eter yl § had tal) Qe eng rr cicierescret pe ts oe yf her ed brtatcrem sitet bg Find taeda pennant oc gh (orf betemgutcstratinn Deed Dati d ht ¢ yideD oy sie peptacid ‘007 UOM aq Ue SIU, “8121S 24} Pue 83SI 50 YEARS AGO Continued from page 14 Couver East, wrote an article for the Federa- fionist, ‘Bombs over Finland’ in which he declared that “Finland, free and independ- €nt, could never be a threat to the Soviet nion,” a statement disproved in 1941 When Finland emerged as a full ally of Nazi ermany. , But the statement served to exert still More pressure on The Advocate, which Teported the angry response it drew from Many CCF supporters. Within two weeks the Vancouver dailies were quoting these reports back from Pravda in Moscow, dis- torting them out of context in their attempts to brand The Advocate as being ‘subversive’. In fact, the Vancouver News-Herald, as I Pointed out in a statement I issued at the time, “left its readers with the impression - that The Advocate was secretly operating a | Tadio station and broadcasting Canadian 'TOOp movements to Germany.” } The resultant publicity increased the | uneasiness of the paper’s printers. Since the }) Outbreak of war they had been receiving | anonymous threats to burn down the print- | Shop in the basement of their historic old converted house in Mount Pleasant, a |, YOoden building on which they could not | Set adequate insurance. | 1] } ‘|| In mid-November the federal govern- i ment had banned The Clarion in Toronto, }, Ontario provincial and Toronto city police | Taiding its offices and its printshop and }) Stripping all copies of the Nov, 11 issue from |, the newsstands. The weekly Clarte had jjalready been banned by the Duplessis government in Montreal and the police raid on The Clarion was followed by a police raid jon Vapaus, the Finnish language weekly in | Sudbury. Our printers’ apprehension grew, although Ben Blockberger, the managing partner, ) had already instructed his linotype operator | to refer to him any ‘questionable’ copy we i ° . : : | turned in. Against the hazards of continuing | to print a paper whose circulation had | doubled from 4,000 to 8,000 he had to i Weigh the considerable amount of money it | Owed him. The paper had a perennial debt, | barely covered by the amount raised in a | fund drive, and I was careful to string out | Our Payments. ° | With the banning of the Mid-West Clar- i ton at Winnipeg in March the tension grew. li, |) ‘30s focus on peace, jobs echoed in 1985 Now I put each issue to bed, never knowing whether it would be the last. Finally, Block- berger informed me that the May 17 issue would be the last. After the war he admitted that he had been meeting Sgt. Dick Barnes, head of the RCMP special squad, on the golf course. Barnes had told him that the government hoped to suppress the paper by denying printing facilities. And as I found out as I went around, every printer in the city had been warned not to touch us. In North Vancouver, however, I found a shop which knew nothing of the warning and wanted our business. Its equipment was antiquated, it had no linotype and all type had to be set by hand, so that it took two days to com- pose and make up a four-page paper and another day to run it off on a press out of the last century. The paper missed one issue and trium- phantly resumed publication. The triumph was short-lived. The paper was banned in mid-June. Fifteen minutes before the police raided the office, Mickey Sievewright of The Province phoned to warn the staff of the impending raid, but I was not there. I was busy completely arrangements for produc- tion of the illegal Vancouver Clarion, a modest mimeographed publication which ultimately was to reach a circulation of 1,200, limited only by the supply of deviously obtained paper. Two weeks later the first issue appeared. Kay Gregory and I produced it in a chicken house on rented acreage in Burnaby where the biggest problem was to keep the feathers out of the ink. There were circulation prob- lems too, as Kay discovered one day when she was walking along Gilpin Street carry- ing copies in a shopping bag concealed by a large cabbage on top. As she walked toward the station on the old Burnaby Lake inter- urban line, a young provincial policeman overtook her and gallantly offered to carry the bag. Then she noticed that the handle was slowly tearing away. It gave just as they reached the station. Before the contents could spill, she snatched the bag, thanked him profusely and refusing his assistance, boarded the tram clutching it. The Vancouver Clarion continued to appear, produced in a succession of ‘shops’ . until the summer of 1941 when the radically || Best Wishes to the Pacific Tribune on its 50th Anniversary International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union Vancouver Local 500 VANCOUVER, BC. at of Capitalism, I hereby ci conditions and the defe: S S etter working condi a eu * * aise sitar tie Le erearia Publishing Association the sum 0 ubscribe to arig eae de nad . >. that will fight for the i F ’ paper for B.C. that will fig . le aes meager see > Gs and for it’s final aim—the aboli as the firs betterment of the con tion of Capitalism. & erking Jitions of the wersins er” for Every Worker Secre The share certificates issued to fund-raisers during the 1934-35 drive to launched the B.C. Workers’ News. President of Proletarian Publishing was Willliam ‘‘Ol’ Bill’ Bennett. changed political situation made it possible to contemplate publication of a legal paper again. It was to be a year before that paper became a reality, but on Oct. 13, 1942 the issue of The People appeared, successor to the B.C. Workers’ News, the People’s Advo- cate and The Advocate and forerunner of the Pacific Advocate and the Pacific Tribune. In all the changes that the paper has recorded in its 50 years of publication, all the advances made by working people of which it has been a part, two needs pro- claimed in the first issue in 1935 remain constant — the need to secure peace : of) against what is now the unconscionable alternative of nuclear annihilation and the ~ need for unity of all progressive forces to achieve new social advance. And for the paper that speaks so clearly for peace and jobs, another constant remains — the ever-present need for the financial support to enable it to continue the role it has played for half a century. No matter how difficult the times, its readers have never failed it. Hal Griffin is the former editor of the Fisherman, and was associate editor and edi- tor of the Tribune from 1936-1958. Join in the May Day celebrations. ; It's guaranteed to be a unifying experience. Labour unity the reality HOSPITAL EMPLOYEES’ UNION jn“ a | a