COMMUNISTS IN BRITAIN
PARTY OPPOSES T.U.C. AND GOVERNMENT POLICY AGREED ON AT NATIONAL CONGRESS LONDON, February 23. The British Communists, at their twentieth national congress, agreed on an. anti-Government and antiTrades Union Congress policy. The party wants a new Government which will be without Mr Attlee, Sir Stafford Cripps, and Mr Ernest Bevin, and which will also be “Left” or “Progressive.” It refrained, however, from mentioning the men it has in mind to lead such a new Government since “it would be wrong at the moment to place any undue emphasis on particular personalities.” It opposes the T.U.C.’s acceptance of the Government’s White Paper on wage stabilisation and maintains that it is the task of every trade unionist and shop steward, every trade branch, district committee, and shop stewards’ committee, to demand, in the words of Mr Harry Pollitt, the party’s general secretary, “that their executive stands firm and fights for wage advances to meet the rising costs of living.”
The party pledges support for the trade unions now claiming wages advances and warns them against “passively accepting” adverse decisions of arbitration tribunals. The decisions of the national arbitration tribunals sre, of course, binding by law. While opposing both the Government and the T.U.C., the Communists deny that they will hamper production. This point was made by Mr Arthur Horner, the miners’ leader, who said that the charge that the Communists were opposed to production was “a foul lie.”
Mr Pollitt, in a two-hour speech, bitterly attacked two Labour members of the House of Commons, Mr R. H. S. Crossman and Mr Michael Foot, whose “rebelliousness” apparently has not taken the course he wished. He also attacked Mr Bevin because of his attitude towards Russian foreign policy, and the Minister of (Mr John Strachey), whom he presumably regards as a lost friend. He gave honourable mention to one non-Communist Mr J. B. Priestley, “who so often reflects the thought of the common man."
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Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25427, 25 February 1948, Page 7
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323COMMUNISTS IN BRITAIN Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25427, 25 February 1948, Page 7
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