lessons of.

lw © strikes
TRE Lon and bitter strikes at
y. *f Murdochville and Lever

A brothers have ended. In each case

dae
Striking workers, who. aroused

|, \Yetsal admiration by their mili-

|. Ys have received less than jus-
: ‘Having fought long and hard
the picketline against police

Nth
ae
| "lence “and injunctions, many

Will Io,

» 0se their jobs and_face victimi-
®n from arrogant companies.

4 re ~ Murdochville, particularly,
h

‘alling off of the strike leaves

| sttdreds of strikebreakers in the
| 8 of strikes, and union recogni-

Yon still in doubt.
“A our opinion the top leaders

7. Cai striking unions, and of the
hs all

“nadian Labor Congress, realized
«, t0o slowly that these were
_thowdown” strikes and that the,
"0 companies were leading a drive
inst the very existence of trade

ns; in other words, that they

ee Strikes of a new period of

| “Atpened class struggle. Con-

gitently they gave too little lead-
hip, and too late.

Bs i Murdochville did not become the
wal se of the whole trade union

Vement until many weeks after
diene” had struck. in the most
“Meult circumstances.
\t Lever’s, where products pro-
hore by strikebreakers were house-
sia Zoods, as distinct from Gaspe
Pper, the campaign to boycott

Yoon Zoods did not reach the labor

ig Sement fully and effectively, and
ak started late. When working
“ple found out about the scab

a aes they responded well, as they
ht a: do when the facts are given
| > Mem. .

_, Organized labor must learn from
eS *se two strikes — and the lesson

iity need for unity and. solid-
» tight across the country, in

| at campaigns against the gov-

NS mm 0 A Wien Gite te aia kis

= ‘ents who allowed the employ-
‘to run hog-wild against union

2 et
| Ughts.

’
»tawing such a lesson. does not

%r can learn much from defeats
» Well as victories. The thing to do

“tha actively learn and we hope

the ‘lessons of these two

hy .
; 1 yrikes will be raised in every union
| (*98s the country.
) = =

"Pacific Tribune

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a. Editor — TOM McEWEN
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| ge to be downhearted. Organized. ,

N THANKSGIVING DAY,
the 23rd Parliament of Canada

was opened with all the pageantry
of royal tradition. The Speech

from the Throne was read in Eng-—

lish and in French by Queen Eliza-
beth, now on a visit with her royal
consort to Canada and the United

States.

It was a very fine speech, an
election speech, promising all things
to all men, from the senior citi-
zen condemned by age to a life of
economic want to the profit-glutted
armaments makers and a fine
sounding follow-up to the pre-elec-
tion promises of the Progressive-
Conservatives, with overtones of
an early federal election through
which the Tories hope to obtain
the majority they now lack,

Highlights of the Speech from
the Throne included increased pen-
sions for senior citizens, war vet-
erans, blind and disabled citizens;
parity prices and extended markets
for farm produce; a “share the

wealth” policy for the whole coun-

°

try as a result of greater natural
resources development; new mar-
kets and greater conservation of
Canada’s fisheries; and ‘earnest
consideration” of possible income
tax reductions. :

But there was also a reiteration
of Liberal NATO and SEATO
policies to “keep our defenses
strong’ which, in terms of the
taxpayer's dollar means that under
the Tories this country will con-
tinue to pour $2.5 billion of the
national annual income into war
preparations.

Now that the royal pageantry is
over, the common people will have

an opportunity of assessing how
closely (or otherwise) Tory ac-
complishments ‘correspond with

- Tory promises.

There was no word in the Speech
from the Throne about the dan-
gers of a policy which places this

- country in the position of becom-

ing a potential battleground of
H-bomb warfare. Surely no coun-

Keep the. pressure on Diefenbaker

try, other than Britain herself,
has more need to press for sus-
pension of nuclear tests and ban-
ning of the H-bomb. Surely no
other country, under wise leader-
ship, can do more to realize peace-
ful coexistence between competing
social systems.

