Condensed from an article

OLISH armies, consisting of some 80,000 trooy
fighting with the Red Army; have xeached i

Seat

The
PEOPLE

Phone MAr. 6929

Vanceuver, British Columbia and ‘printed at East End
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>, L19 West Pender Street,

Editor
‘HAL GRIFFIN

Perspective for Coalition

ROM the moment the - Labor-Progressive
Party first advanced the perspective of a
Liberal-Labor coalition government as the prac-
tical instrument to secure fulfilment of postwar
reconstruction plans for economic security and
democratic progress this policy has been sub-
jected to abuse and distortion. Most of the
abuse, the wild talk that the PP is “selling out
socialism,’
—and those in the active membership who give
it title to leadership—of the CCF, who have
learned all too well that the demagogic trick of
charging an opponent with’ the very thing they
ate trying to do themselves is a convenient way
of distracting public attention.

At the same time there are CCF supporters
and working. people of no political affiliation
who honestly confuse collaboration as they have
ceme to understand it between a working class
party and a capitalist party by which the work-
ing class party surrenders its claim to that desig-
mation by misleading the working people into
support of policies. opposed to their interests;
and cooperation between a working ciass party
and patt or all of a capitalist party for an imme-
diate end that is in the common interest—<co-
operation that in no way restricts the right of
the working class party to conduct its own in-
dependent campaign for its own policies.

Between these two conceptions is the -vast
sulf that separates the Social Democrats of Fin-
land, who have led the Finnish people to disas-
ter as pawns of the Nazis, and the Communists
in the Yugoslav coalition provisional govern-
ment who are leading the Yugoslav peoples to
victory and the establishment of a new demo-

eracy.

a Labor-Progressive proposal is a perspec-
tive derived from a study of the national
in Quebec and. Ontario as

political situation,
lt is a perspective

well as in British Columbia.

based on the probable necessities of the next
federal election outcome in which no party is
likely to have a clear majority, presenting the
alternatives of a coalition of progress or a coali-
tion of reaction. And it is not, as the CCF en-
deavors to suggest, a proposal for a formal pre-
election alliance.

of course, comes from the leadership’

What Kind of Govern-

In his pamphlet,
ment’, Tim Buck places it this way:

“. . ... The only Dominion government
that can be elected, which will carry through
‘policies of cooperation in mutual aid abroad and
fall employment with far-ceaching social re-
forms at home is a government representing a
patinership of labor with thar section of the
capitalist class which is willing to support polt-
cies based upon the principles, enunciated in the
joint declaration issued at Teheran.”

Now a belated recogniticn of the correct-
ness of the perspective drawn three months
ago by the LPP is beginning to find reflection
in other quarters.

The Vancouver Daily Province on July 22
carried a despatch from Ottawa stating:

~Stx months ago tt was hard to find a Liber-

al member of parliament who did not declare,.

and apparently believe that this party could
weather a general election and come through
with a comfortable, if reduced, majority over

all others.

“Today . . . many of them are convinced
that when the next election its over there will
not be one group with the power in themselves
to form a govetnment.”

And Saturday Night, discussins the possi-
bilities of a post-election coalition government,
in its July 22 issue, comments:

“.. .. It probably would be the consensus
of Opinion that the election is likely to end in a
stalemate, with no party having an overall ma-
jority with which to control parliament... .

“What it all botls down to ts that any of
three parties has a chance of electing the largest
group and none much chance of securing an
overall majority.”

What it boils down to for all of us who
want to direct our country along the highway
of international cooperation and national pro-
gress is that we must secure the election of a
strong bloc of labor representatives, the factor
which will decide that the coalition is one of
progress and not one of reaction.

Polish soil is, of course, that region west of the sc
have been resisting so heroically the oppression <
from the Polish government-in-exile.

And now the issue arises of
who will speak for Poland.

Is it to be the Polish govern-
ment-in-exile, which the Soviet
Union does not recognize, and
which withdrew its soldiers from
Soviet soil?

Ts it to be a Reson AMG per-
haps, patterned on the Allied
model, which will adminster Po- |
lish territories, but not recognize
Polish sovereignty ? ;

Or will it be some new autho-
rity, such as the Polish National _
Gouncil, formed inside of Poland

on January 1, 1944, to which the .

Soviet government this week an-

nounced its intention of turning

over all liberated territories? |
Answers to these questions will

unravel finally the knotty prob- -

lems of Poland’s future, and once
and for all lay the basis. for elimi-
nating this problem enone ube
United Nations. —

We do not know all ‘the
answers. But we can surely elimi-—
nate two of the above possibili-
ties. There is no doubt that the
Polish government-in-exile wall
claim sovereignty in Poland. (Jan
Ciehanowski, ambassador to the
United States, denounced the Po-
lish National Council as “a typi-

cal puppet government imposed |

by Moscow.”) But as things
stand now, unless the most rea-
sonable elements of that govern-
ment-in-exile break with’. then:

own reactionaries and unite with .

the National Council, they hardly
stand a chance to figure in the
reconstruction of a new Poland. '

Possibility two can also be=

eliminated. The Soviet govern-
ment, as its statement averred,
has no intention of setting up any
AMG of its own for Poland: Its ©
all attitude toward Poland is that
of an ally; it does not intend to
occupy and adminster a people
with whom it is allied in spirit
and fact.

So there is bound to arise a ~

new Polish authority,-” based
largely on the Polish National

Council, which re
People’s Army insi

-large groups of th

mocratie parties;
Party, the Socialist,
Party and broad str

: tic 2 as a who

Tee Polish Nation:

come out fours
“Polish Constitutior
1921 “the original c
the basis of which P

-born. after the las

Mhis single step of
legianee to the Mar
stitution is- of ee
portance |. - 5

. Hor there are two

in Polish history 1

in Mareh, 1921 It

_-etatic constitution.
the French models w
Siding in, the people |
;elected, representatiy

democrats,,.even 4
_ Stanislaw  Mikolaje
the Peasants, were {
constitution 20 yea

Fre

Te Free German ft
appealed’ for perr

. on the western ands
. of the Union of Gai

a public statement, it
in Britain have a bw

: “mandy front to spe:

the opposite trenche
“this way, we coult
shorten the war and

“This would be ¢
tude we could exter
ment.of Britain. We
who desire the desit
That is Hitler’s wer

- : Two members of the undergroun”
smuggled out of Poland; (Right
Danish patriots defy their Nazi ©