,
headlined "Free Michel Chartrand and the Other Political Prisoners," and
Jeune Garde, headlined "6,000,000 Québec Hostages," obviously
expressed the sentiments of this new growing mass movement.
The task now is to carry forward the defense, not only in Québec but
also in English Canada.
Support Québécois, Devlin Urges Left
Bernadette Devlin has issued a message of solidarity with the
"liberation struggle of the Québec people" and denounced the repression.
In a message to the Comité Québécois de mobilisation pour
l’indépendance et le socialisme (Québec Committee to Mobilize for
Independence and Socialism) in Paris, the young leader of the civil rights
movement in Northern Ireland declares
"To all who are struggling for the liberation of the Québec people
and who dare to stand up to imperialism and capitalism, to all who are
victims of the repression with which corrupt regimes defend themselves,
we proclaim our support.
"In Ireland we have experienced imprisonment without trial and we ask
those who support the struggle of the Irish people to defend our
comrades in Québec. It is the same struggle, and the same victory. Power
to the people!"
The Québec Committee in Paris was organized by Québec students.
According to Québec-Presse, the Montreal trade union weekly, they
have distributed leaflets and posters, held a press conference and a mass
meeting at the Mutualité to explain the political and economic situation
in Québec.
The mass meeting was sponsored jointly with the Comité français pour la
défense des prisonniers politiques Québécois (French Committee to Defend
the Québec Political Prisoners). Among the 20 or so prominent French
personalities associated with this group, Québec-Presse reports,
are Charles Bettelheim, economist, Alfred Sauvy, professor, Jean-Marie
Domenach, publisher of Esprit, and Nicole Dreyfus, a lawyer long
active in "drawing international attention to the fate of Québec’s
political prisoners."
The Nov. 16 issue of Rouge, the organ of the Ligue Communiste,
French section of the Fourth International, reports a meeting on the
Québec situation at Rouen Oct. 29. Speaker was an editor of Rouge,
Jean-Pierre Beauvais. Rouge reports that the meeting, attended by
close to 200, was part of the league’s "campaign of information on
Canadian problems, the struggle of the Québec people, and the struggle
against the repression in Canada."
War Measures Crisis:
How Left Faced Trudeau’s Blackmail
by Dick Fidler
How did the left react to Trudeau’s assault on the Québécois
nationalist movement?
The massive raids and arrests under the War Measures Act marked the
first major move by the federal and Québec governments to block the rising
mass movement for an independent Québec, the most explosive manifestation
in Canada of the new radicalization of recent years.
This highly conscious attempt by the capitalist rulers of this country
to isolate and intimidate the left called for an equally firm and serious
response from the targets of the repression.
That response did not materialize, unfortunately. While the Québec
labor leadership registered its opposition to both the War Measures Act
and the successor law, the labor movement in English Canada, aided by the
New Democratic Party leadership, reversed the NDP’s earlier opposition to
the repression and underwrote the principle of the new reactionary
legislation. It endorsed the illegalization for the first time in years of
a political movement, the FLQ. And it has done nothing to protest the
trials of leading nationalist and labor leaders in Québec, among them
Michel Chartrand, a CNTU leader.
The NDP and labor leadership capitulated to the anti-FLQ hysteria in
part because they are reformists, not revolutionaries; they see the
capitalist state not as the ultimate instrument of class oppression that
it is, but as a socially neutral arbiter ruling in the interests of the
democratic majority.
But what was the reaction to the crisis among those tendencies which
consider themselves revolutionary? Most of these, too, failed the test.
And they failed precisely because their respective political outlooks
prevented them from meeting the challenge posed by Trudeau’s attack.
The Communist Party, for example, itself a prime target in the past of
repressive laws, has responded with appeals to oppose the new legislation.
But the CP has undercut this formally correct position by failing even to
mention, let alone defend, those now charged under the War Measures Act in
Québec.
