BRITISH COLUMBIA

Unemployed
meet set
for Nov. 2

The labor movement wants to “reach
out” to broad sections of British Colum-
bia’s unemployed workers and help build a
united effort to fight unemployment in
Canada.

They’ll be doing that next month when
representatives from church and commun-
ity organizations, trade unions and food
banks gather in Vancouver’s Swedish Hall
for a conference on unemployment Nov. 2.

““We’re trying to reach as many people as
possible. The labor movement wants an
open forum with the community to look at
ways to fight unemployment,” explained
unemployment activist and conference
organizer Terry Hanley.

Hanley, who works at the Vancouver

| Unemployment Action Centre, noted the
conference is the third on unemployment

sponsored by the centre. But in this one
trade unionists hope to meet jobless
workers who have little or no previous con-
tact with organized labor, she said.

“Too often unemployed people are told

- that organized labor’s hard-won wages and

working conditions are responsible for
unemployment. We [ES
want to show that |, ¥
this isn’t the case,
and that jobless
workers are strong-
est when they’re
organized with trade
unions to fight for f}
real alternatives to |
unemployment.” _ ff

The conference, F
Which runs from 9 ™ ee ;
guest speakers and a final discussion, will
benefit from the experience of the Great
Depression’s jobless leaders, Hanley repor-
ted.

Among those leading workshop discus-
sions will be Bob Jackson and other
members of the 1935 On-to-Otttawa trek.

The conference sponsors, including the
Vancouver Unemployed Action Centre, the
Vancouver and District Labor Council and
Vancouver’s east end First United church,
have invited a leading churchman out-
spoken on social concerns to attend the
Meeting.

Rey. Dennis Drainville, author of the
hard-hitting Anglican Church report, Pov-
erty in Canada, will attend.

Hanley said the conference, which can
sesat some 200 delegates and observers, has
receives promises of four to five delegates
from several church, community and
women’s organizations. The Vancouver
Food Bank will send observers.

Other sponsoring organizations include
the 1935-1985 On-to-Ottawa Trek commit-
tee, the Downtown Eastside Residents’
Association, End Legislated Poverty, Van-
couver Status of Women, and the Down-
town Eastside Youth Activities Society.

“One thing we’ll stress at this conference
is that the unemployed, united, can win.
They did it before in the ’30s, winning the

_ establishment of welfare to replace soup

lines and work camps, and unemployment
insurance. And they brought down the
Bennett government,” Hanley pointed out.

“What organized labor wants to see in
the long run is a united unemployment
movement from all sectors, doing some pos-
itive actions to put Canadians back to work.”
_ The Swedish Hall is at 1320 East Hast-
ings St. For further information on the con-
ference and its services — including free
childcare — phone the centre at 684-8653.

Continued from page 1
would be detrimental their business,” said
Bert Rougeau, Reatail Clerks co-ordinator
for the boycott campaign.

“Tt takes us right back to the early 1960s
and the injunctions that the labor move-
ment fought to get rid of,” he said.

The boycott of the Ontario-based
chain, initially launched some 18 months
ago, was to have been given a major boost
this month to target pre-Christmas sales at
the stores. Rougeau has been promoting
the campaign throughout the labor
movement and the Lower Mainland
stores, where much of the business is con-
centrated and where trade union support
can best be mobilized, were to be major
part of the campaign.

The court injunction’ will make the
campaign a much more difficult one and
indicates the extent to which the courts are
again being used to thwart trade union
action on behalf of an affiliate.

In its application to the court, Pacific
Associates Stores Ltd., which owns the
franchise for the stores, argued that it has
no legal connection with Canadian Tire
and therefore has nothing to do with the
Prince George store.

Forster and Donald Graham are listed
in Statistics Canada’s Inter-Corporate
Ownership as owning 48 per cent each of
Pacific Associates.'Canadian Tire in Onta-
rio is listed as owning four per cent.

“There’s no doubt in our minds that
there’s a connection between Pacific Asso-
ciates and Canadian Tire,” said Rougeau,
“but we’ve got to prove it legally.”

Rougeau emphasized that leafletting
and other actions were still going on at
other Canadian stores elsewhere in the
province and the boycott campaign was
still on in support of the Prince George
strike.

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BOYCOTT INJUNCTION. . .one of the most sweeping in two decades.

Organized into the Retail Clerks in Sep-
tember, 1983, the workers at the Prince
Goerge operation have been on the picket
line since December, 1983 in their demand
for a first contract.

Since that time, they have been sub-
jected to harassment by the RCMP as
scabs have been escorted to work and the

picket line has been the scene of several
incidents, including one in which shotgun
shells were placed in the picketers’ fire
barrel.

The company has demanded an open
shop clause as a condition on any collec- |

tive agreement. eg (lea

Gov't forced to lift ban on peace speaker

Public pressure has forced the federal
immigration department to back down and
allow a New Zealand peace activist to tour
Canada on a speaking engagement.

