The Spark!

Theoretical and Discussion Bulletin of the Communist Party of Canada

The Spark!

The latest issue of The Spark! theoretical journal, is now on sale for $5 at Communist Party offices (see p. 8) or People’s Co-op Books, 1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver.

Articles include

“Introduction to a General Theory of Culture” (Barry Lord);
“Political & Economic Realities Behind Colombian Labour Relations” (Sacouman, Moore & Brittain);
“Treaty Process & Indian Nationalism” (Ray Bobb);
“Lenin: Heritage of the Socialist Market Economy” (C.J. Atkins);
“Nature of the State Under Bush & Harper” (Stephen Von Sychowski);
plus reviews, editorials, and more.

People's Voice deadlines:
SEPTEMBER 16-30
Thursday, September 4
OCTOBER 1-15
Thursday, September 18
Send submissions to PV Editorial Office,
706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, V5L 3J1, pvoice@telus.net

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People's Voice finds many "Global Class Struggle" reports at the "Labour Start" website, http://www.labourstart.org. We urge our readers to check it out!

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People's Voice

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1) LABOUR DAY 2008: WHAT'S THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE?

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2) STOP US/NATO AGGRESSION IN THE CAUCASUS!

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3) TORIES THREATEN PRIVATIZED POSTAL SERVICE

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4) BIGGEST JOB LOSSES IN 17 YEARS

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5) STEELWORKERS SEEK SUPPORT FOR POTASH CORP. STRIKERS

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6) MONTREAL POLICE KILLING SPARKS PUBLIC OUTRAGE

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7) NEW ELECTION RUMBLINGS

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8) HYPOCRISY IN THE CAUCASUS

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9) CAW LOCALS "KICK BACK" AS LAYOFFS CONTINUE

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10) GATINEAU WAL-MART GOES UNION AT LAST

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11) READINGS FOR THE ENERGY REVOLUTION

(The following article is from the September 1-15, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Kimball Cariou

Fuel prices have dipped slightly in recent weeks, but energy policy is still being hotly debated right across Canada. People's Voice supporters used our booth at "Under the Volcano" in North Vancouver to discuss the issue with the thousands of people who attend this annual music festival. As well as newspapers, leaflets, buttons and T-shirts, we brought clipboards with a petition to Parliament urging full public ownership of the oil and gas industry.

     Light rain disrupted our efforts that day (August 10), but a steady stream of people came to our table, directed by friends who had already signed. Nearly everyone agreed that the billions of dollars in windfall profits taken by the energy corporations should be used instead to pay for social programs, environmental protection, and expansion of mass transit. Many talked about the destruction of northern Alberta, where indigenous people face a devastating health crisis caused by the extraction of oil sands on their traditional territories. In a few hours, we collected almost 100 signatures.

     This episode reinforces the findings of a 2005 public opinion survey, which found that 49% of Canadians favour nationalization of the petroleum industry. More recently, delegates to the Canadian Labour Congress convention in Toronto adopted a similar position.

     But while countries such as Bolivia move to put oil and gas under public control, this option backed by millions of Canadians is absent from the platform of any "major" political party. Stephen Harper's Tories, of course, are in the pockets of the energy monopolies, and the Liberals are also a party of big business.

     Jack Layton's NDP calls for reforms to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but not for expanded public ownership of the single most valuable natural resource in Canada. Here in British Columbia, the provincial NDP is campaigning to "axe the tax," the latest 3.5 cents/litre on gasoline imposed by the Campbell Liberals. It's a popular campaign, but it fails to point out that profit-gouging energy corporations are the culprits behind high fuel costs.

     The debate in Parliament about these issues is important. But by refusing to advocate public ownership, those politicians and environmentalists who do see the impending crisis fall short by leaving control in the hands of corporate interests opposed to real change.

     There are two sides to the looming crisis of energy and the environment. One is the potential for catastrophic changes linked to the emission of "greenhouse gases": rising ocean levels, accelerated species die-off, and sudden climate shifts. The increased burning of fossil fuels makes "climate change" ever more inevitable.

     At the same time, most analysts believe that the earth is nearing the decline of global oil reserves, with serious economic implications. Unless radical measures are taken to cut fossil fuel use, oil and gas will become ever more expensive. The trendline may be temporarily affected by factors such as this year's decline in vehicle miles driven in the United States, or the occasional discovery of new oil and gas fields. But looking at the big picture, some 85 million barrels of oil are being consumed daily around the world, more than the discovery of new sources.

