BREAK WITH MOSCOW

Taranaki Daily News, 14 May 1932, Page 7

BREAK WITH MOSCOW

CONVERT TO CHRISTIANITY.

EX-COMMUNIST ORGANISER. A man who said that he was formerly a Moscow-trained Communist organiser in Britain at a salary of £lOOO a year told a London audience on March 10 that a great destructive influence known as the Comrades of Life, financed by Moscow, is to work in the British Isles. The man’s name is Victor T. Webb, a Scotsrnan in the .early ’thirties, with a stentorian voice developed at openair meetings. He was speaking at a luncheon held by the World Evangelisation Trust, Limited, a, recently-formed religious movement, at the Mildmay Conference centre, at Newington Green, London. “The Comrades of Life,” Mr. Webb said, “is an anti-Christian movement with headquarters in Moscow, and its slogans are ‘All power to the workers’ and ‘Organised religion must perish.’ Tho secret activities of the movement are the illegal side of Communism, and it has 2000 active agents in the British Isles. Its object is to create a revolution throughout the world.” Mr. Webb told a Daily Mail reporter that he spent about seven months in Russia training as a Communist organiser, after which he went to Britain on his £lOOO-a-year job. “The headquarters of the movement in London,” he said, “are in the Covent Garden district. I was formerly an atheist, but about two years ago 1 was converted to the Christian, faith and threw over all association with Moscow. I am now to make a tour of..tho industrial centres, speaking at meetings of working people. My addresses will be of a religious nature, and non-political.”

scene when the window-smashing started. The decision was reserved. Felix Blaney, seaman, came out of . a hotel at 5.30 on tho evening of the disorders and called out, “Go it, you to runninr constables. He denied association with the demonstrators. A conviction was entered and Blaney was remanded for sentence. William Reilly, a carpenter, aged 08, it war said, booed at passing specials and was taken in charge. Decision m this case also was reserved. Frederick Gordon Thomas was charged with stealing watches and Henry Clarence Berney with stealing jewellery. Both cases were remanded till May 18. William George Lovatt was reminded till May 20 on a charge of mischief.