RESIGNATION OF JOURNALIST

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25448, 20 March 1948, Page 7

RESIGNATION OF JOURNALIST

COMMUNIST PAPER’S NEWS EDITOR

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, March 19. Mr Douglas Hyde, who has resigned from his position as news editor of the Communist “Daily Worker,” said last night that he expected a large number of members to follow his example and break with the Communist Party. ' , “There is no doubt- that many of its members are deeply perturbed by the Communist policy, and by events in eastern Europe,” he told the “Daily Mail.” “The time is ripe for largescale resignations. Mine is not an isolated case. If I, a Communist for 20 years and a ‘Daily Worker’ executive for eight years, feel that way, many young people who joined the party during the war years—and the majority of the party are youngsters —will not take so long to make up their minds. They must be finding it extremely difficult to see eye to eye with the shapers of the Communist Party policy. My action may result in a landslide.” Mr Hyde added that he was now a journalist out of a job, “but I have not felt so happy for a long time.” Earlier. Mr Hyde said: “It has become obvious that the Communist movement is destroying the very freedoms and decencies for which it claims to be fighting. It has become, equally obvious that Communism is incapable of providing a cure for an extremely, sick world?’ Mr Hyde is receiving instruction with a view to joining the Roman Catholic Church.