Like British Columbia’s Prem-
ier W. A. C. Bennett in 1952, when
his first Socred government hung
in the balance, Prime Minister John
-Diefenbaker is faced with the ne-

cessity of putting a progressive

face upon his Conservative regime
in order to consolidate its position
at the next election. The test of his
government is not in the handouts
he: is prepared to give, however
important those maybe, but his
position on the basic issues of
peace, U.S. domination, trade and
social security. And changes in
policy on these issues will come
only as the people unite to exert
pressure on the Diefenbaker gov-
ernment such as it dare not ignore.

Tom
McEwen

JHE MAN. on the Street...
Mr. Average Citizen

John Q. Public—whatever we

may call this great mass of

ordinary people who are neither

scientists nor numbskulls, it is

noteworthy that when airing.

their diverse opinions on Sput_
_nik, the great majority display
an unconcealed delight that it
was the Soviet Union and not
the United States which got its
man-made “moon” into space
first.
No doubt these ordinary citi-
zens have a fairly sound reason

for such a reaction, and not nec- :
essarily a pro-Soviet one. x”

To begin with, they know that
a new scientific era is opened
by the successful jJaunching of
Sputnik, the greatest perhaps
in the long history of. man’s
climb upwards from the abyss of

ignorance. Sputnik is the first :

and greatest step towards inter-
planetary travel.

Secondly, they know from
‘millions of yards of comic strip,

movies, high-pressure salesnan-
‘ship, Yankee know-how and
brasshat bombast, that the USA
is without question the greatest
land on earth bar none; the
-only land which could produce
such misguided missiles as John
Foster Dulles, Joe McCarthy, Al
Capone and “Little Rock” Fabaus,
to say nothing of such barnacle-
encrusted characters as Rear
Admiral Rawson Bennett, chief
of U.S. naval operations, who
eracked that Sputnik was only
“gy hunk of iron almost anybody
could launch.”

_ Naturally, while, Sputnik has
been beep-beeping around this
earth of ours at an 18,000-mile-
an-hour clip, the supermen south
of the border have been heaving
the old bull around~with un,
scientific. abandon.

’ President Eisenhower had to
get on the air last week on a
nation-wide hookup to tell all and
and sundry that what the Rus-
sians have done his ccuntry
could have done months ago, had
they not been giving all of their
attention to ICBM rockets in-
stead, an important item the
admiral apparently overlooked
in his “hunk of iron” bombast.

Other high-ranking know-
hows in the U.S. (and a hand-
ful of the same breed in our own
country) continue to pooh-pooh

_ Sputnik and to regale their audi-

.

ences with the “superiority” of
the projected U.S. satellite. It is
going to be muck bigger than
Sputnik. It will have a whole
lot more electronic gadgets in
its innards than Sputnik. Ht will
travel much farther and faster
and- longer than Sputnik, and
science will learn no end of
things when it gets rolling.

All. this may .be quite true.
Like Mr, Average Citizen, we are
not scientists. This: U.S. “moon”
may be much bigger and better
and faster than Sputnik, but un-
like that beep-beeping Soviet

“moon”. whirling around our. ~

planet with the vrevision of a
CPR engineer’s timepiece, the
U.S. supermen’s satellite is still
sitting on the ground — a very

important difference to scient -

ists, and to ordinary Joes like
ourselves.

It is probably this basic dif--

ference which caused Mr. John

Q. Public in Canada to demon--

stratively express his glee at the
Soviet achievement in preference
to the U.S. one. That, and his
resentment generally to Yankee
influence and domination of his
every day affairs.

Sputnik was sent aloft without
noise or fanfare by a socialist

‘state as a tribute to the scienti-

fie accomplishments recorded
by man in an historic Geophysi.
cal Year. The other is still all
noise—but ne “moon.”

October 18, 1957 —PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 5