Is it because the CP is bitterly opposed to the mass movement for
Québec independence? Its opposition to the mass movement for a French
Québec is well known. In English Canada, the CP has undermined defense
actions by attempting to exclude members of the League for Socialist
Action, which supports Québec independence, from groups it participates
in.
In a statement issued October 16, the CP central committee declared:
"What is at stake is democracy, the national and social aspirations of the
French Canadian people, and not least, the ability of Canada to stay
united and regain its independence as a truly sovereign bi-national state
based on an equal partnership of the French Canadian and English speaking
peoples."
This puts the struggle in Québec on the plane of simple liberalism—as a
fight for equality with English Canada, not for national liberation or
sovereignty. The CP’s view that capitalist Canada must remain "united"
leads it to deny even the democratic right of self-determination to the
French Canadian nation. Thus its "Metro Toronto Committee," in a leaflet
on the War Measures Act, called for "a new Canadian Constitution ... which
will enable Canada to remain united." It spoke of "the right to fight for
national self-determination of the French-Canadian people in a new Canadian
Confederation"! But self-determination means precisely the right to choose
to live outside "the Canadian Confederation." The CP’s position amounts to
telling Québécois they have the right to divorce, so long as they don’t
break up the family!
The CP opposes Québec’s struggle for national liberation in practice
because it sees Québec’s independence, and the socialist dynamic of this
struggle, as a fatal threat to its projection of a "democratized" Canadian
capitalism, under which Canada could achieve "unity" and independence from
U.S. imperialism without a socialist victory.
Another tendency which is also uneasy over the distinctive dynamic of
Québécois nationalism is the Canadian Liberation Movement. It too favors a
"united Canada" but clothes its positions in "revolutionary" rhetoric.
While pretending to sympathize with Québec nationalism the CLM treats it
as not substantially different from the anti-U.S. imperialist movement in
English Canada—"for the same rights, equal justice and a common liberty,"
in the words of the November issue of New Canada, the CLM’s monthly
newspaper.
But to reduce the Québec struggle to a struggle simply against U.S.
imperialism is to miss its essential feature—its powerful thrust against
Anglo-Canadian imperialism and its central state power, the government at
Ottawa. It is to ignore the difference between the nationalism of an
oppressed nation Québec, and the "nationalism" (chauvinism) of what iri
Québec is an oppressor nation. It ignores the special tasks in Québec
flowing from the double oppression of the Québécois.
The Maoist groupings responded to the crisis with seemingly opposite
interpretations. The Canadian Party of Labor devoted a special issue of
their organ Canadian Worker on the crisis to an attack on the FLQ
... for its nationalism! "The FLQ puts the struggle for ‘national
liberation’ (bosses’ liberation) ahead of the struggle for socialism
(workers liberation)," it declaimed.
For CPL, the national revolt of the Québécois has nothing to do with
socialism. In one unbelievable passage Canadian Worker went so far
as to lump together the nationalism of labor leader Michel Chartrand, the
Montreal labor-based opposition party, FRAP, and Québec-Presse, the
trade union weekly, with the demagogic Canadian "nationalism" of the
Toronto Star and Walter Gordon—all of whom, it claimed, "approve of
FLQ objectives!"
The other major Maoist grouping, the Canadian Communist Party
(Marxist-Leninist), also known as the Internationalists, came out with
uncritical support of the adventurist FLQ.
How to explain the contradictory lines of the Maoists? For both groups,
Québec nationalism is irrelevant to their strategy. They share in common
an ultraleftist analysis which couples a grossly exaggerated estimation of
the level of consciousness of the working class with absurd
characterizations of the present political regime.
As the November 7 issue of People’s Canada Daily News, organ of
the CCP(ML), puts it: "The peace period has been terminated by the fascist
compradores who have signed their death warrant. It is the people who will
soon carry out the execution." The issue goes on to assert that "the broad
masses" have now recognized the fraud of bourgeois democracy and are ready
for the revolution.
The CPL’s Canadian Worker phrases it, "Communist ideas are
already being grasped by the working masses," and projects their tiny
group’s feeble connection to the working class as a sufficient base to
unleash the revolutionary struggle.