     Dozens of books shed some light on this complex subject, while also revealing critical differences of opinion.

     Those who laugh at the "doom and gloom" scenarios should read the 2006 book, It's the Crude, Dude, by author Linda McQuaig, who starts with an October 2003 Pentagon study on the dangers of global warming and energy insecurity. Nobody accuses the U.S. military of being tree-huggers, but the men in uniform are bluntly warned about the future of "constant battles for diminishing resources."

     However, as McQuaig documents, the most reactionary section of U.S. ruling class misses the point. Instead of reducing the largest standing army in history, imposing more stringent emission laws, or investing in renewables (with the exception of the bogus "biofuel" option), the neo-fascist clique around Cheney and Bush stubbornly press ahead with their drive for military occupation of the Middle East. Why? Because the latter option is enormously profitable for shareholders of Exxon, Halliburton, and the entire military-industrial-energy complex. McQuaig does a masterful job of exposing the oil industry and the Pentagon, but holds little hope for avoiding environmental destruction and endless war.

     Fortunately, there are many paths diverging from this road to armageddon, although few authors willing to raise public ownership as a key part of the struggle for survival.

     Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction, by Terry Tamminen (Island Press, 2006) is another wide-ranging expose of the deadly consequences of fossil fuel dependency, and the corporate interests which profit from it. But unlike McQuaig, Tamminen has faith that capitalism can somehow be saved by pointing out its "true interests." The first step to salvation, he argues, is to take personal responsibility by using less energy. The second step is to elect public officials who will work for "energy independence." And step three is to press the corporations to change their fuel-guzzling behaviours. Tamminen's optimism is touching, but I'd rather start by taking control away from the imperialist classes which got the world into this mess.

     Other authors focus on particular technologies, with mixed results. To give one example, Travis Bradford left Wall Street behind to found the Prometheus Institute, a non-profit "focussed on using the power of the business and financial sectors to deploy cost-effective and sustainable technologies." Again, I doubt this strategy, but in Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry, (MIT Press, 2006) Bradford makes a good argument for solar energy as the best alternative. Without dismissing wind and tidal power, or hydrogen fuel cells, Bradford describes important factors limiting their role. Nuclear energy, he argues, is at best a high-risk desperation alternative. Solar power, on the other hand, is available across the planet, and is well-suited to small-scale "off the grid" applications. He documents the technical improvements which make solar a viable solution, even before the latest scientific discoveries which may greatly enhance its efficiency.

     Those of us on the left need to explain the roots of the energy crisis facing our planet, but also to elaborate policies to salvage the future. That will take considerable study, so let's hit the books and step up the debate.

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12) COLLAPSE OF WTO TALKS GOOD NEWS

(The following article is from the September 1-15, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Larry Brown, Secretary-Treasurer, National Union of Public and General Employees, from the NUPGE website, www.nupge.ca

This summer, while sensible Canadians were camping or canoeing, or complaining about the weather, there was a great flurry of activity in Geneva as World Trade Organization ((WTO) negotiators tried, one more time, to reach agreement about new and extended trade deals covering agriculture, manufacturing and services. Those talks, like several before them, ended in failure. No new deal was reached.

     That is unqualified good news. There was nothing on the table in Geneva that would have helped ordinary Canadians, and much that would have harmed us.

     Let's start with the obvious disconnect between the problems the world is facing and the Geneva talks on more and better free trade.

     We've had the WTO, and the General Agreement on Trade in Services, (GATS), and all of the sub-agreements and associated limitations on the rights of governments, for 20 years now. The result has been more inequality between countries and within countries. How could anyone argue that more of the same would have reversed that trend? One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things over and over and expect a different result.

Race to the bottom

     A major part of the whole free trade agenda is that it allows companies to move their production to wherever is cheapest for them. But you can never win the race to the bottom - there never is an end to that race. Mexico set up the low wage, non-union, low-tax Maquiladora zones, and for a while factories were set up there in great numbers. Then those factories moved on to cheaper wage areas in Africa and China, and just recently Adidas announced it was moving much of its production out of China because the wages there have become "too high."

     Meanwhile the catastrophic loss of manufacturing jobs in Canada would have been worsened if the new WTO deal had gone through.

