First Published: People’s Canada Daily News, Vol 6, No. 79, October 4, 1976
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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The monopoly capitalist state and its agents have launched a vicious assault on the revolutionary students at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. The struggle centres around the students’ newspaper, The Chevron, where the Marxist-Leninist line of defending the basic interests of the students has become firmly established as the line of the paper.
After a long hard struggle, the line of certain opportunists who wanted to use the paper for their own ends and to keep the masses of students from grasping the fact their interests are inseparably bound up with those of the proletariat, was defeated. Seeing that the Marxist-Leninist line was about to be consolidated as the leading line of The Chevron, the state mobilized an imported American subversive who has been installed as the head of the Federation of Students, to stage a hitlerite conspiracy to muzzle the progressives on The Chevron staff.
On Friday, September 24, the editor of The Chevron resigned for what he called “personal reasons”. This man had long been an instrument of the American subversive heading the Federation, who is himself not even a student! On the same day the editor resigned, the American subversive convened a secret meeting of the Federation executive, all of whom are appointed by himself, not elected by the students. He cooked up the completely bogus charges that the editor had been “pressured” to resign by the progressive students in the Anti-Imperialist Alliance (AIA) who were actually leading the work of the paper. He further concocted that the AIA was preventing new people from coming forward to work as staff on The Chevron. These are merely trumped up charges to prevent the progressive students, led by the AIA, from using The Chevron to defend the basic interests of the students.
On Friday evening, September 24, the university administration changed the locks on the doors of The Chevron offices, without notifying the staff, and even without notifying the student Councillors. When the AIA comrades on The Chevron staff learned of this hitlerite manouevre on Saturday, they immediately went to the offices of the paper to confront the American subversive who had assumed dictatorial powers over the premises. Special instructions had been given to the campus security police that they were to obey his orders to keep the progressive students out of The Chevron. However, the hitlerite American subversive was thoroughly denounced for his fascist attack on the democratic rights of the students and along with his police force was driven away in a panic by the staff who immediately occupied The Chevron offices. The staff then called a meeting.
The entire staff of thirty-five people attended the meeting to denounce the attack of the reactionaries as the “executive action” of a small clique. They resolved to put out a special issue of The Chevron and to expose these nazi tactics.
The lies of the reactionary Federation executive that the AIA “discouraged” new people from joining the staff is thoroughly exposed by the fact that the large staff of thirty-five people is composed mainly of new students. They pointed out that the charge that the editor had been “pressured” to resign was also a lie, and that the Marxist-Leninists had won leadership in the paper by putting forward the line of defending the basic interests of the students.
On Sunday night, at a meeting of the Federation, the reactionaries made use of the bureaucratic form to prevent the students from presenting their views. Even so, the Council was forced to pass a resolution calling on the administration to remove its new locks from the doors. Both the Canadian University Press and the Ontario Federation of Students, who had representatives at the meeting, opposed the arbitrary action of the American subversive and supported the right of The Chevron to keep operating. However, both organizations participated in a decision of the Federation to set up a kangeroo court to “investigate” The Chevron. The staff of The Chevron militantly pointed out that it is not the paper which needs “investigating” but rather the activities of the hitlerite police agents who have been mobilized by the vote to attack the students. They resolutely declared that The Chevron itself would carry out this investigation, and immediately went to work.
All day Monday, the staff was busy preparing the special issue of The Chevron which came on Tuesday. This special issue repudiated the charges against the AIA members on The Chevron staff, and announced the beginning of the investigation of the American subversive and his gang of reactionaries. This drove the reactionaries into a frenzy. They raved that it was an “illegal” issue, since it was put out without the “permission” of the American subversive. This was the second attack carried out against The Chevron and the AIA. The special issue announced that a mass democracy meeting would be held at noon on Thursday to fully discuss the attacks of the American subversive and the Federation, which have been carried out on the orders of the monopoly capitalist state.
The reactionaries also planned a meeting on Thursday in order to carry out still further attacks against The Chevron and its staff.
The mass democracy meeting organized by The Chevron was attended by 1,500 people. Large numbers of people participated in thoroughly discussing the issues and gave their views. Resolutions were presented at the meeting in support of the democratic structure of The Chevron, but due to the disruptive activities organized by a clique of reactionaries, no resolution was arrived at in the meeting which lasted three hours.
At 5:30, the reactionary Council met with about two hundred people attending. The meeting was well stacked with reactionaries who, after six hours, passed a resolution to suspend operation of The Chevron for four weeks. The reactionary Council also eliminated the posts of editor, production manager and news editor in their attempt to purge the AIA influence from the paper. The Chevron staff opposed all these reactionary manoeuvres and stated that it is determined to publish in spite of them. What the reactionaries are so afraid of is the revolutionary-democratic form of the present Chevron, which they want to replace with a reactionary-bureaucratic form which can be controlled by a small clique of reactionaries against the basic interests of the students. At present, no one person or small clique can control the content of The Chevron. The staff has full discussion on all issues in the mass democratic style and no one can impose arbitrary decisions on the staff. This is the revolutionary-democratic form which the state and its agents are so anxious to smash. Naturally the first object of their attacks are the Marxist-Leninists who have led in establishing the present form and who struggle to uphold and defend the basic interests of the students.
These reactionary attacks are part and parcel of the state-organized assault against the revolutionary political party of the proletariat, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), which has pointed out to the revolutionary students that the basic interests of the students can only be achieved by taking up, and fighting for, the basic interests of the proletariat. The working class has always been denied access to the universities which have long been a stronghold of reaction where only the privileged few were permitted to enter the deepening of the economic, political, and social crisis, the students are coming under increased attacks, and are being forced to bear ever more of the burden of the crisis. The only way forward for the students is to take up the revolutionary politics of class struggle of the proletariat, the politics of Make The Rich Pay! The revolutionary students should demand that the working class have free education, and that the rich, who have always used their wealth to shove aside the working class youth, should be forced to pay to the maximum. The rich should pay not only for their education, but also for that of the working class.
It is the revolutionary politics of class struggle advanced by CPC(M-L) which earns the hatred of the monopoly capitalist state, which does everything to attack the Party and its supporters such as the AlA. Only a couple of weeks ago, the bourgeois press whipped up a huge sensation about CPC{M-L) allegedly “inciting” the Native people to be violent and financing them to take up armed struggle against the state. Last week, the state and its various agents carried out a repeated series of physical attacks on supporters of the Party selling revolutionary literature at the Rosemont CEGEP in Montreal and fired two communist teachers for defending the revolutionary students. None of these attacks stop the CPC(M-L) or its supporters from giving firm support to the struggles of the Native people or to the students, but merely increase the resolve of the comrades to carry on the struggle.
In the case of The Chevron, this too has been blamed on the communists. The Globe and Mail carried an article which claimed that the University of Waterloo administration locked the doors of The Chevron in order to keep the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) from taking over the student newspaper. Just as all the other attacks by reactionaries on the communists have been defeated, so will this attack be smashed by the revolutionary students at UW. PCDN hails the revolutionary spirit of The Chevron staff to carry on in the face of the reactionary attacks.
THE COMMUNIST STUDENTS AT WATERLOO WILL CERTAINLY WIN!
THE REACTIONARIES WILL CERTAINLY BE DEFEATED!