Tpassereece auce Published Weekly al ROOM 104, SHELLY BUILDING 119 West Pender Street Vancouver, B.C. by the TRIBUNE PUBLISHING CO. MArine 5288 TCM McEWEN Editor IVAN BIRCHARD . Manager EDITORIAL BOARD : Nigel Morgan Maurice Rush Minerva Cooper Al Parkin Subseription Rates: 1 Year, $2-00; 6 Months, $1.00 Printed By UNION PRINTERS, 2303 East Hastings Street _— — Vancourer, B-C. Authorized as second-class mail by the post-office department, Ottawa Squatters’ rights Rem every corner of the English-speaking world, Lon- : don, Ottawa, Washington, Sydney, Australia, Cape Town, South Africa, comes news of a ‘squatter’ movement; of war veterans being compelled through dire necessity to ‘take over’ vacant buildings to provide temporary homes for their families. Right here in Wancouver we have our squat- ters in the old Hotel Vancouver and at Little Mountain. With woefully few exceptions, the authorities here and elsewhere have demonstrated an appalling reluctance to face up to the issue of homes for veterans. In almost every case they have attempted to cover up their criminal inepti- tude by waxing wrathful over this “unprecedented viola- tion of the sacred rights of private property,” and howling to high heaven about ‘reds’ and communism. The squatter movement expresses the rising protest against the failure of governments to answer a basic human need—the need of men and women to find a corner they may call ‘home’ in which to shelter and rear their children. Moralists may deplore the weakening of family life, the in- crease in juvenile delinquency. Churchmen may voice their alarm over the breaking up of modern homes. Here is one aspect of the problem with which they might concern them- selves. ‘5 os The squatter movement is also a barometer—a politi- cal barometer which indicates to those who care to read that there are values higher than “private property,” and promises to be redeemed. Men who have faced death and extreme hardship for the elementary right of a home, are not to be put off indefinitely with buck-passing and red- baiting epithets. : In Canada the solution to the squatter movement is on file in every governmental archive—the construction of low- cost homes. In Europe and Asia we do not have to look for the cause of lack of homes. That is the heritage left by the blight of Hitlerism. In Canada, in Vancouver, our homes were not destroyed by war. We must look elsewhere, to the timber and steel trusts, all the forces of big business and their spokesmen in public office, for our lack of housing. Government by decree RDER-IN-COUNCIL P.€. 3689 hits at the very exist- ence of free trade unions. Its design could well have been lifted from the pages of Hitler’s labor front’ decrees. Its designers coined it to halt or limit strikes. Since it rests upon the conception that labor is ‘irresponsible, it will do neither. It is a concession to big business, to those in- dustrialists who have been shouting loudly about the “ab- sence of democracy” in the conduct of union affairs, as a means of venting their spleen at the growing solidarity of working men and women, striking for a fuller measure of the vast wealth their toil produces. P.C. 3689 empowers the federal government to con- duct a vote in any industry where a strike may be contem- plated or is in progress. This vote will include not only union members, but all the managerial staffs, foremen, straw- bosses, and the usual minority of "fence-sitters’ and ‘hitch- hikers’ who daily benefit from the efforts of the union, but lend no support. Under the order, administered by Labor Minister Humphrey Mitchell and the bosses, all these cate- gories will have a vote on any action contemplated by the union, This is a new vintage of “pure democracy,” heavily loaded against the workers. Take the steel strike in Hamilton as an example. Such a ‘vote’ would take in the bulk of the managerial staff, plus the 2,000 scabs Stelco has maintained inside the plant since the strike began. With ‘democracy’ so weighted, a “yes, we want to work for starvation wages’ vote would be easily obtainable. Then the severe penalties implicit in the order would be clamped down on the union membership, individu- ally and collectively. The system of voting provided by the order could only result in such ‘votes’ being taken on company or govern- ment offers, and not on democratic proposals of the union membership. It would also provide the government and the bosses with a workable file on ‘who’s who’ and how they vote. Some ‘“democracy.’! The conventions of both the Trades and Labor Con- gress and the Canadian Congress of Labor have expressed disgust with the latest manifestation of the King govern- ment’s strike-breaking policies, aimed to cripple and de- stroy the unions. Labor must unanimously reject this latest attempt to subvert its inalienable right to conduct its own business. PACEFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 4 A Churchill Great design Wresee Churchill has made ‘another speech, this time-in Zurich, Switzerland. His latest tory ovation called for a “Unit- ed States of Europe,” which would include a “revitalized Germany.” “On this urgent work’, said Britain’s top imper- jalist, “France and Germany must take the lead, together with Great Britain, the British Cemmonwealth .of. Nations, mighty America, and, I trust, Soviet