COMMUNISTS BANNED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26772, 15 May 1948, Page 10

COMMUNISTS BANNED

ACTION BY EX-SERVICEMEN’S LEAGUE AN OVERWHELMING VOTE SYDNEY, May 13. The Federal Executive of the Returned Servicemen’s League has decided to ban Communists from league membership. The president of the league, Mr E. Millhouse, said that the resolution was immediately binding on all branches throughout Australia. It was carried by an overwhelming majority. To-day the executive is discussing other motions dealing with Communism and will decide whether the league should ask the Commonwealth and State Government to declare the Communist Party an illegal organisation. The question of banning Communists has never before been considered by the Federal Executive of the Returned Servicemen’s League. At the New South Wales State conference in 1946 the Chairman, Mr K. Bolton, refused to admit a resolution that any known Cotrimunist be banned from holding office in the league. Mr Bolton took that stand on the grounds that Communism was a political philosophy and that the league was a non-political body. Recently, however, the New South Wales executive decided to recommend the banning of Communists, and Mr Bolton said that circumstances had compelled him to take the view that Australian Communism was treasonable, anti-democratic, and destructive.

Liquidator. “ The prevalence of mountain accidents, some of them fatal, emphasises more than ever the need for reliable weather information to climbing parties in the mountains,” said Cr B. N. Murray at a meeting of the Mackenzie County Council, Mr Murray said that persons living in the back country relied implicitly on the recordings of their barometers and on last Tuesday his instruments had fallen more than an inch, he considered was a phenomenal drop. His motion, ‘‘That the Minister of Internal Affairs be written to, recommending that reliable barometers be placed in all mountain huts,” was carried unanimously.