     One of the most serious of the recent spate of crises has been the international jump in food prices. A new WTO agreement would have made that crisis worse.

     For years we've had WTO rules on the freer trade of agricultural products, otherwise known as food. The result has been the commodification of food, the loss of agricultural capacity in many poorer countries, which has meant the loss of ability of many of the world's poor to feed themselves, and a devastating spike in food prices, especially in those same poor countries losing much of their domestic agriculture to the forces of international trade. More and freer trade in agriculture would have simply made the problem worse.

Canadian farmers

     For Canadian farmers, the result of the talks in Geneva would have been the end to, or at the very least, the serious weakening of systems for protecting the often precarious incomes of farmers. The Wheat Board would have been threatened, the egg and dairy and poultry marketing boards would have been threatened. Our government can claim that they are disappointed by the collapse of the WTO talks, but one suspects that they have their fingers crossed behind their backs as they say this. As a result of the failure to reach agreement, the government doesn't have to explain to the farmers of Canada why they got sold out.

     As Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, put it: "In the poorest part of the planet, millions of human beings die from hunger each year. In the richest part of the planet, millions of dollars are spent to combat obesity. We consume in excess, waste natural resources, and we produce the waste that pollutes Mother Earth."

     Would a new WTO agreement have helped the world deal with the environmental crisis? Exactly the opposite. Under the WTO, trade trumps the environment every time. Governments cannot take environmental actions which would "unduly" limit the rights of international commerce. In fact under the WTO, the emphasis is on moving products around the world, which means that the ships and planes and trucks will have to keep up their frenzied pace, whatever the consequences for the environment.

     We've been facing an international crisis from rising energy prices, especially oil and gas. Can anyone think of a single way that a new WTO agreement on more free trade would have helped to resolve this? The result would have been more movement of goods and foods and services around the world, all requiring more energy, more gas and oil. What would make much more sense with respect to the energy crisis is for more local goods to be produced and consumed, more local foods to be produced so we don't have to import so much food from far flung corners of the world.

International financial crisis

     We have an international financial crisis, still unfolding, one that started with the greed of the sub-prime mortgage fiasco in the U.S., a fiasco that was allowed to take place because economic activity was essentially deregulated. The new WTO agreement on services would have entrenched deregulation as a permanent feature of the new world order, made the regulation of financial services subject to the overwhelming dictates of the free market in services. Canada is paying heavily for the U.S. collapse. Our government should be focused on more regulation to govern our financial sector, not on giving up more of our right to regulate, in perpetuity, via a new trade deal.

     The new deal being negotiated would have cost us our ability to protect our public education systems from being undermined by international private sector competition. Our public postal system would have been under threat. Our right to have our environment protection, or our garbage collection, or our waste management, delivered by public systems would have been weakened.

     The new agreements that were on the table would have cemented in the worst aspects of our temporary foreign worker programs, where workers from other countries can come to Canada to work, so long as they leave behind their families for months or even years, so long as they are willing to work for lower wages, are willing to work in total subservience to an employer who can get them deported by firing them, and are willing to put up with dangerous working conditions. The "just in time, disposable workforce" would have been a permanent feature of international trade.

Poor countries spared

     Many governments around the world cannot provide the basic services that we take for granted because their countries are so poor. The new WTO deal would have cost these countries an estimated $63 billion in lost tariff revenue - $63 billion that would not go to education or health care or social service for the world's poorest, all of this while innumerable manufacturing jobs in emerging economies would have gone down the drain as well.

     Our corporate heads, our agribusiness companies, can whine and gripe all they want. For the rest of us, the failure to reach a new agreement at the WTO made this a good summer in at least one respect.

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13) CHAVEZ, THE FARC, AND THE PATH TO POWER

(The following article is from the September 1-15, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By José A. Cruz, Nuestro Mundo

     The words that President Hugo Chavez recently directed to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have prompted comments from sections of both the right and left.

     In order to properly analyze Chavez's comments, they must be viewed in the context of all his words and not based on what the bourgeois press and the right-wing governments of the U.S., Mexico and Colombia, as well as the right social democrats of Peru, have said about them.

