COMMUNIST PARTY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4403, 17 March 1941, Page 6

COMMUNIST PARTY

RED TACTICS IN BRITAIN. INDIRECT OBSTRUCTION. (By J. Emlyn Williams in the “Christian Science Monitor.”) LONDON, January 28. Communism in Britain is embarking on a new “tactic.”. Indirect obstructionism, rather than direct sabotage, has become the method which the left-extremists in Britain are following. It is a development, the possible destructiveness of which is to be measured less in the size of the official Communist membership than in possible support from people who are dissatisfied with the present social order, and are vaguely willing to experiment with change, if only for change’s sake.

Little had been heard about Communism here for a long time, but the recent meeting of the “people’s Convention,” suppression of the “Daily Worker,” the Communist Party organ, and the leftist news-letter, the “Week,” have given it prominence not unrelated to the war.

[The House of Commons by a vote of 323 to six defeated an Opposition motion censuring the Government’s suppression of the Communist newspaper “Daily Worker.” Mr Herbert Morrison, during debate in the House, said the Government’s stand had no political prejudice. After defeating the motion, the House voted approval, 297 to 11, of the Government’s action

in suppressing the “Worker” and the “Week,” a mimeographed weekly news-letter.] SMALL MEMBERSHIP. The Communist Party has a membership of 20,000, according to reliable reports. This is a very small number, and when it is also recalled that the party has but one member in Parliament, and few representatives on municipal or other local government bodies throughout the country, Communist action through constitutional channels is very ineffective.

But the mere statement of numbers does not dispose of the Communist danger, especially as its best propagandists have often been unregistered members.

There is no official information that the British Communist Party is receiving financial aid from Moscow, but that the party’s policy is based upon Moscow ideas is obvious. This is evidenced by the changed attitude which Communists adopted toward Nazi Germany at the beginning of the present war. Before the Russo-Ger-man Treaty, of August, 1939, the “Daily Worker” was strong in its condemnation of the Third Reich, but after that treaty the Communists here followed Moscow’s lead in concentrating upon the interpretation of the war as a pure capitalist struggle, which was not their concern. ORGANISING TACTICS. The Communists are clever organisers and their adoption of the cell system—which the Nazis were sufficiently far-sifihted to imitate—has enabled them to organise their own policy almost unsuspectingly in fac-

tories and workshops in certain parts of the country. It would be difficult to point to definite acts of sabotage by British Communists since the outbreak of the war, but their obstructionism has been increasing.

Their main tactics are preaching what might he described as “revolutionary defeatism” under the guise of supporting the rights of the workers and slowing down production and utilising every grievance for propaganda against “the capitalist system.” It would be entirely wrong to assume that such Communist agitators are merely inefficient workmen, some of them are among the best, who are drawing high wages from munition making.

In a number of factories and workshops, especially in such centres as Glasgow and Liverpool, their work has shown itself in a number of ways. These have been mostly indirect, for example, the recent decision of the Glasgow bus and trolley-bus workers not to carry on during, air raid alarms as well as Communist heckling during the recent speech of Mr Ernest Bevin, Minister for Labour and National Service, at Glasgow.

Liverpool, particularly the dock area, with its large Irish population, is also a Communist centre, and obstructionism has shown itself in a certain amount of canny action.

Reports have also been submitted recently to the Home' Office, according to reliable sources, regarding Communist activities throughout the country.

These include the slowing down of work in a variety of ways in aircraft factories, munition works, shipbuilding yards, docks, and so forth. The People’s Convention, the confer-

ence which met about a fortnight ago under the efficient management of the Communists, was utilised for the expression of all grievances of the dispossessed, particularly the condemnation of war itself as a most monstrous form of exploitation of the working classes.

Unfortunately, however, for their argument when Communism saw in Fascism its great enemy, the British Communist Party argued that war against the Third Reich was quite different. It was also rather unfortunate, especially after the German radio had flattered the convention so much, that the convention was forced to meet in London rather than in Manchester because Free Trade Hall in Manchester had been bombed by Herr Hitler’s aeroplanes. Britons are so careful, even in war time, in their defence of their freedom of expression, especially of the press, that only after much deliberation does the Government suppress a newspaper. It was only after long consideration that the Cabinet decided upon the suppression of the “Daily Worker” and the “Week.” Such action found little opposition from the vast majority of the country. This view will be confirmed when Parliament debates these newspaper suppressions in the near future. DIFFERENCE IN CRITICISM. During the last 16 months of war this official Communist organ undoubtedly has helped to expose certain Government deficiencies which needed exposure, but the “Daily Worker” was not by any means the only organ performing this duty. In fact similar and often stronger and more genuine criticisms—because they were concerned in righting wrongs and more effectively waging war rather than merely embarrassing the Government —have come from the so-called bourgeois press. The “Daily Worker’s” object is to get Britishers to fight war against each other, instead of against the totalitarians. Speaking on the suppression, of the “Daily Worker,” Mr John Jagger, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary, declared that the paper had worked “by definite design on a policy of revolutionary defeatism on the supposition that if they could sabotage the war effort of this country and create a revolution then the Communists could take over the Government.”

He also refuted the argument that the ban would imperil Anglo-Russian relations. The Soviet press in the week-end reports of this action are remarkable for their absence of adverse criticism, Moscow describing the action as being taken in the interests of national self-defence.

The day following the suppression there appeared a cyclostyled single sheet and the next day two sheets of Cammunist propaganda. In the latter Professor J. B. S. Haldane, a member of the editorial board of the “Daily Worker,” condemned the newest legisaltion for conscription of industrial workers so as to speed up war production because he alleged it would reduce them to the level of serfs. It is noteworthy, however, that he said nothing about the conditions of the German workers.

The “Week,” which was also suppressed, was a small publication of a few typewritten sheets run successfully for some years by Mr Claude Cockburn, a capable journalist who had earlier been correspondent in New York for “The Times” of London. RAN “GOSSIP SHEET.” After returning from the United States he founded the “Week,” without capital, but his racy style of American reporting and his gossip and unpublished news stories made up for certain deficiencies of the British press, particularly for people who desired “to be in the know regarding what was happening behind scenes.” It gave what is described in the United States as “the lowdown.” Mr Cockburn was so sklful that he long kept many of his readers guessing as to whether he was a Communist or simply a clever journalist. But any who knew him personally or as “Frank Pitcairn,” the diplomatic editor of the “Daily Worker,” had no doubt regarding his political views. Except for a very small number of leading agitators, British Communists are not people imbued with the Moscow ideology but rather those dissatisfied with existing social and economic conditions.

It can lie assumed they are not willing tacitly to help a German victory with the illusory hope of afterwards making revolution so as to obtain their own ends.