RUSSIAN CONDITIONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 October 1930, Page 12

RUSSIAN CONDITIONS

LABOUR M.P’S VIEW. “Tho effect of rationing and the high cost of food is that a. private market exists in the Soviet territories,” says Mr. J. Toole, M.P. (Labour), in a “Manchester Guardian” interview. “In the main street in Moscow you will seo people sitting and offering food that they have bought after a long wait in the queue, and they make a corresponding profit on the deal. They will starve themselves for the sake of this middleman’s profit. Especially do they deal in buttter.

“Thinking in terms of purchasingpower, I declare that the unemployed man in Great Britain, with a wife and three children, is better’ off with his unemployment pay than the average employed workman in Russia. Female labour is employed everywhere, in docks, fields, factories and trams. “There is no such thing as personal liberty in Russia. The worker may do as he wishes provided he does as he is told. It appeared to me that one despotism is supplanting another. If there is > any consolation in being knocked on the head by a Red policeman with a red truncheon rather than by a capitalist policeman with a black one, then that is the only consolation that the Russian town-dweller has. You may hold any opinion you wish, but you may not organise for it or cooperate for it with others. The State is remorseless, it gives no trial or justice in our sense.

“Capital punishment is the swift and certain end of those who attempt to co-operate in opposition. Capital punishment, in fact, is now only retained for counter-revolutionaries. When 1 spoke about this to one of the high officials ho said ‘There can be no personal liberty until the Revolution is over,’ but he could not tell me when Ihe Revolution would end. According to him it is still going on, eleven years after it began.

“It is my conviction that, whatever the plight of Russia, she must be left to work out her own salvation. When I reflect that there exists in this country a Body of opinion, however small, which expresses the view that a similar organisation of the State would be a good thing for this country I am obliged to tnink that those who hold that view ought to hold their conferences in Prestwich Asylum rather than in Moscow.”