     Although Chavez addressed his comments to the new leadership of the FARC, doing it on national television in Venezuela makes us think that his words were for domestic consumption rather than foreign consumption. A message to the FARC could have easily been delivered through go-betweens. However, Venezuela will hold regional elections in November and the anti-Chavista opposition, composed of the right, right social democrats and the ultra-left, have echoed the charge of the rightist Colombian government that Chavez is financing the FARC. Even so, it would be useful to consider the viewpoints of several Venezuelans about the meaning of Chavez's remarks.

     First, Chavez did not enter into any kind of thoroughgoing analysis to show how conditions have changed in the Americas and that there is now only one path to power for the left, especially for Colombia. What he said was that the FARC provides an excuse for the United States to attack Venezuela. Chavez went on to say that, if peace were to come to Colombia, the U.S. would not have any excuse to attack.

     Anyone who knows Colombian history must feel horrified at what amounts to blaming the victim.

     The first words in disagreement with the president came from the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). In a press conference just two days after Chavez's comments, Oscar Figuera, general secretary of the PCV, said that U.S. has never needed an excuse to attack the world's peoples.

     Other well-known Latin American Marxists have also entered the debate, but always in a respectful manner. The former leader of the Dominican Communists, Narciso Isa Conde, said, "With all due respect ... and with the great admiration that I have for Comandante Hugo Chavez Frias, I have decided to express publicly my disagreement, politically and conceptually, with his recent pronouncement in the matter of the FARC, armed struggle, guerrilla warfare, prisoner exchange and peace in Colombia."

     Not only are there Marxists who disagree with Chavez; there are others who do so, too, but again in a comradely way, avoiding personal attacks.

     Among these is Vicky Pelaez, a columnist of the New York newspaper El Diario-La Prensa, one of the oldest and biggest Spanish-language newspapers in the U.S. Pelaez is a Peruvian journalist who had to go into exile after exposing corruption in the Peruvian presidency.

     "Chavez would be quite right if we lived in a world of democracy, without wars, invasions, or domination by the strongest, or if Colombia were not a paramilitary state," she wrote. "But history shows that many pretexts have been used to justify American aggression."

     In answering a question about Chavez's words, one Colombian senator, of the same Liberal Party of paramilitary President Alvaro Uribe, blamed the Colombian government. She said that "the Establishment has always played dirty. It always has acted to contain the peace process. It always fails to deliver on what has been agreed upon. ... That is one of the factors that generates bigger distrust among the FARC guerrillas."

     Yolanda Pulecio, mother of Ingrid Betancourt, the former presidential candidate held by the FARC, accused the U.S.-backed Uribe government of abandoning negotiations with the FARC aimed at releasing its hostages, including her daughter. (Editor's note: this article predated Bentancourt's recent departure from Colombia. She is now living in France.)

     Notwithstanding all this, the question of the path to power for the people and workers' movement deserves as much discussion as any other question in the Latin American left.

     Decades ago, the question of armed struggle or the electoral path to achieve power caused big disunity in the Americas. The figures of Che Guevara or Salvador Allende were often used to symbolize the position of one side or the other. One accused the other of "adventurism" while the other side was accused of "reformism" and belief in the benevolence of the capitalists who would give up power after an election. I speak here of debate within the revolutionary left seeking replace a social-political system with another - socialism - and not those who simply want to reform the state and leave economic relations intact.

     Both sides in this debate were wrong not to see the complexity of the issue and the specific features of different countries. At the same time, there were people who foresaw that the issue depended on the conditions and the balance of forces in each country. With the election of the Popular Unity government led by Allende in Chile, the debate subsided slightly, until the overthrow of that leftist government by a reactionary military supported by the U.S. government and U.S. corporations.

     Other experiences also gave impetus to this debate, such as the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua through armed struggle and their subsequent loss of power through elections, and the U.S. invasion of Grenada, which became the graveyard of the socialist government of New Jewel Movement.

     Today, that debate is rather a thing of the past. Those who previously advocated the armed or electoral path as the sole path accept that it all depends on the conditions existing in each country.

     Jeronimo Carrera, president of the Venezuelan Communists, wrote about this debate. "The truth in all this is that the revolutionaries can always be wrong, and we often are.... In any case I think that our comrades in the FARC know much better than we know what they are doing."

     Carrera ended by noting that "Likewise, Che Guevara and Salvador Allende ... both acted in accord with the diverse realities that confronted them. Different routes, perhaps, but leading the people to the same goal - socialism."

     At present, leftists of almost all stripes - those who were previously or are now regarded as ultra-left, Eurocommunist, neo-revisionist, or Marxist-Leninist, but who support Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution - are at odds with Chavez's position.

