THE COMMUNISTS TO POLI.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20110, 31 March 1928, Page 6

THE COMMUNISTS TO POLI.

’pti E PROSPECT of a largS number of Communist candidates

at the next British election will add to the liveliness of polities and to the number of forfeited deposits. But Moscow has ordained, and, since apparently Moscow will pay. there is little for the followers of Marx and Lenin to do but obey.

The move is apparently intended to harass the Labour party, but it is probable that the party will regard itself as relieved of an incubus. It is just possible that here and there

the defection of the Communist vote might lose Labour a seat, but the sacrifice would be well worth while if only in order to advertise the independence of the party from Russian influence. Nor, of course, will the other parties object to anything which may split, even infinitesimally, the Labour vote. And in the interests of intelligible politics it is clearly a good thing that Ihe division should be made, for the difference between the Communists and the Labour party is the vital difference between a party avowedly pursuing a class policy and a party equally definitely committed to a policy above class. The number of pledged Communists in Britain is so trifling that they would hardly count on a poll. But the number of people who have vaguely succumbed to the hateful gospel of the class war is undoubtedly larger, and it will be interesting if for the first time in British polities we are able to judge of the extent to which this corrupting influence has spread.