Owen Wilkes, an expert on nuclear wea-
pons systems who speculates the U.S.
Tomahawk cruise missile’s launching sys-
tem is being tested in B.C., was initially
summoned to an immigration department
hearing which might have resulted in his
expulsion from Canada.

But that hearing was cancelled, said Phil
Rankin, the lawyer who was to have repres-
ented Wilkes, following an outcry from sev-
eral peace organizations and leading MPs,
including NDP defence critic Pauline Jewett
and Liberal Warren Allmand.

During his British Columbia tour Wilkes
has also pointed to the large Canadian
Armed Forces base at Masset, on the Queen
Charlotte Islands, as the site for a U.S. spy
antenna that is part of the network ringing
the Pacific Ocean. The data is relayed to the
U.S. Navy, Wilkes has said.

Wilkes also told a Victoria audience Oct.
17 that the increased presence of U.S. sub-
marines in the Nanoose Bay weapons test-
ing range — the site of an ongoing protest
by area residents — indicates that the U.S.
is almost certainly testing the launching sys-
tem for the submarine launched version of
the U.S. cruise attack missile.

Revelations like that got Wilkes into
trouble in both Sweden and Norway, the
sites of U.S. military espionage installations.

Wilkes was a researcher for the Stock-
holm International Peace Research Insti-
tute (SIPRI) when he was tried and con-
victed under Sweden’s anti-espionage laws
for endangering the “security of the realm.”

His “crime” was that he had taken pho-
tos of a military installation while on a bicy-
cling tour of the country. As he was to point

ut during his sensational trial, there were

‘no signs prohibiting photographing the

installation.

Wilkes’ defenders, including Swedish
Nobel prize-winner Gunnar Myrdal, pointed
out that much more detailed information
on Sweden’s military capabilities was
undoubtedly already available to the Soviet
Union.

But, his defenders noted, Wilkes convic-

_ tion was not due to Sweden’s alleged worry

over security. It had more to do with hinder-
ing the work of SIPRI and the Swedish
peace movement.

Wilkes himself said the information
shows Sweden is not living up to its reputa-
tion of neutrality.

“Sweden doesn’t want the public discuss-
ing the details of military policy the way it is
happening in other countries, like Britain
and West Germany,” Wilkes said then.

One year earlier Wilkes and fellow
researcher Nils Gleditsch were sentenced to
six months imprisonment in Oslo, Norway,
after publishing information on the coun-
try’s military installations. Oslo university
law professor Tortein Eckhoff wrote then
that the researchers’ report, published as
Uncle Sam’s Ears, “made use solely of open
sources.

“They have localized the stations with the
aid of the telephone directory, trade union
publications, maps, and property record
books. Their observations of buildings,
antennae, etc. have been made from places
open to any passerby,” he wrote.

“Clearly,” Eckhoff stated, “the intelli-
gence agencies of foreign powers can, with-
out risk, undertake to do precisely what
Gleditsch and Wilkes have done. ..Anyone
with the necessary technical knowledge can,
on the basis of the shape, size and direction
of the antennae, draw conclusions similar to

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those of the two researchers. . .”

Public protests succeeded, in both the
“Oslo Rabbit Trail” and the Swedish cases,
in reducing the convictions to the lesser
offences of espionage without intent to spy
for a foreign power. Wilkes received sus-
pended sentences and was barred from
Sweden for 10 years.

Rankin said Wilkes admitted to the con-
victions when asked by immigration
authorities on his entry to Canada through
Vancouver International airport Oct. 5.

He was allowed to enter Canada, but was
summoned back to Immigration Canada
Oct. 11, one day after he had addressed an
audience at Langara campus in Vancouver.

Immigration officials presented Wilkes
with a report, signed by the senior immigra-
tion officers at Vancouver airport, stating
that Wilkes’ presence in Canada was con-
trary to sections of the Immigration Act.
The report said paragraph 19(1\c) of the
Act prohibits persons convicted of offenses
which, if committed in Canada, would vio-
late provisions of the Official Secrets Act.

A hearing date was set for Oct. 15. Ran-
kin, hired for the case Oct. 11, petitioned for
a postponement.

“But the extensive lobby across Canada
appears to have changed their minds,” said
Rankin.

Wilkes has been issued a special ministe-
rial permit to continue his speaking tour.
But, such permits can be withdrawn “atany _
time,” Rankin warned. ia

The tour also includes Roman Bedor, a
lawyer from Belau, a South Pacific island —
nation of 27,000 citizens currently regotiat-
ing independence from the United States.
The U.S. objects to its protectorate’s inclu-
sion of a nuclear-weapons free zone clause
in Belau’s new constitution, and is stalling —

the process. Bedor is involved in that fight. _

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 23, 1985 e 3