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Published Weekly at
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by the
TRIBUNE PUBLISHING CO.
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26

— ee
TOM McEWEN .
IVAN BIRCHARD

Editor
Manager

EDITORIAL BOARD :
Nigel Morgan Maurice Rush Minerva Cooper Al Parkin

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“Unlawful assembly

eee workers were charged with unlawful assembly
in police court this week and committed to a higher
court for jury trial. The arrest of these trade unionists and
the nature of the charges preferred against them raises a
number of important issues for organized labor. First, of

course, is the question of their defense. This is not the

ptivate concern of this or that trade union or other labor
organization of which they may be members but a question
touching upon the vital interests of the entire labor move-
ment. What today may be used against any one section of

the labor movement, tomorrow may be directed against every -

section,

The crime committed by these workers, if such it may —

be called, was one of picketing a section of the powerful
Southam press, a newspaper monopoly which has embarked
upon a union-smashing campaign in all its Canadian plants,
from the Hamilton Spectator .(new being picketed by strik-
ing steel workers) to the Vancouver Daily Province. The
Southams are determined to smash all newspaper unions
and institute open shop conditions as they already have
succeeded in doing at Winnipeg.

Their task is being made easier by officers of such AFL
trades unions as the Printing Pressmen’s Union who see
only their own immediate narrow interest in “honoring a
contract” which the employers have broken in principle if
not in fact and who choose to ignore the interests even of
other organized printing trades workers within the same
plant. How long can the pressmen or any other organized
section of the printing trades hold their gains, except on
the employers’ terms, if API typographers are replaced
by company-dominated men, conscious strikebreakers? The
Southams have conferred upon this ill-favored collection of

professional strikebreakers and scabs the plausible mantle-

of “a Canadian union operating under a closed shop.” This
argument, designed to mislead those unfamiliar with the
labor movement, does not alter the fact that it is a com-
pany union with a shop closed to all except strikebreakers
and scabs. Pressmen who cross picket lines to work under
such conditions forfeit the respect of all other trade union-
ists even though they do so under threat of having their
union cards lifted. Their union itself is in fact lost to the
- legitimate trade union movement when it must resort to
such methods of intimidating its own members.

The leaders of the International Typographers Union
cannot evade responsibility for their failure to give leader-
ship. The Southams secured an injunction restraining the
ITU from: picketing the Province, an injunction which has
now been modified as a result of the protest it engendered.
Instead of ignoring the injunction and holding to their
written and unwritten right to picket, the ITU leaders sent
their men home over the objections of the men themselves
and publicly announced that they would “religiously” ob-
Serve the injunction. They left it to other trade unions and
labor organizations, who recognized . that injunctions suc-
cessfully applied to one union could be invoked against all,
to take up their duties on the picket line. They too made
it easier for the Southams to provoke such “incidents” as
occurred last week.

Organized labor now has two jobs to accomplish: to
tally to the defense of those who had courage to hold the
Province picket line in defiance of the injunction and to
put a picket line around the Province that will remove from
Vancouver the disgrace of having an anti-labor scab paper
publishing in a union town. :

Salute to union veterans

pee Pacific Tribune takes this opportunity te greet the

thousands of workers and their families who will par-
ticipate in the big labor jubilee picnic at Confederation Park

on Sunday. Since this annual outing was first initiated by

-the LPP, it has grown in political and social importance.
“ach year, thanks to the untiring energy of members and
~upporters, something new has always emerged to provide
enjoyment and education to all who attend.

In this jubilee year of Vancouver, it is fitting that some-
where in the stream of events, honor and recognition should
be accorded to those grand old-timers in the trade union
movement, whose loyalty and consistent efforts have inspired
the growth of our present day trade unions. The “oldest
trade unionist” contest affords an opportunity to salute
those veterans of trade unionism.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE FOUR

Peace Conference

if its opening session in the

Luxembourg palace in Paris,
President Georges Bidault of
France appealed to the 21 rep-
resentatives of the nations gath-
ered at the peace conference to
“end the plague of war.” Those
words express the fervent hope
of millions of the world’s peo-
ples, who will folisw the delib-
erations of the peace conference
at once with hizh hopes and
grave fears.

Almost 28 years ago, in Insc
cemtier, 1918, a ‘biz four’ met
to Craft and ratify tne Treaty
of ‘ersailles- Lloyd George of

_ Britain, Georges Clemenceau of

France, Vittoria Oclinds of It
aly, and Woodrow Wilsen of
the U.S. Their cone:pt of “war
guilt,” their imperialist intrigues
and their class hatred of the
Young Soviet Republic, could
ouly result in bringing into be
ing a peace treaty (Versaill>:)
whieh contained witltin i:self
all the germs of a second world
war. liow rapidly these germs
matured into a glonal war the
world now Knows to iis sorrow.

