HOW BRITAIN HANDLES THE COMRADES
Williams, David C.
How Britain Handles the Comrades By DAVID C. WILLIAMS London THE British Communist Party is the weakest link in the worldwide Kremlin conspiracy, and its leaders openly admit it. "We know," said...
...Many Americans, including, apparently, Louis Johnson, feel that the selection of a one-time Communist sympathizer, John Strachey, as Minister of War is a distinct security risk...
...But they cannot deny its effectiveness...
...But the Communists dislike British Labor's policies just as much, if not more...
...IV Unlike practically every other Communist Party in the world, there have been no important splits in the British Communist Party...
...Some unions have already adopted constitutional provisions barring Communists from office...
...British people freely concede, of course, that there was inexcusable carelessness in the Fuchs case...
...Some people even say that had President Roosevelt had something of the same background, the Teheran and Yalta conferences might not have turned out so badly for the West...
...Furthermore it is likely that wage stabilization will be quietly relaxed to a sufficient extent to blunt the Communist challenge...
...Rightly or wrongly some British observers suspect that a lack of confidence in their own way of life lies behind the anger that many Americans feel about the Communists in their midst...
...The number of people who are willing even to listen to the Communists has dwindled almost to nothing, as a result of one Russian stupidity after another...
...Beyond this, most British people feel it unnecessary to go...
...Sir Waldron Smith-ers, a back-bench Conservative Member of Parliament, is circulating petitions calling for Strachey's removal...
...Of all the countries in the world, this is more free of Communism than any other...
...To a certain type of scientist (fortunately, in a small minority) there appears to be an almost irresistible attraction about Communism as the "scientific" solution for the problems of modern society...
...From the moment they took office, their objective was the closest possible military collaboration with the United States, in the interests of a firm front against Russian aggression...
...Moreover, since the trade unions are international Communism's prime target in the cold war, they have concentrated all their available forces on this front, particularly since their February election setback...
...there is, as Winston Churchill himself acknowledged, no longer an "unreliable element" in Parliament...
...Expenditure runs about $110,000 a year, most of it obtained from members' dues and contributions...
...But there is a general disposition not to discuss the subject...
...Pollitt's analysis of the situation seems closer to the truth than these American and British alarms...
...J. B. S. Haldane and J. D. Bernal...
...like most Europeans, the British are accustomed to the idea of a political police and feel that the less publicity it receives the more effectively it is likely to work...
...It was an attitude, he said, "that leads many churchmen and Socialists to look upon Communists as slightly erring brethren, and Conservatives and Liberals to say that some particular fellow-traveler is not a bad chap really, at bottom...
...The general opinion appears to be that the danger of students being led astray is small compared with the value of freedom in teaching...
...To a nation fully convinced of the superiority of its way of life, "un-British" is a term of contempt...
...Strachey's own views now resemble those of James Burnham, the author df The Coming Defeat of Communism...
...In the same way, most informed British people regard a one-time sympathizer of Communism, who has turned against it, as a Grade A security risk...
...Shortage of money is, in fact, a constant worry...
...His real target, however, was not to denounce individuals, but to dispel what he described as the general public apathy about the subject...
...In their opposition to the Labor Government's wage-slowdown policy, they have hold of an issue which is widely popular among rank-and-file trade unionists...
...The Dean of Canterbury, for example, encounters all sorts of opposition in his fellow-travelling journeys about the world...
...As Lord Jowitt said, in replying to Lord Vansittart, "There is no complacency, but there is no panic or hysteria either...
...The Communist debacle in the February General Election justified Pollitt's pessimism...
...once a person has had the disease and recovered, they say, he is forever immune...
...Far from the British Communist Party having affected British democracy, the reverse appears to have been the case...
...The British leaders of the Communist Party have stayed with it from its foundation...
...Even in the atmosphere of Marxism, the British tradition of give-and-take seems to function...
...His articles on Great Britain have appeared in The Nation, New Republic, Commentary, and the New Leader, while his interpretations of American political developments have been published in Tribune and other British publications...
...Although Lord Vansittart included teachers in his general indictment of Communist infiltration, few people in Britain are seriously concerned about this...
...During the war, the rank and file of the Party, like British people generally, were deeply stirred by the sacrifices the Red Army and the Russian people were making in the battle against fascism, but they spared very little enthusiasm for their own British Communists...
...Even at the height of the "popular front" agitation before the war, when French socialists joined with Communists and radicals, the Labor Party steadfastly refused to have any truck with Communism...
...The age and caution of the Labor Party and the Trades Union Congress were, at one time, among the chief assets of the Communist Party...
...These feelings are echoed by some British people...
...Nevertheless, many Americans are worried about Communism in Britain...
...Moreover, it ensures that at all times ex-Commu-nists greatly outnumber Communists, one great obstacle to the progress of the Party...
...The leaders of the Party, people like Attlee, Bevin, and Morrison, were never under any illusions about the Soviet Union...
...Thus, at the annual convention of the Electrical Trades Union, the delegates agreed with the Union's Communist officials in deploring the wage freeze and Greek fascism...
...Notable Communist scientists include Profs...
...You must learn to hate, hate, hate...
...One reason why Bevin was so alert to the Russian menace from the beginning was that he had had very extensive experience of Communist conspiracies in the course of his trade union career...
...It is a formidable combination...
...When one of London's largest department stores announced that it would discharge all Communists employed by it, leaders of the Conservative, Liberal, and Labor Parties joined in denouncing the statement, and the management withdrew it...
...They developed a "black list" of Communist-front organizations long before the U. S. Government did...
