SUSPECTED COMMUNISTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 306, 25 November 1937, Page 11

SUSPECTED COMMUNISTS.

DEPORTATION PLAN. WASHINGTON, Nov. 23. The Federal Government is quietly investigating an alleged campaign aimed at causing the deportation of two officials of the Committee for Industrial Organisation on the ground that they are aliens and members of the Communist Party, says the United Press correspondent. They are the Australian, Mr Harry Bridges, and Mr Harold Pritchett, president of the new International Woodworkers’ Union.

It is understood that Mr Bridges emphatically denied at a recent private hearing held by the Labour Department that be was a Communist, but the case against him is said to be supported by Governor Martin, of Oregon, whose own investigators inquired into Mr Bridges’s past and testified at several hearings against the Australian. It is understood that various rank and file members of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific have also testified as to Mr Bridges’s supposed Communistic affiliations. Mr Bridges, who lias taken out first citizenship papers three times, allowing the first two to lapse, is expected to complete his naturalisation early in 1938 but under a post-war law any Communist Party affiliation would be sufficient to assure liis deportation. Mr Pritchett is a Canadian, who is in the United States under a temporary visa. ■