SINISTER LETTER

Northern Advocate, 5 November 1932, Page 7

SINISTER LETTER

MOSCOW INSTIGATION. SEQUEL TO LONDON TROUBLE. (Received 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, November 4, “You must fight the police terror and agitate for the police chief’s dismissal,” declared a long letter from Moscow, instructing Hannington and Emfys Llewellyn, members of the Unemployed Workers’ Union, and signed by Sidney Jobe Elias, 35, who was arrested yesterday owing to the discovery of the letter when the police raided Hannington’s office. Elias, who is chairman of the movement, and who wrote the letter during a visit to Russia, was today charged at Bow Street with inciting Hannington and Llewellyn “to cause discontent, dissatisfaction and ill-will between different classes of His Majesty’s subjects, and to create public disturbances against the police. ’ ’ The neighbourhood of the police court was closely guarded.

Further extracts from the Moscow letter stated: "There is no clear indication that the movement is trying to break the police terror. In Birkenhead, the fact is being overlooked. The police are successfully breaking Birkenhead’s spirit. Some proposals must bo made to the comrade's of Birkenhead and Liverpool on the methods of fighting the police terror, and the agitation must be continued in the streets. Simultaneously in the trades unions there must be si national call to the rest of the country to join the struggle and abolish the means test.”

Replying to the magistrate’s question, the prosecution said that the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, which organised the unemployed marches, is a section of the Third International, under whose direction Elias was acting. Accused was remanded, bail being refused.