     Finally, if there is any group that wants peace, it is the Colombian people. And the FARC are part of that people. The guerrillas have sought for a peaceful way since at least 1985. After negotiations with the government of President Betancur they declared a cease-fire and entered the country's electoral politics. The only gunfire by the FARC was in self-defense, when Colombian army troops were firing at them. The guerrillas took no offensive action.

     Together with other progressive elements, they organized the Patriotic Union (UP). Within three years, 500 militants, leaders and candidates from the UP were killed by the Colombian army, police and right-wing paramilitaries - an average of three murders a week. In the six months before the elections of 1988, 100 candidates were killed. Only then did the FARC end the cease-fire and return to war.

     Even more murders of UP people then followed, leaving 5,000 dead. The vast majority of these never had any links with the FARC other than being in the same progressive political formation.

     To suggest that the FARC stop armed struggle to join the political process is to ask it to commit suicide. Isa Conde, Senator Cordova, and Pelaez, among others, have noted this reality.

     At present the FARC is seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict. It was negotiating with the previous Colombian government when the current president won the elections and dropped negotiations for a "military solution."

     Due to his government's ties with paramilitaries and drug trafficking, which is cause for a scandal in the country, Uribe was forced to begin to negotiate a humanitarian swap between the government and the guerrillas as a first step in negotiating an end to violence. Uribe cancelled negotiations that Senator Cordova and Chavez were facilitating.

     As a gesture of goodwill, the FARC decided to release some prisoners. There were delays because the government sent the army to the area where the hostages were to be surrendered. In the wake of their release, the families of prisoners of the FARC have been protesting against the intransigence of the Uribe government against humanitarian exchange. The government responded by killing Raul Reyes, a top FARC negotiator.

     The FARC does not suffer from historical amnesia. It will not dump arms unilaterally without something in return. To tell them to do so, as the Colombian left calls for, while facing a narco-paramilitary terror state, is irresponsible.

     It has been noted that Fidel Castro, along with several progressive Latin American presidents, have recently made similar comments about armed struggle. They were basically ignored by the Latin American left. It should not surprise anyone if a month from now no one talks about this question, except perhaps for the dogmatists of both stripes and a right wing that would like to see the Latin American left again split by the debates of the past.

     (The above article was originally published on June 28, 2008 in Nuestro Mundo, the Spanish language section of People's Weekly World.)

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14) PEACE IS THE NEED OF THE HOUR IN BENGAL

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15) NEW REPRESSION IN COLOMBIA

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16) GEORGIAN PEACE COMMITTEE CONDEMNS "FRATRICIDAL WARFARE"

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17) REFLECTIONS ON THE OTHER 911

(The following article is from the September 1-15, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Chris Powell

     Walking north on Toronto's Yonge Street, between Wellesley and College, you pass Alexander Street on your right. Amid the condominiums constructed over the last few decades is Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, an early twentieth century warehouse converted into a theatre in 1967. Until 1986 it was the home of Toronto Workshop Productions (TWP) under the artistic directorship of George Luscombe.

     This September 11, as we join with the Chilean-Canadian community to commemorate the thirty-fifth anniversary of "the original 911" - the US-orchestrated coup d'etat that installed the murderous dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet - it is worth pausing to consider the role that Luscombe and his TWP played in these events.

     Prior to September 11, 1973, Chile's history of constitutional democracy was second in this hemisphere only to the United States. In 1964 the Central Intelligence Agency spent three million dollars to prevent the election of Socialist Salvador Allende. In 1970, however, Allende forged a coalition with the other left parties and was elected president with a plurality. The response of then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people." Kissinger began plotting the coup that would kill Allende and end Chilean democracy for the next seventeen years.

     Canada actively assisted the United States in these efforts. In the three-year period of preparation, the US placed a trade embargo on the Chile, during which consumer goods disappeared from store shelves. Canada participated in this embargo. Two days after the coup, The Globe and Mail welcomed Pinochet, editorializing, "The decision (for the military) to intervene now was probably taken as the only possible move if the country were to be spared all-out civil war." In the six-week period immediately following the coup, during which time thousands of Chileans were murdered, tortured and disappeared, Canada was one of the first countries to extend diplomatic recognition to the new regime. Commenting on events at the time, Canadian Ambassador to Chile Andrew Ross, stated, "You have to remember, this is South America," as if that somehow justified Canadian support of a fascist dictatorship. The government of Pierre Trudeau welcomed "the return of order and regular business relationships."

