ACTIVITY OF THE COMMUNISTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 269, 14 November 1945, Page 5

ACTIVITY OF THE COMMUNISTS

SERIOUS IN AUSTRALIA

PROBLEM ARISING FOR MODERATE LABOUR

Recci. 5.5 p.m. Sydney, Nov. 13 The activity of Australian Coprmunirts is again causing serious concern, botli to the general public and within the Labour ranks. Communists are largely blamed for the presen industrial unrest in New South Wales, and their demonstration, in the past week against Dutcli troops en route to Java is deplored by the great majority of Australians. Communist have long been hold responsible for trouble on the coalfields, and their tactics there of strikes defiance are now being carried into other industries. The "Sydney Morning Herald” says that in each case the unions concerned are those under the domination of Communists, whose aim is not only to paralyse production by strikes, but also to discredit and undermine ail established authority, so that they may eventually substitute the rule of force for the rule of law. ihe struggle last week between Labour’s Left and Right wings for control of the industrial Labour nßvemenr resulted in a win for the moderates, inspired by the Australian Labour Party, over the Communist, inspired by the militants. The fight in the Labour movement was on the question of the method on how industrial disputes should be handled. The question which divided the Left from the Right was which road to take—the way of strikes and demonstrations, booing of judges, getting hosed on the wharves, or ihe more decorous, if le.s spectacular, path to the Arbitration Court. The Trades and Labour Council decided to continue control of the Por. Kembla and Newcastle Steel strikes, thus, as the “Herald” ,»«« rebuffing the attempt on the nart of the Communists to seize effective control of the movement and substitue revolutionary for evolutionary processes.

The Communists had made a bid to control the current big steel disputes at Port Kembla and Newcastle, and a victory for them, it is believed, would have meant the extension of the disputes into a general strike. One political writer says that back of the moderate minds in Labour’-.' political wing was a fear that the old Red bogey would be brought out of biding again for the ”»v.t Federal elections. The militan'- scoffed at this idea, but the modules could visualise a timid “swir"” of voters shying away from a J..?'-—t Government that could not keep this be. whiskered, bomb-throwir.z symbol ci industrial lawlessness in hand.