SEARCH INTENSIFIED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 142, 29 March 1948, Page 3

SEARCH INTENSIFIED

Hunt for Fugitive Communist f (Rec. 11.15 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day, While police in Queensland intensified their search for Edward Joseph Rowe, a fugitive Communist strike leader, prominent Communists continued boasting about their plans to prevent his arrest.

“The Communist Party has an organisation efficient enough to ensure that Rowe does not. fall into police hands until we are ready,” declared Mr R,. Dixon, assistant-secretary of the party. “Queensland’s strike will be led by leaders outside prison walls,” said Mr S. Moran from a Communist platform in the Sydney Domain. “We will not make the mistake made by theLW.W., who had all their leaders gaoled. _ I would be ashamed of the Corrimunist Party if it could not hide one man from the police. Some of these police could not trace an elephant in the snow if he. wore gumboots.’ To-day they are hunters—to-morrow it will be our turn.”

The deputy-leader of the Federal Opposition, Mr E. J. Harrison, said that Dixon’s statement took some beating for sheer effrontery. “Incidents like this throw into sharp relief the absurdity of the Prime Minister’s stated belief that Communism is just another political phisosophy.” He, added: “Rowe and the Communist Party consider they are above the law’ of democracy and believe they are responsible only to the dictates of the Marx house. Rowe or any other agent of a foreign Power who flouts democratic law should be given a sharp demonstration of the determination of Australia to retain democracy.”

PARTY ENDORSES ACTION

FLIGHT OF COMMUNIST SECRETARY

SYDNEY, March 28

The missing Communist, E. J. Rowe, who has been convicted of contempt of court, will-give himself up to the. police when ready to do so, according to Mr R. Dixon, secretary of the Communist Party. Mr Dixon added that the Party was in complete agreement with the action taken by Rowe. The police say they are satisfied that Rowe has escaped from Queensland to the southern States, and is preparing to fight extradition charges that-would be necessary to return him to Queensland. Many unionists regard Rowe’s flight from justice as a slur on the strikers. They say that while strikers have stood up to their responsibilities, from which Rowe allowed no escape, Rowe himself, as soon as he became a Strike victim, “went into the smoke.” , Addressing the Easter Conference of his Party, Air J. T. Lang accused the Chifley Government of becoming the tool of the Communist Party. “True Labour supporters have found themselves leaderless’ in their day to day struggles,” he said. “The Chifley Government not only appeases Communists but permits them to occupy strategic positions from which they could wreck this country’s economy in time.” In Melbourne last night, shouted threats and struggles for the microphone interrupted the Victorian Labour Party Conference. In the general uproar the conference carried a motion denouncing the Communist Party and its activities.