The Bay of Plenty Times TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 1948 HIS MASTER’S VOICE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14569, 13 January 1948, Page 2

The Bay of Plenty Times TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 1948 HIS MASTER’S VOICE

Like good business men who never pass by an opportunity for a shrewd deal, Communist leaders in and out of Russia ne\ei neglect the chance to discredit the leaders of other parties who oppose them. In Soviet dominated countries they usually shoot them as well. In Britain, however, not having acquired the power necessary to do this, Communists have to be content with vituperation. In Milan, where he happens to be at present, the secretary of the British Communist party, Mr Harry Pollitt, told Italian journalists that Mr Arthur Bevin was the principal architect of the disastrous British foreign policy,, and that “his removal from office should be the first step toward the reorganisation of the Laboui Government.” For good measure he threw in the assertion that “so long as Mr Bevin remains in office the danger of war and misery remains.” The record is a familiar one, and the voice might easily have been that of M. Molotov. In view of his attack on Mr Bevin it is interesting to recall something of Mr Pollitt’s career. After serving his apprenticeship as London district secretary to the Boilermakers’ Society, as a young man he became national organiser of the Hands Off Russia movement as far back as 1919. Prom 1929 onwards he came into prominence as an active official in the Communist Party, of which he has been secretary over since. Six times in sixteen years he lias been a candidate for parliamentary honours, and six times the electors of six different electorates have declined to give him their confidence.

In 1940, the year in which lie Ptcod for Ihc Silvertown scat, and the year of the Battle of Britain, he wrote in the Daily Worker: “Today all our energies must be concentrated on convincing the masses that the fight to establish a people’s government, which in co-operation with the people of other countries, will lead the way forward to a People’s Peace, is the only path 0.l advance. . . ” He had nothing to, say by way of encouraging the people in their grim struggle against aggression; nothing to. say about the heroism of the R.A.F. pilots who were helping to keep Mr Pollitt’s home intact, '‘only (as an English newpaper recently described it) “a contemptible wail about ‘death, destruction and terror being let loose against the peoples of Britain and Germany’.” His sympathies seemed to be shared equally between the two. Such a disclosure was hardly likely to help him at the poll. This then, is the man who presumes to malign Britain’s present Foreign Minister. It is to be hoped that his mana at the Kremlin has grown considerably as a result.