“| think we are being exploited ”

ton.

UE News Service

25 years ago...

BAR TRIBUNE SCAB
PAPER ADMITTED

WINNIPEG — The day be-
fore the TLC opened here, pub-
lic relations director Leslie

ismer barred the Canadian
Tribune from the press table.
Wismer told the press that the
Halifax TLC convention had
Tuled that correspondents from
the Tribune not be.allowed the
usual press badge to sit at the
convention press table. The
Congress was opposed to com-
Munism, Wismer pointed out to
the daily papers, and did not
recognize communists or their
sympathizers as delegates. The
Same Congress) policy applied to
. the Communist correspondents.
. However feeling that more
Justification was called for by this
transparently undemocratic act,

arring the only national labor
weekly in Canada, Wismer de-
tailed the usual canard about the

Ommunist press not being a
free press, and the Communists

arring reporters from their
Conventions.
The Tribune
August 25, 1952.

_ FLASHBACKS FROM |
THE COMMUNIST PRESS

50 years ago...

WUHAN GOVERNMENT
BRUTALLY CRUSHES
LABOR UNIONS

WUHAN, China — During
the last three days the bureaus of
28 labor unions have been oc-
cupied by troops. All documents
and everything in the bureaus
were confiscated. The trades
council of the Province of Hupe,
has protested to the central
committee of the Kuomintang
and to the Wuhan government
and demanded that declarations
of the government and the
Kuomintang promising the
workers and peasants organiza-
tions should be kept.

The University of Wuhan has

also been occupied by troops.

The occupation took place dur-
ing the congress of the Chinese
Students League. According to
the statements of travellers who
have arrived from the districts,
the regime of terror introduced
by the new authorities is worse
than the terror of Chiang Kai-
shek in Shanghai.

_ The Worker
August 27, 1927.

4 editorial said “if the Fascists have not a

EIDUITORILALL
COMIMUEINT

A coalition for jobs

The Canadian labor movement re-
jected the government's invitation to join
with it.in its destruction of the economy.
Rather than being taken in as ac-
complices, the CLC and its affiliates
justifiably demanded instead that Ot-
tawa immediately end its wage-cutting
program and embark on a campaign to
create jobs.

There is mass unemployment in this
country — well over one million. There
are countless other Canadians such as
students and those on fixed incomes
bearing the full brunt of runaway in-

flation, a shrinking jobs market, and the.

myriad of social problems a sick
economy brings with it.

The CLC has replied to Ottawa. with
proposals to ease the economic squeeze
on workers and their families which,
while not getting at the cause of our
economic ills, can be supported and
fought for. They include a massive hous-
ing program, a reduction in personal in-
come taxes, a $1-billion public invest-
ment program to create jobs and a $50
per month increase in pensions.

In an urgent message to the recent

premier’s conference, the CLC urged
the premiers to prevail upon Ottawa to
take action to create jobs now. “We can
no longer tolerate a government which

has made unemployment a way of life,”
the CLC said.

Other militant examples of labor’s
fightback against Bill C-73 and for
policies to create jobs are seen in recent
actions by the Nova Scotia labor move-
ment and in Toronto where this year’s
Labor Day march will take place on the
theme of Full Employment to which all
interested organizations are being in-
vited to participate.

Such moves toward all-in unity in the
fight for jobs should be expanded on a
Canada-wide scale. The CLC should
consider a “people’s coalition for jobs” to
embrace the widest sectors of Canadians
—unions, unemployed, churches, stu-
dents, pensioners, political parties — all
who are concerned with the need to turn
our economy around.

The course is being set, the time is now
for a massive counter-attack on
Trudeau’s bankrupt policies.

Alarming fascist upsurge

The neo-fascist National Front in Bri-
tain makes world headlines. It preaches
racism openly, holds rallies and marches
protected agairist public wrath by lines of
British police.

In Illinois, we see the disgraceful spec-
tacle of the American Civil Liberties

Union defending in court the “right” of .

the U.S. Nazi Party to “free speech”.
Rome’s Gestapo Chief Herbert Kap-
pler is spirited to safety in West Germany

amidst a surge of public sympathy. He |

was serving life imprisonment for war
crimes in Italy. Over 60 nazi elite SS
Guard reunions have been held in the
FRG since last winter. A new spate of
Adolph Hitler books and movies is born.

‘There are many more less publicized
incidents — but what we are witnessing is
a resurgence of neo-nazi activity which
arises out of the socio-economic crisis in
Western capitalist nations.

In spite of its multiple outward forms
and covers, fascism is anti-communist,
anti-labor and racist. It is an extension of
monopoly-capitalism, its most brutal
form.

Hand in hand with neo-nazi_ re-
surgence goes the more “polite” debate
about civil rights. During the 1930’s,
when Communists and other democratic
forces in Canada were battling the fas-
cists and exposing their dangerous mes-
sage, the daily press talked about “the
Communist menace”. The police pro-
tected nazi meetings and arrested
anti-fascists.

Efforts to ‘enact group libel laws
against fascist anti-Semitic attacks were
criticized by the Toronto Globe in an

; editorial “Why be Touchy?” which called

such laws “not the British way, mischiev-
ous and undemocratic”. The Globe

worthwhile idea in baiting the Jews it will
die anyway... ..”

It didn’t die, but tens of millions o
people the world over did.

Substitute Pakistanis for Jews; or
Caribbean immigrants in Britain for
Jews to update the fascist message. Sub-
stitute the Toronto Star’s recent editorial
attack on the “right and left menace in
Britain” for the Globe’s 1930's rationale
to take the heat off fascism and distribute
it “evenly”.

Consider the connection between at-.
tacks on non-white immigrants in
Canada and the National Front’s call for
the forced expulsion of non-white im-
migrants from Britain — both defended
because “they are taking our jobs”, in
conditions of mass unemployment.

Wonder about the fact that nazi
groups like the Western Guard here, the
Ku Klux Klan in the U.S., the-National
Front in the UK, the thousands-strong
nazi organizations in FRG are permitted
to preach their hatred and ask yourself
why, 32 years after World War 2, this is
still allowed, even defended as “free-
dom of speech”.

History clearly shows that in a period
of crisis the capitalist system requires
scape-goats. It could be Jews, it could be
Japanese immigrants, Italians, Pakis-
tanis or Jamaicans. Added to this is one
constant ingredient — anti-communism
which is the major ideological weapon of
fascism. Whether subtley hidden in Star
editorials or openly brandished in vio-
lent attacks, its nature is the same.

Democratic Canadians, the labor
movement in particular, should be clear
on this issue. The struggle for labor’s
rights, an extension of democratic rights
and for world peace is a’struggle against
fascist ideology. Anti-communism, ra-
cism, “big labor” notions and chipping
away at our democratic gains all aid

capitalism and its right bower, fascism.
- “PACIFIC: TRIBUNE~SEPTEMBER 2, 1977—Page 3