Published Weekly at
ROOM 104, SHELLY BUILDING
119 West Pender Street
Vancouver, B.C.
by the
TRIBUNE PUBLISHING CO.
MArine 5288

TOM McEWEN : Editor
IVAN BIRCHARD . Manager
2 EDITORIAL BOARD
Nigel Morgan Maurice Rush Minerva Cooper Al Parkin
Subscription Rates: 1 Year, $2.00; 6 Months, $1.00
Printed By UNIGN PRINTERS, 2303 East Hastings Stret — — — Vancouver, B.C.

Authorized as second-class mail by the post-office department, Ottawa

Dealing the people out

lose secrecy has marked all transactions between Van-

couver’s “Non-Partisan” city fathers and the BCER on
the terms of the new transportation franchise. The same
secrecy has governed procedure in suburban municipalities,
with the result, as in Burnaby, North Vancouver and other
areas, that the people have become justly suspicious of these
closed door deals with the representatives of British Colum-
bia’s top power and transit monopoly. :

Editorials appearing in issues of the Vancouver Sun
between June 15 and 29 commented tersely on the delay in
reaching agreement on transportation facilities and also on
the secret conduct of negotiations, from which the public
has been entirely excluded.

Several months ago the LPP requested from the city
clerk’s department a copy of the special committee’s report
on negotiations with the BCER and the latter’s transit and
street-repairing proposals. The LPP was informed by.the
city clerk that its proposals for a plebiscite had been “re-
ferred to the special committee re franchise, BCER” and
that was that. Again, on July 23, the LPP requested in-
formation about the projected franchise report and asked if
the committee would receive delegations of citizens who
wished to present their opinions on the franchise. The re-
quest was ignored.

The only conclusion to be drawn is that the “Non-
Partisan” city government of Vancouver is up to its collec-
tive ears in pro-BCER politics and cannot afferd to open
‘the door for expression of public sentiment on the matter,
to say nothing of submitting the issue of Vancouver's de-
crepit transportation system to a democratic plebiscite of the
people.
short of President Wilson’s ideal of ‘open covenants openly
arrived at.”

The people of Vancouver should follow the lead of their
neighbors in North Vancouver and compel the city council
to submit the whole report and recommendations of its
“special BCER Committee” for public discussion, as a pre-
lude to a plebiscite to determine whether the people of Van-
couver or the BCER is to run their city.

‘Heil Kelowna’

A few weeks ago a young East Indian resident of the
Kelowna area purchased a $6,000 home in Kelowna, mak-
ing a substantial deposit on the deal to a local real estate
firm. Engaged in farming in the area, this young woman
has been the main support of her mother and four younger
brothers and sisters. As soon as the knowledge of the pur-
chase became known, a section of Kelowna’s citizens, under
the guise of indignant ratepayers, set up a howl and massed
their forces to bar a British subject from acquiring a home
in the City.

“Property values will fall if Orientals come into the
neighborhood,” “Kelowna is an Anglo-Saxon town,” “Tax-
payers threaten to move out,’ —this is how the Kelowna
Courier features the disgraceful incident. A lot of “promin-
ent citizens” are referred to in the Courier’s presentation of
the case, but strangely enough the names of these “promin-
ent citizens,” like the KKK lynch mobs in the deep South,
are not mentioned.

Editorializing on the issue, the Courier reports that “on
Monday night Kelowna City Council reiterated and reaffiirm-
ed its several-year-old policy of being opposed to Orientals
purchasing property within the city limits, and the council
will take steps to notify all real estate firms of this, policy
and seek their co-aperation.” That quotation is an indict-
ment of any Canadian administrative body and should be
acted upon immediately by the people with the objective of
sweeping it out of office. :

We, in Canada, at some cost of human and material
resorerces, have just settled with one gang of “herrenfolk”
in Nazi Germany and now another is cropping up and
spreading its racial poison weeds on our own doorsteps.
“Morally” says the Courier editorial, “the stand of the dele-
gations and the council may be challenged to some de-
gree...’ To some degree is putting it mildly. It is repre-
hensible in the extreme and a disgrace to every concept
of freedom Canadians have worked, fought and died for.

“Prominent citizens” in Kelowna or elsewhere, who put
every obstacle in the way of a Canadian citizen purchasing
a home just because of a difference in color, have missed
what the war was about and must be halted before they can
spread this hitlerite doctine further afield.

PACLEIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 4

As the Vancouver Sun itself put it, “They fall far ~

Business as usual

EPLYING to questions in the

House of Commons on the
activities of Imspector Leopold
of the RCMP, the government’s
answer was 2 curt “yes” to the
inquiry as to whether this of-
ficial stoolpigeon’s duties “in-
cludé any portion of those assig-
ned him during the period he
was a member of the Commun-
ist Party of Canada.”

