BREAK WITH RUSSIA

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 12 September 1927, Page 5

BREAK WITH RUSSIA

WRATHFUL MOSCOW REDS. LABOUR LEADERS ABUSED. BRITISH PRESS COMMENT. BY CABLE —PRESS ASSOCIATION— COPYRIGHI LONDON, Sept. 10. The Riga correspondent -of “The Times’’ says the Trade Union (Congress dissolution of the Anglo-Russian Committee has deeply impressed the Moscow Reds, who are pouring the vials of wrath on the “British traitors.”

M. DogadolF denounces the “functionaries assembled to fulfil Air Baldwin’s behests. Nevertheless 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 Purcels, Hickses and Thomases into the cesspool and put real revolutionaries in their places.” M. Lozovsky says: “The decision was cut and dried; it was no't by chance. Congress’ aggressiveness coincided with Britain’s diplomatic rupture. Only the so-called leaders are traitors; a referendum would have shown that the heart of British Labour really beats for union with Afoscow. ’ ’

A British official wireless message states that, commenting on the decision by the British Trade Union 'Congress to break off negotiations with the Russian trades unions, the “Daily Herald,” the Labour Journal, says: “It was taken because of the lack of harmony of the Russian leaders with .the methods and traditions of the British trades union movement. The relations vvhich have been, suspended can be resumed when the Russians care, .provided only they accept and met upon the condition's which have been laid down and .agreed to by themselves. Those conditions arc: That the Anglo-Russian Commit-, tee is not an international; both sides should have power to conduct the internal affairs of tTTeir own movements in their own way; and that promises or agreements are made to be kept and no't broken.”

The “Daily News” says: “The decision makes it finally plain for all whether at Moscow pi near home, that the ordinary British working man has not tlu slightest intention of working for a tevolution in this country on the Russian model, if for no other reason than because lie knows well enough that he would himself be involved in the ruin ‘that would). This clears the road for some constructive reform in which the political activities of Labour ought to be a powerful and effective agent. The decision stamps Labour definitely as a constitutional force. ’ ’