Anti-Communist Lecturer

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31764, 22 August 1968, Page 16

Anti-Communist Lecturer

Mr P. Walsh, research director of a Canadian Right-wing organisation which has been accused of conducting a smear campaign against the Canadian Prime Minister (Mr Trudeau), arrived in Christchurch yesterday on a lecture tour.

Mr Walsh said he was a journalist who was research director of Ronald Gostick’s monthlv newsletter. “Canadian Intellieence Service.” which is owned and operated by the Canadian League of Rights. That publication Is regarded in Canada as an extreme Right-wing newspaper, but Mr Walsh denied yesterday that the organisation was extremist

“We are anti-Communist,” he said, “but you could call us small-c conservative. We are not ultra-right-wing, and we have nothing to do with '■rackpot organisations like Rockwell’s anti-Semitic group in the United States. “We are not fascist or Nazi —we condemn them as much as we condemn communism. We are primarily an educational project, alerting the people of Canada to the Communist conspiracy and bringing pressure to bear on the politicians to do something about it.”

Mr Walsh says he worked as an under-cover agent for

the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from 1949 to 1953, but says that they will neither confirm nor deny this. “From 1939 to 1949 I was involved in al Isorts of Communist fronts, posing as a fellow traveller,” he said. "I was working for other security agencies such as the Quebec city and Quebec provincial anti - subversion squads.”

Mr Walsh said he had been writing articles for the last 15 years under a by-line naming him as a former under-cover agent for the Mounties. In 1954, he said, he had testified at a libel trial that he had been an under-cover agent. “If that had not been true I would have been arrested for perjury,” he said. Mr Walsh said that his job was to do research for articles for the organisation’s three publications. “Our files on Communist subversion are second only to those of the R.C.M.P.,” he said. “Most of them are based on my reports to the Mounties when I was an under-cover agent. I took copies. They don’t know I did that.” Mr Walsh said he did the research for and wrote an article about the Prime Minister of Canada (Mr Trudeau) which was published and distributed as a pamphlet by the “Canadian Intelligence Service.’! This pamphlet was referred to in a recent edition of the Montreal “Star” as the basis of a smear campaign accusing the Prime Minister of 'Communist tendencies.

But Mr Walsh denied that bis article made such an accusation. He said it merely enumerated facts in Mr Trudeau’s background—such as his “attempt to paddle a canoe to Cuba” (since explained by Mr Trudeau as being simply a test of a boat using foot paddles instead of oars), his visits to Moscow and Peking, and his studies at Harvard University.

“1 have never called Mr Trudeau a Communist,” said Mr Walsh. “To my knowledge he has never been a member of the party. He used to be a fellow-traveller, but he is now a liberal.”

Mr Walsh's lecture tour has been financed by the Australian League of Rights. It is the Australian counterpart of the Canadian League of Rights which owns and publishes the “Canadian Intelligence Service.”

He said he knew nothing about the Aid Rhodesia Movement in New Zealand, and was unaware that it was sponsoring his public meeting in Christchurch.

“But on the question of Rhodesia, I’m four square behind lan Smith,” he said. “I also happen to be Canadian secretary of the Friends of Rhodesia who gave a Canadian tanker full of petrol to the Rhodesian Government.”

Asked why he considered New Zealand in danger from “the expanding global strategy of international communism,” Mr Walsh said New Zealand's danger was from China.

He said that maps had been published in Peking showing that Australia and New Zealand were sparsely populated and that the inhabitants had stolen the land from the natives, so had no right to it. “They have got designs on New Zealand,” he said. “You are threatened by Red Chinese imperialism. Your local Communist Party is considered to be pro-Peking. It may be tiny, but Lenin once said, the smaller the better. A small band of dedicated Communists is worth more than a large apathetic following.”