UNION RULES CHANGED

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28450, 3 December 1957, Page 15

UNION RULES CHANGED

Communist Grip Stronger (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) LONDON, December 2. Communist leaders of Britain’s: 230,000-strong Electrical Trades Union won a stronger grip on their union at a conference in London yesterday to change the union’s rules. The general secretary, Mr Frank Maxell. the president, Mr Frank Foulkes, and the assistant secretary, Mr R. G. McLennan —all Communists—could now call on anyone they chose from the liman union executive to make up the five-man inner committee, the ‘‘Daily Mail” said. Of the 50 delegatas at the meeting. 30 were Communists or supporters, the ‘‘News Chronicle” said.

The new rules passed at the conference have not yet been circulated Delegates to the conference were told to keep their mouths shut about what was discussed.

The Communist leaders of the Union would announce the rules to be members in their own time, the “Daily Mail” said. Mr Foulkes

put it: ‘‘Nobody will make any statement to anybody about anything.” The conference was also believed to have sanctioned in<creased penalties for the unauthorised disclosure of union affairs and for members who circulated other members about union affairs on their own initiative. The “no-communication move,” strengthened by increased decentralisation of union affairs, was to head off the growing anti-Com-munist movement in the rank-and-file of the union, the ‘‘Daily Express” said. One disillusioned rebel said last night: “Now the E.T.U. is a People’s democracy.’ We need not go to Hungary to see what it is like—it is here on our own doorstep.”