Their conference had four
main objectives: “security,”
which they translated into pow-
er blocs through the medium of
the now defunct League of Na-
tions; “self-determiination,” which
they construed into wresting
territory from the USSR with
which to create a “cordon sanii-
taire” against communisn3;
“compensation,” which they
twisted into war reparations in
cash and in kind, collected
through the medium of “Daves
plans,” “Young plans,” ste, and
whicr finally brought theic own
economic structure erashing
down about their ears in the
U.S. stock exchange crasn of
1929. And finally “revenge”
against their former enemy, a
hanGy political weapon to cash in
on popular clamor. Lloyd George
the crafty Welshman and
spokesman for the British Em-
Pire won his 1918 election on
such slogans as “Hang the Kai-
ser,” “Make Germany pay,” “Shill-
ing for Shilling, ton for ton,”
and so on. Clemenceau, dubbed

the “tigre” and “Pere la victor—_

ie,” cynical and crafty, wallow-
€d in the popularity of his hat-
red of “le boshe.”

French statesmen who follow-
ed Clemenceau, Sharing his con-
cept of “security” in power poli-
tics, with 1,500,000 soldiers dead,

Jiberation of the

sought refuge in the concept of
a Maginot line, and the degen-
eration that produced a Vichy
and a prostrate France.
Orlando of Italy left the peace

cenference in a huff, because
the secret deals between Bri-
tain, France and Italy (made

public by the Bolsheviks) were
net reckoned in the daily de-
conference.
Even an Italian liberal should
have known that “secret deals”
should not be too! much spoken
about.

Woodrow Wilson was the man
of the hour at the conference,
but he stood alone. His ideals
for 2 “new order’—security for
@reat and small, the end of the
balance of power politics’—writ-

ten into the Atlantic Cherter 23 _

years later, were regarded by
the diehard imperialists of the
calibre of Lloyd George and
Clemenceau as “naive and child-
ish.” “Eiven God was satisfied
with ten commandments,” sneer-
ed the ‘Tigre,’ but this man
Wilson insists on fourteen.”
Wilson returned from Versailles
a broken and disillusioned man,
and an isolationist
gave him a final “coup de grace”
by rejecting his League of Na-
tions.

Victor and vanquished had one
basic, ideal in common, so well
expressed by the first “socialist”
prime minister Ebert of the Wei-
mar Republic in 1919 in his
ecquiescence with the edict of
the junker Hindenburg . the
High Command expects the gov-
ernment to cooperate with offi-
cers corps in the suppression of
Bolshevism and the maintenanc>
of discipline and order in the
army.” The “Suppression of Bol-
shevism’” became the price for
the tempering of “revenge” of
the victors against the van-
guished, In March of 1933 it pro-
duced a Hitler with the torch
fabricated at Versailles to ig-
nite the world.

ODAY, as the peace confer-

ence opens, more than 2
year after the end of the second
world war, there are factors
which engender great hopes in
the hearts of peace-loving pes-
ples. There are also factors
which engender fear and ap-
prehension.

American — isolationism whicn
contributed to the demise of the
League of Nations as an instru-
ment of peace, is now replaced

Congress -

By Tom McEwen

by rampant imperialism mas-
querading under the guise af a
superior Anglo-American “de
mocracy.”’ Armed with an atom
bomb, the new “atomic diplom-
acy’ parades as the “defender
of small nations” against Com-
munism, which, placed more
bluntly, means an Anglo-Ameri-
can bloc picks up the soiled
mantle of Hutler—the mantle of
anti-communism. Drew Pearson,
notorious red-baiter and politi-
cal muckraker, has already por
trayed the peace conference as
a battle between the SByrnes-
Bevin stalwarts of “atomic de
mocracy,” and communism, “the
one great aim of Moscow.”

In 1919 it was Charles Da-
berty, minister of justice (wvho
later got embroiled in the -cus-
toms scandal graft) and Arthur
Sifton (of “Free Press” fame)
who signed at Versailles for
Canada. This time - the Right
Hon. -W. LL. MacKenzie King
journeys to Paris, talking pious
words about peace, but already
a top kingpin in atomic war
provocations against ~- Ganada’s
greatest ally, the Soviet Union

In 1919 Clemenceau barked
for a power blec to safeguard
the integrity of the French co-
lonial empire from the Hun, and
measured the contriteness of the
junkers on their ability to com=
bat communism. In 1946 De
Gaulle, fearing the forward
march of the French people to-
Wards a new order, conjures up
the past, and “appeals” for an
Angilo-U.S.-France bloc to com-
bat “totalitarianism” (read com-
munism). :

In 1919 the Soviet Union was
not at the peace conference;
Woodrow Wilson would have
had her there, but the spokes-
men of British and French im-
perialism ruled otherwise. They
were already up to the ears
in “intervention,”. spending mil-
lions of their nations’ substance
im an effort to crush the young
Soviet Republic. Needless to say
their plans failed, as all sueh
plans must fail. In 1946 the
USSR sits at the peace confer
ence, and only the USSR as 2
Socialist state can speak for
the ‘little’ nations, by a realistic
open and above—board struggle
for unity with the big nations—
for preservation of Big Four
Unity which won the war, and
on which alone, the peace de
pends.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 1946