     Canada's relationship with the junta was illustrated in its attitude that most refugees fleeing Chile were political extremists that the country was lucky to be rid of. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent two officers, Clifford Wilbrod and Bill Knobs, to the Embassy in Santiago to liaise with US Embassy staff and representatives of the junta and assist in the collection of intelligence regarding political personalities who were trying to leave Chile. While the Swedish Embassy grounds in Santiago became a veritable refugee camp, the Canadian Embassy acted to keep most Chileans out.

     This was reflective of Canada's Cold War double standard policy. During the 1950s Canada allowed 30,000 Hungarians to enter the country following the Soviet intervention of 1956. Likewise, 11,000 Czechs entered Canada after the short-lived "Prague Spring." Later we would admit 60,000 "Boat People" from Southeast Asia. Despite reports of mass executions, disappearances, mutilation and torture, in the 1973-1974 period, Canada granted refugee status to only 2,000 Chileans, after intensive, and often humiliating, political and health screening.

     In April 1974, Luscombe and TWP resident writer Jack Winter attended a party in support of Chilean refugees. The two started to become aware of Canada's shameful relationship with Chilean fascism, and decided to use the theatre to expose it.

     Born in 1926 in working-class East Toronto, Luscombe had been active in a CCF youth group in the 1940s. From 1950 to 1957 he worked as an actor in Britain with the Theatre Workshop group under the direction of Marxist Joan Littlewood. He established TWP as Canada's first alternative theatre in 1959, moving into the Alexander Street address in Canada's centennial year. From its humble beginnings until its end, Luscombe made no bones that TWP was a political theatre.

     Titled You Can't Get Here from There, Winter researched and wrote the skeleton of a script, Luscombe and his actors workshopped it into a play. "It wasn't just a story about Pinochet or Allende," stated Luscombe in a 1990 interview, "it was really a story about the Canadian Embassy."

     The play's purpose, according to Luscombe, was to inform the public "of our government's involvement in the machinations of the CIA, and how they, in such a terrible fashion, support fascism..."

     This wasn't a Conservative government," reminded Luscombe, "it was a Liberal government and the man in charge was (Minister of Foreign Affairs) Mitchell Sharp and it was Trudeau who was (Prime Minister)... The Canadian government was sitting back with its thumb in its mouth, closing its doors on the refugees. Here we were in a clear situation of a coup, a murderous coup, the army slaughtering the youth of Chile."

     According to Luscombe, several Embassy staff approached him after seeing the play, congratulating him on such an accurate portrayal. They made no attempt to hide their disdain for Ambassador Ross and the actions of the Canadian government.

     Out of the darkness of the theatre the play began with film footage of the army attack on La Moneda, the presidential palace, and the carnage perpetrated in the streets of Santiago. Interspersed throughout a radio announcer's account of the coup is Allende's final address to the people of Chile: "Surely this is the last opportunity I will have to address myself to you. My words do not come out of bitterness, but may they be the moral punishment for those who have betrayed the oath they took as soldiers of Chile. They have the power, they can smash us, but the social processes are not detained. History is ours, and the People will make it... I have faith in Chile and in her destiny. Other men will overcome this gray and bitter moment. May you continue to know that much sooner than later the great avenues through which free men will pass to build a better society will open. Long live Chile!"

     The play also included the patriotic working-class songs of Chilean songwriter Victor Jara, as well as a recitation in broken English by a recently arrived Chilean actor of a translated poem by Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda. Jara was murdered in the National Stadium within a week of the coup, Neruda died a few days later of natural causes, some say of a broken heart. At the centre of the stage was a Plexiglas-enclosed area of pure white, representing the inaccessible Canadian Embassy in Santiago. Around it was an earth tone set representing the reality of Chile.

     Before the play opened, however, tragedy struck. In the early morning hours of November 5, 1974, the day of opening night, an arsonist attacked Toronto Workshop Productions, severely gutting the theatre. Years later, Luscombe conceded the fire might have been the work of a disgruntled former actor. His admittedly authoritarian leadership style certainly earned him many enemies. He also thought that it might have been related to five or six other acts of what appeared to be right-wing violence occurring in Toronto at the time, including the firing of several live rounds into the door of Progress Books, which sold communist literature.