This idealized view of the workers’ consciousness exempts the
word-mongering ultralefts from the necessity to formulate a program.
Everything is reduced to the simple question: for or against the
revolution. Since revolution is considered to be imminent, there is no
need to build a mass movement. And those who speak of defending democratic
liberties are of course "agents of imperialism."
Thus PCDN ridicules the "Trotskyites" for calling "for the
development of a ‘mass movement’ " against the War Measures Act, for
"claiming that the people should be discussing ‘women’s liberation’ and
other such irrelevant nonsense," and for supporting the "social fascist"
NDP. A CPL leaflet boasts they will not "become lap-dogs for civil
libertarians. " In several cities, the CCP(ML) have attempted to break up
meetings called to protest the repression.
The truth, of course, is that while Trudeau’s repression is reminiscent
of fascist methods, Canada has not gone fascist.
The mass movement has not been smashed; its organizations, including
the trade unions, remain intact and capable of acting independently in
defense of the workers’ interests. Far from launching an all-out assault
on the entire left and workers’ movement, the bourgeoisie has moved
carefully and deliberately, picking off the most vulnerable or best-known
elements, alleged FLQers, while using the confusion and disorientation
provoked by the FLQ’s adventurism to throw a cloud of suspicion around
other revolutionary tendencies, and intimidate the broad left and
nationalist movement.
But the current repression will not stop the radicalization among
students, trade unionists and least of all the Québécois. It is this
general forward direction of the mass movement that is decisive to the
future perspectives’ for the struggle.
The problem now is to assess correctly the real nature of the setback,
to work to reconsolidate the movement around the defense of the immediate
victims of the repression, the Québec political prisoners. A victory for
Trudeau in these trials would indeed be a major setback to the nationalist
movement in Québec, and encourage reactionaries across the country to step
up their efforts to harass and intimidate the left.
That is why the revolutionary socialists of the League for Socialist
Action/Ligue Socialiste Ouvrière—virtually alone among the organized
revolutionary tendencies—reacted vigorously and boldly during the crisis
following proclamation of the War Measures Act. In Québec, despite the
arrest of two of its leading comrades, the LSO threw all its resources
into using its campaign for the Montreal mayoralty to denounce the
repression and to mobilize opposition to the witch-hunt. In English Canada
the LSA and the Young Socialists have sponsored an extensive speaking tour
for Penny Simpson, one of the arrested victims of the Act.
The LSA/ LSO has made the formation of united front committees against
the repression and for the defense of the political prisoners a top
priority of its activities in the next period.
Simpson Tour Bolsters
Growing Rights Struggle
by Al Cappe
"It was only when the civil liberties groups started protesting that
lawyers were allowed into prison to see us. In the same way it is only
by speaking out now that I will ever retain my right to do so."
This was Penny Simpson’s response at a meeting of 1,500 students at
Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Someone had wanted to
know if she wasn’t afraid to be making a speaking tour of English Canada
to mobilize opposition to the War Measures Act (the RCMP had followed her
around St. John’s). Her answer indicates the tone and purpose of her tour.
Simpson was sent on tour by the Young Socialists/Ligue des Jeunes
Socialistes to help set in motion the defense campaign for civil
liberties. She was arrested under the Act and held incommunicado for six
days in Montreal. The trip lasted three weeks, covering twelve cities in
the Atlantic provinces and Ontario and meetings ranging from 80 to 1,500
people.
What was her overall impression from those three weeks? "The tide is
turning against Trudeau. The mood of the country is beginning to shift
from shock or blind faith in the government, to questioning and wariness
and then to real distrust and reconsideration. While I thought I’d be
meeting opposition all the way instead I found a great deal of support and
a real desire by many for action against the government."
The YS/LJS responded quickly to the need for the radical movement in
this country to defend itself and the political prisoners in Québec. The
purpose of the tour was not only to expose the government and explain the
situation in Québec but also to begin the building of defence committees
which would unite all groups and individuals into a struggle for the
restoration of democratic rights and freedom for the political prisoners.
