“STOOGE” PARTY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22584, 12 March 1948, Page 5

“STOOGE” PARTY

SOCIALIST UNITY BRITISH CHIEF BITTER “FRAUD AND TRICK” (N.Z.P.A. —Reuter —Copyright.) (10 a.m.) LONDON, March 11. General Sir Brian Robertson, British Military Governor in Germany yesterday delivered the most outspoken denunciation of Communist-directed and Russian-sponsored Socialist Unity Party which has yet been made by a leader of the western democracies. It was, he said, “stooge” party and the unity it was advocating was the unity of bondage. The Times correspondent in Berlin says that General Robertson’s denunciation was made at a meeting of the Allied Control Council and the occasion was a letter from the three German chairmen of the “Union of the Socialist Unity Party and the Communist Party of Germany” protesting against the alleged vetoing of the union in the West and the banning of its meetings and publications. “Crusade Against Communism” The letter was accompanied by a long Russian memorandum presented by Marshal Sokolovsky which said, among other things that under the Potsdam agreement “democratic” organisations were allowed. Marshal Sokolovsky, in a personal statement, also alleged that in the West war criminals were still at large and were being used in “the crusade against communism.” General Robertson who, according to the Times correspondent, spoke with deep feeling and indignation, said the Communist Party had been shewn great tolerance. It was a noisy party and in view of its truculence and extravagances it should account itself fortunate in the treatment it had received. The Socialist Unity Party had not. General Robertson said, been prohibited in the British zone. The German people in the British zone did not want it. -They regarded it ns a fraud—as a "trick for enticing workers away from a genuine Socialist conception into the toils of communism.” “Unity in Bondage” The Socialist Unity Party’s idea of unity deceived nobody, General Robertson added. It was a “stooge” party and the unity to which it invited its followers was unity in bondage. Its German chairmen and fellow conspirators were playing a very dangerous game. They would find out how big their mistake was when the iron curtain which shut off Eastern Germany from the West was lifted. “They will then be brought to account by the people of Germany for their attempts to betray democracy and to fasten on the necks of their fellow countrymen a yoke of their own importation.” They would be asked to explain why they had denied Eastern Germany the trade benefits which were being made available to the rest of Germany under the Marshall Plan.