THE HAND BEHIND

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 22, 28 January 1929, Page 17

THE HAND BEHIND

MOSCOW AND THE P.P.S,

ALL COLOURS PROPAGANDA

The Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat has difficulty in finding any place for its propagandist conferences outside of Asia. A meeting of the Secretariat was held in Shanghai in February of last year. Australian, Filipino, Japanese, Russian, American, British, and Chinese delegates were present. This meoting convoked the Pan-Pacific-Trade Union Congress to meet in Sydney or Melbourne in 1929, but tho meeting has been forbidden by tho Federal Government. It is pointed out the objects of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat are revolutionary, that its leaders are avowed enemies of Great Britain and the United States, and that they represent the hand of Moscow in tho wide Pacific. NOT AN OPEN BOND. The American .Federation of Labour is strongly opposed to the Secretariat, and in a letter to a friend in Melbourne the president of the federation (Mr. W. Green) discloses the close link between tho Communist party and the Pan-Pacific Secretariat. Mr. Green writes: "The most authentic material to be obtained regarding the formation of the Pan-Pacific Union Secretariat is almost exclusively of Communist origin. The Red International of Trade Unions, with headquarters at Moscow, is responsible for the creation of thu Secretariat, and actively controls its !'activities. The Secretariat has not adhered to the Ked International because it has been thought to be better tactics to have it remain outside, so that it might attract to itself other trade unions, not themselves, affiliated to the Red International. The establishment of this new organ is evidence of the continuing purpose of the Bolshevik leaders to interfere in and to attempt to direct the course of affairs in the colonial dependencies of 'Great Britain.

"The first proposal to summon a gathering of the Labour leaders to the Pacific Ocean countries was made by tho Australian Trade Unions. This proposal was reported to tho second congress iof the Bed International, and it decided to call simultaneously with its next congress a conference of the revolutionary trade union organisations of the colonies. The fourth congress of the Communist Internationa], in considering the Eastern question, referred to the resolution of the second congress of the Bed International, and it adopted a thesis which stated that the task of the Communist party, among other things, was to conduct an extensive propaganda to teach the peoples of tlic colonial countries to regard Soviet Bussia as the bulwark of all tho oppressed and exploited masses.

COMMUNIST DIRECTION. As a result of the fourth congress of the Communist International and of the second congress of the Eed International, tho latter organisation convened the Pan-Pacific conference of transport workers in Canton in June, 1924. Tho report of this conference shows that its work was directed by representatives of the Communist International and of the Bed International. This conference was important because it was the first attempt to unite the separated movement of the foremost sections of the working class in the countries of the Pacific Ocean. "A conference was hold at Sydney in August, 1926," continues Mr. Green, j Pan-Pacific Congress in Canton in 1927. "at which it was decided to call the This conference actually met in Himkow.,, .^Representatives wero ' present from' Bussia and other trade union centres. Bepresentatives from the Phillipines, Mexico, India, Australia, and' Canada were invited, but for a variety of reasons were' unable to attend. Of the speakers and reporters at this conference the most important have been connected with the international revolutionary movement directed from Moscow. Lozovsky, of Bussia, holds that, the Secretariat is not a new international, but a new weapon for the creation of a United International. According to Heller, also of Bussia, the unity of the Pan-Pacific labour movement in the Secretariat was only possible because of the work of the Bed International and its sections."