BRITISH UNION SPLIT ON ISSUE OF COMMUNISM

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 October 1948, Page 5

BRITISH UNION SPLIT ON ISSUE OF COMMUNISM

(Rec. 12.10 p.m.) LONDON, October 17

Several thousand trade unionists at an open-air meeting on a blitzed site at Manchester overwhelmingly adopted a resolution, urging the Government and the T.U.C. “to take all the necessary steps to remove Communist control of the trade union movement."

' The meeting was the latest move in the dispute between Chris Blackwell, ex-chief shop steward at the Metropolitan Vickers factory, Manchester, and local leaders of the electrical Trades Union, in which the president and general secretary are Communists.

The union has withdrawn Mr Blackwell’s credentials. Mr Blackwell alleged that this was due to “Communist manoeuvres.” Mr Blackwell told the meeting his case had “exposed for the first time the machinations of this diabolical Communist Party.”

Other speakers urged that the Government’s purge of the Communists in the civil service should be extended to other tracie unions, particularly those concerned with the nationalised industries. While Mr Blackwell was speaking, 625 delegates, representing about 12,500 members of the Electrical Trades Union, were meeting privately in Manchester. Later the president of the union, Mr Frank Foulkes, announced that with ’only three dissentients they had adopted a resolution condemning the members of the union . and other unions in using the press to vilify the leadership of the Electrical Trades Union. The Manchester branch of the Post Office Workers’ Union passed a resolution supporting Mr Blackwell in his anti-Communist stand.