British unions and Soviet dissidents

Press, 7 April 1978, Page 12

British unions and Soviet dissidents

Sir, — The article in “The Press” on Monday about Amnesty International’s embroiling of British trade unions in its anti-Soviet campaign contains a paragraph which says: “Railwaymen are involved, too, and Mr Sydney Weighel! of the N U.R. says that he has already given instructions for all the Amnesty material to be published in the union’s weekly paper.” On the cable page of the same issue, under “Cable Briefs,” there is a paragraph, “AntiFront action,” which reports that Britain’s biggest railway union has voted to expel members of the extreme Right-wing National From which advocates the forcible repatriation of coloured immigrants, the National Front claims to have several hundred members in the railways union. It appears not to have occurred to the N.U.R. that dissident Soviet trade unionists, some 200,

may hold views as abhorrent to the Soviet Union’s 56.000,000 trade unionists as their National Front members’ views are to the British N.U.R. — Yours, etc., M. CREEL. April 5, 1978.