Russia. .. .” The addition of the Soviet Union, with the qualitative prefix, “I trust,” was 2 con- cession to European opinion, and especially French opinion, which is as yet far from be- ing convinced that the “re- vitalization” of Germany, a la Churchill, will not mean an- other 1914 or a 1939. Churchill’s speech was timed to follow up on Byrnes’ Stutt- gart speech, where the Potsdam accord was unceremoniously torn up in the rush to create a Western bloc, which has long been the keystone of British policy on the European contin- ent, and now is needed more than ever to stem the tide of anti- fascist democratic progress. “If Russia came into his pro- jected “United states of Europe” Said Churchill, “then all indeed would be well.” This hypo- eritical palaver fools: no one. If Anglo-American atomic poli- cies were not primarily direc- ted against the Soviet Union and those nations of Europe who look upon the USSR as a very staunch ally, there would be no need in the first place for such @ speech. e@ T Churchill proposed is not 5 new. Following World War I, when the question of German “war guilt’ and “revitalization” was on the agenda, the German working class was already on the barricades in a number of key industrial centers. The question of a “cordon Sanitaire” against the expansion of demo- cratic progress (read commun- ism) was much more in the minds of the leading imperialist statesmen of the day, than was a “revitalized” Germany with a version of the peoples’ choice controlled war potential. Thus we found people like Lloyd George, Stanley Baidwin, the late and unlamented Ramsay MacDonald, to say nothing of a whole flock of so-called con- tinental statesmen, whooping it up for a “United states of Eur- ope.” Briand of France was one of its most noisy expon- ents, and even the defunct Lea- gue of Nations accepted the idea in “principle.” And why not, if we haven’t forgotten the political functions of the late leegue. e@: STORY shows a _ diabolical readiness on the part of Brit- ish imperialists to sell out other European nations to gain their ends. They sanctioned the Saar ‘plebiscite’ which five years lat- er led to the fall of France; they sanctioned MHitler’s Aus- trian “anchluss’” because they hoped his “drang nack osten’” would hold inviolate their own interests: Chamberlain - gave Czechoslovakia, “a small coun- try of which we know very. little” to the Hitlerite brigands. The panzer divisions rolled through Europe like a hail storm and nations such as Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Bel- gium, France, went down like nine-pins, not because their people were incapable of de fending their homeland (the underground proved the con- trary), but because, ironically enough, their war potential had been built up against the So- Cialist state that was to be come their liberator from the Nazi yoke, rather than against the Nazi frankenstein ‘which had been carefully nurtured to fill the role of the Anglo-Ameri- can bloc now desired in Chur- chill’s Zurich speech. Can anyone imagine today such countries as Poland, Hun- gary, Austria, Yugoslavia, Ru- mania, Czechoslovakia, roll- ing up their beds and walking into the Elysian garden tended by the flowery Churchill, to bask in a glorified manure pile of reaction, where such _ stal- warts of “democracy” as Franco Spain and Greece, are the elite of the new “united states of Europe,” and for the sole pur- by Tom McEwen pose of permitting themselves to become a two-time catspaw against the Soviet Union? GO FAR tthe British lQabor government, as in the case of Churchill’s Fulton, Miss. speech, has remained silent. In the ab- sence of any statement it can only be assumed that Chur- chill’s “United states of Europe” dovetails well with the ‘“get- tough-with Russia’ foreign pol- icy being advanced in the Paris peace conference and in the United Wations by Byrnes and Bevin, co-pilots of the Angic- American bloe against the USSR. The Austrian social-demoa- cratic paper ‘“Arbeiter Zeitung” has advanced a similar ‘United states of Europe” demana, thereby seeking te split the democratic camp and blocking the unity of all forces so badly needed to head off the plausible schemes of the Anglo-American warmongers. German Nazis who have been promoted to administrative posi tions of trust in the British and American zones, have hailed the Churchill proposals as a “new day” for Germany. What they actually mean is another chance for them, as a “revitalized” sec- tion of an anti-Soviet cordon, to win the objective of world rule — an objective denied them mainly by the prowess of Seviet arms and Soviet sacri- fice, Churchill is “very glad” of the backing of President Truman, who has expressed “sympathy with this great design.” He also feels that his “preat de- Sign,” safeguarded by the “shield of the atomic bomb . . . in the hands of a state and nation which will never use it except in the cause of right and freedom,” may be made more acceptable by this atomic ora- tery. What Churchill’s concept of right and freedom is may be, anyone’s guess, but there are millions in Hurope and Asia; in Greece, Spain, India, Palestine - and the colonial world who do not guess . .. they know. They also know how to foil his “great design . . . by continuing to strive for Big Three unity. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1946 .