LABOUR ORGANISATION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 199, 22 August 1929, Page 7

LABOUR ORGANISATION

AN INQUIRY IN BRITAIN. [Australian Press Assn.) LONDON, Aug. 20. “Political success must not be made an occasion for slackening efforts towards an increase in the bargaining power of organised Labour or an extension of trade union influence,’ ’ insists the report which is being submitted to the Trade Union Congress at Belfast in September. Two long sections of the report are devoted to the results of the inquiry into disruptive elements within the unions. The report states that from the beginning of the Communist propaganda in Britain the constant endeavour had been, not to voice honest criticism and to use the unions as democratic machinery but to divide and conquer the unions with the object of imposing Communist autocracy. Communist minority movements, actunder instructions from Moscow made this their paramount aim and followed a deliberate plan of splitting the trades union movements in order to step in and use it for their own purposes. It was found that the driving force behind the Communist League’s anti-imperialism and anti-colonial oppression was the Communist International from which its finances were largely derived. The Communist newspaper Sunday Worker, in 1928 lost £lO,OOO but managed to carry on after receiving donations from unnamed sources exceeding £15,000.

With the exception of one or two disruptive elements the influence on the unions was decreasing. It had done most harm where early action was not taken by branches and districts. The Trade Union Council now feels that in the light of evidence now available, the unions are capable of cooperating in the task of stamping out disruptive activity, which undoubtedly militated against membership.