     Whatever the cause, the opening was delayed by six weeks, during which TWP was rebuilt. Showing remarkable solidarity, the Toronto theatre community lent its full strength and resources into getting TWP up and running again. On December 31, 1974 You Can't Get Here from There opened.

     Ironically, between the fire and the opening of the play, the Canadian government reversed its policy, opening the doors to Chilean refugees and marking the start of what would become a vibrant and active Chilean-Canadian community. How much credit Luscombe and TWP can take for this is purely a matter of conjecture, but it is significant not only in illustrating the relationship between the political and the artistic stages, but also between Canadians and Chileans in fighting modern-day fascism.

     Through a series of convoluted political battles, Luscombe was dismissed by the TWP board of directors in 1986, in what University of Guelph Professor of Drama Alan Filewod has aptly described as a purge. The theatre folded two years later. Luscombe went on to teach as a sessional instructor at both Guelph and Trent Universities until his retirement was forced by diabetes, to which he succumbed in 1999. In his honour, the University of Guelph re-named its main theatre the George Luscombe Theatre.

     So this September 11, let us remember the victims of both 911s: the American victims of terror, and the victims of American terror. But let us also remember the many "little people" such as George Luscombe who continue to fight, fascism in their own individual ways, people who seem to have an innate understanding of Salvador Allende's parting words: "History is ours, and the People will make it."

     (The Archival Collection for Toronto Workshop Productions can be found at the Library of the University of Guelph. Jack Winter's notes for You Can't Get Here from There, along with his other work can be found in the archives of Mills Memorial Library at McMaster University. See also Neil Carson's Harlequin in Hogtown: George Luscombe and Toronto Workshop Productions, University of Toronto Press, 1995.)

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15) WHAT'S LEFT

WAR RESISTERS

Pan-Canadian Day of Action, Sat., Sept. 13, to oppose deportations of US war resisters. For full details of local events and planning meetings, visit http://www.resisters.ca.

BURNABY, BC

Labour Day Picnic, Monday - Sept. 1, 11 am-4 pm, Confederation Park (on North Willingdon), organized by BC Union Label.

VANCOUVER, BC

Vlogging Resistance, screenings and discussion on new alternative media - Friday, Aug. 22, 7 pm, Rhizome Cafe, 317 E. Broadway.

Left Film Night - Sunday, Aug. 31, 7 pm, showing “Miel para Oshun” (“Honey for Oshun”), film by Cuban director Humberto Solas on the return of a young man to the homeland from which he was taken as a child, Spanish with English subtitles, Centre for Socialist Education, 706 Clark Drive, call 604-255-2041 for details.

COPE Meetings:

Policy conference for 2008 civic election: Sun., Sept. 14, 10:30 am, St. James Community Square, 3214 W. 10 Ave.
Nomination meeting: Sunday, Sept. 28, 2:30 pm, Ukrainian Auditorium, 154 E. 10 Ave. (at Main). For info, call COPE office, 604-255-0400.

Left Film Night - Sunday, Aug. 31, 7 pm, Centre for Socialist Education, 706 Clark Drive, call 604-255-2041 for details.

WINNIPEG, MN

Manitoba Peace Council meeting - Sat., Sept. 6, 10 am, at the Workers Organizing Resource Centre, 280 Smith St. mezzanine level. Use buzzer to gain entry. Info 233-7116.

Four Directions Walk planning meeting - Sat., Sept 6., 10 am at the Workers Organizing Resource Centre, 280 Smith St. mezzanine level. Use buzzer to gain entry. Info 792-3371.

EDMONTON, AB

Edmonton Young Communist League - meets regularly at Remedy Cafe, 8631-109 St., 5 pm on the second Friday each month. Discussion topics and suggested readings on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3559215104.

TORONTO, ON

Labour Education Centre course: Globalization, Imperialism and World Inequality, open to all - September 2008, classes at OISE UT. For cost and other information, see http://www.laboureducation.org.

Support public health care - mass protest Sat., Sept. 27 11 am, at Metro Hall Square (Wellington & John St.); for info call Ontario Health Coalition 416-441-2502.

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September 1-15, 2008 Volume 16 - Number 15 $1

The Spark!

The Spark!

September 1-15, 2008
Volume 16 - Number 15
$1