HUNGARIAN RED SLATES BRITISH LABOUR’S STAND

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22888, 7 March 1949, Page 5

HUNGARIAN RED SLATES BRITISH LABOUR’S STAND

(11 a.m.) BUDAPEST, Mar. 6. The Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Matyos Rakosi, criticising the British Labour Party’s attitude to the Mindszenty trial declared: “The party can call itself the Socialist Party but in connection with the Mindszenty case and in the slander war against the Soviet it plays the same game as the cardinals of Spain who are bleeding the Spanish workers and the cardinals of Petain who collaborated with the Fascists during the war.” Attacking the Vatican’s attitude to the trial, Mr. Rakosi said the Government’s effort to reach an agreement with the Roman Catholic Church had

failed because tthe “Vatican placed its influence at the disposal of American imperialism." Mr. Rakosi said that Cardinal Mindszenty was the “fanatical father of a plan sponsored by American imperialists to re-establish a union of Catholic countries. The Vatican had a role in the planned formation of a Danube monarchy. “The Vatican does not want a peace agreement but wants to fight and have unrest," he said.

Negotiations between the Hungarian State and the church could have ended successfully but the Vatican interfered and disapproved of further negotiations.