TRADES UNION CONGRESS

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 September 1927, Page 5

TRADES UNION CONGRESS

ANXIOUS FOR PEACE. (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.; LONDON, September 11. There was an uproar at the Trade Union Congress during a debate on a resolution moved on behalf of the Furnishing Trades Association, condemning Labour leaders for participating, in industrial peace propaganda, and declaring that their business is to organise the workers for a struggle against the capitalists. Mr Robert Smillie and Mr Cook indulged in passages about “running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.” The Moderates again gained the ascendancy, and the resolution was shelved. Mr Ben Tucker declared that the whole industrial class was anxious for peace. SEAMEN’S UNION. LONDON, September 10. The even tenor of the Trade Union Congress was disturbed by the furnishing trade delegates moving to suspend the standing order to discuss the omission of the Seamen’s Union from the Congress and urging the transport workers to organise seamen on a trade union basis. • ; Mr Pollitt, in seconding the motion, said that if this question were not discussed, the Congress would be stigmatised as a futility. Mr Citrine pointed out that the Disputes Committee of the Congress had arranged to deal with the differences of the miners and seamen, and to ensure Mr Havelock Wilson a fair ingAfter a lively debate the motion was rejected by 91 to 63. COMMUNIST “HOT AIR” LONDON, Sept. 9. The Minority delegates of the T.U. Congress have issued a statement characterising the decision to breach with Russia of “a crime against the workers of the world, equalled only by the betrayal of three million British workers during the general strike,’’ and It appeals to the workers to reestablish the Anglo-Russian Committee. RUSSIANS ANGRY LONDON, Sept. 11. The Times’ Riga ~correspondent says: Trade Union Congress action for the dissolution of the Anglo-Russian Committee has deeply impressed the Moscow Reds, who are pouring vials of wrath on “the British traitors.” M. Dogadoff denounces “the functionaries

assembled to fulfil Mr. Baldwin’s behests. Nevertheless,” he says, “we will devise means of keeping, close contact with the British workers without these servants of black reaction. Then the British workers will throw the Purcells, Hickses and Thomades into the cesspool, and will put real revolutionaries in their place.” M. Lozovosk'y says: “The decision was cut and dried. It was not by chance that the Trade Union Congreds’ aggressiveness coincided with Britain’s diplomatic rupture with Russia. Only the so-called leaders are traitors. A referendum would have shown that the heart of British Labour really beats for. union With Moscow.”