FORTHRIGHT DENUNCIATION OF COMMUNISM BY TRADE UNIONS

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 October 1948, Page 5

FORTHRIGHT DENUNCIATION OF COMMUNISM BY TRADE UNIONS

Outspoken Manifesto Causes Surprise

(N.Z.P.A.—Special Correspondent)

LONDON, Oct. 29 (Ree. 6 pm).—The forthright terms in which the Trade Union Congress manifesto denounced Communism and called upon the British working class to rally against it, have caused surprise, for though it was known that the patience of trade union leaders was fast becoming exhausted, it was not believed they would word their statement in such strong terms.

Mr. Harry Pollitt, general secretary of the British Communist Party, said: “This is very serious. We shall have to consider the manifesto in detail before we make any reply.”

Only two of the 30 members of the T.U.e. Council who voted upon the manifesto opposed it. They were Mr. Bert Papworth, Communist representative on the Transport and General Workers’ Union executive, and Mr. J. B. Figgins, general secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, which at present is pressing for a 12s 6d a week rise in the wages of 600,000 railway workers.

The Labour Party official organ, the “Daily Herald," says editorially: “No sterner statement has ever been issued bv the general council of the T.U.C-

“Today our trades unionism is threatened by an enemy much more subtle than the reactionary boss and every bit as vicious,” says the paper. "The Communist wants to break the power of trades unions. He wants to smash the Labour Government and the whole democratic system under which our people are free to think, vote and read according to their instinct and conscience. He wants to turn Britain into a police State, where no citizen dare speak his mind. The British Communist, wants to make all his countrymen helpless and blindly obedient vassals of a foreign Power. Trades unionists must respond to the general council s call—not merely by agreement, but by determined iand sustained action to eradicate this levil thing, which menaces our moveIment and our liberties”