WEDNESDAY, DECEMBEF 14, 1932 BOLSHEVISM FAILS IN BRITAIN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 14 December 1932, Page 4

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBEF 14, 1932 BOLSHEVISM FAILS IN BRITAIN

IT was a- coiiicidence that there arrived yesterday the cablegram containing news of the trial and sentence of the Communist leader, Sidney Job Elias, and copies of London newspapers which described the .riots which lie promoted, and for which lie has been punished. What was called a “Hunger March on London” was in reality an organised attempt to create a- serious situation which should culminate in an attempt to subvert law and order. The marchers had been organised by the National Unemployed Workers Movement, and they were orderly enough till they reached the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, where they were to be allowed, in accordance with the accepted British custom, to say what- they liked so long as they did not translate their words into unlawful actions. There were 5000 policemen concentrated in or near the Park to welcome them. As the various columns of marchers —there were bands of women marching with the men —approached the Marble Arch, police officers escorted them on either side. There was a strong contingent of mounted police on duty, their primary object being to clear the way for the marchers, not to obstruct them. But as the heads of the various columns were nearing their destination, certain of the marchers began throwing bricks into shop windows. A group of special constables came in for provocative and rough treatment. A policeman was laid out by a rioter with an iron bar. Soon the mounted constables were fully engaged in what must have been a general melee. Chief Inspector Oger and a special constable were felled to the ground, and were removed to hospital. Gangs of hooligans molested people sitting in stationary motor cars; shop windows were broken, and doubtless a certain amount of looting took place. Inside the Park the situation was even more serious. The Communist hunger-marchers had attracted, as they marched, large numbers of lawless individuals who, arming themselves with sticks and stones, pieces of broken seats, and broken park railings, attacked the police, at whose heads they hurled “chair frames, iron chair fragments, and wooden rods.” But the police used great restraint. It was chiefly the mounted police who were engaged. They charged the rioters again and again, using, however, only their batons. At length they restored order within the Park. While the foot police endeavoured to clear the jammed traffic which filled all the streets near the scene of the disturbance, the so-called hungerstrikers were marshalled inside the Park, and were marched off, with a strong escort of police, and accompanied by some thousands of demonstrators, some of whom sympathised with the Communists, while some did not. Possibly about 300 hunger-marchers were seriously injured. Twelve of them were arrested. Tlio significant thing about this instance of planned disorder was that the marchers “were pawns in Moscow’s game.” Some of them carried “banners which bore the hammer and sickle, the Soviet’s national emblem” ; and now it is known that Sidney Job Elias was the principal Bolshevist agent in organising tliis march on London, which terminated so unhappily for the marchers. Indeed, lie seems to have been sent expressly from Moscow to foment and foster the very movement which has been described, and to promote Bolshevism in England generally. When his work is judged by its visible results, there is cause for wonder at the abortive methods and ineffective agents employed by the plotters of the Third International, at Moscow. On a small scale they have employee! in several countries, including New Zealand, the same methods of demonstration as those which have failed in London. It has been said by one critic of their methods that their failure is attributable mainly to tlieir parsimony or their poverty, since they seek to promote their cause chiefly by means of catch-phrases which cost nothing. It lias also been pointed out that their efforts have little cohesion, that they are widely scattered and disconnected, and lack that concentration which is the first principle of attack, whether in war or in revolution. At Elias’s trial before the Magistrate extracts were read from ;i letter which the prisoner had written from Moscow, in September, to certain “comrades” in England, which conclusively proved that both the writer and the lecipients of the letter were the tools of the “Profinlern,” a section of the Third International, which is responsible lor all the propaganda of the Soviet Government of Russia.