteen Canadians were among
the 176 convicted by U.S. District
Court judge Donald Voorhees in a
judgement brought down this week
after decision was reserved last
month. Sentencing — the 176 could
face six months imprisonment and
a $500 fine — is expected January
26.

The charges are the result of
actions during ‘‘Bangor Summer’,
organized last May by the PLC as
well as other anti-nuclear groups,
during which some 4,000 people
marched on the base while a smaller’
group of 300 scaled the barbed wire
fence around the base.

The two-day action was part of

Opposition closing in on Shah

The 38-year rule of the Shah of
Iran appeared close to an end this
week despite desperate attempts by
the U.S. backed monarch to form
Yet another civilian government and
the possibility of intervention by
the U.S. Navy which this week
dispatched a carrier task force to
the Persian Gulf.

Both actions were attempts to
\quell the revolutionary upsurge in
ran where a massive strike by the
ountry’s 67,000 oil workers has
tiven impetus the demand, voiced
y millions of demonstrators across
the country, for the Shah’s ouster.

Hundreds have been killed in
the Iranian military’s armed assault
Xgainst anti-Shah demonstrations

ut even in the army cracks of
Hissension had begun to appear as
Several news sources — including
ime magazine — carried reports
Of troops joining demonstrators.

Elsewhere, however, the
Shah’s army chief of staff moved
bunitively against the strike by oil
Workers, ordering thousands back

to their jobs at gunpoint. But even
in the face of repression, many
refused to return and Iranian oil
production, normally running at
about six-million barrels per day,

remained well below half that
amount.

In addition to the strike by oil
workers, bank workers, electrical
workers, civil servants, postal

IRANIAN DEMONSTRATORS . .

Shah’s ouster.

. resounding demand for the

workers, teachers, professors,
hospital workers and those in the
news media left their jobs last week
to join in the demand for the
removal of the Shah.

The Shah has sought to
maneuver to maintain his tenous
power and has held discussions
aimed at the formation of a civilian
cabinet, first with a former interior
minister Gholam Hussein Sadighi,
and more recently with Shapour
Bakhtiar, a French-educated lawyer
and also a former minister. But
both have been expelled from the
influential National Front, the
major opposition force to the Shah,
and Bakhtiar was not expected to
be any more successful than his
predecessor in forming a cabinet.

This week, thousands of
demonstrators in Tehran, the
capital, denounced Bakhtiar for
holding discussions with the Shah.

The wave of strikes and
demonstrations and the failure of
the Shah to win any significant

See ACTION pg. 7

a continuing campaign of civil
disobedience by the organizations
involved against construction of the
Bangor base, site for installation of
the Trident “‘first strike’’ nuclear
submarine. It was also intended to

focus attention on Trident at the
eae 7 eg se er ——
special session on disarmament.
Some members of the Pacific
See U.S. pg. 2

© SUPERMAN: He’s made

the leap from comic
books to the cinema, and
is adding new dimen-
sions to the great
American myth, in which.
the good guy is always
white, page 7.

x
\

@ LABOR: Jack Phillips
looks at the latest
statistical figures on the
growth of the labor
movement and their im-
plications for the trade
union movement, page 8.