HARRY BRIDGES GAOLED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 151, 12 April 1950, Page 5

HARRY BRIDGES GAOLED

PERJURY COMMITTED IN U.S. OTHER UNION OFFICIALS ALSO SENTENCED (N.Z.P. A.—Copy right) SAN FRANCISCO, April 10. Harry Bridges, president of the International Lougtshoremen’s Union, was to-day sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for perjury and two years’ imprisonment for conspiracy. The sentences will be served concurrently. The Judge said that the United States Government had proved that “Bridges lied in his 1945 naturalisation proceedings, when he denied membership in the Communist Party.” Before ordering Bridges to be taken into immediate custody, the Judge said the verdict was fair and just. It was not, as defence counsel had suggested, the result of hysteria or errors by the Court; neither did it represent an oblique attack on militant unionism, or some alleged external pressure exerted by the United States Government. The defence counsel had contended that the Judge was biased and the trial conducted on a political and patriotic basis.

The defence ‘-attorney (Mr Vincent Hallinan) described Bridges’s conviction as “illegal, tyrannical, and unconstitutional.”

,Two other officials of the Longshore men’s Union, J. R. Robertson and Henry Schmidt, who had been convictd of conspiring to help Bridges to conceal his membership of the Communist Party, were each sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The defence then applied for bail. This was set at 25,000 dollars for Bridges and 10,000 dollars each for th© other two union officials.