COMMUNISTS AND THE WAR.

Evening Star, Issue 25425, 5 March 1945, Page 6

COMMUNISTS AND THE WAR.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In your issue of February 26 you published Press Association reports of statements by a Major Jordan in which he accused Communists "of living off the New Zealand workers," and of deliberately disrupting their war effort. As Major Jordan is obviously not well acquainted with conditions in New Zealand, we list here a few points regarding the policy of the Communist Party.

\t no time has the Communist Party advocated strikes for the sake of striking, and since the inception of the antiFascist war we have consistently opposed strikes as being inimical to the war effort; as witness the recent railway strike, in which well-known members of our party opposed drastic action and were largely responsible for limiting .it and bringing it to a speedy conclusion.

Our efforts in the direction of increasing .production, by the establishment of joint production committees, by the exposing of waste and inefficiency, and by the development of greater co-operation between employer and worker, are well known to all sections of the public.

During the Victory Loan campaigns the assistance given to the committees by our party has been wariiily praised hv members of these committees of all shades of political opinion. In general, the policy of the New Zealand Communist Party, in line with that of our brother parties throughout the world, has been directed towards the establishment and strengthening of national unity against Fascism, based on an organised and united working class and its allies. All our published statements and all our actions have been in this direction, and the posing, by Major Jordan or anyone else, of speculative queries such as " If Russia had not come into the war," etc., cannot alter these facts. In regard to the "Hands off Greece" slogan, resolutions and expressions of protest came spontaneously from all sections of the people—not only from " Communist parasites"—particularly in Britain, where a well-informed Labour Movement led the movement of protest to mass proportions.—We are. etc., Communist Party of Otago. (E W. Hunter, Chairman.) March 1.