Every meeting held was either the gathering of those people interested
in forming a committee or was a first meeting for a committee already
established. Defense groups were sent up in Halifax, St. John’s, Moncton,
Peterborough, Windsor, Hamilton and other centers. Whether the meeting was
100 people or 1,500 people, the individuals in attendance realized that
they were not alone. They saw that others were worried and moreover wanted
to act.
Support came from many quarters. A Windsor newspaperman explained his
support for Simpson’s tour from his own experience: "In the first week
after the Act was invoked the cops phoned our paper and told us that they
didn’t ‘want’ to censor us but that they would if we ‘forced’ them to."
In Peterborough the Liberal member of parliament Hugh Faulkner politely
declined to debate Simpson though he was soon to begin a tour of local
high schools to drum up support for Trudeau. A group of students at Trent
University decided to go around to the principals to demand equal time
with him and to distribute leaflets which told the real story in the
schools.
The tour had a tremendous impact not only through the favorable press
coverage but through the people which it drew together. The tour showed
that there is the real potential for a mass movement against the
government’s repression.
Raids, Trials: Québec Repression Continues
by Penny Simpson
MONTREAL—T.C. Douglas may call them "Keystone Kops," but there’s
nothing funny about the very professional way the Montreal and Québec
police are conducting their campaign of intimidation against the left.
Emboldened by Ottawa’s repressive laws, they are continuing their
raids. On December 2, less than 24 hours before James Cross was released,
they raided the homes of four members of the Ligue Socialiste Ouvrière and
the Ligue des Jeunes Socialistes.
The police didn’t seize anything, even after a twice-over search in one
apartment. But one LJS member, John Lejderman, was threatened with having
his head beaten against the wall, and in another case, the cops threatened
to smash the door in if the building superintendent refused to let them
enter an LSO member’s apartment.
On December 4, four other LSO and LJS members pleaded not guilty in
municipal court to "carrying placards, banners, cockades or similar
identifying symbols" during the October municipal election campaign. The
charge carries a penalty of $200 fine and/ or six months in prison.
The four—Manon Léger, the LSO’s mayoralty candidate against Jean
Drapeau, her campaign manager Jean Herivault, Léon Peillard and Michel
Lévesque—were arrested following the picketing of the Black Watch armories
by supporters of the Léger campaign the day before the vote. They were
remanded to January 14.
The police searches and court charges are clearly a continuation of the
harassment the LSO and LJS have experienced since the arrest of two
leading members, Arthur Young and Penny Simpson, on October 16 under the
War Measures Act.
The personal papers and books of Simpson and Young have not yet been
returned, nor has a letter to the police demanding their return been
answered.
The LSO and LJS are the only radical groups—apart from the defense
committees—that have continued to function here since the unleashing of
the War Measures Act.
Are the police "exceeding their duties"? They’re not exceeding their
powers—they’re acting in accordance with the new "public order" act. And
during the last month, two top Québec Liberals, Gilles Lalande, Liberal
policy commission chairman, and Gerard Filion of Marine Industries Ltd.
have publicly denounced "Trotskyists," and other groups, as "subversives."
The capitalist authorities hope to prolong and even institutionalize
the repressive atmosphere the FLQ kidnappings crisis has enabled them to
whip up against the left. Now that Cross is free, the police have declared
that they will be able to use more ruthless methods than were possible
while the diplomat remained in his kidnappers’ hands.
The trials of those charged under the WMA recommence on January 11. The
year-old sedition case against Raymond Lemieux and Laurier Gravel, leaders
of the St-Léonard struggle for a French school system, will be heard in
the January assizes, as will the case of proabortion fighter Dr. Henry
Morgentaler, charged with arranging and performing abortions.
The governments seem to think they can railroad every opponent they
have in Québec while the rest of the country isn’t looking. A united
defense effort in Québec and across Canada is urgently needed to breach
this attack against every sector of popular protest.
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