...Two years ago Attlee announced the beginning of a formal purge of Communists, fascists, and their sympathizers, and it is being quietly but thoroughly carried out...
...Prompt action will be taken to improve it...
...Putting up 100 candidates all over the country, and working for them with all the single-minded zeal of which Communists are capable, they succeeded only in losing the two seats which they held in the preceding Parliament...
...No person is more determined to resist Communist aggression, and few are better fitted by knowledge and experience for the task...
...Four have been expelled, and the rest have mended their ways...
...If some of them become Communists, it is regarded as an error of the heart rather than the head—a sort of juvenile enthusiasm from which they are expected to recover, and in 99 cases out of a hundred do recover...
...They believe that, by introducing a limited number of "half-hearted" reform measures, Labor is doing away with the "revolutionary" spirit of the British working class...
...The General Council of the Trades Union Congress, all of whose members are identified with the Labor Party, has in the past few years been very active in seeking to oust Communists from office in its affiliated trade unions...
...For their part, the leaders of British Labor have always fought the Communists tooth and nail...
...In others, the membership has been successfully stirred into voting Communists out of office at regular elections...
...In the same vein, Silone tells of the British Comintern delegate who, when the latest tactical step was announced, complained that it seemed to involve deliberate lying...
...The reaction of the average citizen of the United States to anything "un-American" is one of anger...
...In a major House of Lords address lasting almost two hours, Lord Vansittart reviewed extensively, if not always accurately, Communist infiltration into the church, the trade unions, the civil service, and the government broadcasting system...
...It produced a peculiarly British type of fellow-traveler—the militant trade unionist who read the Daily Worker regularly, listened to the Communists, and supported them when they made a good case—but was just as ready to vote against them when they didn't...
...But the Trades Union Congress gives full support to Government crackdowns on Communist-inspired strikes, even to the extent of approving the use of soldiers as strikebreakers...
...We know," said Harry Pollitt, its veteran secretary, "that many times our comrades are inclined to contrast the slow growth of our own Party and its achievements with what is taking place in other countries . . . We are fighting against the oldest and most experienced capitalist class and the most treacherous and cunning Social Democrats in the world...
...Pollitt, watching the Russian football team "Dynamo" when it appeared in London, confessed that he was angered by what looked to him like rough play and disregard for the rules...
...When the Labor Party took power in 1945 per- haps a dozen or so of its Members of Parliament could be identified as fellow-travelers...
...exclaimed Pollitt...
...needless to say, they are never put within reach of scientific developments with military significance...
...The Fuchs case, with its leakage of atomic secrets to Moscow, has cast doubt upon the thoroughness of British precautions against Communist infiltration of the civil service...
...Communists are still capable of causing trouble in the trade unions...
...Indeed, Bevin was "tough" with the Russians months before Byrnes, and privately referred to him as an "appeaser" for his efforts to patch up some sort of a deal with Molotov...
...There is a widespread view, which would mortally offend Communists, that socialists and Communists are very much alike—-in effect, that "Communists are socialists in a hurry...
...Surrounded as they are by a society so superior to any other in the world, as people here see it, the youngsters are unlikely to fail to recognize its merits...
...Britain's intelligence service, whose efficiency is almost legendary, had evidently not kept up with the times...
...III Moreover, the British Government is acting with great firmness in all critical areas of the civil service...
...Many Americans dislike very much what the Labor Government is doing in Britain, and many more would oppose the introduction of similar measures in America...
...Douglas Hyde, a member of the Daily-Worker staff who resigned from the Party, said that no Moscow gold had ever come into the Party's possession, as far as he knew, although there were some leaders who would have welcomed it...
...economic, and political bonds, to the sinking ship of "American capitalist imperialism...
...But they told them in no uncertain language not to support Communist candidates in the General Election, and thus split the working-class vote...
...In spite of all Marxist efforts, tolerance and even honesty seems to have crept in...
...Challenging Clement Attlee in his own constituency, he drew just 704 votes out of the 35,000 cast...
...So have the number of American-style fellow-travelers, who follow the party line wherever it leads...
...Pillowed in this half-contemptuous, half-amused tolerance, British Communists often feel the need to remind themselves that the class struggle is real...
...There is, in fact, a significant difference in the emotions aroused by the words "un-American" and "un-British...
...But none is so deadly as his fellow-countrymen's determination to treat him as a sort of glorified village idiot...
...There has never been nearly so much of a Broadway-Hollywood fringe about the Communist Party in Britain as in America...
...They work tirelessly, and for very little in the way of reward—the highest salary paid is about $15 a week, plus $6 for expenses...
...One of them, Lester Hutchinson, had toured America with Henry Wallace as an authentic spokesman of the British people...
...II In the first place, the Communists appear to be correct in viewing the existence and strength of the Labor Party as an obstacle to their progress...
...So far, neither Sir Waldron Smithers nor Lord Vansittart seems to have aroused much public concern about Communists...
...Five fellow-travelers, running as "labor independents" with Communist support, were also rejected...
...The only area of intellectual life in which the Party seems still to be making progress is among physical scientists...
...Its strength lies in some 50 paid officials and a limited number of activists...
...it is kept constantly up to date, and all members of the Labor Party are forbidden to join any organization on the list...
...If you don't hate, you know nothing of Communism I" Americans may take exception to this British way of handling Communists...
...Worse still, the Labor Government, they say, is tying Britain, by all sorts of military, DAVID C. WILLIAMS is stationed in London as British representative of Americans for Democratic Action...
...There has always been a policy of keeping Communists out of civil service posts where security risks were involved, and of removing those whose Communist sympathies were detected after their appointment...
Vol. 14 • September 1950 • No. 9