_Goupled with explanations of
the questionable, duties of In-
spector Leopold, alias Jaék Es-
selwein, the government stated
that no RCMP were engaged in
investigation of trade unions.
That is hardly a statement of
fact, as the following will show.
Esselwein, alias Leopold, join-
ed the RCMP in September 1918.
Glamorized press reports have
repeated the fable that he join-
ed the RCMP with the intention
of serving overseas in World
War I with the RCMP units.
The war was at an end, in fact
Gid end, six weeks after this
new recruit was admitted to the
force. His knowledge of langu-
ages, we are told, kept him from
getting overseas, and made him
a fine specimen for work on the
home front.

eS

Esselwein’s first job in the
RCMP was stooling on trade
unions, and the statement of
any government Official to the
contrary can not erase known
facts to thousands of trade
unionists in Canada. Remem-
ber, he joined the RCMP in
September, 1918. There was no
Workers Party of Canada, no
Communist Party of Canada,
and the Socialist Party of
Canada was already upon its
political deathbed, since its
leaders could not reconcile the
living Marxism of the Rus-
Sian revolution, with the dead
dogmas which they fondly
termed “Marxism” in their phii-
osophic ivory towers. The
Workers Party, forerunner of
the Communist Party of Can-
ada, did not come into being
until 1921, three years after
Esselwein had been stooling
in both the AFL unions and in
the OBU.

Esselwein’s first labor espion-
age assignment was in the
OBU. His assignment also

provided that he worm his
way into the AFL, which he
did in the Painters’ Local in
Regina, and from that , local
managed to get elected to the
executive of Regina Trades
Council. In those years of
readjustment “and rationaliza-
tion, the trade unions were
going through a struggle simi-
lar to that of teday. Prices
Were going up, economic crisis
was maturing and the workers
were demanding higher wages,
to meet sky-rocketing prices.

One of the most progressive
groups in the Canadian trade
unions of that day was the shop
erafts. of both railway systems,
Division 4, Railway Department,
AFL. Esselwein had an import-
ant assignment from his su-
periors to cover the 1929 con-
vention of Division 4, and to
get the ‘who’s who’ in the rail-
way shop crafts. Esconsed in
the Royal Alexander, where the
convention was being held, Essel-
wein did his prowling in the
best provocateur approved style,
by posing as an active left
winger from Regina. Even in
those days, many railroaders
had the ‘painter’ from Regina,
who did very little ‘painting,’
tagged as a stool. “No RCMP
engaged in investigation of the
trade unions” indeed! 2

We remember also the case of
Sergeant Zaneth, alias Zanetti
(also a Bohemian), of the

RCMP. Zanetti joined the So
cialist Party of Canada in its
declining years, also posing as
a ‘Marxist’ but finding the busi-
ness of provocation difficult in
a moribund group of decadent
philosophers, could deliver very
little of any tangible value to
his superiors at Ottawa. Then
came the early days of the OBU,
with its militant perspective of
@ one big union of all workers
marching forward together, and
in its ranks some of the leading
Socialists who recognized the de
cadence of ivory tower philoso-
phy and the need for action.
Zanetti, alias Zaneth, gathered

what he could in its early years .

and became the glamorized star
witness against J. S. Woods-
worth, Bill Pritchard and oth-
ers, just as 22 years later the
REMP stool, Esselwein, was to

By Tom McEwen

become the glamorized star wit
ness against the eight commun-—
ists, and for the outlawing of
the Communist Party of Canada
The “evidence” Esselwein gave
at the 1931 “trial” of the eight~
communists was nil. This evi-
dence had been- widely publish-
ed in scores of communist pap-
ers years before the Bennett

_ government launched its attacks

a

against the labor movement, by
seeking to decapitate the Com-
munist Party as a prerequisite te
“solving unemployment in 60
days.” Esselwein’s main contri-
bution at those famous “triais™
was to create the proper ccen-
spiritorial atmosphere and te
perpetuate the “get their man”
fable which has been insepar-
ably bound up with the evolu-—
tion of Canada’s strike-breaking
political police.

What was Esselwein’s assign-
ment, according to the govern-
ment answers to the questions
J. T. Bentley (CCE-Swift Cur--
rent) placed on the order paper?
To “join the Communist Party
and subsidiary organizations.”
From 1918 te 1921 Esselwein
Stooled on trade unions. Then he
Was assigned work in the Man
ist party of the day. From i916
to 1919 Zanetti, alias Zaneth,
followed a like pursuit. What, in
the parlance of the RCMP, are
“subsidiary organizations?” Any
and every organization, whether
or not promoted by= the Com-
munist Party, which may pur
sue a policy of seeking to im-
prove the lot of the commen
people and whose membership
or leadership may contain one
or any number of communists!
That includes trade unions, and
the facts of history belie the
government’s ambiguous explan- ~

ation that trade unions are
exempt from RCMP espionage-
@

It does get a bit tiresome te
those who knew this Bohemian
stoolpigeon very well to read the
glamorized accounts of his re
markabie sleuthing. No doubt it
Serves the anti-Soviet, anti-labor
proclivities of sections of the
daily press to give its readers
a dime novel thrill by painting
a glowing pen portrait of 2
common stoolpigeon, a  specié

(Continued on Page 7)
See BUSINESS

FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 1946